12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals)

by Killian McRae

  Shep cocked his head to the side. “Sworn to secrecy?”

  “Something like that. Our underwriter has us under strict guidelines. No sharing information without clearance, either about the dig or ourselves, until you’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement. Sorry, Shep.” She pointed at the radio of the Jeep, and to a small blinking red light on the FM dial. “Our protocols are fiercely enforced by our beloved head of security.”

  He knew the head of the snake hidden in the basket would reveal itself in time. “Underwriter?”

  “Kronastia,” Victoria returned with a smirk.

  “Shit.” Shep rubbed his weary eyes. “Is he ... um, Kronastia, is he ... here?”

  Victoria pulled an errant strand of hair from her eyes. “That’s why you’re here, to hopefully help us avoid his close, personal attention. Believe you me, no one wants a Russian mobster showing up at their place of business. So far, he hasn’t gotten involved on the ground level.” Shep relaxed into his seat too soon. “If you don’t count all his hired henchmen on site, that is.”

  Chapter 3

  Shep had been to Mexico only once before: in college, spring break, junior year. He didn’t remember much beyond landing at the airport and taking a taxi to the beachside cantina. Still, he was certain he had been less at risk of personal harm and/or death on that trip of drunken debauchery than he was now approaching the mafia-funded dig.

  The paved surface gave way to gravel, and gravel to mud. A viscous goo, which bordered the definitions of liquid and solid, challenged the Jeep’s mobility. The engine groaned as they made their way up a slight pitch. The outline of work tents and several other utilitarian and rugged vehicles parked near an encampment came into view. Even a quarter mile away, he could see the bustling workers running around as though they were practicing a fire drill. The work tents were much smaller than those his teams usually used in Egypt. But this was the jungle, he reminded himself. The crisscross of roots and vegetation made the smaller tents with their diminutive footprints necessary.

  Victoria steered cautiously back down the slope and parked between two thick-trunked trees. As the roar of the engine died away, the red light on the radio dial continued to blink steadily. He wasn’t surprised, then, to hear the low buzz of gears turning, a sound he knew well from multiple visits to secured facilities in Egypt. It was the distinctive whir of a camera lens pivoting and zooming in. Only, where the camera was, he didn’t know.

  “It’s like you expect the Federales to come charging in at any moment,” he said offhandedly.

  Victoria turned and grinned. “It’s not the authorities we’re afraid of, it’s the drug cartels.”

  Shep rolled his eyes. First the Russian mafia, now Los Zetas. If they could arrange for a visit by religious fundamentalist, the trifecta would be complete.

  Just as he was pondering if he should fake a bleeding ulcer and ask to be immediately evacuated to the nearest hospital, a full-bellied chuckle drew his attention.

  “Dios mio, if it isn’t the great Sheppard Smyth!”

  Pulling his body from the seat of the car, using the roll bar for leverage, Shep turned and saw his former classmate’s distinctive beard-bearing visage. Shep grinned, despite his acquired antisocial tendencies and the fact that his fatigue from barely sleeping for thirty-six hours—several of them in a drunken state—was beginning to gain on him. With only a slight twinge of discomfort, he accepted the hug Hector gave.

  “Good flight?” Hector asked as he pulled away and placed his hand on Shep’s shoulder.

  “Good enough to Mexico City. Into Veracruz, though ... I have to admit, I get a little nervous when the pilot has to get out on the tarmac and start the propeller turning by hand.”

  Hector gave him a warm-hearted smile. His manner of speaking still carried over from Cambridge days, sounding more like he had been raised in Stratford-on-Avon than Monterrey. “Still, good of you to come so quickly. And good timing, too. We just got a dispatch from our lab up north that Hurricane Helene has shifted and is heading our way. You wouldn’t have been able to get in if you had waited any longer. We’re trying to secure camp and get upland before she hits.”

