Of course. Excited, Claire sat back and braided her hair quickly to get it out of her face. The night sky might give her another clue. Using her computer, she quickly established the longitude and latitude for 50 km north of Trujillo, and 50 km south of the city. Given the writings of the Spanish missionaries and Denis’s maps, King Chaco’s city had to be located somewhere between the two points. Find the ancient city’s location, and she’d have a better chance of finding the tomb.
She plugged the coordinates into SkyCentury. This amazing website, designed by two German university students, took a GPS location—latitude and longitude—and nearly any day in time, and came up with the star field that would have appeared in the sky that night. The most-entered date was December 25 in the year 0, of course.
The night skies change over time because of the earth’s wobble. The earth isn’t a perfect sphere, but wider at the equator, so gravitational pulls from the sun and the moon cause the earth to wobble like a spinning top. Basically, the earth’s axis carves a circle in the space above the planet, but it takes 26,000 years to complete one circle. People in the Northern Hemisphere currently used Polaris as the North Star, but in 13,000 years, the North Star would be Vega.
Claire chose the year 1200 for her search, since this year fell about halfway between the 900 to 1450 time period in which the Chimú dominated the coastal region of northern Peru.
While the program chugged away, Claire read more about the Japanese in Peru. During Peru’s rocky economy in the 1980s, Japan’s was taking off and needed labor. So a reversal of what happened in 1889 began—instead of Japanese coming to Peru for work, the Peruvians who could prove they were of Japanese descent could emigrate to Japan for work. The Japanese called them dekasegi, or migratory workers. As more and more Japanese-Peruvians emigrated to better jobs, the non-Japanese wanted in on it. A person adopted by someone of Japanese descent would legally be Japanese and could move to Japan. In 1992, one Japanese-Peruvian woman adopted sixty people, all of whom dashed off to Japan for jobs. People paid up to three thousand U.S. dollars to be “adopted.” The Peruvian government didn’t care because the dekasegi sent back over $120 million to their families in Peru.
Reading about these Japanese leaving Peru reminded Claire of her own exit…
…Claire finished the last of her coffee, then checked her phone. Nancho would be here soon to drive her to work, so she grabbed her leather satchel, feeling almost positive.
True, yesterday she and Sochi had fought over where to live, basically rejecting each other’s proposals of marriage. And Sochi had left “their” hill without a word. But by the time Claire had walked back to her office, she realized how stupid she’d been, and stubborn. She began composing a letter of apology, offering to stay in Peru with Sochi. She kept getting called away to deal with problems, but then she’d return to her desk and scratch out a few more lines. Hudson was often using her computer, so she had to shoo him away a few times. She recopied the final draft, put it in an envelope, then after a consultation with the subdirector of restoration over a crumbling wall, she grabbed the envelope and had Nancho drive her straight to Sochi’s house.
She’d knocked and knocked without an answer. Since they’d fought, it seemed inappropriate to use her spare key, so she slid the envelope under the front door. Claire wasn’t going to give up on Sochi, but she also wasn’t going to give up on her career. She could find a job in Lima or at Machu Picchu. She and Sochi would kiss and make up, and then slide those rings onto each other’s fingers in a small but beautiful ceremony.
But here it was the next morning and there’d been no response to Claire’s letter. She and Sochi had to find a way to work things out. She’d never loved anyone as much as she loved Sochi. Could it be true? Were they really over?
When her phone chimed, Claire quickly tapped the screen. A photo from Sochi. Claire enlarged the photo and gasped. Sochi held a match to the envelope, which had caught on fire. Claire’s throat closed up and she dropped her phone.
So. Now she knew. Apology not accepted.
When Claire forced herself to straighten up, grab her bag, and open her apartment door, a paper fluttered in her face. Someone had taped up a newspaper article with the word FREAK scrawled across it in red Sharpie.
She pulled it off the door. Tomb Whisperer Hears Voices screamed the headline. Claire groaned as she read: Reliable sources confirm that Dr. Claire Adams, Subdirector of Excavation at Chan Chan, used more than her archaeological skills to uncover tomb after tomb these past few months. Adams claims to be able to hear voices of the dead spirits inhabiting the tombs as they call to her.
