Excavation (33 page)

Maggie frowned. “It's still strange. I'd always thought that myth originated when tales of the Spanish conquest were mixed with Biblical stories brought by missionaries, stories of Christ's resurrection. It's odd to hear the
socyoc
of
this isolated tribe recounting the same tale here.”

“Well, whatever the source, he sure as hell seemed excited.”

Nodding, Maggie continued to stare out at the terraced village as the campfires were extinguished and the torches ground into the sand. Darkness spread across the stone homes, swallowing them away. Finally, she sighed and turned away. “I guess I'd better turn in. We have a long day tomorrow. Good night, Sam.”

He waved her off, then turned to the reed mat that hung over his own door. As he pushed aside the barrier, stories of Incan gods faded into the background, replaced by the memory of Maggie staring up a him, eyes bright with the promise of passion. Sam's chest still ached at the untimely interruption.

Maybe he had read too much into that fiery moment. Still, he knew the memory of her lips would haunt his dreams this coming night.

Sighing, he ducked into his room.

 

Joan had not slept all night. She sat at the small desk in her cell, a tiny oil lamp illuminating her work. The crinkled sheet of yellow legal paper was spread upon the wormwood desk. The sliver of a pencil in her hand was now worn dull, the eraser rubbed down to its metal clasp. Still, she worked at deciphering the row after row of symbols. It was her handwritten copy of the coded message found on the back of Friar Francisco de Almagro's crucifix. Nobody had thought to confiscate the paper from her, but why would they? No one but she and Henry knew the significance of the scrawled symbols.

Joan tapped the pencil against her lips. “What were you trying to warn us about?” she mumbled for the thousandth time since returning to her cell after dinner last night. She had been unable to sleep, her mind fraught both with worry over her imprisonment and curiosity about the revelations in the Abbey's laboratory.

And her fellow prisoner down the hall had offered her no solace.

After learning of his nephew's danger, Henry had grown
distant from her, his eyes hard and angry, his manner closed. He had not spoken a single word over dinner. As a matter of fact, he had hardly touched his lamb chops. Any attempt of hers to allay his fears was met with a polite rebuff.

So Joan had returned to her cell, tense and anxious. At about midnight, she had begun working on the code after her failed attempt at slumber.

Joan stared at her night's work. Large sections of the message had been translated, but many gaps still existed. Her success so far was mostly due to the one large clue provided by Abbot Ruiz himself: the name
el Sangre del Diablo
. From the wide variety of runelike symbols, Joan had already estimated each mark corresponded to a letter of the alphabet, a simple replacement code. So it was just a matter of finding a matching sequence of symbols that would correspond to the same sequence of letters in
el Sangre del Diablo
. She had prayed that somewhere in the cryptogram the friar would mention the name.

And he had!

With that handful of symbols now assigned specific letters, it was just a matter of trial and error to decipher the rest of the cryptogram. But it was still difficult. She was far from fluent in Spanish. She wished Henry had been there to help her—especially since it was so disconcerting to realize that the tidbits she had deciphered so far were glimpses into a man's last words, his final warning to the world.

She held the paper up. A chill passed through her as she read:
Here is my last willed words. May God forgive me…the Serpent of Eden…pestilence…. Satan's Blood corrupts God's good work…Prometheus holds our salvation…pray…may the Serpent never be loosed
.

Sighing, Joan laid down her pencil and paper, then rubbed her tired eyes. This was the best she could accomplish. Friar de Almagro had been either insane or scared witless, but after what she had witnessed in the vault below, Joan could
not be sure his ravings didn't hold some kernel of truth. Whatever he had found, it had terrified him.

The sound of approaching footsteps echoed down the hall, interrupting her reverie.

Quickly, she folded the yellow paper and pocketed it again. If she had a private moment with Henry, she would get his feedback…that is, if he would listen to her. She remembered how stubborn Henry had been as a youth, full of deep moods that she could never touch back then. But she wouldn't let that stop her now. Even if she had to twist his arm, she would make him hear her out. Francisco de Almagro had feared something up in the mountains, something associated with the mysterious metal. If Henry's nephew was in the thick of things up there, Henry had best listen to her.

A sharp knock on her door was followed by a voice. “The abbot wishes to see you both.” The curt voice was Carlos's. Joan swung around as a jangle of keys unlocked her door.

Now what?

