“Where are you?” Ed’s voice called down from the top of the pit, and Kate shut her phone off and stuffed it in her pocket as they made their way back out to the opening.
Ed lowered the ladder and Kate’s taste of freedom was spoiled by thoughts of what Ed might have in store for them when they got to the top. Then again, if he wanted them out of the way, why not leave them down in the pit?
Ace gestured toward the ladder. “After you.”
Kate shrugged and climbed up, her walking stick at the ready, just in case. But her fears were unfounded. When she got to the top, Ed did nothing more than give her a helping hand. Even so, she had to admit she felt a flutter of relief when Ace emerged from the pit and the three of them were standing at the top.
“How did you know we would be down there?” Kate half expected Ed to whip out a gun and point it at her, but all he had in his hand was a beat-up old leather journal.
“I saw what happened at the campsite. I came out of the forest to find a dead guy and Jersey causing the avalanche in the cave. I fought with Jersey and she got away, then I tried to dig out the rocks, but you didn’t answer when I yelled in. I thought you were dead or had found a way out so I tried to chase Jersey because I think she knows where the tomb is. And I saw someone had fallen in the pit. Figured maybe you'd found your way out of the cave and then fell in again.”
Ace slid questioning eyes over to Kate. “Again?”
Kate bristled. “That’s not important now and I did not fall in, but I guess it doesn’t matter. What does matter is how you know about the tomb. I thought you were excavating a Mayan village. You never said anything about a tomb.” An edge of suspicion crept into Kate’s voice.
She was shocked when Ed actually blushed. “I guess you found me out. I’m not actually who I pretended to be.”
“Who are you?” Kate fisted her hands on her hips and looked between Ed and Ace. “Are you FBI, too?”
“No.” They said at the same time.
“Well, then who are you with and why are you pretending to be an assistant sent by Jersey’s bosses?”
“Look, we don’t have time for that now.” Ed brushed off her questions. “After Jersey ran off, I found this journal in her tent. She’s obsessed with finding the tomb and I think once you look in here you’ll see why. She’s dangerous and it seemed like she got some clue as to where the tomb is.”
Kate remembered Snake Ring’s paper that Jersey had torn out of her hands and wondered if it was the missing piece of the map. Had Jersey already acquired the other pieces?
“Anyway,” Ed continued. “She was heading toward your campsite and I’m afraid your people may be in trouble.”
“How do you know where my site is?” Kate’s mind flashed back to all the times she’d felt like someone had been following her in the jungle. Had it actually been Ed? She glanced over at Ace. Or maybe it had been Ace? Then again, how did Snake Ring find her at Jersey’s site if he hadn’t been following her? For all she knew, all three of them had been following her.
“I make it my business to know what is going on.” Ed shoved the book into her hand. “Read this, it will explain a lot.”
Kate took the journal. It was soft, worn from decades of use. She untied the leather cord that wrapped around it. The cover flipped open, revealing papers that were yellowed and stained. The light blue fountain pen ink was barely visible. The front page had one sentence on it.
This is the journal of Reginald White.
“Reginald White?” Kate looked up at Ed in confusion. “The archaeologist?”
Ed nodded. “Reginald White was Jersey’s grandfather. She’s obsessed with carrying on his work.”
Maybe that explained why the picture Gideon had sent of Reginald White showed a man who looked exactly like Ed. “Did one of your relatives have an association with Reginald White?”
“Sort of,” he stammered. “There’s no time to get into that now. Jersey has reached a boiling point. She’s dangerous and we need to stop her.”
Kate still wasn’t sure if she trusted Ed, but Ace must’ve already made up his mind.
“Well, then let’s go,” Ace said. “Where is she?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know exactly where she is. She was holding a piece of paper. It sounded like she said something about the last piece of the puzzle and then she took off. I would have followed her but I thought Kate needed my help,” Ed said apologetically.
Kate was only half paying attention. She was busy flipping through the pages of the journal, which appeared to be an account of Reginald White’s archaeological dig done in this area some thirty years ago. A series of flying winged frogs on a page at the end caught her eye—the same kind of frogs that were on the skull, the rock, and the archway they’d found earlier that morning.
She thought about the map. So far, she only had three of the pieces—the piece on the skull, the piece on the rock Ace had been digging, and the piece that Gideon had found under the painting. But none of these were the beginning pieces. It was possible that piece was on the other half of the painting which Jersey now had.
But if so, what was this in the book? She turned the book over and looked at it from the opposite side her breath catching in her throat when she recognized something on it. At the very end of the line of frogs was the symbol, the tattoo she’d seen on the hookah man and on Ed—the figure eight snake. That wasn’t the main thing that had caught Kate’s eye—that thing made her realize this was probably the missing piece to the puzzle. The beginning of the map that would lead to the tomb.
“I think I know how to find the tomb!”
* * *
Kate got out her compass app and spun around, looking for magnetic north. She looked at Ed. “You seem to know this place pretty good. Which direction is my camp.”
“That way.” Ed pointed toward the east. “You guys go ahead. I’ll be right behind you. It’s better not to go in together. That way we’ll have the element of surprise.”
