by Alex Archer
Annja wished she hand’t prodded him; it was better when he wasn’t talking to her. She dropped into the lake and embraced its otherworldliness, happy to get away from Rembert. The dry suit would keep out the chill, and the rebreather with it... She really wouldn’t even be leaving bubbles behind.
She passed Bob the Boulder and the wrecked boat, saw a three-foot-long muskellunge swimming lazily along the bottom. That was what the giant had been that she’d encountered hours ago. She’d described the fish to the man at the dive shop, and he’d told her it was a muskie, more properly called a muskellunge, the most coveted game fish in these inland lakes, a trophy fifty or sixty inches long. Annja knew the one in the Snakeship’s Maw was a trophy. Maybe in the secret depths of Rock Lake they just grew big.
Her visibility was good, at least thirty feet, no diatoms here and minimal silt. Despite that, Annja had difficulty finding the crevasse, even though she’d memorized the pertinent page in the dive log and thought she had exactly retraced her steps from earlier today. It took her close to a half hour, and at the end of that she’d worried that maybe she wasn’t going to find it ever again. As far as the lake was concerned, the gash at the bottom really wasn’t all that long or wide, like a thin scar on a man’s chest. No wonder it had gone undetected. Joe had no doubt found it by accident. And without his dive logs...she would have never found it.
The dive computer told her she hadn’t been far off her guess. The bottom of the rent was two hundred and ten feet down from the surface. Annja took the left, or what approximated the east leg of it, coming to what appeared to be a dead end until she aimed her light first one way and then the next, revealing the stone wall of a Mayan structure and a narrow gap between it and the rock wall. She’d thought about it on the ride to the hospital when Rembert wasn’t saying anything. An earthquake seemed the most logical explanation. The ground had opened up and dropped the building into it, sealing it in a rocky embrace and at the same time creating the lake and covering up the Native American burial mounds.
Like the chieftain’s passed-down tale of their gods changing the land and calling up a lake to take care of the Mayan blight, Annja recalled. She took pictures of the stone and where it practically joined the natural rock wall, focusing on symbols that had been worn thin by time and the water. Then she hooked the camera to her belt and slipped in the narrow gap, going only a dozen feet before she could no longer fit. Wiggling free of the rebreather tank, she kept the mouthpiece in and held the tank to her side and started squeezing deeper in.
“I would have taken more risks.” The haunting, prophetic words returned. But how many more risks did Annja have in her? Pressed between the worked stone and the natural rock, her flashlight focused on the hieroglyphic symbols, Annja managed to tug the camera up, take a few pictures that she prayed weren’t blurry and stuff it back. She looked down, seeing that she was no longer shuffling across the sandy bottom that had been part of the crevasse, but was on flat stone. It looked like a sidewalk, with its mortared segments every so many steps. Steps? She was on one of the steps of the Mayan pyramid.
Her heart raced and she felt her chest grow tight with excitement. All thoughts of Edgar and Rembert, Doug and Sully, and Chasing History’s Monsters and Lakeside...all of it fled. There was only her and this moment of discovery, this amazing revelation, a once-in-a-lifetime happening. She felt euphoric.
It was a sensation she wanted to bottle and keep and imbibe over and over, an archaeological junkie on a high she’d never experienced before and perhaps never would again. Annja took her time. She crept through the narrow gap, touching the worked stone only when she had to, feeling the natural rock behind her. So much of what once must have been intricate and beautiful were mere suggestions, a hint of a sun symbol, a half man/half jaguar, then an elk with the stylized visage of a man.
A few of the etchings had been deeper and she could better make out just how detailed they’d been. Half men/half badgers, birds with their wings spread, symbols she didn’t know the meaning of but that she managed to get pictures of.
Farther in, the gap widened and she could put the rebreather back on properly. Down and to her left the crevasse opened and descended even farther, and her light stretched about forty feet. Up, she could see the top of the pyramid. It resembled one she’d seen at El Mirador, which was one hundred and eighty feet tall.
She followed the structure down, using both her dive computer and high-powered flashlight for reference. She reached the bottom and took a reading. Three hundred feet below the surface. Rock Lake had held on to this secret for a very long time. She climbed back up, taking pictures along the way, especially of symbols that were the most legible, using her light and her computer and setting the height of the pyramid at about one hundred and fifty feet tall.
Once more she followed it to the base, but on a different side, taking more pictures, finding places where the carvings looked as if they’d just been made. There were more images of suns than of any one other thing, half men/half animals, symbols she had no clue to their meaning, images of death gods and depictions of beautiful long-tailed birds that tugged at her memory. She knew a name for the bird, but it was escaping her at the moment.
The temple had nine steps, which was usually symbolic of the nine layers of the underworld. Likely members of a royal family were buried inside...along with sacrifices.
