Conspiracy of Bones

by Tracy Krauss

  "No thanks," Laura said in a clipped voice. "I think I’ve seen and heard enough for one day." She turned to Mark. "Just remember what I said and don’t do anything stupid. At least not for awhile anyway, until the rest of us have had time to distance ourselves."

  "Thanks for being so compassionate," Mark quipped.

  "It’s your life," she countered angrily, tears in her voice. "If you’re set on throwing it away, I can’t stop you. Just don’t expect me to follow along."

  She turned and strode from the room.

  "What was that all about?" Anthony asked, his eyebrows raised. "Lover’s quarrel?"

  "Hardly," Mark said under his breath.

  "So, uh, Mark… " Anthony asked tentatively. "Is it true that you’re not going to publish your findings?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Whoa! Buddy! This is me, remember? It’s what Sangeruka claimed. I told you that already. I asked John, but he seemed pretty uninformed."

  "I haven’t decided for sure yet," Mark replied.

  "By the look of what you’re sitting on, I’d say you’d be hard pressed not to. I mean, we all saw what was in the burial chamber with our own eyes. Now that you and John have been crunching the numbers, I’d say it’s your duty to tell the truth just the way we found it."

  Mark surveyed the other man closely. "You finish reading that book I lent you?”

  Anthony nodded. "My feelings on the subject are - mixed. It all makes perfect sense and what we’ve seen in the last few months certainly seems to verify that an international cover up against creationist theory is definitely at work. I’m just not sure I’m ready to believe in all that Bible stuff again. It would mean eating some humble pie with my folks and I’m not much for the taste of that."

  "I see. But you do think it’s part of the conspiracy?" Mark asked. "All of the glitches, the mishaps, getting run out of the country. Everything?"

  Anthony nodded. "It’s got to be. What else could it be?"

  "And Sangeruka? What do you make of his involvement?"

  "Now that’s one I haven’t quite figured out yet, although I’m sure he is involved somehow. I just didn’t buy his whole story about wanting to preserve the traditions of his countrymen."

  "Me neither," Mark agreed. "He blackmailed you, too?"

  "What do you mean, ‘too’?” Anthony asked.

  "He threatened the lives of the crew if I didn’t promise to keep quiet. Not to mention my own life as well as my reputation."

  "Hm. He didn’t go that far with me," Anthony said. "He just tried to appeal to my intellectual side. My training as an expert in folklore and the importance of keeping the sacred trust of the local people. He said their rituals demanded that the ancient dead be left undisturbed and that it was also taboo to even talk about it. He made me swear to secrecy. As a scholar, I guess he figured he could safely take that route without going any further."

  "But you didn’t buy it," Mark observed.

  "Are you kidding?" Anthony scoffed. "He was obviously forgetting that as an expert I do have some background knowledge about these things. I’ve never heard any such references to such things in that area of the world at all."

  Mark nodded in understanding.

  "So?" Anthony asked again. "Are you going public or not?"

  Mark let out a heavy sigh. "I’m leaning in that direction."

  "That’s the spirit," Anthony said enthusiastically. "I’d hate to see the bad guys win, you know what I mean?"

  "What makes you think they won’t?" Mark asked soberly.

  "Well, I suppose that is a possibility," Anthony conceded. "But we can’t let them win without at least putting up a fight. Say, you want to know what I got you?"

  Mark raised his eyebrows. He had almost forgotten. "Sure."

  Anthony put up one finger as a signal to wait for a minute. He went to his backpack, which he had deposited on the counter by the door. After a few seconds of rummaging, he pulled out a slim, silver cylinder.

  "What is it?" Mark asked with curiosity.

  Anthony brought the container over to where Mark sat and popped off the lid. Inside were several small plastic bags. "I got those skin and hair samples, just like you asked," he said with a grin.

  Mark blinked in disbelief. "You what?"

  "The skin and hair samples," Anthony repeated. "To be more specific, skin, hair and a nail sample from the king himself, and some scales and leather from the Pterodactyl headdress as well as a fragment from the beak."

