Tears of the Jaguar (6 page)

Deborah hauled herself to her knees and looked at the girl standing in front of the great pyramid.

“Right under your feet,” she said.

Alice flinched and looked at the ground below her.

“It goes under the acropolis,” said Deborah, the full scale of the thing finally hitting her. “It leads inside the pyramid.”

“Inside,” Alice echoed. “Seriously?”

“You’d better get Bowerdale,” said Deborah, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. “And some rope. And the cameras. All of them.”

Alice still had that dazed look when she left, and she seemed to hesitate before going around the acropolis via the east end—the long way, but Deborah was too stunned by the find to wonder why. Deborah’s dig had just become Deborah’s find, and she would have to handle it with only a couple of students for assistance. And Bowerdale, of course.

Her heart sank. He mustn’t be allowed to take over. Deborah considered the newly created
cenote
, thinking hard. She had read all there was to read about Ek Balam, and this sure as hell wasn’t on any map she had seen. A passage inside the acropolis meant an underground chamber—rare in Mayan pyramids, but not unheard of. It would probably be old. Older than the building on top of it: Early Classic, perhaps. Maybe even pre-Classic. Her heart was racing.

This is huge.

Beyond huge. It would make headlines, which would delight Steve Powel and Cornerstone, even if they found nothing significant inside. But unless the chamber had been robbed, there
would
be things to find.

She laughed with delight, but the sound died on her lips. She turned around quickly, sure that there was someone in the underbrush behind her. She had heard something. A snapping twig, perhaps. A stealthy, cautious sound.

Deborah stared at the foliage, but there was no movement. She realized she was holding her breath, and exhaled slowly.

Still nothing, but she felt a chill, and the hair on her arms prickled.

You’re imagining it
, she told her herself.
There’s nothing...

A leaf, one of those huge elephant ear things, shifted fractionally despite the lack of wind, and for a moment she saw—or thought she saw—eyes watching her.

“Where is it?”

Deborah started and looked up. It was Bowerdale, looking flushed and expectant, Alice jogging to keep up.

“It’s a tunnel?” he called, scrambling down to where she stood. “You’re sure?”

“A passage,” said Deborah. “Built with stone blocks and roofed with slabs. Yes, I’m sure.”

He staggered over the uneven ground and thrust his face over the edge.

“We should reinforce this area,” said Deborah. “We’ve no idea how solid this lip is.”

“If it was going to collapse, it would have done so already,” muttered Bowerdale, gazing into the cave below. “But we’re
going to need to build a brace across the top, and get the winch so I can get down there.”

“You?”

“I’m the surveyor.”

“Of known monuments,” said Deborah. “This is not one of them and falls under my jurisdiction. I’ll be the first one down there.”

Alice was watching Deborah carefully.

“With all due respect, Miss Miller, this is a potentially hazardous situation and I think a man might be a better choice to...”

Deborah just laughed and peered down toward the water.

“There’s a ledge over there,” she said, pointing. “Lower me in, and I can swing over to the passage. Do we have the lamps?”

“They’re in the van,” said Bowerdale, taken aback. “But I still think I should be the person to investigate. My credentials as a surveyor have been recognized by the highest authorities, and not only in archaeology. I worked as...”

“Surveyor at White Sands,” said Deborah. “Yes, you said.”

“Well then,” he replied, as if that settled it.

“Where’s James?” she said, ignoring him and shooting a glance at Alice.

“He was over on the east side,” said the girl.

“Go get him,” said Deborah, “and bring whatever flashlights are in the van.”

Alice looked apprehensive, but she nodded once, her pale face blank, and then she was gone. Bowerdale watched her leave then turned to Deborah, his voice low.

“Now look here,” he said, “I am the senior archaeologist on site.”

Deborah rose, took a step away, and drew her cell phone from her hip pocket.

“What are you doing?” said Bowerdale.

“I’m going to go up that damned phone tower and call the lab at Valladolid,” she said. “They can bring more gear.”

Bowerdale reached over and closed one large, tanned hand over the phone. He didn’t take it from her, but he held it firmly, his fingers clamped over the number pad.

“Now hold on,” he said, and there was something different in his voice now, something quiet and a little dangerous. “Let’s just think this through.”

“What?”

“We’ve just stumbled upon what may turn out to be one of the great Mayan finds in recent decades,” he said. His face was close to hers now, his voice low and urgent. “We have no idea what we’re going to find in there. It could be special. Very special. We might be better restricting the number of people who know about it till we see what’s inside.”

“I’m talking about telling
our
people,” said Deborah.