  Shep groaned at the thought of the sleep he so desperately needed and now was almost certain to be denied. Behind him, he heard a plop as Victoria pulled his bag from the back bed of the Jeep. She quickly picked it up, along with her own, and stood behind Hector, as though awaiting his leave to follow.

  Hector continued, “Luckily, you got here before we’ve finished securing the main site for the storm.” He leaned in closely as Shep studied Victoria, and whispered teasingly, “Do you want to have a little peek at her?”

  Redness filled his cheeks as he turned quickly from Victoria’s gaze, and tried to play innocent. “Who?”

  “Isis, of course.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “Um, yeah, sure.”

  Shep took in the scene as Hector led him down a mild, well-trodden slope. Little was out of the ordinary. After all, while the landscape might vary, Shep was no stranger to digs. He had been the primary director of five to date, and had served on the crews of countless others all through school. Nothing here was out of place: the scrambling bodies going about to and fro, the makeshift tents, the scattering of the personal belongings of the crew. Even the occasional religious iconography seemed right at home.

  The only thing that really came across as odd was Victoria. It wasn’t that people in his profession were stereotypically unattractive, nor that they were only male. On the contrary, Shep had thought Christine one of the most beautiful women in all of creation. But in this landscape, Victoria’s beauty set against khakis and jungle seemed somehow wrong. He could picture her at ease emerging from the back seat of a stretch limo in a floor-length mink coat and a fine silvery gown.

  Much to his shame, he could also picture her out of one.

  Victoria did not belong here, an archaeological version of “one of these things is not like the other.” Such alluring women were often reluctant to subject themselves to the rigors of a profession requiring constant exposure to the elements and living for days at a time without modern plumbing.

  As she outpaced them, Shep took in the lines of her figure from behind. He would have thought that when she changed out of her original attire—more suited for Venice than Veracruz—it would have muted the attraction. No such luck. As he watched her long, slender legs work over the terrain with his luggage weighing her down to one side, he felt a stirring of something ... corporeal. It puzzled him, made him cognizant of the stupor in which he had lived much of the last few years. After a moment’s pause to admire how the bottom fold of her khakis rubbed the back of her calves as she walked, he dismissed it. Widower or no, he was still a man.

  Victoria pulled ahead of Hector and turned off to the left, up an embankment and toward what looked like a collection of heavy duty tool sheds.

  “Hurricane shelters,” Hector answered without being asked. “We’ve spent all day loading the technical gear and cots in to them. Shouldn’t have to wait it out too long. We’ll only be catching the outer rim of the storm. A couple of hours, tops, and at night, no less.”

  Shep took advantage of the private moment with Hector. “What’s the story there?” He gestured in Victoria’s direction.

  Hector gave a wry smile. “Entices the eye, no? But I assure you, she’s the most knowledgeable and capable assistant I ever had.”

  They reached a sealed door that connected to a small building with a sharply slanted roof. Shep understood it was the covering of a stairway leading into the dig site. What he didn’t understand was why Hector needed to punch in a string of numbers, and have both a fingerprint and retinal scan, before the door opened.

  “She wrote me an email about a month ago,” Hector continued. “Said she had been given an internship from Plaxis Corpora
tion and my project was one of those offered in their schedule. Sent me her résumé. Very impressive. Well-schooled, and apprenticed with a legend.”

  Shep raised an eyebrow. “A legend?” he chuckled softly. “Not many of those any more. Who?”

  Hector opened the door further and ushered Shep inside. He entered without hesitation, then felt all the oxygen exit his lungs when he heard Hector say, somewhat smugly, “Anathea Hermapolous.”

  As though someone had just punched him in the gut, Shep fell back a step. “Anathea Hermapolous?” he gasped. “Impossible. The Anathea Hermapolous?”

  “I talked to her myself to verify it,” Hector reassured.

  Shep felt a twitch in his eyelids. “You talked to Anathea? How? She’s a recluse. She hasn’t communicated with anyone outside her inner circle other than in letters for the last twenty years.”

