The Eye of Heaven

by Clive Cussler

  Sam looked at his watch as he edged by her into the bathroom. “If I don’t shave my legs.”

  “I’m willing to overlook it this once.”

  The drive to the Institute was slow and miserable, the streets awash with floating trash and overflowing manholes. By the time they made it to the office, it was half past nine. Maribela was waiting for them with an excited expression. It was all she could do to restrain herself when they walked through the door.

  “Good morning, Maribela,” Sam said, running his fingers through his wet hair, the result of the run from the cab to the front entrance.

  “Good morning.”

  “How did your night go?” Remi asked.

  “I didn’t get much sleep. Neither did Antonio. But I have good news. Antonio thinks he knows which pyramid it is,” Maribela blurted.

  “Really?” Sam said. “That’s great! How did he figure it out?”

  “He discarded the Mayan ruins that didn’t fit the criteria or if their story came from an Aztec religious figure. The Aztecs had limited interactions with the Mayans, so it’s unlikely that a secret this important would have been imparted to an Aztec priest. Also, back then, travel would have been difficult into the Yucatán from here, and there’s little chance that any pilgrimage made would have stayed secret for long. And last, unless the body was somehow preserved, it would have been buried around the time of Quetzalcoatl’s death—the ruler, obviously, not the deity. Which narrows the field considerably.”

  “Makes sense so far,” Remi agreed.

  “That leaves us with pyramids that were in existence at the time of his death—which is uncertain but which we can estimate to be between A.D. 980 and 1100. Either way, while that’s a decent number, it’s not huge. And it rules out all the Aztec sites.”

  “But what if the tomb had been constructed later and the body moved?” Sam asked.

  “Possible, but that’s not the way the text reads if you adjust it for the nuances of the Nahuatl language. The person who wrote the manuscript was recording what he thought the Aztec was saying, but that’s probably not what he actually said. It’s a record of how a Spaniard would interpret what he said. Make sense?”

  Remi nodded slowly. “But because that’s your area of specialty . . .”

  “Exactly. Our interpretation can adjust for what might have been lost in translation. If that’s the case, and there’s no guarantee, then the site is one of the ruins north or east of Mexico City.”

  “Which are Teotihuacan, Cholula, and Tula, right?”

  “No, Cholula was south, near where Puebla now is.”

  “And you’ve definitely ruled out the Mayan cities?”

  “As much as anything can be excluded. It would have been impossible to keep something like the construction of a secret tomb beneath a sacred pyramid secret. No, we’re looking at either Teotihuacan, which was uninhabited by the time Quetzalcoatl died, or Tula, where he ruled but from where he was exiled late in his rule. The likelihood is that it’s Teotihuacan because it would have been empty, so anyone working in secret could have performed the excavation and built the chamber without being discovered.”

  “Sounds like a lot of manpower,” Sam said.

  “Yes, but the manuscript mentions a secret order that worshipped the ruler Quetzalcoatl as a living god and later dedicated itself to the protection of the sacred tomb. If the followers were suitably zealous, it’s entirely possible that they could have done the construction and then taken up residence in the area, keeping their secret through the generations.”

  “Then it’s the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan?” Remi asked. “We’ve been looking at that as one of the candidates, but it seems like it’s too obvious.”

  “Sometimes the most obvious place is the best place to hide something of immeasurable value. We have a dig going on there right now. A tunnel system has been discovered beneath the temple, but it was filled in around A.D. 250 and it’s taking forever to excavate it.”

  “Then you would have discovered the secret chamber, too, if it was there,” Remi said.

  Antonio entered and approached them.

  “Maribela was just telling us about your theory about where the temple might be located,” Sam said.

  “Ah, yes. Well, it’s all speculative, but, for my money, it would be somewhere beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent,” Antonio said.

  “But there’s been sonar done after the tunnel discovery,” Remi said, “and it didn’t reveal anything more. Maybe the tunnel connects to it?”

  “Doubtful. One of our colleagues heads up that dig and nothing’s been discovered or hinted at or we would have heard about it. No, if it’s there, it’s somewhere other than the obvious. And the sonar scan that was performed concentrated on that one quadrant after this latest tunnel was found. If it’s in one of the other quadrants, or if it’s deeper than the tunnels, it could be a decade before anything’s found.”

  “Then how do we locate it?” Sam asked.

  “Based on our interpretation of the manuscript, it seems to point to some fairly specific areas once you narrow it down to that pyramid. Of course, that would have been all but impossible for a sixteenth-century exploration, which may well be why the search was eventually abandoned.”

  “How do we get permission to excavate?”

  “Well, you’d need a permit from the Ministry. Which I just got finished discussing with Carlos. He’s going to put in a request and see if he can fast-track it.”

  “How long will that take?” Remi asked.

  “If no resistance is encountered, maybe a week,” Maribela said.

  “And there’s the question of funding the undertaking,” Antonio added. “We’re always low on money, and the new find has taken a hundred ten percent of our discretionary fund.”

  Sam and Remi smiled at the same time.

  “We could make a donation, if that would smooth the way,” Sam said. “Just tell us what you think it would take and we can put the wheels in motion. We’ve funded other digs, so why not this one? Making the discovery is worth more than the cost of a small excavation team . . .”

