“Do you recognize the gun?”
“It looks like a Colt Single Action Army, which would date it—and him—at 1873 or later.”
She said, “His skull is crushed on the left side.”
“That was one of the details I was going to mention after we were outside in the daylight.”
“This man was clubbed to death,” she said. “He was murdered.” She got up, and they both walked into the inner chamber. Inside was a low bier made of cut stone. On it lay a skeleton adorned with a gold breastplate, a strip of gold with carved jade stones for a headpiece, jade ear plugs. There was an obsidian knife, a club, and a large number of carved-jade and beaten-gold objects.
“The tomb is intact,” said Remi. “How can it possibly be intact? Whoever killed that guy out there must have known there was gold in here.”
Sam and Remi both heard a shuffling sound and then another. They stepped to the doorway. Gathered in the outer chamber were a half dozen people from the nearby town—Señora Velasquez; Pepe, the mechanic; Señor Alvarez, the restaurant owner, his son, and two others they didn’t know. Three of them were holding guns of some description, the others knives, and all of them looked furious.
Sam said, “Hello, ladies and gentlemen.”
Señora Velasquez said, “Come out of there very slowly and carefully.”
“We meant no harm,” Remi said. “We just saw that—”
“Quiet or you’ll be as dead as he is.”
Sam and Remi walked past the armed townspeople into the sunlight. Waiting in a large circle around them were about fifty other residents of Santa Maria de los Montañas. Some of them held machetes, others axes or hatchets. There were a couple of baseball bats. A few people held hunting rifles or shotguns, and there were pistols nearly as old as the one beside the man in the tomb.
The menace was palpable. The rifles and shotguns were aimed at Sam and Remi. There were two men with ropes, which seemed even more ominous than the weapons.
A man they had not seen before stepped out of the crowd. He had the sun-darkened face and sinewy arms of a farmer. He looked at Sam and Remi with eyes as hard as obsidian. “I’ll volunteer to dig graves. We can throw the bodies down from here and bury them where they fall. Who will help me?”
SANTA MARIA DE LOS MONTAÑAS
“I’ll help dig graves.” A second man stepped forward and joined the first on the outside of the circle. After that, a couple of others just waved hands and joined the burial crew.
Pepe the mechanic stepped into the circle. “Remember, we have no reason to make these people suffer. Someone shoot them in the head with a hunting rifle and make it fast.”
Sam spoke loudly. “We would like to know why you would want to harm us at all.” He whispered to Remi, “Help me with the language.”
Remi called out, “We came to your town twice. Both times, we told whoever would listen what we were doing here. Yesterday we told Father Gomez what we were going to do today. We came with the most peaceful of intentions.”
Señor Alvarez, the restaurant owner, said, “I’m sorry that you have to die. Nobody here hates you. But you’ve found this place. It’s a sacred place to us. We’re not rich people, but we have a rich past. Our town was founded as part of this complex nearly two thousand years ago. This was a refuge where the people of the city twenty miles to the east came after they were defeated in war. This mesa is one of the highest places in Alta Verapaz. The king and a few loyal survivors came here, turned and fought. Then, hundreds of years later, a period of war came again. Then again. Each time a king of the city was defeated, he and his faction fell back to this place and held out. Up here there are the remains of five great kings. When the Spanish soldiers came the first time, the king prepared the place one last time. But they defeated the Spanish again and again and never needed to come here. Instead, they made peace with the priests. The watchtower on the hill was torn down and made into a church. Nobody from this town has ever betrayed its secrets.”
Sam said, “This place can’t be a secret forever. It’s marked on a map in a Mayan codex we found on a volcano in Mexico. It’s shown up on satellite photographs and been noticed by university professors.”
“We don’t have to let you dig up our ancestors and steal their belongings,” said Señora Velasquez. “You’re like Columbus and the Spanish. You think knowing about them makes them yours.”
