by M. G. Harris
Even so, I want to see if I’m still free to go.
“What if I say no? Can I go back?”
He seems genuinely taken aback. “Of course. It’s your choice, Josh. You can go back to the top, back to your life. Forget this happened. Or you can come with me, and discover what’s behind all of this. But you need to know one thing. If you come with me, you’ll leave behind everything you thought you knew about the world.”
I stammer slightly, saying, “But my mum . . . and my friends?”
“You’ll see them again. I won’t lie to you, it won’t be the same. Nothing will be the same. In many ways, your childhood will be over. But then . . . I imagine after what you’ve been through today, that’s already the case. Isn’t it?”
Today? This is about so much more than today. I feel as though everything in the last few weeks has been leading up to this. Maybe longer. Like grandfather, like father, like son – is this where it’s all been heading?
There’s an unstoppable drive inside me that tells me that it is.
“OK. Let’s do this. I’m in.”
I follow him into a narrowish tunnel, about ten feet high and six feet wide. Hanging from some kind of rail in the ceiling are what I can only describe as something like ski chair lifts. Montoyo gestures towards one of the chairs. He waits for me to sit down properly, then sits in the second chair. He pulls down on two metal lapels sticking out of the top of the chair, above the shoulders. They extend to reveal two cushioned straps, which he crosses over his chest, then plugs into two slots in the sides of the chair. He turns expectantly to me, so I do the same. When Montoyo seems satisfied that I’m correctly strapped in, he presses another button in the side of his chair. A small console rises out of a central panel that separates our two chairs. It swings into place over his lap. For a couple of seconds he’s preoccupied with a small visual display unit that lights up in the console.
I speak up. “Um . . . where are we going?”
He doesn’t look up from his button punching, but grins.
“To Ek Naab, my friend. To the eternal city of Dark Water.”
I remember the line from the Calakmul letter.
In their Holy City of Ek Naab they wait.
Ek Naab. It’s not just some obscure name in an ancient inscription. It’s real. Hidden, secret and lost – under Becan.
Abruptly, Montoyo stops pressing buttons. The console returns to its position in the central panel.
I ask what he’s doing.
“Navigation,” he replies curtly. “This isn’t a route for the uninitiated. We don’t take kindly to intruders.”
“What happens?”
“Booby traps,” he says with an unpleasant smile. “You don’t want to know.”
“You kill people?”
He doesn’t answer my open-mouthed question. A large stud lights up on the central panel. Montoyo presses it. After that all I can hear is my own voice, yelling.
There’s a sound like a small explosion of hydraulic pressure. Our chair is catapulted forward. We’re yanked back into our seats. We hurtle towards what looks like a solid wall of rock. At the very last minute, the chair plummets, falling into the void. I feel my guts lift up inside me. We fall crazily, in a dizzying downwards spiral, plunged into the darkness, like a rocket totally out of control, like a Catherine wheel released from the pin. We pull out of the drop into a steep climb. After that I lose track. The wall of the tunnel speeds past. Every so often I spot openings, turnings. Some we take, some we miss. I understand then what Montoyo said. At this kind of speed only an expert could navigate safely through the tunnels.
Every so often we pass through a wide opening and I catch a glimpse of something. I see a cavern filled with the glow of phosphorescent stones, see our blurred reflection in a pool of mirror water, see a stalagmite as tall as a telegraph pole and thick as a redwood, see another chair skim by, the occupants a white fuzz in the distance. We tumble into a tight loop that crushes us into our seats, then shoot out into another hard curve, before beginning a series of steep climbs. Then a sudden deceleration.
As we slow down, I catch my breath. I stare ahead. I can see bright lights. It’s like coming out of a tunnel in the London Underground. When we finally stop, that is exactly how it looks to me: like an underground station. Empty, clean, no turnstiles, but basically, somewhere to dock.