  Antonio nodded. “That’s very generous of you. Perhaps you could relay that to Carlos? He handles the finances for the Institute.”

  Sam and Remi went upstairs to Carlos’s office and knocked. He came to the door and beamed at them before welcoming them into his suite. They first discussed the likelihood of a tomb beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and he seemed genuinely excited about the possibility. When talk turned to logistics and their participation, he was reticent to commit to a time line but then noticeably relaxed when Sam floated the idea of a donation to cover the excavation expense.

  “That’s extremely generous of you. And I’d imagine it will make it much easier to approve if we have funding in place,” he said.

  “That’s what we were thinking,” Sam said. “We don’t want to delay exploration. Say the word and we’ll arrange for a wire transfer to the Institute’s account. It can be there by tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think it would be overly expensive if you have a specific location in mind. Really, we’re talking about a few workers, a supervisor, possibly some excavation equipment . . .”

  “And a scanner, if you think it would help,” Remi added.

  “Probably not, but it doesn’t hurt to budget for it. Figure, mmm . . . fifty thousand American dollars would more than cover it, including the permit. The scanner must be flown in from the United States and operated by a trained technician from there.”

  “Consider it done.”

  When they returned to their temporary office, Antonio was scrutinizing satellite photography of the location and Maribela was pointing to an area near one of the corners at the pyramid base. “This is the likely spot,” she said, tapping the monitor. “All of the elements in the Aztec’s account are there . . .”

  “This may seem like a silly question, but is the actual pyramid, this Temple of the Feathered Serp
ent, solid or hollow?” asked Remi, the thought just occurring to her.

  Maribela sat back. “It appears that it’s hollow, but far deeper than could have been reached with any ease from the exterior. What happened is that successive pyramids were built over the prior temples, incorporating them inside. Archaeologists tunneled into it and discovered over two hundred skeletons, as well as human remains at each of the four corners. And they’ve been over it with sonar. There’s no chamber inside.”

  “Yes, but sonar has its limitations. I’m all too aware of them,” Sam said.

  Remi nodded. “And what about the Adosada platform in front of the pyramid? Have we excluded that as a possibility?”

  Antonio shook his head. “That was built at a later date than the pyramid. The Adosada was probably constructed to supplant the pyramid as the place of worship. The manuscript doesn’t discuss it, but, you’re right, it could also be a location. Maybe a sort of sleight of hand of the tomb builders—a misdirection. Or we may be interpreting it incorrectly and it’s none of these.”

  “So you think the Temple of the Feathered Serpent pyramid in Teotihuacan is the best candidate?” Sam summarized.

  “That’s our belief,” Antonio agreed.

  Sam rubbed his face. “Maybe we should go out to the site while we’re waiting for the permit.”

  Remi looked out the window. “Once it stops raining. It’s not that far, is it?”

  “It’s about forty kilometers away.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Remi said. “Unless anyone’s got any better ideas?”

  Sam shook his head. “Sounds like a plan. Here’s hoping for clear skies sooner than later.”

  It rained all of the following day, so Sam and Remi immersed themselves in studying everything they could find on Teotihuacan, focusing on the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. The history of the city was fascinating, as was the speed with which it had ceased to be viable—at one point, it was the largest in the world, but it was abandoned around A.D. 700 and destroyed by fire fifty years later. A city that at one point was larger than Rome had become a ghost town. And as little is known about its builders as about the Toltecs, whose own city was only sixty miles north.

  They didn’t see Carlos all day but assumed that he was at his other office and would contact them about funding the project when he’d gotten approval for a dig. The day dragged by slowly and by five o’clock they were both more than ready to leave.

  Morning brought the blessed relief of the sun and, with it, travel to Teotihuacan to see the layout for themselves. Even though they’d studied it, nothing could have prepared them for the grandeur when they exited their taxi and stood in front of the huge stone figure that acted as a greeter near the museum gates.

  They moved with a small group of German tourists and walked onto the long, wide Avenue of the Dead, which bisected the city and terminated at the Pyramid of the Moon. The Temple of the Feathered Serpent was at the opposite end of the unearthed portion of the city, with the Pyramid of the Sun between the two landmarks—an incredible sight and the third-largest pyramid in the world after those in Egypt and Cholula.

  Sam indicated the surrounding buildings. “You get a sense of how vast it was and how evolved the civilization must have been. One of the most amazing things is how geometrically precise the layout is. The front wall of the Pyramid of the Sun aligns with the points where the sun sets on the equinoxes, and the Avenue of the Dead points at the setting of the Pleiades. Astronomy played a huge role in this society.”

  “The other thing I wasn’t prepared for is how hot it is. I guess no shade anywhere has its drawbacks,” Remi said as they walked up the famed avenue, taking in the city’s size. “And here I was complaining about it being cold just a few days ago on Baffin.”

