The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [203]
“There’s gear for you in the van,” he said as he got out. “It’s important to look authentic and official.”
Crosetti and Rolly went to the rear door of the van, which opened to reveal an interior that included a steel table, tool racks, long steel pipes, ladders, rigging gear, electronic equipment, and two men, who introduced themselves as Nigel and Rob, Nigel owlish and bespectacled, Rob broad-shouldered and gap-toothed with a tan buzz cut. They handed out yellow coveralls and boots and yellow hard hats with lamps in them. Crosetti was not surprised to find that the boots and the coveralls fit him perfectly. Carolyn reported that hers did too.
“Osborne seems like a very efficient outfit. Does it make you nervous to learn that they have both our shoe sizes?”
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” she said. “What are they doing?”
“I have no idea,” said Crosetti.
They watched the two men roll a four-wheeled cart made of steel pipe out of the van, and Crosetti was conscripted into off-loading various pieces of heavy electronics and car batteries from the van and lifting them onto the cart.
“By the way, what is all this?” he asked Rob.
“It’s a ground-penetrating radar set, absolutely top drawer. It produces a picture of the subsurface from a few feet to a hundred feet down, depending on the soil. We should get good penetration here. It’s Triassic sandstone.”
Nigel said, “Unless there’s a clay intrusion.”
“What if there’s a clay intrusion?” asked Crosetti.
“Then we’re fucked, mate,” Rob answered. “We’ll have to go to resistivity, and we’ll be all week.”
“You both work for Osborne?”
“Not us,” said Nigel. “University of Hull geology. We’ve been corrupted by corporate gold, haven’t we, Robbie?”
“Utterly. What’re you lot after anyway? A Viking hoard?”
“Something like that,” said Crosetti. “We’ll have to kill you if we find it though.” They both laughed, but nervously, and both looked around for Brown, who seemed to have wandered off.
Rolly was poking at the ground some distance away and Crosetti walked over to see what she was doing.
“You don’t have to claw at the earth with your fingers,” he said. “We have all this high-tech equipment.”
“Look what I found,” she said and held out her hand. In it was a flat, roughly triangular white stone upon which had been incised a perfectly straight double line and below it what appeared to be the petal of a rose.
“It’s the priory,” she said. “This is the place. I’m getting chills.”
“So am I. You look terrific in coveralls and a hard hat. Would you whistle at me as I walk by?”
One of her stern looks followed this sally, and then Nigel and Rob called him over to help draw the cart. They heaved the thing through the wood, over ruts and roots, with Nigel leading the way, staring at a Global Positioning Receiver and Rolly trailing behind carrying several picks and spades across her shoulders.
“Let’s stop here and light up the radar, people. If that satellite view we had from you is correct, Mr. GPR says this is the place.” They were in a shallow dip of land thickly littered with golden beech leaves between three old gray trees, whose reaching limbs crisscrossed against the milky sky above. Nigel made some adjustments and switched on his set. It hummed, and a broad paper tape emerged from a slit in one of the metal boxes. Nigel shoved his glasses back up his nose and studied the colors printed on the paper. He hooted and cried out, “Well, I’ll be blowed. Got it in one. There’s the void and it’s full of what looks like chunks of cut stone. Clear as a bell. Take a look, Robbie.”
Rob did and confirmed the find. They cleared away the leaves and surface soil and began to dig, and before too long had uncovered the remains of what looked like the coping stones of a well, in the center of which was a mass of irregular pale stones.
“It’s dry,” said Crosetti.
“Well, yes,” said Rob, “the