CRO-MAGNON (6 page)

“
No need to worry about that,” Mathiessen said. “Zinchenko will operate the camp and Fitrat will oversee your investigation.”

“
I’m at the critical point of a project,” Blaine said. “How long do you envision this taking?”

Mathiessen spread his hands. “Depends on what you find.”

“
What’s Salomon planning to pay us?” Calder said.

The IHE director shrugged. “Would it matter?”

“
No.”

“
You fly to Tajikistan within a week.” The smug look was back on his weathered face, and Calder guessed the man had still been worried about their accepting the assignment.

He needn’t have been, he thought. No scientist would forego this opportunity. But he wondered if Salomon’s objectives—and by extension, Blaine’s—were sufficiently in line with his own simple desire to investigate and report on the bodies. He knew from his dealings with Hannah Lamb that people reading from different scripts could find themselves at odds.

“
One final point,” Mathiessen said. “Now that you’re privy to what’s in the cave, I should emphasize that Mr. Salomon has forbidden us to breathe a word to anyone about intact human bodies. Not your team at Salomon Industries, Dr. Blaine. Not your department head, Dr. Calder.”

“
Why?” Calder said. “Professor Lamb may be a martinet, but she wouldn’t—”

“
If you knew anything about Salomon, you’d know why,” Blaine said. “He always keeps an edge.”

Mathiessen nodded. “I’ve only talked to the man once, but I don’t think you want to cross him.”

“
You think right,” Blaine said. “I’ve even heard rumors about some kind of enforcer.”

Mathiessen said, “So, mum’s the word until we hear otherwise. Agreed?”

The two scientists exchanged a glance, and both nodded.

Calder smiled. “Prehistoric bodies and intrigue, too.”

Blaine looked at Mathiessen. “I have one demand.”

“
Name it.”

“
I know we have to be secretive for now. But I want your word that whatever knowledge we turn up in that cave will ultimately be disseminated, Laszlo Salomon notwithstanding.”

The IHE director hesitated only a moment before sticking out his big hand. “Deal.”

Calder felt a little better. But he wondered if Blaine, as a recreational scuba diver, realized that underwater archaeology was often fraught with danger. Did she understand the difficulties inherent in a deep and constricted approach to a water-locked cave? And of course, she couldn’t know about his tendency toward claustrophobia. And at this point, he wasn’t about to tell her.

Chapter 3

It was late on Monday afternoon when the Tajik Air jetliner from Munich made a hard landing at Istanbul. Calder and Blaine deplaned while their hand baggage was checked and rechecked, Calder feeling glad to get out of the confined passenger cabin. After flying home to sort through his equipment and then crossing seven time zones from Iowa, he felt jet-lagged as the two of them watched security personnel swarm the aging plane.

“
They don’t look happy,” Blaine said. “Are they searching for bombs, or what?”

Calder inspected the fading tail logo of a white bird rising from a red and green circle. “After the way the plane shuddered on takeoff, and then that landing, sabotage might be pointless.”

“
This is not the most civilized area in the world.”

“
Compared to where we’re going, it is. I just hope we can do the job quickly. I can’t afford to be away right now.”

“
Me neither. Let’s hope everything goes smoothly.”

By the time they re-boarded and the plane lumbered into the air to fly the final three time zones to Dushanbe, darkness had fallen. There weren’t many passengers this time, Calder noticed. As before, Blaine took the aisle seat.

The small window by Calder was almost opaque. He stared at the blurry city lights strung along the narrow strait between Europe and Asia. Here he was, heading for the middle of nowhere to chase a chimera, when he should be stumping for tenure at the university. The thought cast a pall of . . . what?

Anxiety? Fear? Or something else?

What were they doing here, anyway? Were there actually prehistoric bodies in the submerged cave? Or was this a product of nitrogen narcosis or posturing for attention? His stomach rumbled and he shifted his weight in the sprung seat. He didn’t doubt there were human remains.

But Neanderthal? Cro-Magnon? A possible hybrid? That was a stretch. Probably some local hunters had taken shelter in the cave before the tunnel had flooded, then become trapped somehow. The lion could have died previously.

The flight attendant served a meal of dark bread and cold cuts. Calder chewed stolidly, washing the food down with bitter tea. He managed to fall asleep until rough air woke him. He glanced out the window at wisps of clouds littering a vast darkness.

Despite his excitement when Mathiessen had first told them, he knew it was unlikely that human bodies could have remained intact for tens of thousands of years. They’d have to be frozen solid. Wouldn’t the water that sealed the cave entrance tend to raise the temperature in summer?

He turned to Blaine. “The water temp would thaw them seasonally.”

She was spooning some poisonous-looking pudding that Calder had decided to pass up.

“
What?”

“
The lake water would get warmer in the summer, and the bodies would partially thaw. Over thousands of years, decomposition would set in. Genetic information would be lost.”

“
The permafrost should have kept them from deteriorating,” she said. “We won’t know until we see.”

“
I think we’ll find a party of local inhabitants, probably from the nineteenth century but possibly from medieval times.”

“
I think they’re going to be prehistoric.”

“
That’s like believing in the Abominable Snowman,” Calder said. “If it gets out that we mounted an expedition expecting to find an intact Neanderthal, we’ll be laughed out of town by the scientific establishment.”

“
Who cares?”

“
I do,” he said. “Unlike you, I do paleoanthropology for a living.”

He watched a well-shaped lip curl. It wasn’t enough, he thought, that they were on opposite sides of the controversy surrounding the evolution of modern humans. Now they seemed at odds over the mission that had been thrust on them.

“
What could the ‘scientific establishment’ do?” she said.

“
My book would be turned down. I’d fail to make tenure, become unemployable, end up a shovel bum.”

