The couple, when they spoke to each other, did so quietly in French or German. After they had explored the whole market, they moved on. They walked a few blocks surrounding the market and then walked back to the Zhambyl Hotel. A few minutes later, their driver, Nurin, came out to the enclosed lot, folded their carriage, and put it in the trunk of his car. At the same time, had anyone been interested, they could have seen the wife carrying a laptop computer and the husband a lesser-known piece of equipment called a magnetometer up to their room wrapped in the baby’s blanket.

Once they were in their room, Sam and Remi used the laptop computer to convert all of the magnetometer data to a magnetic map of the central market of Taraz. They sent it to Selma and Albrecht at their house in La Jolla. Then they went down to the hotel restaurant for lunch.

The Kazakhstan diet was very dependent upon meat. Sam and Remi managed to avoid horse meat and horse sausage, sheep’s brains, and kuyrdak, a dish made of the mixed innards of several animals. Instead they ordered kebabs, which had pieces of meat that they believed they recognized as fowl, and tandyr nan, a kind of bread, and they were very happy.

When they were back in their room, Remi’s new phone buzzed. “Hello?” she said.

“Hi, Remi, it’s Selma. Are you both there?”

“Hi, Selma. Yes. Sam’s with me.”

“I loved the baby crying. Where did you get that?”

“I found it on YouTube and recorded it on a disk. I just reached into the carriage and played it once and then turned it off.”

“I’ve got Albrecht on now. He’s getting impatient.”

“Okay,” said Remi. “Hi, Albrecht.”

“Hello, Remi. Hello, Sam. You two have succeeded admirably. You’ve mapped the entire central market, or what’s under it.” He laughed. “I didn’t tell you this before, but I was afraid Attila might have been referring to some burial ground outside the city. The early Huns in Asia used to pick a remote valley and bury people under mounds there. If that was the case, we might never find it. But, fortunately, this is different.”

“Do you think the big rectangle near the center is the tomb?”