Land of Marvels (25 page)

He looked directly at the American as he spoke and gave him one of his thin, infrequent smiles, clearly friendly in intent. His words turned the talk toward the progress of the railway, and Fahir for one seemed glad of this. He had spoken to various people, including the German advance party near the excavation site. The general opinion was that the line would reach the site and pass beyond it within a fortnight.

Edith saw the lines of tension gather in her husband’s face as he listened. But her regard dwelled mainly on Elliott, who was silent now and whose face wore a slightly amused expression. He was pleased with himself; he had come through with flying colors. Well before he got here he had chosen this limited field of knowledge, studied it, memorized some salient facts. He had really performed very well, she thought. Such care, such attention to detail, could only be admired. Daddy would have given the same sort of consideration to one of his cases. But it was not quite admiration that she felt now as she looked at him. The care he had taken had been in support of falsehood, a pack of lies, in fact. Was that the difference? But Alex was a man of vision, a man of fire. He was striving to unlock the secrets of the earth, Pluto’s kingdom. Once embarked on a necessary deception he would bear it out, make it good, rejoice in the triumph of prevailing. Was not this better than to be like John, the victim of deception, the poor dupe?

Thus she struggled to preserve the idealism of the man who had made the gift of fire to her, but could not succeed altogether, not while his face still held that look of satisfaction. And it was this failure that gave a certain coldness to her manner when the time came to say good night to him.

In bed, before sleep came, she went on thinking about it. She heard her husband moving about in the next room and tried to fight off the pity for him that came with the memory of his face, so drawn with anxiety, at the dinner table. She had always hated the emotion of pity, when she felt it for others, when she felt herself the object of it; it was this that had made her draw back from Patricia, the note of pity she had heard, or thought she had heard, during their argument about voting rights for women. Pity was negative; it was defeat . . . She thought again of that little smile on Alex’s face. It was more than relief at having passed the test; he had
enjoyed
outwitting Fahir.

He had been so earnest, so fervent. That blaze of sincerity in the blue eyes, that straight, unwavering regard, the voice that came in blurts, like the very throes of truth. But what struck her most in retrospect was the way he had spoken about the future of humanity, the benefits that would come to future generations. Not from oil this time but from a knowledge of Hittite war chariots. He had spoken with a conviction that had nothing to do with his knowledge of archaeology, was independent of it. It was as if, at a certain point, the mantle of prophecy fell on him, and then knowledge or ignorance, truth or falsehood didn’t matter any longer. She remembered how he had clenched his fists as he spoke of the hot embrace of the rock, a sacred fire in a past so remote she couldn’t imagine it, and how the same passionate awe had throbbed in his voice when he went on to speak about the present and the future, the statistics of production, the profits to be made. The same fire . . . It was in the puzzlement of this that she finally passed into sleep.

Elliott had noticed the more distant manner, the way her eyes did not quite meet his own when she bade him good night. He did not trouble himself too much as to what the cause might be; it could not be anything to do with him, he felt sure of that; he had been brilliant at the table, he had held his nerve, she should have been impressed. Women were subject to moods; the fact was well known. However, he took it for a sign that they would not be meeting that night; she would not be coming to him, entering his room and joining him in bed, hot with her own stealth and eagerness—it was quite a while since he had had a woman so ardent.

All the same, he did not mind, tonight, if she did not come. In a way he was glad of it. He wanted to have time to himself on this, one of the most important days of his life, as he felt it to be, a highlight in his career. His victory in the game with Fahir, that triumphant parade of knowledge, had been a sort of celebration, in a minor key, of the momentous discovery he had made earlier that day, about which, naturally, he had said nothing to anybody.

They had returned to the pyramid of stones on the following day. He had gone over that shallow rise, which was roughly oval in shape and covered something like a mile from north to south and perhaps half of that at its maximum width. As he tramped back and forth, the conviction had grown in him that it formed a single geological structure. His work party, who he knew had long ago decided that he was mad, he left to their own devices. His excitement had grown at the thought of what this formation might be. He had felt neither weariness nor any discomfort from the sun. Then today, in late afternoon, when the sun’s rays were slanting low and shadows were long, he had ridden to a point some two miles beyond where the sweep ended. Here the ground rose fairly sharply to a rocky shelf. It was no more than a hundred feet in height, but standing here and looking back the way he had come, with the sun’s rays slanting across, he saw beyond any doubt that it was a single unit he had been traversing, a single shape, a diapir.

How long he had stood there, as the realization came to him, he could not afterward recollect. Some massive formation of the rock had been forced up to pierce the surface, hardly perceptibly, like the slightest protrusion of the tongue between the lips. No, not quite like that: It had no crest or peak; it was a single shallow dome, the cap of rock that had formed over it. He remembered the water charged with salt, the taste of it on his fingers, the prevalence of salt springs everywhere. This great cylindrical mass pushing up from below, piercing the surface, could it be rock salt?

Conviction had grown as he thought about the dimensions of the thing. If it was a mile across on the surface, it could be five or six miles in depth below. Salt, being lighter in density than the surrounding rocks, was often forced up, but very rarely in quantities like this. He had read about salt domes but never seen one. They had been observed in various places, the Gulf of Mexico, the Zagros Mountains, southern Persia. But no prospecting had been done yet, none that he knew of. After the millions of years of heating and compression that had molded the dome and forced it up, the salt, in its rise, would have wrenched out of shape the strata containing the petroleum, forming perfect traps . . .

