The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Six String Theory Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503904774 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503904776 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503901384 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503901386 (paperback)

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder

  First edition

  This is dedicated to the one I love.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE EXILE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  THE RETURN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE BORDER

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE WATERY PART OF THE WORLD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  My death waits there among the leaves

  In magician’s mysterious sleeves.

  —“My Death,” by Jacques Brel, Eric Blau, Mort Shuman

  We are the resurrection and the light.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I have been fascinated by the Etruscan civilization ever since my father took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where I first saw artifacts made by the Etruscans, an ancient pre-Roman people. It’s true that their origins are shrouded in controversy. That they eventually settled in the Tuscany region of Italy around 800 BC, lending the area their name, is beyond doubt. I have traveled there often in search of their remnants. But in the time before Tuscany and Etruria, a slightly wider area of settlement, where were the Etruscans? All over the Mediterranean, certainly, for they were most probably seafarers, but whether they began in another part of Italy, the islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea (as far back as the fifth century BC, Greek historians referred to them as Tyrrhenians), or regions farther east, it is as yet impossible to determine with any degree of certainty.

  They remain hidden—a mystery. Just one of the reasons I fell in love with them and why they make an appearance in this novel.

  THE EXILE

  ONE

  The morning Bella disappeared, Angela was with Bella’s father on a boat off the coast of Crete. It was an island that under Richard’s expert archaeologist’s hands had slowly but surely been giving up its secrets. They had taken a break from the painstaking work that Richard was certain would help illuminate the mysterious and contentious origins of Etruscan civilization.

  Bella, thousands of miles away, walked out of her house on a Saturday morning that was like all other Saturdays in what kids called Deadborn—the Michigan city abutting Detroit better known as Dearborn—but was in retrospect like no other Saturday in her life. At dinner the night before, she had told her mother, Maggie, that she would be off the next morning to study at the library, then have lunch at McDonald’s.

  Maggie wasn’t likely to have heard; when Richard was away, mother and daughter barely spoke. After school, Bella would secrete herself in her room. On weekends, she attended a small study group. She never watched TV, rarely went to the movies, and after the first time, never went back to the mall, where many of the girls in her class hung out after school. No doubt another mother would ask herself what exactly her daughter did in her bedroom all afternoon and evening. Maggie didn’t care.

  On that particular Saturday morning, as Bella stepped out into the morning, Maggie was still in bed, the thick curtains of the upstairs bedroom drawing a veil across the rising day. Maggie, under the blankets, a satin sleep mask covering the top half of a face as crumpled as a used tissue, was oblivious to the world around her. Not even the herbal scent seeping from the mask could disguise the medicinal fug that had colonized the bedroom for the past six weeks.

  Bella, small boned, somewhere between plain and pretty, bounced down the front steps. Her black hair, drawn back from her broad forehead, shone like a helmet. Her large gray-blue eyes took in the quiet street. A woman pushed a baby carriage down the sidewalk, heading away from her, toward the park. A kid on a shiny red bike appeared along a cross street, head down, legs pumping, and then was gone. The morning remained nearly deserted, serene, unremarkable.

  Dressed in lightweight jeans, a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, and old-school Keds, Bella adjusted her heavy backpack so that it sat precisely between her narrow shoulder blades before she set off at a brisk pace.

  Richard Mathis and Angela, half a world away: the breeze wafting over the water, the clouds tumbling overhead, the water’s rhythmic slap against the boat’s wooden hull. They stood side by side, watching the trailing spangles of Mediterranean moonlight, like an enchanted wake, as the boat headed toward the Cretan shore. After what had happened, it was such a relief simply to be alive, to drink in the beauty of the night, to breathe the salt air, and to know everything was going to be all right.

  Late the next morning, Richard’s cell phone rang. He was not alone. Angela was with him, and so were the press vultures that had lately descended on the instantly famous dig. She would never forget the look on his face while he listened—consternation, concern, a grim struggle against an invisible tide.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” she asked against a rising fear. But he didn’t answer, and then it was too late.

  Twenty minutes after he received the call, he was gone. Forty-eight hours after that, he was dead.

  TWO

  Six weeks earlier, Angela, watching a seaplane swinging low over the jewel-tone Mediterranean, felt the anxious gut clutch that accompanied each arrival of the dig’s only physical connection with the mainland. Gulls screeched out of its way, complaining bitterly against this metal-winged mutant as it glided onto the water’s skin with minimum wake. As soon as it had come down, they swirled around it with greedy anticipation, searching for a morsel or possibly a meal dropping out of its gargantuan mouth. Disappointment harrowed them when all that emerged was another human being who with seeming deliberation ignored their constant hunger; they wheeled away in a huff. In stark contrast, Angela’s heart rate accelerated as the seaplane’s sole passenger was ferried ashore in the dig’s shabby blue tender.

