They manipulated the fiber optics, the size and brightness of the computer image, and searched for the most important part of the treasure, the message from Attila. After twenty minutes or so of recording every item in the tomb, Remi whispered, “I haven’t seen anything that could be it, have you?”

“No. I’m going to try something else.” Sam pulled the rigid rig up, then went to work on it. He removed the metal tubes that housed the cable and then he removed the extension. What he had left was a long, black, insulated optical fiber. On the far end was the rounded tip with the light and the tiny camera. Slowly, carefully, he inserted the flexible cable into the drill hole. Many times he had to pull it back an inch or two to straighten it or twist it to get around a snag. At last, after many minutes of feeding it in, it cleared the drill shaft, then curled a bit so they could see the sides of the stone chamber. “Wait. I see something.”

“There,” said Remi. “There it is.”

She took the fiber-optic cable and twirled it with her fingers so she could aim it. The image was a set of deep scratches made with a knife on the wall. Ego Attila filius Munzuci. It went on, and Remi made sure to get every bit of it recorded, then sent it to Selma’s computer, and then copied it on the disk, which she took out and put into the deep cargo pocket of Sam’s pants. They began to dismantle their equipment and put it into their backpacks. As they began to open the hinged bottom of the box, Sam stopped.

“Wait,” Sam whispered. “I hear something. Footsteps.”

Remi closed the computer, turned off the fiber-optic light, and pulled it out of the hole. Sam put it into one of the backpacks, with the drill and bit, while Remi put the computer into the other backpack.

They listened. Remi lowered her head to the ground and squinted through the opening at the edge. “It’s men. Five—no, six. They’re coming this way, of all the million ways.”

The footsteps grew louder and louder, as did the men’s voices. There was laughter. They were loud and jovial. There was the clank of a bottle dropping into an empty steel drum used as a trash barrel. Sam and Remi remained motionless, barely breathing.

The footsteps passed by so close that Remi thought she could pick out each man from the others. There was one who seemed to have a stone in his shoe because his walk was scrape-thump, scrape-thump, trying to get it out from under his foot. He called out to his friends as they moved off.