He skimmed the results – they ranged from teachers to politicians, from drug dealers to physicians. There was nothing helpful here – the man’s name was simply too common.
Two days later a longboat pulled to shore near Bird Monster’s statue. The driver helped his passenger unload three suitcases. One of MRG’s workmen stood waiting for him with a handcart. After an hour on the trail they arrived at the site. He met Mark and Paul, and shortly they were having a beer outside the research shack.
Mark explained his role and said Paul was his friend and backer, along to help with the project.
Then it was his turn. “So it’s Francisco, right? We’re wondering about your interest in all this – are you an archaeologist? Do you work for the ministry?”
The newcomer was dressed in the usual jungle gear – lightweight long pants that could zip down to shorts, a quick-drying shirt and a Panama hat. He looked to be around forty and exuded self-confidence and charm. On the surface he seemed like a decent guy.
“Call me Paco, please! I’m merely an interested bystander, and I want to say up front that I appreciate your inviting me here.” He laughed and they smiled – there had been no invitation. It was the minister’s requirement.
“I’ve been fortunate in business. I started selling computers in the nineties when the concept was totally new in Guatemala. One store evolved into ten, then a chain of megastores – and here I am today! I sold everything a couple of years ago and made a good deal of money. Now I invest it and indulge my hobby – the history of our Olmec and Mayan ancestors. I’m thirty-seven and free to move about. I’ve financed a dig or two for the Minister of Archaeology. When he asked me to be his representative on this project, I jumped at the chance. It sounds absolutely incredible!”
Paul stressed the confidential nature of their discovery and Paco nodded. “You’re the bosses. I don’t intend to get in your way. I’ll lend a hand – I’ll take orders – whatever you need. Tell me if you want me to do anything. Otherwise I’ll stay back and observe.” He explained that his intention was to be here for twelve weeks, although his business responsibilities could change that time frame.
“Did you bring a weapon?” Paul asked.
“I brought a pistol. Is that a problem?”
“No, it’s good that you did. Mark and I have them too; we need to all be armed in case something happens. If people begin to hear about this place –”
“Understood,” the man interrupted pleasantly, raising his hand in mock protest. “I’m decent with a gun, and you can count on me for help if you need it.”
They got Paco and his gear situated in the bunkhouse, showed him around the camp, then took him to the cavern. His astonishment at seeing everything for the first time equaled theirs.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Within a few days, the men had become better friends than Paul and Mark ever expected. Paco was outgoing – he enjoyed a drink, a cigar and a good story. They spent evenings conversing in Spanish about Guatemalan politics and the fervent hope of many that Chiapas state would secede from Mexico.
One evening a couple of days after Paco’s arrival, the after-dinner talk turned to the rebel activity in Chiapas. Paco told them he was indifferent to the secession idea and the rebels who promoted discord in the southern states.
“In your country people who have a complaint can speak to their elected officials,” he explained. “In Mexico and Guatemala, it doesn’t work that way. Our people have used civil unrest as a tool for centuries. They disrupt things, they strike, picket in front of Walmart stores, block major streets during rush hour – they use these tools to bring attention to their cause. Most of them mean no harm. They merely want justice, sympathy or money for their cause.”
Before now they hadn’t discussed the kidnapping. Now that they knew Paco better, Mark brought it up.
“We need to tell you about our experience with the rebels.”
Paco listened impassively as they recounted the hijacking, the rebel who’d called himself Rolando, and his ruthless acts.
“The moment Paul killed him was the moment we knew we all had a chance to live,” Mark said gratefully.
“It’s difficult to know the motives of men who are committed to a cause,” Paco commented.
Paul disagreed. “Whatever Rolando’s motives were, I think the only cause that bastard was committed to was taking the ransoms. Sure, he may have given a little to the secession movement, but I firmly believe the guy was a maniac whose only interest was keeping the money for himself.”
Paco sat quietly for a moment, then brightened. “Shall we talk of more pleasant things?” He began to spin a tale about the beautiful women in a certain Guatemala City nightclub, their extracurricular activities, and the diseases one might contract as a result of a night of pleasure. They all laughed – Paco could tell a very entertaining story.
One morning Mark showed up for breakfast a little late, brimming with excitement. Paul was the only one in the cook shack, and he couldn’t miss Mark’s beaming face.
“I waited until Paco was gone so we could talk about this,” Mark said. “It’s about the jar!”
They hadn’t mentioned the canopic jar to Paco. They’d wrapped it in cloth and hidden it for now. They’d discuss whether to tell him about it after the DNA results came back.
Paul was excited too. “What did you find out?”
“The material’s not only organic, it’s human, just as I expected from its being in a jar like that. And get ready for this. There’s a DNA match. There’s DNA already on file that matches perfectly – one hundred percent. He’s Egyptian and he’s a big, big deal!” He stopped with a huge grin.
Paul didn’t understand. “Wait a minute. You’re saying what’s in the jar matches the DNA of somebody who died a thousand years or more ago? And the DNA of that person is on file in a database somewhere? How’s that possible? Who was the guy who died?”
