The Kukulkan Manuscript (14 page)

“Then we’ll send KM-2 in and let them cut a piece from it,” Alred said.

“Soon as you’re finished with your analysis,” Porter grinned.

Alred left without saying good-bye.

Porter leaned into his leaning desk and stared at the cracked door. She hates me, he thought. She didn’t stay, as planned, and they were in a rush. She even forgot her bag. Would she return for it?

He put his fingers to his lips and rested on his elbows.

He knew he had a reputation for being overbearing. His eccentricities had gifted him with a lonely life. And here was someone willing to share some time with him…he hoped. He had to straighten out, be helpful.

Porter slapped himself in the forehead and returned to his translating.

They would know within a few days when the manuscript had been written.

*  *  *

Alred stomped away with one thing in mind. She only needed a few major pieces of the puzzle to give her counter dissertation power. Other scholars had already set the foundation for her argument. KM-2 would prove to be the final key to destroying the theory of ancient transoceanic contact as Porter described it.

Soon, those points would present themselves.

But on the way to her car, she couldn’t help but scan the darkness…for Dr. Ulman.

April 17
11:53 p.m. PST

Polaski’s breathing seemed to echo off of the office walls as his good fingers flipped quickly through the file. Wilkinson gurgled his last breath from the floor. Polaski dropped the papers with shaking hands. They spilled over the desk, the chair, the carpet.

“That’s it, I’m out’a here!” he said, running to the door.

He reached the street and looked around, driving thin fingers through his thick hair. “Great!” he said, remembering his car parked two blocks away. Sprinting, he crossed the quiet road, his heart thundering. Mutts barked somewhere in an alleyway. With a sigh, he swung around the corner and spotted his gold Mazda hatchback.

Figeroa leaned like a gargoyle against the door on the driver’s side. His dark skin frozen in the cold air, his black goatee shifted like porcupine spines as his eyes met Polaski’s.

“What are
you
doing here?” Polaski said to the brute, who glanced at his misshapen hand. Polaski hated it when people did that.

“Was the parking lot filled behind Wilkinson’s office?” Figeroa said. He shook his head. “You did it, didn’t you.” He came around the side of the car, his voice icy. “You murdered him!”

“You know what would have happened if I didn’t!” Polaski said as Figeroa shoved him. Polaski’s lanky body stumbled backward, his scarecrow arms waving in the air until he steadied himself.

“I can’t believe you killed him! Don’t you realize you’ve pinned us down? There’s no hope now! None!” said the gargoyle with dark eyes.

Polaski caught Figeroa by the shoulders. They pushed against each other as he commanded, “Quiet down!”

“What does it matter?” Figeroa said, his shadowy eyes wide, his hands locked on Polaski’s shoulders. “We’re dead men, now! They’re gonna fry us!”

“Get in the car,” Polaski said, keeping his voice down. His eyes cut up to the dark windows on the buildings around them. The street smelled of exhaust and oil.

“You have ruined my life!”

“I said sit!”

Forcefully, they pulled away from each other. Figeroa threw himself into the passenger seat as Polaski started the engine. Within minutes they were in Polaski’s apartment, packing a large Samsonite suitcase.

“We’ll go to your place next. Get your things,” Polaski said.

“No way, man. Can’t go back there!” Figeroa said, looking at each wall as if they hid police cameras.

“Fine!” Polaski said, flinging his closed bag at Figeroa’s chest.

Figeroa barely caught the bag. Its weight stabbed the snaps of his black suede jacket into his ribs. “What are you do’n?!”

“Get out of here!”

“What?!”

“Take the bag and run. There’s six-hundred dollars stashed in the bottom corner.”

“Huh?!”

“You heard me!” Polaski went into his closet, pulled at a shoe box on a high shelf, lost his grasp on it, and watched the .38 spill out with the bullets when the container hit the floor. “I’m staying to make sure the carbon dating doesn’t happen.”

“Oh, man,” Figeroa said, watching Polaski load the gun, “You’re crazy. You killed Wilkinson and—”

“So?” Polaski shot him a hard glance. “I told you to leave! This is no longer your concern.” He slid bullets into the black revolver with shaky fingers.

