After parking the truck, she took the opportunity to look at the mine complex’s layout. It was impressive, with truly enormous, windowless structures for processing various types of ore, massive conveyors, and a network of rail tracks both in the concession and connecting to the outside world. Much of the infrastructure seemed to be under construction as hundreds of hard-hatted workers welded, hammered, ferried, and hoisted. The sheer scale of the vista made it easy for Claire to imagine how a mining project could swallow billions of dollars before the first ounce of ore was processed. It was also easy to imagine how such a project might simply squash anything that got in its path.
Sergei arrived a few minutes later, halting his pickup inside the gate. “That’s Dr. Anachev,” said the guard, nodding in the direction of the pickup.
Sergei walked up to Claire, extending a hand. “Sergei Anachev. Please call me Sergei.”
Maintaining a neutral expression, Claire simply said, “Claire.” Sergei opened the passenger door, and they drove off.
“Think we got through that OK?”
“We don’t have much time before others get curious,” said Sergei.
“So who’s going to be in the warehouse when we arrive?”
“There shouldn’t be anyone. I sent my team out to do some prospecting about twenty kilometers from here. They’ll be checking in by radio, so I’ll know if they’re coming back. I’m exercising a routine courtesy, and as chief of geology I have some latitude. But, again, if you make multiple trips out here, people are going to start getting curious. And once word gets out, you’re at the mercy of the Transteppe bureaucracy and the Kazakh minders.”
“I’ve already emailed the picture and a scan of the letter you sent me to people I trust asking them to keep the information confidential until I follow up. Can we get the paleomagnetometry done today on a bone sample?”
“Probably not—we’ll be lucky to get the array cut out for examination.”
“Once it’s out, where should we keep it?”
“Probably best that it’s in the hands of archaeologists. And if we’re going to get it out of here at all, we’d better do it today. So take the array with you and tomorrow you can start looking at the rest of the lip.”
Claire knew that this was not the way things were done. “Jesus, Sergei, I don’t know …”
“It’s your decision, but you know the risks of leaving it here.”
Claire was miserable. “How would I take it?”
Sergei thought a second. “Hmm, the block holding the bones will weigh a lot, but maybe we can chisel some of the excess away so that we can move it on a trolley. I’ll have to figure where we go from there.”
As they got out of the car, Sergei put a finger to his lips. “We’ve got to be careful what we say inside, even if we don’t see anyone around. If I want to discuss something privately, I’ll go outside for a smoke.”
“You smoke?”
“No, but I’m Russian—all Russians smoke …”
The warehouse was a giant green shed that looked like it could hold a few 747s. Sergei placed his ID card on the reader by the door to buzz them in. They walked through the first section, where some of the giant machines were stored. Men were working and moving equipment. A couple of men gave them a glance and then went back to work. Passing through a door in a floor-to-ceiling partition, they entered another huge space, part of which was filled with rock samples taken from various parts of the concession, while the back was given over to a glassed-off laboratory filled with high-tech equipment.
Sergei was surprised to see a Kazakh janitor in a red Transteppe jumpsuit sweeping the area. He went over to the man and had a quick conversation in Russian. The janitor looked meekly at the ground and nodded as Sergei spoke. Then he left and Sergei walked back to Claire, taking one more puzzled look at the janitor as he exited.
While they were talking, Claire looked around the warehouse, fascinated. Everywhere there were samples, cuttings from outcroppings, cores from boreholes, and extractions from trenches, all neatly cordoned off and marked. She immediately spied the cut-off lip of the bluff. It was set on a series of rectangular metal supports, the lowest of which was about three feet high to allow access to the underside of the big piece of sedimentary rock. As they walked over, Sergei gave her a quick run-down of all the testing equipment they used on samples. They were able to do chemical, metallurgical, X-ray, spectrographic, and radiometric analyses right there in the lab.
