The Bone Labyrinth (41 page)

“This is a piece of polished diorite,” Lena said, “discovered in the jungles near Cuenca where we’re headed.”

Gray leaned closer.
So the labyrinth was found even here.

“A native tribesman gave this carved stone as a gift to Father Crespi.”

He looked up. “The missionary? The one who came out here because of his own interest in Athanasius Kircher?”

She nodded. “His mission was located at the Church of María Auxiliadora, or Mary Our Helper. Another church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, like the Marian sanctuary where Kircher hid Eve’s bones.” She let that sink in before continuing. “Over the course of his fifty years here, until his death at the age of almost ninety, he accumulated a vast collection, artifacts given to him by the Shuar natives of the region. He stored the collection at the church, some seventy thousand items in all.”

“Where did such a haul come from?”

“According to the tribesmen, they were taken from an extensive cavern system buried under the jungle. Roland believes these artifacts came to Father Crespi’s doorstep not by mere chance, but because the priest had made inquiries of the natives about such a place in the jungle.”

“But he didn’t have the coordinates we have now.”

“He didn’t. Likely Father Crespi had gleaned enough from his research about Kircher to bring him to this general region.”

“But not to the doorstep of this lost city.” Gray nodded to the book. “What else was given to him?”

Lena flipped through the book, showing him other artifacts: seven-foot-tall mummy cases that looked vaguely Egyptian, full suits of Incan parade armor, shelves of Ecuadorian pottery, rolls of silver and gold sheets adorned with images that seemed incongruous for the area.

Lena pointed out those anomalies. “According to archaeologists who examined the collection, the motifs and representations of many of the artifacts seemed to better fit other cultures—Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian.”

She opened to a picture of a copper sculpture of a winged man with a lizard’s head. “For example, this is clearly the figure of Nisroch, a god of ancient Assyria, a Mesopotamian civilization dating back four thousand years ago.” She turned next to a set of golden plaques covered in a linear script. “And here are samples of proto-Phoenician writing. Experts have identified other pieces of the collection bearing Egyptian hieroglyphics, Libyan and Punic writing, even Celtic symbols. Father Crespi became convinced that these objects were proof of a
connection
between a lost civilization hidden in these jungles and the rest of the ancient world, a connection that predated recorded history.”

She fanned through the book, stopping at another set of photos. “Even stranger, the natives also brought him steel-hard copper gears, along with strange brass tubes that showed no rifling. All examples of a metallurgy beyond the local tribes’ technical abilities to produce.”

Gray took the book and looked through more photos of Father Crespi’s collection. Much of it was gold tablets and scrolls, depicting a kaleidoscope of astrological figures, pyramids, and gods. One gold plate even showed a bent-backed figure writing with a quill pen.

He shook his head. “Surely some of this must be fake.”

Lena shrugged. “Father Crespi admitted as much, believing that over time the natives might have crafted some of these gifts to please him. But even he could tell the forgeries from authentic items. I mean, who would freely give up so much gold just to fool an old priest?”

As proof, she flipped to a page that showed a yard-long golden crocodile with large rubies for eyes. It had to be worth a small fortune, certainly not something a native would craft as a simple forgery.

“Whatever happened to Father Crespi’s collection?” he asked.

“That’s a mystery all its own. After he died in 1982, his collection was quickly dispersed. Most of it ended up locked away in museum vaults on order of the Ecuadorian government. You can only view them with special permission. Other pieces ended up at an Ecuadorian military base of Cayambe, deep in the jungle.”

A military base?

Lena glanced to the rear of the jet’s cabin. “And according to Roland, rumors persist that some key pieces were taken and shipped off to the Vatican.”

Gray leaned back in his seat. “If that’s true, it sounds like Father Kircher wasn’t the only Catholic priest who was trying to keep something secret.”

But what were they trying to hide?

“For any more answers,” Lena said, “we’ll have to find that cavern system noted on Kircher’s map, the one marked with a labyrinth.”

