CHAPTER 34
“Yes, I knew your brother,” she said. “Not well. But I’m sorry to hear he is dead.”
Her anger had evaporated almost as quickly as it had come, dispersed the moment Thomas told her who he was.
“He came to the site about a week after the find,” she said. “He was baffled at first.”
“What find?” said Thomas.
“The second diver tomb,” she said. “I assumed you knew.”
Thomas smiled ruefully and shook his head. So his brother’s pluralized “tombs” was right after all. He thought as much. Ed didn’t make mistakes like that.
“For a week or so he kept coming around here,” she said. “He didn’t talk much, which I was glad of, to be frank, especially with his being a priest and all. I don’t have much experience with priests. Anyway, the last time I saw him he was excited, scribbling constantly in a notebook and beaming like an eight-year-old who’s just won a year’s supply of ice cream. Then he disappeared.”
Her eyes were sad, not full of tears or anything so melodramatic, but sad nonetheless, and Thomas decided to trust her.
“So there’s a second diver tomb,” he remarked, half to himself. “I’m amazed it’s not common knowledge, at least around here, given the pride of place given to the original.”
“Original is right,” she said. “This one won’t get the same press because it’s later. Much. Good news for me.”
“Why?”
“The place would be crawling with archaeologists. Some local university would be given control of the dig or it would simply be commandeered by the Italian government. The original tomb dates from about 500 BC. This is early medieval, more than a thousand years later. Come on, I’ll show you.”
She got up, and Thomas was again struck by her gangling height. Not that she was graceless. Far from it. She moved with a surprising economy if not actually elegance, like a giraffe, he thought, knowing immediately that to say anything of the sort would likely get him in serious trouble. This was a woman who didn’t take a lot of crap from anybody.
“So,” he said, “if you don’t mind me asking, why are you running the dig? You’re from . . . ?”
“Atlanta,” she said, “currently.”
She had no trace of a southern accent.
“I’m here because I persuaded the Greek government to help support a little expedition to what was once a Greek site. The Italians don’t mind so long as nothing leaves the country and I don’t destroy anything precious in the process. They send an inspector every week or so to see if I found the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Otherwise they leave me alone.”
“The Lighthouse of . . . what?”
“Sorry,” she said, and her habitual sternness flicked into a smile. “Archaeological humor. The Pharos lighthouse was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It’s nowhere near here.”
“I see,” said Thomas, watching her with interest. She was in her midthirties, he supposed. Peter the Principal would have called her an “odd duck.” He found himself liking her.
“I’m a museum curator,” she said. “Sounds grander than it is. Anyway, I wanted a little break, get a little fieldwork under my belt. And I had done a sort of favor for the Greek government, so they helped land me this. Impressive, isn’t it?” she said, dryly, gazing out over the deserted tangle of weeds and shallow trenches. “Once in a while I get a little help from some local students, but for the most part it’s just me. Which is okay.”
He believed her.
A kindred spirit, perhaps. Would rather be by herself.
“This is it.”
They had arrived at a ramshackle construction made of transparent sheet plastic and old scaffolding, a tent of sorts, just under six feet high and half as much again in length. She stooped and showed him through a flap in the plastic.
The air inside was hot and slightly sweet-smelling, moist like mown grass, but the light was filtered and Thomas felt his face relax as his eyes adjusted. The find was clearly of the same basic construction as the earlier Greek tomb: five stone slabs, all currently draped with transparent sheeting. She revealed each one with tremendous care and the hint of a smile that softened her features still further.
Thomas caught his breath. In place of the lounging drinkers of the Greek tomb, the two longer side panels showed what were clearly crosses. The shorter end panels showed a stylized fish with prominent front fins and oddly well-defined teeth. The final slab, the lid, was what made the connection to the other tomb explicit. It was almost exactly the same image: the naked diver slicing through space into water. The only differences were that the cross and fish motifs appeared here too, in the corners of the painting’s border, and that the water toward which the diver was plummeting was a deep crimson.