'And I took the liberty of bringing Miss Steerforth with me.'
'I'm sorry, David,' Faith broke in. 'I know you said that there probably wouldn't be any action until this afternoon, but I couldn't bear to hang around the hotel by myself. And Professor Panin was coming up here.'
There was a muffled thump as Butler drove his spade into a square of grass which Roskill had roughly shaved with a small sickle. He lifted a segment of turf and placed it neatly to one side.
'And it seems that we were both wise not to delay, Miss Steerforth,'
observed Panin. 'Is this the place, Dr Audley?'
'Our detecting device has picked up something just here, Professor.
We were lucky to pick it up so quickly.'
Sheremetev gestured around him. 'Is it not rather a–a public place for such a purpose?'
'There were archaeologists excavating here at the time, Mr Sheremetev. They were just filling in a trench at this place.'
He met Panin's stare, only to be disconcerted by its lack of expression. Or was it unvarying intensity about those eyes which dummy4
was disconcerting? His first impression had been one of anticlimax the night before. But the man's personality wasn't negative–
it was simply shuttered.
And now Panin was nodding in agreement with him.
'Public, but not obvious–that is good reasoning, Dr Audley. And it was good reasoning in the first instance, too: the classic doctrine of the hiding place.' He considered Faith reflectively. 'Young airmen in my experience were not so devious, but this man we underrated.'
He walked over to where Roskill and Butler were digging behind a small rampart of turves. Neither of them took any notice of him, and he eventually continued past them up the slope of the nearest mound. Sheremetev followed obediently, as though linked to him by some invisible towline.
'I think he's rather a sweetie, really,' whispered Faith. 'He's got beautiful manners and he was charming last evening.'
After that awkward moment of encounter, the man had been courteous enough in a solemn way. The charm, however, was an illusion created by her own nervousness and a mixture of gin and claret drunk too quickly.
'As a matter of fact he's rather like you, David.' Faith grinned wickedly at the discomposure he wasn't quick enough to hide.
He shut his face against her innocence.
'You would do well to remember the fate of the young lady of Riga, my girl,' he said, watching Panin quarter the landscape as he had done ten minutes earlier.
'The one who had an affair with a tiger?'
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'That's the dirty version. In the nursery version she merely went for a ride with him—
"They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And a smile on the face of the tiger".'
'You've got a suspicious nature, David.'
He was only half listening to her now.
'Suspicious? I'm afraid it's an occupational disease, suspicion. But it's rarely fatal. Credulity is the disease that kills more often.'
After a time Panin came down off the mound, and again stood for a while silently watching the diggers.
'A Roman camp, you say?'
Audley nodded. 'The theory is that it was a practice camp built by new recruits from Lincoln. The latest coins they found were of Nero, nothing after that. Apparently they were rather hoping it might have been refortified in the fourth century, but it wasn't.
They found very little, as a matter of fact.'
'That period interests you?'
'The Roman occupation? Not really–I'm more of a mediaevalist.'
'That I know. I have read your essays on the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Dr Audley. They are most interesting.'
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It wasn't really a surprise. Panin was a man who did his homework quickly. He had known about Jake Shapiro's interest in Masada in just the same way.
'You don't think Israel will go the same way as the Crusaders, Dr Audley? In the end?'
'The comparison's false, Professor. Israel is a middle eastern nation–or would be eventually if your country learnt to mind its own business,' replied Audley mildly. It comforted him to hope that Panin might be nervous enough to make conversation. 'Not that I don't appreciate how necessary it may be to stop the rot at home by asserting oneself abroad.'
'It is fortunate for the world, then, that your country is too weak to try that remedy!'
'I couldn't agree more. It's fortunate for us, too, you know. Your people just don't seem to have grasped that the returns aren't worth the effort in the Middle East–and I'm sure ours wouldn't either if they had the power to make any difference.'
Panin shrugged. 'You must find your work a frustrating occupation then, Dr Audley.'
There was a grating sound of metal on metal, followed by an exasperated grunt.
Roskill, waist deep now in the trench, shook his wrist in pain.
'Jarred my bloody wrist,' he explained. Then he bent down and fumbled in the loose earth at his feet.
'Here's what gave us our reading, anyway,' he said. 'Genuine Roman wheels — or maybe Trojan!'
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He wrenched a pair of rusty wheels, still joined together on their axle, from the bottom of the trench, gazed at them ruefully, and then threw them out on to the grass.
Everyone stared wordlessly at the wheels. They were even joined by Panin's driver, a wizened gnome who had been pacing up and down beside the car as though he was afraid someone planned to steal it.
Then Audley realised that they were all looking at him. There was sympathy in Faith's eyes, disappointment in Butler's gaze and amusement in Sheremetev's. Only Panin retained his inscrutability.
Or perhaps only Panin understood that the rusty wheels represented not failure, but final success.
'Don't just stand there, Hugh–get digging!' said Audley. 'The trolley went into the trench after the last box, no point in leaving it around. You're nearly there now.'
It seemed to Audley then that the world shrank to the circle round the trench. Even the distant noise of the tractor seemed to fade, as though their collective eagerness filtered out everything except the thud and scrape of the spades in the earth.
Neither the diggers nor the watchers uttered a word as the first of John Steerforth's boxes came to the light again and was raised from the earth.
They all stood looking at it for a long minute: a very ordinary box, damp-darkened, with its lid already splintered where the first fierce spade stroke which had discovered it had smashed into the wood.
Then Sheremetev knelt beside it and levered up a splintered dummy4
segment of the lid with the edge of a spade. Beneath the broken wood was the top of what seemed to be another box, made of metal.
Sheremetev looked up at Panin, and nodded.
'This is the box,' he said.
Panin touched Audley's arm gently.
'If I might have a minute in private with you, Dr Audley,' he said courteously.
They drew aside from the group, to the foot of the corner mound of the old camp.
'I know that your instructions are quite clear, Dr Audley. I am to have what you find — Brigadier Stocker has made that plain, and there can be no misunderstanding about it. You have done brilliantly, and my government will not be ungrateful.'
Audley listened to the sound of the tractor, which now came loud and clear across the airfield.
'The Schliemann Collection is here, Dr Audley,' Panin continued,
'and we shall restore it to its owners as promised. But this first box I will have now–I will take it now, Dr Audley. Without fuss, without argument. It is necessary that I do this.'
So Steerforth's loot had truly been a Trojan cargo–what it seemed, but also more than it seemed. That had been the only logical explanation.
'I'm not sure that I can agree to that, Professor,' said Audley slowly.
'My instructions cover the Schliemann Collection. But I'm also bound by the Defence of the Realm Act, which gives me a wider obligation.'