It was not until many tense, hard-breathing minutes later that she was able to get a look at the missile. Or not-missile. She was finally in position. Now, her moment. She passed her flashlight beam in a long, steady arc-the light merely passing by on its way to someplace else-over the low corner where the tarp was not straight, where what was underneath was, for a narrow strip, entirely visible.
She almost lost her footing on the dirt floor when she saw.
He was right. This was no missile.
It was gold. Gold bars.
Gold bars cross-stacked, rows of gleaming ingots. Unmistakable. It seemed to give off the very light, the incandescence, of wealth. No nuclear missile, just money. Business. Yi pan sansha, China is a plate of sand.
She gave no outward sign of having seen it, just went on working, studying the wall, probing, covering every inch. She would have liked to tell Lin. Talk to him, stand next to him. Here, though, in this place, it would have been insane.
"What’s this?" Kuyuk called, and since it was the fourth time in an hour or so that someone had cried out, Look, or Come over here, or Hey, Dr. Spencer, nobody looked over at first. Kuyuk moved a boulder aside, and then sank into a careful squat. He made a small pile of rocks and pebbles as he picked each out of its resting place, and then furrowed his face, angling his flashlight straight down in front of him. He touched something hesitantly. Again he cried out, "Na shi shenmo?"- What’s this?
Now Kong trotted over to him, and Lin. A second later their excited Mandarin spurted up over the damp cave quiet and Spencer and Alice crowded up behind.
"What?"
"Look." Lin’s fingers outlined something square.
Alice leaned forward. Yes, oh, unbelievable. It was something square. A perfect, man-made square. A box.
Lin burrowed in a side pocket and drew out a clean cloth. Gently he swept the crumbs of stone away from what appeared to be a large black lacquered box. Around its edges could still be seen the ghost of scrolling gilt paint.
A box.
A crate.
And just the right size to hold skulls, bones, and teeth.
Peking Man.
13
Alice sank hard to her knees, pulse hammering. The voices, bursting one atop the other in a thrill of Mandarin, and Spencer’s English, first "My God," and then "Can you get it open?" but she couldn’t speak, in either language, because for a moment speech lay entirely outside her. She squatted in the cave, in the flashlight-riddled dark, gasping, stunned.
It’s here, she thought. We found it.
"Slowly," Lin was saying to Kong, who was bent over the box. "Be careful."
She trained her flashlight straight ahead and realized, with a start, that Lin was standing directly in front of her. His khaki-wrinkled leg rose before her face. To connect the twoenergies, of the body and soul… Without thinking she put out her hand, slipped it under the rough cotton cuff, and slid over the smooth knob of Lin’s ankle. She felt him shudder, sensed the current of surprise through him.
Lin felt it. Everything about him was focused on Peking Man, yet still he answered her touch by pressing his leg back into her hand. "It’s not locked, is it?" he said to Kong simultaneously.
She squeezed his ankle once and removed her hand.
"Locked? I’m not clear," Kong was saying as his slim, brushlike fingers explored the box’s rim. He fluttered down to the dirt-crusted catch on its front, tested it.
A thrill of murmured tones raced around the little group as everyone trained their flashlights on the box. "No. It’s not locked." Gently Kong manipulated the clasp.
In the hush of indrawn breath the click of the latch opening filled the air around them. Then, the soft creak of the lid. From the corner of her eye Alice glimpsed Spencer’s blond putty face, haggard, triumphant.
The first to speak was Lin.
"Zenmo-le?" Alice heard him croak in disbelief. She craned over the hunched shoulders of Kuyuk, trained her flashlight beam into the yellow pool with all the others. The beam shone into a bottomless black hole, large and dusty.
It was empty.
’’Mei shenmo, " Kuyuk breathed.
"Nothing there," she translated.
"But the bones have to be there!" Spencer insisted.
Dr. Kong tipped the box so that its interior, bare and blank, aimed mercilessly at the face of the American.
"Jesus, this is terrible." Alice touched Spencer’s shoulder.
"Looted…" Spencer shook out, fixing the box with a glassy-eyed stare.
She sent a desperate glance to Lin. The Chinese scientist was already looking at her, his maroon lips flat with sorrow and frustration. "We’ll just have to keep trying." The painful words squeezed out of him. "Won’t we?"
No one answered.
"After all," Dr. Lin croaked, "water wears through a rock."
Outside in the light the soldiers, who by now understood that the artifacts had been stolen at some point, herded the group to the side of the cave entrance. "Wait," the group leader ordered.
Then he opened his cell phone and dialed the Public Security unit from his base. As soon as someone answered he started shouting angrily into the little phone he clutched to his face.
"What’s he saying?" Spencer hissed.
"You’re not going to believe this." She shook her head. "He’s reporting the theft."
"What!"
"Well…" She hesitated, wondering how to explain it to Spencer. Life in China always followed a particular logic, and he just didn’t see it yet. "From his point of view, there’s been a crime. Now he has to go through the appropriate steps. Relax. He doesn’t think we took it."
"I should hope not! Does he realize it’s probably been gone for thirty or forty years?"
"Maybe," she said. "Not that it would matter."
Spencer emitted a croak of disbelief and buried his head in his hands. Kuyuk stood off to the side, studiously ignoring things. Kong and Lin simply tolerated it. They didn’t bother arguing with the soldiers or suggesting that an investigation would waste everyone’s time. Instead they stood, staring out over the ledge to the canyon below, lost in their regret and frustration, waiting for these military functionaries-who, Kong and Lin being scholars, were naturally beneath them in the general hierarchy of things-to finish their job.
Half an hour later the Public Security men arrived, exhausted and annoyed at the long climb from the lamasery. They were taken quickly inside to see the scene of the crime, and then hustled right back out by the soldiers.
A lengthy and heated discussion ensued between Public Security and the soldiers as to who bore responsibility for the theft. The soldiers insisted that the police should have taken better precautions with such a National Cultural Treasure; the officers retorted that the cave was a nuclear missile silo and therefore under the purview of the Army; moreover, who knew Peking Man was in there in the first place? Everyone unburdened themselves of blame. No resolution was reached. The loud voices gradually died down. Kong, Lin, and Kuyuk waited in patient silence, while Alice translated quietly for Spencer.
Finally the officers drafted a statement, read it aloud, and had everyone initial it. In a last flare of self-righteous fury they handed the empty box to Dr. Spencer and stomped away back down the mountain.
"All right," the military group leader said at last when the police were out of sight, "you may go."
At the lamasery they piled into their jeep and bounced back in silence. Spencer slumped on the window. "Adam," Alice tried once, touching his arm, and he said in reply: "What am I going to do now?"
"I’m so sorry," she said quietly, feeling for him. And on the other side of her was Lin, burning with his own pain and loss. She knew how he’d longed for this. She saw. They jolted in silence all the way to Eren Obo.
At the guesthouse Kuyuk said good-night. Dr. Kong and Dr. Lin showed as little as possible, though the veneer of hurt in their faces was clear. Spencer hardly spoke at all.