The Bone Hunters

by Robert J. Mrazek

  “It would appear that every time I see you, General Macaulay, you are lying in a hospital bed,” said Barnaby Finchem. “You should be ashamed of yourself for slacking like this.”

  “Genral?” repeated Carlos. “You be a genral, Steef?”

  “Once be upon a time,” said Macaulay. “How did you find me?”

  “It only took a simple people search on my computer. I just typed in the words lovesick former general and your name popped right up.”

  “Thanks,” said Macaulay, turning away from him.

  “All right,” said Barnaby. “I enlisted the help of a small agency called the U.S. State Department. They tracked your passport.”

  “Where is she?” asked Macaulay.

  “Waiting in the visitors’ lounge,” said Barnaby. “I wanted to see you alone for a few minutes before you two meet again.”

  Carlos had no idea what the big old circus freak wanted, but he didn’t trust him. “I be right outside if you need me, Steef.”

  Barnaby pulled a side chair over to the bed. “At my age it’s a little late to begin a career in relationship counseling.”

  “I’ve seen you use your relationship skills with your female students at Harvard.”

  “Try not to be too judgmental,” said Barnaby. “I’ve also been married three times and learned one or two other things along the way.”

  “Go ahead,” said Macaulay.

  “You and Alexandra shared something special . . . lest I minimize the import, you and Alexandra shared love.”

  “You should have your own reality show . . . Dr. Barnaby.”

  “It would probably be a ratings bonanza. May I continue?”

  Macaulay nodded.

  “You also shared some of the most harrowing experiences within the last year that any two people have possibly ever endured,” said Barnaby. “They include the slaughter of your expedition team in Greenland, your narrow escape across the ice cap, surviving the assassination attempt in Maine, the running gun battle at Leif Eriksson’s tomb, the burying of men alive. One might well describe those experiences as highly traumatic.”

  “Yeah . . . agreed.”

  “People react to emotional trauma in different ways as they attempt to deal with it,” said Barnaby. “Some turn inward or simply run away. For you it became an idealization and adoration of Alexandra . . . for her it was total immersion in her work. The two approaches were irreconcilable.”

  “I’d like to see her now,” said Macaulay.

  Barnaby walked to the door. Stopping, he turned and said, “When we arrived last night, you had already embarked on your flight. Alexandra and I were waiting with the rubberneckers on the beach when you came back. After your plane hit the water, everyone else stood around taking cell phone pictures while watching the rescue boat coming in the distance. Alexandra swam out there and pulled you from the wreckage before the boat got there. I gather it was a close thing. It would seem to suggest that she still harbors some affection for you.”

  “Why did you come down here?” asked Macaulay.

  “Let’s leave that for later,” he said. “I have a Defense Department plane waiting for us . . . if you’re in shape to fly again.”

  Macaulay nodded.

  When Barnaby had gone, Macaulay lay there waiting with almost boyish anticipation as he stared at the closed door. It was as if he were a kid again and waiting for his parents to call him down on Christmas morning.

  The door opened and she walked into the room. Her face was in shadows as she approached the bed. Without a word, she leaned down and kissed him lightly on the mouth. She smelled of soap and shampoo. Honeysuckle.

  The big violet eyes gazed down at him. Her still-damp auburn hair was parted in the natural crown above her face. There were glints of gold in it. She took his hand in hers. It was warm and soft.

  “Another feat of derring-do,” said Lexy with the hint of a smile. “You can’t seem to stay away from them.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Whatever failings you have, Steve, courage isn’t one of them,” she said.

  She was dressed in an oversize men’s cargo shirt and shorts. He wondered what had happened to her clothes.

  “I didn’t stop to think about the danger.”

  “You never do,” she said. “The woman who was bitten by the snake received the antidote in time. You saved her life.”

  “Thanks for my life,” he said.

  “I was just returning the favors from Greenland and Maine,” she said. “I’m still two or three behind.”

  “How did you . . . why did you . . . ?”

  “We had just gotten to the beach when we heard your plane coming back,” she said. “I saw that the lit flight path would bring you down close to shore. As soon as we saw that gaping hole in the hull, I got rid of my shoes and stripped down to my bra and panties.”

  “That must have caused a scene,” he said, grinning.

  “No one was looking at me,” she said. “I started running down the beach to the point where I thought you might hit the water. When you did, I leaped in and swam out. The depth where you went in was less than ten feet. I dove down toward the cockpit and found that the windshield was missing. The plane’s running lights were still on and I could make you out in the pilot’s seat. You weren’t moving but appeared to be trapped in your safety harness. I had to go back up for air, but on my second dive I found the safety belt was still buckled. It was easy from there.”

  “Yeah, piece of cake.”

  She leaned down and kissed him again. This time she let her mouth linger on his before pulling away again.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “Wish I could say the same,” he said. “Just too busy down here.”

  “You aren’t a good liar, Steve,” she said. “About us . . . I had to do what I did . . . leaving.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Barnaby loomed above them like a behemoth.

