"Uh-huh. . . ." But then he remembered some of the things the old guy had said, before he died. Some of the nonsense rhymes. "Yale in France, has no chance." Something like that.
"Where is it?" he said.
"Somewhere in southwest France, near the Dordogne River."
"Dordogne? How do you spell that?" Wauneka said.
DORDOGNE
"The glory of the past is an
illusion.
So is the glory of the present."
EDWARD JOHNSTON
The helicopter thumped through thick gray fog. In the rear seat, Diane Kramer shifted uneasily. Whenever the mist thinned, she saw the treetops of the forest very close beneath her. She said, "Do we have to be so low?"
Sitting in front alongside the pilot, Andre Marek laughed. "Don't worry, it's perfectly safe." But then, Marek didn't look like the sort of man to worry about anything. He was twenty-nine years old, tall, and very strong; muscles rippled beneath his T-shirt. Certainly, you would never think he was an assistant professor of history at Yale. Or second in command of the Dordogne project, which was where they were headed now.
"This mist will clear in a minute," Marek said, speaking with just a trace of his native Dutch accent. Kramer knew all about him: a graduate of Utrecht, Marek was one of the new breed of "experimental" historians, who set out to re-create parts of the past, to experience it firsthand and understand it better. Marek was a fanatic about it; he had learned medieval dress, language and customs in detail; supposedly, he even knew how to joust. Looking at him, she could believe it.
She said, "I'm surprised Professor Johnston didn't come with us." Kramer had really expected to deal with Johnston himself. She was, after all, a high-level executive from the company that funded their research. Protocol required that Johnston himself give the tour. And she had planned to start working on him in the helicopter.
"Unfortunately, Professor Johnston had a prior appointment."
"Oh?"
"With Fran?ois Bellin, the minister of antiquities. He's coming down from Paris."
"I see." Kramer felt better. Obviously, Johnston must first deal with authorities. The Dordogne project was entirely dependent on good relations with the French government. She said, "Is there a problem?"
"I doubt it. They're old friends. Ah, here we go."
The helicopter burst through the fog into morning sunlight. The stone farmhouses cast long shadows.
As they passed over one farm, the geese in the barnyard flapped, and a woman in an apron shook her fist at them.
"She's not happy about us," Marek said, pointing with his massive muscular arm.
Sitting in the seat behind him, Kramer put on her sunglasses and said, "Well, it is six o'clock in the morning. Why did we go so early?"
"For the light," Marek said. "Early shadows reveal contours, crop marks, all that." He pointed down past his feet. Three heavy yellow housings were clamped to the front struts of the helicopter. "Right now we're carrying stereo terrain mappers, infrared, UV, and side-scan radar."
Kramer pointed out the rear window, toward a six-foot-long silver tube that dangled beneath the helicopter at the rear. "And what's that?"
"Proton magnetometer."
"Uh-huh. And it does what?"
"Looks for magnetic anomalies in the ground below us that could indicate buried walls, or ceramics, or metal."
"Any equipment you'd like that you don't have?"
Marek smiled. "No, Ms. Kramer. We've gotten everything we asked for, thank you."
The helicopter had been skimming over the rolling contours of dense forest. But now she saw outcrops of gray rock, cliff faces that cut across the landscape. Marek was giving what struck her as a practiced guided tour, talking almost continuously.
"Those limestone cliffs are the remains of an ancient beach," he said. "Millions of years ago, this part of France was covered by a sea. When the sea receded, it left behind a beach. Compressed over eons, the beach became limestone. It's very soft stone. The cliffs are honeycombed with caves."
Kramer could indeed see many caves, dark openings in the rock. "There're a lot of them," she said.
Marek nodded. "This part of southern France is one of the most continuously inhabited places on the planet. Human beings have lived here for at least four hundred thousand years. There is a continuous record from Neanderthal man right up to the present."
Kramer nodded impatiently. "And where is the project?" she said.
"Coming up."
The forest ended in scattered farms, open fields. Now they were heading toward a village atop a hill; she saw a cluster of stone houses, narrow roads, and the stone tower of a castle rising into the sky.
"That's Beynac," Marek said, his back to her. "And here comes our Doppler signal." Kramer heard electronic beeps in her headphones, coming faster and faster.
"Stand by," the pilot said.
Marek flicked on his equipment. A half dozen lights glowed green.
"Okay," the pilot said. "Starting first transect. Three . . . two . . . one."
The rolling forested hills fell away in a sheer cliff, and Diane Kramer saw the valley of the Dordogne spread out beneath them.
The Dordogne River twisted in loops like a brown snake in the valley it had cut hundreds of thousands of years before. Even at this early hour, there were kayakers paddling along it.
"In medieval times the Dordogne was the military frontier," Marek said. "This side of the river was French and the other side was English. Fighting went back and forth. Directly beneath us is Beynac, a French stronghold."