Текст книги "Thunderhead"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston,Lincoln Child
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Nora glanced at Bonarotti. The Italian waved his hand vacantly, sending cigarette smoke spiraling through the air. “Whatever,” he said. “I will go along with whatever.”

Nora returned her gaze to Sloane. “I count four against two, with one abstention. There’s nothing more to discuss.” Then she softened her tone. “Look, we won’t just leave willy-nilly. We’ll take the rest of the day to finish up the most pressing work, shut down the dig, and take a series of documentary photographs. We’ll pack a small selection of representative artifacts. Then we’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”

“The rest of the day?” Black said. “To close this site properly will take a hell of a lot longer than that.”

“I’m sorry. We’ll do the best we can. We’ll only pack up the essential gear for the trip out—the rest we’ll cache, to save time.”

Nobody spoke. Her face an unreadable mask of emotions, Sloane continued to stare at Nora.

“Let’s get going,” Nora said, turning away wearily. “We’ve got a lot to do before sunset.”

40

SMITHBACK KNELT BY THE TENT AND GINGERLY lifted the flap, gazing inside with a mixture of pity and revulsion. Aragon had wrapped Peter Holroyd’s body in two layers of plastic and then sealed it inside the expedition’s largest drysack, a yellow bag with black stripes. Despite the carefully sealed coverings, the tent reeked of betadine, alcohol, and something worse. Smithback leaned away, breathing through his mouth. “I’m not sure I can do this,” he said.

“Let’s just get it over with,” Swire replied, picking up a pole and ducking into the tent.

No book advance is worth this,Smithback thought. Reaching into his pocket for his red bandanna, he tied it carefully over his mouth. Then he tugged a pair of work gloves over the rubber gloves Aragon had given him, picked up a coil of rope, and followed Swire into the tent.

Wordlessly, Swire laid the pole alongside the bagged corpse. Then, as quickly as possible, the two men lashed it to the pole, winding the rope around and around until it was secure. Swire tied off the ends with half-hitches. Then, grasping each end, they hefted the body out of the tent.

Holroyd had a slight frame, and Smithback raised one end of the pole onto his shoulder with relative ease. I’ll bet he weighs one fifty, one sixty, max,he thought. That means eighty pounds for each of us.Strange how, at times of severe stress, the mind tended to dwell on the most trivial, the most quotidian details. Smithback felt a pang of sympathy for the friendly, unassuming young man. Just three nights before, under Smithback’s journalistic probing by the campfire, Holroyd had opened up at last and talked, at unexpected length, about his deep and abiding love for motorcycles. As he’d talked, the shyness had left him, and his limbs had filled with animation. Now those limbs were still. All too still, in fact; Smithback did not like the stiff, unyielding way Holroyd’s bagged feet jostled up against his shoulder as they proceeded toward the slot canyon.

He thought back to the discussion about what to do with the body. It had to be placed somewhere secure, away from camp, elements, and predators, until it could be retrieved at a later time. They couldn’t bury it in the ground, Nora had said; coyotes would dig it up. They talked about hanging it in a tree, but most of the trees were inaccessible, their lower branches stripped away in flash floods. Anyway, Aragon said it was important to get the body as far from camp as possible. Then Nora remembered the small rock shelter about a quarter of the way through the slot canyon, above the high-water mark and accessible via a stepped ledge. It was a perfect place to store the body. The place was impossible to miss: the shelter was twenty feet off the canyon bottom, just above the trunk of a massive cottonwood that had been wedged between the walls by some earlier flood. The threat of rain had passed—Black had checked the weather report from the canyon rim—and the slot canyon would be safe for the time being. . . .

Smithback brought himself back to the present. There was a reason his mind was wandering. He knew himself well enough to understand what was happening: he was thinking about something, anything,to keep his mind off the job at hand. Deep down, for some reason he didn’t fully understand, Smithback realized he was profoundly frightened. He’d been in more than his share of life-threatening situations before: struggling against a killer in a vast museum; and later, caught fighting for his life in a warren of tunnels far beneath New York City. And yet here, in the pleasant afternoon light, he felt as threatened as he ever had in his life. There was something about the diffuse, vague nature of the evil in this valley that unsettled him most of all.

Once again, Holroyd’s rigid foot pressed sharply into Smithback’s shoulder. Ahead, Swire had stopped and was glancing upward toward the mouth of the slot canyon. Smithback followed his gaze into the narrow, scarred opening. Clearing skies, Black had said; Smithback hoped to hell the weather report was right.