 

Henry sat once again in the abbot's study. Rows of books lined the walls, and the wide windows were cracked open upon a view of the Church of Santo Domingo, its cross bright in the morning sunlight. Behind him, another monk stood guard, pistol in hand.

But Henry saw none of it as he sat huddled in on himself. In his mind's eye, he pictured Sam buried under piles of rubble and tons of granite blocks. His fists clenched. It was his fault. What had he been thinking when he left the excavation site to a handful of inexperienced students? He knew the answer. He had been blinded by the possibility of proving his theory. Nothing else had mattered. Not even Sam's safety.

The creak of heavy doors announced the arrival of someone else. Henry glanced back over his shoulder to see Joan
escorted in by the dark-eyed Carlos. Her eyelids were puffy, and from the wrinkled state of her blouse and pants, it looked like any attempts at sleep had failed her, too.

Joan offered Henry no smile when she entered the room. But why should she? She was yet another person whose life had been threatened by Henry's folly. He had reentered her life only to endanger it.

“Sit down,” Carlos ordered the woman roughly. “Abbot Ruiz will be joining you shortly.” The friar then mumbled something in Spanish to the other guard, his words too rushed and quiet for Henry to make out. Then Carlos left.

Joan sank into the other cushioned chair before the wide mahogany desk. “How are you holding up?” she asked.

Henry did not feel like talking, but she deserved at least the courtesy of a response. “Okay. How about you?”

“The same. It was a long night.” Joan glanced toward the guard and leaned a little closer. She touched Henry's knee, feigning intimacy, just two lovers consoling one another. Her words were no more than soft breaths. “I think I've deciphered most of the code on your mummy's crucifix.”

Despite his despair, Henry was jolted. “What?”

His startled reaction drew the eye of the guard. The monk glared at him, lifting his pistol higher.

Henry lowered his voice, then reached and touched Joan's cheek. It did not require much acting to play the lover of this woman. “What do you mean?” he whispered. “I tossed the cross away back at the lab.”

Joan reached to a pocket in her blouse and pulled out the corner of a yellow sheet of paper. “My copy.”

Henry's eyes grew wide. Here he had been wallowing all night in his own guilt and anger, and Joan had spent the hours laboring at the crucifix's cryptogram. Shame flushed his cheeks. But why should her action surprise him? She had always been so resourceful.

Joan continued in hushed tones, “It warns that this mysterious metal is dangerous. His last words seemed to be a garbled
warning about some disease or pestilence associated with Substance Z. Something I think his order knew nothing about…and still doesn't.”

Henry found himself drawn into the mystery. He could not help Sam directly from here, but knowledge could be a powerful weapon. “What was he afraid of?”

Joan shrugged her face. “I couldn't decipher it all. There are gaps missing and strange references: the Serpent of Eden, the Greek myth of Prometheus.” She stared intently at Henry. “I need your help in figuring it out.”

Henry's gaze flicked toward the guard. He wanted to get a peek at her translation, but there was no way with the guard looking on. “The Serpent of Eden is surely a reference to the tempter of forbidden knowledge in the Bible, a metaphoric reference to something that both tantalizes and corrupts.”

“Like Substance Z, perhaps.”

Henry's brows lowered. “Maybe…”

“But what about the Prometheus reference?”

Henry shook his head. “I don't see that connection at all. He was one of the mythic Titans who stole fire from the gods and brought it to mankind. He was punished by being chained to a rock and had his liver eaten out by a huge vulture each day.”

Joan frowned. “Strange…why mention that?”

Henry leaned back into his chair and silently pondered the mystery. It was better than uselessly worrying over Sam. He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “There must be a reason.”

“That is assuming the man was still sane when he etched the cross.”

“I don't know. Let me think about this. According to Abbot Ruiz, Francisco was pursuing the mother lode, the true source of
el Sangre
. He already knew of its transformational property, so I think your earlier assumption was correct. He discovered something up in the mountains, something that changed his mind about the metal.”

“And something that scared the hell out of him.”

Henry nodded. “But he was also eventually executed and mummified, suggesting he had been captured by the Incas after making this discovery. If he wanted to get a warning out to his order, a message on the cross was a smart move on his part, a calculated chance. He must have known that the Incan shamans would have left unmolested any personal items, especially gold, on the body of the deceased. It was his one chance of getting his message out, even if he did not. He must have hoped his body would be returned to the Spaniards, rather than mummified and buried like it was.”

