The Dig (8 page)

“No need, dear. I already know of your extraordinary wealth.” She said it with a straight face, but there was something in the way she said
extraordinary.

“Oh, really? What do you know? What did Meier tell you?”

“Jon didn’t tell me anything. Most everyone at the museum knows of your sunken treasure.”

“And how I found it?” Matt said casually, fishing.

“No… I don’t think anyone knows about that.”

“You included?”

“Me included, though I hadn’t gleaned that there was any big secret, Mr. Mysterious.”

“Hm- well, that isn’t what I was going to say, anyway. About the money. There’s something else. But I need to think about it.”

Tuni smiled indifferently, but Matt could tell she was intrigued and trying to hide it.

Do I bring her in?
Matt wondered. She seemed trustworthy enough, but that would make how many now? Matt went down the list in his head. Dad, Mom, Aunt Denora, Iris, his ex- Melissa, Uncle J, Dr. Meier, George Miller, Pete Sharma. That was nine. She would make ten. And did she
need
to know? Dad always drilled it into his head: “Keep it tight, boy. If it’s not someone that loves you, consider them a threat.” Dad had not at all liked Uncle J’s suggestion about the museum, but by that time it was out of his hands and Matt had stopped talking to him, or more applicably… listening.

Matt wondered about these people in Africa, the ones with the metal artifact. Would he have to reveal himself to them as well? He hadn’t thought this through nearly enough, and he had to push out his dad’s disappointed “I told you” from his head. He peered over at Tuni, flipping through a food magazine. His instincts told him she should know, but he wasn’t sure if they were clouded by his other thoughts about her. Was he just trying to
qualify
her? That’s what he was doing with Melissa when he first became interested in her. And now she was out there, no longer a part of his life, fully aware of his secret. He couldn’t take it back. But wasn’t this different?

It was, or so he convinced himself.

He leaned over and glanced to the back of the cabin. The flight attendant was seated in a little fold-down, reading a thick paperback.

“Tuni,” he said quietly.

She looked up with a coy smirk as she returned, “Yes, Matthew?” in the same hushed tone.

“I’m going to tell you something that’s difficult to believe.”

She turned serious, nodding sharply.

“Very few people know, and you need to make the biggest promise of your life to keep it to yourself… forever.”

“Yes, er… of course. What is it?”

“The sheet here, on the seat? The whole getup, the gloves… I’m not a germaphobe. I have an ability called
psychometry
. It allows me to read emotional imprints that people leave on objects.”

Tuni’s head cocked sideways and her expression shifted to a frown. Whatever she had imagined he was going to tell her, it had clearly caught her off-guard. She made an undecided “mm-hmm…” for him to go on.

“I told you it’s difficult to believe. But it’s how I tracked that sunken wreck. It’s what I did for Dr. Meier at the museum. Dating artifacts, verifying historical records, stuff like that. Thing is…” he gestured at his beanie and turtleneck’s collar. “I can’t turn it off. And, as far as I know, it’s
on
, I guess, everywhere on my skin.”

Another “mm-hmm” and he could see her wheels turning. He guessed she was thinking back to conversations she had overheard, putting pieces together.

“Do you believe me?”

“I… I suppose so… so, wait. Does Peter Sharma know about it? Is that why he requested you?”

“Yup. He worked with me the most on the
special projects
, as Meier liked to say.”

“Does Hank Felch know?”

“He shouldn’t,” Matt said, almost accusingly. “I definitely didn’t authorize anyone else. Only George and Meier, plus my family—and not even my
whole
family!”

Tuni looked to the floor, processing. Matt waited, studying her expressions. He had only had this conversation twice before, and one was George, so it didn’t seem as big a deal.

She looked back up at him, seemingly with new eyes, taking in his whole body.

“So how does it work? You touch something with your bare skin, and you get flashes of emotions, pictures, what? I think I saw a movie like that once.”

“No, it’s not so cinematic,” Matt smiled. “There’s a brief transition and then I’m essentially
in
the person who touched the object. Every sense is present: vision, hearing, all that. And their thoughts. It could be two thousand years ago and everything is perfectly crisp. The weird part is not being able to control anything; I’m just along for the ride. Also weird when the body is very different from mine.”

“Hmm… yes, I could imagine suddenly being some obese chap…”

“Well, yeah, I guess, but I meant being a woman, or really old or young.”

Tuni smiled and nodded, a little embarrassed. She shook it off and sighed as her eyes flashed around before her. He suddenly felt vicariously excited, imagining the questions swimming through her head. She didn’t appear to doubt him at all, but how could she be one hundred percent—just like that? He couldn’t expect that from anyone. Her eyes returned to his.

“So to make it work… you don’t have to concentrate, or say some sort of incantation, or what have you?”

“Nope. It just goes, like it or not.”

“Hm. Amazing, truly. Makes me wonder what else people are capable of. Are there others? Like you, I mean?”

“Not that I’ve met. I pretty much know of psychic type stuff the same as you. Those people that say they can communicate with the dead or predict the future? Strangely enough, I’m probably just as skeptical about them as the next guy. It’s kind of funny, actually, when I catch myself doing it. Some guy on TV calling out a woman in a studio audience and telling her about her dead father. I think ‘no way, that’s fake! People can’t do that!’ But hell, who knows, maybe they’ve got what I’ve got.”

“That’s funny. Hypocrite.” She flipped to the next page of her magazine though she hadn’t yet looked at it.

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, I needed you to know about me ‘cause where we’re going, with strangers and everything—I’m pretty paranoid about my ability getting out. I’m not trying to get a TV show, if you know what I mean. I need you to run defense for me. When I’m reading this artifact no one else can be around, however you can arrange that.”

