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  Copyright

  The Dig

  Copyright © 2010 by Michael Siemsen

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the author.

  First Edition January 2011

  Second Edition February 2012

  Published by

  Fantome, Inc.

  The Dig

  MICHAEL SIEMSEN

  This book is dedicated to Vicky.

  “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

  — Marcel Proust

  1

  DR. GARRETT RHEESE SAT IN A canvas folding chair and watched his workers toil. How miserable life must be for those born to a race cursed by God. He wondered, did the Kikuyu have the least inkling of the offense their very presence gave to civilized sensibilities? Even shutting one’s eyes to the physical unpleasantness—the lips, the nose, the spring-wire thatch of hair, the revolting eating habits—there was still that incessant, cacophonous jabbering. And to top it all, they stank. He would send every one of them home to their kraals and shantytowns were they not such cheap labor. Oh, yes, the Almighty had been in a spiteful mood the day he created the Kikuyu.

  “Enzi!” Rheese shouted. “Tell your boys to get the bloody compressors away from the edge!”

  The lanky brown foreman glanced across the clearing and frowned—the big, noisy units were indeed perched dangerously close to the pit’s unstable wall. How many times must he tell the boys?

  “Too sorry, Professor,” he replied. “Too very sorry—I’ll push them back, chapu-chapu!”

  Enzi knew that the men took a certain passive-aggressive satisfaction in forgetting certain rules, but how foolish to risk their own safety merely to irritate the mkundu. He chuckled in spite of himself at the epithet, Swahili for “the anus,” as the Englishman was known by one and all—though, wisely, uncertain just how much Swahili the professor knew, they refrained from using it within his earshot.

  After wrestling the two heavy compressors a prudent distance from the edge, Enzi peered down at the sizable excavation, breathing in the sweat- and urine-scented air. His laborers knew they were not to piss down below, but with Rheese docking their pay for every minute at the surface, they often preferred to risk it. Enzi scanned the welter of black arms and backs, gleaming with sweat, picking, drilling, and jack-hammering at the fractured rock walls and floor, working ankle deep in muddy water. He had watched this particular dig grow wider and deeper for the past three weeks. They had created countless craters just like it elsewhere in Kenya, and countless more would no doubt follow.

  Ever watchful for slackers, Enzi spotted two men standing idle at the far end.

  “Chui, Kanu, get you tools out of water!” he barked, glancing back to see if the professor was still watching. Luckily, he must have retired to the air-conditioned shade of his RV. Looking below again, Enzi saw that Chui had hefted his jackhammer to bang away at a seam in the far left corner, but what was Kanu doing? He was simply standing there in the opposite corner, like a child in trouble at school.

  “Kanu!” Enzi shouted again. “If you pissing over there, you pumping out the floor tonight!”

  Kanu twisted his head around and motioned subtly with his chin for Enzi to come over.

  “What…” Enzi stopped himself. If Kanu had found something important, there was no need to alert the entire site.

  Enzi walked casually to the lift and rode the rusty, rattling box down to the bottom, where the stench, noise, and heat intensified. Sloshing through the mud in his black rubber irrigation boots, he crossed to the far end of the pit, where Kanu appeared to be pulling at something in the craggy rock.

  “What you find, Kanu?” Enzi said softly.

  Kanu turned with wild eyes, scanning the area beyond Enzi’s shoulders before stepping back a little so the foreman could see.

  “What you…” Enzi shot a look at Kanu, standing slack-jawed beside him in the muddy water amid the din of picks and jackhammers. Moving closer to shield the find from curious eyes, he reached out and touched its seemingly delicate surface. It was fixed tightly in the limestone matrix, its exposed end giving a little as he ran his fingers over it. The texture was rough, but perhaps only from the flaky bits of rock and fossil shell embedded in it. Bewildered, Enzi let his gaze drift upward, scanning the sedimentary strata from the oldest dolomitic limestone vein at ankle height, all the way to the top. How many millions of years below the surface had they dug? The imprints of Cretaceous Period fossils a few meters above him provided a rough answer.

