I doubt they’d miss me, he thought distractedly, knowing he was probably the least popular member of the dig. But, he knew his girlfriend wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I’ll be there in a moment,” he replied half-heartedly.
A drink in her hand, Sid moved inside the tent and stepped up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing the back of his neck. In the low light of the tent his smooth features and dark African skin glowed bronze but he kept his gentle brown eyes focussed on what he was doing.
Sid frowned as she observed him pick up a sheet of tracing paper and use it to trace the outline of the forehead from the scanned copy he had just made:
Then he used another piece of paper and, placing the edge of the pencil against it, shaded in the shape of the original metal plate from the Sarisariñama mask:
“You remember that McKinney said she wanted an impartial review of the mask?” she reminded him.
“I’m simply presenting her the facts. Cold, hard, undeniable facts.” To punch home his point, he crudely folded his two pieces of paper and then brought the tracings together:
Allowing for discrepancies in the cave painting’s portrayal, the photocopy enlargement and his own tracings, the upper edge of the Sarisariñama mask’s jaw piece met almost exactly with the lower edge of the Bouda mask’s forehead piece.
Sid actually felt a shiver of excitement rush through her boyfriend’s body.
“That’s it!” King exclaimed. “The proof! The proof that the Moon Mask was real and that the Black Death really existed. That he searched the globe for the pieces of it.” He smacked an excited kiss against Sid’s lips.
“Easy there, tiger,” she said, pushing him back. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s going to take more than two pieces of tracing paper to convince McKinney, let alone the rest of the academic world, that an escaped Gambian slave became a notorious pirate who scoured the earth in search of a magical mask. We don’t even know if the remains you found are African, and even if they are, how did a Gambian pirate end up in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, in a hidden temple that was built centuries before he was born?”
He looked at her, wounded. “You don’t believe me?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, baby,” she said, stroking his cheek. “It’s just that we’re going to have to put together a strong argument to convince McKinney. And I hardly think that the middle of the night when you’ve got a party waiting for the guest of honour to arrive is really the time to do that.” She kissed him then smiled, her smooth Indian features glowing with warmth. She took his hand and led him out of the tent, towards the centre of camp where the large mess tent stood.
“Let’s go and celebrate,” she continued. “Then tomorrow we can work out how best to proceed.”
He paused, glancing the opposite way across the table-top plateau, his mind still reeling with the possibilities presented by his discovery. “You go,” he told her. “I’m just going to check in with Nadia first.”
Sid sighed. “Ben, I—”
“Sid,” a voice cut in. Two of the camp’s younger girls whose names King couldn’t even think to recall, hurried past, arm in arm, giggling drunkenly. “Mister Raine is looking for you.”
King noticed a shift in Sid’s expression then, subtle, but there nonetheless. Excitement? He chose to ignore it, too excited by his discovery to let a pang of jealousy sour his feelings.
“I’ll see you in a bit then,” Sid said and hurried off towards the mess tent. The two girls walked off, chatting about how they both wished ‘Mister Raine’ was looking for them.
King headed across the camp, scouting through the alleyways between tents. The camp was set back about thirty feet from the edge of the plateau. A cordon of red and yellow tape marked the inner boundary and a bright red one marked the outer one, just five feet from the sheer drop beyond. A warning to venture no further.
Nadia Yashina’s lab lay on the far side of the camp, near to the gaping black hole that was the Humboldt Sima. He could see lights inside and knew that the Russian woman would be far more interested in examining the human remains they had found than celebrating their discovery.
He trekked over to the lab and ducked inside. He froze just inside the flap as he saw Nadia standing over the skeleton, discussing her findings with Juliet McKinney.
The Scottish woman looked up at him, her curls of copper hair hanging about her face. Nadia, for her part, did her best to disguise a guilty expression.
“Doctor King,” McKinney began, a fake smile curving her lips. “Your timing is impeccable.” She turned and nodded at Nadia. “Doctor Yashina, perhaps you could reveal to Doctor King the results of your examination?”
Nadia shot him an apologetic look before indicating the human remains lying on the osteo-board in front of her.
“My analysis of the remains,” she began in her normal detached tone, her Russian accent rolling off her tongue, “has led me to the conclusion that what we are looking at here is a…” she hesitated for just a second. McKinney’s eyes gleamed triumphantly. “A Caucasian male, one hundred and sixty two centimetres in height, approximately forty to fifty years old at time of death.”
“Caucasian?” King repeated, his voice hollow.
“Continue,” McKinney ordered Nadia. The Russian frowned but nevertheless complied.
“Based on gas residue, the level of decay and erosion as well as the fragments of clothing found with him, I suspect he died at some point between 1700 and 1750 Common Era, although this is only an initial estimate and more detailed study is required.” She indicated the skull. “There are signs of damage to the subject’s skull, possibly the result of a sword or cutlass wound to the face, though I do not believe this is what killed him. There are a number of other injuries on the subject’s remains, suggesting a somewhat violent death. Also, I noted a deformity in the brain cavity, possibly caused by a growth or tumour—”
“Thank you Doctor,” McKinney cut her off, noticing King’s gaze becoming distant as his mind absorbed all the information he had just been fed. “I think Doctor King has heard all he needed to hear for the time being.”
King’s eyes shifted at the sound of her voice, locking angrily on her as she finished her conclusion.
“I think it is safe to say that this unfortunate gentleman was not an African pirate, least of all an entirely fictional one.”
King was silent for a moment. He had tuned out almost immediately, as soon as Nadia had declared the remains to be Caucasian, not African. His mind struggled to catch up, focussing on McKinney’s final, sarcastic comment. A flash of anger erupted somewhere deep inside. His hands gripped the pieces of tracing paper they held, scrunching them. His moment of triumph seemed to be slipping away.
“Fictional?” he snarled, glancing from Nadia to the human remains — as though the dead man himself had betrayed him — and then back to McKinney.
“You’re lying!” he accused her. “You told Nadia to say those things, to destroy any view that doesn’t fit in with the status quo of archaeology.”
“My words are my own, Ben,” Nadia said. “I give only the facts, though I confess that further study is needed.”
“The Moon Mask is real,” he told McKinney, ignoring the Russian. “Whether or not these are the remains of the Black Death, the mask I found today proves that the Moon Mask is real. And if the Moon Mask is real, it proves my father’s theories.”