Claire stopped reading. Holy shit. What a nightmare. She hurried down the stairs and flung open the front door. A dozen men and women surged toward her.
“Dr. Adams, can you confirm that you hear—”
“Ms. Adams, how often do you use San Pedro? Are you addicted?”
“If you can hear voices, why haven’t you found King Chaco’s—”
Nancho fought through them and took her arm, pushing the reporters aside as she hurried to the car. On autopilot, she slid inside and Nancho closed the door behind her. The reporters pressed in close, shouting questions through the glass.
Nancho pulled away from the curb. “Mrs. Claire, are you okay?”
Her hands shook as she reached for her phone. “I’m fine. Thank you for helping me.”
Claire’s favorite archaeology blogs all buzzed with the same story—her. A few dismissed the report as bogus, but most jumped on the bandwagon, calling her a fraud or a freak or a pathetic excuse for a professional. Anger seemed to pulse from each entry she read, anger that one of their own would be so ignorant as to suggest that the dead spoke to her. I Hear Dead People read one of the headlines.
She hiccupped. This news was all over the Web. What about here in Peru? She slid forward because Nancho always had three or four of the day’s papers on the front seat. Before she could grab one, he swept them off onto the floor, out of her reach. But she’d seen the headlines.
Too stunned to think through how this happened, all she wanted to do was call Sochi and cry into the phone. The need to hold her was so sharp Claire imagined she’d been stabbed in the gut. Who had told her story to the press? No one could have been eavesdropping, for they’d been on a barren hill. There would have been no place for anyone to hide. As the truth dawned slowly, Claire wrapped her arms around herself and rocked quietly. Apparently, setting Claire’s apology letter on fire hadn’t been enough for Sochi.
“Mrs. Claire, I take you to door.” Nancho meant that literally. He honked at the reporters crowded around the entrance to the admin offices at Chan Chan, then drove onto the broad sidewalk and right up to the door.
Claire jumped out, dashed inside, ran down the hall to her office, and slammed the door. An avalanche had just barreled through her life, destroying everything in its path. She could barely breathe. Her anger was so frightening, so raw, that for now all she could do was turn her back on it.
Claire shuddered and wiped the tears off her face. There was no going back from this sort of betrayal. There was no going forward. There was just the end of her relationship with Sochi.
She’d never been this angry, almost paralyzed by the churning fury. She hadn’t yet found a new job, so there was no reason to leave Peru, but she couldn’t stay here, not with the press, the ridicule, and the knowledge of what Sochi had done. She went home, packed, then that afternoon Nancho drove her to the airport. When he announced their arrival, his voice was husky. Claire paid him generously, checked her bags, then left Peru…
When her computer dinged, Claire shook her head to clear away the unwelcome trip down memory lane, then opened up side-by-side windows in SkyCentury to view the results. Eight hundred years ago, the night sky 50 km north of Trujillo looked, not surprisingly, very similar to the 50 km south of Trujillo. She leaned forward to study them. Even though she’d lived in the Southern Hemisphere for four years, she’d forgotten
how different the sky looked.
Claire picked out Sirius, Canopus, and Alpha Centauri, the three brightest stars. The Carina Nebula spread itself across the sky, as did Omega Centauri, a bright cluster with topaz, orange, and red stars.
Claire stared at the screens until her eyes burned, and then she saw it. The vertical line of the three brightest clusters in the Carina Nebula tipped just slightly to the left at 50 km north, and just slightly right at 50 km south. It was almost too slight to notice, but it was there. Now if, during a vision with the copper egg, Claire could see the night sky through Ixchel’s eyes, she might be able to narrow down the location using the three clusters in the Carina Nebula.