Once in the slot, they were able to float the wrapped body, buoyed by the drysack, across the stretches of slack water. At the base of each pourover, however, Holroyd’s corpse had to be half pushed, half dragged up to the next pool. After twenty minutes of pushing, wading, swimming, and dragging, the two men stopped to catch their breath. Farther up the winding passage, Smithback could make out the massive cottonwood trunk that marked the location of the rock shelter. He moved a few feet away from the drysack, untied the bandanna from his mouth, shook it out, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

“So you think that Indian you saw had nothing to do with killing my horses,” Swire said. They were the first words he’d spoken since they left Holroyd’s tent.

“Absolutely not,” Smithback replied. “Especially since the people who killed your horses must have been the ones who wrecked our communications gear. And we were with the shepherd when that happened.”

Swire nodded. “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

Smithback saw that Swire was still staring at him. The brown eyes had long ago lost the humorous squint Smithback remembered from the first days of their ride. In Swire’s sunken cheeks, bony face, and tight jaw, Smithback could see a great sorrow. “Holroyd was a good kid,” he said simply.

Smithback nodded.

Swire spoke in a low voice. “It’s one thing to get in trouble back there”—he jerked his head in the hypothetical direction of civilization—“but it’s a whole other deal to run into trouble out here.”

Smithback looked from Swire to Holroyd’s body, then back to Swire. “That’s why Nora’s doing the right thing,” he said. “Getting us out as quickly as possible.”

Swire spat a line of tobacco across a nearby rock. “She’s a brave woman, I’ll give her that,” he said. “Volunteering to track those horse killers on her own . . . that took guts. But guts alone ain’t enough. I’ve seen even the smallest problem end up killing people in a place like this. And you know what? Our problems ain’t small.”

Smithback didn’t answer. His thoughts were still on Nora: her quick tongue, appraising eyes, resourceful pluck—her courage and determination. And he realized, with a sense of astonishment, that he was scared, not so much for himself but for her.

Swire appraised him, eyes glittering. Then he stood up and grabbed the lead end of the pole. Smithback rose, snugged the bandanna once again around his mouth, and scrambled toward the corpse. They climbed the rest of the way to the rock shelter in silence.

41

AARON BLACK STOOD IN THE DAPPLED shadows of the westernmost tower, surveying his test trenches and portable lab setups with a practiced eye. The soil profiles were perfect, naturally: a textbook model of the latest in stratigraphic analysis. And the labs were, as always, a picture of economy, efficiency, and accuracy.

As he stared, the satisfaction he usually felt when admiring his work was eclipsed by a stab of disappointment. Muttering under his breath, he drew a large tarp over the test trench and staked it down, pinning the sides with rocks. It was a wholly unsatisfactory way to preserve his accomplishments, but at least it was better than backfilling. Here he was, about to run away from the site that, by all rights, should be the crowning glory of his career. God knows what they would find when they returned. If they returned at all.

He shook his head in disgust and pulled a tarp over the second trench. Still, he wasn’t entirely sorry to be leaving. His usual assistant, Smithback, was off burying Holroyd, and as Black worked he managed to feel deeply thankful that particular task had not fallen to him. It didn’t really matter whether poison or disease had killed the technician. Either one was dangerous. A part of Black hungered for civilization—telephones, fine restaurants, hot showers, and toilets that flushed—a world hundreds of miles away from Quivira. Of course, he’d never admit this to Sloane, who had moved off in stony silence to take the final photographic records of the site.

As his thoughts turned to Sloane, he felt a hot flush begin to spread out from his vitals. Memories of the night before gave way to hopes and fantasies for the night to come. Black had never had much luck with women, and Sloane was a woman, all right; a woman who . . .

Tearing himself from these thoughts with difficulty, he turned to the flotation lab. Unhooking the jug of distilled water from the apparatus, he dumped the water pan over the edge of the cliff. Then, with a sigh, he began unscrewing the equipment, draining the hoses, and packing everything into two metal suitcases filled with custom-cut foam. It was a job he had done many times before, and despite everything he prided himself on his tidiness. Snapping the suitcases closed, he set them aside and began breaking down the paper chromatography setup.

He paused in the act of stacking the unused papers into plastic folders. By rights, they would have all been used over the coming weeks, forming the foundation for half a year of analysis back in his comfortable lab. He stared at them, all the brilliant articles he planned to write for the most prestigious scientific journals going up in smoke inside his head.

