Decipher by Stel Pavlou Page A

surprised. She moved to the left and could see where part of the body was missing. It looked ripped away rather than rotted. It was hollow now, except for the remnants of a fetus. She had been pregnant. There was no smell, except for the mud and the river.
    Steve grinned again, with a nod. “Yeah. Isn’t she a beauty?”
    Sarah was furious. This was all completely lost on her. She dug her fists into her pockets, and screwed them up into balls. “No. There is absolutely nothing beautiful about a twelve-thousand-year-old frozen elephant! You called me out here, in the middle of the fucking night to see a goddamn woolly mammoth? You gotta be shittin’ me! That’s precisely why I didn’t want to come to fucking Siberia in the first place. I hate Siberia. I hate Alaska. I hate the Canadian north. You can’t dig a fucking hole to piss in without running across a thousand fucking extinct, fucking frozen animals. If it’s not mammoths it’s saber-toothed tigers. You know, last year I found a fucking mastodon? I’m sick of this!”
    The Russian workers couldn’t speak English, but they could sense she was upset. The murmuring ceased abruptly and they all stared at the half-crazed American lady. Steve left the loop to dangle and straightened up. He was frowning now, annoyed. “I didn’t call you, Sarah. Someone else did. Go piss them off. I don’t get to see too many of these things.” He delved into his pocket for a camera and handed it to a Russian. “Now if you don’t mind, I wanna take a picture for my kid before the museum people drag it away.” He posed like a big game hunter next to the massive creature.

    Sarah suddenly felt very sorry for it. She turned her back.
    She could hear her name being called, but she couldn’t figure out from where. Seconds later two guys in hard-hats and big green rubber boots were waving their arms about trying to remain upright while they slid and stumbled down the black mud bank. As they drew closer she could see that the smaller, thinner one of the two was dressed in a suit and a gray Crombie. The other one was dressed sensibly. “Sarah Kelsey? Ms. Kelsey, is that you?” the man in the suit was calling out, trying to keep his hat on.
    â€œYes, it’s me,” Sarah said frostily.
    â€œThe geologist, right?”
    â€œYeah.” She whirled around when she heard a chainsaw spark into life. She glanced at two of the Russians ripping into the carcass, then turned back to the men. “Are you the people who called me?”
    â€œYes,” he smiled. “Yes, we are.” He stuck out his hand, but she eyed it distastefully. “Jay Houghton.” He rubbed his hand absently on his coat. Perhaps it had been dirty. His eye caught something peculiar. He was like a child. “Wow, is that a mammoth?”
    â€œI dunno. What do you think?” she asked sardonically.
    â€œIt sure looks like a mammoth.”
    â€œWell, then I guess it must be one.”
    There was more shouting as a few more Russians came tearing over the hill with an oil-drum on wheels, a fire raging inside it. Someone else carried the ketchup and the barbecue sauce. The guy with the chainsaw started cutting up steaks and slapped them on the grill mesh they had fastened to the top of the drum. Lustgarten was horrified.
    â€œWhat’re they doing?”
    Houghton looked visibly sick. He put a gloved hand over his nose as the smell and the smoke wafted over. “Good God!”
    â€œI thought they were museum people!” Lustgarten yelped. “They can’t eat it!”
    â€œOh, come off it,” Sarah snapped at him with a scowl. “That’s more steak than these people have ever seen. Of course they’re going to eat it!”
    The guy next to Houghton was laughing. He puffed on his cigar and watched with some amusement. Lustgarten tried
to stop the Russians, but they just elbowed him out of