“So what does all this suggest?”

Henry turned to Joan, worry in his eyes. He had no answer.

Any response from Joan was cut off as the door opened again. Abbot Ruiz marched into the room, his face red from either exertion or excitement. Carlos followed in his wake and took up a station beside the other guard. Ruiz continued to his desk, sighing as he eased his large bulk into his seat. He eyed Henry and Joan for a few silent moments. “I have good news, Professor Conklin. Word from the mountains reached us early this morning.”

Henry sat up straighter. “Sam and the others?”

“You'll be pleased to hear they've made it out of the buried temple. They're safe.”

Henry swallowed back a sob of relief. Joan reached a hand out to him, and he clutched it gratefully. “Thank God.”

“Indeed you should,” Ruiz said. “But that is not all.”

Henry raised his eyes. Joan still held his hand.

“It seems you've trained your nephew well.” Ruiz wore a broad smile.

“What do you mean?” Henry asked, his voice hard.

“He and his fellow students have made an astounding discovery up in the mountains.”

Henry's eyes narrowed.

The abbot leaned back in his chair, clearly enjoying the suspense. “He's found a lost Incan tribe, a village nestled high in a volcanic cone.”

“What?” Shocked, Henry clutched Joan's hand harder. He did not know what to make of this pronouncement. Was it some trick of the abbot's? But Henry could think of no motive. “Are…are you sure?” he asked, dismayed.

“That is what we are going to verify,” Ruiz said. “I've spent all morning making arrangements and getting everything in order for our journey.”

“
Our
journey?”

“Yes, both you and I. We'll need your expertise up there, Professor Conklin. We'll also need your presence to convince your nephew to cooperate fully with us.” Abbot Ruiz quickly told of Sam's radioed message and of the students' escape through caves to the hidden site of the village. “So you see, Professor Conklin, we don't know exactly where this volcano is. There are hundreds in the area. Your nephew has proposed signaling us by a set of bonfires, and with you alongside us, I'm sure he'll do so posthaste.”

Henry sat stunned by the news. It was too much to assimilate at once. Sam was safe—but if Henry got involved, if he went along with Ruiz's plan, then he could put Sam into more danger. On the other hand, out in the field, perhaps he'd have a chance to warn his nephew, stop whatever Ruiz schemed. Imprisoned here, he had little chance of doing anything to help his nephew.

Joan squeezed his hand, clearly sensing his distress. He found comfort in her grip.

Abbot Ruiz stood up. “We're set to leave by helicopter in ten minutes,” he said. “Time is critical.”

“Why?” Henry asked, taking strength from Joan.

Ruiz stared Henry down. “Because we have come to believe your nephew has uncovered more than just an Incan tribe. He may have unearthed the site of
el Sangre del Diablo
's mother lode. Why else would a small clan of Incas
still be hiding up there? Unless they were guarding something.”

Joan and Henry exchanged concerned glances.

“We must hurry.” The abbot waved to Carlos, who shuffled forward in his robe, his 9mm Glock again in his hand.

“Move,” the guard said harshly, jabbing his gun into Henry's throat.

The abbot seemed oblivious to his aide's rough manner. As if washing his hands of the matter, he circled around the desk and headed to the door.

At gunpoint, Henry and Joan stood.

“Not you,” Carlos said, indicating Joan. “You're staying here.”

Joan's brows crinkled with fear.

Still holding her hand, Henry pulled her closer. “She comes with me, or I don't leave.”

By the door, the abbot paused at the commotion. “Fear not, Professor. Dr. Engel simply remains here to ensure your cooperation. As long as you obey our orders, no harm will come to her.”

“Fuck that! I'm not going!” Henry said fiercely.

A nod from the abbot and Carlos struck faster than Henry could react. The large man swung his arm and slapped Joan a resounding blow across her face. She fell to the floor, a surprised cry on her lips.

Henry was instantly at her side, kneeling beside her.

She lifted her hands from her pale face. Her fingers were bloody, her lip split.

Henry turned to take in both Ruiz and Carlos. “You god-damned bastards! There was no need for that!”

“And there is no need for profanity either,” Ruiz said calmly from the doorway. “The lesson could've been much worse. So I'll invite you again, Professor Conklin, please come with me. Do not disobey again, or Carlos will not be so lenient next time.”