Curses!

by Aaron Elkins

  Their room was on the second floor, and its balcony overlooked the lush grounds of the grand old hotel—a jungle, but a jungle wrestled into submission, tamed and ordered for the pleasure of discriminating human eyes. Flagstone paths wound from the yellow, vaguely Moorish main building to the outlying bungalows, through thick stands of chicle trees, acacias, and royal palms, some of them a hundred feet high, their fronds and branches matted with trailing vines and flowers. Here and there quiet fountains were tucked away behind massed bougainvillea and frangipani. At the level of the balcony the great arms of a ceiba tree spread out before them, every crotch and hollow overflowing with plant life that had taken hold in the moist bark: spiky, flowering plants, orchids that had trunks of their own, miniature banana palms. Trees growing out of trees.

  Drifting appropriately up from the veranda were the soft chords of a guitar serenading the scattered groups of people having drinks. Even the occasional muted snatches of cocktail conversation, mostly in German or English, carried a sense of civilized ease that was more than welcome after a grubby, exhausting journey that had started at 5:00 a.m. The Mayaland, of course, had been built as a hotel for hardy, well-to-do visitors to nearby Chichen ltza in the 1930s. It was mere luck that it was also close enough to the long-hidden Tlaloc to serve as headquarters.

  Julie leaned back in her rocker and put her feet up on the low, glass-topped table.

  "Ah,” she said, “the essential Yucatan. The jungle, the raw, primitive, elemental—"

  Gideon laughed. “Don't be tedious. You have to live someplace, you know, even on a dig, and since the Mayaland is so close and there are usually a few spare rooms..."

  "Yes, but before I met you I was so naive I believed genuine anthropologists slept in tents and lived off the land on snakes and toads. I didn't know they stayed in deluxe international resorts, for God's sake."

  "Yes, well, naturally Abe and I, being genuine anthropologists, would prefer bathing in a muddy cenote and eating iguanas, but of course we have to think of our amateurs, who might not be so used to roughing it."

  "Sure,” Julie said. “Right.” She felt on her left for her glass. Gideon picked it up and put it in her hand, and they sat in peaceable silence until Abe knocked on the louvered door to the room at five o'clock.

  He was as lean and sprightly as ever. Maybe a little sprightlier, as if two weeks of poking among the tumbled stones of Tlaloc under the Yucatecan sun had done his arthritis good, which it no doubt had. His watery blue eyes sparkled with intelligence and humor above the rectangular glasses he'd recently taken to wearing low on his nose most of the time, and around his neck on a black cord the rest of the time. This after a quarter century of carrying his reading glasses in a pocket and rummaging for them when he needed them. It was one of the very few concessions to age Gideon had known him to make.

  "So,” he said, after the preliminaries of greeting, when Gideon had poured him a glass of beer and they had resettled on the balcony, “how do you like our curse?” His exuberant sunburst of white hair, backlit by the sun, was like a frizzy halo.

  "I can hardly wait for all the lousy jokes,” Gideon said. “Every time anybody breaks a pencil or misplaces a trowel it's going to be the Curse of Tlaloc. When does Garrison present her translation?"

  "After dinner. Eight o'clock.” He leaned forward, holding the glass in both thin hands. “Listen, guess what. The Institute changed its mind. They're going to let us dig under the temple. I guess I convinced them after all."

  "That's great! Congratulations!"

  When the Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia had permitted Horizon to reopen Tlaloc, the Temple of the Owls, where the codex had been found (and promptly lost), was expressly excluded. It was to remain locked and off limits, a kind of shrine to iniquity. This, Gideon knew, Abe had been lobbying to have changed, spending several days in Mexico City putting forth a persuasive argument: Somewhere he had gotten hold of an almost unknown volume by the nineteenth-century French artist-explorer Jean Frederic de Waldeck, in which was sketched a ruined, looted Mayan temple-pyramid he had come upon in the Guatemalan highlands. The structure was virtually identical to the Temple of the Owls—two-level stairwell, concealed room in the landing, and all.

