12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals)

by Killian McRae

  Shep sighed heavily. Even if there had been the odd artifact he acquired through less than legal channels, he wasn’t really interested in becoming an active accomplice in an international crime. He’d heard of more than one sad-ending tale of researchers getting mixed up in the hijinks of “old friends.” Shep’s ability to hold his head high among his colleagues proved enough of a challenge.

  “Hector, I appreciate your confidence in me, but this really isn’t—”

  “Ask me what we found,” Hector interjected.

  Jagged fragments pieced together in Shep’s booze-hazed mind. Hector Gonzalez’s expertise lay in Mesoamerican cultures. Why would he need the help of an Egyptologist?

  “Okay, fine. What?”

  “A statuette of Isis.”

  The professor slicked his hand down his oily face. “Those are a dime a dozen, Hector. The Egyptians mass produced them for use in every two-bit temple from the Sahara to the sea.”

  “That may be true,” Hector agreed, “but how one came to be buried in Mexico a thousand years ago … The Egyptians didn’t have any temples that far from Alexandria.”

  Sheppard took a gulp of air as his heart raced. “You’ve got something wrong, then, or someone’s screwing with you. That’s impossible.”

  “And yet, I’m holding it in my hands at this very moment.”

  Implausible images filled Shep’s mind; the dead eyes of an alabaster face stared up at him as the pad of his thumb ran over its cheek, clearing away the grime of centuries. Like a child recalling the taste of his mother’s favorite home-cooked meal, he relished the recollection of working in the field, of unearthing remnants of a fallen civilization. He hadn’t done any field work since Christine’s passing, and it was getting harder and harder to deny the lust he felt for it.

  As though the Mexican on the other end of the phone could sense his resolve breaking, Hector heightened his pitch. “And there’s something else. I haven’t told this to anyone, Shep, so I’m trusting you to keep it confidential. I was even ready to chalk it up to coincidental imagery. There’s been more than one Olmec carving I’ve found that resembles something from Egypt, but this isn’t Olmec.”

  “Hieroglyphs?” Shep asked instinctively.

  Hector clicked his tongue. “Of course there are some of those around the base, but on the bottom, it’s been vandalized, crude scrapes spelling out Isis Nea. I’m not a Latin expert, but even I can understand that. It means—”

  “New Isis,” Shep inserted, feeling his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. Could it really be? After eluding him for so long, was his muse tempting him to find her in, of all places, Mexico? “I’ll be on the first flight in the morning.”

  -Ψ-

  Socks, underwear, aftershave, Levi’s, toothbrush, passport abused beyond recognition. A haphazard pile took shape in the suitcase lying open on his bed. Would he need a coat? It was early winter in Boston, and old Jack Frost hadn’t waited to stretch his arms. It was easily hovering around twenty outside, but he was on his way to the rain forests.

  Shep glanced down at his wrist. It was already five-thirty in the morning, and the taxi had been arranged for six. With no time to ponder, Shep tossed the leather jacket over the other random objects collected from the smash-and-grab through his drawers and closet. Almost as if from a scene in an old Marx Brothers’ film, he heaved his largest carry-on bag to the floor, sat on it, and slid his hands over the edges as he forced the contents into submission. A sizable suitcase at the back of his closet held what Christine had packed for her last trip abroad, but he still couldn’t bring himself to unpack it. This one would have to do. He hadn’t known metal could groan, but groan the zipper did.

  Each stair offered up a thud as the wheels of his bag whacked against them. Setting it by the door, Shep wandered into the kitchen. A swig of cranberry juice straight from the jug turned his stomach and awakened his senses. As he closed the refrigerator door, he winced. Not from pain, but from shock. From the fridge, the most loving, tender pair of hazel eyes he had ever seen danced before him.

  Christine’s photo was all over the townhouse, but that didn’t mean he looked at her anymore. Shame wouldn’t allow it. If he had managed to move a little quicker, or had not looked through her bag for the missing jade-colored pastel, he could have gotten to her in time. Since her death, what had he done to honor her memory? Found the evidence to show his theory right, the theory she died trying to prove? No, he hadn’t even tried to re-excavate the site where she died after the authorities pulled her body from the sands.