“Let’s go.” Kate started off in a sprint. It was hard going, though, and they eventually had to slow down, picking their way through the thin paths that traversed the jungle. Kate’s fingers brushed the soft leather book in her pocket and she wondered if it was the real deal or something Ed was using to throw them off track. She wouldn’t put it past him, but she didn’t really have anything better to go on and getting to her campsite and making sure her parents and the Golden Capers gang were okay wasn’t a bad idea. Besides, he’d just pulled them out of the pit—why would he do that and then send them on a wild goose chase with a fake journal?
Ace came up beside her. “What was Ed talking about back there? Did Jersey kill Maxon and trap you in the cave?”
“Maxon?”
“Burgess Maxon, Markovic’s guy that you were chasing in the market.”
“Oh, right. I’d forgotten his name. She did kill him. I didn’t have time to bring you up to speed in the cave.” Kate filled Ace in on what had happened that morning. Glancing behind her to make sure Ed wasn’t there, she leaned in toward Ace and whispered, “And the strangest part is Gideon showed me a picture of Reginald White and he was with a man who looked exactly like Ed.”
“That’s why you asked if his grandfather worked with Reginald.”
Kate nodded. “He must have. But the other weird thing is that Ed and the man who was killed in the market have the exact same tattoo … and that tattoo is also right here in Reginald’s book.”
Ace frowned. “Really? That seems like a strange coincidence. What is the tattoo of?”
Kate shivered. “It’s awful. It’s a snake in a figure eight, eating its own tail.”
Ace stopped in his tracks. “A figure eight? Let me see.”
Kate flipped open the book carefully to the page pointing at the symbol. “This is it right here.”
Ace’s brows shot up. He turned the book to the side, angling it so that Kate could see the snake sideways instead of a figure eight. “Kate, that’s not a fi
gure eight. That’s the infinity sign. That proves the FBI’s theory about Itizuma.”
Kate slapped her arms against her side, grabbing the book back from him. “What is this theory? You’ve been very elusive about it so far and I’d appreciate it if you’d just tell me what it is.”
He shrugged. “Okay, but you may not believe me. This infinity symbol symbolizes much more than just forever. It’s also a symbol for time travel.”
Kate scrunched up her face. “Time travel? I thought that was just something that happened in science fiction. And you expect me to believe this Itizuma guy knew the secrets of time travel six hundred years ago?”
Ace's face turned grim. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. In the tomb is a codex that has the formula for time travel. That’s why the FBI is interested. If this formula got in the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. Governments could use it to go back in time and change the outcome of wars. Can you imagine what that would do?”
Kate felt like she’d swallowed a boulder. She hadn’t really thought of time travel before but when Ace put it that way, it seemed like it could be pretty bad. What if the Allies had not won World War II? Or George Washington had been assassinated? Kate shuddered to think what the world would be like today if ill-meaning people could go back in time and change things.
She felt silly. The whole time she was thinking she was digging up a tomb filled with riches and it was really much more than that. No wonder Jersey was so hot to get at it.
“Reginald White must have known about that.” Kate shut the book and tapped the cover. “And judging by this map, it looks like he might have found the tomb. Jersey probably knew, too. She knew what was in that tomb was much more valuable than gold. She could use it for her own purposes or sell it to terrorists or an enemy government.”
“That’s right,” Ace said. “And I’m afraid it’s up to us to stop her.”
23
Kate eventually recognized the path that led to the archway they had found earlier that morning. When they got to the clearing, her stomach sank. It was empty. Where were her parents?
Kate flipped the book open to the map she’d seen earlier. Reginald’s drawing looked like the archway or how it would have looked had it not fallen down.
“Look right here.” She tapped on the archway in the book. “I think that is this.” She pointed to the two broken columns and then took Ace over to where the remainder of the archway lay.
She pointed to what would have been the top of the arch. “If you put it back together, it would look similar to the archway in the book.”
Ace pressed his lips together. “Yes, it does. So, you think this is the beginning of the map?”
“Yes. And if we follow the path, then we just need to put the middle pieces from the painting and the rock together with the end piece from the skull and it should lead us to the tomb.”
“Great. But how do we decipher these.”
Kate stared at the images. They were just frogs leaping off in different directions. But, as she looked at them, she realized the frogs were each a little different. Their wings were set at different angles. The angles reminded her of a compass.
“That’s it!” These frogs correlate to compass points. If you look at these three frogs with their wings in this position, it’s three frogs north and then this next frog points east. See what I mean?” She looked hopefully at Ace.
“Yes, I do. Too bad we don’t know what unit of measurement a frog is. Is that a foot … a mile?”
Kate’s spirits sank. “You’re right. We won’t know how far to go in each direction.”
“Wait a minute. Let me see one of the maps.”
Kate didn’t want to open the leather book which sat safely in her pocket. It was too fragile and she was afraid the pages would fall apart. She pulled out her cell phone and brought up one of the pictures she had taken in the cave.
