“But you’re correct,” Big Baby went on cheerfully enough. “It is astonishingly small, considering its history. A mere two and a half square miles, but what a two and a half square miles! In classical times, you know, the Rock was one of the Twin Pillars of Hercules. The Phoenicians knew it as Calpe. The Carthaginians came here, and the Romans. The Vandals swept ruthlessly into it on their southward rampage through the Roman Empire, and then the Visigoths.”

Gideon couldn’t help smiling. Retired for two years from his position at the University of California, Vanderwater couldn’t stop being a professor. He could – and did – slip into a full-scale, seemingly well-prepared lecture at the drop of a hat. For a man recognized as one of the great figures of archaeology, recipient of almost every award and honor the field had to give, he had an inextinguishable need to demonstrate that he knew more about anything than anyone else, whatever the subject might happen to be. He did it engagingly enough, and with genuine erudition, but after a while it could get on one’s nerves, not least because he was just about always right.

“From the other direction,” Vanderwater continued, “it was at the southernmost tip of Gibraltar – right down there, Europa Point, in fact – can you see where that lighthouse is? – that Tarik ibn Zeyad set foot in 711 to begin the long Moorish domination of Iberia. Yes, right there.”

He was close to purring as his plummy voice caressed the words Europa Point, and with good reason. His appointment five years earlier as director of the Europa Point dig, and the subsequent discovery, under his supervision, of the First Family, had provided the brightest jewel in the crown of his reputation.