Aztec Odyssey

by Jay C. LaBarge

  Nick pulled in on the outer edge of the parking lot, in the shade, and let Nanook out. After the wolf eagerly marked his territory, he and Soba took him for a walk through the park and around a small lake, past the Chapultepec Zoo, the Chapultepec Palace, and the Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art. Looping back to the parking lot of the Anthropology Museum, Nick fed Nanook, then put him in the back of the truck and opened the windows.

  “See you soon big fella. Be good, and don’t eat anyone.”

  Pulling out his cell phone Nick sent a quick text, then walked with Soba over to El Paraguas, an iconic tower covered in native motifs in the center of a massive covered courtyard. Water streamed from the top in a deafening cascade, splashing in a circle around the base and giving off a cooling mist. Tourists took selfies in front of it while their children gleefully ran in and out of the torrent, splashing happily. Nick held Soba’s hand and glanced around, taking in the familiar sights.

  “Good to be back,” he smiled at her. “Our personal guide should be here soon.”

  Soba reached around his waist and pulled him close as they walked slowly around the tower, leaning her head on his shoulder. The mist felt good, and their minds wandered as the sounds of children laughing echoed in their ears. Suddenly their reverie was interrupted by a harried looking man in a white lab coat, closely followed by two assistants. He stopped abruptly in front of them, stood straight and formally offered his hand.

  “Señor LaBounty, my name is Dr. Carlos Lòpez, I am the Director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología. Bienvenido to you and Señorita. Your mentor, Dr. Storm, informed me you would be coming. I have worked with the good doctor since before you were born, a brilliant mind. He has been a significant contributor to this institution over the years, we are eternally indebted to him.”

  Introductions were made all around, and Carlos briskly led them inside the main museum entrance. There directly ahead sat the most famous known Aztec sculpture in the world, the massive Aztec Sun Stone. Discovered in 1790 during repairs to the Mexico City Cathedral, it had sat buried for centuries on the orders of the Archbishop of Mexico. He wanted to eradicate any memory of the ancient practice of human sacrifice and was determined to hide this very prominent reminder. Weighing over 27 tons, its intricately carved surface fascinated the world ever since. Nick couldn’t help himself and walked directly to it, touching it and the pendant on his neck simultaneously.

  Carlos smiled at the young Americano, impressed at the sincerity of his passion for antiquities and native history. And he had been highly recommended by Dr. Storm, quite an endorsement.

  “You and señorita Soba may wander the exhibits at your leisure, but please allow me to provide you access to what isn’t on exhibit. Unfortunately, that would be only for you señor Nick.”

  Soba and Nick agreed to meet later in the day, when he would walk her through the museum personally. Soba was happy to have time to explore the other museums in the area, and to let Nanook romp in the park. As she walked out, Soba paused and marveled at a large tapestry of the origin myth of the Aztecs, of the founding of their island city of Tenochtitlán. It was a myth which had seared itself into the psyche of the Mexican people and was proudly at the center of the Mexican national flag. It showed a magnificent eagle perched upon a cactus, a struggling snake firmly clenched in its beak and talons.

  Carlos and his two assistants led Nick through a maze of air-conditioned corridors, back into the bowels of the complex. Upon reaching a locked secure area, Carlos informed Nick that the archives he sought were inside. One of the assistants, Raúl Concepción, would always be with him to provide admittance and aide in his research, as no one was allowed unmonitored and unfettered access. With a quick handshake, Carlos turned on his heel and left with the other assistant, their shoes clattering down the hallway.

  Nick watched them walk away, and then turned and gave Raúl’s shoulder a pat. “Well Raúl, it looks like it’s just me and you. What say you show me the lay of the land, so I can get my research rolling? I’ve got some gaps to fill in amigo.”

  Over the course of several hours Nick was shown the backbone of not just the museum, but of all its affiliated institutions whose collections and digitized information he would be able to access across Mexico. Raúl was obviously proud of not just the impressive museum he served, but of his heritage and his role in preserving it. As he gained an understanding of what Nick was looking for, he provided useful insights of where to look and how to navigate the Byzantine labyrinth of resources and the archaic systems to access them.

