1 - Prelude
It had only been a minor earthquake, just sufficient to set the seismographs deep in their London and Moscow university basements twitching with interest, but at its epicenter in the hills of northern Italy it had been enough to send the first floor of the conference block at the Lake Reno Institute of Antiquities telescoping into the ground floor, trapping thirty archeologists in a basement lecture theatre. International Rescue had arrived on the scene within an hour, and in another two hours the paramedics were reloading their unused stretchers: - for them, for the thirty people rediscovering the wonder of fresh air and sun, and for the slightly disappointed scattering of spectators, it was all over.
Virgil Tracy put both feet hard down on the pedals and the Mole hauled itself up the ramp by its own bootstraps and into the pod, the light silty soil of Lake Reno flying from the transporter's tracks. Parking as close to the pod's ribs as possible he opened the heavy hatch and climbed down, off the short ladder and onto the tracks, then down to the pod floor with a clang. A lump of turf followed him down from the tracks and he kicked at it, dribbled it out to the pod door and sent it flying, then started back down the ramp to collect the Excavator. It was early summer at the top of the world, and Europe was turned to the sun. The grass in the field was fresh and new, and a little way off the bowling-green smoothness of the conference block's lawn was broken only by the caterpillar impress the Mole had left on its way to the rescue. Beside the main buildings of the Institute the sun glinted on the gunmetal back of Thunderbird One; Thunderbird Two, too big to land in the car park, had been diverted to the fields; hence the damaged lawn, and now the long walk back to fetch the Excavator. At the edge of the field a hoot made him turn his head: a jeep with the markings of the Italian police bounced towards him, its driver's blue forage cap set at a determined angle. It drove up and spun round him in a handbrake turn, stopping, he knew, with millimeter precision in the exact spot his brother intended it to.
"Nice work, Virgil." Scott leaned an elbow on the jeep's half-door. "Thirty lives saved and nothing worse than one broken collar-bone."
"Yeah, we did pretty well, Scott," Virgil agreed. "And the professor would've been okay if he hadn't tripped running back to save his lecture notes. They sure take their work seriously around here."
"Academics." Scott shrugged. "Who knows what makes 'em tick? Anyhow they're all still ticking, and I guess that's the important thing." He slapped the jeep's door. "I borrowed this to ferry the mobile control gear back to Thunderbird One; should take about ten minutes. Will you be ready?"
"I'll be ready to go." Virgil looked at the furrowed lawn. "You should see the Mole. We're going to have a real cleanup job when we get back."
"You're going to have a real cleanup job," Scott corrected. "As of tomorrow I'm working full time on the refit for Thunderbird One's launch bay." The jeep's engine revved and it strained on the brake. "Ten minutes, then. Call you when we're in the air."
The jeep roared away and Virgil set out across the lawn, following the Mole's trail towards the flattened conference block. He yawned; late evening at home, but here it was shaping up into a beautiful day. Some early summer flowers already blazed from their beds, spreading a soft scent that mixed with the fragrance of clipped grass, and in the distance beyond the Institute the blue edge of Lake Reno sparkled invitingly through the trees. He came to a barrier. Down the lawn's center a line of brick pillars had formed a climber-covered walkway, but several piers had collapsed, probably loosened by the earthquake and unable to withstand a second shaking as the Mole passed by. In a tangle before him lay an impressive rambling rose that had been about to burst into bloom but now clung limply to its fallen support, nipped in the bud forever. At its base a mesh of strong roots had pulled up a ball of soil the size of a table, making a shallow pit. He turned to skirt the wreckage, then saw something that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up slowly, one by one: stretched out at the shelving edge of the pit, palms together as if in silent supplication, were a pair of skeletal hands.
