Free CRO-MAGNON by Robert Stimson

master knotted his sausage-like fingers and glanced at the two scientists. “Is . . . how you say . . .”
    Blaine exchanged a look with Calder. “Blocked?”
    Zinchenko shook his head. “ Nyet . Is . . .”
    “ Narrowed?” Calder said.
    The big man nodded. Blaine and Calder exchanged a glance.
    “ How badly?” she said.
    He shrugged. “Diver say two places. Swim through first one. Second one worse, afraid try.”
    Calder glanced at Blaine.
    “ Probably the two slippages Mathiessen warned us about,” she said.
    “ Salomon’s your boss. He must have briefed you.”
    “ This is the first I’ve heard of it,” she said.
    “ A blockage that a professional diver wouldn’t try.” Calder stared at Blaine. “Does Salomon make a habit of sandbagging his employees?”
    Blaine bent to open her suitcase. “As we’ve already discussed, Mr. Salomon is results-oriented. He doesn’t let anything stand in his way.”
    “ If the tunnel turns out to be blocked, he won’t have a choice.” Calder gazed through the front window at the snowy mountainside across the lake. “I wonder what else he hasn’t told us.”
    Blaine rummaged in the luggage, pushed aside a leather case, plunged her hands into a pile of clothes, and looked up in aggravation.
    “ What?” Calder said, as the door opened to a blast of cold air.
    “ My camera. It’s not here.”
    “ Was confiscated,” Gulnaz Fitrat said from the doorway. Teague stood behind her, both of them divested of suitcases.
    Blaine looked at her dumbly. “Confiscated?”
    “ Delyanov say no photographs.” She waved her cigarillo, a tendril of acrid smoke puckering Blaine’s nostrils. “Cameras will be returned when you leave.”
    Calder said, “They took mine, too?”
    “ Yes.”
    Blaine checked the rest of her luggage and found it intact. Probably the Tajiks were afraid she and Calder would smuggle out photos and grab the limelight. It must be obvious that a find like this had the potential to catapult a minor bureaucrat to anthropological prominence. She felt glad she’d had her staff disguise the genetic sampling kit as art supplies. She wished she’d thought to do likewise with the camera.
    She laid her hand on Calder’s arm, to remind him not to give away the scope of their mission. She noticed that for a desk jockey, he was sinewy. He nodded, but did not look pleased.
    “ I’ll need my camera to record remains, artifacts, and cave conditions,” he said.
    If Fitrat noticed the unspoken exchange of a moment ago, she made no mention. “Written report only,” she said.
    She held out her hand. “And you will now give me your cell phones.”
     
    #
     
    Written report only. Calder reckoned the Tajik government wanted him and Blaine to take a quick look and make a minimal report, so they could float a loan from the World Bank and carry on with the hydroelectric project and its accompanying bhat. And apparently, Salomon was also chasing some kind of profit. No one except himself and Blaine seemed interested in the purely scientific aspects of the discovery, and even the two of them seemed to view it from different professional perspectives.
    All the world is queer save thee and me, he thought . And even thou art a little queer. Could he trust her if the chips were down?
    He stepped to the trailer door and gazed past Fitrat and Teague at the bleak mountain lake, wondering if he should scrap the mission now before somebody got killed. Sensing motion, he turned and saw an erect man approaching from the west, his gait economical but efficient. Clean-shaven except for a black mustache, and fair-skinned, he looked in his late thirties.
    He came on toward the group, his manner almost military, and Calder saw that he was taller than most Tajiks he had seen in the city and was strikingly handsome. When the newcomer started to slip between Teague and Fitrat to mount the steps, Calder saw the “facilitator” shift his shoulders to block him. The newcomer squeezed through