Cat Among the Pigeons

BY THE TIME LUKE returned to pick Clare up, he no longer felt comfortable stopping for a night, not with all the equipment in the car. The backseat was crammed full of cartons and odd-looking carry cases and bundles wrapped in lumpy plastic, which he’d been unable to squeeze into the trunk.

“That’s an awful lot of gear,” she said, as they drove away from Tarquinia. “How are we going to pack it all up to the meadow?”

He said they’d only be taking selected items, once he’d got it sorted.

“Like what?”

A long silence.

“Like what?” she said again.

He said for goodness sake he’d have to take another look at the terrain first. His tone was so grudging that Clare started wondering if he was not as familiar with that equipment as he’d like. After another silence he said that electrical resistivity would be one method they would use. The Etruscans tended to pile loose earth around the entrance after a tomb was sealed. Loose earth was more likely to retain water. Ergo, lower electrical resistance.

“Ergo a light bulb goes off in the prospector’s head suggesting that’s the place to dig.”

He started drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“Listen,” he finally said, “I’ve been thinking.” He broke off, ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve been giving thought to how we should manage things.”

“The exploration?”

“Well of course that,” he said. “But also …” His voice trailed off. The drumming started up again. They were on a small country back road. Abruptly, he pulled to the side. He turned and looked at her, a long unnerving look. Finally, “Christ!” he said, “Tindhall, get a grip.” He shook his head, hit his fist on the wheel, pulled back onto the road. Some miles passed.

The fact was, he finally said, that Harry Plank had been onto him from the beginning about finding a toehold in Tuscany. Now Plank was interested in purchasing her property.

“I thought Harold Plank hated travel.”

“He does, but if it turns out that we were on to something, Plank will want to be in on the kill.”

“The kill.”

“You know, like with the opening of King Tut’s tomb at Luxor. Lord Carnarvon arriving just in time to be photographed.” He frowned, considering this. “Of course, Carter delayed opening the tomb didn’t he? He waited for Carnarvon’s arrival.”

Clare had figured out, of course, that the roses, the Brunello, all of that, hadn’t really come her way because of her. Like everyone else — more than everyone — Plank did want in on the kill. From the moment she’d turned up in London, probably, Plank had seen her as his lead to whatever it was her uncle had discovered, and had set his man Tindhall to the task of getting her lined up, little knowing that Luke had an agenda of his own. And, in a sacrifice to British archaeology, as Luke had merrily put it to those loathsome tweedy types, Luke had undertaken the task.

But he’d kept buggering it up. That night when he drove her home, shining his flashlight in her face, then yanking her out of there, Right, come on! That day at the dig, making sure the whole thing went wrong. Why? Was that the way so many things in his life went wrong, starting with his time in sodding academe?

And I’m as much of a mess-up as he is, Clare thought; maybe that’s the sad but undeniably sizzling truth that gets us going.

A few minutes ago, when he’d pulled off the road back there, so nervous before putting Harold Plank’s plan to her, she’d imagined she picked up something else in his stare. She’d been shying away from thinking what might come of it if she did not take care. But now she couldn’t help asking. “You know that night when you drove me home from Ralph and Federica’s? What was that about?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Too much to drink.” He shrugged.

“Don’t give me that.”

“Not my finest hour.”

“So?”

So in a nutshell, she’d called it right.

He confessed that when Harold Plank assigned him the project of buttering up the botanical lass, he’d obediently read her bio, leafed through her book, brushed up on the history of botanical art, culled a useful phrase or two. He’d studied the black-and-white author photo. The woman was a considerable stunner, which surely meant that in London Harry Plank would have exercised his droit de seigneur. But Luke figured he was owed a bit of payback for the way he’d been damn near killed by Kane’s dogs.

Then he’d watched Clare during dinner, a young woman having the insouciance to turn up wearing a flashy western belt and boots and jeans among the self-referential Inghirami, implying they were no more fearsome than any other tribe she’d met on her travels! Well now Tindhall, lucky dog, he’d started to think. This one’s worthy of a little tussle in the name of British archaeology.

“That’s all pretty sick,” Clare said. “But it doesn’t exactly explain why you dumped me, more or less, once you’d got me alone in the woods.”