She smirked. “Shovel bum?”

“
Itinerant archaeological worker. I’m already on shaky ground.”

“
That’s because you keep touting that multiregional evolution so-called hypothesis.”

“
You bad-mouthing my paper at Albuquerque didn’t help. When I got back, Hannah Lamb—”

Blaine made a face. “That’s your own fault. Everybody knows now that Neanderthal and other archaic people were replaced by anatomically modern humans.”

“
Not true. Milford Wolpoff and many other paleoanthropologists still back MRE.”

“
As I said at Albuquerque, they’re behind the times. What about experts like Chris Stringer? He arrived at Out-of-Africa on the basis of fossil evidence.”

“
Just because Neanderthals and their tool kits disappear from the archaeological record twenty-seven thousand years ago doesn’t mean they got replaced. They could have been assimilated by the more numerous Cro-Magnons.”

“
Their genetic signature disappears as well.”

Calder shook his head. “You geneticists. Ever since the Stoneking paper claimed we’re all descended from an African woman of two hundred thousand years ago, you people are like kids with a new plastic toy.”

“
We’re not playing, any more than you physical anthropologists are.”

“
The Mitochondrial Eve theory was discredited, and now you’ve moved on to the Out-of-Africa model, which is almost as absurd.”

“
Human genes provide a decipherable record, which is more than you can say for old bones.”

“
Even your own kind are deserting Out-of-Africa,” he said. “Alan Templeton performed an extensive genetic analysis and found that the African migration began two million years ago. Vinayak Eswaran codified the waves of demic diffusion. And genetic markers suggest that at least the last wave, consisting of anatomically modern humans, interbred with the existing Neanderthals.

Blaine sniffed. “A lot of us don’t go along. Templeton made questionable assumptions. And Eswaran just showed how diffusion
might
proceed
if everything was just right. I got Peter Golub, in his spare time, to go over the—”

“
With instructions to find something wrong, no doubt.”

“
As I said before, there’s very little sign of Neanderthal genes in modern people,” Blaine said. “And the trace they do exhibit dates from at least sixty thousand years ago, before they diverged too much for interbreeding.”

“
You mean you haven’t found any significant trace yet. After millennia of assimilation, that’s not surprising. And by the way, you’ll notice that I didn’t advocate a pure multiregional evolution hypothesis. I believe the geneticists are correct that humans developed in Africa and then spread. Hell, even us bone guys, as you call us, accept that.”

Another sniff. “What you were expounding at Albuquerque certainly sounded like MRE.”

“
I just don’t believe that the newcomers wiped out the Neanderthals,” Calder said. “I think demic diffusion did take place and the two peoples interbred. Like Gunter Brauer and Fred Smith, I take an intermediate position. You wronged me when you stuck me with a pure MRE label.”

“
You weren’t kind to me either, likening me to an astrologer.”

“
Maybe now we’ll now find out who’s closer to the truth,” he said.

“
That’ll be me.”

He leaned across the middle seat and stuck out his hand. “How about a truce, while we see what’s in the cave?”

Blaine gave his hand a quick shake, her grip firm. “Done.”

Calder felt the plane tilt, and looked out the crazed window. Below was a vast darkness. Far aslant, he could see the lights of towns strung along what must be the northern branch of the old silk route between China and Europe. Central Asia had been a wild place then, he knew, plagued by conquerors, plunderers, and constant turmoil.

Judging by recent developments, that condition hadn’t changed much in the last few thousand years. And as far as plunderers went, he suspected he might be working for one. If there was actually anything to plunder.

#

Their passports and visas were confiscated at Dushanbe airport. After what seemed to Blaine a long time, the papers were returned and a guard armed with an assault rifle led them along a dark walkway.

At the baggage terminal a robust man in his thirties stepped away from the conveyor and intercepted them. Beneath a buzz cut he was hard-faced. Dead gray eyes flicked over Calder and lingered on Blaine. She backed a step, hating herself for showing unease.

The man continued to inspect her. “Ian Calder and Caitlin Blaine?” His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d once been karate-chopped.

Great, Blaine thought. She’d been pulled away from her project at a critical time to investigate a fossil Neanderthal, and now the real thing was checking her out. She wondered whether the perusal was professional or personal. Since the failure of her brief marriage to another geneticist, she’d immersed herself in her project. Although men often made advances, they usually backed off upon learning she was a workaholic Ph.D.

Beside her, Calder said, “Yes, that’s us.”

He stuck out his hand. Blaine watched the man ignore it.

“
Teague,” he said. “Facilitator for Salomon Industries. I got a cab.”

Something struck an off-key chord in Blaine’s mind. She searched her memory, but couldn’t pin it down. She remembered from her old-country grandmother that
teague
meant bard in Celtic. That couldn’t be it, she thought, as the man would definitely be out of place reciting poetry while strumming a lyre.

Their bags and scuba gear appeared. Their escort hovered while Calder lifted his, waited for Blaine to identify hers, and handed them to her. She noticed that Teague didn’t offer to help, though the steel air tanks and other gear were heavy.

Calder said, “Neither of us has a dry suit, never needed one. “Mathiessen told us Salomon would s supply them.”

“
Camp master found some. Waiting at hotel.”

The cab was a dented Lada wagon. After the driver loaded the baggage, Teague maneuvered to sit between Calder and Blaine. They drove off down a tree-lined boulevard.

“
I’ll be backing you up for the length of your stay,” Teague said in his flat voice.

Spying on us, you mean.
Now Blaine remembered what had bothered her. She’d heard vague rumors, water-cooler chitchat really, about a shadowy “facilitator” in Salomon’s employ. She stole a sideways glance at Teague’s heavy-browed profile. He didn’t seem like an academic or even a corporate functionary. He looked like a thug.