“Yes, certainly,” Thorpe agreed, his body straightening as the camera started to hum. “In this particular case, the clue was a small piece of jade with glyphs on it.” He produced the hacha and the cameraman struggled to find the best angle. “Here, we have a most unusual situation. A jade ceremonial object of absolutely unique color, black, as you can see, probably selected especially for this ruler and brought here from some other place, possibly Costa Rica. It is sculpted to have a jaguar’s face, as a representation of the ruler’s name, which means Star Jaguar in Mayan. Since the word for ‘star’ also means ‘black,’ and the Maya loved word plays, the black jade was appropriate. The jade was then buried, right where we stand, incidentally, probably as a symbolic interment of the great leader, with a glyphic text indicating the precise resting place of the ruler’s actual body.”
“And you excavated the jade,” the reporter asked, striving vainly to regain control.
“It was found by a worker, yes,” Thorpe said obliquely. “Anyway, what is important here is the glyphic text, not who found it.”
“And it has to do with the planet Venus?”
“The text,” Thorpe explained, “should read as follows: ‘Ek Balam, the ruler, lies at the place where the planet Venus appears during the dry season.’”
“Fantastic,” cooed the interviewer. “And you were able to figure that out, even before the dry time of the year.”
Thorpe gave his best professorial smile. “That was hardly a problem. The positions of the planets and major stars are known for any time of the day and season. It merely requires a few calculations, after which we determined that at the designated time, Venus would appear …” He pointed and we followed his gaze to a small heap of rubble half a mile away. There was a collective gasp as we saw the bright star hovering just above Thorpe’s finger.
“… there,” he declared in triumph.
“Wonderful,” the newswoman declared, then turned to the cameraman. “Are you getting this?”
“Of course,” Thorpe went on magisterially, oblivious to the muttered oaths of the cameraman, who had found at the crucial instant that his mechanism was jammed, “of course, this was simply a bit of theater. A little high drama, shall we say, to make the point. We’ve held off any further excavations until today. We’ve already found the sarcophagus, and today we shall open it.”
“Not until we can change cameras, I hope,” the reporter asked anxiously.
“There’ll be plenty of time,” Thorpe said grandly. He turned to the rest of us, mere mortals witnessing his victory, and nodded toward the little path at the bottom of the hill. “Shall we go now? We should probably get started before the heat’s too terrible.”
He picked his way down the rubble-strewn side of the mound, stepping from block to block like a mountain goat, with the members of the entourage falling on one another to follow.
He halted at the bottom and looked back up at Katherine. “Are you coming?” he called.
“In just a minute,” she said.
He shrugged and started along the trail.
“You’ll miss the main event,” I chided.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He has everything he needs. I realize that now.”
I nodded, a spark of hope flickering.
“You know, it’s funny,” she said, sitting down beside me. “He asked me to marry him when he’s free of Cora.”
Just as quickly my hope was dashed.
“And?” I asked, my mouth as dry as the fields.
Katherine sighed and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“And he even offered me a raise,” she chuckled.
“Katherine …” I turned to face her and saw her eyes alive with amusement.
“So I told him yes.”
“Katherine …”
“About the raise. And that I’d stay on until this phase of the project is over.”
“Damn it.” I put my hand on her shoulder and pulled her around to face me and she started laughing.
“Oh, I told him I wasn’t interested in marriage,” she said and came over against me. “If that’s what you wanted to hear.”
I relaxed, my anxiety replaced by a calmness.
“It’ll do,” I growled. “At least for now.”
I turned back to the horizon just in time to see the edge of the glowing disk push itself above the horizon. Then I leaned against her and she against me, as we settled in to enjoy the sunrise.
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The Maya Stone Murders Page 22