Sam nodded. “There’s a local airstrip nearby. If I can arrange for a ticket on a flight to Mexico City, would you take it?”
She arched an incredulous eyebrow. “Are you serious?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s the least we can do.”
She smiled. “Then hell yes I’d like a flight out of here.”
Chapter Twenty
Sam watched her go.
There was a small airstrip carved out of the jungle twenty odd miles away and he had promised the young woman that one of his guides could arrange tickets for her on a local carrier.
Armando greeted him a few seconds later. His brow furrowed with concern. “Well? What did she tell you?”
Sam said, “She was here for a cave diving vacation, exploring the ancient cenotes and had never heard of Xibalba. What’s more, she says she didn’t get any farther into the dry chamber or reach the obsidian door.”
Armando’s eyes narrowed. “Do you believe?”
Sam grinned. “Not even slightly.”
“And yet still you let her walk free from here?”
“She’s an American tourist who came to the Yucatan and now wants to return home. What do you suggest I should have done, imprisoned her against her will?”
Armando shrugged. Then, in a tone that sat uncomfortably on the fence between a threat and a joke, he said, “If it helped us find the secrets of Xibalba.”
Sam met his eye, trying to read the man, but failed to discern any truth. “Armando, I know that you have spent your lifetime searching for answers hidden within the vault known as Xibalba, but you know by now that some things have a price too great to pay.”
“Yes,” Armando agreed. “It’s all right, I wasn’t serious. But I do want to know how you intend to extract whatever secrets Mia appears to have been intentionally keeping from us.”
Sam said, “I’ve arranged for someone I trust to follow her. Once Mia reaches Mexico City, my contact will report back to me with details; where she goes, who she speaks to. If she did reach the inner sanctum of Xibalba at the request of someone else, we’ll hear about it.”
“What about the obsidian door?”
Sam’s lips parted in an open smile. “What about it?”
“How do you plan to get through it?”
“I’m not sure we can at this stage.”
“You’re kidding me.” Armando kept his voice calm but his eyes betrayed disappointment, darkened with anger. “All the modern wonders of science and you can’t break a two-thousand-year-old door?”
Sam’s eyes, previously drifting across the cool waters of the cenote, turned and met Armando’s eye. “We could do that if you like, with C4. The obsidian would shatter into a million pieces, but there’s every chance that in the process we’ll bring down the entire chamber.”
Armando’s eyes flashed daggers. “So do it! Then excavate the mess and let’s take a look at what’s been hidden all this time.”
Sam licked his lower lip, laughed. “I don’t know where you think all this is meant to take place, but we’re talking about a confined cave, located deep beneath a mountain and flooded with water. It’s nearly a day’s preparation just to reach the damned dry chamber!”
“You think it would end up taking years to remove the rubble?”
“Armando, if that chamber collapses, I doubt anyone will ever set eyes on Xibalba again.”
“So then, what are we supposed to do?”
“We’ll need to find the key.”
“I don’t suppose you know what it looks like or even where to find it?”
Sam handed him a sketch of the crystal-shaped key they were looking for. “It looks like this.”
Armando ran his eyes across the strange sketches. “I’ve never seen anything like this. We might as well give up now.”
“Not quite.”
“Why?” Armando arched an eyebrow. “What do you know?”
“I sent a copy of this image to a friend of mine. She’s a computer hacker by trade, but she’s capable of finding the proverbial needle in a haystack when no one has a clue in which country the haystack was even made.”
Armando’s eyes narrowed. “She’s that good?”
“No. She’s better,” Sam said with certainty.
Armando grinned. “What did she find?”
“Apparently the crystal key was found by early archeologists, inside the burial chamber of the Pyramid of the Magician.”
Armando’s voice was quick, almost frantic, when he spoke. “Where is it now?”
Sam grinned. “Located in the Mayan World Museum of Mérida.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Mexico City
The plane ride was identical to the one Mia had taken to get to Mexico in the first place. It was bumpy and noisy, like a bus full of elementary schoolers going on a field trip to the aquarium. Under them, hundreds of acres of thick foliage blocked her view of the ground. Even now, the unusual sight mesmerized her. In the arid lands of Rhyolite there were few plants and no trees. To her side sat a local, dressed in athletic wear but still sporting tribal tattoos. He played some kind of game on his phone and didn’t look at the greenery once.
Before she knew it they were on the ground. The pilot didn’t even turn around in his seat but the native took a break long enough from his game to give a sidelong glance at her and her bag, jerking his head to the left. It was the universal sign for get out.
Mia grabbed her bag and got.
And just like that, she was out safe and sound, with what she’d wanted. The guide would have to find his own way out. But she knew he wouldn’t. She knew what he’d find.
She left the airport and headed three blocks south toward a payphone. She passed a woman walking her dog, a well-kept golden retriever with a big grin and flowing with the simple happiness of being able to go out for a walk.