  It was her first glimpse of Richard Mathis, but even at that distance, through the shimmering heat haze, she could see how handsome he was, feel his charisma. Everyone loved a star, even one in the once-syncretic world of archaeology. But telegenic Richard Mathis had made archaeology both popular and fun. PBS had ano
inted him, and the proliferation of individualized cable channels had made him famous. Because everyone loved him—or, more accurately, his image—she was bound and determined not to.

  He stepped off the gently rocking tender, his gray-blue eyes wide apart and roaming, and Angela went down the sloping shingle to meet him, cursing Kieros for sticking her with this assignment. She imagined Mathis would be an ego-driven, privileged martinet, prickly, stubborn, imperious, who would expect everyone around him to march to his tune. Not her, not her. He was in for a surprise.

  He was dressed for work: many-pocketed khaki shorts and short-sleeve shirt; sturdy boots, well worn, scratched here and there by briars and rock outcrops at previous digs. He carried a soft-sided suitcase along with what appeared to be an oversized physician’s satchel made of pebbled pigskin.

  Angela had taken a clandestine peek at his impressive CV while the team leader, Kieros, had his back turned. Mathis was a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a ranking member of the American Association of University Professors, and he had supervised digs in Jerusalem, Sinai, and Ephesus. Then there was all the TV bullshit. Most notably, so far as she could see, he had been part of the team formed by the Vulci archaeological park that had unearthed the Tomb of the Silver Hands, the burial place of a noble Etruscan family, seventy-five miles northwest of Rome. Since almost nothing was known of the Etruscans or their empire, this find caused quite a sensation in the archaeological and ancient history spheres. Even before that triumph, though, he had been as close as the archaeological world got to a rock star. He lectured at universities, consulted with museums all over the world, even in Russia and China. There had even been intermittent talk of doing a film of his life’s work. Each time the rumor resurfaced, Richard shot it down as nonsense. In the perverse calculus of the tabloid world, paper and internet both, these denials only served to fuel the rumors and further burnish his reputation.

  But as sensational as the find at the Tomb of the Silver Hands had been, the team’s bounty here on Crete had the potential to top it, which was why the museum funding Kieros’s work had enticed Richard Mathis to join the dig. There was a strong possibility that what Kieros and the team had unearthed was an Etruscan tomb. What the Etruscans were doing on Crete was anyone’s guess. No written histories of the Etruscans had ever been found, so anything that was known about them came from the archaeological digs in and around Rome. They were apparently indigenous to the area, and though later on in their history they ruled the sea-lanes of the Tyrrhenian Sea, there was no evidence yet of them having colonized Crete.

  “Are the rumors true?” Richard Mathis said after the necessary introductions.

  “You have to understand,” Angela said as she accompanied him back to camp, “we’re in the earliest stages of excavation. The more we found, the slower Kieros ordered us to go.”

  Richard nodded. “A good man, Kieros. By all accounts prickly, stubborn, imperious.” He eyed her. “Did I say something amusing?”

  “Only to me,” Angela said.

  “Care to share?”

  “I don’t think you’d find it funny.”

  He stopped, turned to her. “Try me.”

  She looked into his gray-blue eyes and somehow felt herself to be the surprised one. “Prickly, stubborn, imperious—those were the three traits I was sure would define you.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “I think I’m going to like you, Angela Chase.”

  They continued on toward his tent.

  “I find it interesting that Kieros sent you to meet me instead of coming himself.”

  “He’s on his daily call to Athens.”

  “I’m sure. He’s not in the least happy I’m here. He’s insecure, as well—so I’ve heard.” He stopped abruptly again. “I have offended you, haven’t I?”

  “Not really. I’ve become accustomed to my place here.”

  He looked at her, his pale eyes penetrating while at the same time revealing nothing of himself. “Well, you shouldn’t.” He smiled. “So I’m asking you—all the speculation swirling around the dig: What’s true, and what isn’t?”

  Angela licked her lips, for a moment at a loss for words. It had been years since a man had spoken to her with such candor. Long ago and far away. She felt something hidden, obstinate in its rebellion, reluctantly shift inside her. “What we know is this: We set out to find what seemed to be clues to the real-life Minotaur. What we found was an Etruscan tomb. At least that’s the prevailing thought.”

  “Not Kieros’s thought. His theory would be upended.” Richard shook his head, sunlight spinning off his thick hair. “Imagine if you’ve discovered a doorway to the lost.”