Suddenly, a gust of wind caught a pack of the chromatography papers, blowing them toward the back of the cave. He watched as they scattered and disappeared into the darkness.

Black swore out loud. The papers were ruined—contaminated—but he couldn’t just leave them. He’d publicly humiliated more than one archaeologist for leaving trash in a ruin.

He finished packing the chromatography setup and buckled the case shut. Then he stood up and walked toward the back of the cave, eyes to the ground. The papers had scattered along the very back of the midden heap; he could see some still blowing about in the random eddies of wind. Muttering again, he walked past the first granary along the rear wall of the ruin, trapping the papers with his foot as he went, picking them up and shoving them into a pocket. Soon he had counted eleven. The papers came twelve in a pack, he knew; where the hell was the last one?

Ahead of him lay the narrow opening to the Crawlspace, and he moved toward it, bending low under the rock roof. It was too dark to see, and he fumbled in his pocket for a penlight. Its feeble gleam struggled to pierce the darkness, illuminating dust, scattered bones, and—about ten yards away—the last paper, caught on a piece of broken skull.

To hell with Aragon and his ZST,Black thought sourly, getting down on his hands and knees and childishly shoving the bones out of his way. Another eddy of wind stirred up the dust inside the Crawlspace, and he sneezed explosively. Kicking the bones aside, he grabbed the final paper and stuffed it in his pocket. As he turned to go, he saw a large pack rat shamble into the beam of his flashlight, disturbed by the clatter of bones. It turned to face him, yellow teeth bared.

Black shied back, sneezed again, and waved his hand. The animal backed up with a chattering protest and a flick of its tail, but it did not flee.

“Yah!” Black cried, picking up a longbone and aiming it at the rat. With a sudden movement, the rat vanished into a small pile of rock, lying against the back wall of the Crawlspace.

Curious, he moved forward. On closer inspection, he could see that the rocks had not fallen from the ceiling of the Crawlspace, as he had assumed; they were of a different material than the sandstone cave. In the bottom of the pile of rocks the pack rat had made his opening, lined with twigs and cactus husks.

Black crawled closer, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell of guano and rat urine. As he played his light into the rathole, he saw that it led to a black space beyond: a large black space.

He examined the rocks again. It looked to his expert eyes that they were not a natural event. Rather, they had been piled there deliberately. A great deal of care had been taken to conceal this opening: Aragon must have passed it at least two dozen times without noticing anything, and Aragon had sharp eyes, even for an archaeologist. But his own eyes, Black mused, were better.

He sat in the darkness, feeling his heartbeat quicken. Something had been deliberately hidden behind the rock pile; painstakingly, cunningly hidden. A burial, most likely, or even a catacomb. Perhaps of great archaeological value. He glanced up and down the Crawlspace. He was alone, Aragon busy elsewhere on Holroyd’s postmortem analysis. He shone his light into the hole once more, probing farther.

This time, something glinted back at him.

Black withdrew the light, sat up, and remained motionless for a moment. And then he did something he had never done before. He picked up a stray bone and began working loose the small rocks around the rathole. Carefully at first, then with greater and greater urgency, he scrabbled with the rocks, pulling them out. Soon, a small opening in the back of the cave became visible. Thoughts of discomfort, disease, and poison evaporated from his mind, replaced by a new thought: a consuming desire to see what lay on the far side.

Dust began to cake on his sweaty skin; he tied a bandanna over his mouth and nose and continued. The bone fell apart and he continued working with his hands. In five minutes, he had cleared an opening large enough to admit his bulk.

Breathing deeply, he wiped his hands on the seat of his pants and plucked the bandanna from his mouth. Then he put his hands on either side of the opening and pulled himself through.

In a moment he was on the far side. He scrambled to his feet, panting hard. The air was thick, hot, and surprisingly humid. He looked around, his penlight stabbing through skeins of dust.

Almost immediately he saw the glint again—the unmistakable glint of gold—and for a moment his heart stopped. He was in a large black cavern. There, rising in front of him, dominating the cavern, was another Great Kiva. Incised and painted on its side was a huge disk that winked gold in his light. The Great Kiva had once had a door in the side, also blocked with loose stones and half buried in sand. Behind it stood an exquisite Anasazi pueblo, small but perfect, its two-storied roomblocks and ladders sealed in the cave and untouched for more than seven centuries.

