The team members couldn’t get over it. They treated Molly like a seer, as if she had a gift for this. “How did you know to look down there?” one asked.
“I didn’t,” she said.
“But you went right to it.”
“Yeah, after four weeks, right to it.”
As the day dragged on and they still sat idle, Kleat stewed. “What are they doing in there? We could be down clearing the hole.”
“It’s not that easy,” Duncan said. “They’re on to us by now.”
“Who?” said Molly.
“The locals. These are the dead they inherited their earth from, literally, the original owners of the land they’re farming. The villagers could demand to cover the bones over or burn them to ash. One way or another, they’ll have to exorcise the spirits.”
“Screw their boogeymen,” Kleat said.
Molly began to worry. The captain emerged from the tent with a frown on his face, took a long breath, and returned inside. Plainly, he was getting nowhere fast. Once more she felt her story slipping away. They needed proof.
While the rest of the team nodded off in the heat or waved away flies, she got to her feet, ducked under the tape, and stood beside the well. It was darker than ever down there. Expecting nothing, she snapped another blind shot of the depths, then pulled up the image on her display.
“What you got this time, Molly?” someone called to her.
She looked up from her camera display. “You need to see this,” she said.
They stirred and came out into the high sun and crowded around. The display was full of muddled bones…and something else. They all saw it. Mixed among the skulls was a flight helmet. “You’ve done it again,” Duncan whispered.
At 1700 hours—Molly had acquired military time—an American helicopter landed on the road, bearing a colonel and two Cambodian government officials wearing sunglasses. Molly went out with the others to photograph them, and was surprised to see how many villagers had flocked to the area. The Cambodian soldiers were keeping them at a distance from the camp.
The colonel was not pleased. “Quite the circus,” he shouted to the captain as the rotors wound down. Dust flew everywhere. He gestured at Molly. “Who’s this?”
“She’s the
The colonel did not shake her hand or thank her. “You were shooting the bones,” he said.
“I didn’t know what was down there,” Molly told him. His unfriendliness confused her. Hadn’t she just provided them with proof?
The colonel looked away from her. He noticed Duncan and his long hair and Che shirt. “And him?”
Molly saw the captain’s throat tighten. “A local archaeologist,” he said.
“All right,” the colonel declared, “let’s get this thing under control.” The captain led him and the officials to the mess tent. An hour later the colonel and the officials departed on the helicopter.
The captain announced that the excavation would resume in the morning. They had been granted a week— seven days—no more. After that the site would be returned to the kingdom of Cambodia. “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said. “If he’s down there, we’ll find him.”
There were high fives, and Duncan whistled through his fingers. The captain did not smile. He asked Molly and Duncan and Kleat to join him.
There was no Johnnie Walker Black this evening. The meeting was brief. He was grim. “Due to the sensitive nature of the mission,” he informed them, “your presence is no longer expedient.”
Molly’s mouth fell open.
“ ‘Expedient,’ ” said Kleat. “What the hell does that mean?”
The captain’s lips pressed thin. Clearly he had argued. Clearly he had lost. “I have been advised to compress the operation to essential personnel only. We’re letting go of the work crew.” He added, “And you.”
“You can’t do that to us,” Kleat said. “I’ve paid my dues. Year after year—”
“Be ready to leave at 0700 tomorrow morning,” the captain said.
Duncan appealed, not for himself, but for Molly. “Without her, you’d have nothing,” he said.
The captain looked ill. He lowered his eyes. “That will be all,” he said.
7.
“Like outcasts.”
The words poured with smoke from Kleat’s mouth.
Molly was sitting with him and Duncan at a window table overlooking the Mekong River. It was a brand-new restaurant to go with the brand-new Japanese bridge leading east. Sunset lit the water red. Fans spun overhead, politely, enough to eddy Kleat’s cigar smoke but not rustle the pages of Duncan’s
None of it seemed real.
“We find their pilot for them,” Kleat said, “and like that,
“For the record, he’s not found yet, only his helmet,” said Duncan. “And one other thing, it was Molly who found him. Not us.” He raised a toast to her.
Molly gamely lifted her glass. Kleat passed.
The ice-cold Heineken was like culture shock. She sat there. Her farmer tan torpedoed the dandelion-yellow sundress she had been saving for just such an evening. It jumped up at her, the sunburn and freckles to her upper arms, then the shoulders as white as moons. She looked half naked to herself. And her hair, like something chopped to Goth with surgical scissors, which was what she’d resorted to. She lifted her chin. Nothing to do about it tonight. Beauty, skin deep, all that.
The sun went on sinking. Only this morning, the sun had seemed like a peasant disease, breaking them down all day, leaving them sore and weary by night. Now, with a drink in hand and the fans cooling the air, she did her best to see the sunset as a thing of great beauty. She tried to savor her postexpedition daze, to relinquish the heat and dust and insects. She put off thoughts of whatever came next. The day was ending. The month. A full month she had spent grubbing after the dead.
Kleat started in on her. This last supper was his idea. Molly had actually hoped they could part friends. Dumb.
“You were told,” he said. “Day one. Their first commandment. I heard the captain tell you. No shooting the dead. Anything but them. So what do you do?”
The scar at his throat turned purple. He never talked about the scar. He seemed to think it spoke for him. Most of the people on the dig thought it came from a sloppy thyroid surgery.
“We’ve been through this,” Duncan said quietly. “The camera was just their excuse.” He was still holding his
“We got pulled down with her,” Kleat said.
Molly sighed. He couldn’t help himself. She only wished he could have waited until after dessert. The waiters hadn’t even arrived with her salad. The restaurant was known for its salad Nicoise. For a month, she had been waiting for it.
“A deal was struck,” said Duncan. “They were given a week to recover the pilot. However they’re getting through those bones, it’s not for public consumption, American or Cambodian. They don’t want outsiders to see it.”
“Get this straight,” Kleat said. “I’m not one of you.”
“I don’t mean this harshly, John,” Duncan said, “but that’s all you are. One of us.”
The veins stood out on Kleat’s burnished skull. He leaned in. “I belonged.”
“I’ll say it again,” Molly said. “I thought the well was empty.”
“You knew. Somehow you knew.”