There’s no one around. This is like nowhere I’ve ever been. The doorways are arches in the classic Mayan corbelled style. The building material seems to be local limestone, just like above the ground. But there is also metal, wood and ceramics. The walls are tiled with Spanish-style decorated ceramic tiles; except the designs are Mayan. The floors are lined with traditional terracotta Spanish floor tiles.
Montoyo helps me out of the chair and I step on to the platform. I stare in awe, speechless. Finally, Montoyo seems happy to stop, to let me take a moment.
“This is it, Josh; the place your father was really searching for. The centuries-old secret of the ancient Maya. Ek Naab is alive.”
I gaze at Montoyo, see raw emotion cloud his eyes.
“You see, our civilization is not so finished after all. Some of us did escape the Spanish, the conquista.”
I just gawp. “What . . . what are you saying? Mayans live down here? Ancient Mayans?”
Montoyo nods.
“A living city,” I breathe. “Just like John Lloyd Stephens said. . .”
Montoyo breaks into a delighted grin. “You’ve read Stephens,” he murmurs. “I’m so glad.”
“OK . . . not actually . . . not myself. My mum and dad had his books. They told me about it. . .”
He looks a teensy bit disappointed. “You should read him, he’s really excellent.”
“I can’t now,” I comment. “Someone broke into our house, took the Stephens book along with all our computers.”
“Why would someone steal that book?” Montoyo asks with a frown.
I shrug. “I’ve been asking myself that.”
“Well, Josh, I can confirm that we are the descendents of one particular ancient Mayan community.”
“But you . . . I mean . . . you’re Mayan?” I can’t bring myself to say it, but his face is obviously not pure Mayan. He’s as Hispanic as most middle-class Mexicans.
As if guessing my thoughts, Montoyo smiles sadly. “I didn’t say we were completely exclusive. We’d have become completely inbred long ago, if not for bringing in new blood. A few travellers found their way to us; explorers. My ancestors include men from Spain and Germany. Yours were from Spain. But we can claim continuity. The people who lived here were never conquered. We trace a direct line back over two millennia, to the very dawn of Mayan civilization.”
My ancestors? I guess I should have seen that coming. But the surprises are arriving so thick and fast that I’m not getting time to process properly.
Montoyo helps me out. “Your great-great-great-grandfather was a Spaniard, Isidro Garcia de Vega. He married a woman here. And your grandfather, well, that’s a whole other story.”
Then, maddeningly, he begins to walk again.
“Come on, Josh. There’s a lot to see. We have to get you back before a search begins in earnest. We’ve much to do.”
I follow him, trotting to keep up.
“Why am I here? And if it wasn’t you in the blue Nissan, then who?”
“The man chasing you, his name is Simon Madison. According to his passport, a US citizen, occupation listed as a systems engineer. . .”
“Never heard of him.”
“Of course,” Montoyo says. “It’s probably not his real passport. Most likely he’s undercover.”
“With the NRO?”
“It’s possible.”
“And you’ve been watching him?”
“We were watching Camila Pastor. And he was watching her too.”
“Why were you watching Camila?”
“Because she talks to the police – she knows what they know, or at least what they think
they know. We have to investigate this from all possible angles, Josh. We must find out what happened to your father.”
I haven’t realized until this moment just how badly I’ve been hoping that Montoyo knows something – anything that might help. But he doesn’t. It’s a nasty shock, stops me in my tracks.
“You . . . don’t know?”
He gives a deep sigh. “Your father came to Ek Naab – that much you’ve probably guessed. But shortly after he left we lost track of him. There was an air crash.”
“Yeah . . . I know.”
“No, you don’t understand. He left here in one of our flying craft. Like the one we followed you in when you ran into the jungle.”
“What. . .? You mean you weren’t in a helicopter?”
“No, my boy. We have something rather better than helicopters. As you will see. Your father needed to go on a mission for us, to Veracruz. He used one of our aircraft – which we call ‘Muwan’. Shortly after leaving here, we tracked five other craft in the vicinity. They chased your father. And then – he just disappeared from our radar.”