He scrambled to his feet and approached the kiva, touching the gold disk with a trembling hand. The effect of gold had been created with a deep yellow pigment—Black guessed it was yellow ochre of iron—mixed with crushed flakes of mica. The whole thing had then been polished, creating a shimmering surface that looked remarkably like gold. It was the same method used to make the image in the Rain Kiva, only this disk was ten feet in diameter.

He knew then that he had found the Sun Kiva.

42

THE DIRTY SKY OF THE AFTERNOON HAD lifted, and the air above the canyon of Quivira was suffused with the last golden light of sunset. Already, the gloom of night was gathering in the bottom of the canyon, in strange juxtaposition to the brilliant narrow strip of sky above. The brief rain had released the scents of the desert: wet sand, the sweet smell of cottonwoods, mingled with the fragrant cedarwood from Bonarotti’s fire.

Nora, struggling to close one of the drysacks, noticed none of the beauty, smelled none of the scents. To her, still numbed by the events of the day, the valley was anything but benign. A few minutes before, Swire and Smithback had returned from their grisly errand, and they now rested by the fire, exhausted, faces blank.

With an effort, she heaved the drysack alongside the growing pile of equipment, then grabbed an empty duffel and began to fill it. Much of the evening would be spent packing the gear, caching some of it, getting the rest ready for the long, wet trip out the slot canyon to the horses. Once they had packed and gotten away from the valley and its divisive influences, she felt sure, they would be able to function as a team once again; at least, long enough to bring the details of their remarkable find back to the Institute.

A harsh, ragged shout from the direction of the rope ladder intruded on her thoughts. She looked up to see the tall figure of Aaron Black come striding through the gloaming, his face gray with dirt, his clothing streaked, hair wild. For a terrifying moment, she was certain he had caught whatever it was that killed Holroyd. But this fear was quickly dispelled by the look of triumph on his face.

“Where’s Sloane?” he boomed, looking around animatedly. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sloane!” The valley reverberated with his shouts.

“Are you all right?” Nora asked.

As Black turned toward her, Nora could see sweat springing from the mud caked to his brow, running in dun-colored rivulets down his face. “I found it,” he said.

“Found what?”

“The Sun Kiva.”

Nora straightened up, releasing her hold on the duffel and letting it fall back into the sand. “You found what?”

“There was a blocked opening behind the city. Nobody noticed it before. But Idid. I found it.” Black’s chest was heaving, and he could barely get out the words. “Behind the Crawlspace is a narrow passageway that leads into another cavern behind the city. And, Nora, there’s a whole secret city hidden back there. Right in front is a Great Kiva, a sealed kiva. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before.”

“Let me get this straight,” Nora said slowly. “You broke through a wall?”

Black nodded, his smile broadening.

Nora felt sudden anger course through her. “I specifically forbade any disturbance like that. My God, Aaron, all you’ve done is open up a new area to be looted. Have you forgotten we’re about to leave?”

“But we can’tleave now. Not after this discovery.”

“We absolutely areleaving. First thing in the morning.”

Black stood rooted in place, anger and disbelief growing in his face. “You haven’t heard what I said. I found the Sun Kiva.We can’t leave now. The gold will be stolen.”

Nora looked more intently at his face. “Gold?” she repeated.

“Christ, Nora, what else do you think is in there? Corn? The evidence is overwhelming. I just found the Anasazi Fort Knox.”

As Nora stared at him, in growing consternation and disbelief, she saw Sloane come up through the twilight, oversized camera under one arm.

“Sloane!” Black called out. “I found it!” He rushed over and embraced her. Smiling, she disentangled herself, and looked from him to Nora with a quizzical expression. “What’s this?” she asked, carefully setting down the camera.

“Black found a sealed cave behind the city,” Nora replied. “He says the Sun Kiva is inside it.”

Sloane looked at Black quickly, smile vanishing as comprehension dawned.

“It’s there, Sloane,” he said. “A Great Kiva, sixty feet in diameter, with a sun disk painted on its side.”

A powerful play of emotions ran quickly across Sloane’s face. “What kind of disk?”

“A great sun in yellow pigment, mixed with mica and polished. It looks just like gold. I thought it wasgold when I first saw it.”

Sloane suddenly became very pale, then flushed deeply. “Paint mixed with mica?”