Sergei had made sure that the sample was deposited upside down and tilted so that the bones were not visible except if someone lay on the ground, crawled under, and looked up.
They got right to work.
The good news was that the bones were in sedimentary rock. The stratigraphy itself gave them natural points at which to split off a layer of the lip. The bad news was that the fossils were in highly friable sedimentary rock. If the array fell when they split it off, the rock in which it was embedded might simply crumble. Sergei arranged a thick layer of foam on a low trolley, which he then slid under the rock to help protect against that possibility, and then briefly discussed his plan. It was not the way any archaeologist would go about it, but speed was of the essence. After he finished, Claire gave a quick nod of agreement.
He placed two jacks on either side of the trolley and winched them up until the large plates at the top of each jack were touching the rock on either side of the array. There were a few inches between each of the ulnae, so that the entire array was about thirty inches wide. He then took out a portable rock saw and made two vertical cuts about eighteen inches deep into the strata fault lines. On the bluff, he and Claire had estimated the bone to be about forty inches long. He told Claire that he had calculated from the angle of the visible part of the bone that eighteen inches should be sufficient depth.
Then Sergei took a deep breath, sighed, and said, “OK, here’s where I put my life on the line for science.” Claire’s eyes widened as she realized what he meant. He had to slide under the rock between the jacks to make the cut parallel to the lip. Fortunately, the bones were arrayed parallel to the lip so that he did not need to slide in that far, but if, after the three cuts, the sample cracked at the strata line, there were only the two jacks preventing him from being crushed.
“Hold it,” Claire said urgently. “It’s not worth it—there’s got to be another way.”
Sergei smiled. “Why, Claire, I didn’t know you cared! Thank you!” Without waiting for a reply, he put on a dust mask, lay down on the trolley, and, holding the saw, slid under the lip. As he did, he said in a muffled voice, “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. A little drama, yes?”
Claire didn’t believe it but held her tongue as well as her breath.
The cut took just a couple of minutes, and Sergei scooted out as soon as he was done. He got off the trolley, slid it back under, and raised it until one edge of the foam was in contact with the rock. Now came the most delicate part of the operation. Sergei briefly explained how the two of them would slowly and simultaneously hammer in wedges along the horizontal strata line, about ten inches in from the vertical cuts. After each tap, Sergei would tap in a third wedge midway between the other two. After the first couple of taps, Claire stepped back and took a picture of the operation with her phone.
With several wedges in place, Sergei was tapping in yet another when the block broke off and settled on the foam. Intact. When the dust settled, Sergei tried to pull out the trolley. It didn’t budge. He looked at Claire. “OK, forty inches by forty-eight by eighteen …” He scribbled a minute on a pad. “… 34,460 cubic inches, divided by 1,728 equals twenty cubic feet, times 150 pounds per cubic foot equals three thousand pounds. I’ll get a tug to get it out of here, but then we’ve got to get the weight down before moving it to your truck—and fast.”
The archaeologist in Claire was horrified by what she was doing. Still, she nodded, resigned. Moving quickly, Sergei wheeled over a small electric tug, which he controlled by a remote, attac
hed it to the trolley and slowly pulled the block out from under the lip. At the speed of a slow walk, the tug pulled the trolley across the hangar floor and through a door into a shed adjacent to the building. There was a jumble of rocks on the floor. Sergei turned to Claire. “Nobody goes in here; it’s where we put samples. Still, we’ve got to hustle.” Sergei had taken along the portable saw, wedges, and mallets. “Tell me what to do.” Seeing Claire’s miserable expression, he added, “Look, at least it’s sedimentary. It should come off in layers, and we can be precise.”
Claire did a quick calculation and then decided that at the points farthest away from the array, they could start chipping away three-inch-wide blocks. They got right at it, and after an hour they had chipped away a few hundred pounds of surrounding rock. Not enough, but Claire was beginning to worry about the depositional context for the array—archaeologists and paleontologists would want more than photos to get a picture of how the bones were embedded in the strata. Then there was the question of structural integrity. Take away too much rock and the whole array might fall apart.