Down and up again on another side, she found an entrance at the midpoint. Her heart quickened, and the euphoric rush skittered through her. A part of her wished she could share this with someone—Doug maybe, though he’d try to find a sensational angle with it, wouldn’t truly appreciate everything this represented. Edgar. Oh, she wished Edgar could have seen his work become this reality. The old archaeologist couldn’t have come down here, but Bobby Wolfe or she could have been his eyes. Papa might have been coaxed down, though even he would have had a tough time squeezing through the gap.
“I have quite the monster for you to chase, dear Annja. We must meet for dinner tomorrow so I can give you my notes.” Edgar hadn’t meant a monster for her program, not Her Imperial Snakeship or any other fantastical beast. He’d meant a monster of a discovery. He’d meant his pot of gold at the end of his archaeological rainbow.
She studied the opening more closely. It was framed by an arch with numerous etchings of suns and birds. At the top the stone head of a creature with small ears and long fangs protruded. Was it a warning to stay out?
Chapter 31
Annja took a picture of the jaguar head and went inside. She made her way along a corridor that carried hints of painted designs. Annja tried to imagine what they’d looked like thousands of years ago—this structure had to go back more than two thousand years...four thousand more likely. Older? They’d used red paint, and some white and black, the suggestions of color intriguing. She took her time, recording as much as possible.
Among the images were death gods and gods of the thirteen layers of heaven, but always the death gods appeared on top, as if they were holding sway and were more powerful. Again there were more symbols she had no knowledge of, a language perhaps. There were bones—deer or elk, and pig, not typical of Mayan sacrifices, and so they were perhaps brought here for food. Next Annja discovered a chamber with a high ceiling. Her light grazed the top of it but could not reach to the other side. A massive room, then.
She moved at a snail’s pace, not looking at her watch. In truth, she didn’t want to know how much time she was spending here. Rembert said he would wait, and so he would, for some reason wanting to stay close to her....
She didn’t want time to intrude on this magical experience. It would take as long as it would take...as long as she could drag it out and enjoy the enchantment of it all. Or at least until her common sense got the better of her. Rebreathers were amazing, but they did not let a diver stay down indefinitely. Annja calculated she had four and a half hours, maybe five at
the outside. And she had the bail-out tank in case she got in trouble.
Along the walls were still more carvings, these not as worn as the ones outside the building. Annja had a working knowledge of the Maya, because of trips to Central America for Chasing History’s Monsters and because of her overall fascination with anything archeological. Most of the carvings were of gods...the sun god; various gods of the underworld; Itzamna, an upper god or one of the creator deities. The depiction most prevalent was of Vucub-Caquix, a bird-demon that according to Mayan mythology pretended to be both the sun and the moon, father of Cabracan and Zipacna—two earthquake demons.
How appropriate, Annja thought. The being that the Maya people believed birthed earthquakes glorified in a temple that was swallowed by one. Was it possible there really was a divine hand involved with the watery entombing of this place?
There were more skeletons, and Annja’s sense of wonder disappeared. No longer game animals—the skulls were small, belonging to children, in some cases babies, probably all sacrificed to accompany whatever royal personage was buried here to the afterlife. She focused the light elsewhere, illuminating whistles carved from obsidian, intact bowls, pieces of jade, marble carved into the shapes of animals...badgers and beavers, masks, effigy figurines, jade ear bores. Annja took pictures of all of it. Some of the ceramic pieces were exceedingly valuable, codex-style, black-line-on-cream decorated with images to show mythological events. The cold of the lake had actually helped preserve these pieces. She knew from attending legitimate auctions that some of these pieces could bring eighty to a hundred thousand each—worth far more than the coins Joe had brought up.
Mexican and Central American officials were trying hard to lock down the trade of Mayan relics, challenging pieces that came up for auction, proving some of them forgeries and asking for the return of things verified as genuine. But these pieces...would these all be arrayed in display cases in museums? Or would the archaeologists and explorers who came after her get them to the black market? Would these be worth more because of where they came from?
Undoubtedly.
Had Joe entered this pyramid? Had he been able to squeeze through the tight passage? Was she following his course? Or had he found the gold pieces elsewhere? No! He’d been here. The pitcher that she’d purchased in the pottery shop, and the bowl. She squatted and took pictures. They were right here...the originals. Joe had seen them and copied them to remarkable likeness, maybe copied others, as well. These pots, somehow preserved in the cold water at the secret bottom of Rock Lake, were exceedingly valuable. Worth far, far more than the pieces of gold Edgar had...but it wasn’t those pieces Mr. A. had been after, was it? It was this location he’d sought, the place where the gold had come from. The thug had asked her that.
He’d demanded to know where the treasure was as he shoved the gun against her forehead in the alley.
This treasure chamber.
Either Edgar or Dr. Papadopolous, and most likely the latter—she told herself—had mentioned to the thug the possibility of more gold, of a Mayan hoard in Wisconsin. Or Peter. Maybe it was Peter. He was at the root of all the bad things, and probably oblivious to it. The clarity of it struck her. Edgar in his excitement had told Peter, Peter in turn had pestered both Edgar and Papa about getting cut in, had mentioned it to Elyse Hapgood...and who knew who she talked to? And once it was no longer a secret, the mysterious Mr. A. caught wind of it and acted. Manny said there was an illegal selling ring operating at the conference. So Mr. A. must have been primed and in a position to go for Edgar’s find.
