By the time they reached Johannesburg, Mara had stopped pretending she might sleep on the plane.
She had spent most of the journey watching darkness through the window, interrupted by meals she wasn’t hungry for and Daniel finding increasingly uncomfortable positions in which to doze. At some point his head had settled against her shoulder. She had left it there.
Now, standing outside the terminal, she felt the unfamiliar warmth on her face and wondered whether six days had been a ridiculous amount of time to ask for.
Jonathan was already looking for their driver.
A man near the waiting cars raised a sheet of paper bearing his name. Jonathan approached him with the confidence of somebody who had organised everything, then returned a moment later.
“Wrong Reed.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Excellent start.”
Their actual driver found them ten minutes later.
They spent the afternoon at the hotel, where Mara discovered that exhaustion could make a strange room feel more welcoming than her own.
Daniel had arranged three rooms along the same corridor. Jonathan immediately began unpacking documents. Mara put her suitcase beside the bed, took off her shoes and lay down without closing the curtains.
When somebody knocked two hours later, she woke with the certainty that she had missed her shift.
“Mara?”
Daniel.
She sat up slowly. The room returned around her: unfamiliar curtains, a chair beside the window, her borrowed suitcase.
“Give me a minute.”
He was holding a paper bag when she opened the door.
“Jonathan wants to go through tomorrow.”
“Of course he does.”
“I told him you were asleep.”
“And?”
“He said you could sleep after we’d gone through tomorrow.”
Daniel offered her the bag.
“I thought you might prefer food.”
She looked inside. Bread, fruit and something wrapped in greaseproof paper.
“You guessed?”
“Badly, possibly.”
She took it.
“Thank you.”
He glanced past her towards the room, then back at her.
“Everything all right?”
Mara nodded. She hadn’t expected him to ask, and for a moment the answer felt less straightforward than it should have.
“I’m just tired.”
“Me too.”
“You slept.”
“On and off.”
“Mostly on.”
He smiled, then looked faintly embarrassed.
“Sorry about that.”
She leaned against the doorframe.
“Jonathan can wait ten minutes.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Tell him twenty.”
The following morning, Jonathan was waiting outside the hotel wearing his hat.
Mara stopped beside him.
“You’ve committed to that, then.”
“The sun is quite strong.”
“It’s seven thirty.”
“It will get stronger.”
Daniel arrived carrying a bottle of water and looked from Jonathan to Mara.
“Have we discussed the hat?”
“We’re discussing it now,” she said.
Their driver pulled up before Jonathan could defend himself further.
Mara took the front passenger seat. Daniel and Jonathan settled in the back, where Jonathan positioned his canvas bag carefully between his feet.
As they left the city behind, Mara watched the buildings give way to more open land. She had never been anywhere quite like it. For several minutes she forgot about the caves and simply looked.
Behind her, Daniel was less easily distracted.
“You haven’t brought it.”
Jonathan looked out of the window.
“Brought what?”
“The whip.”
“It’s in the bag.”
Mara turned around.
“You actually brought it today?”
“I brought it all the way from New York. Leaving it at the hotel would rather defeat the purpose.”
“What purpose?” Daniel asked.
Jonathan adjusted the bag with his shoe.
“It was a gift.”
“You said that at the airport,” Mara said. “We’re still waiting for the rest of the explanation.”
Their driver glanced at them in the mirror.
“Indiana Jones?”
Daniel pointed towards the front.
“Thank you.”
Jonathan’s expression suggested he had expected greater professional solidarity.
“I happen to enjoy the films.”
“How much?” Mara asked.
“He knows which film the bag is from,” Daniel said.
Jonathan turned towards him.
“It’s a very practical bag.”
“So is a shopping bag. You don’t dress as a grocer.”
Mara laughed. Jonathan tried to remain offended, but the corner of his mouth gave him away.
“When I was younger,” he said, “I thought archaeology would involve rather more of this.”
“Driving?” Daniel asked.
“Going somewhere. Finding something nobody’s seen in centuries.”
“And less paperwork,” Mara said.
“Considerably less paperwork.”
She looked at him for a moment. Beneath the ridiculous hat, he appeared more excited than she had seen him in the museum.
“Fair enough,” she said.
Jonathan nodded, grateful.
Then she added, “But if there’s a giant rolling boulder, you’re going first.”
Their driver laughed.
Jonathan looked at Daniel.
“Are you going to join in all day?”
“Probably.”
Outside, a sign for Sterkfontein appeared beside the road. Jonathan leaned forward to see it, and the conversation softened as they turned towards the site.
By the time they stopped, he had taken the photograph from his bag and was studying it again.
Daniel opened his door.
“Leave the whip.”
Jonathan pulled the canvas bag onto his shoulder.
“No.”
“You’re actually taking it into the cave?”
“I’ve carried it halfway around the world. It can manage the last few hundred yards.”
Mara climbed out and looked back at Daniel.
“Let him have his moment.”
Jonathan straightened his hat and walked towards the low building where their guide was waiting.
Daniel watched him go.
“If he starts humming the music, I’m going back to the hotel.”
