At five-foot-ten, the darkly handsome Zavala was less powerfully built than Austin, yet his one-hundred- seventy-five-pound frame was flexibly muscular, particularly around the arms and neck, and there were traces of scar tissue around his eyebrows, the legacies of having financed his way through college by boxing professionally as a middleweight. He won twenty-two fights, twelve by knockouts, and lost six. His straight black hair was combed straight back. The humorous, slight smile she had seen when he first came into the examination room hadn't left his lips. Remembering the mate's comment, she could see how a woman could be drawn to the soulful brown eyes.
Their gentlemanly manners couldn't disguise a rough-and-ready quality. The brawnier Austin was positively genial now, but she remembered his fierce determination when he'd yanked her out of the way of the hovercraft. Behind Zavala's gregariousness lurked a flinty hardness, she suspected. The way the two men meshed, like gears in a well-oiled machine, as they got her safely to the ship demonstrated that they were used to working as a team.
'Sorry for being so rude,' she said, remembering her rescue. 'I haven't thanked you both.'
'My apologies for sneaking up on you with the jaws routine,' Austin said. 'It must have been frightening.'
'Not half as frightening as having that ugly boat playing water polo with my head. I can never thank you enough. Please sneak' up and pull me out of danger any time you want.' She paused. 'One dumb question, though. Do you normally swim around in the Atlantic Ocean waiting for damsels in distress?'
'Dumb luck,' he said with a shrug. 'Joe and I were puttering around below. I surfaced to get a bearing on the ship and saw you playing dodge 'em with the hovercraft. My turn to ask a question. What was that all about?'
Her smile vanished. 'Simple. They were trying to kill me.'
'I think that was fairly obvious, but why?'
'I don't know,' she said in a monotone, her eyes glazed. .
Austin sensed she was trying to avoid talking about something. 'You haven't told us where you came from,' he said gently.
It was like pulling a plug. 'Dear God,' Nina whispered. 'The expedition. Dr. Knox.'
'What expedition?' Austin said.
She stared into space as if trying to remember a dream.
'I'm a marine archaeologist. I was with a University of Pennsylvania party working an excavation not far from here.'
She related the story of the massacre and her escape. The tale was so fantastic Austin might not have believed it if he hadn't seen the hovercraft attack or the unmitigated fear in Nina's face. When the narrative was finished Austin turned to Zavala.
'What do you think?'
'I think we ought to go take a look for ourselves.'
'Me, too. We'll call the Moroccan authorities first. Ms. Kirov, do you think you can give us directions to your camp?'
Nina had been fighting off the survivor's guilt at being the only one who escaped certain death. She needed to do some. thing. She slidoff the table and stood on unsteady legs.
'Better than that,' she said with a steely edge to her voice. 'I'll show you.'
7 CAPTAIN MOHAMMED MUSTAPHA OF the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie leaned against the sun-warmed fender of his Jeep and watched the tall American woman walk slowly back and forth across the sandy clearing, her head bent toward the ground.
Like most of the country's rural policemen, the captain occupied his days chasing down truants among the village schoolchildren, filling out traffic accident reports, or checking papers of strangers, of whom there were pitifully few. The disappearance of a camel he investigated last year stirred up exciting possibilities of rustling before it was determined to be nothing more than a runaway. Yet that was the closest he'd come to tracking down a vanished archaeological expedition.
Mustapha was familiar with the area the Berbers called the Place of the Dead for the old tombs, and he was aware of the nearby ruins. It was far off the beaten track in a patrol territory that covered hundreds of square miles. He had visited the lonely spot once and stayed only long enough to decide he would not come back unless he had to.
The woman stopped and stood for a moment, hands on hips as if she were lost, then she walked over to the Jeep. 'I don't understand it,' she said, her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. 'We were camped right here. The tents, the. vans. Everything has vanished.'
The captain turned to the broadshouldered man whose hair was the color of the snow on the Atlas Mountains. 'Perhaps Mademoiselle is mistaken about the location.'
Nina glared at the police offices 'Mademoiselle is not mistaken.'
He sighed. 'These people who attacked you. Bandits?'
She considered the suggestion. 'No, I don't think they were bandits.'
Mustapha gave a Gallic shrug worthy of a Parisian boulevardier, lit up a Gauloise, and pushed his visor back over his black hair. He was somewhat uncomfortable at being in the presence of a woman who had her legs and arms uncovered, but he was not an insensitive man. He'd have to be blind not to see the lacerations that streaked her skin, and she was clearly distraught. Yet he could observe with his own eyes that there were no tents, no pile of dead bodies, no vehicles. In fact, there was nothing to indicate the story was true.
The officer took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out his nostrils. 'I was notified, of course, that an expedition was near the Place of the Dead. Perhaps they left without telling you.'
'Great,' Nina snapped. 'Of all the cops in Morocco, I get a Berber Inspector Clousseau.'
Nina's frayed nerves had made her irritable. Austin couldn't blame her for being shorttempered with the policeman's obtuseness after all she'd been through but decided it was time to intervene. 'Nina, you said there was a big campfire. Could you show me about where it was?'
With the police officer trailing leisurely after them, Nina led the way to the approximate center of the clearing and drew an X in the dirt with the tip of her shoe.
About here, I'd say'
'Do you have a shovel?' Austin asked the policeman.
'Yes, of course. It is a necessary tool for driving in the desert.'
Mustapha sauntered over to his Jeep, and from a tool chest he produced a folding shorthandled army-issue spade. Austin took the spade and knelt at Nina's feet, where he began to dig a series of parallel trenches about six inches deep. The first two produced nothing of interest, but the third hit pay dirt, literally.
Austin scooped a handful of blackened earth and smelled it. Ashes from a fire.' He placed his palm on the ground. 'Still warm,' he said.
Nina was only halflistening. She was staring behind Austin at a patch of ground that seemed to be moving,
'There,' she whispered.
The dark blot was formed by thousands of tiny swarming creatures. With the edge of the shovel blade Austin cleared a space in the shiny duster of ants and started to dig. Half a foot below the surface he turned up a spadeful of dark redstained earth. He expanded the hole. More reddish stain. The ground was soaked with it. Nina got down on her knees beside him. The cloying smell of dried blood filled her nostrils.
'This is where they were shot,' she said, her voice tight with restrained emotion.
Captain Mustapha had been staring dreamily off into space, wondering when he'd be able to get home to his wife and children and a good meal. Sensing the change in atmosphere, he threw his cigarette aside and came over to kneel beside Nina. His nut brown face turned a shade lighter as he realized the significance of the discolored soil.
Allah be praised,' he murmured. Seconds later he was at his Jeep talking in rapid Arabic into the radio.
Nina was still on her knees, her body rigid, gazing at the earth as if the horrible events of the night before were gushing out of the shallow hole. Austin figured that she would fall apart if he didn't tear her away. He took her arm and helped her to her feet. 'I'd be interested in a look around the lagoon, if you don't mind.'
