Tom gathered his wits. 'I'm an investment banker with clients in the Far East, and one of them-'
The fat hand rose up yet again, halting Tom's prepared speech. 'That may work with Beezon but it won't wash with me. Tell me what it's really about.'
Tom thought for a moment. The shrewd, cynical glitter in Dearborn's eye convinced him that he would be better off telling the truth.
'Perhaps you read about the murder in New Mexico, in the high mesas north of Abiquiii?'
'I did.'
'I was the man who found the body. I happened to come across him as he was dying.'
'Go on,' said Dearborn, in a neutral tone.
'The man pressed a journal into my hand and made me promise to give it to his daughter, named Robbie. I'm trying to keep that promise. The problem is, the police haven't identified him or as far as I know even found his body.'
'Did the man tell you anything else before he died?'
'He was lucid for only a moment,' Tom said evasively.
'And this journal? What does it say?'
'It's just numbers. Lists of numbers.'
'What kind of numbers?'
'Data to a GPR survey.'
'Yes, yes, of course, that's how he did it. May I ask what your interest is in this, Mr. Broadbent?'
'Mr. Dearborn, I made a promise to a dying man. I keep my promises. That's my interest-no more, no less.'
Harry Dearborn seemed amused by the answer. 'I do believe, Mr. Broadbent, that if I were Diogenes, I would have to put out my lantern. You are that rarest of things, an honest man. Or you are a consummate liar.'
'My wife thinks I'm merely stubborn.'
He gave a flabby sigh. 'I did indeed follow that murder up in Abiquiii. I wondered if it wasn't a certain dinosaur hunter of my acquaintance. I was aware that
the fellow had been prospecting up there and there was a rumor he was on to something big. It seems my worst fears have been realized.'
'You know his name?'
The fat man shifted, the chair creaking under the massive redistribution of weight. 'Marston Weathers.'
'Who's he?'
'Nothing less than the top dinosaur hunter in the country.' The fat man gathered his hands together and squeezed. 'His friends called him Stem, because he was tall and kind of stringy. Tell me one thing, Mr. Broadbent: did old Stem find what he was looking for?'
Tom hesitated. Somehow, he felt he could trust this man. 'Yes.'
Another long, sad sigh. 'Poor Stem. He died like he lived: ironically.'
'What can you tell me about him?'
'A great deal. And in return, Mr. Broadbent, you will tell me about what he found. Agreed?'
'Agreed.'
14
WYMAN FORD COULD see the tapering point of Navajo Rim a few hundred yards ahead, where the mesa ended in a small, thumb-shaped butte. The sun hung low in the sky, a disc of red-hot gold. Ford felt exhilarated. He now understood why the Indians of old went off into the wilderness and fasted in search of a vision quest. He had been on half rations for two days, eating only a slice of bread drizzled with a little olive oil for breakfast, and then for dinner half a cupful of cooked lentils and rice. Hunger did strange and wonderful things to the mind; it gave him a feeling of euphoria and boundless energy. He found it curious that a mere physiological effect could produce such a profoundly spiritual feeling.
He skirted the sandstone butte, looking for a way up. The view was incredible, but from the top he would be able to see even more. He edged along a sandstone ledge no more than three feet wide, plunging a thousand feet down into the blue depths of a canyon. He had never been this deep into the high mesa country before, and he felt like an explorer, a John 'Wesley Powell. This was, without a doubt, some of the remotest country that existed in the lower forty-eight.
He came around the edge and stopped in surprise and delighted astonishment. There, wedged into the side of the bluff, was a tiny but almost perfect Anasazi cliff dwelling-four small rooms constructed from stacked pieces of sandstone and mortared with mud. He edged around the precipice with great care-how in the world had they raised children here?-and knelt down, peering in the doorway. The tiny room inside was empty, save for a scattering of burned corn cobs and a few potsherds. A single shaft of sunlight penetrating through a broken part of the wall, splashing a brilliant splotch of light on the ground. There were recent footprints in the dust of the floor made by someone wearing hiking boots
with chevron-shaped lugs, and Ford wondered if these belonged to the prospector. It seemed likely; if you were going to search this corner of the high mesas, you couldn't find a better lookout.
He stood up and continued along the ledge past the ruin, where he encountered an ancient hand-and-foot trail pecked into the sloping sandstone, going to the top of the butte.
The summit afforded a dazzling vista across the Echo Badlands, almost, it seemed, to the very curve of the earth itself. To his left, the enormous profile of Mesa de los Viejos loomed up, level after level like a great stone staircase, rising to the foothills of the CanjilonMountains. It was one of the most awesome views it had ever been his privilege to see, as if the Great Creator had blown up and burned the landscape, leaving it an utter wreck.
Ford sorted through his maps and removed one. He traced the quadrants of the map with his eye and then mentally drew those same lines on the badlands in front of him. Having sectioned and numbered the landscape to his satisfaction, he took out his binoculars and began searching the first quadrant, the one farthest to the east. When that was done he moved on to the next one and the next, methodically working his way across the landscape, looking for the peculiar rock formation outlined in the computer plot.
His first sweep yielded too many candidates. Similar formations were often found in groups, having been carved from the same layers of stone by the same action of wind and water. Ford had a growing conviction that he was on the right track, that the T. Rex was somewhere in the Echo Badlands. He just needed to get closer.
He spent the next fifteen minutes examining each quadrant a second time, but while many rock formations looked similar to the one he was after, none were a perfect match. There was always the possibility, of course, that he was looking at the right formation from the wrong angle, or that the formation might be hidden in one of the deep canyons at the far end of the badlands. As his eyes roved about, one canyon in particular captured his attention. TyrannosaurCanyon. It was the longest canyon in the high mesas, deep and tortuous, cutting more than twenty miles across the Echo Badlands, with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of side canyons and tributaries. He identified the great basalt monolith that marked its opening, and he followed its sinuous length with his binoculars. Deep in the badlands, the canyon petered out in a distant valley jammed with queer, domelike rocks. Some of the domes looked uncannily like the image in the computer plot-broader on top, with narrower necks. They were jumbled together like a crowd of bald men knocking their heads together.
Ford measured the distance from the sun to the horizon with his fingers at arm's length, and decided it was about four o'clock. Being June, the sun wouldn't set until well past eight. If he hustled, he could reach the cluster of sandstone domes before dark. It didn't look like there would be any water down there, but he had recently filled his two canteens at a fast-evaporating pothole left from the recent heavy rain, giving him four liters in reserve. He would camp somewhere down in that impressive canyon, commence his exploration at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Sunday. The day of the Lord.
He pushed that thought out of his mind.
Ford took one last look through his binoculars at the deep, mysterious canyon. Something twisted in his gut. He knew the T. Rex. was down there-in TyrannosaurCanyon.
The irony of it made Ford smile.
15
HARRY DEARBORN DREW in a long breath of air, his face hidden in shadow. 'My goodness, it's four-thirty already. Would you care for tea?'
'If it isn't too much trouble,' Tom said, wondering how the enormously fat man would get out of his chair, let
