Uneasy Relations

by Aaron Elkins

  Which was also the reason that Rowley’s audience was huddled so tightly.

  “Now then, to the south,” he continued, “across the straits, the dun-colored mountains are the, ah, er, Atlas Mountains of Morocco. To the west, across Gibraltar Bay, we have Algeciras, Spain, about which, heh-heh, there is an amusing saying . . .”

  But they were not to learn what the amusing saying about Algeciras was, at least not yet. Rowley was somewhat of a mumbler—a hem-and-hawer—at the best of times (an impediment not helped by the small, ceramic-bit pipe that was forever clenched between his teeth, usually unlit), and this morning’s wind gusts sporadically plucked the words out of his mouth and whirled them, unheard, out over the strait.

  “Can’t hear a damn thing, Rowley,” said Audrey Godwin-Pope, the Horizon Foundation’s director of Field Archaeology, whose metallic, incisive voice would have had no difficulty being heard above buffeting that was far stronger than this. “Too windy. And please make an effort not to swallow your words.”

  Rowley, taking no offense (Audrey was Audrey; what could one do?), expanded his chest and attempted to raise his volume a tad, though he didn’t go so far as to take the pipe from his mouth. “Yes, this wind is a curious meteorological phenomenon, you know, and unique to the Straits of Gibraltar. The Spaniards refer to it the poniente, and it—”

  “Far be it from me to correct a native, Rowley, especially you, but I’m afraid you’re in error there,” said Adrian Vanderwater. “The poniente is the westerly wind that comes in from the Atlantic. This one, coming from the east, out of the Mediterranean, would be the levanter . . .”

  “The levanter?” echoed Rowley, removing the pipe and tapping it against his teeth. “Are you sure? You know, I always remember the difference by—”

  “. . . which, might I add, would mean that the rain and fog are not likely to be very far behind.”

  “Well, whatever the hell you call it, it’s getting pretty bad out here,” Audrey grumped, drawing her coat around her lean, spiky frame. “The fog’s starting to come in, all right, and I just got a spatter of rain on my glasses. And it’s getting cold.”

  “Oh, now, Aud,” said her burly husband, Buck, standing beside her, “it’s not as bad as all that.” As he spoke, he swept off his jacket— he wore only a polo shirt underneath—and offered it to her.

  Gideon, knowing Audrey (but not Buck), expected her to swat it irritably aside. Instead, he watched in amazement as she practically melted, allowing Buck to place it tenderly around her shoulders, from which it hung down to her knees. And all the while she looked up at him—he was a good foot taller than she was—the way a besotted teenager gazes at her lover.

  Astounding. But it lasted no more than a few seconds. As soon as the jacket was settled comfortably around her, she was her old self again, assailing Rowley. “In any case, I’m ready to eat. It’s almost noon. Where do we get this lunch you promised? It better be indoors.”

  Rowley chuckled. “Why, of course it’s indoors. There’s a charming little restaurant right in the cable car terminal building. I’ve booked the whole place for us. And yes, I suppose it would be best to straggle off to it before it gets any worse. It’s just up the path, no more than a five-minute walk.”

  And off they straggled in twos and threes. They’d all had dinner together at the hotel the previous evening, renewing old acquaintances and making new ones. Among the old acquaintances for Gideon and Julie was Pru McGinnis, she of the short, flyaway red hair, the muscular washerwoman forearms, the thick, chapped, red wrists, and the overall build of a VW bus, big, square, and sturdy. Now a fellow at the august Franco-American Institut de Préhistoire in Les Eyzies, France, she’d been a student of Gideon’s in the very first graduate course he’d ever taught, although she was only a few years his junior. A jolly, animated, resourceful New York-born woman approaching forty, she’d gotten an MA in physical anthropology under Gideon, then—to Gideon’s disappointment—had switched to theoretical archaeology for her doctorate. He had been on her doctoral committee and had had to sit in on the defense of her dissertation: Post-processual, Structural, and Contextual Paradigms in Archaeology, Considered from an Epistemological Perspective. He hadn’t understood a word.

  Before moving on to the Institut, she’d taught for a few years at the University of Missouri, where she’d picked up a Western accent, soon gone, and a penchant for Western garb, which had stayed with her. Today she was in a tailored plum-colored cowboy shirt, a flouncy denim-and-gingham square-dancing skirt (sans crinoline), and worn, lizard-skin boots.