It was hard to explain. When he’d switched on the torch to take a small preprandial peek, there were those eyes of hers, wide and troubling as the sodding Sargasso, eyes that could sink a man if he wasn’t careful.

“We don’t have to worry about you sinking though,” she said, hoping she was right.

AT THE NEXT INTERSECTION, a tractor turned out of a farm gate right in front of them. Luke banged his hand on the wheel. “Oh sod it! Bloody hell.”

“Come on. It can’t be going all the way to Cortona.”

They would never know. Luke pulled out into the smallest gap in the oncoming traffic, squeaked past in a blare of horns.

“Anyway, don’t imagine for a moment,” he said, “that Harry Plank won’t set aside his fear of flying to be on hand when the moment of discovery comes. It would all reflect more brilliantly on Harry if the dig took place on property he owned.”

“And all this would reflect brilliantly on you. Re: Project The Anatolian Gig.”

Luke shrugged.

“I thought you said that if there did turn out to be any remains on my place, I wouldn’t be able to sell — at least not for years and years — till a whole archaeological bureaucratic jumble got sorted out.”

“Harry’s the sort of bloke who can usually find a way.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER, when they were twisting through low green hills, Luke said, “Take a look in your side mirror, will you?”

“The Audi? Why not pull over and let him pass?”

“Not a bad idea.”

The car swept past. A red Fiat was right behind, which slowed as Luke slowed, until he pulled over onto the verge and let it pass. “That should set the cat among the pigeons,” he said, with satisfaction. Round the next bend, the Fiat turned off onto a side road heading east, skirted a rise and disappeared. He tapped the map. “How does that road link up with ours? When will we see him next, do you suppose? We don’t want to lose him altogether.”

“What’s all this about?”

So much had been odd. His vagueness about the equipment he was after, the techniques for its use, even the meeting he’d gone off to with Vittorio Cerotti. What if they’d just gone for a beer? What if he was in the grip of grand delusion? What if she tore open those bags back there and they were full of plastic egg cartons or table legs, not archaeometric equipment?

Just as she was seriously weighing this, she saw the same red Fiat preparing to nose out of an oncoming junction ahead. After they passed, it allowed another couple of cars to go by and then rejoined the line behind them.

“Good for them,” Luke said. “Once we get to the autostrada of course the fun will begin. There should be two or three more, changing guard.”

HE HAD SET THIS up, he said, because, even without her along, he had no way of getting hold of the equipment without word seeping out. It was better to let the word get out, allow themselves to be followed. After that, he would set up a decoy in the low hills behind Lake Trasimeno, not far from Sanguinetto, a spot that was one of the few remaining pieces of land that Luisa di Varinieri’s family had not sold. That was where they would unload all the equipment they themselves did not intend to use, and store it in an old shed there.

“But what about Vittorio Cerotti? He’s bound to tell his wife. Is Luisa in on this too?”

“You underestimate me.”

He explained that Vittorio Cerotti was one of those contrarians who maintained that the hilltop of Cortona had not been a major Etruscan settlement, at least not until very late, almost into Roman times. According to Vittorio, early Etruscan settlement had been limited to the lower slopes, with a few princely villas controlling the rich trade routes around the base of the mountain and leading into what was now Umbria, towards the Tiber.

“Your uncle’s newspaper column about the Etruscan paving seems to have confirmed this for Vittorio, and nicely bolstered his theory that the early elite settlement extended into the low hills above Trasimeno — right into his wife’s family property, as luck would have it. But he’s never had the funds or backing to explore this. Which is why he’s selflessly agreed to aid the Plank Foundation in purchasing equipment for a preliminary snoop around, on the understanding that when anything does officially turn up, he’ll get a good chunk of the credit.”

“But you don’t think there’s anything there at all?”

Luke gave one of those shrugs, this time with both hands off the wheel.

Once they’d turned onto the autostrada, the red car did not reappear; but Luke began to justify his suspicions by telling her tomb robber tales. How destructive these people really were, how they searched for any promising hump or hollow, even certain types of flowers, probing the earth with iron rods, breaking through into tombs with rough blows, the ancient stonework caving in, the contents looted and torn out of context. The need for secrecy was not paranoia on his part.

