At least Margo had set those idiotic paleontologists straight. They were now properly armed with rifles and pistols that would arouse no one's curiosity.
Malcolm grinned. What a way to begin their first adventure together as Smith and Moore, time guides, soon to be Moore and Moore, time scouts. He edged his horse just far enough toward hers to catch her hand and squeeze it. She glanced up, startled, then grinned and squeezed back. Malcolm quietly unstrapped the leather satchel holding his computerized log and ATLS, opened the flap, and slipped out a digitizing video camera attached to the log. He turned it on and was gratified when Margo copied his action efficiently, setting up her own digitizing camera and training it on Chuck, still busy digging. The images both cameras captured would feed directly into their individual logs, an could be used as legal evidence, along with the sworn affidavits, in most any uptime court of law.
Chuck's hole was getting larger by the minute. What was he burying, a crate the size of a steamer trunk? Malcolm narrowed his eyes. From the looks of the luggage tied to that pack horse's back, if he intended to bury it all, he'd need a big hole.
Chuck finally laid the heavy spade aside and straightened his back, grumbling audibly. Whatever he was burying, he was going to a great deal of personal trouble about it. Antiquities smuggler was Malcolms private bet with himself. It was the only reasonable explanation he could devise for a man who went downtime with a vast sum of money, and returned with a great deal of clearly precious luggage.
What, Malcolm mused, had he brought back? Manuscripts? The way Chuck grunted when he unstrapped one case quashed that idea. That box was heavy. Chuck set it on the ground beside his deep hole, then unpacked several other cases. Then he sat down and opened them one by one. Apparently he had been too careful to examine them while in TT-86.
"Mother-fucking-" Chuck's curse was loud and startling. He was glaring into the first box, which he'd angled enough that Malcolm and both cameras could see its interior-and complete lack of contents. "Goddamned gold must've been used for something else later in history. Shit! After the trouble I went through to get those pieces ..." He muttered something under his breath, then tossed the case aside. "Just like what happened with those goddamned jewels of Isabella's. How was I supposed to know those rocks would end up in her collection, never mind Chris Columbus' greedy Italian hands? Damn. Wonder if any of it managed to come through the goddamned Porta Romae intact?"
Malcolm held back a chuckle at the look of glee on Margo's face. She was absolutely intent on her work, recording Chuck's every move, every savage curse, every case he opened. Another foul expletive cut through the air. "-gold inlay vanished!" He held up a piece that Malcolm at first couldn't identify. Then the shape took on abrupt, crystal-clear meaning. It was an ivory dildo, complete with testes, which were evidently missing a detailed inlay of some sort. Malcolm zoomed in on the piece and thought, Yes, l do believe there was supposed to be golden "hair" on that thing, and inlay for the veins along the shaft. Good Lord, what's he done, robbed or bribed every brothel in Rome?
A quick glance at Margo showed him flaming cheeks and even a pinkened throat, but she was still recording as steadily as any pro. Good girl! Chuck laid the dildo back in is velvet-lined case and examined the rest of the contents. All of them were sexual in nature, although not all of them were actual sex toys. Each new case brought to light exquisite statuary in marble, ivory, bronze, even-Chuck gloated through the digitizing camera lens-a few surviving golden pieces. A delicate little silver statue of Aphrodite in flagrante delicto with one of her lovers came to light, followed by a marble statue of Hermes with a very erect-and removable-phallus.
Very carefully, Chuck re-covered his treasures in their lined cases, dragged out a small, battered notebook and made a few notations in it, then bagged each case in waterproof plastic which he then heat-sealed with a handy little battery operated gadget. He then gently laid them in the deep hole he'd dug, clearly planning to return uptime and reclaim his treasures without having to pay ATF taxes on them. It was a nice little scam. Those pieces would bring a fortune on the black market-even if they hadn't been commissioned by some uptime collector. Chuck filled in his hole again and tamped the dirt down, then carefully replaced the sod he'd cut out and tamped it down, too, pouring water from two entire canteens over it to ensure that it wouldn't die and turn brown, sticking out like a neon sign saying "Somebody buried something here!"
Chuck then pulled out an ATLS, surprising Malcolm considerably, and shot geographic coordinates using lines of magnetism, the position of certain mountain peaks in relation to his treasure trove, and so forth. He'd have gotten a better reading at night, when he could shoot a complete scan, with star-fixes to be completely sure of his location, but Malcolm decided he'd get an accurate enough reading to find his little treasure with minimum difficulty once he'd returned uptime.
Having taken his ATLS reading, Chuck stowed the instrument generally used only by trained time scouts in its leather bag on the pack horse-which now had a much lighter burden-and started whistling again. He mounted his saddle horse, glanced back at the watered sod, and said quite distinctly, "Not a bad haul. Not bad at all. Boss is going to be pissed as hell about the lost pieces, but that's the risk you take in this business." He chuckled. "Ah, well. I should've known better than to buy that whole lot from one source. Rotten little Egyptian. Too bad I won't be able to zip back down to Rome and settle the score." With that, he clucked to his horses and set off at a brisk trot toward town.
Malcolm waited until he'd been out of sight for a full fifteen minutes, then signaled Margo to wait. She thinned her lips, clearly seething at the restriction, but this time she stayed put with no arguments. She was learning. Good. Malcolm walked his horse around the clearing several times, but Chuck showed no sign of returning. He filmed a close-up of the tamped down, wet sod, then signaled Margo to join him. She did, grinning like the evil little imp she was.
"Okay," she said, fairly bursting with excitement, "what do we do? We've got him dead to rights-but how do we catch him?"
Malcolm chuckled. "We notify the uptime authorities the moment Primary opens to stake out this spot. He'll 'show up to dig up his booty one nice quiet night and they'll nail him. Meanwhile.. ." He turned off his camera, stowed his log, and said, "Keep filming, would you, Margo? I'm going to leave a nasty little surprise for our dear friend Chuck Farley, or whatever his real name might be. Let's see, now..." He sorted through his saddlebags until he found a short-handled camp spade he'd planned to use on a jaunt he'd wanted to take Margo on out into the countryside.
Instead of camping, they had something much more enjoyable lying ahead of them. Malcolm chuckled, carefully laid Chuck's wet sod aside, then began to dig. He uncovered every single plastic-wrapped case, then filled in the hole with rocks while Margo recorded the whole thing. "What I intend to do," he said, puffing for breath as he heaved the final rock into place, "is return these antiquities to the ... proper authorities. There." He tamped dirt down around the rocks until the entire hole had been filled, then settled the sod back in place, watering it from his own canteen.