Remi said, “You don’t have to let us study your special place. If you didn’t want us to climb up here, you could have told us while we were with Father Gomez. We thought we were finding a place nobody knew about.”
There was a roar of derisive laughter as the townspeople looked at one another with grim amusement. One of the men was angry. “You see graves on a satellite photo and think it’s all right to dig them up? It never seems to occur to you people that we know anything about the places where we’ve always lived. It was our ancestors who built these tombs, who made the mesa into a fortress. We’ve all been coming here since we were small children. Do you think we can’t see walls and burial mounds? You think that if we don’t dig up our ancestors and sell their treasures, we must be ignorant.” He turned away from Sam and Remi and took a rifle from one of the men near him. He cycled the bolt to load a round.
“Stop!” The voice was powerful but strained. As everyone turned to look, Father Gomez’s head rose above the rim of the plateau by the trailhead, and he took the last step up onto the plateau. He was panting and wheezing from the long, steep climb. He held up his arms. “Stop! Don’t do this. Arturo, put down that rifle. What you’re about to do is just murder. It has no higher meaning.”
The angry man looked at his feet, then opened the bolt of the rifle and handed it back to its owner.
Father Gomez seemed to be relieved, but his expression showed he knew this was not over.
Pepe, the mechanic, spoke. “You’re not from this town, Father. You’re not one of us. You don’t know.”
A man who seemed to be a relative of Señora Velasquez said, “Since the days of the kings, we’ve had nothing except this place. The walls are where brave men and women fought to their deaths, and great leaders lie inside each of these mounds. Nobody has been allowed to desecrate this place or take away what’s buried here. The second king who led his people up here respected the remains of the first, and the one after that respected him.”
He paused and pointed at the mound Sam and Remi had reopened. “Only once before did a stranger make it up to this spot. He’s lying in there now, although it’s been more than a hundred years and nobody now alive has seen him before today. Everyone knows that he was killed by townspeople with hoes and hatchets. The secret was safe again.”
“No! No! No!” said Father Gomez. “I may not have been born in Santa Maria, but I’ve lived here longer than many who were and I’m responsible for the state of your souls. Do you think the men who committed that murder a hundred years ago aren’t suffering for it in hell?”
A few people looked down at the ground and others crossed themselves. A couple spat.
Pepe said, “We’ve lived for centuries at the mercy of men in Madrid or Guatemala City, signing pieces of paper to make other rulers over us and control what we have—men who never even saw us. This is more of the same. All we’re doing is trying to protect the bodies of our ancestors from the men far away who own everything.”
Father Gomez took a breath to speak, but Sam said, “Hold it, Father.” He turned to the people in the circle. “My wife and I had no plans to take anything away from here. The people we work with are university professors who are only interested in gaining more knowledge about the Mayan people. We’re here for that reason alone. There are other people who already have maps with this spot marked. One of them is Sarah Allersby, who owns the Estancia Guerrero. Even if you kill us, she and people she hires will come to find this place. She’ll dig up whatever there is and leave th
ings looking like this.” He turned and nodded toward the open trench.
People were disturbed, in doubt, murmuring among themselves, while others seemed to be angrier. Small arguments began.
A new voice came across the plateau. “Señor Fargo is right. Listen to him.”
People turned their heads to see Dr. Huerta come around the mound near the trailhead.
“What are you doing here?” asked Señor Lopez, the storekeeper.
Dr. Huerta shrugged. “I noticed people were gone, so I asked some of your children. And, over the years, I’ve found that whenever there were a lot of people out, carrying sharp objects and firearms, there has been plenty of work for a doctor.”
“What are these people—friends of yours?” asked Señor Lopez.
“This is only the second time I’ve seen them,” Dr. Huerta said. “But I find I like them more and more. I’ll show you why.”
