“Out back,” someone replied. “With Raine.”
King was already moving, stalking through the crowd which nervously backed away, allowing him to burst through the back entrance, just in time to see Sid, hidden inside a copse of trees, throw her arms around the American’s neck.
“You bastard!” he snarled, stalking up behind the American and grasping his shoulder. He spun the stunned pilot around and before he knew what was happening, his large and powerful fist smashed into his smug face!
Blood erupted in a fountain as Raine staggered back. The crowd burst into shocked gasps, some of the drunker ones hooting like monkeys, egging the violence on, while others screamed obscenities at the madman.
“Ben!” Sid bellowed. “What the hell are you doing?!”
King ignored her. He threw himself at Raine but the American was faster, recovering from the initial blow quickly and spinning away from the second. He swung up a defensive block, pushed King back then bolted to his feet. He moved faster than the archaeologist, jumping back, just beyond each of his swings.
“Benny!” Raine shouted, anger mixing with confusion. “What the-?” He ducked below another swing and, realising the enraged archaeologist wasn’t going to back down, he lashed out with his leg, catching King behind the knees and wrenching him to the ground.
Instead of falling backwards, King lunged forward, his powerful shoulders smashing into the pilot’s chest in a wrestling-style take-down. The impact threw them both to the ground.
“Ben, get off him!” Sid bellowed but King didn’t hear. Straddling Raine, he brought his fist back for another blow but his elbow was caught mid-air. The gawping on-lookers had finally been spurred into action and several of the men closed around him, grasping him and wrenching him off the helicopter pilot.
Raine scrambled to his feet, holding his bloodied nose. “What the hell is your problem, Benny?!”
“My problem?!” King struggled against the overwhelming number of hands holding him back. “My problem is that it’s not enough for you to sweep in here every fortnight and disrupt this dig just so you can get your end away with the interns, but now you feel the need to put your ego-centric American whammy on my girlfriend!”
“What?” Raine asked, confused.
“He wasn’t putting the ‘whammy’ on me, Ben,” Sid shot at him, angry.
“I saw you…” he wasn’t sure what word to use and annoyingly settled on “embracing! Out here in the bush where no one can see.”
“Yeah,” Sid admitted matter-of-factly. Her blunt admission brought him up short. Wasn’t she even going to try and deny it? “Yeah, I hugged him… to say thank you.”
Now it was King’s turn to be confused. He shrugged off the hands holding him. “Thank you? For what?”
“For this!” She threw a cardboard sleeve at him. It frisbeed through the air and one corner dug into the soft earth at his feet. “Nathan’s spent the last two months trying to get hold of it and get it out here in time for your birthday next month! The Royal bloody Mail doesn’t exactly deliver to the middle of the Amazon, you know!” Tears streamed down her face.
King suddenly felt very small, very stupid. The eyes of the entire camp were watching him.
“She didn’t know where you were or when you were going to arrive in the mess so we came out here so I could give her it without you seeing,” Raine explained. The embrace King had witnessed was nothing more than a friendly thank you.
“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Sid whispered through angry sobs.
“Sid, I…” he began, reaching out for her but she pulled away and pushed through the crowd, running through the mess tent and vanishing into the gloom. King watched her go, his legs heavy and unable to run after her.
“Come on folks,” someone said from behind him, addressing the crowd. “There’s nothing more to see here.” In a babble of muted conversations, the crowd dispersed back into the mess tent. King kept his gaze averted as someone led Raine past, having applied a damp towel to his bleeding nose.
Moments later, he stood alone, his heart hammering in his chest, his face flushed with embarrassment and shame. The music was abruptly cut off and the floodlights shut down, leaving him in muted darkness, staring down at his gift, still embedded in the ground.
For a few moments earlier that day he had had everything — the proof of his theory, his ticket to academic success… and he had Sid to share it with.
He finally bent over and picked up his gift, examining it. It was a record — an actual LP, not some digitally re-recorded CD. His joy at discovering the title — a rare 1976 Elvis Presley Live at Lakeland vinyl — was locked within a black pit of despair.
Not an hour earlier he had had it all.
Now, he feared, he had lost everything.
5:
The Evil Spirit
The camp was silent, save for the hum of the generators which kept essential equipment running throughout the night.
The impromptu party had, unsurprisingly, come to an equally impromptu end following King’s fiery display. All the attendees had soon retired to their tents, the distant whispers of conversation slowly dropping away as lamps were extinguished one by one. Now, the only light came from the bright display of speckled stars and the silvery haze of the moon as it hung low above the canopy of trees.
Benjamin King sat alone in the darkness. As he often did, late at night when Sid was sleeping and he was haunted by nightmares, he had ducked under both the safety cordons and sat on a ledge which he had picked out not long after arriving on the dig.
This night was different, however, in that instead of sneaking out of the tent which he and Sid shared, he had not retired to it at all. Instead, he sat alone, legs dangling over the edge, thousands of feet above the ocean of tree tops below. Over the artificial whine of the generator, he could hear the natural backdrop of noise — the buzzing and twitching of insects, the distant cry of prey falling to nocturnal predators, the occasional flourish of activity on the forest floor or the rapid beating of a bat’s wing. He realised sombrely that he was going to miss each and every one of those noises.
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” a voice said quietly from behind. King glanced around to see the last person he had expected to see.
Nathan Raine ducked beneath the perimeter cordon, a bottle in hand. “May I?” he indicated a spot beside King on the ledge.
King shrugged. “Sure you want to?”
“Well, I thought that sharing a bottle of whisky might restrain you from taking another shot at my nose,” Raine half joked, shuffling into a position beside King and, like him, dangling his feet casually over the vertical cliff face.
King glanced at the bottle. “That’s not whisky.”
“It is bourbon,” Raine said, double checking he had brought the correct bottle.
“Precisely. You want whisky — you need to get your taste buds around a single malt Scotch. Not some Yankee swill.”
Raine pulled the cap off with his teeth. “Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” He offered King the bottle and he greedily took a long swig, feeling the liquid burn his throat. Then he smiled hollowly.
“How’s the nose?”
“The nose?” Raine repeated casually. “Ah, fine,” he waved it away. “You punch like a girl.”
King shot him an angry look but when he saw the subtle hint of mischief in the American’s ice-blue eyes he couldn’t help but laugh. They both looked back out over the rainforest, settling into an uncomfortable silence.
“So, McKinney tells me I’ll be having a passenger with me on the way back tomorrow,” Raine broke it.