  "But how did you…” Mark trailed off as the probable method of smuggling the evidence dawned on him. "You didn’t, did you?"

  "Don’t worry," Anthony replied with a smile. "I had the cylinder itself wrapped in plastic with a coating of Vaseline. Absolutely no contaminants reached the samples themselves."

  Mark squeezed his eyes tight, trying not to let a picture form in his head. He couldn’t help the smile that crept across his face until he suddenly burst out in full-fledged laughter. Anthony joined him good-naturedly. "I can’t believe you actually did that.”

  "Anything for the cause, right?" Anthony grinned.

  "What if you’d been caught?"

  "I didn’t plan on it" Anthony shrugged. "In any case, I wasn’t, now was I? I know it can never replace the real thing, but at least it’s something."

  Mark shook his head. "You’re a real trooper, you know that? Now how can I not go forward?"

  "I was hoping I’d convince you.”

  Mark slapped Anthony across the back. At least he knew he had one solid ally.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Now that Anthony was back, new hope seemed to rise to the surface for Mark. Any threats from Sangeruka, any warnings from Laura - even his own doubts - seemed minuscule and he dismissed them in order to single-mindedly pursue the publication of his findings.

  John was unable to help as much now, since he had projects of his own to work on. But Mark had known this was the case from the beginning and was not dampened in spirit. Anthony was making valuable contributions to the project, adding his knowledge of the connections with ancient legends, including the Biblical accounts, and it was now up to Mark to put it all together in some kind of format that would explain all the data and be acceptable for publication in a scientific journal.

  "Anthony, how are those specs coming?" Mark looked up from his laptop as Anthony entered the room. His smile faded when Anthony didn’t answer. The look on the other man’s face was grim and sounded an alarm bell in Mark’s brain. "What is it?"

  "I just heard a rumour," Anthony replied. "The specimens are already packed for shipment back to Africa."

  "What?" Mark asked, eyeing Anthony sharply. "So soon? Who told you?"

  "The lab receptionist," Anthony answered.

  "That can’t be," Mark said, rising from his chair. "I was just in the vault yesterday. All the arrangements have been made so that we can wait to ship after my presentation. The date has already been set. It’s a done deal."

  "Well, if I were you, I’d check again," Anthony advised.

  Mark did just that. He strode with purpose down the hall and stopped at the reception desk. "What’s this I hear about artefacts - my artefacts - being shipped back to Africa without my knowledge?"

  The woman at the counter raised her eyebrows defensively. "You can check with the Dean of Archaeological Studies yourself, if you like.”

  Without any further acknowledgement, Mark swung his body down the hallway to his right, Anthony scuttling after him. He bypassed the Dean’s receptionist with a dismissive wave and rapped briskly on the wooden door leading into the office. As soon as the muffled ‘Yes?’ was heard from within, Mark barged into the room.

  "Are the African artefacts getting shipped back?" he asked without preamble.

  The other man took off his glasses with deliberate calmness and gestured to the available chair in front of his desk. "Doctor Graham, have a seat, won’t you?"

  "Just answer the question, Taylor," Mark replied, not budging.r />
  Dean Taylor was a man of about fifty, with steel grey hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. The Doctor of Archaeology and Anthropology, with honorary degrees from several of the most prestigious institutions in Europe and North America, matched Mark’s gaze with unwavering determination. "An agreement was signed. You know that."

  "Yes, I know, but I thought we had agreed to wait until after my presentation," Mark countered. "Institutions like this one have an overriding responsibility to make sure that the world’s priceless artefacts are properly preserved and cared for. You can’t just turn them over to some other entity whose reputation is questionable at best. Not until we’re sure they’ll be properly preserved and housed. Those artefacts are priceless. Once they’re presented publicly we’ll have a better bargaining tool to make the government see that. Keeping them here at least until then could buy us the time we need to -"

  "Um, about your presentation…” Taylor cut in.

  Mark narrowed his eyes. "What about it?"