  Moreover, de Waldeck had found a second concealed chamber at the base of the steps, also regrettably broken into and emptied. Did this mean there might be a second sealed room at Tlaloc, under the first one and now blocked by the debris of the cave-in? If there were, what might it not contain, considering the fantastic find in the one above? No one knew the answers, of course, (and the Count de Waldeck's romantic enthusiasms had been known to get the better of his fidelity to fact), but Gideon was sure that Abe's presentation to the Institute had made their mouths water.

  "That's wonderful, Abe,” Julie said. “Maybe Horizon can get back in their good graces yet."

  With his head tilted to one side, Abe seemed to weigh these innocuous words. “Maybe,” he said darkly, “maybe not.” He drained his beer. “If you're not too tired from your trip, how about taking a walk to the site? We can be back by dark if we get started now."

  "I'd love it!” Julie said.

  "Good. And you, Gideon, I want you to have a look at something."

  Gideon frowned. “Is something wrong, Abe?"

  "That,” Abe said, “is what I want you to tell me."

  * * * *

  As Yucatecan ruins went, it wasn't much, not in the same league as Coba, or Chichen Itza, or Uxmal; a square ceremonial plaza about three hundred feet down each side, with six more-or-less standing structures. The largest was the one they were on, the Pyramid of the Owls, but by Mayan standards it was hardly imposing: a squat, truncated pyramid only forty-two feet high, with its broad, crumbling stairway of stone steps set at a comfortable forty-degree grade instead of the usual dizzying, near-vertical uplift.

  When they had made their way to the top they turned to look back out over the site. Five and a half years hadn't changed it much. Only the eight-foot chain-link fence surrounding it was new. It had been erected by the government a few months after the site had been shut down.

  They were facing west into an early-evening sky just shifting from a pale blue to a rich, red-ribbed mauve. Below them were the rest of the buildings, trailing long shadows and scattered with no apparent design around the edges of the grassy plaza: the thickly overgrown cube of the Priest's House, where the newly discovered skeleton lay; the twin ramps of the modest ball court, where much of the current work centered; the cluster of three small, collapsed buildings, little more than foundations now and unimaginatively dubbed the West Group by Howard Bennett.

  The clump of knobby hummocks along the northern border of the plaza just inside the fence had also once been structures of some kind, but the jungle had long ago broken them up and engulfed them. To a casual eye they were no more than irregular humps of dirt and debris covered with soil and sprouting tangles of weeds and bushes. No one would even be able to guess at what they had been until they were cleared and excavated in the years to come.

  And that was it, except for the archaeologists’ shed of limestone stucco, its thatched roof flaring to salmon as the slanting rays of sunlight struck it. Immediately beyond the square plaza, on all sides, the rain forest pressed in, a lumpy, scrubby mat, endless and impenetrable.

  Or so it seemed. Invisible under the green canopy was the trail they had walked to get here. Decrepit now, collapsed and pulled apart by time and roots, it had once been part of the complex system of raised Mayan “highways” that had linked the great centers. This one cut arrow-straight through the jungle for three-quarters of a mile to Chichen Itza, conveniently passing within fifty yards of the Mayaland's grounds on the way.

  But from here the Mayaland might have been on another continent. There was nothing to see beyond this silent, thousand-year-old place of ghosts but jungle, nothing to hear but the thickening drone of insects as the evening came on. It was an astonishing thought that they had been d
rinking iced beers in a posh hotel only twenty minutes before. Even the air was primeval, full of the sharp, burnt-straw smell of Yucatan. Here they still cleared their cornfields for next year's crop by setting them aflame, just as they had done when Tlaloc bustled with life.

  "Come,” Abe said. “I want you to have a look inside the temple."

  The entrances to Mayan temples are generally doorless, but this one had been sealed by the government with a thick plywood barrier, now warped and spongy. A clumsy arrangement of metal bars and a massive padlock held it in place.

  Abe grasped the padlock. “Yesterday when they sent me the key, I came up to have a look around. And this," he said dramatically, “is what I found.” When he lifted the lock it slid apart in his hand.

  "It was already open?” Julie said.

  Not merely open, but sawn neatly through the hasp.

  "Looters?” Gideon wondered.

  "Ah, you tell me,” Abe said. “Let's go in."

