Aztec Odyssey

by Jay C. LaBarge

  He looked over directly at Nick and continued. “It also turns out the Texcoco cartel is headed by a guy with political aspirations. With his cash hoard he comes across as a benefactor of the common man, a regular fricking Mexican Robin Hood. But here is what is really interesting. Turns out this cat is one of the biggest black-market buyers of pre-Columbian artifacts in the world, the kind of guy who would want what Dad was looking for, what we’re now looking for. And be willing to kill for it.”

  “What’s his name?” Nick asked.

  “Esteban González,” Charlie replied. “More commonly known as Eztli. He just might be the one behind all of this.”

  “Eztli,” Soba slowly pronounced, with a Nahuatl accent. “Do you know what that means?” she asked, looking at each brother in turn. “It’s Aztec for blood.”

  They drove due west on the interstate, eventually angling off to a smaller roadway and onto Zuni Reservation land. They met their friend Lonan as arranged near the Visitors Center and introduced him to Charlie as one of the respected tribal elders. Lonan lit up when he saw Soba, who gave him a big bear hug and a kiss atop his bald head. With one sniff Nanook recognized him and leaned into him, almost knocking him over. Lonan laughed and patted him on the head.

  “Easy big wolf, I just old man. This one trouble,” he said as he winked at Soba, and walked feebly over to his dilapidated jeep. He pointed to the passenger seat, and Soba jumped in front and Nanook in back, the two of them chatting amicably in the Zuni language as he drove away. Nick and Charlie got back in the pickup and followed, finally rolling up the windows due to the dust kicking up in front of them.

  “He certainly took a shining to her, didn’t he?” Charlie observed. “She knows his language too?”

  “It seems she knows them all. She was raised speaking multiple languages, went to college as a linguist studying native languages, and definitely has the gift of tongues. Lonan likes her, he never had a daughter, and she can be kind of charming, right?” Nick laughed.

  “What was the deal with this area, anyway, how does it all tie in?” Charlie asked.

  “Coronado was led right here by Fray Marcos de Niza, who had supposedly seen these ‘Seven Cities of Gold’ off in the distance on a prior expedition. Turns out when they got here no fabulous seven cities, no treasure. Coronado then goes on a wild goose chase to the east, tribes just wanting to get rid of him. But he was onto something, at least up to this point. And this is where the other group of artifacts turned up that mimic what Killian showed us at Gila. More of the Two Worlds, as Soba so aptly put it.”

  They pulled into the same compound of buildings that Nick and Soba had visited last time, and went over to the nondescript collapsed wall, still marked off with nothing more than sticks pounded into the ground. Lonan pointed to the area and wandered off a short distance chanting to himself, Nanook trotting along beside him.

  “So what are you hoping to find that you didn’t last time?” Soba asked.

  “Insight,” Nick replied. “Insight into the context of why anything at all was put here. Behind an enclosed wall, which was purposely built to blend in. There was no mummy here like at Gila, just the artifacts and the petroglyphs. But the same type of artifacts.” He wandered away and looked at the site from more of a distance.

  “Killian said there were petroglyphs at Gila too when you asked him. Did they tell anything?” Charlie asked.

  “No, too deteriorated, too faded. My best guess is there was another body in here at one point, but when the wall crumbled, wild animals probably dragged it away. Who knows how long ago that may have been. But the petroglyphs right there held up, if anyone could ever decipher them. So far, no luck.”

  Soba suddenly brightened. “Not true,” she exclaimed. “When I was in hiding while you were gallivanting around Seville, I was with a tribe of Aztec descendants. There was an elder there, her name was Huehue, and she was still practicing the art of symbol writing. Not the tourist version, the real ancient, handed down generation to generation version. She was hoping to pass the knowledge of it down to someone, but there was little interest. I think she wanted me to learn, but we left too soon.”

  “So she could read the old symbols, even though so few exist?” Nick incredulously asked. He and Charlie walked over and hung on the answer.

