Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Afternoon
Wilde took another look at the mysterious woman and got pulled into her eyes momentarily before he broke away and opened the envelope. Inside was a wrinkled, dirty piece of paper. He unfolded it and found some kind of handwritten picture.
“What is it?”
“It’s a map.”
“A map to what?”
“To tombs.”
“Tombs?”
Right.
Tombs.
“Where’d you get it?”
The woman spotted the coffee pot on the credenza and said, “Can I buy a cup?”
Wilde got her fixed up. She took a noisy sip and said, “What do you know about the pyramids in Mexico?”
“I thought the pyramids were in Egypt.”
“They are, but there are some in Mexico too,” she said. “There was a civilization that lived in central Mexico, about twemty-five miles from where Mexico City is located today. The best guess is that it began somewhere around 200 BC and ended in the 7th or 8th century, meaning it was around for almost a thousand years. Who they were remains one of the biggest archeological mysteries today.”
“How do you know all this? Are you an archeologist?”
“Not officially,” she said. “Officially I’m a lawyer here in Denver. I work at Colder amp; Jones.”
Wilde nodded.
He’d heard of them.
They were one of the bigger firms in Denver with offices on the upper half of the Daniels amp; Fisher Tower over on 16th Street.
That meant she had money.
She could afford his services.
“Unofficially,” she added, “I dabble with the ruins down in Mexico. I don’t have any official archeological training but I tag along with whoever will have me. I’ve spent two or three months a year down there for the last four years. The site itself is enormous and largely unexplored, even to this day. There are two large pyramids. One’s called the Pyramid of the Sun and the other’s called the Pyramid of the Moon. They’re located some distance apart. Running between them is a long street, for lack of a better name, that’s called the Avenue of the Dead. There are a number of structures on that street and, indeed, structures emanate out in all directions for some distance. It’s probably the biggest archeological site in the world and 90 percent of it is still virgin. Most structures have yet to be entered.”
“Interesting.”
“They call it Teotihuacan. Can I have some more coffee?”
Sure.
No problem.
Wilde liked her voice. Every sentence was a melody, every word a note. The movement of her lips was pure sex.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and conclude that this map has something to do with that archeological site,” Wilde said.
London smiled.
“Good limb climbing,” she said. “Like I said before, almost nothing is known about this civilization. The biggest mystery of all is what brought it to an end. We do know that almost every prominent wooden structure was burned to the ground. Some think the city was conquered and burned down by enemies. Others think that the lower class got repressed to the point of revolution and burned down their repressors. Still others think that it was nothing more than an accidental fire that spread from building to building. No one really knows.”
Wilde lit a cigarette.
“This is actually sort of interesting,” he said.
“When you really get into it it’s absolutely fascinating,” London said. “In a very slow kind of a way, but fascinating nonetheless. Last year, they began to work into the interior of one of the pyramids. Not much progress has been made yet, but what they found so far was the remains of humans, together with birds in cages and various other animals in cages. The thinking is that these were all sacrifices that took place during the construction.”
“Sacrifices for what?”
“The usual,” she said. “To the gods, whoever they were, to make the construction go smooth or whatever. Most civilizations evolving during that time frame did the same thing. The Romans and Egyptians are the best examples.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“Skulls and dead birds,” he said. “What a way to go, be sacrificed to some god who doesn’t even exist.”
London nodded.
“Exactly,” she said. “They might have been enemies who were taken prisoner. Some day it will all get figured out. Anyway, over the years I started to come up with a theory.”
“What theory is that?”
“A theory that this civilization, although it was advanced enough to flourish and exist for a long time, was still barbaric at heart,” she said. “Pyramids don’t get built because everyone thinks it would be a nice idea. They take a tremendous amount of labor. That level of labor generally means there is a lower caste of slaves. When you have that kind of social structure, that means that there’s someone at the top-a ruler, someone in the nature of a king or queen or pharaoh, one after the other, century after century.”
That made sense.
“People like that acquire wealth during their tenure,” London said. “The riches rise to the top.”
“Right.”