A squawk from Sergei’s radio interrupted her thoughts. Sergei listened, said, “See you then,” and signed off. “They’re on their way back.” He looked at the somewhat reduced block. Then he looked around the shed and signaled that they should go outside.
He took out a cigarette and looked at it distastefully. “How much can your truck hold?”
Claire thought a bit. “It’s got reinforced suspension, but I wouldn’t want to carry more than a ton on these roads.”
“Well, you’ve got to decide,” said Sergei. “Either we leave it on the trolley overnight or get it on your truck—now!”
Claire fidgeted. Sergei’s tone changed. “Claire? Decide!”
“OK, let’s do it. How do I get it out?”
Sergei thought for a minute. “I’ll call Rob and tell him you are taking a rock sample and borrowing a trolley. He’ll clear it with the gate. There’s a lift and loading platform on the other side of the building, where we can push the trolley onto the pickup. The bones are on the underside now, so no one is going to see them until you unload. We don’t have much time, so let’s get going.”
Claire looked miserable.
Sergei smiled sympathetically. “Claire, you’re obviously an honest scientist, but sometimes we have to adapt, and it’s for a good cause, yes?”
Claire flushed in spite of herself. “It’s not just that, Sergei. The grad students are getting demoralized by the failure of the project, and I’m worried about how they will react when I tell them to forget about horses and think about elephants … or Delamain, for that matter.”
Sergei nodded and thought about that as they rolled the trolley to the pickup and loaded the bones. Sergei hopped in on the passenger side to make sure she didn’t have any trouble at the gate. He could see that she was still worried. “Don’t worry about your team, Claire.” He gave her a sly smile. “If they’ve been spinning their wheels, this discovery will be a shot in the arm, and I’m sure they’ll see the forest for the trees.”
Claire couldn’t help but laugh—Sergei did know American idioms! But he was also exactly right. As she started the pickup, she was smiling.
13
The trip went smoothly—at first. The block was covered with a tarp, and there were random rocks and tools scattered in the bed of the pickup. With Sergei in attendance and Rob’s authorization, Claire got out of Transteppe with a minimum of fuss. The guard didn’t even look under the tarp, not that he would have seen anything suspicious. She drove carefully, as the truck felt unstable with its big load. Worse, the rock was on a trolley, which even at its lowest setting made the load top-heavy. They had jerry-rigged cartons on either side to keep it from rolling, but the buffer would provide little protection in a crash or serious lurch.
Claire drove slowly. The combination of shadow and glare made it difficult to see potholes. She barely missed a couple of craters and felt a stabbing pain in the pit of her stomach as she heard the cargo bang in the back of the truck.
Most of the time the only hazards in driving the steppe were potholes and monotony, as it was possible to see approaching vehicles miles before they passed by. But late afternoon turned to dusk before Claire had traveled twenty kilometers. Very few drivers plied the roads in this part of the steppe, but a good number of those who did put off turning on their headlamps until the last vestiges of light disappeared, under the belief that doing so would extend the life of the lamp. Thus it was that with almost no warning Claire was suddenly confronted by an ancient, overloaded truck bearing down on her as it hewed to the center of the road. Reacting on instinct, she veered violently to the right, putting the truck in a near spin that was aggravated when her left front tire hit a pothole. She was going relatively slowly, so the truck didn’t tip over, but the lurch caused the trolley to crush the carton buffer on the left, and the block of rock to slide off, hitting the inside panel.
When she heard the impact, Claire felt a stab in the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with physical injury. The truck she had avoided continued on, unmindful of or uninterested in the near collision. Claire halted the Land Cruiser and jumped out. She was nearly hyperventilating when she looked in the back. What she saw was a jumble of the fragile rock and the five bones. Three had separated, and one of those three had broken in half. Two bones were still encased in rock.