  Maybe this was his chance. If what Hector claimed was true, Mexico could finally give him the closure he needed and her memory deserved. And maybe, just maybe, he’d find a way to move on.

  With a deep sigh, Shep’s gaze moved to the countertop where the remnants of the answering machine mocked him. Well, if he had any hope of moving on, best to get on with it. He’d bought a replacement machine months ago, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull away the collection of small bits left from the other. Even if it didn’t work, Christine had touched it.

  So what? She touched the coffee pot too, but that hadn’t kept him from buying a new Krupp’s when it had broken. Right, time to move on.

  Shep had just finished setting the time on the new machine when his doorbell rang. He looked at his watch again. 6:03.

  Switching the answering function on, he made his way to the door, grunted as he yanked his bag to his side, and locked up. And, of course, that was when the phone rang. Shep’s shoulders fell as he slowly let out a long breath and glanced over his shoulder at the cabby.

  “I can wait if you want,” the driver offered in a thick Boston accent, “but meter’s running.”

  Shep pressed his ear to the glass, trying to hear the caller’s message, if any. It came across garbled.

  “Mr. Smyth ... Katherine ... calling from ... at the request of ... to invite you ...”

  Damned telemarketers.

  He shook his head as a slightly amused smile crossed his face. “My first answering machine in three years, and somehow they know exactly when to call.”

  Chapter 2

  The first direct flight from Boston to Mexico City departed at 8:23 a.m. From there, he would transfer to a smaller plane to Veracruz. The dig site lay ten kilometers southwest of San Lorenzo.

  This wild goose chase likely amounted to career suicide, but he’d had a razor targeting that vein for quite some time. Shep knew that with striking clarity despite his in-flight hangover. What did it matter? Few held him as a serious academic anymore. Once, he had boasted a reputation of worth. After finishing his Ph.D. at Cambridge a decade earlier, he had risen to the top of his field and gotten there pretty damned fast. Harvard had snatched him away from a two-year stay with Imperial College. By the time he was thirty, Sheppard was a tenure-track professor at one of the world’s most prominent universities and claimed digs on three continents. Within a few years, he had met, fallen in love with, and wed one of his junior research associates, Christine Cezanne. By thirty-four, his name was popping up on the occasional History Channel or PBS special, right next to good old Zahi Hawass himself. And yet, he was always as a fill-in-the-blanks guy, always a secondary opinion. Never the big name on the marquee.

  When the email from Ethiopia had arrived, the discovery of the papyrus fragment found in the pages of an eight-hundred-year-old bible came as a godsend. Every great archeologist needed a discovery that rocked man’s conceptions about the past to earn his own place in history. Howard Carter had King Tut’s tomb, and Sheppard Smyth would have Cleopatra’s murder. He probably knew more about the ill-fated queen than he did about many of his own relatives. And if there was one thing he knew about Cleo, it was how self-centered and self-aggrandizing she was. She had aligned with two titans of Rome to secure her power, and brazenly took up residence in the hear
t of Rome itself during Caesar’s time. She had her own brother killed just to keep the royal house’s power solidified. To Shep, she just didn’t seem the suicidal type, even if the practice in her time was viewed as an honorable death. She was murdered; it was the only plausible explanation. He only had to find out by whom and why to claim his place in history. Most of his colleagues thought he was crazy, the accusations of insanity from his unorthodox hypothesis tarnishing the bright star he had become.

  Christine had stood firmly at his side.

  Since her death, Shep had devoted all of his efforts to research … as long as it didn’t require going back to Egypt or remaining sober for too long. Devoted study to observing the effects of Jameson hadn’t resulted in any greater clarity, and the university was demanding traditional research and credible results. He’d refused, declaring that if he gave up the hunt for Cleo’s killer, Christine would have died in vain. He needed to do it, he argued, for both of them. Unspoken, however, was a sense that he owed Cleo, as well.