  They strolled along in silence, and, after they had moved halfway along the Avenue of the Dead, Sam held his phone up, as if checking for a signal, and then spoke softly. “Don’t turn around, but our tail’s about two hundred yards behind us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “See for yourself.” Sam had been filming as he held the cell aloft. He quickly rewound and handed the phone to her. The footage was bouncy, but he’d caught an image of a Hispanic male in his thirties, walking alone, looking out of place. He obviously hadn’t been expecting to have to walk miles in the heat and was dressed differently than the other visitors, to his detriment.

  “Doesn’t look very happy, does he?”

  “He was probably thinking he’d be sitting all day, not going on a hike.”

  “You know, you’ve just inspired me to pick up the pace and spend twice as much time walking the site as we’d planned,” Remi said, handing the phone back to him.

  “Bad day to be in the ‘Follow the Fargos’ business.”

  “Let’s make him earn his money, shall we?”

  “You’re a hard woman, Remi Fargo.”

  “Aye, that I am, kind sir. That I am.”

  The Pyramid of the Moon loomed before them, with smaller temples on either side lining the avenue. They stopped at the Palace of the Jaguars, so named because of the colorful frescoes to be found throughout its interior, and savored the shade from the corrugated-metal roof before trekking to the Palace of Quetzalpapalotl, which owed its name to the illustrations on its walls of a mythical butterfly creature. It had been renovated and stood in most of its former glory. They took their time inside, fully aware that their tail was out in the harsh sun. When he finally followed them inside, they left and made for the Pyramid of the Moon, forcing him back outside.

  “I almost feel sorry for him,” Sam said quietly as they started ascending the steps on the front of the pyramid along with a few other hardy tourists.

  “Not me. Nobody’s forcing him to tail us.”

  “He definitely got the raw end of the deal. Did you see? He’s wearing black leather dress shoes. Not a good choice for this kind of thing. He’ll be lucky if he can walk by the time this is over.”

  “And there’s so much more to see. Wow, look at this view,” she said, then pulled her phone from her pocket and took some photos of the entire city spread out before them. The buildings shimmered from the heat rising off the pavement as Sam and Remi took in the awe-inspiring panorama.

  “Where to next?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, I think we need to see the Pyramid of the Sun, don’t we? And then we can finish up in the Citadel, which is the section with the Temple of the Feathered Serpent over on the far end.”

  “Good thing we ate a big breakfast. We won’t be out of here until two or three at this rate.”

  “And our tail will be limping on stumps by then. Didn’t his mom ever tell him that sensible shoes were important?”

  “And sunscreen. Bet he wishes he’d brought a hat, at the very least. Should be a mean burn. We are at seven thousand feet. Ouch.”

  “Now even I’m feeling a little sorry for him,” Remi said, “but not enough to wind this down. Am I correct that there were temple structures on top of each of those smaller pyramids before the city was destroyed?” she asked, pointing to the row to her left.

  “That’s the assumption. Same for the top of this one, as well as the others.”

  “Makes you feel very small and recent, doesn’t it? To think that all this was thriving fifteen hundred years before we were born. And now it’s largely mounds of dirt.”

  “Nobody gets out of this alive. Which is a good reason to make the most of it while the sun’s shining. Which it definitely is today, as our friend can attest to.”

  Remi took Sam’s hand. “Come on, let’s get to the big pyramid. Our boy down there seems like he’s getting way too much rest. And how long can he stare at the other buildings before he stands out even more? This is the main attraction, and everyone else has climbed the steps.”

  The smaller temples along the way were large when viewed from the ground, the terrain beyond them rising nearly to their summits. When excavation had started, the city had been bumps
of land with an occasional structure peeking from the landscape, the earth seemingly eager to reclaim it as though wiping any trace of Teotihuacan from its surface.

  They climbed the steps to the Pyramid of the Sun and gazed down at the rest of the complex two hundred feet below.

  “Poor Quetzalcoatl’s pyramid’s kind of puny compared to this. He got shorted. Those feathered snakes get no respect,” Sam joked as a welcome breeze tousled his hair.

  “Let’s stop in at the museum. No doubt it has air-conditioning. Let’s cool off there and then finish up with Snake Boy, shall we?”

  “Sounds like a good plan. Especially the AC part.”

  The museum was filled with artifacts that had been uncovered during the hundred years of archaeological exploration of the site and included a map and a simulation of what the city had looked like in its prime. All the buildings had been covered with plaster and bright paint, decorated with frescoes to honor the gods and celebrate important moments in the civilization’s history. They browsed for fifteen minutes, enjoying the cool of climate control, and then made their final way to the area called the Citadel by the Spanish, which they had thought was a fort but was actually a plaza that housed the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

  As they approached the temple, it didn’t look particularly impressive compared to the two larger pyramids. But once they’d mounted the steps of the platform in front of it, they could see the detail of the carved snake heads and the elaborate depictions of serpents winding their way around each level.

  “It’s certainly all about snakes,” Sam said.

  “Go snake or go home. That’s my new motto.”

  “You’re in the right place, then. All snake all the time.”

  “But with feathers. Don’t forget the plumage.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Looks like it’s closed off to visitors,” Remi observed. “And they’re working on some of the heads.”

  “I have a feeling this is a bit like owning a bridge. You’re never really done with maintenance.”

  “Then this was the center of the city?”