  Not to mention, she’s ancient, thought Shep, though his gentlemanly upbringing told him such should go unsaid. As the story went, Anathea Hermapolous had been all of ten years of age when she and her father had been invited to visit a friend, Howard Carter, in Egypt. Anathea was the only living person who had witnessed the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. The event had sprouted a fascination with Egypt in her, and by the time WWII rolled around twenty years later, she was already a prominent member of the archaeological community.

  Like countless others, Shep had spent years trying to meet her. After the war, she had gone on to discover several more no-less thrilling, if not as prominent, sites in the Middle East. In 1953, she abruptly stopped her work. Few had had the privilege of speaking to her since, though she occasionally published or agreed to author a preface to a book or special issue journal. As a researcher, she campaigned to reclaim Cleopatra’s good name from an evil legacy bestowed on her by Roman historical propaganda. Shep wondered how Victoria had managed to worm her way into Anathea’s good graces and company, when so many through the years had failed.

  Including Shep, who—in a fit of desperation after Christine’s death—had slept outside the gates of Anathea’s Cairo mansion for three days in a last-ditch attempt to see her. Yeah, didn’t work.

  “I was only able to make contact with her through Plaxis,” Hector added. “Don’t be too jealous. It was a thirty-second conversation, and the line was full of static. Could barely make out a word.”

  That statement brought Shep back to the moment. “Plaxis?”

  Any trace of amusement fled from Hector’s face. “They’re funding our dig.”

  “Really? Because your assistant mentioned in the car something about Dmitri Kronastia.”

  “Same thing. Plaxis is the shell corporation that Kronastia conducts his somewhat legal business under.”

  Shep couldn’t hide the ridicule from his voice. “So it’s true what I heard. You’ve become a tomb raider. Was working in academia so bad, Hector?”

  The Mexican turned on him, pushing his finger into the air. “Easy for you to say. The civilization you study doesn’t share a geographical region with so many drug lords and bandits. My university couldn’t hire security. My research is only possible because I have a bigger gun behind me than the damned cartels. Everyone knows we’re Kronastia’s people, and they know to leave us alone. Kronastia and the puppets at Plaxis don’t actually give a damned if we find artifacts or not, and as long as I follow their protocol I’m at liberty to do most anything I want. Their only requirement is to notify them if we find anything … out of place.” Hector grumbled a laugh. “When I agreed to that, I didn’t think much of it. Now I have to wonder. Anyway, it is over here.”

  Shep nodded and looked to the iridescent light of any number of bulbs strung haphazardly over the path before him. With a deep breath, he started his way down the stairs and into the pit.

  “So if Victoria was offered an internship by Plaxis …” Shep wondered aloud.

  Hector pulled a soiled handkerchief from his back pocket and dotted his head. “I don’t think she’s involved at that level. Plaxis does some legit business. She seemed unaware of Kronastia’s background when I told her. I did tell her, of course. Didn’t want her getting on board with this blindly, but she barely batted an eyelash. Ah, to be young and ignorant of how deep a pile is until you’ve stepped into it.”

  The smell of freshly turned soil told Shep parts of the site were only recently excavated. As he descended the stairs, he found himself jealous of Hector’s work environment with its lack of shifting sands. No doubt the crisscrossing roots of the rainforest above made the ground around them self-supportive. At the bottom of the stairs, with Hector at his back, Shep turned up a make-shift passage, only to come face to face with the canniest Ché Guevara impersonator he had ever seen. The titan eyed him with instant disdain and scowled instead of spoke.

  Hector came around Shep’s side, huffing. “José, por favor!”

  He pushed the guard aside and strode up the passageway. José grumbled. Shep didn’t understand Spanish, but could pick out no entrada with ease. Shep wasn’t allowed to be here by whomever was enforcing Kronastia’s agenda, and Hector had to have known it.

  Affronted, Hector snapped back. El Hulk-o burbled more highly-accented statements and took a cell phone from his pocket as he turned to ascend the stairs. Hector waved his hand dismissively as Shep continued to follow him down the passageway against his better judgment.