“What did ya do to him?”

“Stabbed him with his letter opener,” Polaski said with a dry voice.

Figeroa shook his head, ran to the window, and peered out through the crack in the drapes. He almost laughed, but his voice trembled with nervousness. “Don’t suppose you wore gloves, did ya?”

“Shut up.”

He turned back to Polaski and shouted in his face, “Then your
prints
are all over the place! You probably left the murder weapon in Wilkinson’s back!”

“So what?!”

“Polaski,” Figeroa said, easing his shaking voice when his eyes stopped on the gun again. “You lost your wallet in the building earlier today, remember?”

“I was pick-pocketed!” Polaski said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Some student’s got five dollars more than he had yesterday. He’ll toss the wallet in a dumpster, and no one will ever see it again.”

“You don’t know that! It might’a slipped out when you poked around Wilkinson’s office this morning! What if Wilkinson found it and put it somewhere safe, left the building for his meeting across town, returned this evening just in time to run into you and get killed?! Man, the cops will be storming your place before noon tomorrow!”

“Never committed a murder before,” Polaski said to himself, looking down at the gun. “Didn’t think I was capable.”

“You never will again!”

Polaski looked at Figeroa and slowly lifted the gun. “I told you to get out of here.”

Figeroa froze, silent for a minute. Then he said, “You fire that weapon and cops’ll be here instantly.”

“You’ll be dead,” Polaski said with wide eyes.

Without another word, Figeroa nodded slowly, bit his upper lip and went to the door. “You’re insane, man. Cops’ll get ya.”

Polaski didn’t lower the weapon until Figeroa had closed the door behind him. He sighed and looked at the window. In a low voice he said, “It’s not the police I’m worried about. If I don’t work fast, I’ll be dead by the time they find me.”

*  *  *

Porter’s covers were already on the floor. He turned hard enough to wrench off the mattress sheet.

No nightmares.

No sleep!

He stared at the bare wall for a while. The codex, its delicate pages covered in words that would stun the world, flashed again in his mind. He thought of the smell of the paper breaking into a fine mist of pepper, different from old books but so similar to Egyptian papyrus.

He closed his eyes in anger.

He knew he was going overboard with the subject, but he’d never run across something so exciting. The guys in Utah who worked for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) would kill for this document…in a manner of speaking.

But its very existence in America wasn’t exactly legal. The thought burrowed like a tick into his brain.

He rolled again.

Alred was about the most uptight woman Porter had ever worked with. She was spending fewer hours with him as time went on. He’d caught her in the library two days before, volumes stacked neatly around her, pads of used paper open and piled under her busy hands. When he’d tried to find out what she was doing, she’d nearly bit the tips of his fingers off.

She was pretty.

Porter tossed on the bed.

Red letters of the clock glowed with a growl:
2:27
.

April 18

“Hear the news today?” Porter said, catching Alred in the parking lot behind the Dover building. He’d waiting for almost an hour in the cold, hoping she’d show up. It was past noon, but the fog hadn’t subsided.

“I’m surprised you have time to watch television,” she said. She carried a black portfolio twice the size of a briefcase but only two and a half inches thick. She also wrestled with her bag, which she’d retrieved the day before.

“It was on the radio. Dr. Wilkinson was found stabbed to death in his office this morning. His own letter opener.”

“Professor Wilkinson—here?” Alred said, shooting him a glance, then staring off into memory-ville.

“Don’t suppose you want some help,” Porter said, looking at her full hands. The black overcoat she wore crowded her person and made her look like she carried more weight than she could have been. She was big-boned, so her outfit also seemed to give her an added fifty pounds around the waist.

“No thank you,” she said. “Any word on the dating?” Striding tall, Alred held her head up. Her relaxed eyes scanned the rear entrance to the building with Porter’s office. Porter tried to keep up.

“Not till tomorrow,” Porter said, still looking at her bags. “Dr. Atkins says she’s drowning in assignments. What’cha got there?”

“Are you always this persistent, Mr. Porter?”