“Yes. Crushed biotite mica, which has a golden cast to it. A brilliant imitation of the real thing. Which is exactly the kind of symbolic representation you’d find on the outsideif they were storing—”

“Take me to it,” Sloane said urgently. Black grabbed her hand and they turned away.

“Hold on!” Nora barked.

The two turned to look at her, and with dismay Nora read the passion in their faces. “Just a minute,” she continued. “Aaron, you’re acting like a pothunter, not a scientist. You should never have broken into the back of the cave. I’m sorry, but we can’t have any more disturbance.”

Sloane looked at her, saying nothing, but Black’s face grew dark. “And I’msorry,” he said loudly, “but we’re going up there.”

Nora looked into Black’s eyes, saw there was no point in arguing with him, and turned to Sloane instead. “For good or ill, everything that happens here is going into the final report,” she went on urgently. “Sloane, consider how your father will react if he hears we busted willy-nilly into that kiva. If Black is right, this could be the most important discovery yet. Even more reason why we have to proceed carefully.”

At the mention of her father, the sudden hunger seemed to leave Sloane’s face. She tensed, struggling to regain her composure.

“Nora, come up with us,” she said with a quick smile. “All we’ll do is look. What harm is there in that?”

“Absolutely,” said Black. “I’ve touched nothing. Nothing has happened here that can’t go into a public report.”

Nora looked at each of them in turn. Smithback, Swire, and Bonarotti had come over and were listening intently. Only Aragon was missing. She glanced at her watch: almost seven o’clock. She thought about what Black had said: a hidden city, the Sun Kiva. What was it Aragon had said in the Rain Kiva? “There’s a piece of the puzzle still missing. I thought it would be in this kiva. But now, I am not so sure.” If Aragon were here, no doubt he’d disapprove. But she knew Black’s find could mean the key to everything. The fact that it might be looted and destroyed after they were gone filled her with a helpless anger. Because of that, they had an obligation to document the inner cave, at least in photographs. Besides, if she were to keep the group together, she felt she had no choice but to bend just a little. The harm had been done; Black’s transgression would be dealt with later, and not by her.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll make a short visit. Only long enough to take photographs and decide how best to reseal the cave. No more violations of any sort. Am I understood?” She turned to Sloane. “Bring the four-by-five camera. And Aaron, you get the fluorescent lamp.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, a small group stood huddled together in the confines of the inner cave. Nora gazed in awe, overwhelmed despite herself by the richness of the site, by the perfect little gem of an Anasazi pueblo hidden behind the mysterious kiva. The greenish glare of the lamp threw magic-lantern patterns on the irregular walls. It was a small pueblo, no more than thirty rooms; no doubt some kind of sanctum sanctorumfor the priests. For that reason alone, it would be exceedingly interesting to study.

The Sun Kiva itself was unadorned except for the great polished disk, glinting in the harsh light. Thick ribbed dust lay in drifts against its base and along its walls. The kiva had been carefully plastered with adobe, and she saw that the only opening in its side had been blocked with rocks.

“Look at that stonework,” said Black. “It’s the most fortified kiva I’ve ever seen.”

A pole ladder was leaning against one side of the kiva. “That was leaning against the roomblocks,” Black said eagerly, following Nora’s glance. “I brought it over and climbed onto the roof. There’s no roof opening. It’s been totally sealed shut.” His voice dropped a notch. “As if it’s hiding something.”

Sloane broke away from the group and walked up to the sun disk. She stroked it lightly, almost reverently, with her fingers. Then she glanced back at Nora, briskly unpacked her camera kit, and began setting up the first shot.

The group stood silently while Sloane moved about the cavern, shooting the kiva and its associated roomblocks from a variety of angles. Soon she rejoined them, folded up her tripod, and put the camera body back in its case.

Even the loquacious Smithback had remained silent and, most uncharacteristically, taken no notes. There was a palpable tension in the air; a tension quite different, Nora realized, than any she had felt at the site before.

“Done?” she asked. Sloane nodded.

“Before we leave tomorrow morning,” Nora went on, careful to keep her voice neutral, “we’ll reblock the hole as best we can. There’s not much to bring a looter back behind the granaries. If we hide it well, they’ll miss it.”

“Before we leave?” Black repeated.

Nora looked at him and nodded.

“By God, not until we open this kiva,” said Black.

Nora looked at his face, then at Sloane. And then at Swire, and Bonarotti, and Smithback. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said quietly. “And nobody’s opening this kiva.”

