“I will not permit it!” Masterson said.
“How can you stop me?” Ulman said.
Masterson bent his neck like a buzzard across his desk, his blue eyes bulging out of his wrinkled head. His baldness reflected a lamp somewhere in a corner of the office. “If you publish a work on this find, identifying yourself as a professor at this University, I’ll have you dismissed! It will destroy the school! It will ruin anyone who touches it! Take my word! Let it decapitate and bury you if you will, but don’t drag the world down with you!” Violently lifting off of his desk, Masterson walked out of his room, his eyes holding solidly onto Ulman until he disappeared. He slammed the large wood door hard behind him.
Ulman jerked and opened his eyes. The crack of the door had been the blasting of thunder again. He looked back at the chest and licked his lips. A small grin turned the corners of his mouth for a fleeting moment. Masterson had only been a dream. He let his eyes close and then forced them open.
No one would believe him. They would all see the evidence and be unable to deny its existence, but no one would take his find seriously. Ulman himself felt that the discovery had to be a mistake, a lie. Yet there it was in the box. As an expert in ancient Mesoamerican studies, he knew of few people more qualified in the entire world to judge such a find! And like all the other professionals, Ulman couldn’t believe it was real, but he did. He had to!
It was his discovery! It ruined everything! He almost laughed. What would the world think? Already, Ulman had dispatched letters to some of his more prominent colleagues. He regretted sending a few of the memos. It didn’t take a genius to realize that his find would not be something the world would be eager to see. Dr. Masterson in his dream had spoken the truth. The breakthrough posed particular questions for which the scholarly world would be forced to seek answers, though they would despise the necessity of the operation. The results would contradict many of their previously written and spoken statements concerning the early history of Central America. Modern historical textbooks would become as obsolete as all the maps and globes depicting the Soviet Union as a single country.
Archaeologists and ancient historians are interesting people. They seek the truth, but hate it at the same time. They publish a thesis or write their masterpiece-their greatest attempt at eclectic scholarship-and within fifteen years someone overthrows their facts, their theories with new ones. And rather than accepting their previously incorrect suppositions, they spend the rest of their lives attempting to back up what they’ve already said. Ancient history is a fluid science, ever-changing as new facts and theories bridge the gaps of older hypotheses and mysteries. Of course, no one likes to be proved wrong. History is a constant argument concerning the past.
Both archaeologists and historians would come to abhor the name Christopher Ulman.
Why?
Ulman smiled, shivered, and fought to stay awake.
His find was unbelievable! Would the world accept it at all? Ulman didn’t want to! Why should the world believe in it? But as Ulman translated what he could from his precious codex, the thing looked up at him and said, You cannot deny that I am in your hands! Could Ulman renounce his long years of academic training? Could he shout to the memories of his pushy professors at Yale, “Look at it yourselves! It is here in my hands! You cannot dispute that tangible fact! You cannot and I cannot!” Would they believe him?
He knew that all the dating techniques would work, but they were unnecessary. Anyone capable of translating the codex could see the truth it bellowed to the world! Let them call the document a fake, but they would have to acknowledge that no better forgery existed, for it was flawless.
Besides the writings themselves, Ulman had discovered the city from which they came. The world would shake at the sight of this ancient metropolis!
It was final! These new truths would come forth and make Christopher Ulman as famous as the discoverer of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, Howard Carter. His work would be in all the papers and journals! He imagined a smiling picture of his face beneath the red letters of Time Magazine. Scholars would argue over it all for decades, as they did with the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the Middle East.
Only one thing could suppress the appearance of these findings: the death of Christopher Ulman.
With a frown and foggy eyes, Ulman looked at the door.
He heard the gunshots again.
CHAPTER TWO
March 21
11:03 a.m. Pacific Standard Time
“Mr. John D. Porter?” Mrs. Welch said in a flat voice.
“Yes.”
“What does the D stand for?”
“It stands for: Does That Matter?”
“Do you know why you’re here Mr. Porter?”
Mrs. Welch, a forty-three year old with tight brown curls, which were obviously dyed, and matching color contacts in her eyes, sat behind a neatly organized desk in her pin-striped business suit. Her skin had been tanned too often and showed the splotchy signs of sun and age, but her face wore enough make-up to look almost normal, except where it cracked near the wrinkles around her mouth. She knew her position was high and mighty relative to his, and her relaxed eyes examined Porter’s with only an occasional glance to his face.
Porter let his eyes drop to her name plate, Debby-Anne Welch-Degree Assessment, Office of Admissions and Records. Without a smile, Porter asked, “Am I safe in assuming that I’m here for assessment?”
“Do you know what your problem is Mr. Porter?” She spoke again in her flat voice. She really didn’t want to bother with this. In her mind, John Porter was just another smart-aleck student who wasn’t mature enough to leave the university and step into the real world. Though he never smiled, his eyes were lit with a fire that looked for an opportunity to burn someone.
Had Porter been particularly handsome, Mrs. Welch might have treated him differently. But he had as normal and plain a face as one could get. His eyes were small, his nose average, his lips not too thin, but not thick. A light complexion showing little time spent in the sun. So he was probably a bookworm know-it-all. His brown hair, cut short, neatly fell to one side. He wore no earring, no wedding ring, and was dressed in gray slacks and a white button-down shirt. His features might have appeared attractive in their simplicity on anyone else, but not on Porter. But neither was he ugly-just bland and somewhat colorless.
Most of all, she didn’t like his attitude. If he wanted to have a hard time, she’d be happy to give it to him.
“I have lots of problems, Mrs. Welch,” his lips curved in a slight smile, and his eyes seemed to sigh. “To which might you be referring?”
Mrs. Welch looked at him for a moment without speaking. There was just something else she didn’t like about him. And it wasn’t due to her bad-hair day. “Mr. Porter,” she said, sighing as she looked down at his record. “Let’s see now.” Pause. “You graduated with a bachelor of arts in history from Berkeley and went on toooo-”
“Chicago,” he said. His face smiled the way it had since he’d stepped into the office, his mouth barely moving, his eyes glowing. A little pride held his head aloft.
Mrs. Welch looked through his file to confirm his words. “An MA in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. And you wrote your thesis on-”
“Semitic temples,” he said as she read it.
She took a long breath. “It says here that you graduated in the top of your class, summa cum laude, from Chicago University,” she flipped backward through the file. “But you didn’t do so well at Berkeley.”
“It was a real liberal school,” he replied, looking at the white walls with colorless Yosemite photos and a matching calendar hanging as if set by a professional decorator. His gray eyes stopped on the framed shot of her father’s yellow catamaran in high waves.
“What’s wrong with liberal schools?”
She saw the smile as he looked back into memories of Berkeley. “Nothing, as long as there are some rules attached. We had people come to class on a daily basis with barely a stitch of clothes. I got my mortarboard.