“Who said anything about paranoia?”

“I know what you’ve been thinking.”

“What I’m thinking is that you’re much more interested in the archaeology of this region than you let on,” she said. “And here you told me that you’re a totally Stone Age man at heart.”

He gave a noncommittal snort.

“What does a Stone Age man exactly do?” she said. “Officially, I mean.”

“Don’t tempt me.” His hand returned to her knee.

AS THEY HURLED ON up the autostrada, he began telling her about the work he really loved — using, as an example, a period when he’d worked at a private museum in Paris that housed a collection of Stone Age implements owned by Baron Lowenthall. Some of the happiest moments of his life had been spent, he confessed, in the musty basement of the Lowenthall Museum. A specialty he had developed was a technique known as retrofitting. This involved fitting back together stone chips that had been discarded, chipped away, in the process of the carving of spear points by cave dwellers some fifty thousand years ago. When the gathered-up chips were fitted back together, you could tell exactly what sort of tool had been carved out of the larger block, and this told you what animals those particular cave dwellers had hunted, and therefore what they ate and wore. The geological makeup of the reassembled stone indicated how far afield that tribe had ranged and traded, and even whether the ancient tool-smith had been leftor right-handed.

Clare shook her head, half-ashamed, half-alarmed. He was the real thing. She realized she’d regarded him with an edge of suspicion, never taken him seriously, not as this sort of serious and knowledgeable person.

They careened off the autostrada at the Chiusi exit, threaded a network of secondary roads, swung up a rise, crested a hill. Suddenly the lake was there, a flat green shimmer. Luke pulled off onto the verge.

He turned off the motor. He took her chin in his large hand. She smelled leather on it from the wheel, and the hot salt of his skin. His other hand traced her cheek bones, her nose, her ears. She caught a glint of the gold snake’s ruby eye.

He said, “Do you think you could love me, Clare?” Then, as he saw her involuntary shock, a quick recoil. “I said could you, not do you.”

He started the car and jammed it into gear. They crunched down to the valley.

DO YOU THINK YOU could love me?

And then that moment when he’d seen his mistake. Appalling that she was responsible for him showing himself like that, his face so naked, vulnerable, hopeful, then slammed tight. They passed through the narrow streets of a small village. He banged on the horn. An elderly woman wobbled on her bike and nearly lost her loaf of bread.

Clare glanced at his chin-up, scruffy-lion profile. What had her face looked like in the instant after? She remembered the shock on her uncle’s face when she’d declared her lust for him — shock and horror at her, at himself — which had lived with her ever after. And now she, grown Clare — wounded, hardened, lying Clare — had been tossed a chance to put just a pinch of ease back into a universe of monstrous and clashing forces. The moment had opened, then shut, in a blink.

They drove around the lake. They passed the palm trees of Passignano. She closed her eyes. Was it possible that if she could just let go of whether or not she did love — just said, Yes, Yes I could — might this not turn out to be true? If she could do that, just make that leap, might it not jolt her from aching to hear another voice telling her about resin fungi and the life history of the unicorn. I am so lonely, Clare.

They drove up a rutted track that ended at a small stone shed.

They carted in bundles of stakes, electric wire, survey tape, a metal detector, and cartons of unknown contents.

By then it was dusk. He secured the shed with a padlock and pushed past her.

She said, “Luke!”

He stopped, but didn’t turn.

She said, “The answer is yes.”

He didn’t move. She was going to have to spell it out. If her next words felt like pity, or the jabs of an inoculation — all to the good. She imagined she could smell the feral, wounded struggle he was having before he turned back to her.

THEY DROVE UP THE hill to her uncle’s place, her place, then drove slowly on along the path into the woods. In the dark they managed to heft two great duffle bags and an oblong padded case up the stream bed. They hid these as best they could.

They sat for a while on one of the mounds. Fireflies sparked, small silent fireworks. Then a rustling movement on the sidehill made Luke call out, “Who the fuck’s there?” It turned out he’d brought along a revolver. He fired it into the air. The silence that settled held just that single whistle that might have been a bird.