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little trumped-up imbecile of a desk clerk. He would have enjoyed throttling him, stuffing those manila folders down his gullet until he choked. “Very well, I advise you—the Frenchman’s price is high.”
    “No object,” Eidel said.
    “And his trustworthiness is less than admirable.”
    “That is something you will be expected to deal with. The point, Colonel Dietrich, is that you will find him and you will bring him to the Führer. But it must be done quickly. It must be done, if you understand, yesterday.”
    Dietrich stared at the shade on the window. It sometimes filled him with dread that the Führer had surrounded himself with lackeys and fools like Eidel. It implied a certain cloudiness of judgment where humans were concerned.
    Eidel smiled, as if he was amused by Dietrich’s unease. Then he said, “Speed is important, of course. Other parties are interested, obviously. These parties do not represent the best interests of the Reich. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Clear,” Dietrich said. Dietrich thought about the Frenchman for a moment; he knew, even if he hadn’t told Eidel, that Belloq was in the south of France right then. The prospect of doing business with Belloq was what appalled him. There was a smooth quality to the man that masked an underlying ruthlessness, a selfish ness, a disregard for philosophies, beliefs, politics. If it served Belloq’s interests, it was therefore valid. If not, he didn’t care.
    “The other parties will be taken care of if they should surface,” Eidel was saying. “They should be of no concern to you.”
    “Then that is how I’ll treat them,” Dietrich said.
    Eidel picked up the cable and glanced at it. “What we have talked about is not to go beyond these four walls, Colonel. I don’t have to say that, do I?”
    “You don’t have to say it,” Dietrich repeated, irritated.
    Eidel went back to his seat and stared at the other man across the mountain of folders. He was silent for a moment. And then he feigned surprise at finding Dietrich seated opposite him. “Are you still here, Colonel?”
    Dietrich clutched his attaché case and rose. It was hard not to feel hatred toward these black-uniformed clowns. They acted as if they owned the world.
    “I was about to leave,” Dietrich said.
    “Heil Hitler,” Eidel said, raising his hand, his arm rigid.
    At the door Dietrich answered in the same words.

THREE

Connecticut
    I NDIANA J ONES sat in his office at Marshall College.
    He had just finished his first lecture of the year for Archaeology 101, and it had gone well. It always went well. He loved teaching and he knew he was able to convey his passion for the subject matter to his students. But now he was restless and his restlessness disturbed him. Because he knew exactly what it was he wanted to do.
    Indy put his feet up on the desk, deliberately knocked a couple of books over, then rose and paced around the office—seeing it not as the intimate place it usually was, his retreat, his hideaway, but as the cell of some remote stranger.
    Jones, he told himself.
    Indiana Jones, wise up.
    The objects around him seemed to shed their meaning for a time. The huge wall map of South America became a surreal blur, an artist’s dadaist conception. The clay replica of the idol looked suddenly silly, ugly. He picked it up and he thought: For something like this you laid your life on the line? You must have an essential screw loose. A bolt out of place.
    He held the replica of the idol, gazing at it absently.
    This mad love of antiquity struck him all at once as unholy, unnatural. An insane infatuation with the sense of history—more than the sense, the need to reach out and touch it, hold it, understand it through its relics and artifacts, finding yourself haunted by the faces of long-dead artisans and craftsmen and artists, spooked by the notion of hands creating these objects, fingers that had long since turned to skeleton, to dust. But never forgotten, never quite