  Angela shuddered. A doorway to the lost. The personal meaning for her bore nothing but dire consequences. Coming out into the light, being found again, would almost certainly be the end of her.

  They had reached the tents, but after setting down his bag in the tent assigned to him, Richard was in no mood to settle in.

  “I want to see the dig,” he said.

  “No problem,” she said. “I’ll get Kieros. He should be finished with his call.”

  “Don’t bother. He’s lost his chance. And you’re here. You know the site, don’t you?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “You take me.”

  “I’m thinking Kieros will be pissed.”

  A conspiratorial laugh. “I’m thinking the same thing.”

  They crossed the five thousand or so meters to the dig site. Fabric snapped in the hot, dry wind as if they were entering a marina, boarding a sailing vessel. No one was about; the sun was surrounded by white, as if it had bleached all color from the sky.

  “Truthfully,” he said, “I don’t want to hear Kieros’s biased opinion on what this dig is—which is what he wants it to be.”

  “I don’t know enough to be biased one way or the other.”

  “There, you see? How much do you know about the Etruscans?” he said in a conversational tone of voice. This was the first thing she had noticed about him—well, the second thing, after his eyes—he talked to her as an equal. She was used to being talked down to by the archaeology professors on the team. Not that she minded so much; she hadn’t their credentials, after all. Nevertheless, it was a change, another demarcation, a latitudinal crossing from there to here.

  “Not nearly enough,” she said.

  He showed her a half smile, enough for her to tell that her answer pleased him. Not that he felt it either right or wrong—intuition told her he was not that kind of man—just that he appreciated her candor. She was, of course, affected by his charisma, as, she had read, was everyone with whom he came in contact. But she was surprised by his warmth, the way he listened to her even when his gaze was on the dig. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, aware of her as a human being. That was something that hadn’t happened—that she hadn’t wanted—since she’d left America. On the contrary, she had strived to blend in, to be invisible, to disappear as completely as possible. Her goal had been to be a nonperson. For the first time in four years, as she walked next to Richard Mathis, she realized what a superb job she’d made of it. She had been grayed out. Now color was slowly flowing back into her.

  “Here’s what you came to see,” she said, moving toward the dusty plank ramp of section 17K.

  “Look.” Richard pointed to the side of the dig closest to them, the layers of sedimentary soil, each a different shade of ocher. “I think of digs as being like books, you see? Each layer of earth a chapter to explore, a new perspective on history unfolding. Another bit retrieved, another lost bit found.” Then he laughed softly. “I’m afraid you can take the professor out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the professor.”

  She didn’t mind that in the least. She was here to learn, and Richard possessed the knack all the best teachers had of making their subject fascinating.

  Richard, standing beside her, said, “The composition and discipline of the
Roman legions we’re so familiar with from films and books were Etruscan in origin.” He turned in an arc, pointing. “You see this dig is on a north-south axis. This was specified in Etruscan sacred books. All Roman legion camps were set up the same way. Though, to be honest, Kieros is skeptical of this theory. He’s holding out for the Minotaur and the origins of the Cretan myths.”

  He spoke like a professor, but when they reached the lowest level of 17K and he breathed in the dust of ages, his demeanor changed completely. In Kieros’s unconventional methodology the excavation was divided into physical grids, marked off with string they needed to duck under in order to access the squared-off sections. Every square was numbered, lettered, or both. Though he moved carefully and expertly around the site, Richard’s expressions and little gasps of joy were those of a young boy circling the tree on Christmas morning.

  “See here. Most definitely Etruscan,” Richard said, kneeling beside a pithos, a large storage jar three-quarters buried. “But not an indication of an Etruscan burial site.” He sat back on his haunches. “The Etruscan civilization rose between the tenth and the eighth century BC.” He possessed that great gift of speech; he could make the phone book fascinating. “They had an enormous influence on the Roman Empire that in many areas of Italy, particularly Tuscany, survived to the present day. It was the Etruscans who drained the swamps and transformed what had been a loose agglomeration of tribal sheepherders’ huts into Rome, whose armies would eventually dominate large tracts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. From the Etruscans, too, came the antecedents of Latin and the Roman gods.”

  “Do you think they were indigenous to Tuscany—Etruria—or migrated from Asia Minor?”

  “What do you think?”

  That’s what she got for trying to impress him. “I’m afraid I don’t know enough about them.”

  “Most don’t, even the so-called experts.” He nodded. “And that’s why you’re here. Why we’re both here, really. To learn more about what was lost.” He looked all around him. “There’s so much more here,” he murmured, as if to himself. Then, to Angela, “How did you come to be on Kieros’s team? You’re pretty young to be on such a senior project.”