He blinked, but the hands remained. Swallowing he took a step nearer, then walked to the edge of the pit and looked down. The skeleton lay half-buried in the powdery soil, arm bones thrust forward and leg bones drawn up together in an odd and unnatural posture. The skull was tilted back, gazing at the sky, and the lower jaw hung open in an unnerving gape. In the cranium just beside the right eye-socket were two neat little round holes. He took off his cap, and knelt down for a closer inspection. Apart from the holes, which he tried not to look at, the bones were in good condition, their smoothness and lack of discoloration suggesting the unpleasant possibility of a fairly recent ownership. Around the sides of the pit some squarish indentations could have been the marks of a spade.
Over by the Institute buildings small figures moved around the car park, and heavy fire department vehicles crawled in the ruins of the conference block, but the lawn and its gardens were deserted. He raised his wristwatch-telecom, touched a button at the side of the dial, and Scott's face appeared on the miniature screen. It frowned. "What's the matter, Virgil? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Virgil turned away from the perforated skull that drew his eye with a repulsive fascination, and shook his head. "It isn't quite that bad, Scott," he replied seriously, "but there's something here I think you ought to take a look at."
"You're right, Virgil, they certainly look like bullet holes to me." Scott stood at the edge of the pit, gazing thoughtfully down. "Probably a pretty modern gun, and high-powered, too." He crouched down. "Some blackening on the bone; could mean the shots were fired from close range. And there's something else. Look at these wrists."
Virgil knelt down beside him. "Something's been wrapped round them."
"Yeah, a rope," Scott said grimly, "and the ankles are the same. He must've been tied up. Tied up then shot."
The thing in the pit gaped up at them in eyeless horror.
"Gee, the poor guy," Virgil said feelingly. "It's murder, then, Scott."
Scott straightened up. "Yeah, but who knows how long ago? Those bones could've been here ten years, maybe even fifteen or twenty. We'll get the police over right away, but they won't have much chance of catching the culprits now."
"He must've been here before the rose bush," Virgil pointed out. Guess they planted the garden when they built the new block, and that was fifteen years ago, according to the plaque back there."
"Well, that's your answer, then. This would've been one big construction site at the time, full of plenty of nice convenient holes. Ideal for disposing of a body."
"But here?" Virgil stood up and looked around. "This place is full of professors and dusty old guys who wouldn't know one end of a gun from the other. They dig up old bones, they don't bury them."
Scott shook his head. "He could've been brought from miles away, virtually anywhere in Italy. This is a nasty business, Virgil, probably some kind of syndicate killing. And those kind of crooks don't dump the evidence in their own back yard."
Virgil looked at the bony hands outstretched in their posthumous plea for succor, and frowned. "I just wish we could get hold of whoever did this, Scott. Doesn't seem right they should get clean away with it."
"Yeah. Well, that'll have to be up to the police." Scott turned to go. "This is one time International Rescue were too late. About fifteen years too late." He started for the jeep. "I'll get someone to take care of this while you load the Excavator, then maybe we can get home. Dad'll be worrying about us, I should've checked in five minutes ago."
Virgil watched the jeep bump back towards the Institute buildings, then, with a final reluctant glance at the contents of the pit, he set his cap back on his head and resumed his original course for the rubble of the conference block.
The Excavator sat on the buckled concrete at the edge of the ruins, its combined flail and scoop raised over the rockpile it had shifted to let the Mole through. Its tracks, smaller than the Mole's, had nevertheless collected their share of the Institute's turf, and Virgil wandered round it, knocking away the bigger lumps with his boot. As one dropped, something too regular to be a stone rolled away and settled, and he picked it up. It was a blackened little disc, coin-sized but perhaps a bit thicker, and crusted over with a rough, stony coat. He scratched at it experimentally and a chip detached, revealing a dull surface and some spidery lines that could have been writing, but could equally well have been worm tracks, except that worms didn't usually eat metal. The thought of worms brought some unpleasant associations, and he was about to consign his find to the rubble when an impatient tooting from the jeep at the edge of the car park reminded him of his original purpose, and he put a foot on the bottom rung of the Excavator's ladder, dropped the disc into his pocket, and promptly forgot all about it.