Killian was slightly taken aback when Nanook was let out of the back of the truck and came up to him and sniffed. With an indifferent air, Nanook then ignored him and sat next to Soba. “That is one big animal, do you think you will have any problem getting him over the border?” he inquired.
“No, I’ve got all his papers, his record of shots. Just another large canine going through customs, I expect. He’s been across before.” With that Soba led Nanook away so he could stretch his legs and relieve himself.
Nick put his arm around Killian and said, “Great to see you man. It’s been way too long. I appreciate you showing us your little discovery too. Let me know if you find out anything else about your Padre. You know you still owe me a visit back up north, be good to get a few of the old classmates together.”
They said their goodbyes, and Soba leaned in for one more hug with her new Apache friend. Nick looked at them both and said, “Glad to see your tribes have finally buried the hatchet after all these years.” That got a laugh out of both Killian and Soba, as the phrase had multiple connotations.
It was about a four-hour drive to El Paso and the border, and they settled into the familiar rhythm of the road. Soba picked the music this time, shaking things up a little with a random selection of jazz tunes playing in the background. She shook her head at how he had his iPhone connected via a cable into an old cassette deck in the dashboard.
“Old school meets new school,” she commented.
“Old school is still the best school,” Nick replied. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, it sounded like Bidzii was able to keep his buddies away from the dark side, from what you were telling me. But I got the sense there was something else going on with it.”
Soba sighed and looked out the window. “Too much time, too little work, people out to make a quick buck. Alcohol was the drug of choice for most on the reservation, even though it was illegal. But drugs were always an issue too, a constant undercurrent. Especially around the young people. Bidzii lost his brother to an overdose when he was young and swore he would never affiliate with anyone who did or dealt drugs. The friends he kept all knew this, and they avoided that path, both for their own good and because of their respect for Bidzii.”
“That explains it, the vibe I was getting from him now makes sense. Hey, I was no angel, I toked occasionally in my rebellious phase, but that was never my thing. Frankly that element was something I went out of my way to avoid. I could never understand the psyche of someone who could only feel something by feeling absolutely nothing at all. It seemed a lot of them ended up aging well before their time, if they even got that far. How does he deal with it now?” Nick asked.
“If you’re his friend and you want to drink, he’s with you all the way. I believe you’ve experienced that firsthand already. You smoke a little pot, he’ll give you the silent treatment. You do harder drugs, he’ll pick a fight with you. You deal drugs, he’d like to kill you,” Soba said, surprised at the matter-of-fact conviction in her own voice.
It was early evening when they reached El Paso, and Nick pulled into a large truck stop for a bite to eat. Soba walked Nanook, while he put a call into Charlie from a pay phone and caught him at the office this time. They talked for over twenty minutes, and Nick brought him up to speed on the artifacts and wall etchings he saw at Hawikuh, and the interesting mummy Killian showed them at the Gila Cliff Dwellings.
“Was that Kill Devil Killian from college?” Charlie asked. They had met when Nick brought him home over one break, the three of them becoming fast drinking buddies.
“One and the same, although I think he has settled down a little bit. Hard to tell in the brief time I saw him. Anyway, I doubt any of what I saw at Hawikuh or Gila is relevant to Dad’s quest, but it sure as hell fascinates the archeologist in me.”
“Also sounds like Soba fascinates you too. I’m jealous, that’s quite the road trip you’ve got going brother. Be careful and keep in touch. If what you said was true about the way Dad got killed, you don’t want to tangle with those hombres,” Charlie warned.
As they sat down to eat, Soba said she had also called Bidzii to give him an update. “All good with him, they are playing gigs and working their way back home. But he said it was more fun when the two of us were around,” Soba said as she leaned into Nick playfully. “I think he misses you too. Should I be jealous of your bromance?”
Stomachs and gas tank full, they headed for the border crossing, the lines much shorter going into Mexico than into the states. As they pulled up for their turn, the agent glanced down at a computer screen, and then took a call on his cell phone. He asked for their documents, and slowly reviewed them. Looking nervously about, he told Nick to pull over off to the side.
Nick did as he was told, and they sat waiting for several minutes. With no warning, the doors were opened, and they were both told to get out of the vehicle. One stiff looking Mexican Border Agent went to open the back but saw Nanook glaring back at him. “Get your dog out, and keep him with you,” he instructed. Soba grabbed Nanook but could sense the hair on his back slightly raised and heard a low growl from deep within. She and Nick looked at one another with raised eyebrows, neither knowing what had prompted the spontaneous inspection.
Sitting on a bench to the side, they saw two agents go through the vehicle thoroughly. Once that was done, one agent brought back a German shepherd and had him sniff everything. The second agent looked under the Chevy with a mirror on a telescoping pole. For a final check, he crawled under and examined it directly. When he was sure no one was looking, he slipped a small device out of his pocket and attached it securely. He then turned it on and waited to see a faint red-light blink to know it was active. With that he rolled out from under and nodded to his companion with the shepherd.
