To the others he said, “Get out of the tomb, all of you. Now. I report to people just like you do. I have to make a call.”
The student diggers were amazed to see Dr. Ortiz, the highest archaeological authority in the country, acquiesce to Cory Spencer. They all climbed the stairs and emerged on top of the Temple of the Inscriptions, just as Spencer had ordered them to do.
Cory called the U.S. Ambassador and told him what had been found. The diplomat assumed his was the first call Cory made after the discovery. But it was actually Cory’s second call.
After Spencer had ushered everyone out of the temple the team from Sussex University didn’t know what to think. In the plaza outside they talked among themselves about their leader’s possible motive in shutting them out of the discovery one of them had made. Within an hour after the men had opened the hole, Cory had ordered his team completely off the site with instructions not to return until further notice. Likewise, Dr. Ortiz commanded the Temple of the Inscriptions closed to the public. He then drove back to Mexico City.
That left no one at the site for two days except Cory Spencer and the person to whom he had first called to report the discovery. During that time Spencer showed the man what had been found. Strings had been pulled in Mexico City that allowed these two people unrestricted access with no governmental oversight.
Thomas Newton Torrance was accustomed to pulling strings. In fact he was a master at it.
Chapter Six
Thursday
The day of the disappearance
President Chapman’s excitement mounted as the SUV arrived at the ancient site of Palenque. The driver pulled into a gravel lot. As usual the Secret Service agents exited the vehicle, scanned the area then allowed the President out.
Dr. Ortiz had learned about the upcoming visit in a call from the President of Mexico the previous morning. He drove back to Palenque to welcome the party. A heavy man, he was dressed in a wrinkled suit that had seen better days. His open collar shirt was stained with sweat and he sported a scuffed pith helmet. The heat of the jungle was oppressive but Ortiz had worn his finest clothes. It wasn’t every day that an American President made a secret trip to Mexico, and then to a ruin under the supervision of Dr. Ortiz! He wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to show off the famous site and perhaps even get his picture taken with el Presidente Chapman.
Ortiz introduced the President to Thomas Newton Torrance, explaining that Torrance was the British financier who had funded the project at Palenque. TNT was dressed impeccably in a white linen suit. He looked like the star from the old TV show Fantasy Island. The President thought he seemed totally out of place here in the jungle.
“It’s a pleasure to have you at the site, Mr. President.”
“Thanks, Mr. Torrance. I recently read of your involvement here but I didn’t know you had an interest in the Maya.”
Chapman and Torrance chatted as Ortiz led them down a wooded path that opened into a broad courtyard. There were several ancient structures around a much larger one. “The Palace,” Ortiz announced to the group as he gestured proudly toward the massive building. “And here, next to it, The Temple of the Inscriptions.”
Sunlight broke through the high trees surrounding the courtyard and illuminated the top of the Temple. The President looked up and saw a view he’d marveled at before – on top of the temple nearly eighty feet above the jungle floor sat a small building with five dark open doorways. It was through one of those doors that the President would find the stairway leading down deep inside the building, to the tomb of King Pakal.
Chapman’s excitement grew as the men climbed seven stories, their knees straining as they navigated the very tall rock stairs the Mayans typically used in their architecture. No one knew why the builders created steps too tall to scale in a normal gait. Since it was only priests and royalty who ascended to the top, some scholars figured the difficult stairway was a sign from the priests that the common people shouldn’t attempt to navigate their ways to the top. Maybe the holy men were sending a message that the road was too tough for anyone but the anointed. But no one knew for sure.
At the top they entered the doorway leading to Pakal’s tomb. A hole in the floor of that room was the place where Alberto Ruz had discovered the hidden staircase in 1952. Now it was open and ready for descent but by only one person at a time.
“Are the lights on all the way down?” the President asked Dr. Ortiz.
“Yes, el Presidente. I will lead the way for you.”
Chapman turned to Ortiz. “I’ve been here before. I’ll do it alone. I want to experience what you’ve found by myself.”
“Ah, of course.” The director’s disappointment shone clearly on his face. “No hay problema, el Presidente. Here is my strong torch for you to take through the opening into the new chamber. The Sussex University crew has removed the rock in the floor. The hole is still tight but you will fit fine. I put a ladder down into the room below for you. Other than the archaeological team and me, you will be the first to see the thing the diggers discovered.”
One of the Secret Service agents tapped the President’s arm lightly. “May I have a word with you, sir?”
“No, you may not,” the President said curtly. “I want to see this, to stand alone and take in whatever they’ve found. I’ve heard enough to know it’s astounding at least. I’ll be fine. I know with all this rock you won’t be able to communicate with me. But I’m only seventy-five feet away – straight down this stairway. There’s only one way in and one way out. Give me fifteen minutes. If I’m not standing right back up here with you by then, come find me. I may have been overcome with the wonder of whatever it is!” He laughed and started down the stone staircase. At the halfway point it took a turn and the party above lost sight of him.
As they awaited John Chapman’s return, Torrance asked Dr. Ortiz where Cory Spencer was. “Since he’s the chief man on the dig, I thought he would be here in case the President had questions. Did you send him off somewhere?”
