Black Rain

She glanced over at Professor McCarter, who was working with Susan and the porters. Their lives were in danger, and they didn’t know it in the least. Certainly, they watched Verhoven and his men patrol, listened as Hawker flew in with a load of defensive equipment, including motion sensors, computerized tracking devices, lights, flares and boxes of ammunition—and the pack of trained dogs Verhoven had insisted upon—and in all likelihood they considered it only a precaution. A little bit of the government’s heavy hand when a lighter touch would have been fine.

Danielle knew better. Somewhere out there an enemy sought them, and despite the time they’d bought by racing up the river, eventually that enemy would find them. She wanted the civilians long gone when it happened. To make sure that happened, she had to keep pushing.

She looked to Professor McCarter, crouched on the rooftop, running his finger down a seam in the stonework and explaining to the group what he’d found.

“Tell me again what this means,” she said.

“You see how precise the fit is?” he said, pointing. He waved the others closer and then used his knife to scrape at the moss. The stonework was so tight that the moss hadn’t grown into it, just covered it over like a tarp. “You couldn’t get cigarette paper between these stones. All the great sites that have stood the test of time show this type of craftsmanship. In the Yucatan, in Egypt, in Mongolia.

“This structure must be remarkably stable to look like this, perhaps built onto some bedrock like the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan. I have seen some damage on the north side,” he admitted. “But the foundation itself can’t have subsided too much or these seams would be loose and jumbled. I’m quite excited about that.”

“You said you might have found a way inside,” she reminded him. “Can we skip ahead to that part? That’s what I’m excited about.”

“You’re not one for slow cooking,” McCarter replied, only slightly bothered.

“Microwave,” she replied. “Or faster.”

He smiled and moved to another section of the roof, waving the group over. “This stone tells us another story. The connection here is less precise, the workmanship less exacting.” He dug at the moss, pulling it loose where it had burrowed into the cracks, clearing the seam all the way to its corner. The exposed edge was gouged and chipped, dozens of hairline fractures revealing damage yet to come. He looked up. “Of all the stones on this roof, only this one appears in such condition. That can mean only one thing—this stone has been moved … repeatedly.”

At last. “You think this is the way in,” she guessed.

“If there is one,” he said. “Most Mayan temples have nothing inside except an earlier temple.”

Puzzled looks came his way.

“The kings and Ahau of Maya wanted monuments to themselves like all the other leaders of the ancient world. But in a surprisingly pragmatic twist, they would often commission a new structure to be built over the existing ones, a sort of pre-Colombian municipal rehabilitation project, one that enabled them to leave behind a greater temple than their predecessor. The result is something like those Russian nesting dolls, where each larger doll covers the smaller one. At places in the Yucatan some temples have half a dozen underlying layers.”

He returned to his original thought. “But other Mayan temples are stand-alone structures, some of which contain inner chambers, rooms for the kings and the priests to meditate and communicate with their long-passed ancestors. A process usually accompanied by the letting of blood, as they passed barbed ropes and stingray spines through their lips and their earlobes and, um … through other parts considered more sensitive.”

Hawker winced. “Kind of puts a damper on that whole being a king thing.”

Danielle laughed and looked back at McCarter. “So you think this is one of the latter types?”

“It looks that way,” he said. “And that could help us determine if this place is Tulan Zuyua or not.”

“How?” she asked.

“Remember how Tulan Zuyua had other names,” he said. “The stone Blackjack Martin found contained one of those names. Seven Caves. Other Mayan writings refer to it as the Place of Bitter Water.”

“Seven Caves,” she said, running the scenario through her mind. “So you think there might be a cave under here or a group of them?”

“Possibly,” McCarter said. “But I’m thinking on a less dramatic level. Other Mayan sites linked to the word ‘cave’ have been found to contain inner chambers. And why not? After all, what is a cave? A dark place with walls of stone. It’s only semantics that differentiate a stone-walled chamber from an actual stone cave. Spelunkers even call the open chambers of a cave a room. The Mayan description probably follows a similar line of thought. And if this temple was to have a set of inner chambers, seven of them, then that would support our theory that it is Tulan Zuyua.”

“Our theory?” Danielle said.