The Fifth Kingdom

by Caridad Piñeiro

  He stood there dressed in a black cashmere sweater that lovingly hugged each and every muscle on his torso much like his jeans were snug against the long powerful lines of his legs. If he had been dangerously attractive before, now it had escalated to deadly in his civilian clothes.

  He repeated his inquiry. “Are you okay? Are you up to reviewing whatever is in the box?”

  “I guess we should so that we can know what to do next,” she sighed as neutrally as she could because her mind was still a minefield of volatile thoughts and emotions, including ones about Bill.

  He stepped aside gallantly to let her down the hall. As she passed the room her father had taken for his own, she realized he had already made himself comfortable there in a recliner. His head was buried in the Codex Mendoza once again, his face alight with joy as if rediscovering an old friend.

  She smiled indulgently and continued on to the living room and the parcel that sat on the coffee table. She took a spot before it together with Bill. The sofa was on the smallish side, which meant that with each movement their shoulders or arms brushed against one another, creating that unnerving skitter in her insides. She drove it back even as Bill efficiently cut away the twine, removed the kraft paper and then sliced the packing tape around all the edges. He stopped there, clearly expecting that she would continue with the unveiling.

  She laid her hands on the flaps of the box. They shook and her palms were wet with sweat. Her heart took up a staccato beat inside her chest that refused to slow down. Would it be like a jack-in-the-box, springing up to scare the shit out of her but doing no real damage? Or would it be more fatal, like a Pandora’s box releasing plague and destruction?

  Considering her mother, a mix of the two was highly possible. Despite that, she carefully pulled open the flaps on the box and peered within.

  Chapter Nine

  The first item was a journal with an embossed leather cover that had clearly seen its share of handling. She lifted the journal out of the box to discover that the pages were stuffed with so many other papers and objects, the diary could not close. The cover jutted at nearly a forty-five degree angle from the thickness of the pages in relation to the binding.

  Beneath that massive tome was another journal and although it was two inches thick and small compared to the first, the rich patina on the face of it indicated that this journal, too, had been well-handled.

  She placed both journals on the coffee table, uncertain which one to open first.

  “Have you ever seen these before?” Bill asked and his question prompted a memory of Miranda sitting at the kitchen table beside her, meticulously writing notes in a book while Deanna did homework.

  “Miranda used to write all the time in diaries like this one,” she advised and gestured to the smaller of the two journals.

  Almost as if aware that she couldn’t muster the strength to open the book on her own, Bill placed his hand on the cover and asked, “May I?”

  Her mouth suddenly dry, she licked her lips and in a scratchy voice replied, “Please do.”

  Without lifting the book from the table, Bill flipped open the cover to reveal the first entries.

  Images and memories assailed her at the neat script which formed letters obviously written in code. A familiar cipher that she hadn’t seen in over fourteen years.

  “What is this?” Bill said as he ran a blunt finger along the lines of text on the page, tracing the letters in what would appear as nonsensical words to him.

  In a soft voice, she explained. “When I was younger I read about the Navajo Wind Talkers and became fascinated with how they had used their language as a cipher during the World War. My mother and I decided to create our own code to communicate. It was simple, but it made me feel mysterious to exchange little notes with her or even the shopping list to surprise my dad with a special dinner.”

  Those had been the good days when Miranda had still possessed some motherly instinct.

  “It’s nice that you have those memories of your mom.” There was a wistfulness in his voice that snagged her attention.

  “You must have similar memories.”

  His gray eyes darkened to the slate of storm clouds and his features hardened to granite. “My parents abandoned me. Then I went from foster home to foster home, each one worse than the one before for the most part. I try not to remember.”

  Wanting to offer comfort, she placed her hand over his as it rested beside the journal. “I’m sorry. I must sound like a spoiled brat with the poor-me-my-mommy-left-me routine. At least I had a loving father.”

  His hand trembled beneath hers for a moment before he slowly withdrew it. Focusing on the book, he said, “I survived thanks to a man who finally gave a damn.”

  Much like she had survived. “We were both lucky to have people who cared for us.”

  Slowly he met her gaze head-on once more. There was a wealth of longing there—dangerous, tempting longing. It started up that offbeat drumming of her heart and ignited a wave of heat deep in her core as she imagined satisfying his longing and hers.

  “A man makes his own luck,” he said and reached up with one hand, ran the back of it along the line of her cheekbone. His action had her leaning toward him, determined to grab her own destiny when a soft footstep registered in the hallway, dragging them apart.

  Her father stood there, dressed in his pajamas even though it was barely ten o’clock. “I just wanted to say good night.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” Bill asked, worry apparent in the tone of his voice.

  “Fine. Just a little tired from all the excitement,” he replied and shuffled over to his daughter. He hugged her and dropped a paternal kiss on her cheek. Glancing over at Bill, he shot him a fatherly glare and said, “Don’t keep her up too late.”

  “No, sir, I won’t,” he replied respectfully. As Gonzalo walked back to his room and closed the door, Bill couldn’t help but wonder how a woman as seemingly adventurous as Miranda could have married a man like Gonzalo Vasquez.