Paco stepped inside the shack. He saw how eager they both looked and noticed Mark was holding his cell phone.
“Good news?”
Mark gave Paul a “should we tell him?” glance.
Paul replied, “Tell us, for God’s sake! I want to know myself!”
“Sit down, Paco. I have something to show you. I apologize that we held back this discovery, but we wanted to wait until we had confirmation as to what it was.”
He held up the jar and explained how its presence appeared to confirm that Egyptians had been here in the distant past.
“Jars that look just like this – canopic jars – were used to hold the organs of the deceased pharaohs. They were always buried in the tombs with their bodies. This is different. It’s not a canopic jar although it’s almost identical to one. It has the image of the chief god Amun, and there was a mummified piece of something inside. We sent a sample to a lab for DNA testing, and we just got the results!”
“Your smiles look like children on Christmas morning,” Paco said. “It must be good news!”
Mark continued dramatically. “Inside a jar that was inside a cavern at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, is the heart of Tutankhamun, pharaoh of Egypt, who died around 1323 BC – thirty-five hundred years ago. Don’t ask me how or why, but that’s absolutely what it is!”
Paul was stunned. “My God! I knew it had to be Egyptian, but … Why in hell is it here? Who brought it?”
“I’d hoped the glyphs might give us a clue. The Egyptians told stories in pictures, as you know, but this one is identical to one in the burial chamber of King Tut in Egypt – nothing more, nothing less except the addition of a single cartouche bearing his name. We can examine this mystery for the rest of our lives, but I’d be willing to bet we’ll never learn the answer. There’s never been a pharaoh whose body and possessions were more thoroughly examined than Tut’s. Since they found him in 1922, one group after another has subjected his corpse to every scientific examination known to man.”
He asked the men if they’d ever heard that Tut was buried without
his heart. They hadn’t, so he told them the story.
“In 2014, news agencies worldwide reported that new evidence showed Tutankhamun was buried with an erect penis and without a heart scarab, the amulet that was placed in every king’s chest cavity to take the place of his heart. Scientists thought both of these were to make him more like the god Osiris, whose erect penis was the symbol of his prowess and whose heart was removed and hidden. Akhenaten and his son Tut were considered heretics for believing in only one god – Aten. Tut was just a boy, and his advisors succeeded in converting him back to polytheism. The 2014 theory was that Tut’s erect penis and missing heart made him like the god Osiris, more pleasing to enter the afterlife than the heretic monotheist his father had made him.”
“Interesting story,” Paco commented. “But how does that explain the heart ending up here, a continent and an ocean away from Egypt?”
“That’s the mystery. Who took the trouble – who even knew the route – to get here? And there’s one more enigma that’s part of all this. Do you know why every single pharaoh except Tutankhamun has been buried with a heart scarab?”
They didn’t.
“Because without a heart, the embalmed king can’t enter heaven. Without a heart, or the heart scarab to represent it, the pharaoh is doomed to the underworld forever.”
Paul was amazed. He’d never heard any of this. “So you’re saying…”
“I’m saying somebody stole Tut’s heart and hid it so far away that nobody could ever take it back to Egypt. Somebody had it in for him in a big way. Without his heart, King Tut went to hell.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Mark and Paul randomly picked twenty plates. There were nearly twelve hundred in all – the rest still sat on the shelves exactly where they’d been all these centuries. Mark took detailed photos of the twenty and sent them to his colleagues in Toronto.
The researchers at the university had strict instructions to keep the project confidential. They had forty close-up photos – one for each side of the plates – showing some type of etched markings and drawings. The archaeologist gave them one more caveat – keep an open mind. Don’t assume anything about the photos just because he was sending them from Guatemala.
University officials and Mark’s staff knew he was back in the jungle at Piedras Negras under a concession granted by the Guatemalan government. They didn’t know details of how the granting of that license happened, but they were aware he was working there. The photos almost had to have been taken at the site, but the researchers did as Mark asked. They didn’t jump to conclusions. Instead, they examined the inscriptions without considering possible origins.
Given the layout of the etchings on the plates, the researchers presumed these marks were letters. If they were looking at a language, the university’s computers could decipher it. They spent a week breaking apart the photos into single units, some perhaps letters and others glyph-like pictures. The forty photos yielded over a thousand single units that they uploaded into the university’s computers.
The computer determined that the forty photos were in fact forty written pages, most containing both letters and pictures. As in modern languages, some letters appeared more often and others less so. The translation into English was a surprise. They read the first line:
Jfkme fjild 010101 nbd kn 00011001111010100 xhgft mkpbr 010100000100100111
The language on the plates was a highly advanced combination of binary code and words, the computer determined. The “0101” code was instantly familiar to the team’s computer programmers. Nothing made sense in English, the computer determined, because the foreign words were written in a language so advanced that English was simply too basic for a translation. So the researchers asked for a comparison to every other known language.