  Enzi glanced behind him and wondered how the professor would react. It depended upon the man’s mood—he was as likely to bestow a “Great job!” as a snarling “Why are you wasting my time with this rubbish?”

  “Zuberi!” he shouted. “Get Professor!”

  A tall, hunched fellow in patched blue-gray dungarees raised a shoulder and hand in question.

  “Mkundu! Get the mkundu!”

  Garrett Rheese sat at his now-muddied breakfast table and glowered at the source of his newest problem, working out mentally all that he must soon explain.

  He dropped it with a clunk onto the wooden tabletop and picked up a piece of the stone matrix that had held it for who-knew-how-long. In one side, Rheese could see the imprint of the artifact; its pattern captured perfectly in the calcite as if it had been molded right there. He could already hear the first question: “Tell us, Professor, do you always use pneumatic hammers in the extraction of rare fossils?”

  Wiping the sweat from his bald pate, he considered hiding it. The artifact was obviously too important simply to discard, but without detailed photos, drawings, and samples thoroughly describing its discovery location and provenance, it would be an irrelevant find. He had spent the past hour trying to come up with an alternate explanation. Half a meter below Lower Cretaceous sediment… What is that—a hundred million years old? It could be worth its age in cash, but it could also be nothing but an unwelcome spotlight on his true objectives in this godforsaken country. The project’s checking account would not be refilled, the University and Museum Group would smear his name for good, and he would never find what he knew to be here.

  With a sigh, Rheese taped the object between two foam pads and locked it in the safe beneath the bench seat. He needed to take a walk.

  Sitting in the shade of the canvas mess fly, Enzi heard the trailer door swing open and glanced behind him. His eyes met with Dr. Rheese’s for only a second before he turned back to his cardboard plate. The professor’s face had lacked its usual look of simmering irritation. Was it fear he had seen in its place?

  Whatever the reason, the professor’s order to halt all digging for the past seventy minutes told Enzi all he needed to know for now: the artifact was genuine, and he would be telling many lies for this Englishman in the coming days.

  2

  THE UPS COURIER RANG THE DOORBELL AT 312 Kaspar Avenue. Her big brown van idled behind her, parked beside a 2000’s Jetta—she liked the U-shaped driveways in this neighborhood because there was no street parking and it meant she never had to back out of the driveways.

  A pair of eyes appeared in the diamond-shaped window, and the door swung open.

  “Hi there!” said the pale twenty-something attached to the eyes. He wore a tight gray T-shirt that read Brand New, which she found ironic because it had that intentionally distressed look, along with several drips of blue and orange paint. The same paint had ruined his
baggy jeans and polished his left big toenail. She thought he’d be a good-looking man in five or six years, when his jaw filled out more and his chin gained some definition.

  “Three packages for Matthew Turner,” The courier said as she held out her brown scanner for him to sign. The man looked at it and then at his hands.

  “Crap! Hang on a sec,” he said, and disappeared to rummage about for something out of sight. She was pretty sure she heard something break before he reappeared wearing latex gloves. “Hah-hah… sorry. I usually have some hanging by the door.”

  She’d seen it before, OCD types who didn’t like to touch anything, because they thought they were going to catch the plague. He took the scanner to sign. She wondered if his messy hair had been styled that way, or if it was simply a mess. Its straw-colored streaks could have been highlights or from real sunshine—by the pallor of his skin, she was betting highlights. He handed back the device and she read the name.

  “Are you Matthew Turner?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yup, afraid so… Do you mind bringing them in? I’m not a serial killer or anything.”

  Not funny, she thought. “I can put them right inside the door, is that all right?”

