Spencer said they should explore each ravine in turn. So they climbed as high in each one as they could, struggling up the grade, slipping in the quick, fine earth. Sometimes they got close enough to catch a glimpse of the worn-down Wall above them, sometimes they hit a jumble of rocks or an impossibly narrow cleft or some other formation that told them no house could possibly have been built any higher up. Then they would turn around. They stopped talking. There was no sound except their sand-sucking footsteps, the drone of wind, and the scratching of Adam’s pen in his notebook as he mapped the system of canyons.
"Keep going," Spencer insisted when her disappointment started to show. She did. Even three hours later, when his shirt was sweat blotched and his nose starting to show pink, he kept saying it. "Let’s do the next one."
"The house could be anywhere. In any direction."
"We’ll find it," he said stubbornly.
It was like this, dragging, empty handed, that Dr. Lin Shiyang spotted them moving around the lip of a wash, at the turn of the canyon a mile or so up. "Tamen zai ner," he said with relief, and pointed them out to Kong with his chin. A small movement, economical. He was hot and tired too.
’’Na hao. Women zou-ba. " Kong sighed, and walked away to collect the driver from his patch of shade.
When the Americans walked up Lin could see they’d found nothing. Their eyes sagged with failure.
"It should have been right here," Spencer said, the rust-headed woman putting his words into melodious Chinese. "Right by the site. But it’s okay. Tomorrow, we’ll keep looking."
He nodded and looked down at the woman. "Zenmoyang?" he asked her-How did it go?
She shook her head. Nothing.
"Tai zao-le, " he said sympathetically.
Alice sighed in acknowledgment. All she wanted at this moment was to get back to Yinchuan and have a bath. She was coated with dust and grit. Her mouth was dry and aching with thirst, but she had finished off her water bottle as they hiked back down the last canyon.
Lin saw her glance at her bottle, empty, saw the flush in her freckled cheeks. He held out his own, still a third full. "Gei, " he said quietly.
"Oh, no," she said. "Na zenmo xing."
"Gei, " he said again.
She took it, drank gratefully, and handed it back to him. "Thank you."
He nodded and reattached it to his belt.
"What did you get?" Spencer was saying in English to Dr. Kong, nodding his head at Kong’s sack bulging with microliths.
Kong smiled broadly and opened the bag for Spencer, who inspected the contents and gave him a thumbs-up. "Good work."
The driver, who stood next to Lin, cleared his throat and glanced pointedly at the sun’s angle above their heads. The light had grown long and yellow, the shimmering heat almost unbearable.
"Yes," Lin said. "We should go."
"Dr. Spencer," she said, taking a few steps toward him, "the driver says we should hit the road."
"Oh? Okay. Hey, congratulations, Dr. Kong. Great stuff." He twirled the bag closed and handed it back to the Chinese, smiled tiredly at her. "Let’s go."
"God, Adam," she said in English, "look at your neck! Don’t you feel it? It’s bright red!"
"It is?" He reached back and touched it, winced.
"You have to be more careful. Sunburn is no joke." As she spoke she reached out and unfolded his shirt collar, positioning it gently so it covered his neck. She smoothed out the denim. "Really. Be careful."
Lin felt his stomach drop, watching them. Don’t stare, he ordered himself. Turn away. The way she touched the American man! So familiar, so intimate. So there was something between them. When he and Kong had been briefed it had been made clear that these two foreigners did not know each other until a week ago, when the man hired the woman as his interpreter. Both, they’d been informed, were unmarried. He’d heard stories about Americans, just as all Chinese had. Their restlessness, their high sexual interest. These two had worked together only one week. Could they already be qing ren?
"You ready, Dr. Lin?" Now her face was turned to him, those khaki eyes wide open, pleasant, expectant.
"Eh," he said. "Ready." Remarkable.
"Zou-ba, " she said, watching Lin climb into the rear seat.
She stepped into the back and sat next to Lin. He showed her a millisecond of mild surprise, and then faced front again. She adjusted in her seat for Spencer, who climbed in the back on her other side. Kong got in front with the driver.
They bounced up the dirt road, twisting and turning through the long series of canyons. It would take an hour and a half to get to the ferry crossing. She let the first hour go by without a word.
As they passed through the resettled villages, she saw that Lin scanned out the window constantly.
He thinks his wife might still be out there, Alice realized. He thinks he might actually see her.
So she waited until they came almost to the river before she spoke to him. By then, she knew, they were out of the laogai zone and the only people they would see would be the Mongols, and the Muslims, driving their camels and their sheep and their two-wheeled carts.
"Dr. Lin," she ventured. "Find anything today?"
He turned to her with his mouth bent in the smallest smile. Instead of speaking, he opened his clenched palm and extended it.
There, all but invisible in the brown landscape of hollows and calluses, gleamed the tiny ostrich-shell bead.
Sun Gong, third assistant Party vice manager for Ningxia Province, was back in his office after a week’s leave, glancing through a sheaf of faxes on his desk. One from Beijing caught his eye. It was his prudent habit to always look carefully at faxes from Beijing.
Vice Manager Sun squinted at the letterhead: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. Curious. The IVPP was the national research institute handling anthropology and archaeology. They gave out excavation permits and oversaw Ningxia’s provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics. What was odd was that they were communicating with the Party ofnce-with him, Sun Gong. Normally their directives went straight to the Bureau of Cultural Relics.
He scanned through the fax. Alerting him to the presence of an American archaeologist and his female assistant… attempting to recover Peking Man, the single most important batch of fossils lost by China during the world war… calls placed to highest-level U.S. Government offices… Peking Man! Sun’s eyebrows went up. One of China’s great lost treasures. He read on: Two Chinese scientists accompanying, from Huabei University… permits granted to cross Xi Xia Missile Range… please coordinate with regional PLA command. They are providing security. Cordially. Vice Director Han.
Security! Sun’s fingers trembled as he pulled a crumpled pack of Flying Horse cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one loose, and lit it. The words seemed clear enough, but what lay behind them? Did Vice Director Han imply that if they found the precious Peking Man remains-though surely that was impossible, for the Japanese had spirited the bones away fifty years before-the Americans might try to smuggle the fossils out of the country? The very idea made Sun Gong bridle in righteous fury.
Or was it possible-could it be-did they suspect espionage?
Yes, he thought, pulling hard on the strong cigarette and feeling his heart race, yes, it was possible. Anything was possible. The archaeologists were going to cross a missile range, after all. Highly sensitive. State secrets.
For years, Sun Gong had been looking for a way to prove himself to the bosses above his head. It was not easy, out here in the provinces, where nothing ever happened.
He snatched up the phone and jabbed out a number. Miles away, at the PLA command post, he heard the insistent ring.