“And I’m saying, let’s just hold on. If you and I go in alone, we get to tell the world exactly what we found. No one could contradict us. We take the pictures, shoot the video. We get the scoop. The
National Geographic
exclusive. The
Discovery Channel
documentary. This is how careers are made, Miss Miller.”

“Why would anyone contradict us?” she said, genuinely confused. “Surely the more people we take in, the more secure our story.”

“Too many cooks,” he said. “And besides”—and now Bowerdale’s voice dropped to a whisper—”there might be things inside that could have more value going through less
authorized
channels.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just that some items that would otherwise gather dust on the shelves of your museum might be of great interest to private collectors. Even minor artifacts could fetch the kind of money that would keep your museum running for some time.”

“You’re suggesting that we smuggle pieces out to raise money on the black market,” she said. She felt so completely thrown that she had to piece together the implication of what he was saying.

He seemed to watch her for a second, studying her face. Then, quite suddenly, he laughed, a throaty chuckle that filled his chest.

“I think I had you going there for a second, Miss Miller,” he said. “Kidding, or as my tiresome students like to say,
psych
! Cheer up. This is a day you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”

Deborah stared at him, but he had already moved to the edge of the depression and was signaling to James and Alice, who had rounded the eastern end of the acropolis at a run. Deborah watched him, unable to shake the uneasy feeling his manner had left with her. Bowerdale certainly knew how to get a rise out her, so perhaps he really was just teasing, but there was something about the way he’d reached for her phone. He’d been humorless. He’d been—what was it?
Threatening.
The word jumped into her mind and she found she could not push it away.

Eustachio watched from behind a huge
k’u’che’
tree a few yards from the northernmost edge of the place where the ground had collapsed, and he knew that it had happened at last. Strange that it should be now, after he and everyone else had spent years digging only a few feet away. Strange too that it should be rain that did it. After all the barrows of dirt, the spades, picks, and mattocks, it was the rain that had uncovered the secret his forefathers had vowed to protect. There had been times over the years when he had doubted their secret had been based in anything real, but now he knew for sure, and his life had changed. If only it hadn’t rained.

But then, Chaak had always ruled the Maya. When he bestowed his rain there was plenty and when he turned his face away there was death. Perhaps this too was his will.

Eustachio listened to the
gabachos
talking about ropes and winches, and he blamed himself. He should have seen the
danger of the sinkhole, should have guessed years before what lay beneath it. But then, the sinkhole had existed for many decades and neither his father nor his grandfather had imagined it obscured the secret place. What would happen next, he could not say. But he felt a ripple of fear course through his chest.

Terrible things would come. He sensed them in the pit of his stomach, looked into them like the
gabachos
peering down into the dark water that ran beneath the tomb of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. Terrible things.

He prayed to Chaak in the hybrid way he had learned from his father.

“I call to the bringer of rain in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost...”

They lowered Deborah down and swung her over the brownish water of the new
cenote
until she could reach the trailing roots and pull herself into the mouth of the passage. The tunnel itself was lined with stones, though some of it had collapsed into the sinkhole, with a corbelled vault ceiling—an inverted V-shaped roof that in the center was almost high enough even for Deborah to walk without stooping. She unslung the flashlight and snapped it on, dimly aware of Bowerdale’s voice, scolding the students for taking too long to get him roped in.

Deborah didn’t wait.

She moved a few yards down the tunnel to where a stone slab had been set as a door, permanently closed, except that the shifting of the ground had split it into three pieces. Deborah studied it, holding the flashlight beam on the fragments, carved with what resembled a stela, a royal figure seated in profile, along with ornamental birds, jaguars, and snakes. It was a tomb.
The carving represented the man who had been buried inside. Deborah’s heart beat fast and she could hear the rush of blood in her ears.

A tomb!
she thought, deliriously.
Powel will be on the next plane
.

Deborah squeezed through the shattered doorway and down two steps, the flashlight beam turned to the paving stones. The ceiling was lower here and the tunnel felt cramped. She raised one hand to the roof so that she could feel how far it was from her head as she walked. It was her hand rather than her eyes that registered the sudden rise in the ceiling, though she sensed the space around her and shone the flashlight up.

The passage had opened into a large chamber hollowed out of the rock, but it wasn’t empty. A stone structure shaped roughly like a step pyramid had been built inside. It stood about twenty feet high, rising right up to the cavern ceiling. It was coated with stucco that, though faded, was red as blood. When she trained the bright beam of her flashlight on the pyramid, she could make out forbidding masks flanked with bird wings in green and yellow, and dour, hawk-nosed faces. It reminded her of the Rosalia in the Mayan city of Copan, Honduras, but this was different. For one thing there was a doorway framed as an open maw lined with teeth, and terrible eyes: a hell mouth like the Zac Na set in the pyramid above it.