The excitement that had seized him in the afternoon as he stood looking down returned to him now, set him pacing backward and forward in his room. As always, a sense of the miraculous attended on him—the nearest he ever came to ethical feeling, though it transcended all notions of right or wrong. How many millions of years, how many floods and evaporations in the shallow sea that had once been Mesopotamia had gone to form these vast deposits of salt? In its slow, irresistible journey up to the surface, the salt would bend the layers of rock above it, bend them upward, forming pockets where oil and gas would collect, trapped along the flanks of the cone, between the salt and the enclosing rock. The dome-shaped cap of rock forced up to the surface, this could have formed a reservoir above the salt, where oil might gather. A lake of oil, not far below, easy to get at. Closer examination would be needed, but this would explain the oil seep, the swamps of bitumen . . .

He was disturbed in this excited reverie by a light tapping at his door. His first thought was that Edith had decided to visit him after all. But it was too early for this. He opened the door to find the British major at the threshold. Manning looked neat and spruce in a white shirt and white shorts and white stockings that rose just below the knee. There was about him a slight odor of what Elliott thought might be disinfectant soap.

“I hope it’s not too late for a visit,” he said, “but I am a great believer in prompt action.”

“I guess that’s the military training.” Elliott stood aside for the major to enter. What kind of action could he mean? Perhaps it was hair lotion or the sort of thing one put on one’s face after shaving. Could the major have shaved before coming to pay this visit? Could some glance or word of his own have been misunderstood, misinterpreted? The British picked up some kinky habits at those schools of theirs, that was common knowledge. The clipped mode of speech, the mannerism, noticed at dinner, of tightening the lips, causing the carefully trimmed, gingerish mustache to bristle slightly—was there some wrestling with impulse going on there? Better get him sitting down as soon as possible.

“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to one of the two upright chairs at opposite sides of a small table, all the seating there was in the room. “Would you care for a drink? I’ve still got some of the Scotch left that I brought with me from London.”

“Thank you, just a spot.”

“Water?”

“No thanks, just as it comes.”

Manning watched the American as he poured out the drinks. A tall man, steady-handed, moving easily on his feet, with a direct and open regard and a sort of shine about him, as if the light fastened on him, favored him in some way. No telling from appearances. That unblushing reference to London, scene of his treachery. This was the traitor who was working for two conflicting interests, two countries on the verge of war, and taking payment from both. Such baseness was hardly conceivable; it was beneath contempt. He felt more than ready to carry out the orders he had received; he felt it as a mission. He was on duty; it was why he had taken pains with his appearance, shaving and dressing carefully before his visit. “Well, cheerio, down the hatch,” he said, raising his glass to Elliott, who had taken the chair opposite.

“Your very good health, sir,” Elliott said, managing to infuse this accustomed phrase with accents of deep and heartfelt sincerity.

“Won’t beat about the bush, don’t believe in it, never have,” Manning said. “I am the bearer of a letter from Lord Rampling, authorizing me to collect your interim report and convey it back to London.”

“Interim report? I haven’t made an interim report. I wasn’t asked to make an interim report, not at this early stage. There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake.” Manning’s right hand went to the breast pocket on the left side, unfastened the button, drew out a sealed envelope, and laid it on the table.

“No, I don’t mean to doubt the genuineness of the letter . . .” Elliott paused a moment or two, then said more slowly: “No, I meant some confusion about the nature of my instructions.” Looking across the table, he saw the major’s mouth tighten in that slightly lopsided involuntary grimace. “I’ve not been here long enough to make a comprehensive report,” he said. “All I’ve got are notes. How come you have been saddled with this business?”

“Well, by chance really. I was due to leave for Mesopotamia anyway. I know Arabic, and I know this region well. It seemed a good idea, you know, to pick up any papers you might have as I was passing by.”

“Are you working for Lord Rampling?”

“Good heavens, no. I am a military man. I have specialized in cartography, and I have been detailed to carry out surveys and make contour maps of the region between the Belikh and the Khabur, preliminary to a major irrigation project to be carried out under Sir William Wilcox. You will have heard of him, no doubt.”

“The engineer, yes.”

“That’s a very mild way of putting it. He is an international authority.”

“Well, I don’t know much about irrigation.”

“The Wise Men come from the West now, you know. Once they came from the East, now they come from the West. I am quoting Sir William when I say that.”

“Meaning he is one of the Wise Men?”

“Yes, so he is. And among the nations Britain is foremost in irrigation technology. We lead the world. In the absence of a report the letter authorizes me to take whatever notes you have so far accumulated.”

Elliott made no immediate reply to this. Like most tricksters he was distrustful, and a certain suspicion had entered his mind while Manning was quoting the words of the wise Sir William. He had the definite impression that the major was acting a part and that he was not—unlike himself—a very good actor. The attempt at a friendly, easy manner had not succeeded. Of course, this did not necessarily mean that he was up to something; such attempts on the major’s part would probably never be successful, whatever the circumstances, perpetually defeated in advance by the stiff movements of shoulders and head, the occasional nervous twitch of the face. All the same, there were things here that didn’t quite add up. Manning seemed to want him to believe that picking up the papers was a casual matter, something he had been asked to do in passing, as a convenience, in the course of other business. If that was so, why the haste, why this visit rather unconventionally late on the first evening of the major’s arrival?

“A little more Scotch?” he said.

“Just a drop. It’s very good. Malt, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right. Twelve years old. I see you know something about whiskey.” Could the major be a fake? He was almost too good to be true, but that might be the reason he had been chosen. Like a double bluff . . . Could he be working for some other oil interests? The d’Arcy Group, for example, or Shell, or the newly formed French combine, the CFP. In that case, it would make good sense for them to try to get whatever information they could; it would save them time, put them a step ahead. “Perhaps I’d better see the letter,” he said. “Not that I doubt your word, of course, but Rampling has placed a great deal of trust in me, not only in my capacity but in my prudence.”