He stepped up to Sam and Remi, lifted Sam’s shirt, and pulled his semiautomatic pistol from its hiding place and held it up. There was a murmur from the crowd. He released the magazine, looked at it, pushed it back, then stuck the pistol back under Sam’s shirt. He lifted Remi’s shirt slightly to reveal her gun. “After all these years as a doctor, I’m good at seeing things on people that aren’t part of their bodies.” He stared at the circle of townspeople. “Some of you are eager to kill them. If they’d wanted to, they could have killed plenty of you. But they didn’t want to. They were here on a friendly mission and didn’t let your threats change that.”
He put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and the other on Remi’s and began to walk them toward the trail to town.
“Stop.” They stopped and slowly turned. It was Señor Lopez again. “Maybe you’re right and these people should be freed. But we need time to decide what to do.”
The townspeople responded with a roar composed equally of approval and relief that they didn’t have to make such a momentous decision right then. The people swarmed around Dr. Huerta and the Fargos and swept them along the trail, down from the stronghold, and into the town.
When they reached the main street, the crowd ushered Sam and Remi into an old adobe building. There was an outer room, with a table and chairs and a big, heavy wooden door. On the other side of the door was a row of three cells with thick iron bars and padlocks. The crowd pushed Sam and Remi into one of the cells, and someone locked the door and took the key. Then the people trickled back outside.
After a minute, Father Gomez entered the cellblock. “Sam, Remi, I’m terribly embarrassed by this. I apologize for them. They’re good people, and they’ll come to their senses very soon.”
“I hope so,” said Sam. “Could you make sure our backpacks don’t disappear?”
“They’re already in the outer office. If you need anything from them, Señora Velasquez will be here to get it out for you.”
“Thank you,” said Remi.
“And one more thing,” said Father Gomez. He held out both hands, pushing them through the bars.
Sam and Remi took their guns out from under their shirts and handed them to the priest. He put them into his coat pockets. As he left, he said, “Thank you. I’ll keep them safe for you in the church.”
A minute later, Señora Velasquez opened the big wooden door, propped it open, and returned with a tray with soft drinks and glasses on it. She slid it through the feeding slot at the bottom of the bars.
“Gracias, Señora Velasquez,” said Remi.
“I’ll bring your dinner in an hour, and I’ll be outside the door all night,” said Señora Velasquez. “Just shout if you need anything.”
“You don’t need to stay,” said Sam.
“Yes I do,” she said. She reached into her apron and held up an old but well-oiled long-barreled .38 revolver that could have been from the 1930s. “If you try to escape, someone has to be here to shoot you.” She put it back in her apron, took her tray, and disappeared through the doorway. After a second, the heavy wooden door swung shut.
SANTA MARIA DE LOS MONTAÑAS
At dawn, the sun shone into the jail through a ventilation shaft, impeded only by the motionless blades of a fan. At some point in the night, Sam and Remi had fallen asleep on the two bunks, which each consisted of a shelf like a door on hinges folded against the wall during the day and lowered at night on a pair of chains that held it horizontal.
Sam woke to find Remi sitting on her bunk and swinging her legs. “Good morning,” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was thinking how cute you are when you’re lying there in your bunk,” she said. “Too bad I don’t have my phone to take your picture. You could be Cellmate of the Month in women’s prison.”
Sam sat up and pulled on his shirt, then began to button it. “I’m flattered, I think.”
“It’s just an observation, and I don’t have much to look at,” she said. “It doesn’t look as though they use this jail much. No graffiti, not much wear and tear, since the last paint job.”
“Have you seen anybody yet?”
“No, but I’ve heard the front door close a couple of times, so we’re still under guard.”
A moment later, there was a loud knock on the wooden plank door at the end of the cellblock. Remi smiled, and called, “Come in.”
Señora Velasquez opened the door and came in, bearing a tray with two covered plates, some glasses of orange juice, and other good things.
“It was nice of you to knock,” said Remi.
“Nobody said you can’t have any privacy,” said Señora Velasquez. “You just can’t leave yet.”
