Murder on the Silk Road (6 page)

“What makes you think you’ll find fossils in Dunhuang?” asked Peter. He gestured with his chopsticks at the platter of mutton stew. “Would anyone else like more of this?” he asked.

They declined, and he polished it off.

“Several things,” Lisa replied. “First, Central Asia is rich in fossil deposits in general; it was never covered by the ocean as were Europe and America. Second, the rock formations there are similar to the Barun Goyot Formation in Inner Mongolia, where RCA made his discoveries.”

“Where is your group from?” asked Peter.

“Well, the sponsor is the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. That’s where I work. I’m the assistant to Bert Rogers, the field leader. You may have heard of him; he’s a well-known paleontologist. But the team is multi-institutional; we also have people from Yale and the Carnegie Museum.”

“Will you be staying in the town of Dunhuang?” asked Marsha.

“No,” she replied, as she nibbled on the beans. “We’ll be staying at a guest house at the Dunhuang Research Academy. I understand it’s about fifteen miles south of the town, which is farther out into the desert and therefore closer to the fossil beds. If there are fossil beds,” she added.

“That’s where we’re staying too,” said Marsha. “I hear that it’s, quote, primitive but charming. Peter’s already been there for a few weeks. Do you agree with that assessment, Peter?”

“It’s very nice, actually,” he said. “I think you’ll like it. The food is very good too. A lot better than this.” He smiled mischievously. “You’ll have to try the local specialties.”

“What are they?” asked Lisa.

“Camel palm, donkey penis, and stuffed sheep entrails.”

Charlotte arched an eyebrow.

“Yuck,” said Lisa again.

After dinner, Charlotte, Marsha, and Peter returned to their compartment, while Lisa went in search of her companions. As the day wore on, the temperature had climbed, and their compartment was now stifling hot. Though they had switched on their compartment’s little electric fan, it wasn’t providing much relief. Opening the windows helped some, however, and, after opening those in their own compartment, they went out into the corridor to open the windows there for cross ventilation. Afterward, Charlotte understood why the waiters’ aprons had been black: the corridor was swirling with dusty, sooty air. Traveling by modern antique had its drawbacks as well as its charms.

With their compartment aired out, they settled in for the evening. Soothed by the rocking of the train and the monotonous scenery, Charlotte was just beginning to fall asleep when she was awakened by Lisa’s appearance at the door. Behind her stood a man holding a tray on which stood a pitcher of beer and several glasses. In his cowboy boots, Stetson hat, and Western-style shirt, he looked like an extra for a Hollywood Western, of the good guy variety. Short, paunchy, and bandy-legged, he had a grin that stretched from here to Texas, and the dimples to go along with it. His appearance was so incongruous that a service worker (as any Chinese with a menial job was called) who had been mopping the floor stopped in mid-motion to gape in fascination.

“What’s the matter with him?” said their visitor. “Ain’t he ever seen a pissant walkin’ around with a potato chip on its head before?” With that, he laughed heartily and held the tray out to Lisa. “Lisa told us there might be a party goin’ on in this here compartment, so we thought we’d bring along a little
pijiu
,” he said. “We hope you don’t mind our joinin’ you.”

Pijiu
was Chinese for beer, the beverage of choice in a country where the only other widely available beverages were a sickly sweet orange soda and hot water for tea. Fortunately it was a very low-alcohol beer—what people in the Midwest call near beer—which meant that you could drink a lot of it before you felt its effects.

“Not at all,” said Marsha, sliding over to make room on the seat.

“I’d like you to meet Dogie O’Dea,” said Lisa. “Dogie’s a member of my team. He’s considered one of the world’s greatest dinosaur hunters. Dogie knows fossil-bearing rock the way other people know horses or dogs.”

“I’m pretty damn good at horses too,” he said.

“What constitutes being considered a great dinosaur hunter?” asked Peter as Lisa set the tray down on the fold-down table.

“It’s a certain knack,” she replied. “Some people will have a terrific fossil right under their noses and they won’t even see it. Others—like Dogie—seem to be able to sniff ’em out. I kid him that that’s why he’s nicknamed Dogie—because of his ability to sniff out old bones.”

“It isn’t?” asked Charlotte.

“It’s a nickname from my cowpunchin’ days,” he explained. “I guess I got it ’cause I’m as stubborn as one. To say nothin’ of bein’ as ugly as one.” He laughed again, a jolly, good-natured laugh.

