4
Logan took a step backward. He saw Rush’s hand approach his elbow and instinctively brushed it aside. Already the shock was passing, replaced by curiosity.
“Dr. Logan,” Stone said, “I’m sorry to surprise you like this. But, as you can no doubt appreciate, I am forced to keep the very lowest of profiles.”
He smiled, but the smile did not extend as far as his eyes. Those eyes were far more piercing, more brilliant, than the pointillist photo on the cover of Fortune had conveyed. Behind them clearly burned not only a fierce intelligence but an unslakable hunger-for antiquities or wealth or merely knowledge, Logan could not surmise. The man was taller than he’d expected. But the frame beneath the Arab garb was just as thin as the photos in the press had led him to believe.
Stone nodded to Rush. As the doctor turned to lock the door, Stone shook Logan’s hand, then gestured for him to have a seat. Logan drew no particular impression from the handshake-just a fierce energy out of keeping with such a gaunt frame and almost effeminate features.
“I didn’t expect to find you here, Dr. Stone,” he said as he sat down. “I thought you kept yourself far removed from your projects these days.”
“That is what I would like people to believe,” Stone replied. “And for the most part, it’s true. But old habits die hard. There are times even now when I can’t resist doing a little digging, getting my hands dirty.”
Logan nodded. He understood perfectly.
“Besides, whenever possible I prefer to talk personally to key members of a new team-especially on a project as important as this one. And of course, I was very curious to meet you face-to-face.”
Logan was aware the blue eyes were still scrutinizing him. There was something almost pitiless in their intensity: here was someone who had taken the measure of many, many men.
“So I’m a key part of the team?” Logan asked.
Stone nodded. “Naturally. Although, to be honest, I hadn’t expected you to be. You’re something of a late addition.”
Rush took a seat across the table from them. Stone put aside the scroll he’d been reading, revealing a narrow folder beneath it. “I knew of your work, of course. I’d read your monograph on the Walking Draugen of Trondheim.”
“That was an interesting case. And it was nice to be able to publish-I’m so rarely allowed to.”
Stone smiled his understanding. “And it seems we already have something in common, Dr. Logan.”
“Call me Jeremy, please. What might that be?”
“Pembridge Barrow.”
Logan sat up in surprise. “You don’t mean to say you read-”
“I did indeed,” Stone replied.
Logan looked at the treasure hunter with fresh respect. Pembridge Barrow had been one of Stone’s smaller, but historically more spectacular, discoveries: a burial pit in Wales that contained the remains of what most scholars agreed was the first-century English queen Boadicea. She had been found buried in an ancient war chariot, surrounded by weapons, golden armbands, and other trinkets. In making the find, Stone had solved a mystery that had plagued English historians for centuries.
“As you know,” Stone continued, “the scholarly elite always maintained Boadicea met her end at the hands of the Roman legions in Exeter, or perhaps Warwickshire. But it was your own graduate dissertation-in which you argued she survived those battles to be buried with full warrior’s honors-that led me to Pembridge.”
“Based on projected movements of Roman search parties far removed from the Watling Road,” Logan replied. “I guess I should feel honored.” He was impressed with Stone’s thoroughness.
“But I didn’t summon you here to speak of that. I wanted you to understand just what you’re getting yourself involved in.” Stone leaned forward. “I’m not going to ask you to sign a blood oath or anything so melodramatic.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
“Besides, somebody in your unique line of work can be trusted to keep a confidence.” Stone leaned back again. “Have you heard of Flinders Petrie?”
“The Egyptologist? He discovered the New Kingdom at Tell el-Amarna, right? And the Merneptah stele, among other things.”
“That’s right. Very good.” Stone and Rush exchanged a significant glance. “Then you probably know that he was that rarest of Egyptologists: a true scholar, endowed with a limitless appetite for learning. In the late 1800s, when everybody else was frantically digging up treasure, he was searching for something else: knowledge. He loved to stray from the obvious dig sites-the pyramids and the temples-searching far up the Nile for potsherds or bits of clay pictographs. In many ways, he made Egyptology a respectable science, discouraging looting and haphazard documentation.”
Logan nodded. So far, this was all relatively common knowledge.
“By 1933, Petrie was the grand old man of British archaeology. He’d been knighted by the king. He’d offered to donate his head to the Royal College of Surgeons so that his unique brilliance could be studied in perpetuity. He and his wife retired permanently to Jerusalem, where he could spend his twilight years among the ancient ruins he loved so much. And so the story ends.”
A brief silence fell over the archives. Stone pulled out the grimy spectacles, fiddled with them a moment, placed them on the table.
“Except that it doesn’t end. Because in 1941-after years of sedentary retirement-Petrie abruptly left Jerusalem, bound for Cairo. He told none of his old colleagues at the British School of Archaeology about this new expedition of his-and there can be no doubt that it was an expedition. He took a bare minimum of staff: two or three at most, and those I suspect only because of his age and growing infirmity. He made no request for grants; it would appear he sold several of his most prized artifacts to finance the trip. None of these things were in character for Petrie-but strangest of all was his haste. He had always been known for careful, deliberate scholarship. But this trip to Egypt, with North Africa already deep in the throes of war, was the polar opposite of deliberation. It seems to have been frantic-almost desperate.”
Stone paused to take a sip from the tiny cup of coffee. The air was briefly perfumed with the scent of qahwa sada.
“Where exactly Petrie went-why he went-was not known. What was known is that he returned to Jerusalem five months later, alone, funds depleted. He would not speak of where he’d been. His air of desperation remained, yet the journey had sorely weakened an already enfeebled body. He died not long afterward in Jerusalem, in 1942, apparently while raising funds for yet another return to Egypt.”
Stone replaced the cup on its earthenware coaster, then glanced at Logan.
“None of that is in the historical record,” Logan said. “How did you find this out?”
“How do I find anything out, Dr. Logan?” Stone spread his hands. “I peer into the dark corners others don’t bother to examine. I search public and private records, hunting for that one lost document accidentally shoved behind the others and forgotten. I read anything and everything I can get my hands on-including, I might add, obscure graduate dissertations.”
Logan put one hand to his heart, made a mock bow.
“People talk about the secret of my Midas touch.” Stone uttered these last words contemptuously. “What tripe. There’s no secret beyond plain hard work. The fortune I made from the Spanish Plate Fleet gave me the resources to do things my way: send scholars and investigators to all corners of the world, searching quietly for that tantalizing gap in the historical record, that scrap of ancient rumor, that might prove to be of interest-and, perhaps, more than just of interest.”
As quickly as it came, the bitterness left Stone’s voice. “In the case of Flinders Petrie, I obtained a battered diary, purchased as part of a lot in an Alexandrian bazaar. The diary had been kept by a research assistant of Petrie’s during his last years in Jerusalem: a young man who wasn’t asked to go along on that final expedition and afterward, in vexation, joined the army. He died in the Battle of the Kasserine Pass. Of course the story described in his diary piqued my interest. What could have possessed Petrie-who cared little for treasure, who had earned a large measure of scholarly fame, not to mention every right to enjoy an old age of ease-to leave the comfort of his