Nick and Soba were allowed to get back up, and Soba put Nanook in the back of the truck. They noticed where they had sat on the bench was now being examined as well. With no explanation they were curtly told to be on their way, and pulled out, relieved that they must have been misidentified in some way. As they drove away lightheartedly laughing at their good fortune, a faint red light continued to blink, unseen under the truck frame.
Part III
The Rebirth of Empire
Xipe Totec, Our Lord the Flayed One,
was God of the spring, of planting, and of rebirth.
He wore the skin of a sacrificial victim,
eventually shedding it to symbolize
the continuous renewal of the earth.
Like maize that sheds it skin
when the seeds are ready to germinate,
so too new life grows from the old.
Chapter 25 – Morning, June 25
Esteban González sat alone in his elegant private museum, protectively set beneath his sprawling mansion in the affluent Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. Known as the Beverly Hills of Mexico, it was home to the wealthiest of the elite of the country. His mansion was probably the most secure building in all of Central America, and he preferred it that way, for good reason.
Esteban took a puff on his Regius Doube Corona cigar, and another sip of his Ultra-Premium Pasion Azteca tequila. They were the most expensive money could buy, but what did he care? Money was no object at this stage of his life, only the consumption and collection of the finer things. Things meant to be savored by someone with his refined taste and appreciation of history, someone who had the will and means to actually shape history.
He put down his cigar and turned in his hands a skull, coated in gold, with pure silver in the eye sockets. Purportedly this was the very skull that sat at the top of the Hueteocalli, or Great Temple Pyramid, at the heart of Tenochtitlán in 1521. Legend had it that it was the skull of a particularly hated Spaniard taken prisoner by the Aztecs during the fight for their homeland, coated in precious metals as he breathed his last, as a punishment for his greed and cruelty. It was to sit on the very top of the temple, to see the glory of their empire for all of eternity.
A different kind of Mexico could have emerged, one with a prouder heritage of independence, one with a purer native blood line, one that didn’t bow to colonial powers then or the Norteamericanos now. Different oppressors, same yoke over the people. But the Aztecs didn’t have the leadership, nor the will, to finish them off when they had the chance, he ruefully reflected.
He felt his anger rising, his face flushing. “I would have ground them all into dust, I would have flayed Cortés and pissed in his skull and offered his heart to the gods,” Esteban said to no one in particular, his words echoing down the corridors. And he meant it and had done worse. Much worse. Nobody became a man in his position without earning it, without proving himself to anyone and everyone who crossed him or got in the way of his far seeing and grand ambitions.
He ground his cigar out, took a last sip of tequila and stood and stretched. He looked out over his domain, down the rows upon rows of exquisite display cases and intricately decorated walls and was pleased. For stretched out before him was the largest collection of pre-Columbian artifacts from the Central American region anywhere in the world. What the Louvre, British Museum, and Smithsonian had in their paltry collections paled in comparison. Even the Museo Nacional de Antropología, or National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, offered little that he would consider worthy of adding to his private collection.
Over many years and at phenomenal expense he had acquired priceless artifacts on the black market. Artifacts that museums could only dream of, and frankly some had been pilfered from the museums themselves. He laughed at how long it even took some of the museums and private collectors to notice a key item was missing. So meticulously his duplicates were fabricated. Some might never be discovered, and, from embarrassment, some might never be reported.
Establishing provenance, or the precise location an item was found and its chain of ownership, proved trickier in the murky backwaters he and his minions utilized. When something desirable was brought in from a place such as the deep jungles of Guatemala, it wasn’t always possible to trace exactly where it came from. Esteban no longer personally got his hands dirty with acquisitions, he had a small army of very well paid, highly educated and specially skilled professionals fronting for him. This network was extremely well connected to both legitimate and black-market opportunities. Little ever became available anywhere in the world that he didn’t have the opportunity to consider.
And while he would always gladly pay top dollar or outbid an Arab oil sheik for something he desired, his organization was one to never cross. Those few times a well-made forgery came into his possession, a very public example was made of the provider. And of his family, and his relatives. Esteban González was never a man to cross, and he made sure the world knew it.
His network was completely attuned to anything that was discovered that might be of interest, or anything new that became available on the antiquities market. He discretely funded scholarships to the best archeology programs, not just to hire new and indebted blood into his organization, but also so that he had eyes and ears in all of the major centers of learning. Places that would be the first to know of any new discoveries, sponsoring expeditions, sending students to sites to train, conducting meticulous research. He even had his tentacles into archeological, anthropological, and historical magazine publishers and web sites. These generated insight, gossip, and tidbits of information that occasionally paid off.
And of course he sent out his own well-financed and equipped teams to actively and preemptively explore sites of interest. The latest technology was utilized, including satellite imagery acquired from well-placed and well-paid informants in various agencies. Investments in recent innovations such as LIDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, a form of radar which was especially useful for penetrating the dense jungle canopies of the tropics, paid off handsomely. Even Ground Penetrating Radar was effectively deployed, revealing subsurface anomalies, structures and caches. Coupled with his payoffs to various governments and military leaders, whole undiscovered villages and trading routes were coming to light, well before the public sector could even discover them or react accordingly.
