father.
“Years from now, I want you to look me up, and when this young man is older, I’d like to help with his education—if he’s still interested in all this.”
“I definitely will be,” Henry interrupted.
“That’s nice of you, Professor,” said Henry’s father.
“Nice has nothing to do with it,” Professor Peterson snapped. “I need men like your Henry. People with faith.”
Henry’s father looked away. His wife would be at home in the bedroom they use for storage, sitting on the carpet. She would be out when they got back—walking in the fields beyond the house.
He would fry eggs and make toast. Henry would watch. They would eat together in front of the television, watching Blue Peter .
Professor Peterson took the flint and set it next to an ashtray of old stamps. Then he took a key from his waistcoat pocket and opened a glass cabinet behind his desk. It was full of strangely shaped things. He carefully removed a fossilized dinosaur egg and turned around.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Henry. “I was given this when I was your age by my father. It belongs to you now.”
For the next twelve Christmases, a box of the year’s archaeological books and journals would arrive by post to the small semidetached house in Wales where Henry spent his childhood.
After about three years, however—Henry realized that all he’d found in the garden that afternoon was a flint in the shape of an axe head.
He wrote this in a letter to Professor Peterson, who was in the Middle East at the time. A month later, Henry received a postcard from somewhere very far away with writing he didn’t recognize.
Chapter Twenty-Two
On a mountain high above Athens, two figures leaned over a kitchen table in the blazing sun.
“This is peculiar,” Professor Peterson said, handing a magnifying glass to Henry. “I have a funny feeling it might be Lydian.”
“That doesn’t seem likely.”
The professor was referring to a discus the size of a dinner plate.
Henry spent the afternoon not thinking about his work. His old British dental tools scratched the ground but revealed only more questions about Rebecca. About eleven o’clock, Henry washed his hands over the sink, pumping the foot pedal to draw water. The professor appeared from the tent.
“Let’s take that discus down to the college now,” he said. “With Giuseppe away, it’s our only chance.”
“I was going to have lunch,” Henry said.
“Good, good, we’ll eat together at Zygos’s Taverna.”
Professor Peterson’s car occupied the extremely rare privilege of being the most battered automobile that had ever clunked and overheated its way along the Athenian roadways.
It was a dirt-brown Renault 16 the professor said he had bought when he still had hair. He had driven it over 1.3 million miles, most of which were accrued on long desert roads in the Middle East. According to the professor, the mileage clock had broken in 1983 and then started going backward in 1989. The professor said that when it got to zero, he would give it back to Renault with a ribbon tied around the bumper.
The dashboard was a mass of twisted wires (one of which was live) and the instruments were too dusty to read. Pinned to the sagging upholstery roof were photographs of the car at famous digs in Europe and the Middle East. According to the professor, the car had led a far more interesting life than any one person he had ever met. It was once stuck in the sand in Egypt and had to be pulled out by camels. It took two bullets running the Iraqi border into eastern Turkey with a half-ton statue strapped to the roof that Professor Peterson had stolen from thieves who had stolen it from pirates who had stolen it from an international arms dealer. In the end it turned out to be a fake.
In snowy Poland at Biskupin, the old Renault had rolled down a small embankment, almost crushing a Polish archaeologist, who was saved only by her enthusiasm for archaeology—the depth of her
“Years from now, I want you to look me up, and when this young man is older, I’d like to help with his education—if he’s still interested in all this.”
“I definitely will be,” Henry interrupted.
“That’s nice of you, Professor,” said Henry’s father.
“Nice has nothing to do with it,” Professor Peterson snapped. “I need men like your Henry. People with faith.”
Henry’s father looked away. His wife would be at home in the bedroom they use for storage, sitting on the carpet. She would be out when they got back—walking in the fields beyond the house.
He would fry eggs and make toast. Henry would watch. They would eat together in front of the television, watching Blue Peter .
Professor Peterson took the flint and set it next to an ashtray of old stamps. Then he took a key from his waistcoat pocket and opened a glass cabinet behind his desk. It was full of strangely shaped things. He carefully removed a fossilized dinosaur egg and turned around.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Henry. “I was given this when I was your age by my father. It belongs to you now.”
For the next twelve Christmases, a box of the year’s archaeological books and journals would arrive by post to the small semidetached house in Wales where Henry spent his childhood.
After about three years, however—Henry realized that all he’d found in the garden that afternoon was a flint in the shape of an axe head.
He wrote this in a letter to Professor Peterson, who was in the Middle East at the time. A month later, Henry received a postcard from somewhere very far away with writing he didn’t recognize.
Chapter Twenty-Two
On a mountain high above Athens, two figures leaned over a kitchen table in the blazing sun.
“This is peculiar,” Professor Peterson said, handing a magnifying glass to Henry. “I have a funny feeling it might be Lydian.”
“That doesn’t seem likely.”
The professor was referring to a discus the size of a dinner plate.
Henry spent the afternoon not thinking about his work. His old British dental tools scratched the ground but revealed only more questions about Rebecca. About eleven o’clock, Henry washed his hands over the sink, pumping the foot pedal to draw water. The professor appeared from the tent.
“Let’s take that discus down to the college now,” he said. “With Giuseppe away, it’s our only chance.”
“I was going to have lunch,” Henry said.
“Good, good, we’ll eat together at Zygos’s Taverna.”
Professor Peterson’s car occupied the extremely rare privilege of being the most battered automobile that had ever clunked and overheated its way along the Athenian roadways.
It was a dirt-brown Renault 16 the professor said he had bought when he still had hair. He had driven it over 1.3 million miles, most of which were accrued on long desert roads in the Middle East. According to the professor, the mileage clock had broken in 1983 and then started going backward in 1989. The professor said that when it got to zero, he would give it back to Renault with a ribbon tied around the bumper.
The dashboard was a mass of twisted wires (one of which was live) and the instruments were too dusty to read. Pinned to the sagging upholstery roof were photographs of the car at famous digs in Europe and the Middle East. According to the professor, the car had led a far more interesting life than any one person he had ever met. It was once stuck in the sand in Egypt and had to be pulled out by camels. It took two bullets running the Iraqi border into eastern Turkey with a half-ton statue strapped to the roof that Professor Peterson had stolen from thieves who had stolen it from pirates who had stolen it from an international arms dealer. In the end it turned out to be a fake.
In snowy Poland at Biskupin, the old Renault had rolled down a small embankment, almost crushing a Polish archaeologist, who was saved only by her enthusiasm for archaeology—the depth of her
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