“No,” Ortiz responded. “I haven’t seen him at all this morning. It’s unusual, actually. He’s always here early.”
Torrance thought about that, pulled out his phone and sent a text to Cory Spencer. He heard nothing – that was rare since Spencer was under strict orders to answer him immediately.
The President’s self-imposed quarter-hour deadline passed. He didn’t return.
Fifteen minutes on the dot after the President had left, an alarm buzzed on the Secret Service agent’s watch. “Let’s go,” he said to his partner.
“We’ll all go,” Dr. Ortiz said nervously, louder than he intended. Things were not going well on his watch, at his temple.
The agent responded firmly. “No. No time to talk. The two of us go. You’ll stay here.” They started quickly down the stairs. As they descended Torrance and Ortiz watched them unstrap the safety buckles that secured the revolver each carried on his belt.
Within a couple of minutes they were in Pakal’s tomb. The sarcophagus lid was still covered in protective layers and to one side sat a large stone. The top of a ladder stuck out of a hole in the floor where the rock had been. One of the agents retrieved a flashlight, shone it into the area below and yelled, “Mr. President. Are you there?”
There was no response. The agents scrambled down the ladder into a room with solid rock walls, very similar to Pakal’s tomb chamber just above it. The room was a ten-foot cube. There was some type of rock altar in the middle. Lying on it was what appeared to be a crumpled piece of metal about eight feet long and three feet wide. It was clearly something manufactured. The object was roughly a long triangle with holes in it that might have served to increase its tensile strength. One of the agents thought it looked like a very large version of the fins that form the base of rockets people shoot on the Fourth of July.
The agents gave the object a brief glance. Their eyes swept the room searching for President Chapman. He was not there. They did a quick check of the walls and floo
r to see if anything appeared out of place. There had to be another way out of this chamber but the men couldn’t see it. Every rock, every seam in walls, floor and ceiling looked as though they had been untouched for hundreds of years.
Back at the top one of the agents asked Dr. Ortiz if there was any other entrance or exit from the stairway, Pakal’s tomb chamber or the newly discovered room below it. Ortiz responded that since the discovery the diggers had searched every square inch. They were convinced there was no other way in or out.
The other agent was on his cellphone, his hands shaking as he said words he had never hoped to utter. “Eagle is missing. Repeat, Eagle is missing.”
Chapter Seven
Sunday
Three days after the disappearance
President John Chapman disappeared on a Thursday. By Sunday the entire country anxiously waited for the other shoe to drop. Someone had to know where he was – someone had taken him. Unless, that is, he had fallen through a secret hole into a deep well. Or been abducted by aliens. Or decided to disappear for reasons known only to him.
Theories ranged from reasonable to wacky and the authorities attempted to deal with them logically. Both the FBI and the Secret Service struggled to be productive. On the day the President disappeared the Secret Service agents worked for hours in tandem with the Mexican Federal Police, combing every square inch of Pakal’s tomb and the newly discovered chamber below it. They stopped their efforts at dusk after finding absolutely nothing. At the top of the staircase Dr. Ortiz, the national archaeological director, closed and locked the heavy iron gate that covered the stairs. He posted a guard in the plaza at the base of the temple and the FBI assigned two men there as well. The search for President Chapman would resume in the morning.
In his role as director of the National Institute, Dr. Ortiz walked a fine line between sympathy for the situation and the need to ensure the preservation of King Pakal’s sarcophagus. Try as everyone might to find an answer, there were no leads and no clues by Sunday.
-----
First Lady Marianne Chapman’s grief was tangible. Gut-wrenching sobs wracked her body. The rare times she left the personal residence during those first few days people saw a woman whose eyes were bloodshot and puffy from tears. Her staff felt genuinely sorry for her and pondered what it must be like to have your husband just disappear.
The First Lady’s torment and tears were real. She grieved inconsolably. Not for her husband, of course. Her love for him had been gone so long she hardly remembered if it ever actually had existed. She cried because there were no children to stand beside her. Thanks to her husband and his selfish desires to further his career, he had emphatically insisted there was no time or place for children. As a young bride she accepted it, certain his mind would change later. But that one statement by an aspiring young politician turned out to be the first of many which turned his new wife against him, creating a decades-long loveless marriage.
No, Marianne Chapman’s tears were for herself. She knew if her husband didn’t come back all the things she loved would end abruptly. She would be packed up and shipped out of the White House the instant Harry Harrison was inaugurated President.
She loved the attention she got as the President’s wife. She craved it, thrived on it. The First Lady had thrown away her own life to be the wife of a powerful man. She had lost the chance for a family, the love of a husband and a truly meaningful life. And now, thanks to the son of a bitch who had gotten lost somewhere, she stood to lose the only thing she cared about any more – the love and attention of millions of people, the cover pictures on magazines, the fawning, pawing pushes as people tried to shake her hand in a crowd. No matter that it wasn’t real. No matter than people didn’t really love her – in fact they didn’t even know her. She was about to lose it all. She was about to be a has-been – a former First Lady.