  After having comprehended at least a rudimentary understanding of what was available, Nick decided to not launch into research that day. It was a lot to digest. He wanted to ponder a game plan first, and sometimes he thought best when he didn’t directly think about something at all. Time to see Soba.

  “Raúl let’s meet tomorrow at 8 a.m., if that works for you. I’ll plan on a full day of digging for information. I really appreciate all the help.”

  When Soba showed up back in the main entrance at the agreed upon time, Nick was eager to provide a personal tour. While there were a fair number of people milling about for a Thursday afternoon, Nick knew from experience it was nothing like on the weekends. They took their time and wandered the seven regions covered by the museum, with Nick interpreting highlights such as the Aztec Sun Stone, Pakal’s tomb, huge Olmec carved heads, and Montezuma’s throne and headdress.

  “That’s absolutely stunning, the colors are so vibrant,” Soba commented, looking closely at the quetzal feathers of the headdress. “It’s amazing how they could use gold thread to secure them. What craftsmanship!”

  “And you know what’s even more amazing?” Nick inquired with an exasperated expression. “The original is in Vienna, and how it went from the Aztecs to the Spanish to the Austrians is anyone’s guess. The best they can do here, in the land it is actually from, is show a reproduction. It’s like you have to go to the British Museum to see the statues that graced the Greek Parthenon. Unfortunately, with colonial exploitation, to the victor go the spoils.”

  With little fanfare, Nick then showed her his one piece on display, from when he had spent a summer digging through Toltec ruins. His Magnum Opus, he liked to joke. It was an elegant and remarkably well-preserved jade carving of Quetzlcoatl, the plumed serpent god. One of the pantheon of Mesoamerican gods, Nick said it was just luck he discovered it, and not one of the other students. But he felt the real credit should really go to Dr. Storm, who arranged everything and put the students in the ruins in the first place.

  They took their time looking at the sculptures, stonework, pottery, ceramics, and textiles. Soba marveled at subtle similarities in Aztec and Mayan clothing with those of her Navajo ancestors. But it seemed to her that some things were missing from the collection or were underrepresented. She lingered in front of a display of beautifully wrought gold jewelry, dazzled by the skill of the craftsmen to create even the most subtle detail.

  She turned to Nick, a quizzical expression on her face. “It just struck me. This seems mostly a collection of stone and sculpture. Why so little gold in the museum? Or the feather work for which they were so famous? Or more of their pictographs and stories?”

  “As always, you ask the insightful questions,” Nick replied. “What the Spanish didn’t destroy outright or couldn’t find, time and humidity did. They wanted to stamp out the old order and religion, to leave the populace nothing to rally around. They went to great lengths to eradicate an entire culture. Like the Nazis burned Jewish books, the Spanish burned Aztec codices. Very few survived. And it was a lot easier to transport gold and silver when it was melted down into ingots and stamped with the royal seal.”

  They wandered back toward the entrance, and Soba paused under the tapestry of the Aztec origin myth, deep in thought. Nick looked at her, ready to move on, but she lingered. “Read it to me again, that passage from Alexandre’s letter about looking for a sign. And read it exactly as he wrote it.”


  Nick took out his phone and pulled up a photo of the letter. “OK, here it is. Bear with my pronunciations.”

  Sed ifin I ever git back ere, to look fur the sign of the outsa nd a taleys nd eyeteden in the peeblo.

  “The sign of what again?” she asked, excitement rising in her voice.

  “The sign of the outsa and taleys and eyeteden in the pueblo?” Nick quizzically replied.

  “Outsa taleys eyeteden. He couldn’t spell well and the languages are jumbled, that’s why I didn’t see it. Atsa, Tliish, Iteedin, now it’s so obvious! Atsa is Navajo for eagle, like Bidzii’s good friend’s name. Tliish is Navajo for snake. And Iteedn is Apache for cactus,” she whispered loudly, trying not to draw attention, and pointed excitedly to the tapestry. “Look for the sign of the eagle, snake, and cactus in the pueblo!”