  “Yes, mostly. I showed her the photos of the glyphs you had taken here, on the off chance she might be able to pick up a meaning or two. She couldn’t make all of them out, some were badly faded. But what she did read translated roughly as this. ‘Go to cold. Follow old ones. Away from devil.’ The rest she couldn’t read. Does it make any sense or help?”

  Nick went to the petroglyphs carved into the stone, knelt down and traced them with his fingertips. “Let’s assume a caravan did indeed leave Tenochtitlán, before Cortés conquers it. They send out false expeditions at the same time to confuse anyone looking for it. We don’t know the exact path the one true journey went, but let’s role play that they eventually made their way to Gila, and left an offering with a carefully preserved mummy, and a hint in stone too faded to read. And then they come to Zuni, and leave another offering, and a body we can’t find, but a hint we can read.” He blew into the cracks of the etching, a small cloud of dust hanging in the tepid air.

  “And the hint says, ‘go to cold.’ That means north. ‘Follow old ones.’ That could mean the old, pre-Aztec interconnecting network of ancient pathways and villages, just like here at Zuni. And ‘away from devil.’ Away from the Spanish, away from Cortés. You know where the path of the ancient ones, the Anasazi, leads from here? Along a well-built pathway north, dotted with villages and warning pyres on the cliffs, right to Chaco canyon, the epicenter of their world. And you know where the pathway north from there leads? To Mesa Verde, all of them on a nearly perfect celestial axis.”

  Nick got off his knees and turned to them. “They were right here, I know it, I feel it. And they wanted what they left behind to be found, but not for a long, long time. It was just like Alexandre said in his letter.”

  “It had to be,” Charlie excitedly said, pointing at Nick and quoting the letter. “Many years from now, when there is peace between us, have good people put the souls of the Mexica in a safe place forever.”

  Suddenly they heard one person behind them slowly clapping, walking toward them from behind the corner of a wall of the ruin. Behind him came two men carrying the collapsed body of Lonan, and two others with guns aimed at them.

  “I hope you can now solve this mystery, for all your sakes,” Miguel González sneered. “Because your lives depend on it. My organization seeks the treasure of the Aztecs that the Spanish never found, the lost treasure of the Seven Cities of Cibola.”

  His men roughly herded Nick, Charlie and Soba together, and dumped the unconscious body of Lonan on a large rock right in front of them. Nick made a move toward him, and was pistol whipped across the back of his head. He slowly staggered back to his feet, dazed.

  “What the hell have you done to him? What do you want with him?” Nick asked aghast, looking down at Lonan. “He’s just an old man, he has nothing to do with any of this.”

  Miguel nodded, and guns were leveled at each of them. He pulled a tranquilizer dart out of the back of Lonan’s shoulder and held it up. “He is simply a means to an end, that’s all. We didn’t want to interrupt that little speech you were making, it being so very insightful. Now this dart just turns out to be merciful.”

  Miguel pulled out an obsidian blade, and shifted Lonan around, chest up. “Let me be perfectly clear. If you don’t do exactly as we ask, this is what I will do to her,” he said, staring at Soba.

  Nick and Charlie both made a move toward him, but were hit with the butts of the guns, and despite struggling were forced to their knees, their heads held straight ahead by their hair. Miguel held the blade aloft for a moment, then plunged it deeply into Lonan’s chest, whose eyes opened wide, then slowly closed. Miguel cut deeper, then reached in and pulled hard, and held a dri
pping heart aloft.

  Soba looked on in disbelief and screamed, as two of the men held her tightly by the arms and roughly led her away. Miguel put a boot on Nick’s chest and stared deep into him. “Do as instructed, or this will be the last piece of her you ever see.” With that he contemptuously tossed the heart on the ground in front of Nick, the blood spattering up all over him. Miguel then nodded to the men holding Nick and Charlie, who swung down hard with the butts of their guns.