His feet slowed, but he skipped forward, turned his eyes away, and said, “I’m not offended by my first name.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,
John
,” said Alred without emotion as they climbed the few steps to the glass door, “but I have a single streak of relentless conservatism.” She opened the door and looked at him. “Formality.”

“After you,
Ms.
Alred,” Porter said with a happy grin.

She slid by him, banging her packages into the sheet metal door frame.

“Tell me, Porter…do you think the world will convert to your religion if your dissertation’s proficient enough?”

Porter’s eyebrows rose. “To tell you the truth, I think you are right.”

“Really,” Alred said, coming to the elevator. She rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand.

He sighed and said, “I asked you not to discount the possibility of a
possibility
that my findings were true…and then I threw out any chance of believing I was wrong.”

DING.

The door slid open.

Alred didn’t move, but looked into Porter’s gray eyes.

“Not very scientific of me,” he said.

The portal started to close, but Porter threw a hand against it.

Looking at the elevator floor, Alred lifted her eyebrows. “Hmm.” She entered, and Porter followed, unable to read her thoughts, unsure whether he’d made ground or hit another heartless wall. He didn’t know what else to do. Liberal women loved men who admitted their mistakes, especially when it was true.

Before the door closed, a tall man walked by and looked in. His dark eyes shot fiery darts.

April 18
10:23 p.m. EST

Albright would die if he didn’t run. That’s what the doctor said, at least.

He panted in the dark, wishing he’d been exercising as much as his physician recommended. It would be easier then, wouldn’t it?

Only circling three blocks.

Halfway around, he knew he’d do the same as always: stop running and start walking!

His lungs were filled with smoking acid, as was his heart. He could smell the burning. He lifted his fists higher, hoping it would relieve some of the stress on his body. He didn’t know anything about proper running form.

Just to the next stop sign, he told himself, then walk.

He’d heard on television that whether one ran or walked, one would burn the same amount of calories. He supposed it would be the same with his cardiovascular system; he’d burn the energy, sweat a couple liters, and keep his pulse rate high. He couldn’t say his heart
wasn’t
going!

It was under thirty degrees, but warm for an Ohio night in April. Thunderheads hid in the dark overhead, but the pavement his feet beat upon looked dry as concrete in a desert under the yellow street lamps. All the snow had disappeared, but there would probably be more by midnight tomorrow.

So why was he sweating?

Didn’t exercise but once in a week.

He could see the stop sign…relief!

Wiping away the sticky moisture on his face with his gray sleeve, Albright slowed to a gentle stride. His arms fell to his sides. His lungs sagged, waiting for his heart to rest.

He had a good excuse for not running. He’d been out of the country. The doctor couldn’t expect Albright to run in the mountains of Guatemala!

But why tell his physician he ran every night? For more Fenfluramine and Phentermine! They were supposed to lower his appetite. It wasn’t easy shaking thirty years of carefully acquired excess weight! Besides, he wasn’t supposed to get more than two weeks of the prescription at one time (which he
did
take regularly, and
couldn’t
do without), and Albright was going into his second month.

Nice doctor. He got his check.

Running fingers through his wet hair, he held his breath as a blue Chevy passed, vomiting invisible smog.

He’d left the Kalpa site in a hurry to get back to the states. It was very peculiar, he thought, passing the stop sign. Peterson had taken off the day before him, and Albright had no idea what had happened to Ulman…though he had suspicions.

A colorless Ford Taurus with bright lights rounded the corner.

With a snarl, Albright lifted a hand to protect his eyes.

He dropped it and listened to the car pull to the curb and die some twenty feet behind him.

So why had the University requisitioned KM-1, Dr. Albright’s codex?

Made him too famous, he figured.

That was fine. His first article was published, and a more thorough paper would be finished tomorrow morning.

It wasn’t illegal, his possession of KM-1. Not mostly.

He’d passed through channels…bribed, his way, that is. Wasn’t too hard to obtain the necessary paperwork. Easier to purchase than he’d thought it would be!

But the University had frowned on his measures and said they would keep it, “For legal purposes.”