"Yes, and you?"
"Yes, thank you. Your family?"
"They’re well."
"Good. Then." Kong Zhen paused to signal a little shift. Ordinarily the pleasantries would have gone on longer, but the call was expensive and the bank manager’s patience limited. So he plunged on: "Have you taken care of our-our surveillance problem?"
"Eh, yes," the vice director said. "I spoke to District Commander Gao. It’s most regrettable what happened to the American female. The commander agrees. But you know- provincial officials-what can you do?"
"Yes. Yes of course. So the situation now…?" He let the question trail off.
"Beijing Command will advise them. I think they’ll discontinue. Now. What about Peking Man?"
Kong sighed. "The group is no closer to finding it. Though there have been… clues. Speaking frankly, the American is right about some things. But the fossils themselves? No. Nothing yet." Kong naturally downplayed how close they were to the remains, to the cave. There was no reason to build the vice director up and then disappoint him later. And there was every reason to start drawing his interest away from Peking Man so he could be made to see the incredible Late Paleolithic research that was everywhere here in the Northwest, waiting to be done. He, Kong, saw a future for himself here. Maybe a future with Dr. Spencer.
Kong liked the American. He liked working with him even though they couldn’t talk without a go-between. With Dr. Spencer he felt at ease. He knew he should keep a little more distance-after all, Spencer was an outsider-but he didn’t.
Eh, Kong thought, my face has always been too open. He thought of the many times his wife had complained at his lack of guile, a quality dangerous for all zhi shi fenzi, intellectuals, who came of age first during the famine, and then the Cultural Revolution. "You worthless bone!" she had accused him, so often – "Think before you speak! Breathe through the same nostrils as your superiors! Consider every step, every word-" Of course, she had been right, Baoling had; the slightest mistake during those years-when an idle story told by one man could instantly become fact in the mouths of ten thousand- could bring a man down, and all his family with him. Kong had been one of the lucky ones. He had survived, his wife and son had survived, and he had been allowed to continue as an archaeologist. "Elder cousin," he said now, "it is difficult to call you from this place. But be assured I will call-if anything occurs."
"Thank you," the vice director said. "Duo bao zhong." Guard your health.
"Bici."
When he had hung up and stepped out onto the iridescent limestone steps and down into the dirt street, Professor Kong replayed the conversation in his mind. The hunter-gatherer work, that was what he wanted now. He hoped he’d been sufficiently casual with his cousin. He hoped he’d handled it right. He wanted all his doors left open.
The soldier who had been standing stiffly at the entrance to the cave motioned to Kuyuk. "They may enter now."
They all scrambled to their feet and exchanged looks. The previous day they’d had a taut verbal struggle with Lieutenant Shan. There had been proposals and counterproposals, feinting and parrying; several times they’d prepared to walk out, ready to abandon the idea of entering the cave-and paying Lieutenant Shan-altogether. Side issues-the inconvenience of the foreigners’ presence in a military area, the inevitable damage to archaeological sites and artifacts from military activity-were raised and bartered back and forth. Finally a deal was struck. Spencer counted out six hundred and sixty in American bills, money from Alice’s credit card, which the lieutenant folded and stuck in his pocket. No forms, no receipts. It’s called the hou men, Alice explained to Spencer, The back door.
Then this morning they had waited on the rocks for hours, wondering if the PLA’s vault people would ever be able to get the pressure lock open. Watching while the line of uniformed soldiers faced them with their assault rifles cocked and ready. "What, do they think we’re going to rush the missile bay?" Spencer had whispered.
Now they stood up trembling in the blazing light, brushing off the yellow dust and trying not to scream with excitement.
"Ready?" Kong asked.
"All backpacks and supplies remain outside!" barked the senior PLA officer, who had emerged from the mouth of the cave covered with dirt and sweat. "Only flashlights! Form a single line!"
Alice put this quietly into English. Spencer piled his day pack on the ground with the others. "Camera?" he asked her hopefully.
"You out of your mind?"
"Okay," he groused.
"Zou!" the officer barked.
"Move," she translated.
Kuyuk led them, Kong, Spencer, and Lin following. Then Alice. They filed cautiously into the cave, lit now by powerful hand-torches.
Alice watched Lin’s back as she stepped over the rock floor. This is where he touched me in the dark the other day, she thought.
Lin caught the memory, too, turned back to her, just an instant, then looked away.
They came to the petroglyph. She gazed at it in the good light from the soldier’s handheld lamps. It was small, like the others, but beautifully wrought. And protected here, in the cave. The whole head was the sun, warm rays streaming from it; the face a wide-eyed, inquisitive monkey. Just like the carvings in the other canyons. Like the picture. Like the message in the margin of Teilhard’s letter, the drawing and the words This is it. This was it. She felt the thrill a pilgrim feels, crossing into the holy land.
"Come on," Spencer called from up ahead.
Armed soldiers stood rooted in a row by the submarine lock. The massively engineered door yawned open.
They stepped through one at a time.
On the other side a cavernous room opened around them, weirdly illuminated by the roving flashlight beams. In its center hulked some massive thing draped in tarpaulins.
It was box shaped, roughly the size and shape of a small truck. Alice edged away from it. A large, densely charactered sign shrieked warnings. She shivered when she recognized the characters yuanzidan, Nuclear. Never had she been anywhere near such a thing before.
The armed men filed in and took up posts around the missile.
Spencer spoke in the softest voice, as if more might detonate it, and Alice’s translation wove in behind. "Teilhard would have wanted the bones safe, but findable. Let’s look the way he would have looked around here fifty years ago. Maybe he went further than just leaving it. He might have put it behind a rock, up a side passage. Not far. Just out of sight, that’s what I think. So. Rock piles, rocks small enough to have been moved by one man, clefts in the walls, side passages…" He played his flashlight around the room, shook his head. "It’s a big space. And I don’t think our friends here are going to give us too much time."
Alice glanced at each face as she finished up in Chinese. They all fanned out across the rock floor.
Except Spencer, who sidled up beside her. "It’s not a missile!" he whispered.
"What?"
"It’s not a missile! Check it out."
She puckered her eyebrows and ran a cautious look from one end of the draped huddle to the other. "What are you talking about?"
"Walk around the far side. That corner-" He made a small movement with his eyes. "Look around the bottom, below the edge of the tarp."
She drew her brows together.
"Just don’t let them see you."
She turned to walk in the opposite direction, and started in at the opposite end of the cave wall. She swept her flashlight beam methodically, then moved and looked behind, under, around, everywhere. She got hold of rocks with all her strength, tore her fingernails, turned them over, walked them to the side, anything not to miss a crate of hominid bones.