  The plane touched down in Veracruz as the sun pitched a deep angle against the horizon. Hector couldn’t leave the dig site, he had said, but would send his assistant, Vick, to retrieve Shep from the airport. He waited by the baggage claim, a smoky smorgasbord of aging tourists, a wide spectrum of the local specimens, and the occasional clergyman. After forty-five minutes, he felt the eyes of the policia in the terminal fall upon him. Doubts festered in Vick’s absence, and he began to wonder if the phone call hadn’t been a lucid, alcohol-fueled dream. He schlepped over to the information desk to ask in his broken Spanish for hotel information, when he heard a woman’s voice across the way.

  “Dr. Smyth?”

  He turned, assuming that someone had recognized him from TV. It happened. Or, at least, it used to. Shep was reaching into his pocket for the ever-ready pen when he saw her.

  Olive skin framed perfectly over a delicate twist of hip. With a knee-length white skirt, sleeveless top, and a wide-brimmed hat topping off the ensemble, the beauty looked ready to stroll the Polo Fields. No make-up, yet her cheek bones appeared to shimmer and her lips were an entrancing pale pink. Her straight hair fell in alternating honey brown and black over her shoulders, down half the length of her back.

  The corner of her mouth rose when a speechless Shep finally succeeded in smiling.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Professor.” He noted the mismatch between her accent—distinctly upper crust British—and her features, which suggested Hispanic or Middle Eastern ancestry.

  “I’m sorry, do I ...” He couldn’t quite place her, though somehow he felt the oddest sense of familiarity. “Do I know you?”

  “I believe you’re expecting me. I’m Dr. Gonzalez’s assistant, Victoria Kent.”

  “You’re Vick Kent?” Praise be to unisex names. He tried to blink away the surprise as she nodded. “Yes, I’m Doctor … um, Professor Smyth. Um, Shep.”

  Shep offered his hand and shuddered as Victoria accepted it. Had it really been so long since he’d touched a woman that the sensation was so foreign and startling?

  “A pleasure to finally meet you, Shep.”

  She had a glimmer in her eye that seemed out of place, matched by an oddly bubbly smile. If he didn’t know better, he would say she was star-struck. Or maybe smitten? He’d had more than a few female students in his day wanting to earn some credit through “extracurricular” activities, but it’d been a while since he’d acknowledged that type of interest. All of a sudden, Shep found himself standing a little straighter.

  Victoria wrapped her hand around his bulging roller bag’s handle. “I’m afraid it’s quite a drive yet. Not so much long as it is bumpy, though. The sooner I get you to camp, the sooner I can get you into bed.”

  “Sorry, what?” He wondered if he was hearing things. Part of him hoped he wasn’t.

  She passed him a crooked expression. “You’ll forgive my presumptuous nature, but you look like you’ve been run ragged. We might not have five-star accommodations at camp, but I’m willing to bet you could do with a hot shower and a comfortable bed. We can provide you that much at least.”

  They both wheeled around when they heard the screaming. A scrubby man in dirty, brown clothes across the room held a sign in front of him covered in sloppily painted letters. The officers present obviously didn’t care for his presence as they tried to coax him out. With a threatening glare, the man stood his ground; yelling, screaming, and trying to make eye contact with whomever would meet his gaze. At this moment, it was Shep. Across the expanse of the room, the man mouthed something, his eyes pleading for Shep’s understanding. Shep felt the temptation to move closer, hear him out, but la policia had had enough. They belted the man in the stomach, forcing him to double over as another officer handcuffed him from behind.

  “We should go.” Victoria’s voice brought him out of his gawking.

  He couldn’t help that his closeted inner anthropologist’s curiosity was piqued. “What do you suppose that was all about? And what was he saying? Didn’t sound like any kind of Spanish I’ve ever heard.”

  “That’s because he was speaking Yucatec.”

