“Help me clear more rock. Now!”
Twenty-eight
Rich pulled the flap back on McCauley’s tent.
“Gotta a minute, doc?”
“Sure. Hey, how’s Anna doing?”
“Okay. She’s not a happy camper, but she wants her computer. That’s a good sign. I keep her in the loop, which she loves.”
“Nice going. I’ll try to stop over tomorrow,” McCauley said.
“She’d like that.”
“So, what’s up Rich?”
“You’ll probably want to toss me out of the tent, but I really think you should call Robert Greene.”
“Him again. The conspiracy nut.”
“Yeah. We may have stepped into a secret government project or some hidden black ops facility. You said as much yourself. Or it belongs to a private corp that was testing something. Even scarier, a CDC research lab, which I hope to God it isn’t.”
Some of the newer possibilities Tamburro raised had also occurred to McCauley. Clearly he needed help, especially if the CDC was involved. He could go to Kappy, but that didn’t seem prudent.
“What if we do more research first?” McCauley asked.
“To tell you the truth, I have. Not much comes up except coal mine accidents. Just call.”
Tamburro handed McCauley a sheet with the phone number. “Mind if I stick around?”
“I have to call now?”
“Right now. In front of me.”
“Okay, okay.”
At that moment, Alpert walked into McCauley’s tent.
“Room for another?”
“Sure. You can witness the beginning of the end of my career.”
“Oh?” she asked.
Tamburro explained.
“Just call,” Alpert implored.
McCauley punched in the number on his cell.
“Speaker,” Tamburro insisted.
The professor activated the speaker function. On the fifth ring the call went to voice mail.
“Apparently I don’t know you well enough to give you my cell, so leave your name at the beep and if, after investigating you a bit, and I’m so inclined, I’ll call you back. If you don’t hear from me, don’t bother calling again. We’ll never be talking.”
McCauley shrugged his shoulders and thought, What an asshole!
“So here comes the beep. Make it quick. I’m busy.”
Not knowing how much time he had, McCauley jumped right in. “Hello, Mr. Greene. My name is Quinn McCauley. I’m a paleontologist working at a site in Montana. We, ah….”
Alpert gave him a speed up sign.
“We found something…” he took a beat, “…interesting.”
Interesting took Katrina back to her discussion with McCauley. It was a safety word.
“And I’d like to talk to you about it confidentially.” He gave his number, said thank you and ended the message.
“What’s the chance he’ll call back?” Alpert asked.
“Oh, he’ll call,” Tamburro said. “The operative words were ‘interesting’ and ‘confidentially.’ Too good to ignore. He’ll call back all right.”
McCauley’s phone rang at an ungodly hour. He was in such a deep sleep he almost missed the call.
“Hello,” McCauley said finally answering.
“Is this Dr. McCauley?” the male voice replied.
“Yes.” Quinn struggled to find his watch to check the time. 3 A.M. Jesus. “Who’s this?”
“Robert Greene. You called me earlier.”
“A lot earlier, Mr. Greene.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking at the time.” He laughed. “Guess I’m too much of a night owl. If this isn’t good, we can talk tomorrow. But it’ll probably be way late again.”
“No, no,” McCauley said as he gathered his thoughts. “Now’s okay.”
“I’ve looked you up on LinkedIn, on the Yale website, and a few other places I have access to, Dr. McCauley. Read your bios and a paper you wrote on dinosaur communal behavior in the Jurassic period.”
“Thanks. You’re probably the fifth person to get through it.”
“Actually, I didn’t finish it. Made some of the government reports look dry. But I have to ask, anything more than theory?”
“Just theory.”
“Pictures would have helped.”
“Academia. They weigh the ink.”
“Really? Pictures tell so much more.”
“Look, next time I’m in my time machine I’ll be sure to bring my camera.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
“I’m not really the science fiction type,” McCauley said.
“Not even Jurassic Park?”
“Well, of course. Got my undergraduate degree from Harvard. That’s where Crichton went.”
“There’s hope for you yet. So what did you find that was interesting and we needed to have a confidential talk?”
McCauley smiled. Tamburro had been absolutely correct.
“I’m not really sure,” McCauley admitted. “Some of my colleagues recommended I get in touch with you, but quite honestly…”
“Here I go again,” Greene interrupted. “You don’t believe I’m for real.”
“I was trying to put it more delicately.”
“You don’t have to. The only thing I’ll say in my own defense is I’m a researcher not a rumor monger. Like you, I look for things no one else has found. Most days there’s nothing. And then there are the times when it’s all worthwhile. I think it’s safe to say you recently had a good day, but you don’t know how to explain it.”
Greene waited for an answer.
“Dr. McCauley?”
“I’m here.”
“Am I correct?”
There was another long pause.
“Okay. I take it I am. That means you might want my help,” Greene said breaking the silence again.
Quinn McCauley thought hard.
“When?”
Twenty-nine
They returned again with better tools. The more rock they cut away, the greater the mystery.
Soon they had a fifteen foot wide portion of the smooth, sleek wall. Yet, no matter how much light they aimed, they still couldn’t see it. The smooth surface simply absorbed all the light, reflecting none back.
“Blacker than black,” Jaffe said.
McCauley was more interested in what he was feeling than what they couldn’t see: the indentations. The wall was riddled with them.
He felt with his fingertips, then with the palm of his hands. “I can’t quite get it, but it feels like there’s a design to them.”
“A design?” Alpert responded.
“Here. Feel.” He took Dr. Alpert’s hand and blindly moved it across the wall.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just random depressions.”
“Slide your hand down. There’s more.”
She closed her eyes to focus her concentration.
“Wait, Yes. They begin to spread out,” she noted.
“Okay, let’s switch.” McCauley now reached in and tried to get a picture in his mind’s eye. It was hard. “Damn,” he complained. “Wish I could do a rubbing. No chalk or pencil.”
“We have dirt,” Alpert said. She scooped some and let it flow through her fingers. “And I have a few sheets paper.”
“You’re better than a Boy Scout,” he joked.
“I should hope so.”
McCauley pressed the paper against the surface and rubbed dirt in, making a virtual negative of a portion of the pattern. He felt one small dimple at the top of the design. Below it, more, in a still indeterminate pattern. Soon he began counting the indentations aloud as he felt groups of the dents and visualized where they were.