CHAPTER 78
“If the site had been disturbed prior to the dig,” said Matsuhashi, ignoring the way Thomas’s eyes moved between the knife and the phone, “the team would be able to tell. The earth would not be properly compacted. It would look like filler.”
“Maybe they did and decided to say nothing,” said Thomas. “I’m going to speak to my friend on the cell phone now, okay?”
“NO,” said Matsuhashi. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”
He began to shout in Japanese, raging, so that suddenly he was transformed and terrifying. His face locked into a wide-mouthed grimace. It took a second for Thomas to realize that he was crying.
“He is a great man,” he whispered in English.
“Maybe so,” said Thomas.
“Not maybe!” shouted Matsuhashi, and he looked young, his blustering anger quite empty.
“Okay,” said Thomas, calming him. “But in this case, at least, he has not been honest.”
He waited to see what defiance this would produce, but the young man looked merely surly and said nothing, though the tears ran down his cheeks. It was quite dark now and the Venetian blind glowed with a soft opalescence from the streetlamps outside. Thomas looked at the phone on the desk. He wondered where Jim was. Where Kumi was.
“Give me the knife,” he said, “and let me talk to my friend.”
Matsuhashi looked at the knife as if wondering how he came to be holding it. Carefully he set it on the desk.
“So,” Thomas continued gently. “How did he get into the burial chamber without anyone realizing?”
There was a long silence, disturbed only by the student’s trembling sobs.
“Maybe the tanuki,” said Matsuhashi at last, sinking heavily onto the desk. He wiped his eyes and took a long uneven breath, suddenly quite calm so that Thomas felt the worst was past. But it still might be too late.
“What?” he asked, and there was a note of desperation in his own voice now.
“The site was penetrated by tanuki—a kind of animal. They opened a passage into the burial site. Entrance through there would perhaps go unnoticed . . .”
“Please let me call my friend,” he said. “I need to make sure my wife is okay.”
Matsuhashi turned to him and looked closely into his face. For a moment nothing happened.
“I will call,” he said.
The car climbed out of the basin where Kofu sat, leaving the lights of the town behind them. Kumi and Watanabe had fallen silent, neither one bothering to maintain the charade, just driving, lost in their own thoughts as the tiny, terraced rice fields fell away and the land became rugged. When they pulled over, it was on the edge of what might have been a farm, the walls tumbled down, the concrete drainage ditches overgrown and singing with crickets. The moon hung low and full over the black pines.
“Here,” he said, getting out, taking the keys.
She had no choice but to get out onto the deserted road. It could hardly be more dangerous than being inside the car . . .
The ringing of Watanabe’s phone was startling in the oppressive silence, and he answered it with something like relief.
“It’s not her,” said Matsuhashi. “I checked the picture. It looks a little like her, but it’s not her.”
“You are sure?” said Watanabe.
“Yes. Is she okay?”
“She . . . yes. You’re sure?”
“She’s a journalist with a Tokyo weekly looking for a scoop. She has probably called in once already.”
“A journalist?”
“Yes,” said Matsuhashi. “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t like to read about on Sunday.”
Watanabe hung up and took a long look at the woman who was standing by his car gazing at the moon, pretending not to be terrified.
“Thank you,” said Thomas.
Matsuhashi looked utterly blank, drained of all emotion.
“What will you do now?” asked Thomas.
Matsuhashi shrugged. “There is nothing to do,” he said. “In Japan we do not cross our teachers. We are . . .” he fought for the word, “apprentices. We don’t ‘bite the hand that feeds us.’ ”
He grinned sadly at the phrase.
“No,” said Thomas. “I guess not. But there are things I still need to know. About my brother.”
“I cannot help you.”
“I know. I must speak to Watanabe-sensei myself.”
It was the first time he had given the archaeologist his title, but he did it out of respect for his student, not for the man himself.
“He will tell you nothing,” said Matsuhashi. “He is a good liar.”
He grinned that sad, pained grin again.
“And you?” said Thomas. “You won’t tell him that you know about the fraud? Even though it means that everything in the papers, everything in the academic journals, everything that will be taught in schools is wrong?”
Matsuhashi slumped further, his head down toward his belly, a picture of defeat and despair.
“I cannot stand against him,” he whispered. “I have not the strength.”
Whether he meant political or moral, Thomas couldn’t say.
“Did you know my brother?” he asked.
“I did not travel to Italy,” said Matsuhashi, frowning at the change in tack. “I saw him here but I did not know his business. He met with the sensei . . .” he caught himself, “with Watanabe-san. At first they seemed glad to see each other, but I think they argued, quietly.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. They just changed. Became cold to each other.”
“He was here two days?”
“Yes,” said Matsuhashi, calmer now that the subject was less controversial. “He worked in the lab most of the time, had dinner with Watanabe-san. We were deciding which mounds to excavate and were using satellite images of locations all over Japan. He was very interested in the technology. Then they argued, and I took him to the station.”
“Did he seem very angry or upset when he left?”
“No,” said the student, frowning again as if this had seemed odd to him. “He seemed cheerful, even excited.”
“Did you know a man called Satoh, or maybe Tanaka? A man who knew Ed in Italy?”
“No.”
“He will do this again, you know,” said Thomas, redirecting abruptly. “Watanabe, I mean. If you let him get away with it this time, he’ll do it again. There are going to be a lot of questions about this find. Someone will poke holes in his ideas and he’ll invent more evidence to cover his tracks. You could spend half your career manufacturing the same lie for him. Would you rather be a real archaeologist or a fake celebrity?”
The question hung in the air like smoke, and as the time passed and the student said nothing, Thomas thought it had dissipated. But then Matsuhashi began to move very gradually, straightening up, his back losing its arch one vertebra at a time. His eyes were shiny with more than tears, and they had a brittle light to them that seemed both determined and a little mad.