That was what they had been after, Mr. A. and his cohorts. Not the few circles of gold Edgar and Papa had, but the mother lode.
The old pot Sully had mentioned...she would ask to take a look at it. Maybe it wasn’t one Joe made; maybe it was one he’d brought up from down here.
Nearing the back of the massive chamber, she found five intact skeletons, probably only kept that way because they’d at one time been wrapped in swaths of cloth that must have been elaborate. Now the cloth was in tatters, loosely keeping the bones gathered, strips of it floating in the water and looking ephemeral and insubstantial, like ghostly seaweed fronds. She took more pictures, the light touching the strips and revealing faint patterns that had been red—the color the Maya associated with death and rebirth. The five bodies were arranged facing north, aligning with where the Maya believed one of the entrances to the underworld could be found.
The treasure—the true treasure of this temple—was arrayed around the five bodies. Tucked in gashes and other small openings in the stone, there were wide gold and silver bracelets decorated with jade, massive elaborate necklaces that must have been too heavy to comfortably wear in life. The details were staggering, filigreed and engraved, images of suns and birds, of half men/half badgers, more symbols she had no understanding of. The more detail a piece of jewelry had and the larger it was, the more valuable. Annja recorded all of it on her camera and tried to touch nothing. Each of the skeletons had large headdresses, gold, serving in the stead of Egyptian funeral masks. She was struck with the notion...finding this temple, this chamber and seeing all this treasure.
The small gold pieces Edgar had in that envelope were insignificant next to this. Grains of sand in a desert. One of these headdresses alone could command more than a million, well more, given its condition and provenance. A fortune in just one piece. No wonder some archaeologists were tempted to take things away from dig sites.
She looked closely at the first skeleton, not finding its hands, then searching and searching with the light and catching sight of finger bones and jade and gold rings that had fallen off. This skeleton was the only one that did not have a necklace. Perhaps Joe had taken something from it.
Stepping carefully beyond the first skeleton, she looked at the others. Each body had so much jewelry and other trinkets buried with it. A very significant family, a king perhaps, the members of the family killed when he died. Two of the five skeletons were smaller, probably teenagers. Had one of the survivors ascended to the throne after the king’s death, and had that survivor ordered the deaths of the other family members so his or her rule would not be contested?
Archaeologists would pull up the bones and study them, record their health, try to determine what they’d eaten and how they had died; it would all be fascinating and would take years. And it would be a major boon to scientists in the U.S., who would not have to ask permission from officials in Mexico and Central American and South American countries.
The chamber extended beyond the skeletons and was packed with treasures for the afterlife. Statues almost life-size, urns and bowls. Annja was dizzy, giddy, as if she’d just arrived at the wildest party and gulped down an entire bottle of champagne. Her knees quivered. There was an assortment of bowls that looked as if they’d been filled with so much blood that it had stained them—she’d seen their dry counterparts in Mexican museums. Finger bones were nearby. What sort of sacrifices and ceremonies had been involved? Had these people glorified Vucub-Caquix? Some of the larger bowls had the bird-demon’s image carved in them, and one of the largest statues was of a man-bird with wings tucked close to his body.
Mayan gods were intriguing and complex; Annja knew she would be reading voraciously about them during her trip to Morocco and long afterward. That good and evil vacillated in the deities was a concept difficult to get a handle on. That a god could be perceived as evil one day, good the next, its worshippers not minding...that is, if she remembered her previous research correctly.
Above all of that, she felt the pressure and presence of evil here.
She’d seen so much evil since inheriting Joan’s sword. She shook her head at the notion and continued to be mesmerized.
Jade beads, the currency of the Maya, a waist-high urn, and there were weapons, too. Annja didn’t know enough Maya history to recall if they believed weapons were needed on the other
side. There were daggers made of obsidian and chert, obsidian arrowheads, chert spearheads, the wood long since rotted away...enough to have equipped a sizeable force.
Initially the Maya were thought to be peaceful. Though the more historians and archaeologists studied the sites, the more they learned that there had been struggles within communities for dominance and with nearby communities. Some of the sacrifices were believed to have been related to retaliation for military strikes.
The bones, all the skulls...were they Mayan or Native American? Perhaps both. The scientists could probably sort it out with time.
How long had she spent down here? Annja finally gave in and looked at her watch. It was a little after nine...not as long as she’d expected. Dinner had been fast, and she was on the lake and in the water at six-thirty. So, close to three hours. She imagined that Rembert was tapping his foot impatiently and wishing he’d bought a second paperback. She would go back at ten for his benefit and return tomorrow. She’d be rested and would find a place to buy another memory card for the camera. But just a little more now. A little farther.