She rubbed her burning eyes. Treasure hunts were exhausting when you had to reach toward the ridiculous for clues.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Claire
Tuesday, March 28
Claire’s plan was to irritate the three people following her as much as possible. She had nothing else to do since she couldn’t control when the copper egg gave her an Ixchel vision, and that was now her only source for clues in this crazy treasure hunt.
So for three days, Claire and Nancho went fake treasure hunting. Each morning, by the time they passed Chan Chan and Claire had gazed at the mountain horizon to the east that she loved, they’d acquired all three vehicles. Nancho would ask if she wanted him to “be loosening those sons of guns,” but she declined.
“They’ll just find us again.” The three had given up any attempt at concealment. Whenever Claire and Nancho would return to the car, their three shadows would be parked along the road—the Japanese in the SUV, the woman in the orange Volvo, and the indigenous man in the pickup truck.
At least being followed injected a little excitement into Nancho’s day, since their prospecting was yielding few finds. Claire knew they were just going through the motions, but poor Nancho didn’t. She thought about telling him the truth, but decided the truth was better kept to herself. She even considered sneaking out on her own and “planting” a few pots for Nancho to find, but that would have just been cruel.
So on the third day when the metal detector began clicking loudly in Nancho’s hands, they were both surprised.
Nancho beamed. “I has found it!”
“Not so fast, cowboy.”
The area they’d been pacing was an uninhabited stretch of desert southeast of Pacasmayo. They were far enough inland she couldn’t hear or see or smell the ocean. This was an unlikely site, given the Chimú’s dependence on the sea for food.
More sweeps of the detector determined that the majority of the clicking was concentrated in a five-by-five-meter area. In the nearest corner, they gently shoveled off the thin layer of grass and topsoil, then got to work. Within minutes, they began to encounter pottery sherds. Her heart beat a little faster, even though she knew it wasn’t what they sought. Still, anything that had been in the ground for centuries was, in her book, treasure.
Then Nancho bent over to scoop something up. He wiped it off and handed it to her. “Gold bead,” he said.
“Nice, but don’t get your hopes up. This could just be your average burial site.” His grin shouted maybe not.
“The bead is tumbaga, a gold-copper alloy used by the Moche and Chimú. Let’s try a soil sample before we get too excited.” Claire retrieved her dig kit from her leather bag. Nancho pushed the hollow soil probe in, twisted it, then brought up a sample. She dropped a spoonful into a test tube.
“What are we doing?” Nancho asked.
“I’m adding hydrochloric and ascorbic acids to the sample.” She capped the tube and shook it. “We’re looking for high-phosphate soil, which indicates human habitation. Bone, urine, and other organic matter contain phosphate.” The liquid in the test tube turned deep blue. She grinned at Nancho.
“Blue is good?”
“Blue is great.”
Her training took over. She marked off one square meter with cord, then they switched to trowels and brushes. “Okay, anything you find, no matter how small, put into this bucket. I’ll bag it up later. We are cutting so many corners here it’s pathetic.”
By the end of the day, they’d dug down barely a quarter of a meter, but had found Chimú pottery sherds, many more beads, and a broken Tumi knife. Claire sat back, filthy and tired.
“Mrs. Claire, this is slowly going.”
“It is, Nancho. Definitely slowly going.” For a second, she was tempted to use her shovel to dig recklessly, but then an artifact would be useless without the context in which it was found. That was what infuriated her most about looters like La Bruja—their disregard for the story each tomb told.
“Will it be safe tonight?” Nancho asked.
“This is an isolated spot. It should be fine.”
It wouldn’t be. Her trio would be falling all over themselves tonight in this location. She recorded the coordinates in her notebook, and began the long walk back to the car.
On the drive back to Trujillo, the car was stifling hot so Claire barely moved as sweat ran down her back. Nancho cranked up the AC. Her fingernails were cracked and flaky and her teeth crunchy after a day of working in sand. Every muscle in her body protested as she stretched her arms and shoulders. In three years of deskwork, she’d forgotten the physical realities of her field. But it felt good. Very few of her muscles were challenged by emailing customers or training employees how to safely pack a seventh century Chinese vase.