“Are you following me?”
He was.
He was indeed.
“When the riches rise to the top, the ruler starts to worry about the afterlife,” London said. “They want to be sure they appease the gods that are going to play a role in what happens next. That means temples and gifts and sanctuaries. We’ve seen that in Egypt in all the pyramids that have been found in the Valley of the Kings.”
“Okay.”
“Here’s the interesting thing,” London said. “This entire archeological site has almost no structures of prominence that would indicate a king or queen was buried there.”
“What about the two pyramids?”
London nodded.
“Right, we have those, but that would only account for a few, assuming there are tombs inside, which is almost certain. So, where did all the other kings get laid to rest?”
Wilde shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“Well I do,” London said. “That’s what the map shows.”
Wilde looked at it again.
It was modern paper.
It wasn’t ancient parchment.
“This isn’t old,” he said.
“I know.”
“How could it be a map then?”
“That’s a good question.”
“You say that like you have a good answer.”
“I do. Do you want to hear it?”
He did.
He did indeed.
With that, she told him a story so rich and vivid that he felt as if he was actually there.
Under the cloak of a moonless Mexican night the young American lawyer chipped away as quietly as she could at the outside wall of the ancient temple. The structure couldn’t be more than two feet thick and she’d already gone almost that far. She wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.
Her 26-year-old body ached.
If the guards stumbled on her she’d be weak.
She wore all things black. Her long raven hair was fastened in a ponytail and pulled through the back of a green baseball cap.
Her body was well-conditioned and taut.
Her face-ordinarily sensual and mysterious-was tense and focused.
The temple was located on the Avenue of the Dead, midway between the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, in the middle of the Teotihuacan archeological site twenty-five miles northeast of Mexico City.
No one had ever been inside this particular ruin.
It was nothing special from the outside, just a rectangular stone structure with fifty-foot sides and a ten-foot height. Unremarkable pillars stood upright on the four corners and four midpoints. Hundreds of years ago they supported a wooden canopy. The structure paled against the mystery and grandeur of dozens of larger and more ornate works, not to mention the pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, where most of the archeological efforts had been directed to date and, even at this time, were still in their infancy.
Legend had it that the temple was cursed.
The reason for the curse had been lost to antiquity.
A hole opened up, not a big one, but enough to indicate the beginning of the end. She chipped away at the edges with renewed energy and didn’t stop until the opening was large enough to crawl through.
She took a look around and saw no one.
Okay.
This was it.
She stuck her head close to the opening and took a sniff followed by several deep breaths. The centuries-old air had no detectible odor. No lightheadedness followed, indicating the oxygen hadn’t been eaten away by mold.
She shined a flashlight inside.
The chamber was large and not broken into smaller rooms. As she anticipated, several support pillars for the stone top came into view. There were no snakes, spider webs or sounds. Whatever dust had been there at one time had settled many hundreds of years ago.
She turned the flashlight off, tied a rope around her backpack and slithered backwards through the opening until she was inside.
The air was cooler by several degrees but not damp.
She stood up and turned the flashlight on.
Intricate murals ordained all four walls.
In the middle of the room was a stone box the size of a casket, also with ornate sides.
The top was wooden, elegantly carved and hand painted.
She pulled the backpack through the opening, took out a hammer and chisel and carefully pried the top up, managing to keep it in one piece. She maneuvered it to the side, tilted it over the edge and lowered it carefully to the floor.
Then she shined the flashlight inside.
What she saw she could hardly believe.
A cold chill ran up her spine.
Outside a bright arc of lightning flashed, so close and violent that the inside of the chamber lit up.
Thunder snapped.
The flashlight dropped out of her hand.
The bulb exploded with a blue flash.
Then everything in the world turned black. The darkness was so absolute that she couldn’t even tell where the opening was.
She stood there, breathing deep and heavy, hearing nothing but the sound of air moving in and out of her lungs.
Suddenly a noise came from behind her.
It was a heavy breathing not more than a few steps away.
She backed away, tripped over the side of the casket and fell inside.