  When the wooden barrier was wrenched out of the way, they found a jumble of stones and dirt inside, some of it piled three feet high. The collapsed stairwell in the center, re-excavated down to the landing by the police in 1982, was now crudely dug out a further six or seven steps. A dusty pickax lay at the bottom of the shaft. There was a spade propped in a corner, and a yellow plastic bucket on one of the dirt piles.

  Abe turned to Gideon. “So, did it get left like this in 1982?"

  "No, of course not. The police cleaned up after themselves, and I was here when the government sealed it. There have been looters here, all right."

  "Just what I figured,” Abe said with a sigh. Then, mildly, as an afterthought: "Vay is mir."

  "Woe is me,” Gideon abstractedly translated for Julie. He had been through enough crises with Abe to know the expression well. He was kneeling, looking closely at the spade in the beam of his flashlight, using his fingers to break up some clods of earth that had been stuck to it.

  "But do you mean the Mexican government hasn't been guarding the site?” Julie asked. “Anyone can see it would be attractive to looters. Where there was one codex they'd think there might be another one."

  "Highly unlikely,” Gideon said. “Wildly unlikely."

  "Sure, you'd know that, but would they?"

  "It was guarded,” Abe said. “One of the guards from Chichen Itza walked over twice a day to have a look around."

  "Twice a day? But anybody—"

  "Julie, certain things you got to understand. You know how many archaeological sites there are in Yucatan?"

  Julie shook her head.

  "Well, you're even with everybody else,” Abe said. “Nobody knows. A thousand for sure; probably two thousand. In all of them there's stuff worth stealing, but that's a lot of places to guard twenty-four hours a day."

  "But still—"

  "They put a fence around it,” he said with a smile, “which is more than most of them have. But what kind of robber would it be who lets himself be stopped by a fence?"

  "Well, at least they've saved us some work,” Gideon said, brushing the dirt from his knees and standing up. “We'd just have had to redig those steps ourselves."

  "That's a point,” Abe said equably.

  "I don't understand you two!” Julie exclaimed. “How can you stand there so calmly? There have been looters in here! Who knows what they got away with?"

  "They didn't get away with anything,” Gideon said. “At least I don't see how they could have. They didn't do any new excavating. All they did was re-dig a few steps that we'd already excavated before the cave-in. We'd gotten down thirteen steps below the landing, if I remember."

  "Twelve, according to the site report,” Abe said. “Altogether, twenty-four down from here.” He looked at Julie. “So all they did was clear away some more of the rubble that fell down when Howard, that bum, caved in the tunnel."

  "Oh.” Julie subsided, looking unconvinced, and peered down into the dim shaft. “Is that where you found the chest? On that landing?"

  Gideon flicked on his flashlight again and the three of them walked down together. “Here it is.” The heavy chest was still in the little chamber, four massive limestone slabs standing on their edges around a fifth slab that served as the base, all of it grit-coated and painfully empty. The mutilated lid, since patched together, was now in the Museum of Anthropology in the capital.

  Gideon played the beam of light over the walls of the once-sealed room. No more fairyland down there; no pristine crystal cave. The stalactites and stalagmites were still there, but they had turned a dingy gray, thickly scummed with lichen and pulpy fungus. After a millennium of perfect preservation, five years of exposure to the fecund air of Yucatan had turned what had once seemed like glittering cascades of ice into nasty excrescences. There were even a few pallid, frightened-looking plants in crannies here and there, cowering deep inside a pyramid, ten feet below the surface of a sealed, windowless, lightless building.

  "So what were they looking for?” Abe said, as much to himself as to anyone else as they walked back up the stairs. “With a thousand places to hunt for treasure, what's so special about Tlaloc? And why dig under the temple, where it's already been dug once?"

  "Could they have heard about the possibility of another sealed room at the bottom?” Gideon asked.

  "No, no, this I doubt very much. De Waldeck's book was never translated from the French, and as far as I know there are only two copies, the one I saw at Dumbarton Oaks and one in Paris. No one ever even mentions it in the literature. Only by luck did I stumble on it myself. Besides, another sealed room is a long shot, no more. And even if there is one, who says there's anything in it worth robbing? No, if I was a looter I could spend my time a lot better."