“As stubborn as a dog?” said Marsha.

“Dogie, I think you’ll have to explain,” said the tall, dark man who had appeared at the door behind him. Like Dogie, he was dressed in jeans and a Western shirt. “These are cultured ladies from back East, who aren’t familiar with our quaint frontier ways.”

“As in ‘Git Along, Little Dogies,’” Charlotte explained.

“Whoopee, ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,” yelped Dogie in the refrain from the old cowboy song.

“How colorful,” teased Marsha. “Are you going to jingle your spurs?”

Dogie lifted up a boot-shod foot and checked the heel. “No spurs today, ma’am. But if you wait until we get to Dunhuang, howsoever, I might be able to rustle you up a camel patty or two.”

“And this is my boss, Bert Rogers,” said Lisa, nodding at the other man.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark, wavy hair, a thick beard, and warm blue eyes. He reminded Charlotte of one of her favorite leading men, whose most appealing quality had been his aura of security. Leaning up against his chest had been like leaning up against a hundred-year-old oak.

Charlotte noticed Marsha’s quick glance at the conspicuous white circle on his ring finger. Like Charlotte, Marsha had recently been separated, but unlike Charlotte, she wasn’t too old to have given up on romance quite yet.

Within a few minutes, they were all drinking beer and munching on salted cashews from Marsha’s stash: Marsha, Lisa, and Dogie on one side, and Charlotte, Peter, and Bert on the other. Except for Dogie, it was a compartment full of long-legged people, and their knees butted together cozily.

“Ugh, I hate this warm beer,” drawled Dogie as he took a swig. “The only thing that’s worse than warm beer is kissin’ your sister.”

“How long have you been hunting fossils, Dogie?” asked Charlotte.

“Fifteen years,” he replied. “Do you folks mind if we turn on a little music? After all, we are having a party.”

“I’ll do it,” said Marsha, reaching for the knob under the fold-down table that controlled the loudspeaker system. Her interest in their impromptu gathering had suddenly picked up with Bert’s arrival.

In a minute, the compartment was filled with accordion music, a selection from the system’s bizarre assortment of American show tunes, folk music, and jazz, punctuated by the occasional polka or waltz. But at least it was better than “The East is Red,” Marsha had said.

Cupping his hand behind his ear, Dogie smiled broadly as he recognized the tune. “Hot damn,” he said, chuckling as he slapped his knee. “It’s the ‘Beer Barrel Polka.’ Ain’t this Chinese music a howl.” Removing his hand from his ear, he looked back at Charlotte. “Now, where were we?” he said.

“Hunting fossils,” she told him.

“Oh, right!” he said. “I was foreman on the ranch where Bert made his first big find. From the moment I saw that huge ischium stickin’ out the wall of that dry gulch, I was hooked. Before long, I was workin’ for Bert full time. I was too bunged up to ride anymore, anyways,” he added.

In the winters, Bert explained, Dogie supervised the preparators, the people who reassembled the bones that were collected on their summer digs. Lisa was one of the preparators on Bert’s staff. “The best one,” he added.

“Lisa’s told us about your expedition,” said Charlotte. “We wish you luck in finding fossils at Dunhuang.”

“Oh, we know we’ll find fossils,” said Bert. “The question is whether or not we can bring off the expedition.”

“Why’s that?” asked Charlotte. “Are the Chinese difficult to work with?”

“No, the Chinese are fine. It’s the other Americans who are the problem.”

“Case in point,” said Dogie, directing his gaze at the corridor, where an immaculately dressed man (How did he manage to look so unrumpled? Charlotte wondered) was closing the windows which they had just opened.

“He’d rather roast to death than get his clothes dirty,” said Dogie.

“Who’s that?” asked Charlotte.

“Eugene Orecchio,” said Dogie. “A rock jock—also known as a geologist—from the Carnegie Museum. Another member of our team, I’m sorry to say.”

“Why a geologist, and why sorry to say?” asked Marsha.

“It’s a long story, and a far cry from Chinese poetry,” said Bert. Lisa must have told him about Marsha after dinner.

Charlotte checked her watch. “We have another thirty-nine hours.”