Marianne Chapman had been the first person in the USA questioned by the FBI. Asked by an agent if her husband had appeared worried or atypically concerned the morning he flew to Palenque, she responded, “I don’t know. I didn’t see him that morning. He, uh, he left really early and I had decided to sleep in another bedroom that night so he wouldn’t wake me.” All that was true – she never slept with her husband.
Every news broadcast led with the story of the American leader’s disappearance. The daily banner on CNN read “The Missing President.” The countdown of days since Chapman disappeared had started on day two, Saturday. But soon the reports became briefer and briefer – there was no update, nothing new to report and camera footage was always the same – shots from outside the Temple of the Inscriptions showing a plethora of police and governmental vehicles from both the USA and Mexico parked randomly in the grassy areas between the ancient buildings. News teams could film at the base of the temple but were not allowed to climb the structure. Trucks with satellite dishes sat in the main parking lot of the temple complex, cables running down the same path the President had walked only days before.
The first news helicopters had arrived on Friday, hoping to hover a hundred feet off the ground and shoot footage inside the building atop the temple, where the stairway led down to the tomb that John Chapman had entered. As the first blades whirred noisily at the top of the Temple of the Inscriptions, blowing dirt and trees around down below, the Archaeological Director screamed at the chopper from the ground, shaking his fist. “Get away! Get away! You’ll harm the structure!”
Within twenty minutes Dr. Ortiz had a governmental order closing the airspace over the Mayan city of Palenque. The news crews were grounded. Literally.
-----
Back in Washington, something had to be done about succession. There was no precedent for this situation. Within twenty-four hours of Chapman’s disappearance the Vice President had been briefed on all the critical situations in the nation and the world. But without the authority to act Harry Harrison was powerless. He couldn’t order policy changes, send troops into battle or move to stabilize the economy. He had only the specific powers of his own office, not those of the missing Commander-in-Chief.
Most of Washington considered it a foregone conclusion that the Vice President would be sworn in to succeed John Chapman. The country had to have a leader and it had to be done quickly. But the events of the past week were unprecedented in America’s nearly two hundred and fifty years of existence. Never before had there been the question of removing a President from office simply because he was missing. No one knew exactly how things could be done to make succession a reality. In a rare moment of unity, the leaders of both houses turned to the Supreme Court.
Everyone close to the situation walked on eggshells – no one wanted his or her thoughts or words to upset First Lady Marianne Chapman, underplay the life of her husband or make it appear as though the Vice President were eager to assume the Presidency. After all, no one knew if President Chapman was still alive. Despite the largest and most intensive manhunt in history, not a single clue had emerged as to the President’s whereabouts. No one had heard a word. No demands. No video of a bound and gagged prisoner. No ransom letter. Nothing at all.
Marianne Chapman made a phone call to the only Justice her husband had named to the Supreme Court. She pleaded with him through sobs of anguish to hold off on naming the Vice President as her husband’s successor. “They’ll find John, I’m sure. He’s just lost. Don’t let the Court do this.” To the Justice Mrs. Chapman sounded like the grief-stricken wife he would have expected her to be, tormented by the disappearance of her husband and distraught at the lack of any news whatsoever. He promised the First Lady he would consider her request. He quietly reminded her, however, that the Court had to do what was best for the country as a whole.
The First Lady hung up knowing she had little time left in the life she loved, the one to which she had become so accustomed. From her bedroom that afternoon her screams of grief could be heard all over the residence on the second floor of the White House. The staff went about their duties in s
ilence, heads hung low, each of them incorrectly believing her anguish was over the disappearance of her husband.
Chapter Eight
Thursday
Seven days after the disappearance
The day of the Supreme Court’s decision on succession was a frenzied one in the White House. Now at least everyone knew what would come next. Now everyone had direction for the future of the nation.
The Oval Office had been eerily quiet for seven days. No one sat in the President’s chair. No meetings were held in this historic chamber. Doors were kept closed and the room was dark – the office was unoccupied, awaiting the high court’s ruling on whether John Chapman would officially be a past President or remain the Commander-in-Chief in absentia.
During the past week Vice President Harry Harrison had conducted a dozen meetings with his Chief of Staff, Bob Parker, and other key members of his team as everyone waited for the Supreme Court to hand down a decision. What would in normal circumstances be called the VP’s transition team was instead vaguely termed his “summit group.” They had had a couple of meetings with President Chapman’s top people but once again everyone refrained from too much assumption. Tempers were short on the Chapman side – none of his staff was willing to turn over the reins when the President’s whereabouts remained unknown. They wanted to keep their jobs. For the Vice President, understatement was paramount. No one wanted to appear presumptuous or anticipatory – most of all the Vice President himself. He had to patiently wait for guidance.
At nine a.m. on the seventh day after President John Chapman went missing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court phoned Vice President Harrison. It was a courtesy call with advance notice about the decision that would be made public a half hour later. As soon as the call ended, Harry Harrison walked over to his office door, opened it and yelled across the room to his Chief of Staff, “Bob! Get the team in here now!” Glancing at his appointments secretary, he said, “Cancel everything for today,” then strode back to his desk.
Brian Sadler Archaeology 03 - The Strangest Thing Page 4