It was nearly eleven a.m. by the time she found herself dropping a peso into the phone’s slot and dialing a number from memory. She waited for the dial tone to change, indicating someone on the other end of the line had picked up the phone. A slight pause on the line was the only indication the caller had answered, the silence, what she’d expected.
“I have it,” she proclaimed.
A second later she put the phone down on its cradle and exited the booth.
Outside the payphone and standing on the opposite side of the road was a woman, her face hard, eyes blue above an impish grin, framed by a short outcropping of brown hair and staring at her. The woman was patting a dog. A good-looking golden retriever. Still looking happy but no longer walking jauntily along the walkway.
It gave Mia more than a little pause.
There was a chance the woman had merely been walking her dog in the same direction as her. No reason to suspect taking a dog three blocks for a walk should be cause for concern, but in the back of Mia’s head, alarm bells were going off.
The very same alarm bells which had managed to keep her alive, this long.
Was she being followed?
And more importantly still, who wanted to know her agenda?
Mia’s heart raced. It might be nothing but then again, it might be everything. She didn’t have long to lose her tail. There was a pub at the end of the street that she knew well, with a bathroom out the back which exited to an alleyway. She’d never used it for such purposes but knew if she needed to escape it’d be her best bet.
She moved quickly, taking purposeful, determined strides across the road and toward the pub. As she closed the pub door behind her she spotted the dogwalker quickly change direction, turning to follow her and confirming Mia’s suspicions that the woman was indeed tailing her.
Momentarily out of the woman’s line of sight, Mia dropped any pretense of coming to visit the pub for a drink and instead began to race toward the bathroom.
She reached the door just as her pursuer began talking to the bartender. It was obvious she was asking where Mia had headed because the publican soon gestured toward the bathroom. Mia l
ocked eyes with her pursuer for a moment then closed the bathroom door, securing the lock behind her.
From there Mia moved quickly. She climbed on top of the toilet and up through the narrow opening of the window with all the grace and skill that would have made a contortionist proud.
She dropped down onto the alleyway several feet below, landing with a lithe feline-like grace. Mia drew herself up to her full height and sprinted to the mouth of the alley.
A blue Ford Lincoln pulled out in front of her and its rear passenger door swung open. She climbed in and immediately slammed the door behind her.
A man, seated across from her, asked, “May I see it?”
She dug into her pack, unzipping the secret compartment that ran along a hardened section of the back of the bag and pulled out an intricate stone key made of obsidian, etched with a series of swirls, like one giant labyrinth. “Here, it’s all yours.”
The man smiled. “Well done! This will make him very happy, Mia.”
The Ford Lincoln sped away.
She glanced out the bullet-resistant windows. There, on the corner of the road, she spotted a golden retriever. It kept staring at her. She smiled at the lone dog; it wasn’t the dog’s fault its owner might have wanted to be the death of her.
For a moment, she could have sworn the dog had cocked its head at her, as if in recognition.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mayan World Museum of Mérida
It took nearly two days of negotiation to convince the curator of the Mayan World Museum of Mérida to relinquish the ancient Mayan key into Sam Reilly’s custody for a period of two weeks. Sam had explained that he wanted to run a geological analysis of the strange crystal offsite, at the Mexican Institute of Geology and determine if the crystal had originated from a local mine site they were exploring. In the end it was Armando Ayala’s reputation as a famed historian that got them across the finish line, the curator eventually agreeing to sign off on the loan and a not-so-small donation to the museum.
Sam signed the various legal forms making him responsible for the crystal key and placed a U.S., two-million-dollar bond as security.
At one of the museum’s many archival desks, Sam switched on the overhead light and, using a jeweler’s loupe, examined the strange crystal key.
It was made of pink, smoky quartz crystal.
The stone was quite beautiful to look at. Upon closer inspection, a series of small veins of gold formed unnaturally straight lines throughout the mysterious haze of smokiness. They were set in an array of up-down strokes, similar to a rudimentary electronic key which used a series of on-off switches to differentiate its radio frequency against that of other keys. If he had to guess, the gold had somehow been artificially inserted into the quartz. There was no way it was a natural, geological development. Still, it seemed impossible to believe the ancient Mayans possessed such lapidary skills nearly two thousand years ago.
But. There was nothing to suggest the Master Builders hadn’t.
Armando glanced at Sam. “What do you think?”
Sam grinned. “I think whoever made this key? They possessed technology thousands of years more advanced than the ancient Mayans.”
“But you think it is, in fact, the key to the obsidian door?”
Sam nodded. “I’m almost certain of it.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“Nothing. Let’s go. Tom will have brought in the rest of the diving supplies by now and we should be able to make the journey through the underwater labyrinth, hopefully access the obsidian door, and into the heart of Xibalba.”
“Excellent work!” exclaimed Armando, beaming with pleasure. “They told me you were the best, Mr. Reilly, and I think I am now starting to believe them! Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
Sam was about to secure the key in its case when the curator wished them good luck with their project and mentioned they were already very lucky because the key had only just been returned after its display at a private historical function.
