"Find her yourself." The young man plopped onto the ground cross-legged. "That lady's gonna kill me."
"So she's here?"
"Oh, yeah. She's here." He squinted at them. "Think maybe I can hitch a ride back with you guys? Maybe it's not too late to switch my major. I've got a pretty good—"
"Stop your whining, Benjamin!" A strong, sharp voice cut through his sentence.
Rachel and Tavak turned to see a woman who could only be Dr. Emily Hutton. Her tanned, weather-beaten face was creased with deep lines, but otherwise she looked astonishingly like the photo of her mother. She possessed the same angular features, and her gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
Emily took off her hat and struck the young man about the head and shoulders. "Drink some water and get back in your hole. Now!"
"I can't. Not yet."
"Sure you can. And you will. How would you like Cassie Davis to see an eighty-year-old woman taking your place because you're too much of a wuss to finish what you've started?"
The student glared at her. "You hit me. That's abuse. I could write you up, and—"
"For God's sake, you're twenty years old. You'd get laughed off the campus if you filed a report. Now get back to work."
Benjamin muttered something beneath his breath. Then he picked himself up and trudged back toward one of the dig sites.
Emily turned back toward Rachel and Tavak. "I take it you're not here to give me the extra supplies I need."
"Afraid not," Tavak said. "We want to talk to you about a discovery your mother made."
"Ah, shit. Which one?"
"Nemop, in Babylonia."
"You couldn't have called or sent me an e-mail?"
"Your graduate assistant wouldn't give us the number of your satellite phone, and she refused to pass along a message. She said it was for emergencies only."
Emily chuckled. "Good girl. I'm very busy out here. See me in my office in ten days." She turned away.
Rachel jumped out of the Jeep. "Wait!"
Emily stopped, but she didn't turn around.
Rachel ran around to face her. "Dr. Hutton, please. I'm Dr. Rachel Kirby. I'm a university professor, too. I know how important this project is to you, but if you could just give us a few minutes of your time."
Emily glanced between Rachel and Tavak. "Young lady, if you're a college professor, you know how precious my time is out here. I have to fight like hell to get the grants I need to mount these shindigs."
"I understand."
"And still you want to take some of my valuable time."
"Yes. It's important."
"Of course it is." Emily sighed. "Just a few minutes, huh?"
"Absolutely."
"Uh-huh. Okay. Come see me at the end of the day. We'll talk."
Tavak shook his head. "We need to get back right away."
Emily shrugged. "Then go. I'm not stopping you."
"Okay, okay." Rachel put a hand on her arm. "We'll stay. Thank you."
Emily's face lit with a broad grin that was definitely elfish. "Don't thank me, Rachel Kirby." She bent over, picked up a pair of shovels, and handed them to Rachel and Tavak.
Tavak looked at his shovel. "I'm afraid to ask what this is for."
"Last time I checked, it was for digging. Which is what you're going to be doing for oh, the next seven hours or so. It so happens we can use a couple grunt laborers here today."
"Are you serious?"
Emily turned and walked away. "Talk to the tall blond girl over there. She'll tell you where to dig."
* * *
As the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, the excavation site's atmosphere changed from that of a slave-labor camp to a block party. Torches were lit and folk-rock music suddenly blared from an array of speakers. Two of the students erected a long table, while another uncovered a grill pit and started a fire.
On the hill where Rachel and Tavak had worked in relative isolation, Tavak threw down his shovel. "I guess the whistle has blown."
Rachel glanced at her throbbing hands. "I hope we were really accomplishing something. I have a feeling they just put us up here so everyone could look up whenever they needed a laugh."
Tavak smiled. "I wouldn't put it past the old girl. Come on, let's find her."
They worked their way down into the heart of the camp, where they finally found Emily seated on a canvas folding chair, holding court for a half dozen of her students. She held a shot glass in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other, which she used to frequently refill her students' cups.
Rachel ventured into circle. "Dr. Hutton?
"Welcome, welcome!" Emily now appeared much looser than she had earlier in the afternoon, and her eyes appeared as two tiny slits. She smiled. "Don't worry, I'm not drunk. At least not yet. But a couple of hours from now, that'll be a different story."
The students laughed and clinked their glasses.
Emily poured herself another shot. "So tell me, why in hell would you want to know about Nemops?"
"It was a major archaeological find," Tavak said. "But little seems to survive."
"Oh, it survives. Just not anyplace where people can easily study it."
"Why not?"
"It was the deal my mother struck with the government. She could dig, study, and catalog, but none of her finds could be taken from the country. They went into storage. There was some talk of a national museum, but it never happened. Eventually, everything was either sold off or pilfered. As you know, ancient Babylon is modern-day Iraq. Some of those Babylonian archaeological sites have been paved over and have military helipads on them. Nice, huh?"
Rachel knelt next to her. "Do you know where the artifacts ended up?"
"My mother kept track of that stuff. She was hoping to interest a foundation in gathering it for a permanent collection, but she never got very far. What are you interested in?"
"The temple itself. The walls, anything with inscriptions on it."
Emily laughed so hard that the student next to her had to grab her wrist to keep her from spilling her drink.
"Did I say something funny?" Tavak asked.
Emily wiped her eyes. "Do you like monkeys?"
"Monkeys?"
"Yes. You see, that temple went on the auction block in 1939 to line the pocket of some corrupt government official. I think a few museums were in the running for it, but an American with far too much money was also there. His checkbook was bigger, so he went home with it.
"What American?"
"William Randolph Hearst. Heard of him?"
Tavak nodded. "Of course."
"He was buying art treasures all over the world for a little place he was building on the California coast."
Rachel's brows lifted. "Hearst Castle? It's there?"
"In a matter of speaking. You see, Hearst never bothered reassembling the temple. I guess he just didn't know what to do with it. The walls, floor, ceiling—the whole thing—became a sidewalk."
"You're joking," Rachel said.
"Wish I was. My sense of humor isn't this good. Those priceless temple walls became an inlaid outdoor walkway in Hearst's zoo on the property. It was the largest private zoo in the world."
"Incredible," Rachel said. "And it's still there?"
Emily nodded. "Near the monkey cages. There are no animals anymore, of course. I don't think the tours even go up there nowadays. And the whole estate now belongs to the California Park Service."