"Look. There are other bones much deeper in the permafrost. They are evidently thousands of years old." She reached into the hole and scraped out some decayed vegetation and showed it to her colleagues. "This stuff is not very old. Your little elephant came into the hole more recently."
"Perhaps it is my poor English, but I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying," Sato said politely.
"Yes, what are you saying?" Sergei said with no attempt to hide his impatience. "That the mammoth is not part of its surroundings?"
"I don't know what I'm saying. Only that it is odd that the flesh is not rotting."
Sergei crossed his arms and looked around at the others with a triumphant grin on his face.
"I understand," Maria said. "I'm surprised we didn't see it before. This ravine still floods from time to time. It's possible that a flash flood washed the specimen away from a wall farther along and that the baby floated here, where it lodged in the hole and froze again."
Sergei saw that he was losing his conversational edge. "We're not here to look at holes," he said brusquely. He led the way about a hundred feet from the discovery site to where the ravine branched off.
"You go with Maria down there," he said, pointing to the left-hand branch. "We'll examine the other ravine."
"We've already been down this one," Maria protested.
"Look again. Maybe you'll find some more of your floating mammoths."
Maria's eyes flashed. Sato saw that a salvo was coming and intervened. "We had better make sure our hand radios are tuned to the same channel," he said.
With a verbal brawl averted, they all checked their walkie-talkies; and made sure the batteries were good. Then they split up into two groups, with the three men going one way and the women the other.
"What's wrong with Sergei today?" Karla asked.
"We got into an argument over your theory last night. He said it was all wrong. I said he wasn't giving you credit because you were a woman. He's such a male chauvinist, my husband."
"Maybe he just needs a little time to cool off."
"The old goat will be sleeping with an iceberg tonight. Maybe that will cool him off."
They both burst into laughter that echoed off the walls of the ravine. After walking several minutes, Karla saw why Maria had been so angry about being ordered to the left-hand branch. There were few bones to be found. Maria confirmed that the expedition had partially explored the other gorge and found it far richer in bones than the one they were in.
As they scanned the walls of the gorge, Maria's hand radio crackled. Ito's voice came on.
"Maria and Karla. Please return immediately to the point where the party split up."
Minutes later, they were back at the place the ravine forked. Ito was waiting for them. He said he had something to show them, and led the way along the tributary to where the other two men were waiting in front of a section of banking that looked as if it had been blasted open with dynamite.
"Somebody has been digging here," Sergei said, stating the obvious.
"Who could have done such a thing?" Sato said.
"Is there anyone else on the island?" Karla asked.
"We didn't think so," Ito said. "I thought I saw a light a few nights ago, but I couldn't be sure."
"It appears that your eyesight was working very well," Sato said. "We are not alone on the island."
"Ivory hunters," Sergei pronounced. He picked up a splint of bone from the hundreds of broken pieces that littered the ground. "I had no idea they had found this place. It's a sin. There's no science here. It looks as if someone has taken a hammer and chisel to it."
"Actually, we us
e a portable jackhammer."
The words came from thickset man who stood looking down on them from the top of the bluff. His broad face, his narrow, hooded eyes and high cheekbones advertised his Mongol ancestry. A thin mustache drooped down on either side of his mouth, which was wide in a thin-lipped grin. Karla had studied Russian while she was in Fairbanks and got the gist of what he was saying. The assault rifle cradled in his arms spoke louder than any words.
He whistled and a second later four more men appeared in the gorge, two from each side, all armed with similar weapons. They had tough-looking, unshaven faces, with sneering mouths and hard eyes.