“The same day as Rome,” said Rimona.

“That’s right.” Dina looked around at the remnants of the old village. “It started right here in Beit Sayeed more than fifty years ago. It was Khaled who masterminded Rome, and he’s going to hit us again in twenty-eight days.”

PART TWO THE COLLABORATOR

 PART TWO 

THE COLLABORATOR

8 NEAR AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE

8

NEAR AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE

“I THINK WE MAY HAVE FOUND ANOTHER ONE, Professor.”

Paul Martineau, crouched on all fours in the deep shadows of the excavation pit, twisted his head slowly round and searched for the origin of the voice that had disturbed his work. It fell upon the familiar form of Yvette Debré, a young graduate student who had volunteered for the dig. Lit from behind by the sharp mid-morning Provençal sun, she was a mere silhouette. Martineau had always considered her something of a well-concealed artifact. Her short dark hair and square features left the impression of an adolescent boy. Only when his eye traveled down her body—across the ample breasts, the slender waist, the rounded hips—was her remarkable beauty fully revealed. He had probed her body with his skilled hands, sifted the soil of its secret corners, and found hidden delights and the pain of ancient wounds. No one else on the dig suspected their relationship was anything more than professor and pupil. Paul Martineau was very good at keeping secrets.

“Where is it?”

“Behind the meeting house.”

“Real or stone?”

“Stone.”

“The attitude?”

“Face up.”

Martineau stood. Then he placed his palms on either side of the narrow pit and, with a powerful thrust of his shoulders, pushed himself back up to the surface. He patted the reddish Provençal earth from his palms and smiled at Yvette. He was dressed, as usual, in faded denim jeans and suede boots that were cut a bit more stylishly than those favored by lesser archaeologists. His woolen pullover was charcoal gray, and a crimson handkerchief was knotted rakishly at his throat. His hair was dark and curly, his eyes were large and deep brown. A colleague had once remarked that in Paul Martineau’s face one could see traces of all the peoples who had once held sway in Provence—the Celts and the Gauls, the Greeks and the Romans, the Visigoths and Teutons, the Franks and the Arabs. He was undeniably handsome. Yvette Debré had not been the first admiring graduate student to be seduced by him.