“Yes, this I know.”
“I was joking. Believe me, I had no intention of getting anywhere near a pillow with Felipe Revez. Why do you think I dove overboard?”
“To save your virginity?”
“Bingo.”
He gave me a sideways look and laughed.
Chapter 17
A Day Trip to Bonampak B
The shrill light of dawn found us dressed for a safari and wired for sound. Or at least, Cruz was wired for sound. He was also carrying a powerful GPS transponder unit that pretended to be a PDA.
After hearing my description of what had happened on Felipe’s boat, Cruz had decided it wasn’t safe for me to wear anything electronic. There was no telling when Revez would decide to get amorous, even with Cruz around.
In fact, I had the distinct impression that stealing nibbles from under the other tomcat’s nose was a game Felipe Revez enjoyed. He had, in fact, left a noticeable nibble on my shoulder, possibly in the hope that Cruz would see it. If he had seen it, he neglected to mention it to me.
“By the way, just so we keep our stories straight,” I told Cruz as we took the elevator up to Revez’s penthouse for breakfast, “Revez thinks good old Geoff arranged for our shared suite and that he hasn’t a clue about our affair.”
“Ah, so we are having an affair.”
“I hinted at it.”
“And how are we keeping this affair secret from your paranoid fiancé?”
“He thinks you’re gay.”
His lips twitched. “Oh, indeed. What else should I know about myself?”
“I sort of hinted that I think you don’t like me very much but just tolerate me because Geoff pays you so well. And Revez is sure the ‘friction’ he feels between us is competitiveness. He came up with that all by himself.”
“Did he really?” Cruz kept his eyes on the elevator’s digital floor readout. “Is that what you think it is?”
“Makes sense.”
“If you say so.”
The doors slid open with a quiet shush and we stepped off onto the terra-cotta tiles leading to the front doors of the penthouse.
“You don’t think that’s it?” I asked. “The friction?”
Cruz glanced toward the doors, which were opening. “I think you still don’t trust me.”
Felipe was now standing in the doorway and I was certain he’d heard Cruz’s enigmatic parting shot. That, and the slight frisson between us as we stepped over his threshold was the perfect sauce for Felipe’s interest in Marianna. If that was not glee in his eyes, I don’t know what it was.
Breakfast was unenlightening. Felipe quickly got back on a more amiable footing with Cruz, trotting out some artifacts for his professional opinion. They had come from Bonampak B, of course, and they were stunning.
“I hope,” Cruz said, fingering the gleaming lip of a horn-shaped drinking cup, “you are leaving something for my employer to discover.”
“Trust me, Cruz. This is nothing compared to the wealth that is still there. It is a storehouse, my friend. Not a static cache created for a king’s death, but a living treasure trove he surely must have added to in life.”
“I thought you said there was a tomb—tunnels,” I interjected.
“It was a tomb. At least it was built to be a tomb. But, at some point, it was converted to a treasure house. I am eager to see if Mr. Gutierrez agrees with this assessment.”
He wasn’t kidding about being eager. We took our coffee on the nifty little jet he’d chartered out of Cancún. Palenque is roughly four hundred miles from Cancún, but this was, not surprisingly, the easy leg of the trip.
There was another man on the jet with us—a stranger. Dressed in a black leather jacket and chinos, he sat in the rear of the cabin and ignored us pretty much to the same extent that Revez ignored him. I took him as a bodyguard and assumed he was armed, as were we. I’d left my Taurus behind, but had tucked a dainty Smith & Wesson .22 that Cruz had lent me into my tiny (and virtually useless) Michael Kors “backpack.”
Not that I intended to indulge in any shootouts.
We set down at Palenque Airport at about 10:25 A.M. and were in the air again in Revez’s private helicopter less than an hour later. It was a fairly new R44 Raven four-seater. I’d somehow expected a flashy color, knowing Revez’s taste in décor, but his copter was a bilious shade somewhere between green and brown.