Ace took the phone from her and used his forefinger and thumb to enlarge the picture then he held it up to her. “Look at this right here.” He tapped a spot in between two of the frogs. “This looks like something on the map almost as if they put signposts or markers where you were supposed to change direction. See how this frog is going north and the next one goes east.”
“So there might be some kind of a sign, like maybe a tablet or a stone that will tell us when we need to change direction?” Kate asked.
Ace shrugged. “We might as well try it. We’ve got nothing else to go on. Your friend Ed hasn’t shown up and besides, we don’t even know if he can help.”
Hope fluttered in Kate's chest. As she looked more closely at the maps, she saw there were small marks at every direction change. What Ace suggested made perfect sense. “The markers might not still be there after all this time, but I’m game if you are.”
They started at the remains of the archway, just like the map in Reginald White’s book indicated. Following the direction of the frogs, they walked north using the compass to make sure they were going in a straight line. Ace kept them on track while Kate scoured the ground for some sort of mark.
She was almost out of hope when she saw it. A four-inch tall piece of white, rectangular limestone stuck out of the ground. Its top was carved in a point, like a miniature pyramid.
“Over here! This can’t be natural. Someone put this here on purpose.”
Further inspection of the stone yielded a figure eight snake symbol. Kate and Ace smiled at each other. She was confident now that they were on the right path.
They continued following the map through the dense tropical forest, Kate’s stomach getting tighter and tighter the further they traveled. She hadn’t seen any sign of her parents and the Golden Capers gang. What had Jersey done with them?
They never saw Ed, either, which only added to her stress. Once again, she considered the possibility that Ed had given them the book to throw them off track. But if he had, why did it all makes so much sense? And why did the map seem to be working out perfectly? Although they hadn’t figured out what unit of measure each frog symbolized, they had noticed that the more frogs were piled up in each direction, the longer it took before they found a signpost. Clearly the frogs had some meaning, but it was beyond Kate to figure what it was.
After the first half hour, the jungle got thicker, making it harder to find the signposts. Kate became more and more frustrated. Would they ever get to the tomb? And what would they find when they got there?
“Shhh.” Ace held out his arm for her to stop. “Do you hear that?”
Was someone following them? Maybe it was Ed. Kate strained to listen but didn’t hear anything except the sounds of the forest. “I don’t hear anyone.”
“Not anyone, anything.” Ace gestured for her to give him the phone and she did. He navigated to the picture of the skull, enlarging it and then holding it up for her to look at. “See these lines over here? I think that indicates a river and I hear one just to the east of us.”
Kate cocked her ear in that direction. He was right. she heard the unmistakable sound of flowing water. She hadn’t noticed it earlier because it didn’t seem out of place, blending into the forest sounds naturally.
“If this map is correct, the tomb is at the mouth of this river. We just need to follow the river and I think we’ll find it. And luck must be on our side because the sound of the river will mask our approach and will give us the element of surprise.”
24
Centuries of water rushing through the ancient river had cut a chasm in the ground. They followed alongside it as the map indicated, the chasm growing deeper as they progressed. Kate’s stomach swooped every time she looked down.
Kate was glad she had brought her walking stick. It had scared off a few snakes along the way and the frequency of snake sightings seemed to increase the further they went.
“We must be getting close.” Their journey had progressed through the various maps and they were now on the last one, which Kate assumed ended at the tomb. Judging from how far they thought
they’d progressed in relation to the map, they should be coming up on it soon. Kate just hoped they’d be able to see it in the dense foliage.
She needn’t have worried. They river took a sharp turn and there it was.
“Holy moly. I guess that’s it, huh?” Ace said.
“Yes. It looks like this old map was pretty accurate after all.” Kate stared at the step pyramid which rose up out of the forest. It wasn’t the whole pyramid, though. Like most of these ancient ruins, one side had crumbled and fallen. They weren’t close enough to see it, but Kate pictured the stone would be strewn about at the base, covered in moss and dirt. The top was just a jagged outline of what it once had been. Halfway up was a platform similar to that which usually sat on top of these types of pyramids and would typically be used as a temple.
On that platform, Kate could see Jersey, Kate's parents and the Golden Capers gang.
Panic lapped at Kate’s gut. It looked like Jersey had them as hostages and was threatening them with something. She didn’t know what Jersey was doing, but whatever it was, it didn’t look good for the Golden Capers gang. “What’s going on up there?”
“I don’t know. Let’s sneak up a little closer and find out,” Ace whispered. “We don’t want her to know we're here.”
They wove their way through the thick foliage, being careful not to make any sound or movement that might alert Jersey to their presence. Kate could see that the pyramid backed up against the edge of the river. The side of the temple that backed up to the river had deteriorated and sheered off steeply. The platform where her parents stood dropped off sharply, straight to the edge of the cliff. It must have been a one hundred foot fall and it looked like Jersey was aiming to push them off.
Kate’s heart crowded her throat as she watched Jersey advance toward the huddled group that made up her parents and close friends. They took a backward step. There were mere inches now between them and the edge of the platform.
Ancient Hiss Story (Kate Diamond Adventure Series Book 2) Page 12