  “That’s it!” exclaimed Nick, as he gave Soba a hug that lifted her off her feet. “You rock! I couldn’t get past that clue, it had me stumped. That’s another door unlocked in this whole mystery!”

  Nick suddenly realized where he was, and gently put her down and whispered in her ear. “My gypsy shaman of many tongues evidently gets as excited as me in solving old mysteries too. Now we’ve just got to find the right pueblo that’s hidden out there somewhere.”

  Another critical tumbler had fallen into place, the lock on the complex riddle one step closer to being opened. As they were about to exit, Soba caught a glimpse of Nick intensely looking around one last time, mentally cataloguing every artifact that was visible from here, with a last lingering gaze of the tapestry.

  “This is your church, isn’t it, your sacred place? Any museum, any archeological site, any new discovery?” she stated, more than asked. “The history of humanity is your religion, isn’t it?”

  Nick nodded, she knew him all too well, and she had known him only a few weeks. But what an intense few weeks it had been. He knew he had no secrets that the mystical woman in Soba couldn’t see through, her green eyes laid his soul bare, so why bother trying?

  Walking out the main entrance door they passed a row of newspaper racks, and something made Nick pause and look closer at one. An image had managed to catch his eye. He wasn’t sure he understood all of the words of the headline, but upon closer inspection he immediately recognized a photograph of a person on the front page.

  “Soba, what does this say?” he suddenly implored.

  She paused, not sure why he was suddenly so upset about what had happened to some stranger.

  Soba cleared her voice and said, “Francisco ‘Chico’ Martinez of Department of Antiquities found dead of apparent suicide. Why? Did you know him?”

  Chapter 29 – July 3

  Sitting in the courtyard in the middle of his sprawling mansion in the wealthiest part of Mexico City, Eztli casually flipped through the journal of Albert LaBounty. He took another bite of his imported Beluga Sturgeon caviar he was having for breakfast and washed it down with chilled Cristal Brut champagne. True, when in doubt he always got the more expensive option, and certain vintages of Dom Pérignon cost more. But he found he actually preferred the taste of the Cristal, so for once the hell with appearances. It was just him this morning after all.

  The journal he held was the key, of that he was sure. He smiled at his own cleverness in obtaining it, how easy it was to have a wide network of informants on the payroll, constantly with their ears to the ground to do his bidding. This Albert LaBounty evidently had been on a quest that coincided with his own. And when Albert had written certain archivists and research scientists requesting information on very specific Spanish expeditions, word filtered back to him that perhaps someone had a piece of insight he lacked. His minions had dug into everything they could find out about Albert, and it indicated that there was some type of historical link that had led to his obsessiveness. Eztli smiled, this was a display of fanaticism he could fully relate to. Albert had dragged his whole family around the Southwest every summer, and in one particular year, had come close to something Eztli coveted.

  A servant discretely approached Eztli and said a guest had arrived. “Yes, yes, by all means show him in. And get the damn girls out of my bedroom right now, you know I never want to wake up with them. Don’t ever let that happen again, or you will be shown out too. Way out.”

  The servant bowed and silently left, and a short, heavily muscled man with extensive tattoos sauntered in and sat down in front of Eztli, dropping a cloth bag loudly on the table between them. He grabbed the bottle of champagne and clinked it with the glass held by the Boss of Bosses, and took a long, deep swig. “Cheers! You know you look like fucking Al Capone sitting there in your robe,” he exclaimed.

  “Capone, ha, that’s a good one. And salud to you too Miguel. You really should work on your manners, your decorum. You want to lead a bigger part of this empire, you need to exude a certain persona, have some gravitas,” Eztli said, smiling across the table.