The results were both astonishing and frustrating. It was as if a person speaking English tried to translate a book into a language that consisted only of grunts and clicks. The words on the plates were so sophisticated that there wasn’t even one corresponding word in any language on Earth.
The team then turned to the glyph-like pictures interspersed among the letters. But there were no answers there either – the computer offered nothing that would explain them.
The team relayed the information back to Dr. Linebarger in the jungles of Guatemala. They had no idea the metal plates were found in a room that had been sealed shut ages ago. Whatever language was on these plates, it had to be nearly four thousand years old … if not far, far older than that.
The secrets of the ages, the knowledge an ancient civilization wanted to impart to future generations, was written in a language so highly advanced – so sophisticated – that the people of Earth weren’t yet able to understand it in the twenty-first century.
There was so much more to be done here. Three months had passed in a flash, and the men working in the cavern hadn’t even begun investigating the complicated instruments and machines that sat on the pedestals. That would happen over the next several months, but for now time was up for one of them. Paco was leaving soon.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Payday was at noon each Saturday; then the local workers had that afternoon and Sunday off. At midday on Saturdays a longboat arrived and took as many as wanted to go back to Frontera Corozal for a brief return to civilization. On Sunday at two they boarded the boat in town, arriving back at Bird Monster’s statue around seven. That gave the men an hour to walk to the site before night fell.
On this particular Saturday there was a second longboat. This time everyone was going to town for R&R. Even the security guards needed a break – they hadn’t been off-site in a month. Paco asked the minister to send five replacements for the weekend shift. They arrived on one of the boats that took everyone else back.
Paul, Mark and Paco had worked together for three months. As much as they’d dreaded the minister’s watchdog showing up, Paco turned out to be both a pleasant addition to the mix and a major help. They’d taken him into their confidence, disclosing personal theories, ideas and conjecture about what Piedras Negras was all about.
Each Saturday Paco sent a weekly briefing to the minister, and he always gave Mark and Paul an advance look. The reports were complimentary of the men and their efforts to advance Guatemalan archaeology.
They had no idea that the reports were fictitious. The minister neither knew nor cared what was going on at Piedras Negras. He’d been paid a small fortune to mind his own business and he hadn’t communicated with Paco in the three months since he arrived.
Today their time together would be over. “The floatplane’s picking me up tomorrow at four,” Paco said yesterday. That evening they’d had a going-away dinner complete with roast tapir one of the workers had killed. There was a lot of beer and a lot of stories.
Paco spent the morning packing up his gear for the trip back. At eleven the contingency of workmen and guards left the site, heading down the trail to the river. Two hours later the five replacement security men arrived.
“I’ll show them around,” Mark said as Paco lugged his cases out of the bunkhouse.
Finally it was time to go. Paco wanted a last look. “I suppose I’d better take a final opportunity to absorb this incredible room.”
The three went down the pathway they’d traversed so many times lately, crawled through the tunnel and went through the doorway in the painted wall. They stood in the Crypt of the Ancients – a place they now were certain was one of the three Halls of Records of the Atlantean people. A bonus was the wall of glyphs and the Amun jar, providing conclusive proof that Egyptians had come to Mesoamerica too.
Each of them stood, lost in his own thoughts, until Paco said, “There are a few things I want to tell you. Do you remember the Egyptian jar you kept a secret from me until you knew more about me? Well, I have kept a secret or two of my own.”
He stepped back, drew a pistol and said, “Toss your guns to me.” He gathered them up and threw them back through the doorway into the other room.
>
“Paco! What’s going on?” Mark was both surprised and afraid. He couldn’t believe what was happening. “What the hell? Why are you pulling a gun on us?”
Paul said nothing; he watched the man’s eyes and waited for an opportunity.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely truthful with you gentlemen about my motives. My name is Francisco Garcia and I am a wealthy man. That part is true. I did sell my company for many millions of dollars. Some other things about me I did not mention. I am the person behind the largest narcotics cartel in Central America. That has nothing to do with my time here in the jungle with you. It’s merely background so you will understand who and what I am. The Minister of Archaeology has secrets – bad secrets. I have known them for some time, and thanks to my discretion, he keeps both his job and his reputation.
“Mark, he told me everything about your presentation, the Egyptian wall and what might be behind it. I was fascinated – I wanted to know more. I told him to appoint me as his representative for your concession and he was happy to comply. I also paid him money to forget everything he knows about Piedras Negras. He will do as I say when I am ready to show the world this discovery. The minister is a stupid man, but thanks to me, his secrets are protected.
“Oh yes, there is one more thing. I am the largest financial backer of the rebel movement in Guatemala. My little brother was also heavily involved with them. He became greedy – he struck out on his own. He forgot about the cause that had been his passion. He wanted everything for himself and he paid the ultimate price for his foolishness. Fortunately he gave me passwords, codes and bank information, just in case something happened to him, so the ransom money wouldn’t be lost forever. My younger brother’s name was Juan. Juan Garcia. Do you remember him, Paul? The man you knew as Rolando? The man you killed?” He fired once and Paul fell to the ground.
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