Its presence also effectively solved the mystery of the extra passenger on the jet. He may have been a bodyguard, but he was most definitely a helicopter pilot. He gave Cruz and me headsets and some brusque instructions on how to use them to communicate over the noise of the rotors, then he powered up and headed southwest.
I don’t think Revez said more than two words to the guy, but he and Cruz chatted away in Spanish about everything from archeology to baseball. I half-dozed against Cruz’s shoulder, occasionally perking up when they hit on a point of interest.
Revez, it turned out, was somewhat of a baseball aficionado, who knew a great deal about Fidel Castro’s abortive attempt to break into the American major leagues. I dozed off contemplating how different history might have been had he become a starter for the Cincinnati Reds instead of a revolutionary.
The two men had seemingly drawn a truce; there was no evidence of yesterday’s acrimony. If Revez thought Cruz’s amiability was odd, he sure didn’t show it. I’ve noticed that before about guys. They seem to have an unparalleled ability to compartmentalize things like jealousy, loyalty, and whatnot for the sake of mutual goals.
It was midday when we touched down again, this time in the middle of a steaming jungle. I knew we had to be somewhere near Bonampak, but I sure couldn’t see it from ground level. I thought we were in the middle of a trackless waste until I saw the camouflage netting strung between the trees to one side of the “landing pad” (which was little more than a cleared spot in the surrounding greenery), and realized this was a regular stop on someone’s itinerary. The pilot, who was sitting on the ground in the lee of his copter smoking a cigarette, certainly seemed to be well acquainted with it.
“How far from Bonampak are we?” Cruz asked, looking around.
“About ten miles from the main site. Far enough from the secondary site to need a vehicle.” He made a broad gesture at the camouflage wrap and I realized that it was a makeshift garage beneath which hunkered a perfectly hideous Humvee in full military drab.
And that was when he got out the blindfolds.
I kid you not.
We submitted, but I could tell by the way his jaw muscles tightened up that Cruz was less than thrilled with the situation. I have to admit, when confronted with this new wrinkle, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if there was the slightest chance Revez had made us as being something other than what we pretended to be. Dr. Cruz Veras was not invisible in the Mexican archaeology community, and though Cruz Gutierrez seemed an entirely different person, it was conceivable that Revez might have recognized him. Or that the NPS cyber team had left a chink in our armor, or . . .
I shut the voice o’ doom down. The NPS team was professional. They knew their jobs. And I had not imagined that Felipe Revez found me—or rather, Marianna Esposito—very attractive. Would he have reacted that way (and most sincerely, I could tell) if he thought I was a spy?
This train of thought did not completely shield me from prickles of vulnerability or unwanted images of Rose’s car diving into the dunes or Ted Bridges’s lifeless body stretched out on the floor of his pirate lair. We were in the middle of the jungle where screams would not be heard any better than they would in space. And although Cruz’s GPS gizmo was going to get the whole ride down on digital media, that did nothing to help us if we were, say, yanked from the car and shot.
Several truly comforting thoughts intruded on my five seconds of panic at the sight of the blindfolds. First, if Felipe Revez suspected we were not who we pretended to be, he could have no idea what sort of backup we had. For all he knew, there were U.S. government ninjas all around us,
ready to pounce at the first sign of betrayal. I fervently hoped that might militate against him deciding to torture the truth out of us, if he was so inclined. Second, there were two of us and one of him, and at least one of us was trained in martial arts. Third, there were Cruz’s Glock and my S&W.
So instead of tumbling down the rabbit hole into a state of panic that neither Marianna nor Gina would ever give in to, I spent part of the interminable and damned uncomfortable drive mentally rehearsing my most damaging kung fu moves—the ones my sensei objected to as being “Tiger” moves unworthy of a student of the Hung Gar school. This was, potentially, not the time for niceties or doctrinal purity. I had practiced those moves blindfolded in the dojo. I could do them blindfolded in a jungle just as well, I figured.
Having used part of the interminable drive coming up with different ways to fend off attackers, I spent the rest of the trip trying to make nice with the Hummer’s autovoi—which is my personal term for its mechanical spirit.
