The others squatted on the dirt or on the two rugged wooden benches pulled from the back of the single battered pickup, the same one that held the useless generator.

“Any luck?” Kylan asked. They were not very talkative this evening, perhaps because they saw the imminent dashing of their hopes and dreams. This dig had become their lives in the past few weeks. Two couples were already lovers.

Mitch held up his hand, made a grasping motion. “Flashlight,” he said.

Tom Pritchard, twenty-four, skinny, with a head of dusty and tousled blond hair, tossed him a black aluminum flashlight.

The students looked at each other, blank-faced in the way kids have of hiding what might be an inappropriate emotion: hope.

“What is it?” asked tall, stout Caitlin Bishop, far from her native New York.

Mitch lifted his head and sighed. “Probably nothing,” he said.

They crowded around, all pretense and weariness gone. They needed hope as much as they needed rehydrating fluids. “What?” “What is it?” “What did you find?”

Mitch said it was probably nothing; probably not what he thought it was. And even if it was, how did that figure into his plans? There were hundreds of shells from Spiro scattered in private and university collections. So what if he had just found one more?

What sort of prize was that to replace his family?

He waved them off with the flashlight, then aimed the beam up at the first star to appear in the sky. The air was dry and the beam was only visible because the dust they had been raising all day lingered in the still air.

“Anyone know about Spiro, Oklahoma? The Craig mound?” he asked.

“Mississippian civilization,” said Kylan, the best student in the group but hardly the best digger. “Opened during the nineteen thirties by the Pocola Mining Company. A disaster. Burials, pottery, artifacts, all gone, all sold to tourists.”

“A famous source for engraved conch shells,” Mitch added. “Decorated with birds and snakes and such, vaguely Mesoamerican designs. Probably part of an extensive bartering community spread through a number of cultures in the East and South and Midwest. Anybody know about these shells?”

They all shook their heads.

“Show us,” said Bernard Rowland and stepped forward, as tall as Mitch and broader across the shoulders. He was a Mormon and did not drink beer; Iced Sweat, a wickedly green drink in a large plastic bottle, was his liquid of choice.

Mitch led them back through the ranks of holes in the ground. Flies were starting to zizz and hum after hiding out during the heat of the day. The cattle feed lots near Lubbock were less than ten miles away. When the wind was right, the smell was impressive. Mitch wondered why anyone would want to build homes here, so close to that smell and the flies.

They came to his hole and the students stood a foot back from the dry edges. He climbed into the hole and pointed the flashlight at the terrace that held the shell, painstakingly revealed by his brush and dental pick work of the last six hours.

“Wow,” Bernard said. “How did it get out here?”

“Good question,” Mitch said. “Anybody have a camera?”

Kylan handed him her digital, Dyno-labeled “Potshooter.” Mitch drew out the marker strings with length measurements in small squares of tape, handed them to the students, who set them at right angles and weighted them with rocks, and then snapped a series of flash pictures.

Bernard helped Mitch out of the hole. They stood solemnly for a moment.

“Our treasure,” Mitch said. Even to himself, he sounded cynical. “Our only hope.”

Fallon Dupres, a twenty-three-year-old from Canada, who looked like a fashion model and kept severely aloof from most of the men, handed him another can of Coors. “Actually, the Craig mound shells weren't conchs,” she told Mitch in an undertone. “They were whelks.”

“Thanks,” Mitch said. Fallon tilted her head, blasé. She had made a pass at Mitch three days before. Mitch had suspected her of being the type of attractive woman that instantly gravitated to age and authority, however weak that authority might be. In the near vacuum of the little dig, he was the most authoritative male, and he was certainly the oldest. He had politely declined and told her she was very pretty, and under other circumstances he might oblige. He had hinted, in as roundabout a way as possible, that that part of his life was over. She had ignored the evasions and told him bluntly that his attitude was not natural.

In fact, Mitch had not had a woman since he and Kaye had parted last year in Phoenix, shortly after his release from prison. They had agreed to go their strategic ways. Kaye had gone to work for Americol in Maryland, and Mitch had gone on the road, looking for holes in the Earth to hide in.

“I thought Spiro was, like, a corrupt vice president,” said Larry Kelly, the dimmest and funniest of the crew. “How's a shell going to save our dig?”

Fallon, surprisingly, set herself to gently explain.

Mitch wandered off to check his cell phone. He had turned it off for the morning work hours, and forgotten to switch it on during the nap he had taken at the burning center of the day. There was one message. He vaguely recognized the number. With an awkward pass, he punched in the retrieval code.

The voice was instantly recognizable. It was Eileen Ripper, a fellow archaeologist and friend. Eileen specialized in Northwestern digs. They had not spoken in more than ten years. “Mitch, something dishy. Are you busy? Better not be. This is, as I said, dishy. I am stuck here with a bunch of women, can you believe it? Want to upset some more apple carts? Call me.”

Mitch looked across the darkening plateau and the black ditches to where Fallon was explaining the Spiro shells to a group of bone-weary students, about to have their dig closed and covered over by lawns and concrete slabs. He stood with the phone in his weak hand, clenching his strong hand. He could not stand the thought of having this dig closed, however trivial it was, of having another part of his life be judged useless.

He had been put away for two years for assault with a deadly weapon—a large wood chip. He had not seen Kaye for more than a year. She was working on viruses for Marge Cross, and in Mitch's judgment, that was a kind of defeat as well.

And there was Stella, stashed away by the government in a school in Arizona.

Fallon Dupres walked up behind him. He turned just as she folded her arms, watching him carefully. “It isn't a whelk, Mitch,” she said. “It's a broken clamshell.”

“I could have sworn,” he said. He had seen the Mesoamerican design so plainly.

“It's scratched up like a doodle pad,” the young woman said. “But it's not a whelk. Sorry.” She turned away, glanced at him one more time, smiled perhaps more in regret than pity, and walked off.

Mitch stood under the blue-black sky for a few minutes, wondering how many wish-thinks he had left in him before he lost it completely. Another door closing.

He could head north. Drop off and visit Stella along the way—if they let him. You could never find out in advance.

He called Eileen's number.

8

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Gianelli entered at the back of the chamber, carrying a stack of papers. Thomasen looked up. Augustine glanced over his shoulder. The last senator on the committee was followed by a Secret Service agent, who took a position with another agent by the door, and then by a small, intense-looking woman. Augustine recognized Laura Bloch. She was the main reason Gianelli was a senator, and she was a formidable political mind.

Augustine had also heard that Bloch was a bit of a spymaster.

“Glad you could make it, Dick,” Chase called out across the chamber. “We were worried.”

Gianelli smiled foxily. “Allergies,” he said.