  He nodded and stepped back. She glanced around the interior and gathered, from the open boxes and bare walls, that they were moving in. Seeing the gaming chair on the floor in front of the TV, the chaos of game consoles, and the style of the furniture, she sensed a bachelor vibe.

  “Um… not to pry, but is this your house? I mean, do you live here alone?”

  “Sure do. And yes, it’s my house. Not renting or anything. Awesome, right?” He grinned.

  She slid the last and biggest box into the house and stood back up.

  “Yeah, awesome. So are you some millionaire’s lucky kid or what?” She never minded coming across as nosy.

  “Nope, just lucky.” He flashed a pearly white smile.

  “Well, have a good day, sir,” she said as she turned back through the open doorway. Kind of cocky, but intriguing.

  “You, too!”

  The new cell phone on Matthew Turner’s new desk began to buzz, and then chimed out its default ring tone. He shut the door and jogged to his new office, picked up the phone, and frowned at the unknown number displayed on the screen.

  “This is Matt,” he answered.

  “Hi, Matt, this is Daphne at Nautique Exotics.”

  “Oh, hi, Daphne, so glad you called… Is it in?”

  “Yes, it is. Will you be picking it up, or would you like to take advantage of our free delivery service?”

  “Um… well, if I drive my V-Dub over there and the Porsche back, could someone get my old car back to me?”

  “I believe I could arrange that, sir.”

  Matt spun in his chair and cracked his knuckles with nervous excitement. As the newest multimillionaire in Raleigh, he was making a big splash with the local purveyors of luxury goods.

  His new iPad prompted him to accept some license agreement for an app he’d downloaded. With all of the highly useful apps out there, this was going to take most of the day, he thought. And he hadn’t even started on the useless apps! He wondered if there was someone he could hire that would just intuitively know what kind of stuff he would like on there and install it all for him. Is that what other rich people did? Ugh, but then some random dude would be touching my stuff…

  His cell buzzed again, and he snatched it up before the ring began.

  “This is Matt,” he said, making a mental note to change the ring tone before it grew truly annoying.

  “Hey, Matt!” It was George from the museum. “You finish yet?”

  Matt grimaced and slapped the end button. Crap! He was supposed to have gotten back to them a few days ago, but he had hardly glanced at the artifact. He spun his chair around as he put on his thin leather gloves and scanned the messy office for the package that had arrived three days ago. He scuttled the rolling chair over to an open box nearby and picked it up, digging into the foam peanuts. His cell phone began to vibrate again behind him, and he rolled back to silence it.

  He frowned as he looked at the piece from the box, turning it over in his hands. It was a three-inch section of smooth, dark-stained wood, decoratively beveled on three sides. A squiggly line of dry, cracked glue marked the only unstained side. Two holes indicated where the piece had previously been screwed into something.

  Unable to recall if he had locked the front door, Matt set the wood on the desktop and debated whether to go through the house to make sure everything was secure before proceeding. Caution won and he did his rounds. Note to self: get security system activated. He flopped back in his chair and opened his desk drawer, pulled out his armband timer, and slid it up to his forearm. He turned it on and pressed the batt button to check the charge—plenty of juice. He rolled the chair under the desk and fidgeted until he was comfortable.

  He inhaled deeply and said aloud, “Okay… ready for you.”

  With the timer set for one minute, he pressed start. He stretched his hands out before him, flat and steady, approaching the wooden piece as if about to give it a back massage.

  Contact.

  The usual rushing sound filled his ears as he felt his body roll forward into someone else’s. Sometimes it felt as if he were surging forward, sometimes backward—he had never understood what determined the direction. His eyes focused, adjusting to the other person’s as he went through his well-practiced routine.

  I’m male. I’m forty-seven. My name is Jakob Herz, and I was born in Dortmund, Germany, in 1892. The year is 1939. I live in Kalisz, Poland. I am frightened. They are in the neighbors’ house already. I open my grandmother’s writing table to remove the jewelry. I will hide it in the chimney.

