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more fashionable than the other students, who favored torn jeans and T-shirts. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said. She took my hand. “This is Julia Nelson and her husband,” she informed the gathering.
    “Matt,” my husband added.
    Nina introduced us to the rest of Dr. Stewart’s students. Arturo’s wife Vitoria was also a grad student in the department. Petite and smiling, she shared her perfect skin with their two-month-old daughter, who slept in a sling around her neck.
    With his broad shoulders and slow southern drawl, I immediately typecast Daniel Long as a Confederate flag-waving, gun-toting redneck. Nina later told me he graduated from Yale and had turned down a Rhodes Scholarship to work under Dr. Stewart.
    Nilima Gurung was a little older than Dr. Stewart’s other students, probably in her early 30s. Heavy set, with dark skin marked with acne scars, she had been a documentary filmmaker who made a short film about Dr. Stewart. Fascinated by his work, she gave up her career and returned to graduate school to study archeology.
    Nina introduced Thomas Cheng last, and he did feel like an afterthought as he sat on a chair pushed against the back wall, as if he was trying to disappear into it. Intense, with dark, heavy glasses, he briefly nodded a hello but didn’t speak.
    Matt handed Nina the bottle of wine. “I’ll put this in the refrigerator,” she said. “We’re very casual here. Why don’t you come with me and serve yourself?”
    She led us down a narrow corridor to a large kitchen filled with granite and Sub Zero appliances. A mishmash of pots simmered invitingly on the six-burner stove. “Please, help yourself,” Nina said. “Friday night dinner is something of a competition. Dr. Stewart is an accomplished chef, so he always outdoes anything we prepare.”
    “Does everybody know why we’re here?” Matt asked.
    “I only told Dr. Stewart.” She offered me a reassuring smile. “I didn’t want you to feel like you were on display.”
    I was relieved to hear that, though they weren’t the ones I had imagined staring at me like I was a freak show specimen. “Where is our host?” I asked.
    “He’s been on a call with one of our Chinese colleagues for most of the evening,” Nina said. She handed us plates.
    Matt, never shy around food, laded soup into a bowl. “How long were you in North Korea?” he asked.
    “Six months, but there’s years’ worth of work to do.”
    “Why did you leave then?”
    “The North Koreans disagreed with some of Dr. Stewart’s theories about the site, so they kicked us out of the country.”
    “’Disagree’ is an understatement,” said a young woman who had just stepped into the kitchen. “You’re lucky you weren’t both thrown in the gulag.” Tall, lithe, and blonde, with a sensual Russian accent, the woman reminded me of a younger Maria Sharapova.
    “Elena,” Nina said. “We need to be judicious about what we say.”
    “Then maybe you shouldn’t invite your friends to Ash’s parties.” She offered a hand to Matt, then to me. “I’m Elena Novakovich, and I’m guessing you’re not archeologists.”
    “Software sales,” Matt replied. “We really don’t know anything about this so I think your archeological secrets are safe.”
    “Ash isn’t going to be able to keep the lid on this forever,” Elena said. “Magoa is going to upend everything we believe about Asian society. Patriarchal privilege may never be the same.”
    Nina flashed Elena a reproving look. She turned to us. “Dr. Stewart wants to keep the details of the discovery under wraps until he’s finished his research. He’s concerned that the wrong publicity will hurt our chances of returning to the site.”
    “Trying to keep secrets only hurts our credibility,” Elena said. “That’s the first lesson I learned from studying Soviet history.”
    ~*~
    We filled our plates and followed Nina and Elena back to the living room. Matt and I squeezed onto the sofa next