It didn’t take but a second for her to realize how enmeshed she was in the trap she had built for herself. Unbidden, a vision of various éminences grises staring at her, asking questions for which she had no answer. “Why did you feel it was so important to reduce the mass, which made the block vulnerable to cracking … why didn’t you take the time to find a sturdier vehicle in which to move the block … what evidence do you have of this so-called array? Why did you take it upon yourself to do this alone?”
She let out an anguished cry and began to sob. All thoughts of a glorious reset to her career vanished, replaced by images of the bleakest possible future. As she tried to rearrange the pieces to limit any further damage, she kept thinking, You knew it! You knew it! You knew it!
Filled with self-recrimination, she started the truck and headed back on the road to camp. After a half hour of beating herself up, her self-pity began to ebb. She had to pull herself together.
The bones were an extraordinary find in and of themselves, and she did have two of them still arrayed as well as copious visual documentation of the original find. Then she started lobbing mortars into her plan. Her basic problem was that she couldn’t explain why she had done what she had. If she had brought back the array intact, amazement over the discovery would probably have glossed over her transgressions, particularly since she would have simultaneously revealed the find to the Kazakh authorities. Instead she had cast an arc light on the stupidity of trying to be Indiana Jones, in the process turning herself into a case study of how to ruin a career. It was easy to imagine how her team would react, how excitement would give way to confusion, anger, and self-righteousness.
In an exercise of black humor, she tried to guess how her team would react. Abigail and Tony, the two young graduate students who had started a romance, would probably filter everything through what it meant for them continuing the dig/affair (Tony was married, but, apparently, not fanatical about it). She expected self-righteous disapproval from Samantha, who had studied feminism and Marxism at Bennington before turning to archaeology—she would probably see what Claire had done as a betrayal of women and some sort of patriarchal or imperialist slight to the noble Kazakhs. Samantha was capable of connecting mayonnaise to patriarchy and/or imperialism. Waylon would have difficulty processing why she was bringing back fossilized elephant bones when they were looking for horses. Katie, who had been an animal rights activist before returning to school, and had been around the block, would probably snort with derision at Claire’s fecklessness—if you’re going to launch a caper, at least do it right! Francisco, from the Un
iversity of Florence, would get it, but would also be vastly amused by the web Claire had caught herself in. Well, she thought to herself, at least Lawrence will remain my friend.
She tried not to think about Tamerlan. He was going to find out pretty soon and would find himself in the catbird seat. Claire was sure that he would not be shy in using any leverage he could. She shuddered.
And then there was Sauat; Sauat with his worship of Timur Tabiliev from the museum. She realized that she really needed Sauat.
14
An innocuous message—“Remember your loved ones with flowers”—popped up in Sergei’s email, though the Russian’s response was to grit his teeth. The email was a coded signal that he was to report in on a secure line. Following protocol, Sergei retrieved an encrypted phone and dialed a number.
Without preamble, the voice on the other end launched in. “You’ve been busy. What’s with the odd trips, the huge rocks? And who’s the woman?”
Sergei’s blood went cold. He knew that they probably had eyes on him, though he’d yet to figure out just whose were those eyes. Thinking quickly, he wondered whether to spin some tale, but, just as quickly, he put that aside. He didn’t want to think about the consequences of being caught in a lie, and besides, the archaeological moonlighting was no threat to any plans his controllers might have, whatever they were. So he told the caller the partial truth; he said that Claire was an archaeologist and that they’d found some bones on the concession that she was interested in. He did not say that they were over five million years old.
The caller took this in. “Archaeology could be the perfect cover for industrial espionage.”
“All the more reason for me to stay involved,” said Sergei smoothly.
Andrei Bezanov grunted. “Remember, when I put you in at Transteppe, I said I needed a geologist I could trust.”
Sergei kept his voice calm, although he was quivering with rage. “Message received.”
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