  Damn. “I don’t suppose you speak Mayan?”

  “‘Beware the end of the world,’” she returned without pause as she turned from the scene. “Some of the people in these parts of Mexico are still close to their traditions. This whole Mayan calendar thing has brought the worst ones out of the woodwork. They have this crazy superstition about the twelfth of December.”

  Of course, now he remembered. It was this decade’s Y2K, a passing fad that gave cable TV something to hype on slow news days, between the newest fad diet and the latest gossip on the Kardashians.

  Which meant it was total bunk.

  Victoria continued, “I’m afraid there are some superstitious types who believe that mumbo jumbo around here. This way, Shep. We should try to get back to camp before the sun goes down and the rain starts.”

  Victoria—Vick—led him to a rugged, mud-strewn 4x4 in the small parking lot outside the terminal. Without wincing at all from the strain, the gently-curved, probable runway model took his bag and tossed it effortlessly into the back of the Jeep. She grinned when she caught the dumbstruck look on Shep’s face.

  “Oh, don’t let these little ladies fool you.” Victoria tapped a hand to the bicep of her opposite arm. “The work at digs bulk a girl up. I’m just lucky to have some genetics in my favor that keep me from going all Red Sonja.”

  Shep laughed despite himself. “Red Sonja? You’re a little young to have seen anything with Brigitte Nielsen in it, aren’t you?”

  Leaning over, Victoria pulled off her high-heeled shoes and tossed them into the back bed, next to his bag. She glanced at him wryly as she slipped her feet into a pair of stained white socks and dusty, worn boots.

  “How old do you think I am?”

  He shrugged. He always hated when women asked that question. Christine had thought it was an unfair position to put a man in. Guess too high, and the woman would be insulted. Guess too low, and she would think you were patronizing her.

  He surveyed Victoria’s face. Her smooth, silken skin held no laugh lines. Her body certainly looked every bit a woman’s, and there was the fact that she was the assistant to a prominent archaeologist. She might be an advanced graduate student or a postdoc, which meant ...

  “Twenty-six?”

  She gave a quick nod. “Sounds about right.”

  When Victoria pivoted the top half of her body and started pulling down the zipper of her skirt where it clung suggestively to her hip, shock made Shep’s eyes go wide and instinct reminded him he was a man. He couldn’t help but gawk. Luckily, she misinterpreted the animal reaction as nothing more than surprise.

  “Sorry, Shep, didn’t mean to take you off guard. It’s just—”

 
The flaps of fabric fell left and right as she quickly shimmied the skirt down over her hips and past her ankles. Underneath, rolled up khakis had been secured with safety pins. Victoria opened the hinges and rolled the pants down, the material covering her legs to mid-calf. She followed suit by taking off her refined white top to reveal a somewhat dirt-touched sleeveless undershirt beneath. The discarded clothing fit into a small duffle bag and it too was laid on the floor of the Jeep’s storage area.

  “I had a meeting that ran late in town before I came to the airport and field attire was hardly appropriate. I guess I forget that it’s not customary to undress oneself in plain view while in public.”

  While her accent suggested Victoria came from a high pedigree, it was obvious she’d adapted to the practicality of her chosen profession.

  “It’s no problem, I just didn’t want anyone thinking they were seeing anything they shouldn’t.” Shep cleared his throat, disappointed by an echo of ... something. Concern? Lust? It had been too long since he acknowledged anything other than self-pity or sorrow to know for certain.

  As they drove away from the Veracruz Airport, the whipping of the wind past their ears made conversation impossible. Shep was anxious for an opportunity to examine Hector’s discovery. He wondered if there had been any developments since the phone call less than twenty-four hours ago. When at last they reached more rural roads where the trees became as thick as the humid air, he didn’t hesitate to ask.

  “Tell me, Miss Kent, where did Hector discover you?”

  “You make it sound like I’m some sort of artifact that he dug up.” She smiled, though she kept her eyes on the road. “Sadly, I’m not at liberty to say.”