“Of course,” she said. “I think that’s why Jon sent me along with you. He probably knew there would be logistical issues around that. Now that I think back, he did say that he hoped you would tell me something that he couldn’t. That it would make my job easier.”

“Mmm—figures,”
Sneaky bastard. He knew I’d tell her.

The cockpit door finally popped open, and the pilot leaned back and gave Matt a nod. He removed his seat belt and got comfortable.

“Well, enough about me…” Matt began.

“Ah, the old ‘enough about me… ’” She interrupted, but then saw Matt recoil. “It’s fine, I’m joking. Go ahead, enough about you.”

“Nah, never mind. I’m actually going to try to get some sleep. It was good to talk to you. I feel better about everything now.”

He acted normal, but she could tell he was bruised. He reclined his seat, checked the barrier sheet was still secure, and positioned himself toward the window. She felt like a prat, but decided to let him sleep, returning to her magazine. She found her eyes gliding over the words on the page without actually absorbing anything. Could Matthew’s claim really be true? Obviously, Jon and Peter believed him, but they were big dreamers, and perhaps necessarily gullible. Matthew’s delivery was very convincing though, very matter-of-fact, and clearly apprehensive. Then again, he could be a con artist with a whole act down.
A con artist that can trace a sunken ship?
She rested her head back and closed her eyes, debating both sides.

Tuni awoke several hours later. She drank a sip of her water and took some peppermint gum from her handbag, then looked over at Matthew. He was now facing her, still asleep. She liked that his skin was as pale as a Londoner’s, and unblemished. She could tell he had been trying to grow a beard of sorts, probably for the past few weeks. His dirty-blond locks were tousled, though she had a feeling he wouldn’t especially care. This was a man with bigger things on his mind than his hairdo.

“Can I get you anything, ma’am?” asked the flight attendant.

Tuni was surprised to feel a little awkward at having just been caught looking as if she were admiring him.

“No, thank you, not right now. Will there be food at some point?”

“Of course, whenever you like.”

Right, of course. It wasn’t as if there were a schedule and two hundred people to serve. “Very well. I’ll wait until Matthew wakes up, and eat with him.”

The flight attendant smiled and raised her eyebrows at Tuni before walking away. Tuni felt a vague ruffle of annoyance at the thought that the woman assumed she was smitten with her dozing charge.

Tuni wondered how her cat, Mr. Pups, was getting on without her. She had given her neighbor the key and asked him to feed him and change his litter box. Randall had two kitties of his own, and she trusted him with Pups. Who knew what else he was doing in her apartment, though. Hopefully not going through her skivvies drawer!
Ugh, a wispy little bachelor like him…
She wouldn’t be surprised. She would have to remember to launder everything on her return.

She did not look forward to her return to Africa. Her last time there, she was a gangly eight-year-old, living with her mum—Dad was out of the picture long before. Their house was no shack, but the menu did often come down to beans and cornmeal
sadza
when times were tough.

Fortunately, after they had moved in with her aunt’s family in London, things got much better. In her memory, if not that of others, her awkward phase turned out to be an awkward decade. And standing several centimeters above her classmates, it was impossible to blend into the background. The downfall of many a lanky girl, she used the “hunch” technique to fit in. Mum loved to pull out the old photo albums. “Just look at you
now
…” she would say. But Tuni knew what she was really saying: “Good God, look at you
then!
” Blossoming in her late teens seemed to have a lasting effect on her self-esteem. Even now at 31, when a man or group of men gave her the old
reow, hey baby…
routine, her first thought was—
If only you knew what I
really
looked like
.

“Hey, they gonna feed us at some point?” Matt was awake. She offered him a piece of gum. “No, I’m good,” he declined.

“Really?” she replied with raised eyebrows.

He frowned and then realized why she had offered. “Oh, sorry—the breath of doom after sleeping, huh? I’ll take one.”

She smiled, close-lipped.

“They’ll feed us anytime we like. I take it you’re hungry?”

“Yeah, aren’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” she said breezily, as if it hadn’t really occurred to her. Her belly gave a quiet moan, and she shifted to silence it.

A short time later, the attendant rolled their food to them on two little carts with locking wheels. It was chateaubriand—lovely, nothing at all like airline food.

The pilot poked his head out to say they’d be descending soon.

“Oh, are we there already?” Matt asked, pulling up his sleeve to look at his watch.

“We stop briefly in Accra for fuel and shots and then cross Africa to Nairobi, with no further stops. How is your meal?”

“It’s great,” Matt replied. “What shots?”

“Oh, the usual immunizations: malaria, hep. B, and so on. You apparently didn’t have time back in the States.”

Matt felt the icy fingers of panic. He could not do shots. He took a deep, shaky breath and tried to hold back the tears already pooling in his lower lids.

“Hey, you okay?” Tuni reached across and touched his shoulder.

He turned his head so she couldn’t see him.

“I’m just not big on shots, is all. Nobody said anything about that. Of
course
your boss wasn’t going to bring it up.”

“I don’t think Jon would have thought to mention it, Matthew. He wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. Will the shot… uh, can it
affect
you?”

“In quite a few ways, actually.” He rubbed his eyes as if they were just sore, then turned to her. “Think about this: up until very recently, most syringes would be cleaned and reused thousands of times. That’s just changed in our country so you can imagine what a place like—well, I’m just saying. I mean, you’re getting a shot and just think about how many kids have gotten shots with that needle and were terrified and physically hurt by it. Think about a nurse who’s been doing this for years, and the irritation she feels every time another damn screaming kid sits down in the pokey chair. All these emotions stick to an object like that. It’s gotta be in my top ten worst things to experience, no matter how fast it happens.”