Jonathan’s colleague telephoned three days later, while Daniel and Mara were in his office arguing over an atlas.
Daniel had suggested they could spend a few days in Cape Town if the caves led nowhere. Mara had pointed out that Cape Town appeared to be on the other end of the country.
“It’s the same country,” Daniel said.
“So is California.”
Jonathan reached across them for the telephone.
“Reed.”
They stopped talking.
He listened, reached for a pencil and pulled a sheet of paper from beneath Daniel’s elbow. As the conversation continued, he began writing faster.
“Yes, I have the photograph here.”
Mara watched him turn it over.
“No, the copy isn’t particularly clear either.”
A pause.
“Would we be able to see that section?”
Daniel looked at Mara. She pretended not to notice.
Jonathan wrote down a name and underlined it.
“Of course. Whatever arrangements they require.”
By the time he put down the receiver, both of them were waiting.
“Well?” Daniel asked.
“The photograph came from a survey of one of the side passages. My colleague thinks he can identify the area, although he hasn’t been down that particular section himself.”
“But we can go?”
“He can arrange access with someone from the site. Proper access,” Jonathan added. “We don’t wander in and start digging.”
Daniel smiled.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I’m telling you now so I can remind you later.”
Mara looked at the notes.
“When?”
“Next week, if we can get there.”
The answer made the journey real in a way the photograph had not. Until then, South Africa had been a place on Jonathan’s desk. Now Mara would have to speak to her manager, explain the absence to her family and work out how much money she could afford to lose.
Daniel was already asking Jonathan which airport they needed.
“Hang on,” she said.
Both men turned.
“I haven’t said I can go.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
“You said we should find out.”
“Yes. Find out.”
He glanced at Jonathan, then back at her.
“What do you need to arrange?”
“My job, for a start.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“We can work around that.”
“And the flight.”
“I’ll cover the flight.”
He said it easily, as though she had mentioned needing a pen.
Mara looked down at the atlas. Jonathan became occupied with replacing the cap on his pencil.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She looked up.
Daniel had stopped smiling.
“I want you there,” he said. “You’re the reason we opened the thing.”
“That doesn’t mean you owe me a holiday.”
“I wasn’t offering you a holiday.”
For a moment she could think of no answer that didn’t reveal how much the offer embarrassed her. He could decide to cross an ocean and then do it. She had spent that morning calculating whether she could afford to replace her shoes.
Daniel pulled his chair closer to the desk.
“Speak to your manager. If you can get the time, we’ll sort out the rest.”
She disliked the word we’ll almost as much as she liked hearing it.
“And if I can’t?”
“Then we wait.”
Jonathan looked up at that. Daniel didn’t notice. He was watching Mara. She nodded once.
“I’ll ask.”
Her manager gave her six days.
He did so reluctantly, after pointing out that she had been employed for only a few months and that people generally took leave to recover from work rather than investigate mysterious objects in another hemisphere.
Mara had described it as helping a museum researcher, the most respectable part of the truth. Persuading her mother was harder.
“South Africa?”
Mara stood at the public telephone with the receiver pressed against her ear. Behind her, somebody was trying to manoeuvre a luggage trolley through a doorway too narrow to accommodate it.
“With people from the museum,” she said.
“What people?”
“Jonathan Reed. I told you about him.”
“And the other one?”
“Daniel.”
“The English boy?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence Mara knew well.
“Are you being sensible?”
She watched the porter reverse the trolley and try again.
“I’m trying to be.”
It was enough to end the argument, although not enough to ease her mother’s concern. When the call was over, Mara remained beside the telephone for a moment, her hand resting on the receiver.
She could still cancel.
Instead, she went upstairs to pack.
Jonathan arrived at the airport carrying a canvas shoulder bag, a rigid document case and a hat Daniel had never seen him wear.
Daniel studied it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re looking at my hat.”
“It’s quite a hat.”
“It keeps the sun off.”
“We’re going into a cave.”
Jonathan handed him the document case.
“Make yourself useful.”
Mara arrived a few minutes later with one borrowed suitcase. She had changed out of her hotel uniform, and Daniel realised how rarely he had seen her in clothes she had chosen for herself.
She caught him looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Jonathan sighed.
“Apparently nobody has anything to say this morning.”
At the check-in counter, he opened the canvas bag to find his passport. Mara saw the coiled leather tucked beneath a notebook.
She reached in and lifted one end.
“Jonathan.”
He turned.
“Why have you brought a whip?”
Daniel slowly lowered the document case.
Jonathan took it from her and pushed it back into the bag.
“It was a gift.”
“That wasn’t the question,” Mara said.
“You never know what might be useful.”
“A torch,” Daniel said. “A torch might be useful.”
“I’ve brought a torch.”
“And a whip.”
Jonathan found his passport.
“Are we going to discuss every item of my luggage?”
Mara looked at Daniel. The smile came before she could stop it.
For the first time since agreeing to the journey, the tightness in her stomach eased.
Beyond the counter, passengers were moving towards departures. Jonathan began explaining their tickets to the clerk, becoming unnecessarily formal as he did whenever he wanted to establish that he was in charge.
Daniel leaned towards Mara.
“We can still pretend we don’t know him.”
“He has the tickets.”
“Good point.”
She looked towards the departure hall. In a few hours, the hotel, the pendant and everything familiar would be an ocean behind them.
Daniel picked up her suitcase.
This time, she let him.