  “Forgive me for intruding on this tender reconciliation scene, but there is a plane waiting for us,” he said. “To answer your question, General Macaulay, what happens now is that we spring you from this pest-ridden hole and make you comfortable on the plane. The game is afoot, my boy.”

  The white Learjet 45 was waiting on the tarmac when they arrived, its engines whining and the cabin door open. The words United States of America were painted along the fuselage in bright blue.

  When Macaulay was settled in the passenger compartment, Barnaby came back to check on him. He was holding a full, long-stemmed wineglass.

  “Do you prefer white or red with your prime rib?” he said. “Our galley steward aims to please.”

  “I’d prefer Sam Adams,” said Macaulay with a wan grin, “as cold as Valley Forge.”

  Barnaby sat down next to him.

  “What do you know about the Peking Man?” he asked.

  Macaulay thought about the question.

  “I remember now,” he said. “It used to be a good Chinese restaurant in Arlington when I was stationed at the Pentagon.”

  “Excellent,” replied Barnaby. “You’re fully up to speed then on what we’re doing.”

  SEVEN

  17 May

  American Museum of Natural History

  Central Park West

  New York City

  “This could be a good starting point,” said Barnaby Finchem as he led Lexy and Macaulay through the high-columned stone entranceway to the museum. “One of my Harvard colleagues told me this man Sebastian Choate knows more about the disappearance of Peking Man than anyone alive.”

  “With no success in finding him, I gather,” said Macaulay.

  “He might be able to give us some promising leads,” said Barnaby, ignoring the gibe. “Incidentally, I’m told he is exceedingly eccentric” />
  “Then you two should get along like blood brothers,” said Lexy with a grin.

  Since leaving Belize, Macaulay had begun to heal after an overnight stay at Bethesda Naval Hospital. The dressing on his forehead had been replaced by a small butterfly bandage and he no longer needed the cast for his dislocated shoulder.

  “Choate is a substantial patron of the museum and the grandson of one of the original founders,” said Barnaby as they joined a crowd of tourists and schoolchildren milling about in the vestibule.

  A slender Chinese woman in a green pantsuit approached them through the crush. She looked up at Barnaby with a tentative smile of recognition.

  “I am Dongmei, Dr. Finchem,” she said in slightly accented English, “Professor Choate’s assistant. He sent me to bring you to him.”

  In her sixties, she had a delicate oval face, a helmet of shiny black hair, and radiant brown eyes.

  “How did you know who I am?” he asked.

  She colored and said, “Your physical description left little room for doubt.”

  “I will take that as a compliment.”

  Barnaby had made a serious attempt to look presentable. His thick white mane was harnessed into a long ponytail and he had put on a clean red gabardine jumpsuit. The tourists waiting in line for the exhibitions gawked at him as he passed by.

  While making their way across the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, Lexy heard a chorus of excited shouts and looked over to see a throng of elementary schoolchildren gazing up in awe at the hundred-foot-long model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling. She remembered her own sense of wonder when she had visited the museum’s Hall of Human Origins as a child. It was one of her inspirations to become an archaeologist.

  It took ten minutes to navigate through the rabbit warren of corridors and stairways that led from the principal exhibition halls to the hundreds of offices and research labs in the twenty-seven interconnected buildings that made up the museum.

  Arriving at the first floor of the oldest museum building in the complex, Macaulay noted the date 1869 in the cornerstone. The Chinese woman led them up several flights to the top floor and then down a dark passageway. The Victorian-era ceilings were fifteen feet high. The flickering lighting came from old gaslight sconces embedded along the plaster walls.

  “Maybe they never heard about the invention of electricity up here,” whispered Macaulay to Lexy.

  Lexy smelled the aroma of exotic incense as the Chinese woman came to the last office along the corridor. A brass nameplate next to the massive oak door read SEBASTIAN CHOATE, HUMAN ORIGINS. Dongmei removed a key from her purse and unlocked a dead bolt before leading them inside.

  As Macaulay gazed around the walnut-paneled walls inside, he heard the door being locked again behind them and wondered why the security was so tight. There were two tall windows in the room, but they were both shuttered against the daylight. A single Tiffany-shaded desk lamp provided the only illumination. Through an open doorway into another, larger room, she could see a wood fire burning in the grate of a marble fireplace.

  Before ushering them into the next room, Dongmei gestured toward a silver tray that held several pairs of open-heeled brocade slippers.

  “If you would, please,” she said politely.

  “I regret the need for you to remove your shoes,” came a thin, chirping voice from the next room.

  After putting on the slippers, Lexy stepped inside and saw a man perched on a cushioned Victorian armchair near the fireplace. He pointed down at the rug on the floor and said, “It is the second oldest documented Chinese rug in the world, a cousin to the Pazyryk. At least two thousand years old.”

  Looking down at him, Macaulay thought he might be about the same age.

  “Please forgive me if I don’t stand to greet you,” said the man. “I am Sebastian Choate.”

  No more than five feet tall, he was dressed in a red silk robe emblazoned with golden tigers. His little legs extended onto an ottoman set closer to the fire and were covered with a red afghan.

