“I’m sorry we don’t know any more than this but at least it may be something tangible for the first time since John disappeared.”
“That’s just great, Harry. Thanks a lot for dropping that news on me. I don’t believe a word of what you just said. You can think whatever you wish. I choose to believe he’s alive. He’s too big an asshole to just die on me. He has to make it harder than that.” She sobbed then took a breath.
“I’m sure they’re going to find him sitting on a desert island somewhere, bring him back here and you’re going to step down and let him have his rightful place back. And I’ll have mine too. Is that what you’re going to do, Harry? No. Of course it isn’t.”
She hung up on the President of the United States.
An hour later Harrison’s national security team had developed a plan. There were no FBI agents in central Mexico so two CIA operatives from the Embassy in Mexico City were being dispatched to Palenque by private jet. They would arrive this afternoon to assist in the operation.
The Secretary of State placed a call to the Foreign Secretary of Mexico, gave him brief details on what Brian had told them about President Chapman and received permission to do a thorough but again non-invasive search. At this point that was all Harrison wanted – they didn’t need to move stones or damage anything. If Cory Spencer’s story were true, they just needed to find two buttons that opened the stone door.
Just before noon Eastern Time the President called Brian back on the FBI agent’s phone. The agent answered the call and immediately handed it to Brian, motioning him to step outside on the landing at the top of the Temple of the Inscriptions. Cell service was excellent up this high and Brian needed privacy for this call.
Harrison asked, since they previously spoke, if anyone had attempted to go down the stone staircase into Pakal’s tomb. Brian answered negatively. “I’ve been here the whole time. Dr. Ortiz and the agent have too. We’re all at the top. Nobody’s gone down the stairs.”
“Here’s what I need you to do now,” he told his old roommate. “Help’s on the way, but you and the agent are all we’ve got for right now. Get down there and figure out how to open that door. I’m sending CIA reinforcements in a couple of hours. I’m hoping you can figure this out fast – before they even get there. I really don’t care where Spencer and Torrance are at this point. I just want to know if John Chapman’s in there.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“The agent and I are going back down into the artifact chamber,” Brian told Dr. Ortiz after hanging up from the President’s call.
“What are you doing, Senor Sadler? Things appear to be getting a little strange. Secret calls. Guarding my temple stairway to keep people out. Feeling the walls and the stone altar in the artifact chamber. What’s happening? What are you looking for?”
“Dr. Ortiz, I’m not sure. I’m following orders from the President of the United States and he gave me instructions as to what to do next. I’m not at liberty to tell you what or why. I can’t keep you from coming but I could use your help staying up here to make sure no one else comes down. And if you happen to see Cory Spencer or Thomas Newton Torrance I need to know that also.”
“I will do as you request for now, Senor Sadler. But let us not forget, I am in charge of this temple and this project. And I will be calling my superiors in Mexico City. You are in our country. Please do not forget that. Our government will tell you what to do, not your presidente.
Brian and the agent walked briskly down the stone steps. Ortiz had to throw that power thing in. Has to make sure we know who’s in charge. Actually I wish I knew what I was doing right now. I have to find these damned indentations.
The FBI agent with him was accustomed to dealing with information on a need-to-know basis. He kept his mouth shut – at the bottom he said, “If you want me to do anything, Mr. Sadler, all you have to do is ask.” Brian asked the agent to remain on the stairs to intercept anyone who might come down. Brian walked around Pakal’s sarcophagus and went down the ladder into the room below.
He walked to the far end of the artifact chamber and stood with his right hand on the stone altar. The mangled metal strut lay a foot away from his fingers as they worked their way methodically along the stone. Several times Brian thought he felt a depression – something that might have been Cory’s “button” – so he kept a finger on it while he fruitlessly ran his other hand over the wall nearly three feet away. He kept it up for half an hour without success.
It’s amazing that Cory ever found this at all, Brian thought as he took a break. His arms ached from holding them outstretched.
Back at work, Brian tried combinations of “buttons” time after time to no avail. Since he wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for or what the depressions felt like, this was a daunting task. And there were dozens of natural indentations in the rock wall and the stone altar. The exact two buttons could take weeks to find. Or never be found at all.
Around two p.m. Brian heard noise from the stairway. Someone was coming down. He heard the FBI agent yell, “Halt, I have a weapon!”
Brian climbed the ladder and poked his head into Pakal’s tomb chamber. Two men had just reached the bottom of the stone staircase and were standing with their hands up. The agent had his service revolver trained on them. “Whoa!” one shouted. “CIA! Easy, buddy.”
“Show me ID,” the agent said. “Do it slowly.”
The men produced government IDs and the agent holstered his weapon. Brian climbed into the tomb chamber and said, “It’s too crowded in here for four people. Let’s go upstairs and talk. I’ve got to get some fresh air and something to drink.”
Upstairs, the CIA men introduced themselves and said, “We’re to take our instructions from you, Mr. Sadler. It’s my understanding the President has given this the highest priority of national security…”
“National security?” Dr. Ortiz asked. “Senor Sadler, I must insist now that you stop whatever you’re doing until I can call Mexico City. And you must now tell me what’s going on.”