“What?” I’m staggered. “Aircraft. . .?”
“That story about the Cessna crash is just as much of a mystery to us as to you.”
“Maybe he was forced to land and got into his other plane?”
“No, Josh. Listen to what I’m saying. One aircraft, the Muwan – your father. Then five others appeared. Six craft.”
Slowly, unbelievably, it dawns on me.
“The UFOs. . .?”
Montoyo nods, starts walking again.
“What did you call them? ‘Muwan’? The UFOs over Campeche?” I repeat, incredulous.
“Pay attention, Josh. I said your father was in one craft. The other five were a total surprise to us also.”
“Extraterrestials?”
Montoyo snorts with disdain.
“Then, what?”
“Simple; someone has stolen our technology. We’ve suspected it for a long time. These same people probably murdered your father.”
“This Simon Madison guy and the NRO?”
“Possibly.”
“The NRO must have organized the burglary. . .” I mutter, almost to myself. “That’s when they started following me . . . they must have tracked me to Hotel Delfin.”
“Hmm.”
“Why didn’t you reply to my email?”
“I promised your father. Not to involve you. It was a solemn promise, Josh. If I’d answered that email, I would have had to lie.”
“But I did get involved.”
“True, but not because of me.” Then gently he says, “Look, we’ll talk about this later. I realize you have many questions. But I need you to listen first.”
We walk again, making our way along the tunnel, then up stairs. I make a huge effort to shut my trap. Tough, when my worldview, not to say family history, is being turned on its head.
“The first thing you need to know is that the Mayan inscription your father found originally belonged to your real grandfather, Aureliano.”
I nod. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“And your grandfather, he was one of us. He was born in Ek Naab.”
That’s not as surprising to hear now as it would have been outside Ek Naab. It certainly solved my grandmother’s big mystery over where Dad’s father came from – and where he went.
“Where is he now?”
Montoyo catches his breath. “He’s dead.”
“I know,” I agree. “But where?”
“That’s the big question. Because we believe he had something with him when he died.”
Suddenly it’s obvious. My grandfather had owned the Calakmul letter before my dad. He was searching for the codex too. And his search hadn’t been in vain.
Breathlessly, I say, “The Ix Codex?”
Montoyo nods, apparently impressed. “Good boy. It’s the only explanation. He was in charge of the search. For hundreds of years, one from your family has sought the codex. Then, miraculously, finally we found its trail. Your grandfather, he set off to find it. Our information told us it was in England. . .”
“England?!”
“In a place called Saffron Walden. In the house of the renowned Mayan archaeologist J. Eric Thompson.”
I stop walking. Each new bit of information seems more incredible than the last. “Thompson?! Thompson had the Ix Codex?”
I’ve heard about J. Eric Thompson all my life. He was probably the most famous British guy ever to study the Maya. My father had all his books. Until he died in 1975, he was the Big Cheese of all Mayanists.
“Your grandfather believed so. He tracked the codex to Thompson. Not easy, because Thompson didn’t know what he had. Or at least if he did, he kept it very, very quiet. For understandable reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“Later, Josh. We’ll come to that. Your grandfather went to see Thompson in Saffron Walden. We received word that he’d found the codex. You can’t begin to imagine the importance to Ek Naab, to the destiny of the whole world. And then, somewhere over Mexico, we lost track of your grandfather. He simply vanished.”
“He died near water,” I murmur. “In a hut.”
Montoyo stops suddenly. We’re almost at the end of the stairs. My legs are cramping with fatigue.
“Why do you say that?”
“I dreamt it,” I say, rubbing my thighs. “One of two huts, on water. The ocean or a lake. A misty, watery place. He died, choking. And someone saw it.”
Montoyo looks at me with a mixture of respect and wonder.
“Amazing. That’s just what your father said.”
He turns to the opening of the tunnel, a few metres away. Beyond, I catch a glimpse of buildings and the glow of natural light.