Here’s the theory: according to Russian lore each home has a domovoi—a house spirit. These guys live behind stoves or in attics and are generally charged with taking care of the homestead and ensuring domestic tranquility. They moan and groan when there’s trouble on the horizon, or pull your hair to warn of potential violence. A really top-notch domovoi will finish chores left undone by absentminded teenagers, spouses, or roommates. A disgruntled one can severely jink up your household: books leap from shelves; keys and glasses go missing; things get put away in the wrong place; tasks you thought you’d completed come mysteriously to naught, as if someone had just discovered your personal Undo key. To keep this from happening, you’re supposed to feed the domovoi every night. Mom always does and always has as far back as I can remember. And every night, something ate the food. I’m not sure I want to know what that something actually was.
My theory, such as it is, is that if houses have domovoi, then cars must have autovoi. And I suppose, if I’m to be consistent and logical in this irrational philosophizing, then Boris the Harley must have some sort of spirit as well. I just haven’t figured out what to call it yet. Motovoi? Harleyvoi?
Whatever. As long as it’s willing to answer to “Boris” and doesn’t mind the occasional anointing with holy water, all is well.
I did this exercise, you understand, to keep my mind busy while I was being bounced all over Chiapas with a safety harness biting into my shoulders, and my knees being whacked against the Humvee’s inadequately padded door frame. I turned a deaf inner ear to my reptilian hindbrain, which gibbered that the jig was up and we were going to have to fight our way out of the jungle. At least, I assumed that Cruz was versed in hand-to-hand combat and wouldn’t be useless after he’d emptied his magazine.
Right about the time I had made peace with the Humvoi, we slowed to a stop. I slowed my breathing as well, the better to listen to the sounds around me. My hands were ready to jab, block, or chop, but I flattered myself that it didn’t show. I tried to cover any tension in my face with a mask of Marianna-esque annoyance as I heard car doors open. A moment later, my blindfold was removed and I opened my eyes to see—surprise!—a jungle. And so far nothing else, though all of my senses were on high alert for sudden movement or unexpected sound.
I shot Revez a baleful glance. “You promised there wouldn’t be any backpacking.”
“A promise I intend to keep. We have arrived at our destination.”
He held his hand out to me. I took it, letting him help me out of the Hummer.
“I don’t see anything.”
Cruz stood at the front of the vehicle with his hands in his pockets, watching Revez like your neighbor’s rottweiler watches your cat. There was something almost feral in his dark eyes, as if the jungle and the journey had worn his veneer of civilization thin.
“That’s because you are not a trained archaeologist, corazon.” He pointed to his left at a riotously green hillside. “A pyramid, if I am not mistaken.”
“I’m impressed,” said Revez, letting his hand linger at the small of my back. “It is a pyramid. A temple with a tomb, as it happens. Come.” He let go of my hand and led the way toward the mound of greenery.
It really was a pyramid, its lines blurred by overgrowth. As we rounded it, I saw other similar shapes nearby—at least two of them set across what might have once been a small plaza, but which was now a wild tangle of foliage.
On the front of the building, the greenery had a peculiarly lumpy look to it. Revez tugged at a bit of shrubbery and an entire section of the screening bushes and vines rolled aside. They were attached to a framework of chicken wire and PVC pipe borne on what looked like Radio Flyer wagon wheels. Behind the screen was the entrance to the temple.
This was not like the nice, neat, landscaped entrances I’d seen at Ek Balam and in photos of Bonampak. This was messy—a dark hole in the hillside choked with roots and littered with fill and crumbled rock. This was a place whose domovoi was on a very long sabbatical.
“We have to go in there?” asked Marianna, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
Crybaby.
Cruz looked down his nose at me and Revez laughed.
“It gets better inside,” he promised. “This is here in the event someone else should prove to be as curious as the fellow who found it.”
He moved ahead of us into the darkness.
Cruz put his hands on my upper arms and steered me into the black void.
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him.
