CHAPTER 80
Thomas lay on his back on the far side of the trash mound where the filler dirt from the site had been dumped. When the excavators had carved the earth from around the burial mound, they had created a great sloped cone of rubble and sandy earth that was actually taller than the mound itself. From where he lay Thomas could look out over the entire site without being seen, though with no permanent lights in place, there was little to see in the dark. The night was still and calm, too early in the year for the metallic drone of the cicadas.
Watanabe arrived half an hour before dawn. He had parked at least a block away and entered the site silently, his movements furtive. He had brought a flashlight no larger than a pen, and most of the time he worked without switching it on. He took no more than five minutes to prepare, and then disappeared around the back of the mound. Thomas listened, but he could hear nothing, and for a full ten minutes it looked as if Watanabe had left.
“Where is he?” he whispered.
“Inside,” said Matsuhashi, who had not moved at all for at least two hours.
“How did he get in? The entrance is right there.”
“There must be another tanuki hole we didn’t know about on the other side,” said Matsuhashi. “Clever. It must give him access to the unexcavated part of the mound.”
Another silent five minutes passed, and, then they heard him moving around again outside the mound. Thomas risked a look. The darkness was graying fast and the archaeologist had stowed his flashlight. He was bent over the ground, barely moving except for his hands, rubbing, polishing one tiny object at a time, using what might have been a child’s toothbrush, working with infinite care. He wore gloves and had spread some kind of tarp on the ground, but the meticulousness of the scene was belied by the feverish muttering that increased as time passed. He was desperate, panicking.
Thomas turned away, easing back down the slope, careful not to dislodge so much as a pebble.
“How long does pollen last?” he whispered.
“Tens of thousands of years,” Matsuhashi said, still not moving. “The outer shell is almost indestructible. It can say much about conditions when an object went into the ground.”
“If it’s really there,” said Thomas.
Matsuhashi didn’t speak for a moment, then said, “He’s going back in. It is almost time.”
They waited till the sun was barely over the horizon, the chorus of birds winding down, before they made their move. It was simple enough, climbing over the top of the fill heap and down into the excavation site proper. They did not speak and still moved quietly, unwilling to reveal themselves.
Watanabe didn’t see them at first. He emerged, looking grubby and distracted, and had already gathered his tools before he looked up and saw the pair of them standing there, waiting.
He became quite still, and then, as if he might yet ride this out on personality alone, snapped on his trademark grin. Without the shades he looked old, haggard.
“Early start?” he said in Japanese.
Matsuhashi stood silently, his back ramrod straight, his eyes on the ground, like a soldier at inspection.
“It’s over,” said Thomas. He felt no triumph, just weariness and a desire for it all to be done. But there was something he needed to know.
“Tell me about Ed,” he said. “My brother. What exactly did you fight over?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said.
Thomas looked to Matsuhashi, but the student just stood there as if paralyzed, unable to look at his teacher.
“Tell him about the pollen,” said Thomas.
“What pollen?” said Watanabe with an unconvincing shrug. He was going to brazen it out after all, convinced his student wouldn’t turn on him. “Do you know anything about any pollen?” he asked his student, inching closer, looming.
“No, sensei,” said Matsuhashi. “I know of no pollen.”
Watanabe smiled, genuinely this time. His hands patted his breast pocket and located his trademark shades.
“Your brother,” he said, “was a fool.”
“He came for the cross?” said Thomas, persisting with an effort.
Watanabe looked at Matsuhashi, who seemed so still and powerless before him, and permitted himself another grin.
“You came here to make accusations against me that you cannot substantiate,” he said. “Your brother did the same. Whining about giving a proper burial to certain . . . human remains.” He shook his head and chuckled. “A strange quest for a priest, no? Wanting to return dead people—whose names he didn’t even know—to some hole in the ground on the other side of the world?”
He rolled his eyes at the absurdity of the thing.
“That’s all?” said Thomas, aghast. “He came to get the bones back to Naples because Pietro was eaten up with guilt for selling the dead down the river? That’s all? What about the cross? The fish symbol? His research?”
“Research?” Watanabe sneered. “He was a priest. What could he be researching that would be of interest to a scientist? We didn’t discuss it.”
Watanabe shrugged again, pleased with Thomas’s disappointment, and the shrug looked real. Ed’s time in Japan had been a sidebar, a tangent, and Thomas’s following him here was just so much wasted time. Anger welled up in Thomas and he turned to Matsuhashi.
“Finish this,” he said.
But Matsuhashi, his cheeks tear-streaked again, seemed incapable of speech or movement.
“You see, Mr. Knight,” said Watanabe, slipping his shades on, “we Japanese are very loyal to our sempai—our superiors. Matsuhashi-san is my student, my kohai, my inferior. His future is also mine. Without me he is nothing.”
Thomas looked from him to the student, willing him to speak.
“There is no pollen,” said Matsuhashi with great slowness, each word hauled out like a millstone.
“Yes,” said Watanabe. “You must have made a mistake in the lab . . .”
“There never was any non-Japanese pollen on the bones,” said Matsuhashi, and suddenly he straightened up and looked his teacher directly in the eye. It was such a surprising and defiant gesture, one Thomas was sure Watanabe had never seen from his student before, that the archaeologist took a step backward. “But,” Matsuhashi continued, “you did not know that, which is why you just entered the tomb and cleaned off the artifacts you had planted earlier, artifacts that you hadn’t planned to ‘discover’ for several days.”
Watanabe flinched as if slapped.
“That’s a lie,” he said, very quiet.
“No, sensei,” said Matsuhashi, eyes lowered again, the soldier standing before his superior.
“Yes,” said Watanabe, “it is.”
“No,” said Thomas, gesturing to the perimeter of the site. “And we have proof.”
Curious, Watanabe peered out over the tops of his shades. People were emerging from cover close to the entrance, others on top of the fill heap. They had video cameras and long, foam-covered directional microphones. NHK had agreed to come only when Thomas had warned that a minor reporter with the New Zealand Herald would scoop the entire story and make Japanese archaeological science into a laughingstock unless they came. They hadn’t believed his tale, but they would now. Everyone would.
“No!” shrieked Watanabe, hurling himself at Thomas. Flashbulbs fired, hardening the soft morning light like a blaze of gunfire.