the readers?”
“Okay, yes, the ordinary reader, maybe, but… look, the only people here who could possibly be affected by something I might ‘reveal,’ whatever the hell that might be, would be some of these archaeologists, right? What could I possibly know that they’d be that desperate to keep me from telling?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Couldn’t it have something to do with Gibraltar Boy and the First Family? After all, that’s pretty much why we’re all here. And you’re the one who made the connection to Sheila Chan – to what happened to her.”
He nodded. “I did, yes, but that part of it seems pretty far-fetched to me now. As Fausto said, two years is a long time ago. A big stretch, even for interconnected monkey business.”
“Okay, if you say so, but that still leaves you, and the more we talk about it, the more it seems to me it all has to have something to do with the Gibraltar Boy and the Europa Point dig.”
“Maybe, but-”
“Look at it this way,” she said intently. “If somebody really snuck up behind you on the Rock, and if somebody really set you up to be electrocuted… assuming there aren’t two people trying to do away with you… it just about has to be somebody who’s here for the meetings, one of your good buddies – who else would have been in both those places right then? Doesn’t that imply rather strongly that it’s got something to do with the Europa Point dig, with Gibraltar Boy?”
He considered this, sipping his coffee. “Julie, don’t forget, I was never at the dig. I just did some lab work on Gibraltar Boy and I completed that almost five years ago now. I haven’t been involved before or since. And what could I possibly say about him that was so earth-shattering anyway?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too. You could say you that after much deliberation, you finally came to the conclusion that he really was just another Neanderthal, not the product of a mating between Neanderthals and humans. Wouldn’t that shake up some of these people who’ve been – forgive the expression – living off the Neanderthal-human connection ever since?”
It was something he hadn’t thought of. “Well… sure, but I haven’t come to that conclusion.”
“No, but they don’t know that.”
“And even if I had, other anthropologists think exactly the same thing and have said so, and as far as I know they’re still walking around. I’d just be one more voice in the minority. I wouldn’t have any way to prove it.”
“No, but they wouldn’t know that either. They might think you’ve come up with something new, especially on account of those articles. Besides, being the modest fellow you are, I think you underrate the impact of your opinion.”
He smiled, finished his coffee, and sighed. “Julie, what do you say we call a moratorium on the subject for a while? I need to get my head clear. We may be seeing it all wrong. Let’s be tourists for the afternoon. You’ve been out seeing the sights all morning. How about showing me around the town?”
“That’s a good idea. It’s a cute place. There’s plenty to see.”
She gave him a pale smile as they stood up. “Just make sure you look both ways when we cross the street.”
Indeed, there was plenty to see, especially from a historical perspective. The actual sites of historic importance in the little city were few, but the very fabric of the town was an amalgam, or rather an accretion, of its own history. At first glance it was a typical English market town with its fish-and-chips places, its pubs, its Marks amp; Spencer store, its red “Royal Mail” mailboxes. But if you raised your eyes to the upper story (almost all the buildings lining the narrow Main Street – now a pedestrian walkway – were two stories), you were in Spain: pastel-colored stucco facades; wooden shutters painted in vivid green, red, or blue; delicately filigreed iron balconies. And looking up the side streets, you might have thought you were in Moorish Iberia: narrow, cobbled, winding alleys, overhanging, flower-filled balconies that nearly met the ones across the way, tiny Arab fruit and vegetable markets that were little more than cubbyholes.
There was plenty of evidence of the long British military presence too. Aside from the big eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cannons prominently displayed all over the place – in front of government buildings, in the public gardens, along Line Wall Road – the street names made it hard to forget: Bomb House Lane, Horse Barracks Lane, Victualling Office Lane. And the main library, a stately, pillared nineteenth-century building of classical design, was still known as the Garrison Library.
And walls. Ancient, crumbling, fortified defensive walls and bastions, some British, some Moorish, a few Spanish, poked up all over the place, some lining the harbor, others snaking all the way down from the top of the Rock, and still others, along with the old city gates, appearing in bits and pieces throughout the downtown area. And looming above the town, on its own bleak promontory, visible from almost everywhere, was the ancient, brooding presence of the fortified square tower known as the Moorish Castle.
“Built during the Arab occupation,” Julie told him. “Guess what it’s used for now.”
He shook his head. “Looks like a good place for a dungeon.”
“Actually, you’re right. It’s the prison, it’s the Gibraltar jail. It’s been the prison ever since the Brits took over in 1704.”
“Whoa,” he said looking up at the grim, gray walls. “No wonder there’s no crime here. Who wants to risk being shut up in a place like that?”
Still, for a man like Gideon, who happily lived most of his professional life in the past, it was all intriguing, but after a while the press of fellow gawkers – a second cruise ship had come in – began to wear on him – on both of them – and he asked Julie if she hadn’t found some quiet place unlikely to be full of noisy, excited tourists.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” she told him. “And it’s exactly your sort of place. You’ll love it.”
“My sort of place?” he asked curiously. “What exactly is ‘my sort of place’?”
It was an old burial ground, of course, and as devoid of day-trippers as Julie had promised. Trafalgar Cemetery was a small, triangular plot of land set flush against the base of the fortified, sixteenth-century Spanish wall known as the Charles V Wall. Originally laid out in 1798, Trafalgar Cemetery had at first been known as Southport Ditch Cemetery. A few yards above it, on top of the broad walls themselves, had once been another final resting place, the wonderfully redundantly titled Deadman’s Cemetery. Later, that long, narrow cemetery had been converted to a rifle range, but Southport Ditch still remained, its named changed to Trafalgar Cemetery in 1805 to commemorate the celebrated naval battle that had recently been fought off nearby Cape Trafalgar and the sailors’ remains – those that weren’t buried at sea – that were soon to grace the plot. The body of Admiral Nelson, famously preserved in a cask of brandy, had also been carried to Gibraltar after the battle, but had remained only long enough to have the brandy replaced with spirits of wine, thought to be a better preservative, before going home to England for more fitting interment in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
These facts were read aloud by Julie from A Brief Historical, Shopping, and Dining Guide to Gibraltar as they strolled the narrow, overgrown paths among the low, crooked old headstones. There was more, but she closed the book and slipped it into her shoulder bag.
“Gideon, I can’t help thinking about it. In all honesty, how likely do you really think it is that these things that have been happening to you are, well, just accidents, coincidences? Of your being in the wrong place at the wrong time? On a scale of one to ten.”
“Honestly? Maybe a two.” Honestly, he thought it was zero, but no point in overworrying her.
“Me too,” she said. “I guess we’ll know more when Fausto finds out about the lamp.”
“That should settle it. We may as well stop conjecturing until we hear from him.”
“That suits me.”
They stopped to read the timeworn legend on a squat headstone with a black iron cannon ball cemented into its top.
To the Memories of Lieutenant Thomas Worth and John Buck-land of the Royal Marine Artillery, who were Killed on the 23 ^rd November 1810 by the same Shot while directing the Howitzer Boats in an attack on the Enemy’s Flotilla in Cadiz Bay.
“Now that,” Gideon said, “is an example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Rather than walking back up to the hotel and eating with the others, they decided on dinner in the city. Julie