“I wouldn’t want you to fall and break something,” he said, loudly enough for Revez to hear.
Beneath the hill, inside the temple, the damp earth enveloped us in its cool perfume. It’s a fragrance I happen to love. I’m neither claustrophobic nor afraid of the dark, and I absolutely adore caves. I find them comforting. The walls of the passage felt like cool, damp silk; the roots we ducked beneath and around were living stalactites.
Alas, Marianna was less sanguine about these things than I.
“Oh, what was that?” she whined as something crunched beneath her soles. “This isn’t going to be like one of those horrid adventure movies, is it?”
Light flared. I shoved aside a tangle of roots and stood fully upright in a long, partially cleared corridor illuminated by a battery-powered lamp set atop what looked like an old steamer trunk. The passage seemed to run for yards beneath the ersatz hill, interrupted at intervals by what I assumed were doorways. The chamber in which we stood was some sort of vestibule—wider than the corridor beyond. Its walls were covered with paintings half-obscured by dirt.
Even through the filth I could see that the colors were intact.
I turned to Revez. “You haven’t cleared these off?”
“As I mentioned earlier, if anyone finds this place, we don’t want them to realize the extent of our presence immediately. In fact, we’ve planted some items about to suggest the attentions of merely curious locals, or perhaps secretive archaeology students.”
“To what purpose?” asked Cruz.
“To buy time. While archaeologists or authorities may poke about out here, trying to determine the extent of our digging—” He gestured down the corridor. “—we can continue to remove artifacts from the heart of the cache.”
His smug expression said, I’m too sneaky for my shirt. Too crafty for my pants. So cunning it hurts.
He enjoyed our obvious puzzlement for a moment, then moved to place his hand on a slab of rock that had fallen from the ceiling to stand, cockeyed, against the wall to our right.
“Oh, don’t tell me,” I said. “You’ve got a secret doorway into the mountain.”
He grinned at me and produced what looked like a walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket. “Abierto sesamó,” he said, and pressed a button on the keypad.
There was a loud, metallic thunk, and the top of the slab began to lower toward us accompanied by the clatter of chain through gears. It was like a drawbridge opening. It stopped when it formed about a forty-five degree angle
with the wall, revealing the mechanism behind it. It was simple, really: chains, pulleys, and an electronically controlled motor mounted on the ceiling of the passage beyond—a glorified garage door opener. Low-tech, but effective.
Revez took my hand and drew me through the V-shaped aperture. Cruz brought up the rear. The corridor in which we stood had been cleared almost completely—as had the walls. And cleared of more than fill. Entire sections of the colorful friezes that had once lined the passage had been carefully excised, leaving neat bare patches that reminded me of boarded-up windows.
“You have done much here,” commented Cruz, laying subtle stress on the word “much.” “Clearly you have found a market for these things.”
“Clearly.”
“Not as lucrative as you would like?”
“I am compelled to share my discoveries with others. And at the pace I can remove objects from the site, there is more demand than supply. Recently, I began to explore . . . alternatives to my current working arrangement.”
“Which is?” Cruz asked.
“I hand over what my people find to my investors.”
“Your people?”
“Diggers, who are blindfolded for the trek out here, just as you were. My experts, of course, and a handful of men who, shall we say, owe me their lives and their loyalty.”
“You’re not afraid one of them might divulge the location?” Cruz asked.
“Certainly, my associates—and my investors—have tried to pry the location out of my men, but, as I said, they know where their loyalties must lie. So, my investors pay me a modest retainer and allow me to keep certain items for myself. Over the last year or so, I began to investigate my own channels for releasing antiquities to the lucrative North American market. I acquired an operative—a talented individual with the ability to move between Mexico and the U.S. at will. I was able to place some pieces and gather enough capital to hire another ‘agent,’ then a third.” He hesitated.
“I’m impressed, Felipe,” I prompted. “And I have to say, I think even Geoff would be impressed with your . . . entrepreneurship. I take it you want to establish a broader conduit.”
The Antiquities Hunter Page 19