  "It seems we may have to postpone that for awhile," Taylor hedged. "Strictly a scheduling issue."

  "Oh really," Mark snorted sceptically. "Why doesn’t that surprise me?"

  "You know that we’re sitting on a bit of a hot bed, Dr. Graham. The last thing this institution needs is the kind of controversy that could lead to funding cuts. As it is, we’re just holding on to many of our corporate sponsorships."

  "So this is about money?" Mark asked. "What ever happened to scholarly excellence?"

  "I don’t think you realize the gravity of this situation," Taylor said. "Dealing with foreign governments can be very tricky."

  "Nothing you haven’t handled before," Mark said with exasperation.

  "This is a matter of legality. They have a legal right -"

  "Legal right!" Mark exploded. "This institution has an obligation to preserve history!"

  "Governments can be fickle. We can’t take the chance of a law suit," Taylor continued reasonably.

  "I was there, remember? Those government officials are steeped in bribery and all kinds of questionable practices. We have an obligation to do what’s right, not just on moral grounds, but on scientific grounds."

  "Sometimes it’s best just to back down rather than push an issue that could end up bringing bad publicity."

  "Oh, so this is about publicity," Mark stated flatly. "You don’t want any bad press."

  "That is part of my job," Taylor reminded.

  "How can you be so nonchalant about this?" Mark asked. "You do realize what we’re sitting on here?"

  Taylor hesitated for a moment and looked down at his fingers, steepled in front of him. "I’ve been meaning to have a discussion about that."

  Mark surveyed Taylor suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

  Taylor cleared his throat and sat up straighter before meeting Mark’s gaze. "I’ve been hearing some rather… alarming things about the way you are presenting your findings, Dr. Graham."

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. "Yeah? From whom?"

  "That’s not the point. The point is, this institution is not interested in any bad publicity over a questionable archaeological dig. The fact that we are already running into difficulty with the local governing body is bad enough and now, to find out that our premier archaeologist on site is twisting the data for some kind of personal agenda… well, I don’t need to spell out for you how bad that makes us all look."

  Mark was stunned. He couldn’t even formulate an immediate reply. Twisting the data for his own personal agenda? What in the world was Taylor talking about? And who was feeding him this information? Laura? He knew she was angry with him, but he would never have expected that kind of retaliation.

  "Actually," Taylor continued, "what I was going to suggest to you was a brief leave of absence."

  "A leave of absence," Mark repeated flatly. "What does that mean, exactly, Dean? Am I being dismissed?"

  "Only temporarily. Until this unfortunate situation blows over," Taylor said with a placating smile. "You’re a world class scientist, Doctor Graham, known in your field. You wouldn’t want to taint your reputation with the type of questionable speculation I’m afraid you’ve fallen into."

  "So you’re telling me to drop everything I’ve been working on for all these months. Just abandon the evidence because you’re afraid it might bring some bad press to this institution?" Mark shook his head in disbelief.

  "You’ve obviously gotten way too personally involved.”

  "Personally involved? Of course, I’m personally involved! It’s my life’s work. My passion. You know that. It’s what makes me good at what I do and one of the reasons you wanted me on board at this institution in the first place, in case you don’t remember. You can’t expect me to just abandon everything I’ve been working on.”

  "You can work on your dissertation all you like, but just not under the auspices of this institution," Taylor stated.

  "Meaning, if I publish anything, you won’t verify or back up any of my findings."

  Taylor just shrugged in agreement.

  "Tell me something," Mark asked, leaning forward. "Your contact from Africa wouldn’t happen to be a guy named Sangeruka?"

  "I am not obliged to share that information with you, Doctor," Taylor stated, pressing his lips together.

  Mark nodded. "Yep. I should have known. So it probably didn’t take much convincing for you to pack up all the artefacts. The farther they are away, the easier it will be to distance yourself." He laughed mirthlessly. "People are going to wonder, you know. There was enough sharing of information that it won’t just disappear."