From across the aisle, Seichan spoke with an arm over her eyes. She must have been feigning sleep while he and Lena had talked, eavesdropping on their conversation. “All of this sounds like nothing more than folktales, rumors, or treasure-filled dreams.”

“Maybe not,” Gray said.

Seichan lowered her arm and turned toward him, arching an eyebrow doubtfully.

While the others had studied various pieces of the puzzle, he had spent the past few hours researching the possibility of the existence of a lost city buried in the jungles of these mountains.

“It’s been well documented,” he said, “that a vast cavern system
does
tunnel through the Andes in this area, stretching an immeasurable distance. Large sections of it were photographed and mapped by the British-Ecuadorian research team back in 1976.”

“The one headed by Neil Armstrong,” Lena said.

“He was the honorary president of that expedition. While they found no lost city, the group did discover the remains of an old tomb in those caverns, along with identifying hundreds of new species of plants, bats, and butterflies.”

Seichan rolled her eyes. “Still, like you said, they found no lost city. And like I said, it’s folktales.”

“I’m not so sure. There’s a persistent legend about this region, of secret caverns that hold a vast library of metal books and crystal tablets. According to accounts of a man named Petronio Jaramillo, a Shuar tribesman took him to those caverns when he was a teenager. This was back in 1946. Afterward, fearful that it might be looted, he kept its location secret for decades. He finally agreed to guide a handful of people to its location, but only with the assurance that Neil Armstrong would participate in this latest venture, too. Then in 1998, within weeks of this scheduled trip, he was assassinated outside his home.”

Lena cringed. “Assassinated?”

“Some believe it was done to silence him. Others that he was murdered while someone tried to extract his secrets. Either way, the location died with him.”

Lena took the book from the table. “Do you think Father Crespi’s collection could have come from that same place?”

“Possibly. From there or maybe from tunnels that connect to that lost library.”

Seichan stretched in her reclined seat. “So why did that assassinated guy insist that Neil Armstrong be part of this new expedition?”

Gray shrugged. “It could be the man wanted someone whose status and name were beyond repute. Or maybe there was another reason. I still find it odd that Armstrong would’ve agreed to be a part of
either
expedition. He wasn’t an archaeologist. And after the Apollo 11 mission, he became somewhat of a recluse, doing only a handful of interviews. So why become involved in any of this?”

“I think I may know,” a voice said behind him.

Roland had quietly joined them, his eyes glassy with exhaustion and amazement. He clutched Kircher’s journal to his chest while gazing toward a window, where a full moon was perfectly framed.

“Why?” Lena asked him.

“Because of the moon . . . it’s not what we think it is.”

9:02
P
.
M
.

Roland ignored their incredulous reactions. He struggled to find the words to explain what he had found buried within Father Kircher’s journal.

No wonder the reverend father had kept all of this secret.

Just forty years prior to the reverend father’s discovery of Eve’s bones, the Inquisition had sentenced Galileo to death for daring to suggest that the earth was not the center of the universe. The revelations written within Kircher’s journal would have equally doomed the man and anyone associated with his discovery.

“If the moon isn’t what we think it is,” Gray asked, “what is it?”

Roland lifted Kircher’s book. “The reverend father came to the conclusion that the moon is
not
a natural object.” Before anyone could object, Roland stood straighter. “And I agree with him.”

Seichan pulled her seat upright and swung around to face them all. She pointed toward the window, toward the full moon. “You’re saying that’s not real.”

Roland sank into a seat amidst the group. “I spent all night researching details I found in Kircher’s book. Seeking ways to disprove his conclusions. But instead, I only found more corroboration.”

“Maybe you’d better take us through this,” Gray said, nodding to the book. “What did you learn?”

“It’s not just what I found in the reverend father’s journal.” He looked to the shining face of the moon. “Have you never wondered why during a total solar eclipse the face of the moon fits
exactly
over the surface of the sun? Doesn’t that perfect visual alignment seem like an odd astronomical coincidence?”

From the others’ expressions, he saw that this odd fact had escaped them.

