Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations

“You know,” she said, while he returned to chewing away, “this pretty much settles it. It has to be one of our people, someone who was right there in the dining room that night – someone who heard Ivan get confused over Gibraltar and Guadalcanal.”

“That’s right. Rowley, Audrey, Buck, Adrian, Corbin, Pru – the very same people, by the way, who were around last night, when George brought those two vertebrae to the table. One of them obviously recognized what they were, what they represented, and rifled our room hunting for it. Which,” he added with a smile, “we still wouldn’t know about if old eagle-eye here hadn’t spotted a jacket hung backward.”

“Rowley, Audrey, Buck, Adrian, Corbin, Pru,” she recited. “So who had the motive? Which of them would benefit most from keeping the fake a secret?”

“Hey, you’re thinking like a cop now – that’s exactly what Fausto asked me.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said it was a pretty good motive for all of them, every last one.” He dabbed mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth and explained.

For each of them, the fact that there was no Gibraltar Woman, no First Family, would be a hideous blow to their reputations and even to their livelihoods. Adrian and Corbin probably had the most to lose. They had written the standard academic books on the First Family, and they had supervised the dig itself; there was no way they could come out of this without looking like bunglers and – worse than bunglers in the minds of fellow scientists – dupes. Or maybe it was Rowley that had the most to lose; he hadn’t been involved in the dig per se, but his precious museum was founded on its supposed findings, and his new book, the book he’d been working on for three years, was now worse than meaningless. Audrey “That does look good,” she said, indicating his sandwich. “How about cutting me off some?”

“It is good. Want one of your own?”

“No, I’d rather have a piece of yours.”

He sliced off a quarter for her and went back to his rundown.

Audrey, heretofore esteemed for her expertise and acumen, would be ridiculed as another dupe, and, considering her long record of caustic remarks about others, there were plenty of colleagues just waiting for the chance to do it. Buck had had nothing whatever to do with Gibraltar Point, but his devotion to Audrey couldn’t be missed, and who knew what lengths he might go to in order to protect her? Pru probably had the least to worry about. True, she was the person who had actually dug up the remains, but in her case there were extenuating factors; namely, the depredations of a rampant bulldozer before she ever got there. On the other hand, extenuating factors were probably not going to entirely get her off the hook. There was no getting around the fact that she had personally excavated the sham “First Family” and had never had a clue that there was anything wrong. She would go down as one more dupe. Maybe not a world-class dupe like the others, but a dupe all the same.

Between them, they had finished the sandwich. Gideon ordered coffee and Julie got a refill on her iced tea. She pulled slowly at the straw with a contemplative scowl.

“What?” Gideon said.

“Well, I was just thinking… what about your reputation? You were the senior author of the paper that started the whole thing, after all – I mean, the thing about Gibraltar Boy being a hybrid, and all.”

He put down his cup. This was something that hadn’t occurred to him. “I think I’ll come out of it all right,” he said, not as confidently as he might have liked. “Remember, we went out of our way not to call him a hybrid. Other people did that. We just described him as accurately as we could. What does bother me a little is that we didn’t spot the fact that the two sets of remains came from two different sites over a hundred miles apart – different soils, different weathering patterns. We did say – I hope we said – something about them differing more than one would anticipate for bodies that had been buried together – in their color, in their preservation, and so on – but when you’re dealing with bones twenty-five millennia old, you expect that kind of variation, so I don’t think anybody’s going to fault us for not making something of it.”

“Uh-huh, I see,” Julie said. “Extenuating factors, is that it?”

He laughed. “Hmm, you think maybe you’re looking at one more dupe, after all?”

“Oh, I doubt it, but I wouldn’t worry about it anyway. If they frog march you out of anthropology, you’ve got your other career all ready and waiting for you.”

“I do? What career would that be?”

“Writing ‘stunning exposes’ for Lester Rizzo and Javelin Press, of course. Which reminds me-” She drained her tea. “The Javelin reception starts at five. We’d better get started if you want to go.”

“I don’t.”

“But you have to. Lester is your editor, and you’re one of their star authors; he’s going to want to show you off. You have to make an appearance. Besides, Rowley would be crushed if you weren’t there.”

“You’re right, as always,” Gideon said, getting up reluctantly. “Let’s go, then. Oh, by the way, we’re not supposed to mention any of this to any of the others – orders from Fausto.”

Julie responded with a snappy salute. “Yes, sir. Will do… sir !”

The Paleoanthropological Society cocktail reception- cum -book launch party had gotten off to an early start. The Eliott Hotel’s rooftop terrace, bathed in mellow, late-afternoon sunshine, was hopping by the time they got there, with knots of attendees chattering away on the wide patio surrounding the outdoor swimming pool. Most had a drink in one hand and a plastic plate piled with food in the other. Those that didn’t were either in line at one of the two portable bars, or gathered around food tables near each end of the pool. At one, a blonde woman in a tall white chef’s toque carved slices off a giant hunk of roast beef. At the other, an ice swan, dripping wings outstretched, hung over dozens of plates of quintessential ye olde English appetizers: sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, potted cheese toast triangles, miniature Cornish pasties. Waistcoated, bowtied waiters threaded their way smoothly through the crowd with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. And in an out-of-the-way corner of the terrace a tuxedoed quartet, sans amplification, was unobtrusively, almost apologetically, tinkling out Boccherini’s Minuet in C.

“You do have to hand it to Lester,” Julie said as they came through the doors from the elevator. “He throws a heck of a party.”

“Seems a bit understated for Lester,” said Gideon. “I mean, Boccherini? I was expecting a fully staged Phantom of the Opera. Or if he wanted classical music, a symphony orchestra and full chorus doing Beethoven’s Ninth at the least.”

“Well, you know Lester. Understated is his middle name.”

“Right. Get you something to drink?”

“A white wine would be nice.”

On the way to the nearest of the bars, Gideon almost bumped into a Prada-Gucci-Ferragamo-clad Fausto smoothly gliding among the fashion-clueless academics like a sleek shark in a school of flounders. He was one of the few without a glass in his hand.

“Wow,” Gideon said. “I didn’t know you were a dignitary. I’m impressed.”

“Commish gave it a pass,” Fausto said with a shrug. “Officially, I’m here representing him. Personally, I wanted to come, kind of look around, check on the people.” With a hand on Gideon’s arm, he steered him to the fringe of the crowd, near a giant poster of Rowley’s bright blue book cover with its long-winded title: Uneasy Relations: Humans and Neanderthals at the Dawn of History: Implications for Today’s World. Under it was a table laden with copies to be given to the attendees as gifts.