*
That evening, Claire and Denis had dinner downtown at his favorite seafood restaurant. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d nearly run right into Sochi in the church.
She opened the conversation. “I don’t appreciate being set up at the church the other day.”
Denis had the good sense to blush. “I am sorry, but the tension was driving me crazy. I knew you weren’t going to call Sochi, and she certainly wasn’t going to call you. I had to get the two of you together in one room. Consider it an intervention.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t go well.”
“You fought? Exchanged harsh words? I am saddened to hear that.”
She laughed. “We exchanged nothing. After a few seconds, I freaked and ran.”
Denis scratched his earlobe. “It is better to get that first meeting out of the way so you can move to the next step.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. That would be up to the two of you.”
Claire thanked the waiter for the glass of wine he placed in front of her. “There is no next step. We were done three years ago. We’re still done.”
Denis steered them to safer ground, and the rest of the meal was a delight. She’d forgotten how nice it was to have someone to talk with. Her affection for this man came rushing back—he was a great father and good friend. He told the truth. Yes, he purchased artifacts from looters, but he did so to keep the treasures here, in Peru. And he truly loved the cultures he collected, especially the Moche and the Chimú.
While waiting for desert, she slipped her hand into her pocket and touched—for the hundredth time—the copper egg. Nothing ever—
As Ixchel watched Cualli walk closer, warmth flooded her face. Desire froze her tongue. She never knew when Cualli would come visit, but she loved seeing her. Cualli was like walking sunshine.
Cualli took her hand. “I have escaped my family again. Come with me.”
They spent the evening strolling through stalls and watching a woman weaving a basket. Finally, when the sun had sunk into the ocean, Cualli tugged at Ixchel’s hand again, pulling them toward a sunken field. It was dark, but Ixchel was willing to follow Cualli anywhere, any time.
They climbed down a short ladder into one of the shallower fields. Most fields had to be dug the depth of two men to reach water, but not this one.
Ixchel stumbled, but Cualli caught her. “Come.”
There was a bare spot in the field so they lay down on the warm soil. Ixchel arched her back, looking up at the world of stars.
> Yes! Claire’s brain screamed at Ixchel. Stay there. Don’t move!
Cualli leaned over Ixchel. “I think of you all of my days.”
Ixchel’s heart pounded. She slid her arms around warm, soft Cualli.
Move! Claire yelled at Cualli. Move your head! The Carina Nebula is behind your head!
Ixchel felt the welcome weight of Cualli’s body against her own. Soft lips slid over her mouth. Cualli touched her, confident, strong, as their bodies pressed into the fertile ground. Ixchel clutched soil, arched, and shattered into bits of light and floated among the stars, a need she’d never understood finally met.
“Claire?”
She shook her head. God damn it. “Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry.”
“Did you have a vision?”
She nodded. In this vision, Cualli’s libido had literally come between her and the clue she needed. Claire was happy for the two women for connecting, but crap, so frustrated.
Her hotel was only four blocks away, but Denis insisted on driving her. Just as he pulled to a stop in front of the massive doors, her phone chimed and she stared at the photo. “What the hell is this?” She showed it to Denis. A woman sat slumped over in the sand, tied to a stake, the water lapping at her knees.
Denis cursed. “Is this real?”
Another ping. This time it was an email with GPS coordinates and this note: Look at the cache I’ve hidden. Be the FTF. And do it soon. This photo is hours old. Tide coming in.
“Seriously?” Claire growled. “Some asshole has cached a human being?”
“FTF?”
“First to find.” Her pulse increased. By now the tide could have drowned the woman. “It might be a prank, but I need to check it out.”
“It could also be a trap.”
“I’ll call a taxi.”
“No time,” Denis snapped. “Direct me.”
In twenty minutes, Claire’s GPS brought them to the parking lot at Huanchaco Beach, empty except for an old orange Volvo, one of the cars that had been tailing her. Dusk had yielded to darkness. With Denis struggling through the sand beside her, shining his phone as a flashlight, she followed her GPS.
The Copper Egg Page 12
