"Anytime, gentlemen. Anytime you like," Indy said.
There was a round of handshakes, then Brody escorted the officers to the door. Alone in the empty hall, Indy closed the book. He thought for a moment, trying at the same time to suppress the sense of excitement he felt. The Nazis have found Tanis- and these words went around and around in his brain.
The girl, Susan, said, "I really hope I didn't embarrass you when you were with Brody. I mean, I was so . . . obvious."
"You weren't obvious," Indy said.
They were sitting together in the cluttered living
room of Indy's small frame house. The room was
filled with souvenirs of trips, of digs, restored clay
vessels and tiny statues and fragments of pottery and
maps and globes-as cluttered, he sometimes
thought, as my life.
The girl drew her knees up, hugging them, laying her face down against them. Like a cat, he thought. A tiny contented cat.
"I love this room," she said. "I love the whole house ... but this room especially."
Indy got up from the sofa and, hands in his pockets, walked around the room. The girl, for some reason, was more of an intrusion than she should have been. Sometimes when she spoke he tuned her out. He heard only the noise of her voice and not the meaning of her words. He poured himself a drink, sipped it, swallowed; it burned in his chest-a good burning, like a small sun glowing down there.
Susan said, "You seem so distant tonight, Indy."
"Distant?"
"You've got something on your mind. I don't know." She shrugged.
He walked to the radio, turned it on, barely listening to the drone of someone making a pitch for Maxwell House. The girl changed the station and then there was dance-band music. Distant, he thought. Farther than you could dream. Miles away. Oceans and continents and centuries. He was suddenly thinking about Ravenwood, about the last conversation they'd had, the old man's terrible storm, his wrath. When he listened to the echoes of those voices, he felt sad, disappointed in himself; he'd taken some fragile trust and shattered it.
Marion's infatuated with you, and you took advantage of that.
You're twenty-eight, presumably a grown man, and you've taken advantage of a young girl's brainless infatuation and twisted it to suit your own purpose just because she thinks she's in love with you.
Susan said, "If you want me to leave, Indy, I will. If you want to be alone, I'll understand."
"It's okay. Really. Stay."
There was a knock on the door; the porch creaked.
Indy moved out of the living room along the hallway and saw Marcus Brody outside. He was smiling a secretive smile, as if he had news he wanted to linger over, savor for as long as he could.
"Marcus," Indy said. "I wasn't expecting you."
"I think you were," Brody said, pushing the screen door.
"We'll go in the study," Indy said.
"What's wrong with the living room?"
"Company."
"Ah. What else?"
They entered the study.
"You did it, didn't you?" Indy said.
Brody smiled. "They want you to get the Ark before the Nazis."
It was a moment before Indy could say anything. He felt a sense of exaltation, an awareness of triumph. The Ark. He said, "I think I've been waiting all my life to hear something like that."
Brody looked at the shot glass in Indy's hand for a moment. "They talked with their people in Wash' ington. Then they consulted me. They want you, Indiana. They want you."
Indy sat down behind his desk, gazed into his glass, then looked around the room. A strange emotion filled him suddenly; this was more than books and articles and maps, more than speculation, scholarly argument, discussion, debate-a sense of reality had replaced all the words and pictures.
Brody said, "Of course, given the military mind, they don't exactly buy all that business about the power of the Ark and so forth. They don't want to embrace any such mythologies. After all, they're soldiers, and soldiers like to think they're hard-line realists. They want the Ark-and I'll quote, if I can -because of its 'historic and cultural significance' and because 'such a priceless object should not become the property of a fascist regime.' Or words to that effect."
"Their reasons don't matter," Indy said.
"In addition, they'll pay handsomely-"
"I don't care about the money, either, Marcus." Indy raised a hand, indicated the room in a sweep. "The Ark represents the elusive thing I feel about archaeology-you know, history concealing its secrets. Things lying out there waiting to be discovered. I don't give that for their reasons or their money." And he snapped his fingers.
Brody nodded his head in understanding. "The museum, of course, will get the Ark."
"Of course."
"If it exists . . ." Brody paused a moment, then added, "We shouldn't build our hopes up too high."
Indy stood up. "I have to find Abner first. That would be the logical step. If Abner has the headpiece, then I have to get it before the opposition does. That makes sense, right? Without the headpiece, voila, no Ark. So where do I find Abner?" He stopped, realizing how quickly he'd been talking. "I think I know where to start looking-"
Brody said, "It's been a long time, Indiana. Things change."
Indy stared at the other man for a second. The comment was enigmatic to him: Things change. And then he realized Marcus Brody was talking about Marion.
"He might have mellowed toward you," Brody said. "On the other hand, he might still carry a grudge. In that case, it's reasonable to assume he wouldn't want to give you the headpiece. If in fact he has it."
"We'll hope for the best, my friend."
"Always the optimist, right?"
"Not always," Indy said. "Optimism can be deadly."
Brody was silent now, moving around the room, flicking the pages of books. Then he looked at Indy in a somber way. "I want you to be careful, Indiana."
"I'm always careful."
"You can be pretty reckless. I know that as well as you. But the Ark isn't like anything you've gone after before. It's bigger. More dangerous." Brody slammed a book shut, as if to emphasize a point. "I'm not skeptical, like those military people-I think the Ark has secrets. I think it has dangerous secrets."
For a second Indy was about to say something flippant, something about the melodramatic tone in the other man's voice. But he saw from the expression on Brody's face that the man was serious.
"I don't want to lose you, Indiana, no matter how great the prize is. You understand?"
The two men shook hands.
Indy noticed that Brody's skin was damp with sweat.
Alone, Indy sat up late into the night, unable to sleep, unable to let his mind rest. He wandered from one room of the small house to another, clenching and unclenching his hands. After all these years, he thought, all this passage of time-would Ravenwood help him? Would Ravenwood, given that he had the headpiece, come to his assistance? And behind these questions there lingered still another one. Would Marion still be with her father?
He continued to go from room to room until finally he settled in his study and put his feet up on the desk, looking at the various objects stuffed in the room. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, tried to think clearly, and rose. From a bookshelf he removed a copy of Ravenwood's old journal, a gift from the old man when the two were still friends. Indy skimmed the pages, noticing one disappointment listed after another, one excavation that hadn't lived up to its promises, another that had revealed only the most slender, the most tantalizing, of clues to the where abouts of the Ark. The outlines of an obsession in these pages; the heartbreaking search for a lost object of history. But the Ark could flow in your blood and fill the air you breathed. And he understood the old man's single-mindedness, his devotion, the kind of lust that had led him from one country to an other, to one hope after another. The pages yielded up that much-but there was no mention of the head piece anywhere. Nothing.