Their guide’s name was Pieter de Villiers. He had Jonathan’s fax in one hand and the expression of a man accustomed to visitors expecting more than the evidence promised.
They shook hands. Jonathan introduced Daniel and Mara as people assisting him with the enquiry, which Mara thought sounded considerably better than the truth.
Pieter glanced at the photograph.
“I think I know where this was taken. Whether we’ll find exactly what you’re looking for is another matter.”
“We understand,” Jonathan said.
Daniel said nothing.
Mara had noticed that he became quieter when he was interested. During the drive he had watched the land passing the window with the same concentration she had seen him give the pendant.
Pieter led them inside and spread a plan across a table.
“This is the section recorded in the survey. We can reach it, but the last part is narrow.”
Jonathan leaned over the drawing.
“And beyond it?”
“Not somewhere I’m taking visitors.”
“Of course.”
Pieter looked at each of them before continuing.
“No souvenirs. No climbing away from the route. If I tell you to stop, you stop.”
Mara nodded. Daniel did too. Jonathan appeared almost offended by the need to be told.
The descent took the heat out of their clothes.
Mara followed Pieter, with Daniel behind her and Jonathan bringing up the rear. Their lights moved across uneven walls, finding pale ridges, dark hollows and surfaces that looked wet until she came close enough to see they were simply smooth.
Conversation became awkward as they went farther in. Somebody would ask a question and receive an answer from around a bend, the voice arriving before the speaker.
Jonathan kept trying anyway.
“How old was the survey?”
“Older than the filing system.”
“That explains the notes.”
“It explains most of our notes.”
Mara smiled, although she was no longer listening properly.
She had expected the cave to feel familiar. Since boarding the plane, she had imagined recognising a passage or knowing which direction to turn. Instead, she felt clumsy and slightly cold. Her borrowed helmet pressed against her forehead, and she had already struck it twice against the rock.
They had come a very long way to look at a scratch.
Pieter stopped where the passage broadened enough for them to stand together.
“Here.”
Jonathan moved beside him and took out the photograph.
The angle was wrong at first. Pieter repositioned his light, letting it fall sideways across a shallow recess.
The curved mark emerged from the surface. Jonathan raised the photograph. For several seconds, nobody spoke.
It was smaller than Mara had imagined. Part of the lowest stroke had almost disappeared beneath a pale deposit, but the curve and the remaining lines were there.
Daniel crouched.
“Don’t touch it,” Pieter said.
Daniel withdrew his hand before it reached the wall.
“I wasn’t going to.”
Mara doubted that.
Jonathan passed him a copy of the writing. Daniel held it beside the marking, turning the page slightly.
“Well?” Mara asked.
“It’s close.”
“How close?”
He looked up at Jonathan.
“I wouldn’t call it an accident.”
Jonathan didn’t answer immediately. He was examining the surface around the mark, searching for something that might justify the journey in terms he could explain to someone else.
“We need better photographs,” he said at last.
Pieter nodded.
“You can take them from here.”
While Jonathan unpacked his camera, Mara stepped aside to give him room.
Her light caught a narrow opening beyond Pieter’s shoulder. The floor rose towards it, and a projecting shelf of rock concealed most of the passage from where they stood.
She looked back at the marking.
Something about the arrangement troubled her.
“Daniel.”
He stood.
“What?”
She moved her light between the recess and the opening.
“I don’t think it’s something you’re supposed to read.”
Jonathan stopped adjusting his camera.
“What do you mean?”
Mara struggled to find the distinction.
“In the photograph, it looks like writing. Here…”
She shifted a few steps to her left. From that position, the longest stroke seemed to incline towards the opening.
“Here it looks like it’s showing you where to go.”
Pieter turned to follow her light.
“That passage narrows very quickly.”
“Have you been through it?” Daniel asked.
“Far enough.”
Jonathan lowered the camera.
“We could look at the entrance.”
Pieter considered him, then glanced at his watch.
“The entrance,” he said. “That’s all.”
Daniel had to turn sideways to pass the projecting rock.
Beyond it, the floor climbed for several feet before levelling beneath a low ceiling. He moved carefully, keeping one hand away from the wall and the other around his torch.
Mara followed. Jonathan waited behind her while Pieter checked the footing.
At the end of the short incline, Daniel stopped.
His light rested on a pale face of stone. A fracture ran down one side, disappearing beneath a bulge near the floor. He moved the beam across it, then back again.
Mara recognised his expression.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
He crouched, looking along the lower edge.
For most of his life, broken things had troubled him until he could see how to make them right. This was different. Nothing here appeared broken.
But something had been fitted together. He could feel the arrangement without yet understanding it. Jonathan squeezed into the space beside Mara.
“Daniel?”
Daniel stood and placed the torch at a different angle. The light caught another short line on the stone. Mara leaned closer.
It was faint, worn almost flat, but it intersected a curve she had spent the past two weeks trying to forget.
She unfolded their copy of the writing.
“There’s another one.”
Jonathan took the page from her. This time he didn’t need to turn it.
Behind them, Pieter asked everyone to move back so he could see.
Daniel stayed where he was for a moment longer, studying the edges.
Then he said quietly, “I don’t think this is the end of the passage.”