Climbing down the steps, he followed the seawall until he was opposite the place canvas covered the base. Standing with a piece of stone in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other was Indiana Jones. Or at least his Italian counterpart. Tall, with a broad-brimmed hat, military-style khakis, and knee boots, he was intent on whatever he was inspecting.
'Dr. Rossi?'
Indiana turned and looked up with eyes that had become myopic from close scrutiny of too many antiquities. The face was tanned and prematurely lined from exposure to the sun. A queue of white hair protruded like a tail from under the hat. There was nothing defective about the smile as bright as young Savelli's.
'Mr. Couch?' He shifted the glass from one hand to the other, put both it and the stone down, and extended a hand. 'Enrico must have called even as you were leaving the museum. It is not every day we are honored by an American newspaperman.'
The accent was more British than Italian.
In spite of a twinge of guilt at the deception, Lang produced a small tape recorder, setting it down on a stone that might have served as a bollard for Roman galleys. 'I'm particularly interested in forensics, the tools you use to read old and obliterated inscriptions or ancient and faded texts.'
The archaeologist nodded. 'There is no magic in that, Mr. Couch.' He picked up the stone he had been holding. 'Note the indentations on this. I suspect it was some sort of a marker, perhaps what we today would call a slip number for someone's private watercraft. Centuries of abrasion in the sand of the beach have worn it nearly smooth.' Even through the magnifying glass Dr. Rossi held, Lang could see only faint indentations and grooves. He stood back. ''You have something that will enable you to read that?' The Italian crossed the small enclosure to lower the flap of canvas. With the light breeze shut out, sweat instantly began to prickle Lang's neck. The archaeologist reached into a box and produced a contraption that resembled a hair dryer.
'Please forgive the heat, but it is necessary to exclude as much light as possible. This is an ultraviolet scanner.' He held it so the beam would run along the surface of the stone before he turned it on. 'There!'
Like a magician's trick, the faint grooves became readable: ''XXI.'' 'Twenty-one?' Lang asked skeptically, still unsure what he was seeing.
'Twenty-one,' Dr. Rossi confirmed. 'What we don't know is if that is a slip number, the number of a boathouse, or part of a larger inscription. This business is full of puzzles.'
He seemed more elated than overcome by the prospect.
'That light,' Lang asked. 'How does it work?'
Rossi put down the stone and opened the flap. The air rushing in was warm and moist but refreshing, like opening the kitchen door after broiling a roast.
'''When a stone or any hard substance is engraved, by hand or machine, the groove frequently goes deeper than the human eye can see, albeit very narrow. The ultraviolet simply picks up and casts shadows from the otherwise invisible grooves. This one was fairly easy. Had we not been able to read it, I would next have used this.'
He produced a camera with a very short, wide lens.
'Thirty-five millimeter with a huge macro lens and ultraviolet filter. We would have put the rock on the table there, turned on the klieg lights, and photographed it.'
'Like trying to read the numbers filed off a firearm,'
Lang suggested.
''At least in your television crime dramas, yes.'
He put the camera down and picked up its twin. 'This one has the same lens but with an infrared filter. When we come across writing on parchment, papyrus, any form of material that would have required some form of ink, we use this. Often the pigment has long ago faded but it leaves a residue, one this camera can pick up. In fact, the Oxyrhynus Papyri, found in the nineteenth century in what amounted to ancient garbage dumps, have yielded parts of Aristophanes' plays long lost, early parts of the Gospels, all sorts of things tossed onto the rubbish heap from the second century B.C. to the seventh A.D. With this camera, we can actually read what the original discoverers could not.'
Lang braced himself for the full duration of an academic lecture. He was surprised when Dr. Rossi came up short.
'I digress from your question. You might want to remember 'Oxyrhynus Papyri' if you have any questions about how this sort of equipment is being used. I'm sure there's an Internet site.'
He spelled the words for the benefit of the empty tape recorder and lifted his watch to inches in front of his face.
'Oh my. It's past time to stop work for the afternoon recess. The men will be complaining. Do you have labor unions like that in America, Mr. Couch?'
Lang started to suggest the doctor ask any out-of-work airline employee. Instead, he said noncommittally, 'We certainly have them. Doctor, you've been most helpful.'
They were stepping out from under the canvas.
'Could I perhaps persuade you to stay for tea? Or perhaps something a little cooler?' the archaeologist asked.
Lang was about to reply when something streaked across the corner of his eye. A flash of a reflection, the early-afternoon sun dancing off of glass. A small, polished piece of glass.
'Shit!'
Lang threw himself to the ground, an arm extended to knock down the Italian. Tiny fragments of rock stung his cheek a millisecond before he heard the flat crack of a rifle.
Dragging the doctor behind him, he rolled under the canvas, which would screen them both.
The man outside the Rome museum on the cell phone, no doubt a call to a confederate in Naples. A tail in traffic so thick it was impossible to detect. The man who had watched him enter the path to the ruins.
And enough time to get a rifleman with a telescopic sight in place in one of hundreds of apartments facing the ancient town.
Dr. Rossi was breathlessly speaking into a cell phone. Lang heard the word polizia more than once.
A burly workman, dirt caked to his hairy bare chest, took the doctor by the arm, helping him to stand on none-too-steady legs. Even without understanding the words, Lang knew the archaeologist was assuring his workers he was OK.
He turned to Lang, a nervous grimace twitching at the corners of his mouth. ''You think it's safe now?'
Lang nodded. 'Whoever it was, he's long gone. Trying another shot's too risky now that we know the area where it came from.'
The doctor made a show of brushing himself off and said with forced humor, 'I knew the crew expected me to observe the midday recess, but they could have simply asked.'
The police arrived in force, made a detailed if futile search of the apartments, and interviewed everyone in sight, including the horde of guides. The few visitors had been evicted for the afternoon closure before the shot had been fired.
As far as Lang could tell, the local cops were pretty sure Rossi had been the intended victim. There had been a rumor that the apartments were to make way for complete excavation, a possibility a number of the inhabitants opposed vociferously without inquiring into its actual existence.
Only one policeman, Lang guessed the only English speaker, paid him any heed at all. After taking his name, address, and residence in Italy, the man asked, 'The doctor says you shoved him out of the way. He would be dead had it not been for you. How you know someone gonna shoot?'
Lang shrugged modestly. 'The doctor is mistaken. I heard the shot and hit the ground, pulling him with me.'
The cop eyed him suspiciously.
Lang gilded the lily. 'I was in the Gulf War. I know what a rifle shot sounds like, and getting down is still instinct.' Now that he was a war hero, the policeman seemed satisfied and wandered off to question the workmen.