  "I know that. That’s why I’m going to get someone else to compile the findings."

  "Who?"

  Taylor hesitated, as if he was debating with himself whether to reveal that information to Mark or not. "I’ve got Doctors Sawchuk and Bergman already working on it."

  Mark felt numb. Laura and John. Laura he could understand. She had been threatened herself and probably thought she was saving him somehow. But John? He had been so helpful, so supportive… so interested in every detail. Now he knew why. The betrayal was almost too much to swallow.

  "And what if I publish my own findings, separate from theirs?" Mark asked.

  "I can’t stop you," Taylor replied. "It’s a free country. But don’t expect to be welcomed back under the umbrella of this institution ever again, or any other reputable institute of higher learning, for that matter."

  Mark was silent for a moment. To sever himself from the university was more than just an act based on moral principle. It could mean the end of his career. But the thought of out and out lying - pretending none of it had ever happened and that he had not seen with his own eyes what he knew he had…

  What would Jack do? He’d always had an answer. Mark wished now that he had spent more time with him in these last years. With all of them, really. He had been so preoccupied with making his own discoveries that he had neglected the one thing that was most important. Family.

  And now it was too late - for Jack, at least. He would never see him again.

  A small voice inside whispered. That’s not what Jack believed.

  Mark blinked. That’s right. Jack had given his life to Christ. If there really was a God, and Jesus was it, Jack was safely in heaven, waiting for the rest of them. It was the hope of his entire family - his father, Deanie, Harmony, his Grandmother…

  If he had ever wished he believed like the rest of them, now would be the time. He needed all the help he could get with this situation.

  "Well, Dean Taylor, it’s been good working with you," Mark said calmly, stretching out his hand to shake the other man’s. Taylor looked surprised and didn’t reciprocate the gesture immediately. Finally, he grasped Mark’s hand tentatively.

  "I’m not sure I understand," Taylor said.

  "I doubt we’ll be seeing one another again," Mark replied. "Even if I do lay low for awhile; drop this whole project, I don’t think I could remain under the directorship of a man
who would exchange undeniable evidence for the easy popularity of a lie."

  Taylor’s eyes narrowed. "I’ll expect all of your personal belongings off the property by the end of the day. And don’t even think about going near the storage vault - you or your sidekick."

  Mark’s jaw worked angrily, but he dared not open his mouth again. He swung from the room, almost bumping into Anthony on the way, who had been loitering near the door.

  "You don’t have to ruin your own career, Anthony. I would totally understand if you just jump ship right now. It would be the smart thing to do," Mark said as they manoeuvred their way back to the lab.

  Anthony waited until they were inside and the door was shut before replying. "I suspect the damage has already been done.”

  "Guilty by association.”

  "I was thinking, though.” Anthony stopped and looked over his shoulder before continuing. "Maybe you could use a man on the inside."

  Mark had already started gathering books off the shelf and piling them in a haphazard stack on one of the work counters. "Why would anyone trust you?”

  "I could convince them, no problem," Anthony assured. "Say I just got caught up in the excitement of the legendary aspects of the dig, but now I realize how foolish it is. Something like that."

  "And what good would that do?" Mark asked.

  "I could let you know what angle they’re taking as they write up their findings. You could counter attack, maybe even publish simultaneously. I also might be able to track the artefacts. Even though they’re supposedly packed for shipment, there is a chance they might not get shipped right away. I’m pretty good at smuggling, as you already know. He smiled.

  Mark considered this then asked the obvious question. "How do I know you’re not part of the whole conspiracy?"

  Anthony blinked and then frowned with a hurt expression on his face. "Hey, that’s not the response I was expecting."

  "Sorry.” Mark rubbed the back of his neck wearily. "But you’ve got to admit I have reason to be suspicious. Everyone else I trusted has turned against me."

  "You do have a point. There’s probably not much I can do to convince you otherwise, although you ought to know I feel as strongly about making sure the truth comes out as you do. If I do stick around here, I’ll be trying to see that it happens, one way or another."