  “He wasn’t always so bookish,” Deanna said defensively.

  He met her gaze. “Am I that obvious?”

  She shrugged. “I could tell from the look on your face. I suppose other people felt the same way. I’ve heard it more than once from papi’s friends that they never understood how he and Miranda had gotten together, but…”

  Bill waited for her and when she didn’t finish he asked, “But what?”

  A distant look was accompanied by another uncertain shrug. “They used to laugh and kiss. Have so much fun. I remember going on a research trip with them. I was maybe seven and being with them I felt so alive.”

  And when Miranda had left that sense of life had left both of them, he thought, but kept to himself. It was enough that Deanna was beginning to acknowledge that not everything connected to her mother had been bad. That would certainly help both of them during the course of this mission.

  But first they had to have more information and so he pushed her back toward the journals. “Can you decipher them? Find out what they say and if it’s pertinent to the investigation?”

  Deanna shifted the one journal before her and examined the first few pages. “I’m a little rusty, but I think I can make sense of it. The code wasn’t all that hard. Just a simple transposition of letters and numbers.”

  “I’ll get you a paper and pen if that will help,” he said and at her nod, he went to a nearby desk, grabbed a pad and pencil and returned to the table.

  She thanked him and then wrote down the letters of the alphabet and zero through nine on the pad. Hesitating, she then wrote two garbled words along the top of the paper.

  “What’s that?” he asked, running his finger along the pad and leaning close to her, his arm brushing hers as he did so.

  “Our names. I remember how to write our names with the encryption. I should be able to backtrack from there.”

  She quickly filled in the coded letters in her name against the words she copied from the journal onto the p
ad. Then using the first few pages, the two of them worked at breaking the rest of the cipher. While they did, it became apparent that some of the transpositions roused memories in Deanna. The zero stood for R because their doorman had been named Richard and his head had been oval shaped. The G in her father’s name had become P for papi, the Spanish endearment.

  Little by little, decrypting the letters revealed word after word on the pages and recollection after recollection in Deanna. In less than an hour, she was already capable of reading through the pages and translating her mother’s journal. As she worked, she took occasional notes, but very few.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” he said and she didn’t argue since it seemed that contrary to their promise to her father, it might be a late night if they were going to make satisfactory progress on the one journal.

  He measured out the coffee and water and kept an eye on Deanna. She flipped through some pages at amazing speeds, but then slowed for others, making him wonder about their contents. He stayed at the counter in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew. Wanting to give her some emotional space in addition to physical distance for himself.

  He had never revealed his past to anyone willingly. He was surprised that he had opened up to her that easily but then again, they were similar in some ways. Both wounded. Both tentative to trust in others because of those injuries.

  When the coffee machine had almost finished brewing, he asked, “How do you like it?”

  She looked up from the journal and for a moment he thought he detected the glint of tears and possibly a small sniffle before she answered him. “Light and sweet.”

  Her voice was a little husky. From emotion? it occurred to him and he wondered what was in the journal that was causing such a response.

  Prepping both coffees with half-and-half and a few spoonfuls of sugar for energy, he returned with the mugs to the table and sat beside her. There was no denying the sheen of tears in her eyes, but there was pleading there as well.

  Don’t ask me yet, her gaze begged and he honored that unspoken request. He placed her mug within easy reach, but far enough away to avoid immediate spill damage to the two journals. Sitting beside her on the sofa once again, he motioned to the second journal and asked, “Can I help?”

  Deanna shot a tentative look at the journal, then pushed the translation for the code in his direction, clearly grateful for his offer of assistance. “Sure, take this. I’ve got it memorized. Maybe we’ll find what we’re looking for faster.”

  “Thanks,” he said with a polite incline of his head and grabbed the journal. Certain that some distance between them now was a good thing so she could deal with all those feelings rising up as she read the journal, he picked up the piece of paper, tucked it against the larger journal and then headed across the space to the kitchen table with his mug. After scrounging around for another pad and pen, he sat down.

  They had only looked at the first few pages of the journal before and like its more petite companion, the code had been in use. Due to its size, Deanna had tackled the first few pages of the smaller journal first and determined that it contained her mother’s research notes. Because of that, they had set the larger one to the side and maybe that was a good thing, he thought. He flipped through more of the pages and realized even without the code that the purpose of the journal had nothing to do with the research of any kind.

  This diary was clearly a scrapbook dedicated to all things Deanna. From the very first baby photos and wispy clips of chestnut-colored hair secured on the page, the pictures, articles and other mementos secured in the journal told the life of the woman sitting across the room.

  Using the key on the paper, he decoded the first few paragraphs at the beginning of the scrapbook, but when he recognized that it was a letter from mother to daughter, he stopped, unwilling to violate Deanna’s privacy. And yet something pulled him back to the photos. He continued flipping through the papers, intrigued by the various changes in Deanna as she grew up. Painfully aware of just when her mother had left her. Eyes that had once been laughing in the pictures grew shuttered and were accompanied by a lifeless flat line of a smile.