  As a student, she had been criticized by one of Gideon’s fellow instructors as being “insufficiently reverent,” but Gideon had found her to be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise hidebound department. He had liked her as a pupil, been proud of her as a protégée, and now considered her a friend, as did Julie.

  Like most first-time visitors to the Rock, the Olivers were fascinated by the Barbary apes that scrambled around them or sat hunched and glowering along the edges of the path, grooming each other or moodily eating handouts given them by the mostly British tourists despite the prominent signs warning of a five-hundred-pound penalty for doing so. And the snacks they fed the animals were as bad as the snacks they fed themselves: sweets, sweets, and more sweets—candy bars, muffins, sugared biscuits, and packaged cakes, with the occasional bag of flavored crisps to break the monotony.

  “Cute li’l buggers, aren’t they?” said Pru, who had been to Gibraltar before, having been one of the team on the Europa Point dig. When the dig had started, the professional team had been composed of nothing but archaeologists—experts in stones, but not in bones. But once they had unearthed their first evidence of human skeletal material, however—the proximal end of an ulna protruding from a crevice in the cave wall—Pru had been called in to perform the delicate exhumation. Gideon had been a little surprised at that, inasmuch as she had only that MA in physical anthropology, and, really, not much to recommend her in the way of experience as a “dirt archaeologist. ” But Les Eyzies, where she was working, had been relatively nearby, and Corbin Hobgood, Europa Point’s assistant director, had been an old friend, and so he had brought her on. As a result, it had been Pru herself who had excavated the bones of the First Family. And a fine, careful job she had done, as far as Gideon could tell.

  One of the monkeys ambled up to him with its shambling, quadrupedal gait, and, without bothering to look up at him, stuck out a demanding hand for a handout. When Gideon didn’t oblige, the heavy-browed, cinnamon-colored creature tugged impatiently on his pant leg, almost sending him tumbling; like most nonhuman primates, they were strong for their size.

  “Beat it, you bum,” Gideon muttered, snatching the fabric out of its grasp.

  Julie was shocked. “Gideon, that’s not like you at all.”

  “Well, I hate monkeys,” he mumbled, a little ashamed of himself.

  Now both women stared at him, astonished.

  “You hate monkeys?” Julie exclaimed. “I never knew that.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean I hate them,” Gideon said, chastened, “but I don’t like them. Now, apes I like. Thoughtful, intelligent, adaptive. How can you not like a chimp—bright, eager to please, always ready to play? And how can anyone’s heart not go out to a gorilla sitting in the corner of a zoo cage somewhere, all pensive and melancholy? But monkeys, no. Look at them—greedy, spiteful, malicious, contemptuous—”

  “Contemptuous?” Julie said, laughing. “Pensive? Somebody’s getting a wee bit anthropomorphic here.”

  “Okay, I plead guilty to that. Got carried away there for a minute. But look at them. Unlike apes, they—”

  “But these are apes,” said Pru, gesturing with the sunglasses she carried in her hand. “Barbary apes. The sign says so. ‘Please do not feed the Barbary apes.’” She clapped her other hand to her heart. “My God, somebody keep me from falling down. Did I just catch Professor Oliver in an error—about primates, yet?”

  “The
sign may say so, but the sign is in error,” Gideon replied calmly.

  “I could have told you,” a laughing Julie said to Pru.

  “The uninformed—for example, those with mere master’s degrees in physical anthropology—may call them apes,” Gideon went on windily, “and it’s true that they’re big for monkeys, they lack tails, they look a bit like baboons, and they have a baboonlike gait, but in fact they are monkeys, macaques, Macaca sylvanus, and they are among the nastier, crabbier, least amenable of their kind.”

  “With a diet like that, I’m not surprised,” Pru said. She stopped walking to lean close to a couple of males, each in the process of sullenly, but extremely competently, opening up a package he’d been given. “ ‘Cadbury Curly Wurlies,’ ” she read aloud from one label, "and ’Mr. P’s Pork Scratchings.’ No wonder they’re crabby,” she said, straightening up. You’d be crabby too if you lived on a diet of— hey!”