“Yes, I guess we do,” said Bert with a warm smile. “Well, Gene is a proponent of the catastrophe theory of dinosaur extinction. He believes that the dinosaurs died out in a catastrophic event caused by an extraterrestrial object—death star is the popular catchword, though it was actually a comet or an asteroid—that struck the earth sixty-four million years ago.”

“And you aren’t?” said Marsha.

“No self-respecting paleontologist is: the evidence proves that the dinosaurs didn’t all turn feet up in a day, whatever Gene might think to the contrary. But he’s not a paleontologist, which is the problem. In fact, he’s very contemptuous of paleontologists. He has been known to accuse paleontologists of being stamp collectors, not scientists.”

“Those sound like fighting words,” said Charlotte.

“You bet they are,” Bert agreed.

“What makes him think the dinosaurs died out in a catastrophic event?” asked Marsha as she munched on cashew nuts.

Charlotte couldn’t help but notice the deep interest that she was suddenly taking in paleontology.

“The K/T boundary. It’s the boundary between the sediments of the Cretaceous—K is for Cretaceous, to distinguish it from Carboniferous—and the Tertiary Periods at about the time the dinosaurs died out. The soil from the boundary layer contains soot that the catastrophists say is from fires that blanketed the earth at the time of the catastrophic event.”

“And you say what—that a death star didn’t strike the earth?”

“No. Only that the dinosaurs weren’t wiped out by it. The dinosaurs had been dying out for a long time before. Not that the catastrophic event didn’t contribute, but it wasn’t the deciding factor. There were lots of factors involved. Not only does the catastrophe theory go against all the evidence, it’s much too simplistic an explanation.”

Without the cross breeze from the open windows in the corridor, the tiny compartment was becoming uncomfortably hot again. There was also a strong odor emanating from the toilet at the end of the car.

Pulling a red bandanna out of the pocket of his blue jeans, Dogie wiped his cherubic brow. “Speakin’ of soot,” he said, “I think it’s about time that we introduce some soot into this car. What do you say, boss?”

“I think that’s a very good idea,” Bert replied.

Excusing themselves, the two men went out into the corridor and lowered all the windows which their colleague had just closed. The hot air hit them like a blast from a coal furnace, but at least it was moving.

When Bert and Dogie returned, they poured another round of beers and continued their conversation about dinosaur extinction.

“If all the evidence goes to the contrary, why is the catastrophe theory taken so seriously?” asked Charlotte as she sipped her beer. She had read a lot about the catastrophe theory in the newspapers.

“Two reasons,” said Bert. “The main one is that there have never been any significant dinosaur fossils found above the K/T boundary layer. That’s not to say there will never be, only that there haven’t been so far.”

“That would seem to be pretty strong evidence,” Charlotte observed.

“Not really. We estimate that the dinosaurs lived on in reduced numbers for hundreds of thousands of years after the catastrophe. To us, that seems like a lot of time, but geologically speaking it’s an instant. Finding a fossil from that period would be the equivalent of finding the needle in the haystack.”

“But when and if a significant fossil is found, it will blow the impact theory to kingdom come,” added Dogie.

“What’s the other reason?” asked Charlotte.

“The second reason is political,” Bert replied.

“Political?”

“If you believe that a catastrophic event caused a disruption in the earth’s climate significant enough to wipe out life on earth, then you must also believe that a nuclear war would lead to a nuclear winter that would wipe out life on earth, and therefore you are a pacifist.”

“With God on your side,” said Dogie.

“If, however, you believe that the dinosaurs died out gradually, then you must also believe that life could survive a nuclear war, and therefore you are undermining the nuclear-winter hypothesis. Which means that you are a militarist, at best; a right-wing warmonger, at worst.”

“I’ve been called a helluva lot worse,” said Dogie.

“By me, for one,” said Bert.

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Charlotte.

“Ridiculous, but true,” said Bert. “Grant proposals and research papers have been rejected because their authors—myself among them—contradicted the politically acceptable attitude toward dinosaur extinction.”

“I know the mentality,” said Marsha. “Someone recently told me that the word Oriental had imperialist overtones. What are we supposed to do, change our name to the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etcetera, Institute?”

Bert smiled at her with his navy-blue eyes. In the tiny compartment, the attraction between him and Marsha was almost palpable.

“It sounds horrible,” said Charlotte. “Like the McCarthy era all over again, but in ideological reverse.”