  The room was incredibly warm, maybe ninety degrees or more, thought Macaulay. The smell of incense was overpowering as the man motioned for them to sit down across from him.

  “Dongmei,” he chirped again, “please bring some tea for my guests.”

  She bowed and left the room.

  “I am afraid that, like cold-blooded insects, I exist principally on heat,” said Sebastian Choate. “Steam heat.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to see us,” said Barnaby. “We have traveled a long way to seek your advice.”

  “I’m afraid I am the last person you should seek for advice,” said the tiny man.

  It was hard to estimate his age. A dollop of white hair covered the pinnacle of his slightly pointed head. His body was skeletal and the skin on his hands was like wrinkled parchment. There was a simian caste to his face, and the unnatural grin that remained fixed at his mouth indicated a past stroke.

  “We were hoping to learn more about the disappearance of the Peking Man fossils,” said Barnaby, “and perhaps some new information that will help us locate them.”

  Choate studied Barnaby’s face for several seconds before responding.

  “When I was young, Dr. Finchem, it was my dream to become a scientist,” he said, “and to make a serious contribution to the field of anthropology. I wanted to have the chance to help interpret each new discovery that would define the origins of man. I was a young man of some ability, but in the course of my life, I discovered that ability is only an artifice. Without dedication, ability is worth nothing. Instead of becoming a scientist, I merely became a man who studies science . . . not inconsequentially, mind you.”

  Lexy glanced around the huge room at the collections adorning the walls and filling the glass and mahogany display cases. They were all in homage to ancient man, plaster cast molds of skulls, ancient stone tools and weapons, shards of bone, early black-and-white photographs of archaeologists at various digs.

  “Some years ago, I contributed several monographs to the fifteen-volume history of science edited by Professor Charles Gillispie of Princeton,” he went on. “But in truth, Dr. Finchem, I am a complete failure. I failed at marriage. I failed as a father. I failed in the most important quest I have ever undertaken. And now the end awaits me.”

  Macaulay started to sweat. Taking off his jacket, he wondered if the end would ever come as far as the man’s ruminations on his past life. Sitting close to Lexy, he focused his mind on the fine texture of her hair where it joined the back of her neck.

  “In the course of my ninety-eight years, I look at what we have achieved after a million years of human progress. The world has become an insidious place, sir, grotesquely violent, with warring religious factions fighting in every part of a world abetted by poverty and famine,” said Choate. “Not that it wasn’t always a cesspool, but it has gotten progressively worse.”

  The Chinese woman came back into the room wheeling a trolley that held a silver tea service. With practiced ceremony, Professor Choate poured them each tea in thimble-size china cups. There was no interruption in his monologue.

  “As you can imagine, I belong to no organized religion. At one time, I fancied myself a transcendentalist in the mold of Emerson and Whitman, but even that small step into the spiritual pond collapsed under the weight of what can only be termed a divinely inspired hell on earth.”

  Macaulay glanced at his watch again. If the man continued at his present pace, they would reach the next millennium before the old man got to the subject they were there to discuss.

  “You referred at one point to your great quest,” Barnaby gently interrupted.

  “Of course, forgive my perambulations. At my age, the truths seem to pour out like a mighty river. In fact, I have spent millions of my family inheritance and seventy years of my life hunting for the Homo erectus pekinensis,”
he said, shaking his tiny head sadly, “dedicating myself to restoring him to history. Sadly, it was not to be.”

  “We know there are many theories about what happened to him,” said Barnaby.

  “Yes, and I know them all,” answered Choate, “all the many promising leads, all the initially auspicious paths, all leading me to a dead end.”

  The unnatural grin was supplanted by a short giggle.

  “My goodness . . . I believe I made a joke.”

  Barnaby gave him a forced smile and said, “What about hard facts?”

  “The one fact we know for certain is that the last time Peking Man was seen on this earth was on the afternoon of December 8, 1941, Chinese time, when the fossils were sealed inside glass cases and rolls of waterproofed oilcloth in two teak crates at the Peking Union Medical College. Panic had broken out in the streets of the city amid the chaos of the Japanese advance. Everything after that is pure conjecture.”

  “I gather there was a concern that the Japanese wanted the fossils,” said Barnaby.

  Choate sat up in the chair, the permanent grin not hiding his agitation.

  “It wasn’t just a concern . . . the Japanese were fossil raiders,” he said, “when they were not indulging their lust for slaughtering Chinese women and children. On the same day the invaders arrived in the city, a delegation of Japanese archaeologists went immediately to the college and demanded to open the locked safe in the department of anatomy, which until the day before had held the fossils of Peking Man. They knew it was there and they wanted it. When the Japanese did not find Peking Man, the Chinese archaeologists at the college were interrogated and tortured. Two were executed.”

  “Why did they want the fossils so badly?” asked Lexy.

  Choate stared at her for a few moments. From the intense expression in his eyes, Macaulay thought he might be about to reveal something important. A moment later, he shrugged and said, “They were beasts.”