7

“Well,” said Menendez, when he heard the news. He stroked the side of his face.

“They refuse to violate sacred ground!” said Senator Zamora, who had read out the law preserving ancient monuments and structures.

“Well, well.”

“It could be Lebtit or Exilissa, or even Auza.”

The Governor’s expression did not change until he swallowed and then the muscles on his cheeks and forehead came out in relief. He sank back in his chair, hairy hand on white jacket.

“Well, well, well.”

Minutes later, Senator Zamora gyrated through the security gate. He moved through the dense assembly of ratas, scattering men to the right and left of him.

“Stop!” He stood on the steps of a spoil lorry. He stood seven thousand five hundred and fifty-nine metres tall. “Stop!” he shouted, waving his hat. He held aloft the order for a cessation of all activity while a preliminary excavation was conducted into what in his critical opinion constituted the single most important burial ground in North Africa since Father Delattre’s excavation of the necropolis at Carthage.

“It’s signed by the Governor!” With those words, Senator Zamora disappeared underground.

8

“What’s a tophet?” asked Queesal next morning, sniffing. The news that all the Moroccan workers were refusing to work, coming as it did ten days before the Royal Visit, had reactivated his condition.

“A place of sacrifice,” said Wavery. He decided now was not the time to mention its proximity to the residence.

“Humans?” asked Queesal, his tone evoking the circumstances in which he might approve of tophets.

“Animals too.”

“I see heads rolling here, Tom. Unless certain things are sorted out PDQ.”

“The Governor is adamant this stoppage is a temporary affair.”

Something else puzzled Wavery’s new Head of Department. “Forgetting, for a moment, the Moroccans. This tophet, from what you say – it’s not in the main tunnel.”

“They were intending to seal the rock-boring machine there.”

“You mean . . . it’s still under the sea?”

So Senator Zamora was able to tell Asunción. The main shaft was complete, but not yet the service tunnel.

“They reckon on another week.”

In London Queesal was silent. He said, “I’ll work on a document to preserve the ambiguities of our response. The PUS is going through the programme with the Foreign Secretary tomorrow. It is my feeling the smallest thing at this stage could rock the whole boat. The smallest thing, Thomas.”

“The Governor has promised a statement tonight.”

“I expect you to ring me immediately.”

9

After a night spent underground, Senator Zamora, son of Abyla’s most famous son and indefatigable lord of the headland, was not altogether himself.

At lunchtime he stole into the kitchen to clasp his ecstatic cook around her middle. “Whose bread I eat, their song I sing,” he crooned, massagingly.

“Señora Criado, what wonderful things are you proposing to gorge us with tonight? Pablo! Money for ice creams? Have your hair cut as well! Clotilda, more of this soup? No, don’t get married. A ridiculous institution. Asunción! My turtle-dove! Of course, I’ll come to the Consul General’s party. Tromso? Dear boy, how are you? We missed you at Christmas. Delighted. Anything to help. I don’t know if it would make a great film . . . ”