  “Screw that brother, I’m your general for what you don’t want to get your hands dirty with,” Miguel replied. “You know, you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

  “Oh, I’ve had my share of fleas, and you more than anyone know I’m not above getting my hands dirty. But what we are doing is something I could only trust to family—to you. And I need you to think bigger with me, more steps ahead. We have a larger agenda to accomplish, and I think this journal still holds the key. Tell me what you have learned.”

  Miguel got up and walked around the courtyard. He had too much nervous energy to sit long, and nursed the large bottle as he spoke. “We did as you asked. We took the one journal and photographed the rest so as not to arouse suspicion and covered our tracks. We disposed of the body so that it looked like an accident.” He then let out a large belch to show he did in fact have a certain gravitas, at least in his own mind.

  “And it was well done, but what has the son been up to?” Eztli asked. “He seems to be on the trail of something.”

  “We know he went to Zuni and the Gila Cliff Dwellings. And we picked him up again when he crossed the border, one of our border agents planted a tracker on his pickup. He and the girl then went to Cuernavaca. A cop on our payroll saw him there, and now the GPS tracker says he is headed further south.”

  Scratching his chin, Eztli pondered his next move. “There are any number of sites further south, but it seemed to me the real trail leads north. That is where his father took him, where the journal leads us. Follow him closely Miguel, get eyes on him. I want to know what there is south of Cuernavaca that has his interest.”

  Reaching into the bag he had brought, Miguel pulled out a life-sized carved jade head of an Aztec Eagle Warrior. “It turns out Chico was holding out on us. He knew the best pieces were to go to you, not to some national museum for the peons. That didn’t show much gratitude for you sponsoring him Eztli.”

  “I know, but still it pained me to have you kill him. He has been most useful to me over the years. But examples must be set, people must be kept in line. I saw from the headlines you made it look like suicide, well played hermano. I’m going to clean up. I’ll meet you back in the war room.”

  Miguel watched his brother walk back inside and pulled a cigar out of his pocket and sniffed the length of it. He sat heavily and picked at the caviar, bit the end off the cigar, and lit it.

  Fine champagne, caviar, and cigars. If he hadn’t had the girls hustled out, I could have spent this time more productively, he thought.

  An hour later Eztli took the elevator down to the unmarked lower level of the mansion, the access of which was granted only through an optical iris scan. Miguel was already there, impatiently waiting for him, one of only three who had access to the inner sanctum. The motion activated lights automatically went on as they walked away from the vast underground private museum to the discrete door of an even more heavily constructed room, a safe room to which Eztli alone had access. Another scan of his eye, and they entered.

  “Ah, the appropriately named War Roo
m. I haven’t been in here since you sent me to Michigan,” Miguel commented.

  Before them on one entire wall were a series of screens, the largest of which was of all of Central America. This was flanked by smaller screens for individual countries, each with color coded indicators which showed specific types of activity. Blue indicated older, already explored archeological sites, yellow were suspected yet unverified sites, orange meant discovered but unexcavated sites, and red was reserved for excavations currently in progress. White lines, from infrared, LIDAR and satellite imagery, outlined the heavier trails, footpaths and trading routes. A confluence of intersections of these white lines was a solid indicator of a rich potential site, especially if it sat hidden under a canopy of tropical foliage. Under this, certain areas had been set aside by the government for indigenous tribes, who didn’t take kindly to looters traipsing across their lands. But experience had taught Eztli’s underlings that most tribes were easily outgunned.

  Further off to the sides, additional screens also covered known ocean trading routes, and outlined actual or suspected shipwrecks from the Spanish Main in a similar manner. The left side was for the Pacific Ocean, the far right the Atlantic.

  Eztli smiled as he spread out his arms toward all the screens. “All these scattered, random, ill-financed expeditions out there tripping over each other. They are barely aware of one another, much less the larger picture. This is how I manage my business brother, a single War Room to track everything that is taking place, to put it all in context. That is how I beat everyone to the punch, to only let them discover what I want them to. National Geographic can kiss my ass,” he laughed viciously, exposing the jade inlays in his teeth.