Brian started to answer when one of the CIA agents interrupted. He looked at Ortiz coldly. “Sir, you may call whomever you wish. With all respect, we know we are in your country. But we have orders to follow so until someone far, far higher in the pecking order than you tells us differently, Brian can’t tell you anything about what’s going on here. And he will continue to work in the chamber below. Those are our orders, sir.”
“The pecking order? No entiendo. I don’t understand.”
“Dr. Ortiz, you have to give us a little freedom to work right now.” Brian sought to assuage his concern. “For now, we have approval through your Foreign Secretary to do non-invasive examination of the artifact chamber. Until that approval is taken away we will move ahead.” Sadler knew Ortiz would begin making calls as quickly as he could; he would try to stop things until someone explained what was up. Time could be short and Brian had to find the buttons that opened the door before things became complicated.
After a twenty-minute break and two bottles of water, Brian gave instructions to his newly formed team. He told one of the CIA operatives to remain at the top with Dr. Ortiz. The other would accompany Brian and the FBI man to the chamber. There wasn’t much help anyone could give Brian; the search for the buttons was a one-man job given the narrow area in which to stand and the limited places the buttons conceivably could be. But he wanted people from the U.S. government with him in case he succeeded in opening the door.
Ortiz had been on the phone most of the time Brian was on break. He had talked quietly in Spanish but apparently had no success in convincing anyone to countermand the Foreign Secretary’s order from earlier today. At least so far.
“OK, let’s go,” Brian said.
Ortiz walked to the stairway. “This time I go with you. You have a man here to watch the staircase and guard against intruders. This time I will see what you are doing.”
The room couldn’t easily hold four people and Brian had no a
uthority to order Ortiz to stay away. Reluctantly he left the second CIA man at the top as well.
In the artifact chamber Brian resumed the boring, mindless work of running his fingers a centimeter at a time over and over the surface of the rock to his right, finding something that might work then running his left hand up and down the rock wall.
Nothing.
Dr. Ortiz watched intently. Several times he took pictures with his phone. Brian watched him. He knew Ortiz would send those to his superiors to support his request to stop Brian’s examination.
About an hour was all Brian could do at one stretch. The tension from holding his hands out for such a long time was exhausting. His muscles ached but he wanted to keep going – there was no way to tell how much time he had left before Dr. Ortiz would successfully stop his efforts. So long as Ortiz was in the chamber with Brian, the archaeologist’s phone couldn’t receive a call – there was no signal this deep in the temple. So Brian pushed on, straining his arms and slowly feeling every indentation.
By three p.m. Brian had easily checked a thousand little depressions, and probably had gone over a lot of them more than once. But he had kept going. He had been doing this for hours and he was physically drained. He gave himself until three-thirty. He would have to quit then. Once he stopped he was certain Ortiz would get the project put on hold. That would mean Brian had failed the President. He would have failed to complete the search for President Chapman.
At ten minutes after three Brian put his fingers on an indentation in the stone altar and another on the stone wall. He pressed. The same way he had pressed over and over all day long.
Without a sound the door swung open.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The men in the chamber gave a collective shout of surprise. Since the only activity was watching Brian methodically move his fingers around, Dr. Ortiz had almost fallen asleep and the FBI agent was struggling not to join him. The air was stuffy and hot; Brian’s muscles ached so when the stone quietly moved back into the passageway they all jumped at once.
“Santa Madre de Dios!” Ortiz yelled. Holy Mother of God!
The agent moved next to Brian, his pistol drawn and ready for whatever might lie in the darkness ahead. But there were no sounds from the corridor.
“How many flashlights do we have?” Brian asked.
There were two among the three of them – only the agent didn’t have a light. “I’ll stay with you,” he told Brian. “Let me go first – you hold the light and shine it in front of me.”
Ortiz brought up the rear. The three started down the corridor, pausing a moment at the first glyph on the wall. Ortiz looked at it, puzzled at what it could mean, but he hurried ahead when the other two men continued walking. Brian had no time to look at the things Cory Spencer had described. His job was to find President Chapman.
Brian shone the light on the second hieroglyph and Ortiz glanced at it while he walked on down the chamber. They arrived at the large cavern. Brian directed his light toward the center of the room. A mass of metal lay roughly in the middle, as he had been prepared to expect, and a body was visible on the ground. He ran to it. “It’s President Chapman,” he said, anticipating.
But it wasn’t Chapman. Brian turned the body over and looked into the face of Cory Spencer. Blood covered the front of his shirt. As Brian touched his neck to feel for a pulse, Spencer’s eyes opened.
“Brian,” he said weakly. “You’ve come. Thank God. President Chapman’s body is over there.” He pointed an unsteady hand to his left. The beam of Brian’s light caught the second man’s body.
The FBI agent grabbed Ortiz’s flashlight and shone it in Chapman’s face. “Mr. Sadler, I can go up to the top and notify my office if you want…”
“I’ll handle it. The President told me to call him personally. I need to wait a minute, though. There’s one more thing – Cory, do you have any idea where Thomas Torrance is?”