Like it does most people.

“That phenomenon happens because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, while sitting 1/400th of the distance between the earth and the sun.” He shook his head at the amazing relationship. “And that’s not all. The moon precisely mirrors the annual movement of the sun. A
midsummer
full moon will set at the same angle and place on the horizon as a
midwinter
sunset. Again, doesn’t that symmetry seem to defy coincidental chance?”

“But that doesn’t make it fake,” Lena said softly, as if talking to a madman.

And maybe I am . . . maybe I’ve fallen too far down the rabbit hole
.

Still, he refused to relent. “Researchers aren’t even sure how the moon formed. The current hypothesis is called the Big Whack theory, that some object the size of Mars impacted with the earth early in its formation and knocked enough material into orbit that it formed the moon.”

“What’s wrong with that theory?” Gray asked.

“Two things.
One
: astronomers all agree that such a planet-sized impact would have set the earth spinning faster than it does today. To compensate for that and to make their theory work, they hypothesized a
second
impact to our planet, this one striking from the opposite direction with the same force.”

“To brake the faster spinning of the earth.” Gray’s brow furrowed at the improbability of such an event.

“Even astronomers admit there is
no
actual evidence of such an impact having occurred. Which brings us to the second problem of the Big Whack theory. It concerns the strange
amount
of material ejected from the earth that coalesced into our moon.”

“How is it strange?” Gray asked.

“Because once the dust settled, the earth ended up with a circumference precisely
366 percent
larger than the moon’s. Doesn’t that percentage seem odd to anyone?”

“The number 366.” Lena frowned. “That’s almost the same as the days in a year.”

“In fact, the earth rotates 366 times during one trip around the sun.” Roland looked down at the journal in his lap and traced a finger along the labyrinth of ancient Crete gilded on the cover. “It’s why the Minoan astronomer-priests of Crete divided a circle into 366 degrees. The Sumerians did the same, further dividing the degrees into 60 minutes and subdividing those minutes into 60 seconds.”

“Like we do today,” Lena said.

“Except we rounded this to an even
360
degrees,” Roland corrected. “But back to the moon. There are other oddities concerning our sister satellite: how it’s lighter in mass than expected; how its gravitational field has stronger and weaker patches; how its core is abnormally small. Yet without this strange moon, there would be no life on this planet.”

Lena frowned. “Why’s that?”

“Biologists believe that the gravitational pull of the moon—which produces tidal changes and tidal pools—is probably what helped early aquatic life transition onto land. But more important, astrophysicists know that the mass of the moon orbiting our planet helps to stabilize the earth’s axis, to keep it at a slightly tilted angle toward the sun. Without the moon’s presence, the earth would wobble more, leading to extreme fluxes in temperature and weather, making it almost impossible for complex life to form.”

“So without the moon, we wouldn’t be here,” Seichan said. “But at the same time, its perfect symmetry and existence defies rationality. Is that what you’re saying?”

Roland shrugged, letting them reach their own conclusions. “Maybe that’s why Neil Armstrong became involved in all of this. Maybe he experienced something during his time on the lunar surface that compelled him to pursue this line of investigation.”

Gray frowned, glancing toward the full moon framed in the jet’s window. “NASA’s missing two minutes,” he mumbled.

Everyone stared at him.

“What missing two minutes?” Seichan asked.

9:07
P
.
M
.

Gray wasn’t sure how much weight to give to Roland’s revelations. Still, Neil Armstrong’s puzzling participation in this archaeological expedition reminded him of another mystery concerning the Apollo 11 mission.

“I heard a story from a colleague, an astrophysicist who worked at NASA,” Gray explained. “During the televised moon landing, a pair of cameras supposedly overheated, resulting in two minutes of radio silence. Afterward, sources claimed that NASA was covering something up, something Armstrong and his fellow astronauts witnessed upon landing. This was substantiated later by a retired NASA communications engineer, who admitted that the event was deliberately staged to hide something found on the lunar surface.”