  A skinny, hairy forearm had snaked up just as she turned away, and long, spidery fingers had expertly plucked the sunglasses out of her hand.

  “Come back here, you creep!” she cried as the animal scampered up onto a rocky ledge, its Curly Wurlies in one hand and Pru’s sunglasses in the other.

  “Those cost me $34.95, you . . . you little shit!”

  Whereupon the monkey, staring contemptuously—Yes, contemptuously , Gideon thought—at her all the time, slipped the glasses more or less over its eyes and just sat there wearing them, safely out of reach.

  The nearby tourists laughed and reached for their cameras.

  “On second thought, I guess the little guys are pretty amusing at that,” Gideon said.

  THE tiny Top of the Rock Bar and Restaurant, hidden one floor below the big tourist cafeteria, was a cozy, olde English sort of place with open-beam ceilings, a gleaming mahogany bar, and an inviting fire glowing in a small stone fireplace and casting feathery, flickering, orange reflections on the walls. On the front door was a sign stating Reserved for Private Party. There were only two small tables, and three or four stools at the bar, just about enough room for Rowley’s group. Places had been attractively set for eight: three at the larger table, two at the smaller, and three at the bar. Everything looked wonderfully appealing to the chilled troupe looking yearningly in through the glass door.

  There was only one problem. They couldn’t get in. The door was locked, there was no response to their knocking, and the preordered lunch wasn’t going to be ready until one, almost an hour away.

  “That gives you all an opportunity to do a number of things in the interim,” said Rowley, looking on the bright side. “If you just want to warm up over a cup of coffee or cocoa, the cafeteria upstairs is open, and there’s a souvenir shop up there too, with some excellent books on the area. But if you want to brave the elements, you’d have time to go on down to the Apes’ Den area, if that appeals to you. It’ll be less windy there, and that’s where you’ll find the largest assemblage of them.”

  “Oh, goody, let’s do that,” Pru said sourly to Gideon.

  “Good idea. Maybe you’ll find the one that has your glasses.”

  “Or you could simply wander down the paths a ways,” Rowley continued. “I’m afraid you won’t have time to get to the Great Siege Tunnels or St. Michael’s Cave, but there are some wonderful views. Oh, and there’s an old Moorish sentry post still standing, not very far down the path to my left. Dates from the twelfth century. Not much to it, really, but you might find it interesting, or, er . . . well, that’s about it, I suppose, given our time constraints.”

  “Buck and I will go up to the cafeteria,” Audrey proclaimed. “Come, Buck.” Without waiting for his concurrence, she headed for the steps.

  Buck shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Yes, ma’am,” he said with his tolerant, aw-shucks smile, and obeyed, shambling after her like a good-natured trained bear.

  “That’s Audrey’s husband?” Julie murmured, shaking her head. “I can’t get over it.”

  Gideon had been no less surprised at meeting Craig “Buck” Pope the evening before. To call it a marriage of opposites was to put it mildly. Audrey—whom Gideon knew fairly well, having worked with her several times, both on committees and in the field—was virtually unchanged in the ten years that he had known her. A tiny, bird-boned woman in her sixties, wiry and closed-faced, with long-out-of-date harlequin glasses resting on a blue-tinged, bladelike nose, and iron gray hair forced into an untidy bun, usually with a couple of pencils sticking out of it, she was everybody’s image of a turn-of-the-century—the twentieth century—spinster schoolmarm, the kind that lived in somebody’s rented attic and smelled of chalk dust. All she needed was a high-necked, frilled collar and a cameo brooch.

  Buck, on the other hand, was a retired Army master sergeant from Oklahoma, twice Audrey’s size, with a voice like a gravel spreader but a gentle manner. His formal schooling had stopped with a community college degree, but he was now an instructor in infantry field tactics at a military institute outside of Chicago. Outgoing, friendly, and a live-and -let-live type, where Audrey was severe, demanding, and inclined by nature to be censorious, he seemed utterly unsuited to her. But they had been married for at least twenty years—a late first marriage for both—and as far as Gideon could see, they got along splendidly. Buck treated her with a solicitous, old-fashioned courtesy, gentling her as he would a cantankerous horse, obeying her frequently imperious commands with what seemed like an indulgent if slightly amused affection, and in general, speaking only when spoken to.