  Charlie came to first. He rolled over and got to his knees, then saw Nick lying next to him, blood all over his shirt. Thinking that he had been executed, Charlie cried out and shook him, until he came to. Nick moaned deeply and cautiously sat up, clutching the back of his head. Gaining his senses, he stood, and immediately started yelling out to Soba. He glanced over at the crumpled figure of Lonan, and ran around the corner to the road, Charlie trailing him.

  No one was there, just his pickup and the jeep, but he noticed another set of vehicle tracks coming in and leaving. He glanced at his watch, they had both been unconscious for over an hour. Suddenly Charlie motioned for him to be quiet, and they heard a slight whimpering. They cautiously walked toward the sound, and found Nanook lying on his side, two broken tranquilizer darts sticking out of his ribs, and one imbedded in his neck.

  Nick knelt down gingerly next to him, and carefully pulled each one out. He noticed kick marks all over him, and pooled blood around his mouth and snout. “I know, you tried boy. Nothing you could’ve done, not with these in you.” He checked Nanook’s eyes carefully, the pupils fully dilated, still half drugged. The two of them carried the large canine over to the pickup and set him in the back on unrolled sleeping bags. They then reverently gathered Lonan and his remains and wrapped him in a tarp and put him in the back of the jeep.

  “We’ll have to tell the tribe, they need to know what happened here, on their sacred land. But they can keep it quiet until we figure out what to do. I suspect there are some who will want to avenge him,” Nick said, still shaking his head in disbelief. “I have to get her back Charlie, whatever it takes. I can’t lose Dad and Soba over this.”

  Charlie walked over and started the jeep, while Nick got in his pickup. On the middle of the seat, where Soba had sat just a short while ago on the ride out, was a small bag. He opened it and pulled out a phone and his dad’s missing journal. A folded note was tucked inside, along with a long lock of jet-black hair, bloody at one end. He read the message with shaking hands:

  I thought you could make better use of this journal than I, as you are apparently so close to discovering the hidden treasure of my great Aztec ancestors.

  We could not decipher this, I trust you can. Perhaps it provides the missing clues to that which has proven elusive for so very long. If your dad had simply chosen to have been more cooperative, it would be him concluding this search, and not you. Such are the fates which have brought us together.

  Do not think to involve the authorities. If we suspect anything, parts of your Navajo mistress will be shipped to you, one at a time. We know how to make life linger, for her sake do not doubt the sincerity of my intentions.

  Keep this phone on you at all times. It will allow me to contact you, and always tell me exactly where you are. If you attempt to disable it, or I can’t contact you, or I don’t know where you are, body parts will start to arrive. And then I will personally deliver the last one.

  You are now on the clock, run rabbit run. Find the treasure of the Aztecs, find Cibola, before it’s too late.

  Nick sat in stunned silence, unable to come to terms with Lonan’s death and Soba’s abduction, right before his very eyes. He turned the letter over, it was unsigned, and the men who had accosted them never mentioned who they were. But he had seen the distinct brand mark on their arms, it was the unmistakable image of Miquiztli, the skull-like Aztec symbol of death. The badge of honor of the Texcoco cartel. The calling card of Eztli.

  Chapter 34 – July 22

  They drove slowly back to the Zuni Visitors Center, where Nick had first met Lonan just over a month before. Lonan had been so helpful and cheerful back then, and now here they were delivering his dismembered body back. A crowd slowly converged around the center as word spread. Both Nick and Charlie had clearly been assaulted, Nick still slightly dazed and in the same blood-spattered shirt. They were led inside, where a couple of kind Zuni women who worked there got them ice packs and tended their wounds. A few phone calls were made, and other tribal leaders started showing up. They were then led to a back room, where only Zuni elders were permitted to enter, while some of the younger Zuni men stood as informal guards outside. The elders sat in a circle on the floor, silent, looking at them, questions on their minds.