On the nautical front, Side Scan Sonar had also been further perfected, allowing detailed mapping of the deepest recesses of the oceans. This proved most useful in the quest for finding lost ships not already discovered, from the Spanish treasure fleets—especially those far off the shores, in deep international waters with no local government interference or jurisdiction. The sheer expense of researching and mounting such undersea expeditions limited his competition. And in the event payoffs were ever needed, everyone had their price, or, failing that, their weak spot to exploit or family to protect.
Farsighted and ambitious with his goals to an extreme, he would utilize his network to feed information to certain organizations to get them off the scent of something he was actively pursuing. A continuous stream of false leads were proffered to various, possibly competing, entities. In a favorite example he liked to brag about, the National Geographic Society went off on a proverbial wild goose chase to a site he knew to be mostly barren. It would keep them busy for years researching, fundraising, and mounting an expedition. And then ultimately drain their finite resources for little gain.
Esteban González was a complex man, the polished veneer of sophistication and scholarly insight hiding the soul of a hardened career criminal and pathological killer. He started life as an abandoned child on the mean streets of Ciudad Victoria, whose claim to fame at various times was being the homicide capital of all of Mexico. Street smart and tough, Esteban made his bones hustling as a kid, as a drug mule in his teens and eventually as a hired Soldado, or Soldier, for the local drug ring. He came to the attention of a drug lord when he intervened in a shootout and took a bullet intended for him.
Brought within the cartel, he learned the organization intimately from the inside out, rising within the ranks to the position of Narcotraficantes, a fully-fledged drug trafficker. After paying his dues over time, he became an Oficial, or Made Man. Once achieving that he went through an initiation ritual, which included being tattooed with Aztec symbols and given his Aztec cartel name. Within the organization he would henceforth be known as the Blood Prince, or Eztli Príncipe. But the name was shortened over time to one word, such was his growing notoriety and fame. He became known as simply Eztli, or Blood. It was a moniker that even those who bestowed it upon him would soon have reason to dread.
Having hired and trained most of the Soldados, and as a senior Oficial and consummate backstage player, he was the replacement when his boss met an untimely end. Mysterious circumstances surrounded his death, but Esteban was now the local drug lord, and a member of the Junta Directiva, or Board of Directors. These were the executive members of the greater cartel, who only answered to the Jefe de Jefes, or Boss of Bosses.
Fifteen years later, through a relentless trail of bribery, extortion, intimidation and a pogrom of murder, Esteban González, now known simply as Eztli, was the Boss of Bosses. Blood had flowed freely, an incomprehensible fortune had been amassed, and an idea took hold. Eztli would fade into the background and run his empire silently and discretely from his opulent mansion in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. He would become the king maker, ensuring those in political and military power were favorable to his interests, until the time was right for him to emerge from behind the curtain. Slowly he would grant more freedom to his Junta Directiva to run the day to day operations. He still ruled with an iron fist, and periodically went out of his way to make an extreme example of some overambitious cartel, political, or military member. But his focus shifted to other, farther reaching ambiti
ons.
Eztli became a student of the history of the cartels, and what ultimately befell them. Hubris, overreaching greed, conspicuous displays of wealth, becoming users instead of just dealers, in short falling to mortal whims and urges instead of methodically implementing any kind of visionary long-term plan. Even the Arabs knew that oil, or at least the need for oil, wouldn’t last forever, and they anticipated it and diversified their holdings accordingly. It was a very useful analogy for the drug world, and there was a lesson to be learned. Eztli would not make the mistakes of his predecessors. Not only would he build on his empire, he would construct it in such a way as to outlast them all.
Most passionately, Eztli became a student of the history of his ancestors, the Aztecs. He was interested in cultivating something far beyond a simple drug empire, he knew that it would inevitably rise and fall despite his best efforts. No, better to utilize the vast resources at his disposal to restore the pride of his people, and their proper place in the world. The chaos and instability of the political situation in Mexico worked to his advantage, and he contributed to the carnage to perpetuate the uncertainty, to raise the noise level. Because beneath that cover he could operate with impunity. As he liked to say about using bloody news, turmoil, and false innuendo to his advantage, “People are sheep, and media is the shepherd. And nothing is easier to manipulate than the media.”
He wandered to the front of his vast underground museum, where there stood an original Aztec Sun Stone. It wasn’t as big as the 12-foot carved basalt one found buried under Mexico City in 1790 and now displayed at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, but it was in better shape. And even more amazing, it was made of solid gold, meticulously crafted by Aztec goldsmiths before the conquest.
In front of the gold Sun Stone sat a replica of a skull rack that had been recently discovered in 2017 in the archeological zone of the Hueteocalli Temple in Mexico City, which contained an astounding 650 human skulls. While this one only contained 60 skulls, they were each personally known to Eztli, each and every one a small steppingstone to the position of power he now held. He smiled smugly to himself and thought, There is always room for more.
Aztec Odyssey Page 19