“Yes,” Cory struggled to answer. “He shot me, then…then he fell into the metal thing. I remember seeing little sparks right before he fell in. Don’t touch anything in there…”
“He shot you?”
Cory was too weak to respond.
“Keep your gun out, just in case,” Brian told the FBI agent. He looked inside the oval object. There were no sparks and no body – nothing at all but a group of dusty gray capsule-like things, each about eight inches long.
“He’s not in here. Do you know if there’s another way out of this cavern?”
“I have no idea,” Spencer slurred. He closed his eyes and his body slumped.
“Stay awake, Cory! Don’t leave me now!”
“I’m just so tired…” he responded, his voice barely a whisper.
“We’re going to get help for you. Right now.”
Brian formulated a quick plan. He left the armed FBI agent with Cory in case Torrance was hiding nearby. Then he asked Dr. Ortiz to remain in Pakal’s tomb at the bottom of the stone staircase. That was to ensure no one else came in or out of the passageway.
At the top of the temple Brian pulled out his phone. He needed help quickly and thought it would be fastest to work through the Embassy. He clicked on the number.
“Cultural Affairs,” a pleasant voice answered.
“This is an emergency,” Brian said. “Give me the Ambassador’s office. Now!”
The call was transferred and within two minutes an administrative assistant had put Brian on hold while she located the Ambassador.
“Mr. Sadler. Good afternoon. What can I do for you?”
Brian spent only a moment filling the diplomat in on the shooting of an American citizen at the ruin. “I don’t have time to figure all this out. The President’s Gulfstream’s here and we can get the archaeologist out but I need medical attention for him fast. He’s going to die if we don’t get it.”
“I’ll call you back in five minutes.” The Ambassador was fully aware that Brian Sadler was operating with the authority of the President of the United States and he moved quickly. His assistant called the small local hospital in Palenque and made preparations for the arrival of a gunshot patient. The Federal Police would be notified by the hospital; the Ambassador would smooth things with them as soon as the patient arrived.
He called Brian and told him to move Cory by car to the Palenque hospital. “I’ll work on getting him to Mexico City to a major trauma center – I’ll ask the President to authorize the Gulfstream.”
“No need,” Brian replied. “I have authority to instruct the pilots to fly to Mexico City. I’ll take care of that as soon as Cory’s stabilized in the local facility here. Thanks for your help.”
While Brian made arrangements for Cory’s medical treatment Dr. Ortiz and the three government men down below devised a makeshift plan to move Cory. Using a bed sheet they retrieved from the crew bunkhouse the four men carried the archaeologist out of the cavern, hoisted him up the ladder then did the best they could on the narrow stairs. Brian instructed one of the CIA agents to take Cory to the hospital in the SUV. After a brief examination and efforts to stabilize him, Cory was taken by air ambulance from Palenque to Mexico City, kept in the hospital overnight then flown to New York.
Once the immediate need to help Cory was dealt with, Dr. Ortiz called in the Federal Police to secure the Temple of the Inscriptions. With Torrance unaccounted for there was a chance he could reappear at any time. He had shot Cory Spencer – he was considered armed and dangerous.
Brian called President Harrison who put the call on speakerphone after bringing his Chief of Staff into the room. Brian reported that Chapman’s body had been found just as Cory Spencer had said it would. Then he outlined the rest of what he knew – after shooting Cory, Thomas Newton Torrance had apparently fallen into the oval egg-like object but was nowhere to be found now. He described the glyphs and the mysterious artifacts in the cavern. The President and Bob Parker listened intently until Brian was finished, then Harry Harrison told Brian what would happen next. They ha
d been working on a plan since Brian’s earlier call today that Chapman’s body might be in the temple.
Instead of being used to fly Brian home from Palenque, the Gulfstream brought the body of former President John Chapman back to Andrews Air Force Base where a toxicology report confirmed the cause of death as poisoning by the bite of a fer-de-lance. Shortly the nation focused on President Chapman’s upcoming funeral in Washington.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Aftermath
Marianne Chapman did not attend her husband’s funeral. Immediately following her last conversation with President Harrison she had taken an overdose of barbiturates. She was found the next morning by the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her. The day of John Chapman’s funeral was the fourth day she had been in a coma. She would recover from this episode but within a year she tried again. This time it worked. She died at the age of fifty-five and was buried in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
Thomas Newton Torrance was gone. His pistol and cellphone lay inside the oval metal object into which Cory said he had fallen. The gun and phone were nestled amid the small capsule things. Government agents who were careful not to touch the ancient objects carefully retrieved them. The phone was slightly radioactive and, perplexingly, it remained fully charged after nearly twenty hours without external power. The gun bore the fingerprints of Thomas Newton Torrance. One bullet had been fired – that shell casing was retrieved from the floor of the cavern. That bullet had entered and exited the body of Cory Spencer.
The Sussex University dig supervisor was recovering at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. Shot once in the gut with a .38 caliber bullet, Cory had lain in the cavern roughly fifteen hours before Brian Sadler successfully determined how to open the door and find him. He lost a lot of blood but was expected to make a full recovery. Caroline Tipton, his old lover and benefactor, was by his side in the hospital every day.
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