“Yet?”
“People have been listening to what Father Gomez and Dr. Huerta say about you. I think we’ll all meet in the afternoon, and you can be on your way after that.”
“That’s a relief,” said Sam. “But I’m glad they didn’t let us out before breakfast. That food smells so good.”
“Yes it does,” said Remi. “You’re very kind to us.”
Señora Velasquez slid the tray under the bars, and Sam picked it up and set it on the shelf that served as his bunk. “I wish we had chairs and things,” said Señora Velasquez. “We weren’t expecting anyone like you.”
“Thank you for what you’ve done.”
As Señora Velasquez went out the door, there was no mistaking the sound of a big bolt being slid into place.
Just as they finished their breakfast, they heard the morning silence of the little town broken by the sound of a truck laboring up the long hill to the main street. They could hear the transmission whining, the engine’s revolutions speeding up on the last hundred yards, and then the engine idling in the street in front of the church. After a moment, there was a man shouting, and then other men jumping from the truck to the pavement, and then running footsteps.
Sam and Remi looked at each other. Sam stepped to the space below the tiny, high window in the wall, bent his knees, and knitted together the fingers of both his hands to make a step for Remi. She put her foot in his hands and he lifted her up. She grasped the bars of the little window and looked out.
Men in a mixture of camouflaged fatigues, T-shirts, khakis and blue jeans ran from the truck and entered buildings along the main street. They kicked in doors and shouted at people to come out to the street. “They’re rounding up the townspeople,” she said.
Men, women, and children came outside, looking confused and worried. They joined their friends and neighbors, adding to the growing crowd. Groups of armed men ran up the side streets and brought back more people. “They’re gathering the whole town.”
The cab of the truck opened and two men got out. “It’s the two men!” Remi whispered.
“What two men?”
“The ones who tried to kill us for Sarah Allersby. The ones from Spain. The one you painted blue.”
“How does he look?”
> “He looks sunburned but still has a trace of a blue tinge, like a dead man.”
“I can’t wait to see him.”
Outside, Russell and Ruiz stepped to the bed of the truck, climbed up, and used it for a stage. Russell took out a thick sheaf of legal documents and handed it to Ruiz, picked up a bullhorn, and spoke. “Testing.” The word was loud, echoing from the hills. He held it for Ruiz, who read the Spanish text.
“Citizens of Santa Maria de los Montañas,” he said. “Your town is situated in the middle of a tract of land that has been set aside as an archaeological preserve. In five days, you will be removed and taken to a new town a few miles from here. You will be provided with a place to live and given employment in exchange for your cooperation.”
An old man stepped out of the crowd. He wore an ill-fitting blue sport coat and an old pair of khaki pants. He stood near the truck and spoke in a loud voice. “I am Carlos Padilla, mayor of Santa Maria.” He turned to his people. “These men want to move us to the Estancia Guerrero. The work they offer is growing marijuana, and we would live in the barracks they built years ago when the gangsters moved in. They’ll charge us more for rent than they pay us for the work, so we will always owe them money and can never leave. The land we’re on has been ours for twenty centuries. Don’t give it up to be slaves.”
Ruiz read on into the bullhorn. “You will all sign a paper, accepting the offer of relocation, housing, and a job. Doing so will end any claim you might have to land in or around the town of Santa Maria de los Montañas.”
Russell jumped down from the truck, holding a paper. He went to old Carlos Padilla, pulled a pen from his pocket, and held it out to the old man. “Here. You can be the first to sign.”
“He’s trying to get the mayor to sign,” Remi whispered.
The answer was loud. “I would rather die than sign that.”
One of the men from the truck waved his arm, and four men rushed the mayor. They slipped a loop of rope over him and tightened it under his arms, threw the end of the rope over a large limb of a tree beside the road, hoisted him up, and tied it so he hung there.
The Mayan Secrets Page 26