“If we don’t do it now,” Sloane said, her voice loud, “nothing will be left when we return.”

There was a tense silence, broken by Bonarotti. “I would also like to see this kiva full of gold,” he said.

Nora waited, taking measured breaths, thinking about what she was going to say and how she was going to say it.

“Sloane,” she began quietly. “Aaron. This expedition is facing a crisis. One person has died. There are people out there who killed our horses, and who may try to kill us. To open and document this kiva properly would take days. We don’t havedays.” She paused. “I’m the leader of this expedition. It’s my choice to make. And we’re leaving tomorrow.”

A tense silence gathered in the cave.

“I don’t accept your so-called choice,” Sloane said in a low tone. “Here we are, on the verge of the greatest discovery, and what is your answer? Go home. You’re just like my father. You have to control everything. Well, this is mycareer, too. This is mydiscovery as much as it is yours. If we leave now, this kiva will be looted. And you’ll have thrown away perhaps the greatest discovery in American archaeology.” Nora saw that she was shaking in anger. “I’ve been a threat to you from the beginning. But that’s your problem, not mine. And I’m not going to let you do this to my career.”

Nora looked hard at Sloane. “You mention your father,” she said slowly. “Let me tell you what he said to us, right before we left for Quivira: ‘You are representing the Institute. And what the Institute represents is the very highest standard of archaeological research and ethical conduct.’ Sloane, what we do here, what we say here, will be studied, debated, second-guessed by countless people.” She softened her tone. “I know how you feel. I want to open this kiva as much as you do. And we willbe back to do this the right way. I promise you’ll get all the credit you deserve. But until that time, I absolutely forbid the opening of this kiva.”

“If we leave here now, there will be nothing left when we return,” Sloane said, her eyes locked on Nora. “And then we’llbe the ones doing the second-guessing. Go on and run, if you want. Just leave me a horse and some supplies.”

“Is that your final word?” Nora asked quietly.

Sloane merely stared in return.

“Then you leave me no choice but to relieve you of your position on the archaeological team.”

Sloane’s eyes widened. Then her gaze swivelled to Black.

“I’m not sure you can do that,” Black said, a little weakly.

“You’re damn right she can do it,” Smithback suddenly spoke up. “Last time I checked, Nora was leader of this expedition. You heard what she said. We leave the kiva alone.”

“Nora,” Black said, a pleading note entering his voice, “I don’t think you appreciate the magnitude of this discovery. Just on the other side of that adobe wall is a king’s ransom in Aztec gold. I just don’t think we can leave it for . . .”

His voice trailed off. Ignoring Black, Nora continued to look hard at Sloane. But Sloane had turned away, her eyes fixed on the large painted disk on the kiva’s side, glowing brilliantly in the fluorescent light. Then she gave Nora one last, hateful look and walked to the low passageway. In a moment she was gone. Black stood his ground a little longer, staring from the kiva to Nora and back again. Then, swallowing heavily, he tore himself away and wordlessly made his way out into the Crawlspace.

43

SKIP KELLY MADE HIS CAREFUL WAY DOWN THE far reaches of Tano Road North, doing his best to keep the VW from bottoming out on the dirt road. It was terrible road, all washboard and ruts: the kind of road that was a much-coveted asset in many of Santa Fe’s priciest neighborhoods. Every quarter mile or so, he passed another enormous set of wrought-iron gates, flanked by adobe pillars, beyond which a narrow dirt road wound off through piñon trees: portals to unseen estates. Occasionally, he caught glimpses of buildings—a caretaker’s cottage, an immaculate set of barns, an enormous house rising from a distant ridgeline—but most of the great estates along Tano Road were so well hidden that one hardly knew they existed.

The road narrowed, the piñons crowding in on either side. Skip slowed even further, eased his foot onto the clutch, elbowed Teddy Bear’s huge muzzle out of his face, and once again checked the number scribbled onto a folded sheet of paper, dim in the evening light. Not far now.

He came over the brow of a hill and saw the road peter out a quarter mile ahead, ending in a thicket of chamisa. To the left, a great rock of granite rose out of the earth. Its face had been polished flat, and ESG had been engraved on it in simple, sans-serif letters. Beyond the rock was an old ranch gate. It looked much more battered than the shiny monstrosities he had just driven past. As he eased the car closer, however, he saw that the shabbiness of the gate belied its immensely strong construction. Beside it was a small keypad and an intercom.