Sam looked up at the curator through raised eyebrows. “Excuse me, did you just say this stone key was only just returned this morning?”
“That’s right,” the curator confirmed.
“Who borrowed it?”
“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to release that information but I can tell you that the gentleman who arranged to borrow the key was a wealthy businessman.”
Sam and Armando frowned. “Did he have it three days ago?”
The curator thought for a second. “Yes. He borrowed it four days ago, to be precise, and returned it today. Why?”
Sam thought about Mia, the girl who he’d rescued from the depths of Xibalba. It was the final confirmation he needed that the young woman was more than a mere tourist, diving the cenote. But the question remained, did she achieve her goal and enter through the obsidian door?
If so, what was she looking for?
And what had she found?
Sam turned to the curator. “Thank you very much for your help, sir. We’ll take good care of the crystal key and return it within the timeframe agreed upon.”
“I’m sure you will,” the curator replied, shaking his hand.
Sam carefully secured the crystal key into its purpose-built, protective metallic casing and he and Armando stepped out of the building. The museum was built on two hectares and had three levels, representing the three worlds of the Maya: Sky, Earth, and Underworld. The main building was built in the shape of a ceiba tree, the sacred tree of life to the Maya.
His cell phone rang. He picked it up and spoke to Genevieve briefly before ending the call.
Armando’s eyes narrowed. “Is everything okay?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, but we might have a problem.”
“What?”
“That was my friend who followed Mia when she left the airport in Mexico City. She tracked Mia to a nearby payphone where she made a call and was picked up about ten minutes later by someone in a blue Ford Lincoln.”
Armando frowned. “So, we lost our lead?”
“No.” The lines across Sam’s face deepened. “The license plates were run against the Mexican Drivers and Motor Vehicle register and matched up with one owned by the Black Muerte Cartel.”
Armando’s eyes narrowed. “She was working for the cartel?”
Sam nodded. “It would appear so.”
“The question is, why would the Black Muerte Cartel have any interest in Xibalba?”
“Why indeed?”
“Whatever it is, they won’t leave it alone now that we’ve arrived,” Armando warned.
Sam grinned. “Then we’ll just have to be quick.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Entrance to Xibalba, Yucatán
Sam met Tom at the entrance to the cenote the next day. Tom had re-provisioned their diving equipment with more than a dozen oxygen tanks and set up a series of safety deposits throughout the cave system to make it easier to reach the obsidian door.
They donned their wetsuits and closed-circuit rebreathers and prepared for their dive. Armando’s men stood guard over the cenote with AK-47s.
If the Black Muerte Cartel were interested in the contents of Xibalba’s inner sanctum, Sam didn’t want to take any chances.
Sam parted the reeds and entered the shallow cenote, descending into its warm depths, disappearing into the dark subterranean passageways. They moved quickly, with the silent efficiency and teamwork acquired through years of working together. They quickly passed through the chokepoint which had nearly killed Tom the first time he’d tried to maneuver through it and soon reached the dry chamber.
Once there they exchanged their oxygen cylinders with a pair that Tom had stationed the day before to allow them to exit the chamber quickly if need be.
Removing their dive equipment and wetsuits, they opened their dry bag and swapped into dry clothes and hiking boots. They retraced their journey across the deadly boobytraps that had killed so many before them
until they reached the obsidian door.
Sam stared at the door with the strange crystal-shaped keyhole.
Tom swallowed. “Moment of truth.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. He removed the crystal key and inserted it into the keyhole.
The crystal turned dark pink with the mellow glow of light filtering through its smoky center. For nearly two minutes nothing happened.
Then, the obsidian door swung open.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam and Tom walked through the massive obsidian door and in to the narrow passageway on the other side. The beam of Sam’s flashlight washed over their new environment, reflecting off the glistening crystal walls. If he had to guess, none of the crystal was native to the region. Instead, it had all been brought in by the ancient Mayans.
Or the Master Builders?
He pictured the Mayans as the puppets and the Master Builders as the masters influencing their design and engineering feats for their own purpose. The question was, what exactly did the Master Builders want with South America?
Sam pondered, if I could answer that I might know why the Black Muerte Cartel is so desperate to get inside.
He hoped time would soon reveal all.
They continued down the passageway for approximately fifty feet before it opened up into a large chamber shaped like a horizontal rectangle, with a narrower vertical section made of sloping stone works in the middle and leading to an identical horizontal rectangle on the opposite side. Along each vertical section were two stone rings, tenoned into the wall at mid-court, not too dissimilar to those on a modern-day basketball court. Viewed from above, Sam imagined the entire vault must form a massive playing field in the shape of a capital letter “I,” with serifs.
At the end of the second rectangular chamber, a small passageway appeared to head deeper into whatever strange temple it was they’d arrived in.
Tom’s lips twisted into an incredulous smile; his amazement evident. “What the hell is this place?”
Sam met his smile. “Judging by Armando’s theory that we’ve located the origins of Xibalba, Hell is probably an apt description.”
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