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“Which columns?” Remi asked.
“The Karyatids. They stood at the entrance to the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi.” Before either Remi or Sam could ask the next question, Evelyn answered it. “A Karyatid is a stone column—usually marble—in the shape of a robed Greek woman. The most recognizable ones are at the Athens Acropolis.”
“What kind of test was he trying to do?” Sam asked.
“I don’t remember. He had a jeweler’s hammer and pick and some kind of acid kit. . . . I put it all down in my report to the board. I may still have a copy. Let me look while we talk.”
They heard Evelyn moving about, then the rustle of cardboard and the shuffling of paper.
Remi asked, “What did he say when you caught him?”
“That he’d misunderstood the rules, which was bunk. I gave him the rules myself. He was lying, but he refused to say what he was up to. We ejected him and notified the guy’s department chair at Edinburgh.”
“No police?”
“The board decided against it. Lucky for him, too. The Greeks take that kind of thing seriously. He would have done jail time. I heard Edinburgh fired him, though, so that’s something. I don’t know what happened to him after that. Here’s the report. . . . His name was Bucklin. Thomas Bucklin.”
“And the acid kit he had?” Sam asked.
The sound of flipping pages came through the speaker. “This is strange,” Evelyn said. “I’d forgotten this part. He was using nitric acid.”
Remi said, “Why’s that strange?”
“It’s not a standard artifact test. It’s highly corrosive. We don’t use it.”
“Who does?”
Sam answered. “Metallurgists. It’s used to test for gold.”
They talked for a few more minutes, then hung up. Sam opened his MacBook Air—one of the few things they’d brought along in his backpack from Königssee—and logged into the hotel’s wireless Internet connection. There were almost two thousand hits for the name Thomas Bucklin. It took only a few minutes to narrow their search to the right one.
“Bucklin’s written a number of papers on classical history, mostly focusing on Persia and Greece, but nothing more recent than a year ago,” Sam said.
“About the time he got fired,” Remi said, looking over his shoulder. “Are any of his papers available?”
“Looks like JSTOR has them all.” JSTOR was a nonprofit online archive for scholarly work whose subjects ranged from archaeology and history to linguistics and paleontology. Sam, Remi, and Selma used the site extensively. “I’ll have Selma download and forward them.” Sam typed up a quick e-mail and sent it. Selma responded thirty seconds later: Five minutes.
Remi asked, “Any mention of what he’s been up to since leaving Edinburgh?”
“Nothing.”
Sam’s e-mail chimed. Selma had found fourteen papers by Bucklin; they were included as pdf attachments. “Here’s something interesting,” Sam said. “According to Selma, Bucklin had been on a sabbatical from Edinburgh when he showed up on Evelyn’s doorstep.”
“So he was freelancing,” Remi replied. “He wasn’t there on behalf of the university. Who the heck is this guy?”
Sam stopped scrolling, his fingers frozen over the keyboard. He leaned closer to the screen and squinted. “There’s your answer. Have a look.”
Remi leaned over his shoulder. One of Bucklin’s papers included a photo of the author. It was small, and in black-and-white, but there was no mistaking the mostly bald pate, fringe of orange hair, and black-rimmed glasses.
Thomas Bucklin was the lab-coated man they’d encountered in Bondaruk’s private laboratory.
CHAPTER 52
Bucklin’s papers were compelling, if not well received or widely circulated. According to JSTOR, Sam and Remi had been only the second party to purchase them since their publication. They had little trouble guessing the identity of the other interested party.
Sam forwarded the papers to his iPhone and gave Remi the MacBook, then they spent the next three hours wading through Bucklin’s work. Not wanting to taint one another’s conclusions, they waited until they were finished to compare notes.
“What do you think?” Sam asked. “Nutcase or genius?”