The Reckoning Read Free Page B

miss?”
    â€œMe?”
    â€œCamp is on the far side of the road. I can take you there. Or if you like, we can go on to the dig site.”
    She told him the dig site. They started walking. He carried his steel briefcase in one hand, the trowel in his other.
    â€œThey’re all waiting for their fifteen minutes, you know,” he said. “They think you’re going to make them immortal.”

2.
    Duncan led her along a succession of paths toward a surf roar of men’s voices and clattering tools and the drumbeat of earth being chopped and a generator snarling to pump away water. They arrived at a small army of locals pick-and-shoveling through more paddy walls, raising a cloud of orange dust. Molly curbed the impulse to reach for her camera, waiting to meet the head honcho and get the inevitable ground rules.
    Duncan called “Captain” at two Americans on a dike above the toil, but neither heard. They were busy consulting a map with a wiry village elder, or a Cambodian liaison officer. The old man had a dark brown moon of a face with burr-cut white hair and one pink plastic leg. Somehow he heard Duncan over the din. He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Molly as if he’d been waiting for her.
    â€œOld Samnang,” Duncan told her, walking closer. “He’s the work boss. In the old days, before Pol Pot, before Nixon, he studied at the Sorbonne and taught music and math at the Royal Academy in Phnom Penh. That was then.”
    The two Americans noticed her now. Molly figured the taller one to be the mission leader. He looked commanding with his sun-bronzed skull, photogenic as hell, a seamed scar looping across his throat. He wore black cargo pants bloused in his boot tops, a close second to the American uniforms that were forbidden on these military excavations.
    But it was the squat younger man dressed in a Hawaiian-print shirt, Gargoyle sunglasses, and a baseball cap who descended to them. Molly took in the cap, the veins, and the wedding band. The captain was an Orioles fan, a gym rat, and married. And a hopeless legs man. Even the Gargoyles could not disguise his stare.
    â€œWelcome to the kingdom, Ms. Drake.” The young captain didn’t mention that she was badly overdue. He didn’t try to own her. She liked that. His eyes flickered at Duncan’s kroma on her head, and he did not begrudge Duncan’s first contact with his guest of honor. “You plunge right in,” he said to her. “Already out meeting the natives.”
    â€œMr. O’Brian saved me. I was about to go off chasing phantoms.”
    â€œThe gypsy kid,” said Duncan.
    â€œSome poor mother’s son,” the captain said.
    She had not meant to apologize, but since all seemed forgiven she saw only merit to be gained by it. “The week got away from me,” she offered.
    â€œNo problem.”
    She looked around at the mounds of dirt. “I was praying I wouldn’t be too late.”
    â€œIf you mean have we found the pilot, we have not.”
    She tried to read his tone. Was he optimistic? Discouraged? They had been here for nearly three weeks. Generally their digs didn’t go longer than a month, which was a blink of the eye compared to other digs she’d covered. At Canyon de Chelly, Yellowjacket, Little Big Horn, and elsewhere, it took years and even decades to lay bare the past. Coming over on the plane, she had worried about their quickness. She had sold her editor on a find, not a hit-or-miss process. She needed bones for her story. But she could not say so, not to these bone hunters.
    Duncan seemed to read her mind. “We’ll find him,” he said.
    â€œIf he’s here,” the captain qualified, “we’ll find him.”
    â€œHe’s waited long enough,” Duncan said. She sensed a subtle tug of war between the captain, under deadline, and this long-haired middle-aged archaeologist who did not even wear a