  Goddamn it! He sent me some Nazi crap again and didn’t even warn me! That’s it, Georgie—you’re done.

  Through Jakob Herz’s eyes, Matt found himself digging through this ornate desk, hearing shouts and gunshots outside and in other homes nearby. He has a pistol upstairs.… Should he retrieve the pistol? Matt says, Hell yes! Shoot the first son of a bitch that comes through the door! But he knows he has no control over the experience. Jakob is apparently more interested in hiding these items in hopes that his family will be able to retrieve them when they return from the lake tomorrow. Matt and Jakob both panic because the soldiers will not be gone by the time the family returns, unaware of… Five loud wooden taps on the front door, and Matt wondered if the imprint would fade out or if the sixty seconds would elapse in time to save him. He was not in the mood to feel a bullet rip through their body.

  Rewind.

  I open my grandmother’s desk to remove…

  Again… more.

  I open my grandmother, Hilde Weiss’s, desk to remove…

  That’ll do it, thank you. Wow, new speed record!

  Matt’s hands drew back reflexively as the timer began buzzing in his head. He struck the stop button on his arm, glanced around the room, and took down some notes. A quick look at his phone revealed that George had called again while he was reading the piece. Oh, don’t worry, George. We’re going to have a nice little chat shortly. Now, let’s see if we can’t meet granny Hilde. Resetting his timer for five minutes, he reached for the wooden piece again.

  The ear-sucking, familiar disorientation, and he found himself with Jakob in the same panicked state. Fast-forward… Jakob again—penning a letter. Must have been an emotional letter. Nope, earlier… c’mon, hurry up to the next imprint. Matt waited through the letter. He had never been able to fast-forward past an unread imprint. Some kind of stupid limitation set by those that handed out psychic powers.

  Jakob picked up the letter to review it and a few seconds later, dark space took over the scene. Matt thought about the car awaiting him just ten little miles away. A candlelit room coalesced out of the mist before him.

  I am Hilde Weiss. I’m female. I’m thirty-four years old. I was born in Paris, in 1832. The year is 1866. I l
ive in Dortmund, Germany. I am happy that my husband, Samuel, has given me this wonderful gift. “Where did you get it, love?” she asks him as she runs her fingers over its smooth, dark-stained surface.

  There’s Samuel. She looks at his eyes… loves those eyes… more so at this moment, apparently, than normally.

  “It was Danke Stern’s,” he says. Hilde looks back at the desk and strokes it again. “It’s eighty years old.”

  Seventeen eighty-six—Yahtzee!

  They look back at Samuel. He’s ready for his thank-you kiss, and likely a more demonstrative kind of thank-you as well.

  Matt waited impatiently for the timer to shock him out of it. He’d been the woman in these situations enough times already. Come on, let’s go. Job done. “I love you, Samuel! How did you get it from her?” A reasonable question, it seemed. It looked as though these folks weren’t exactly living the high life in this one-room hovel.

  But before Samuel answered, Matt slapped the stop button on his timer and wrote more notes on his legal pad. Then, pulling his gloves back on, he shoved the piece deep into the box of popcorn. Where had he put all the tape guns? He quickly pulled a strip off one of his own boxes, sealed the top, and stuck the return label over the old label. He breathed his first sigh of relief as he dropped the package onto his doorstep and walked back inside. The house was clean again.

  “New York Metropolitan Mus—” George answered.

  “Hi, Georgie,” Matt said with a menacingly pleasant tone.

  “Oh… hey, Matt! I got cut off. Tried to call you back, but—”

  “Yeah, right. To answer your question, yes, I did finish with it. I’ll admit, I was pretty shocked to discover what it is you sent me.”

  George’s gulp was clearly audible.

  “Look, Doctor Meier made me!” George said with quaking voice. “See, this Jewish family with living descendants—”

  “That was it, okay?” Matt interrupted. “The last read. I’ll e-mail you my notes later.”