############The heat of the following day was at its worst by the time Halstead allowed the workmen to set up their canvas tents, eat a leisurely meal, and rest their weary bodies until the moon had risen once more. Hess and Williams joined the workmen for lunch, then curled up in the Locomobile to get some rest themselves. Halstead and Albright took longer to retire, Halstead out of a need to keep watch over the dig and the diggers, and Albright out of a giddiness that prompted him to seat himself and rock back-and-forth alongside Halstead on the bottom step of the sixteen that had been excavated. The Darbeitpartei leader averted his eyes from a contemplation of two seals impressed in the heavy plaster covering the doorway, one of the Royal Necropolis and one of King Tutankhamen, and looked aside at the fidgeting archeologist. “Are you okay, Doctor?” “It’s not too late to turn back, you know, Mister Hitler,” Albright replied, his own eyes still contemplating. “We could just tell the Antiquities Service that it was all a mistake, that you didn’t know what you were doing—” “It’s far too late to turn back now, Doctor,” Halstead assured his companion on the step. “We would never be able to explain why we dug as deep as we did.” Albright leaned forward, removed his glasses, and rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes. “The seals, Mister Hitler. The seals. That’ll be two more seals broken. That’s three seals, Mister Hitler. Three seals in all.” By the half-mumbled utterance of his last sentence, Albright was hunched over his legs and holding his head in his hands. Halstead laughed, and slapped the younger man’s thigh. “Lighten up, Doctor, and don’t get bogged down in apocalyptic semantics. These seals are emblems on a wall, not wax blobs on a scroll. The end of the world is nowhere near.” Halstead removed a cigar from the breast pocket of his shirt and carefully adjusted the loaded carbine sitting across his lap. “You smoke cigars, Doctor?” |