“Absolutely.”
The truth was, the relatively warm air was feeling really good, and he didn’t mind lingering a bit. The new antiviral regimen was playing havoc with his usual malarial meds, and more than once that morning he’d felt a sudden shiver descend his spine. If anyone else under his command had reported similar problems, Slater would have promptly removed that person from active duty and ordered rest and maybe even a medical evaluation. But if he took himself out of the picture, if he admitted what was going on to anyone else on the team, the whole mission would grind to an immediate halt. Even more to the point, if, God forbid, word of the delay got back to Dr. Levinson at the AFIP, he’d instantly be replaced, recalled … and relegated to a desk job in D.C. forever after.
And that was not a risk he was prepared to take.
“This is our living room,” Dr. Lantos joked, waving her arm around the long, narrow space, illuminated by a row of light fixtures attached to a single aluminum beam that ran the length of the room. Counters had been set up on either side, topped with electron microscopes, racks of test tubes, vials, flasks, beakers, rubber gloves, and antiseptic dispensers. Underneath them there were cabinets and bins with neatly labeled and color-coded drawers.
“You have all the power you need?” Slater asked, and Lantos nodded vigorously, which only served to call his attention to the pencil, and the pen, she had stuck in the frizzy mop of her gray hair. He had the fleeting impression that if he looked hard enough in there, he could find anything from grocery lists to ticket stubs. It was one of the things that had always endeared her to him.
At the rear of the tent, a second chamber—a chamber within a chamber, as it were—had been erected behind its own clear plastic curtains; parting them, he was met by a blast of much colder air. A freezer, about half the size of a normal refrigerator, squatted on the triple-insulated rubber mat that comprised the floor. Standing in the center of the space was a long, stainless-steel autopsy table, and beside it a wheeled cart that held an array of vessels and receptacles for the organs and tissue samples they would be removing from the corpses they exhumed. Slater expected to take samples from no less than three or four, drawn from all quarters of the cemetery, before he was done. After inspecting the air vents, which were serviced by a separate filtration unit outside, Slater was satisfied that the place was indeed ready to go.
“Grab your hat,” he said. “It’s showtime.”
With Dr. Lantos in tow, Slater rounded up Professor Kozak, who was buried in his geological studies, and told them to wait for him by the main gates. Then, with some reluctance, he went to fetch Nika. He wished it could be avoided, he did not want her anywhere near the site and exposed to any of the myriad dangers it might present, but he also knew she’d be livid if he tried to leave her out.
Not to mention the fact that as the duly appointed tribal representative and mayor of the closest town, she could shut him down if she really wanted to.
Poking his head into the flap of her tent, he found her typing furiously on her laptop. She was compiling field notes, he knew, for an anthropological report she hoped to write, and Slater had not yet found the heart to tell her that none of what was happening on St. Peter’s Island was likely to see the light of day, much less in some academic journal. The only official report that would ever be written would be his own, and if experience was any indication, it would be restricted to a very small cadre of AFIP scientists and directors to review.
“The digging is done?” she said expectantly.
“It should be by the time we get there and suit up.”
Twirling around on her camp stool, she grabbed a worn and faded leather jerkin that was lying on her cot and slipped it over her head. It had a long fringe that hung below her waist, and red and black stitches depicting bears and eagles and otters all over it.
“When I said suit up, I meant a hazmat suit.”
“That’s fine,” she said, winding her long black hair into a glossy ponytail and flipping it over the collar of the jerkin. “But as the tribal rep, I’ve got to wear the sacred garment.” Pulling on a parka over everything else, she added, “And I’ll need a minute to say some words over any grave you open.”