“Beyond this tunnel lies the city of Ek Naab, a city of a thousand wells. The city of a hundred fables. A city that exists for most only as a rumour, a whisper, a hope. It’s the city to which you belong, Josh, as much as you belong anywhere. Ek Naab holds the only hope of survival for civilizations throughout the world.”
We emerge from the subway tunnel on to a high platform overlooking a deep underground pool. Montoyo says, “This is the cenote, the fathomless ‘black water’; a black hole of sacrifice for which Ek Naab became notorious.”
I stare into the depths. The surface of the water is about twenty feet below the opening of the sinkhole. A nasty drop and a pretty impossible climb to safety for the poor human sacrifice. A metal fence and guarded walkway rings the entire body of water, which is roughly the size of the penalty area of a football field. At intervals around the walkway, tall lamps with five globes of yellow light illuminate the nearby shore of the lake. The smooth surface of the pool gleams, mirror-like.
Beyond the water, I glimpse the wide expanse of the underground cavern. I can see buildings that appear to be as much as two football fields distant. All kinds of buildings – everything from what look like gleaming office blocks to sombre, stone-faced Mayan temples. There are plazas and alleyways and canals of water, all bundled together. Like a weird fusion of Mexico, ancient and modern, with Venice.
And all underground! I can’t get my head around it at first – how come it’s so light?
Then I look up. Over the central part of the city, instead of the rock ceiling, there’s a mesh-like fabric. Sunlight pours through the tiny holes. It’s unnerving, confusing. There’s a sense of vast space . . . then you look up and see that ceiling.
I stare back into the city. Colourful murals display the Mayan heritage. The five-globed lamps are dotted around the city. There’s one spacious plaza covered with tables and chairs; open-air cafés. They’re empty, so I guess it’s too early for them to be open.
There are even trees. Exactly the kind I’ve seen in the central town zocalos of small Mexican towns, canopies neatly clipped. Warm light leaks from windows in the buildings. A background hum carries the faint suggestion of voices and music.
And everywhere I look, flowers. Potted, i
n hanging baskets or trailing over walls, crawling their way through the narrow alleyways between brick, glass and stone; the entire city blooms with violent pinks, regal purples, jubilant reds.
Montoyo watches me with a hint of a smile. “What do you think?”
I spin around, trying to take it all in, my head in my hands. “Amazing! I mean . . . where did this all come from? And how?”
Montoyo’s enjoying watching my reaction, I can tell.
“Centuries ago, Ek Naab was just a shrine, dedicated to Itzamna. He brought us agriculture, writing and time-keeping. The Maya worshipped Itzamna as a god, you know. They came to Ek Naab to placate him with regular sacrifices of the city’s young people, thrown into the cenote to drown.”
He gives me a loaded stare.
“But that’s all in the past, right?”
Or am I about to hear that the Maya of Ek Naab were sticklers for tradition, and I’m about to become the latest sacrificial victim?
Montoyo chuckles. “Of course. We’re over all that.”
I’m silent for a long time. “I . . . really dunno what to say.”
“Don’t you want to know about us?”
“Well, yeah. . .”
But where to start? I’m not in the mood for a history lesson. The damp of my clothes has cooled in the underground chill. I begin to shiver. Or maybe it’s the thrill of discovery? I have this sudden urge to call Ollie and Tyler. Then I remember that my mobile phone wouldn’t work underground, even if it wasn’t soaked.
The thought that my father was here gives me a warm feeling. I’m sharing in his final secret. I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that I would? I’d like to think he’d be proud of me. I guess now I’ll never know.
Montoyo finally snaps me out of my trance-like state. “You look exhausted,” he notes. He’s right; my legs are turning to jelly, and my eyelids keep drooping. “We’re gonna get you to a bed,” he says. “And we’ll talk more in a few hours.”
I nod and follow him around the path, past the cenote, through a narrow passageway into a small patio crammed with bright red, potted hibiscus flowers. We cross the patio and take one of four doors, climb stone stairs to a third floor.