  "The two of you keep assuming they knew exactly what they were doing,” Julie said, “but they probably just heard some stories about the codex being found here and decided to do a little exploring on their own."

  "Maybe so,” said Abe. “Anyway, they gave up before they got very far, thank God."

  Julie gestured at the tools that had been left behind. “I wonder if you frightened them off when you reopened the dig last week."

  "That seems like a reasonable possibility,” Abe said agreeably.

  It didn't to Gideon. He could think of two reasonable possibilities, and neither of them was the one Julie had suggested. When he had taken a look at the spade he had found that the clumps of dirt sticking to the blade were just that: dirt. No fungi, no webby tufts of mold. So it was highly improbable that it had been lying untouched for very long in this dark, moist dungeon of a room. Even the heaps of dirt and rubble looked fresh, although a few of them were starting to turn a woolly gray here and there.

  Assuming that these moldy piles were the earliest, he estimated that the digging had begun—not ended—about a week ago, or even less. And to all intents and purposes it was still going on.

  That meant, he told the others, that someone had been burrowing away in here since the dig had reopened. So either some very careful looters had been managing to evade Abe, the crew, and the guards, or...

  Or one of the crew had been jumping the gun and excavating the temple on his own.

  "Or her own,” Julie corrected.

  "Or their own,” Abe said, “but let's not jump the gun ourselves. Why the crew? Let's stick with outsiders. Maybe they worked at night when nobody was around. What's so impossible about that?"

  "But then where are their lamps?” Julie asked. “If they left their other tools, why not their lights?"

  "Because if they came and went at night, they'd need them to get back to wherever they were going.” Abe folded his arms and studied the gouged-out stairwell, squeezing his lower lip between his fingers. “If these are all the tools they had, then there's maybe...say, ten, twelve hours digging they did here. Eight if they had two people instead of one. Gideon, you would agree?"

  Gideon agreed. ‘

  "So, that's what, two nights’ work at most? Not so hard for some ro
bbers to wait until we locked up and then come in and do their dirty work for a couple nights."

  "I agree they probably did it at night,” Gideon said, “but I still don't think it was outsiders. Outsiders have had a deserted site to dig in at their leisure since 1982. Why wait till it's crawling with people? No, if this has really been done in the last week, and I'm betting it has, then I'm also betting somebody on the crew's responsible."

  "But that just doesn't add up,” Julie said. “If anybody would know that those steps have already been excavated, they would. They were here."

  "That's true,” Gideon admitted. “It doesn't add up, whatever way you look at it."

  Unexpectedly, Abe laughed brightly. “A puzzle,” he said. “Come on, it's dinner time, and then we got our curse to hear about.” He nudged a pile of rubble with his toe. “This we can talk about later."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 7

  * * * *

  Bernadette Rose Garrison, Professor of Pre-Columbian Languages at Tulane's Middle-American Research Institute, did not fit the layman's idea of a leading scholar of ancient Mayan. Or Gideon's either. A severe, dowdy black woman in her fifties, with her hair pulled back into a bun, she sported the only set of pince-nez Gideon had ever seen on a live person. She might have made a perfect office manager, diligent and prim, or maybe a supervising social worker, or a sternly uncompromising loan officer. Her manner was unceremonious—"call me Bernie,” she had said when they were introduced at dinner—but imposing enough so that only the most self-confident (Abe, for instance) had taken her up on it. Gideon, easier to intimidate, stuck with “Dr. Garrison,” which she seemed to find entirely suitable.

  She sat at the head of a huge, grim table of sixteenth-century Spanish design, her neatly typed notes before her. Surrounding the table were ten massive chairs of mahogany and dark, stiffened Leather, presumably also meant to evoke the Spanish past, but looking like nothing so much as 1930s-style electric chairs. All were filled, one by Dr. Garrison, eight by the members of the Tlaloc crew, and one by the formidable Dr. Armando Villanueva, deputy director of the Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, who had arrived unannounced from Mexico City only two hours before for the express purpose of being present at Dr. Garrison's translation. That, and to exercise the Institute's prerogative of stringent review.