have already got things up and running there, and I want divers in the water as soon as possible to show what we can do. Rebecca’s going with them.”
“Your daughter is with you?” Katya said.
Jack had told Katya about Rebecca for the first time at the conference. “I was going to bring her here, but not after what happened to your uncle in the jungle. This place might be over the danger threshold. And she’ll have enough on her plate with the guys on the lake. This is her first IMU expedition, and I want it to be a good experience, especially so soon after losing her mother.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Katya said.
“The maintenance team thought the chopper would be grounded for another day. I’m hoping they’ll get there soon enough for things to be up and running before we arrive. Last time we were diving was in Egypt a week ago. I’ve never dived in a central Asian lake. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I might take a raincheck until I pass a Geiger counter over the water,” Costas said, rubbing his stubble. “Forty-odd years of Soviet submersible and torpedo testing. I know exactly how they fueled their gear. It was my master’s thesis at MIT.”
“The biggest problem is the old Soviet early warning stations on the mountaintops, which were nuclear- powered so they could be left unmanned,” Katya said. “Locals have raided them and come back with pockets full of uranium, and been dead within a week. The nightmare is that any of this stuff finds its way onto the black market. It’s why the Americans are so keen to take over cleanup of the old naval base. It’s not so much environmental concern, but the war on terrorism.”
Jack thought he saw a flash of light in the distance. He glanced up at the boulder-strewn slope behind them. It could have been a reflection off glass or metal, or just a trick of the eye. He shaded his eyes against the sun, looking hard, then turned to Katya. “Anyone else out here?”
“The odd shepherd, sometimes a hunter who disappears up there and never seems to come back.” She turned to Altamaty and spoke to him in Kyrgyz. He followed Jack’s gaze up the ridge, then spoke quickly to Katya. “Altamaty has eagle eyes,” she said. “He says he saw breath from a horse when it was cold early this morning, far up on the ridge. The hunters sometimes stay in one place for days, waiting for deer.”
“You’re sure it’s a hunter?” Jack said.
Katya eyed him. “Who else do you think it could be?”
“Are you armed?” Costas asked.
“Altamaty has his old service Makarov pistol and an SKS rifle he liberated from navy stores here when the Soviet Empire collapsed. We go hunting together. It supplements the mutton that’s the staple out here.”
“I forgot,” Costas murmured. “A palaeolinguist who knows about guns.”
Katya gestured toward a cluster of boulders about fifty meters away, where the top of a tractor was just visible above the rocks. “Come on,” she said. “The light’s perfect now, just as it was yesterday when we found it. And Altamaty’s got some stew simmering in a big pot outside the yurt. You’re in for a traditional Kyrgyz feast this evening.”
“I’m starving,” Costas said. “And I know mutton’s one of Jack’s favorites.” Jack gave him a withering look and swallowed hard. It was the one thing he had been dreading. He could stomach virtually anything, except boiled sheep. He had lived for several years as a child in New Zealand, and had once overindulged. Since then even the smell made him feel nauseous. He knew it was a matter of the utmost importance that he conquer the problem now. His manhood was at stake. He smiled at Altamaty, then followed Katya along a track between the boulders. The ground was hard, baked like brick, with only a few tufts of coarse vegetation growing around the edge of the boulders. It was as if a sea of mud and rock had slid down the mountainside and solidified in one mass, embedding the boulders. Jack saw more rocks with carved designs on them, some so eroded they were barely discernible. He stopped for a moment to peer at one, and Costas hurried past him to Katya. “I meant to say,” Costas said quietly, “I’m sorry about your uncle.”
Katya glanced at him and nodded, saying nothing. She walked ahead, and they followed her in silence through the rocks until they came to the tractor. Costas stopped dead in his tracks, like a boy who had just been given a dream present. “A four sixty-five,” he murmured reverently. “A Nuffield four sixty-five. This was why I got into engineering. I had a summer job on a farm in Canada. This was the first-ever diesel four-cylinder I disassembled.” Altamaty opened the engine cowling, and the two men peered inside. Costas glanced at Jack. “I think I can bond with this guy. I think we just found a common language.”
“No way,” Jack said. “We did not come here to disassemble a tractor.” Costas sighed, patted Altamaty regretfully on the shoulder, then followed Jack to where Katya was kneeling in front of a boulder a few meters away. They could see where it had been dragged away by the tractor, revealing another boulder that had been partly buried. Between the two was a marked-off excavation area of about four by two meters. In the center was a carefully excavated pile of smaller rocks, about a meter across and two meters long. Jack squatted down and stared at the markings on the freshly exposed boulder. It was why Katya had called him here. “Well I’ll be damned,” he murmured.
“Another rock carving,” Costas said. “It looks better preserved than the others.”
“Not just another rock carving,” Jack said. “It’s fantastic.” His mind was reeling. It was one thing hearing it on the phone from Katya, but another thing seeing it for real. He felt the power of the past as he touched it. Letters in Latin. “It’s the same number as in the jungle shrine, the same symbol. XV Ap. The Fifteenth Apollinaris legion.”
Costas knelt down beside Jack. “I can see it. And that Roman inscription from the cave in Uzbekistan. The one Katya’s uncle recorded.”
“It’s definitely the same sculptor,” Katya said. “I’ve photographed this and scanned it against the image from the cave. He has a distinctive way of doing his finials, ending each line by angling the chisel back and knocking out a triangular chunk of rock.”
“A citizen-soldier,” Jack murmured. “One who remembered his trade, and still practiced it with care. He was the one they called upon when they needed to make an inscription.”
“In the cave in Uzbekistan, I think it was a casual marking, ‘Licinius was here,’” Katya said. “Maybe the cave was where they really felt they had escaped from Merv, where the desert of Uzbekistan became the foothills of central Asia. From there, the Silk Route follows the ravines and mountain passes that eventually lead to this place. But this inscription here by the lake was for a different reason. You can barely make out the first line above the legion inscription, but it’s a different personal name, I think Appius. And look at those two letters at the bottom.”
“D M,” Jack said, tracing his fingers down. “Dis Manibus. That means given to Dis, the god of the underworld. A funerary inscription.” He glanced at the pile of rocks between the boulders. “This is a grave.”
Costas peered at the rock. “And that symbol above the inscription. It’s an eagle, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we saw in the jungle shrine?”
“It’s the same legion,” Jack murmured. “Incredible.”
“It’s exactly what I dreamed we’d find,” Katya said. “The burial place of someone who died here, or in the pass below. For some, this must have been a place for exultation, for recuperation before the next stage in the journey. For others, it would have been a place to die. There must have been many deaths among the traders, Persians, Bactrians, Sogdians, Chinese. But Roman? It’s astonishing.”
“Did you find anything in the grave?” Costas asked.
“It was a hasty burial, as you might expect,” she replied. “The ground’s rock-hard and there isn’t enough wood here to fuel a cremation. The body was covered with stones, maybe cut turf That inscription would only have taken an hour or so to cut, for a skilled mason.”
“A skilled mason?” Costas said. “Are you really sure about that?”
“There’s no doubt about it.” Jack traced his fingers over the symbols. “He had somehow fashioned a chisel with the right width of head, and he knew precisely where to place each blow. He knew the characteristics of this kind of rock, that it could take a glancing blow without fragmenting the surface. It’s what I said in the jungle shrine. A citizen-soldier.”
“You think this is the same guy?” Costas said.
“Let’s wait to see what else Katya has to show us.”
Katya looked at him, took a deep breath and pointed to a wooden finds crate on the ground. “The soil’s very alkaline, and any bones would have disappeared long ago. But when the tractor dislodged the boulder, it revealed
