“We need the three men we used as crewmen on the boat in the Tisza. They need to be at our hotel in Mantua by tomorrow evening at sundown.”
“You have a boat?” asked Tibor.
“No, but by tomorrow night I will.”
“They’ll be there.”
“Thanks, Tibor.”
“I have to get off now, so I can talk to them. Good-bye, Sam.”
Sam and Remi called the concierge again, and while she got them a reservation for a fine restaurant in Mantua, they drove the twenty-five miles to the city to shop in the best stores and find clothes suitable for an evening out. They began with a gray Armani summer suit for Sam, and, at Folli Follie, Remi bought a simple but striking Fendi jacquard sleeveless dress with a gold accent on the belt. They wore the clothes they had bought, left the clothes they’d worn in the trunk of the car they’d parked at the city walls, and made the ten-minute walk to Ochina Bianca, a restaurant just north of the city’s center.
They ordered risotto alla milanese, redolent with saffron, as their pasta course, osso buco as their entrée, and their wine selection was Felsina Fontalloro 2004 from Tuscany. Remi said, “This is all so wonderful. Let’s flip a coin to see which one of us goes to culinary school so we can have this at home.”
“The cooking part is not my specialty,” he said. “Think of me as your nutritionist and trainer. I’m just helping you build up your strength for tomorrow when the work starts again. In fact, I’m already thinking you might need some dessert. There’s a local delicacy called sabbiosa, which is a plum cake soaked in Guinness. How can that be bad?”
“I have no idea,” said Remi. “Maybe it can’t.”
“In fact, I’ll even have some with you to be sure it’s up to your standards.”
“I’m sure you will.”
After their dinner in Mantua, they walked to the city walls, got into their car, and drove along the country road toward Lake Garda. “I’m glad we did this,” Remi said.
“Are you?”
“Yes. Tomorrow night at this time, if we’re digging a deep hole with shovels, I can remind myself that while the world sometimes brings you dirt and hard labor it also brings perfect risotto.”
“And a perfect date to share it with.”
“You’re getting awfully good at that,” Remi said. “I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you to be sure you’re not practicing compliments on other women.”
“Feel free,” said Sam. “I relish close attention.”
“I know you do,” she said, and leaned close to kiss his cheek as they drove in the starlight back to their hotel in Peschiera del Garda.
CONFLUENCE OF THE PO AND MINCIO RIVERS, ITALY
IT WAS TEN THE FOLLOWING NIGHT BEFORE SAM AND Remi walked into the field again. This time they arrived by car. Sam drove it off the road under the row of trees and bushes and covered it with a tarp to hide its shape. He and Remi wore dark clothes and carried shovels and crowbars, flashlights, climbing ropes, and infrared night goggles in their backpacks.
They quickly found the pole they had left behind and began to dig. The work went more easily than Sam had anticipated because the ground had been plowed recently, so it was loose for the first foot or more. Beneath it was rich black dirt from thousands of years of overflows from the two rivers, land cultivated by the Etruscans and then the Romans, then the Lombards and modern Italians.
It took them two hours to reach a rough stone surface. They dug away some of the dirt on top, moving only enough to make a path to the opening on top. This time, there was not an iron slab but a barrier of three big stones laid close together over the opening and mortared in place.
Remi looked closely at it and said, “This doesn’t look like something we can move by ourselves.”
“It isn’t,” Sam said. “I’ll be right back.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting the car,” he said over his shoulder. A few minutes later the car they had rented was bouncing along the plowed rows of the field with its lights off. Sam backed up to the edge of the hole he and Remi had dug. He got out, attached the climbing ropes to the tow ring under the car, and looped them over the first of the stone slabs. He took a hammer from the trunk and a crowbar to use as a chisel to chip away most of the mortar. When he was ready, he said, “You drive. I’ll give the stone a little help from back here.”
Remi got into the driver’s seat and opened the window so she could hear Sam.
Sam went to the first of the stones, slid the bent end of the crowbar under its edge, then walked a few yards over to the long aluminum pole from the magnetometer that he had dismantled
the day before and came back with it. He slipped it over the long part of the crowbar. The pole was about seven feet long, and he grasped it near the end. “Okay, Remi,” he said. “Slowly.”