  But if he did open his mouth to say something when they were in a group—and this is what really came as a surprise—Audrey instantly took an adoring backseat, refraining from all interruption, correction, and disagreement. This was extraordinarily un-Audrey-like behavior, particularly astonishing coming from one of archaeology’s leading and most outspoken feminists.

  “And they get along like that all the time,” said Pru, who had once worked with Audrey for over a year and knew her well. “Is a puzzlement. I never get tired of watching them together. Well, I think I’ll go up to the souvenir shop, and then just stroll around for a while.”

  Julie not very hopefully suggested a cup of cocoa to Gideon, but as she expected, he was interested in seeing the Moorish sentry post.

  She looked doubtful. “It’s getting pretty cold. And look at that fog roll in.”

  Indeed, the weather had worsened in the last few minutes, and, although they were wearing fleece pullovers under windbreakers, the warmest clothes they’d brought, they were chilled through, Gideon no less than Julie. They’d been warned that, while Gibraltar town could be counted on for year-round summery temperatures—it could be considered part of the Costa del Sol if you wanted to stretch a point—it could get quite chilly on top of the Rock. But they had foolishly scoffed. They were used to hiking in the multiglaciered, seven-thousand-foot Olympics. A mere thousand-foot “mountain” was something to be sneered at. But they hadn’t taken this fog, this cold, whirling, penetrating, wind-driven fog, into account.

  “You go on and have your cocoa, sweetheart,” Gideon said. “I’ll only be a little while.”

  “Well, keep your mind on where you’re walking, will you? They’re not exactly big on guardrails up here, and visibility is getting pretty poor, and it’s a long way to the bottom.”

  “I appreciate your wifely concern,” he said, laughing, “but don’t worry. I have no intention of falling off the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  “It’s only that your mind has a way of wandering sometimes— now, you know it has—and if you’re not paying attention to where you’re going—”

  “Julie,” he said, taking her by both arms, and looking squarely into her eyes and speaking firmly, “go and have your cocoa. I promise you, I am not, repeat, not—going to fall off the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  FIVE

  AND he didn’t; not for almost fifteen minutes.

  The Moorish outbuilding turned out to be on the very top of the long ridge that cre
sted the main body of the Rock, above the footpath, so that to reach it he had to mount thirty or forty steep, high steps that had been roughly carved into the limestone. These he climbed, working his way around two monkeys that only grudgingly moved aside for him. He could practically hear them sigh in exasperation. In the middle of the top step was a third one, a particularly big one, baboon-sized, that looked as if he had no intention of letting Gideon or anyone else get by him. Gideon stopped and took an unopened bag of peanuts from his pocket.

  “Here, pal,” he said, making amends to all monkeys collectively. “I’m fresh out of Curly Wurlies, but maybe you’d like this? With my apologies for my earlier remarks, of course. And then perhaps you’d be kind enough to let me by?”

  The monkey looked without interest at the bag and turned away his head.

  “Monkeys like peanuts, don’t you know that?” Gideon asked. “Here, want me to open it for you?” He pulled apart the top of the bag and offered it. The monkey glanced up into his face with a what-the -hell-do-I-have-to-do-to-get-rid-of-this-guy expression, sauntered a few steps away, turned his back, and sullenly sat down again.

  “Be that way,” Gideon said, turning his attention to the outbuilding.

  It was old, all right, a small, cylindrical structure—room enough for only one man—with a conical cap of a roof and a narrow, arched entrance. The construction was a mix of roughly cut limestone, ancient mortar, cracked, crumbling cement of some kind for the roof and floor, and thin slabs of orange brick to create the curve of the doorway’s arch and to patch the walls where stone blocks had come out or been destroyed. It was precariously sited right smack at the very edge—the very edge—of the near-vertical cliff that formed the long eastern wall of the Rock, so close that Gideon assumed that it must originally have been built at the back of what had been a rock overhang that had collapsed at some point along the way. The entrance and two small, high windows just below the interior roofline all faced out over the edge, so that the man in it could, on a clearer day than today, spot sails approaching from the Mediterranean many, many hours before they arrived. There were no openings on the other side, toward Gibraltar town, from which, of course, no hostile forces would have been expected.