  Nick stood and addressed those gathered. After all he was the one who had gotten Lonan involved in the first place, had brought this pestilence down upon them, and felt it his duty to be as forthcoming as possible. He explained how the local discovery on their land had drawn the interest of the scientific community, how it tied into the personal quest he was on, and who he thought the killers were. The same evil men as who had killed his own father. He also explained that Soba, the tall Navajo who had accompanied him and spoke their language so eloquently, had been abducted, her life now at stake. He asked for their silence to give him a chance to recover her, or at least until things played out one way or the other.

  The elders talked amongst themselves in their own language for a few minutes, a sort of consensus reached, and one arose to speak for the rest.

  “Lonan explained to us of your visit and showed the artifacts you had uncovered. These were not Zuni things, but of our southern cousins the Azteca, and of the Spanish. Talismans of a fight that we Zuni soon joined when the conquistadors came here looking for gold we never had. They were cruel, and killed many of us, and we never forgot. Today evil men come again from the south, for something we still don’t have, and kill our brother. Greed echoes through time here. We will respect your wishes, just as Lonan respected you. But now we must mourn our dead. Go, find what you seek, and may it bring back that she that you truly treasure.”

  The brothers went back outside, the crowd larger now, agitated. The elders worked their way through the crowd, carefully lifted the body of Lonan, still wrapped in the tarp, and led a procession along a narrow path that led away from the Visitors Center, away from all vestiges of civilization. The sounds of chanting and crying drifted back toward them on a slight breeze.

  Nick went to the back of his truck and opened it, Nanook seeing him and woozily trying to sit up. Nick pet his head, leaned him back down and rubbed the fur around his neck until Nanook’s breathing fell into a regular rhythm, deep asleep. He felt Charlie’s hand on his shoulder and turned to see him nodding toward a group of younger men, one of whom stepped forward, who he recognized as the informal leader of those standing guard inside the center not long before.

  “My name is Ahaiyuta,” he said, whose name meant Morning Star. “We heard what happened, I mourn for Lonan, and am sorry for your friend.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “Someone coming here, on our sacred land, and doing that to a respected elder,” he tailed off, lost in his anger, clenching his fists. “It simply cannot be, it cannot go unavenged. Tell us who did this.”

  “Ahaiyuta, I understand your anger, I feel it too. There is a time and a place for that, for justice. But first I must find something for them, or I have nothing to bargain with to get my friend back,” Nick reasoned. “Be patient, you will hear from me when the time is right. Tell your warriors to be ready.”

  Charlie slid into the driver’s seat of the Chevy, he was in the better shape of the two, and Nick wanted to dig into his dad’s missing journal as they traveled.

  “Wow, I haven’t driven this in years. I see the clutch is still a little soft,” Charlie said with a touch of nostalgia, getting used to shifting the gears again, since in one of the reworks they had been installed upside down. “So where to bro?”

  “North,
towards Mesa Verde. Somehow it and Chaco Canyon were tied together in dad’s mind, but I don’t yet know how. This journal wouldn’t have come up missing if it wasn’t vital, and Dad wouldn’t have had us scatter their ashes in Chaco Canyon if he didn’t suspect something there. There is something hidden in this,” Nick said, tapping the journal for emphasis. “I just have to get in his mindset to figure it out.”

  Charlie drove along silently, off the Zuni Reservation, past Fort Wingate, northward towards Sheep Springs. Nick was buried in the journal, writing furiously as he worked to decipher their dad’s cryptic annotations. Albert had kept detailed notes, but not all were written in a straightforward manner. Some were his musings, brainstorming possibilities and probabilities, and some were purposely archaic and coded. Waiting for the day someone would unlock their secrets, someone who understood exactly how he thought.

  “Interesting, he goes into great detail on what I always guessed was just a paper weight,” Nick commented, and reached under his seat and held up an old, heavy piece of metal. “Remember this? Something in my head told me to bring it when his journal went missing. In his notes here Dad says it’s a bracket to hold an axle to a wagon, a very old, hand forged one. He sent photos to various museums that had early Spanish artifacts, to see if it possibly matched anything. One museum in Guanajuato replied and sent him a photo back. They look identical, and they show it on a wagon they reconstructed from the early 1500s, with some of the original parts.”