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He panned the binoculars. “I see it.”
“Zoom in on the pallet.”
Sam did so. After a few seconds, he lowered the binoculars and looked at Remi. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s not my area of expertise,” Remi said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s a goliath ammonite. It’s a type of fossil, like a giant nautilus. This isn’t a mining camp, Sam. This is an archaeological dig.”
13
LANGTANG VALLEY, NEPAL
“A dig?” Sam repeated. “Why would King be conducting a dig?”
“No way to tell for sure,” Remi said, “but what’s going on here breaks about a dozen Nepalese laws. They take archaeological excavation very seriously, especially anything dealing with fossils.”
“Black market trade?” Sam speculated.
“That’s the first thing that popped into my head,” Remi replied.
In the last decade, the illegal excavation and sale of fossils had become big business, especially in Asia. China in particular had been cited as a primary offender by a number of investigative bodies, but all of them lacked the teeth to enforce penalties within her borders. The previous year, a report by the Sustainable Preservation Initiative estimated that of the thousands of tons of fossil artifacts sold on the black market, less than one percent of them are intercepted—and, of these, none led to a single conviction.
“It’s big money,” Remi said. “Private collectors are willing to pay millions for intact fossils, especially if it’s of one of the sexier species: Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus . . .”
“Millions of dollars is pocket change to King.”
“You’re right, but there’s no denying what’s in front of us. Wouldn’t this qualify as leverage, Sam?”
He smiled. “It would indeed. We’re going to need more than pictures, though. How do you feel about a bit of skullduggery?”
“I’m a big fan of skullduggery.”
Sam checked his watch. “We’ve got a few hours until nightfall.”
Remi turned around and retrieved their digital camera from her pack. “I’ll make the most of what daylight we have left.”
Whether a trick of light or a genuine phenomenon, twilight seemed to last hours in the Himalayas. An hour after Sam and Remi hunkered down in the foliage to wait, the sun began dipping toward the peaks to the west, and for the next two hours they watched dusk ever so slowly settle over the forest until finally the bulldozers’ and trucks’ headlights popped on.
“They’re finishing up,” Sam said, pointing.
Along the perimeter of the pit, digging crews were emerging from the tunnels and heading toward the ramp.
“Working from dusk till dawn,” Remi remarked.
“And probably for pennies an hour,” replied Sam.
“If that. Maybe their pay is, not getting shot at.”
To their right they heard a branch snap. They froze. Silence. And then, faintly, the crunch of footsteps moving closer. Sam gestured to Remi with a flattened palm, and together they pressed themselves against the ground, their faces turned right toward the sound.
Ten seconds passed.
A shadowed figure appeared on the trail. Dressed in olive drab fatigues and a floppy jungle hat, the man carried his assault rifle diagonally across his body. He walked to the edge of the pit, stopped, and gazed down. He raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the pit. After a full minute of this, he lowered his binoculars, then turned, stepped off the trail, and disappeared from view.
Sam and Remi waited for five minutes, then rose up onto their elbows. “Did you see his face?” she asked.
“I was too busy waiting to see if he was going to step on us.”
“He was Chinese.”