  The journal continued to the present day, stopping with an article from just several weeks earlier about Deanna’s lecture at a well-known gathering of academics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  Closing the book, he wondered at what the various encrypted entries said on each page, but refrained from deciphering them. He suspected that much like the missive at the beginning, they were likely private comments intended solely for Deanna.

  Deanna, he thought and stared across the room. She had picked up her feet and was reclining across the sofa cushions, the diary in one hand while she took occasional notes with the other. When she sensed his interest, she said, “Done already?”

  “Just taking a break,” he lied, not wanting to allow the emotions the larger journal would evoke to interfere with what had to be done. “How about you?”

  “Cheated and skipped to the end. Not many exact details on the location of the tomb, but lots of other clues and hints that I guess Miranda thought I could understand,” she admitted, but then picked up the pad. “Got a name for you, though. Hector Lopez. Apparently Miranda consulted with him about the Aztec Sun Stone.”

  She rose from the couch and approached, journal and notes in hand. Her curvy body elegant in movement. Her eyes alive with intelligence and something else—excitement.

  “You think your mother was onto something?”

  She dipped her head to the side and placed the book on the dining table. She sat in the chair beside him, but angled it so that she was facing him. “Her notes so far are cryptic, but meticulous if that makes sense. She’s done her homework on Montezuma, his last moments as ruler and the Aztec Sun Stone.”

  “What is the Sun Stone?” he asked and Deanna flipped open the research journal to a page where a photograph of the relic had been tacked onto the sheet of paper.

  “This is it. The stone was discovered in 1790 and has become the symbol for Mexico, but more than that, it has great importance in telling the story of the Aztec people.”

  She ran her finger along the photo and continued with her explanation, gesturing to the various spots on the Sun Stone in the photo. “These glyphs all along the stone function not only as a calendar, but as a history of what the Aztecs describe as their first four kingdoms.”

  “But there were more than four rulers, weren’t there?” he questioned, wanting to understand if the Sun Stone had any relevance to Montezuma and their investigation.

  “The kingdoms refer more to eras in Aztec history rather than the reigns of particular rulers. The Aztecs marked the end of those eras by what destroyed them. Jaguars, flood, hurricanes and fire.”

  Bill considered what little he knew about Mexican history and wondered aloud, “So where do Cortez and the conquistadors fit into the kingdoms?”

  Deanna smiled, closed the book and leaned back in her chair. “Some historians believe that the Aztecs thought there were a number of omens that had been fulfilled with the coming of the Spaniards. Because of those omens, the Aztecs feared it meant an end was near to the fifth kingdom in which they were living.”

  “The fifth kingdom? And you’re saying the Sun Stone may have had something to do with it?”

  Deanna popped up in the chair and laid her hand over the smaller journal. “I’m saying that Miranda believes there is some kind of connection between Montezuma, the stone and his tomb. It’s why she went to Lopez for help interpreting some of the glyphs on the relic.”

  “I’ll send his name on to my team so we can find out more about him.” He shifted his chair a bit until his knees almost brushed hers. Leaning forward, he said, “The other journal. It has nothing to do with your mother’s research.”

  She jerked back a bit and seemed surprised. “Really? It was so packed with stuff that I assumed it was important notes and papers.”

  Placing his hand over the smaller research
journal, he pushed it away and moved the other larger one closer to Deanna. “It is important to her. Very important.”

  She turned away from him slightly and opened the book to the first page. Her hand trembled as she ran her fingers over the words there. She ducked her head down, making it difficult for him to gauge what was going on with her. Not even her breathing provided a clue, except possibly that she was controlling her every action since each inhale/exhale seemed measured. Way too regular.

  Her actions remained guarded until she reached the end of the page and laid her hand on the surface of the table. She continued staring down at the paper, pressing her fingers down onto the tabletop as if to stabilize herself.

  Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke and rough with emotion. “Did you read this?”

  “Only the first couple of sentences. I realized it was personal and stopped, although I did look through some of the pictures.” Because he thought it would help her move forward, he shifted so that he could more easily reach the journal and carefully flipped the pages until he came to one of his favorite photos.

  “You seemed all excited about this Christmas gift,” he said and motioned to a series of pictures taken nearly two decades earlier during the holidays. In the photographs, a gap-toothed Deanna was busy ripping bright red-and-green paper off a nearly foot-high metal box.

  “It was a chemistry set that I had wanted when I went through my mad scientist phase. I spent my entire Christmas vacation making snow in test tubes and awful smelly things,” she replied in a choked whisper, but without his prompting, she began to flip through the pages. Every now and then she would pause, relate another story about a family adventure to him.

  A trip to Colonial Williamsburg where she had been chosen to be part of an irate mob rebelling against taxation without representation.

  Tromping up the Statue of Liberty to share the breathtaking views from the crown.

  At the last entry, she paused and ran her hand over her mother’s neat writing beneath the article. “She says she’s proud of me. Of the woman I’ve become.”