  “If my being here is going to cause some kind of problem, Hector ...”

  “Pfft! Kronastia’s goons can’t see reason,” he scoffed. “Their screening process can take weeks, but I need this object vetted now. I don’t want to call in a false report—or a true one—if I don’t have to. Besides, if this is authentic, we have a whole other thing going on here beside a Mesoamerican settlement.”

  “Just because you happen to find one Egyptian statue doesn’t mean there’s not a logical explanation. Could be something as simple as a stolen treasure cubby hole. Nazis put stuff all over Central and South America.”

  Not that that seemed likely, nor could Shep particularly think of what other logical explanation there would be. Still, he was a professional and an academic. He knew that one oddly placed artifact did not a paradigm shift make. It could, however, inspire a Time-Life series, cult following, and a new legion of conspiracy theorists.

  They reached a chain-link fenced security gate. Hector fished a set of keys from his pocket and selected a small silver one to shove into the lock. He winced from the sound of the door accordion-folding as Hector pushed it and took two steps beyond the barrier. That was when Shep felt his breath catch in the back of his throat.

  No, one artifact did not a paradigm shift make, but eleven certainly did.

  Jaw-dropping didn’t seem apt a description, but full cranial detonation? That seemed about right. Each item sent his mind reeling, but his eyes immediately focused in on the object that had made him jump on a plane. The alabaster statuette couldn’t measure more than ten inches. She stood erect, head held high, shoulders back, arms stationed serenely at her side. With Hector’s permission, he picked it up, surprised it wasn’t heavier in his hands. The weight wasn’t really what made his pulse spike, however. The sculpted braids and a unique triple uraeus crown revealed her identity to him as clear as day.

  “So, is it real? Is it Egyptian?” Hector’s desperation was palpable.

  “Oh, it’s real, and yes, it’s Egyptian.” Shep turned the base to his eyes and examined the scrawling Latin text Hector had told him about on the phone. His finger traced the letters, feeling the smooth edge of the graffiti. It hadn’t been vandalized in modern times, that was for sure. “But you should know, this isn’t a statue of Isis.”

  The Mexican blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand, someone clearly etched ‘New Isis’ on the bottom. Unless they were trying to pass it off as something it wasn’t?”

  “Something
like that. Look here.” Pointing his finger at a less defined, and therefore likely older inscription on the carved pedestal, Shep explained, “This is a titular, a series of titles that identifies the subject as royalty. This isn’t a statue of a goddess. It’s a statue of a queen who also called herself the New Isis, and whoever put that on the bottom wanted that fact known.”

  “So you know which queen it is?”

  Feeling the blood drain from his face, Shep’s breaths misted the cool, underground air. “Cleopatra VII.”

  He knew her face better than any other woman’s, better than even Christine’s. His wife had sometimes been jealous of Shep’s “other woman,” but mused afterward that of all the mistresses her husband could choose, probably the least threatening to their marriage was one who had died two thousand years before.

  “Everything is right: the style, the stone, the glyphs here at the bottom.” He bounced it around in his hands. “Seems a little on the light side, but that could just be from mineral depletion in this wet climate. Yeah, um, small ones like this were kept in temples on the far edges of the empire, so the Pharaoh could be worshipped along with the other gods. Nevertheless, few statues of Cleopatra survived, and I don’t remember hearing of one this small. This is a big discovery, Hector, however it ended up here.”

  Shep ran his fingers over Cleo’s cheek, a chill racking him. What a coy mistress she was. He had searched the deserts, even down the Nile Valley, into Ethiopia for her footsteps, only to find her here? So typical of his Cleopatra, never letting you come to her on anything less than her terms, at the hour of her choosing. First Caesar, then Marc Antony, and now even in death Cleo had wrapped Sheppard Smyth around her graceful fingers and brought him all the way from Boston. He grinned. Somehow, he felt a little of the thrill the Romans must have felt at being caught in her snare, with one significant difference: unlike Caesar and Antony, he would escape with his life.