“It’s Dr. Miller. I need to get into room twenty-seven for a few moments. Sorry to disturb you.”
The night security guard was right next to them but refused to take his torch from Miller’s face until he was certain of the curator’s identity. Finally he lowered the beam.
“You should tell us when you’re working late, Dr. Miller,” the man said officiously. “I’ll have to make a note of this in the log.”
“Of course you will. Quite right too. Don’t worry, we won’t be long. Good night to you.”
There was no mistaking Dr. Miller’s dismissal. The man turned away, switched off his torch and faded back into the shadows.
“They get a little jumpy at night. Imagination is what does it mostly. Things tend to take on a life of their own. I don’t blame them, of course. I’ve worked late here myself and definitely seen statues shift position.”
“You’re not serious?” Max asked.
“That depends on one’s imagination.”
There was sufficient light to see the old man’s face crinkle into a smile. He pushed open the doors and led the way into a room full of Central American artifacts.
Max gazed into the emerald-green eyes of a black beast. Misshapen, but unmistakably a big cat, it glared back as if Max had just come face to face with the black jaguar in the dense undergrowth of the rain forest.
It was an ancient carving hewn from black volcanic rock. The ragged edges gave the beast a sense of movement, as if its fur was being brushed by the breeze or a low-lying branch. The open jaws displayed white bone teeth, carved to match the shape of incisors and canines. It was powerful and ferocious. It loomed, ready to strike, ears flattened, fixing its glare on him.
The dim light in the room seemed to fade even more. Max smelled the musky cat fur and the carnivore’s stale breath, and heard the resonant growl from somewhere deep within the predator’s chest. It was frightening. Frightening and glorious. Max felt the sigh escape from his lips as he reached forward and touched the beast’s flanks.
A part of Max ran free. Claws dug into the bole of a tree, and a canopy of stars beckoned above the treetops.
“Max?”
Dr. Miller’s voice returned the statue to its role as lifeless guardian of the room’s treasures.
The showcases around three of the four walls were lit, while on the fourth, stone fresco slabs, intricately carved with figures, were frozen in a silent, macabre dance of bloodletting.
“Those are Mayan kings and queens, making sacrifices to their gods.”
He stepped farther into the room. Max faltered, his hand drawn to touch the rough stonework, as if willing the storyboard to unfold through his fingertips. A loud buzzing alarm startled him. Yanking his hand away, the sound stopped immediately.
“Electronic beams scan those lintels,” Dr. Miller said. “They’re ancient, so we can’t have every child on a school tour rubbing their hands over them, can we? But never mind those for a moment. Now, where are we … yes, here.”
In the exhibit’s half-light, he pointed out the history of the Mexican and Central American people. Different colors stained the map as Miller walked around the room, following history. He stopped. “The Maya-250 BC to AD 1000.”
Max gazed past his reflection in the glass and pressed his hand against it. It felt like a contact between him and his mother. She was there, still there, among all those marks and symbols on the ancient map.
Dr. Miller spread out the khipu on an exhibit’s plinth.
Max heard movement somewhere deep in the silence. “I heard something, back there,” he whispered.
Dr. Miller took his attention away from the knotted cords. A questioning look.
“A flat, dull sound. I don’t know what it was,” Max said, unable to identify the muffled movement he had heard.
They listened for a moment longer, but it was silent. Dr. Miller turned back to the map. “It will be one of the night security people. Now, see here,” he said, ignoring the fact that Max stayed focused on the channels of darkness reaching into the endless halls. His instincts prickled. The sounds were a whispering movement. Not the almost-silent tread of a bored man on night duty whose long hours stretched out before him. These were like rushes of air across the cold, hard surface of the museum’s floor, like rats’ whispers.
Instinct warned him to stay alert, but he knew it could also be his imagination-he hoped. He forced himself to concentrate on what Dr. Miller was looking at on the map. The narrow strip of land between South America and Mexico was pockmarked with symbols.
Dr. Miller carried on without further hesitation. “Here. This is where Danny Maguire passed through on his way to Mexico. He contacted me several months ago, said he had reached the ancient ruins of Lord Shield Jaguar, who is the king shown on that stone lintel you touched.”
“Then Danny went into Central America? He wasn’t just in Peru?”
“Absolutely. I was quite concerned at the time. That isthmus is a well-worn path for drug smugglers from Colombia into Mexico and the United States. Danny was traveling off the beaten track, deep into the mountains and rain forest.”
Max felt something squeeze the air out of his chest. It was a swell of hope. “My mother died somewhere in the rain forest. Does that khipu tell us anything else? Like where exactly Danny might have traveled in the jungle?”
Miller winced. Perhaps his own enthusiasm to help Max would exceed the boy’s expectations. He hesitated, then shrugged. “I did say this was a crude example. A khipu is an information-storage device.”
“Like a computer,” Max said, remembering Sayid’s words.
“Yes. But if someone keys the wrong letters into a computer, then it will not make any sense. So these knots might be the same. Who knows what might have urged Danny to make up this message.”
“Dr. Miller. Please. Don’t you see? He was responding to my call for help for any information about my mum. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble if it wasn’t really important. I think Danny was killed because of something he witnessed or because of information he was given. But that bit of knotted string must have more information on it. He was there. Right there. Where Mum died.”
Max had raised his voice. He quieted, seeing the look of concern on the old man’s face. He lowered his voice. “I’m convinced Danny died trying to get this to me. I’ve already been attacked. Is there anything, anything else at all?”
Dr. Miller fingered the knots like Sayid fingered his misbaha, the prayer or worry beads inherited from his father.
“I can only speculate,” Miller finally said. “In truth, Max, I do not think this khipu has anything to do with your mother. There is nothing to suggest it. It has more to do with a state of affairs that is dangerous and involves children.”
He took Max’s hands and laid them on the khipu. “Close your eyes and feel the knots,” he said gently.
Max did as he was told. The man’s smooth palms brushed across the back of his hands and then lifted away. In his mind’s eye, Max saw the knots through his fingertips. In that moment of stillness, his mind caressed every fiber. Since he had received the khipu, he had been so focused on finding answers that he had not stopped and held the dead boy’s legacy.
There was a rhythm to the strands of cord. The looped and curled knots felt different from each other. The spaces between the knots and the lengths of each pendulum string felt like a pause in speech. It was deliberate. It carried meaning and inflection. But the mystery remained exactly that. He could have no hope of understanding.
Miller’s voice guided him like helping someone stumbling through a pitch-dark room. “That gap you feel there is, I think, a vast open tract of land. The curls and loops in the knots indicate disruption. Damage of some kind. Devastation. Perhaps now, perhaps then. I think it is near a volcano. Possibly the temple is near a volcano where the armed men are. I think there is also great fear.”
Max opened his eyes. The old man was gazing at the map, his finger hovering near the center of the land mass. “And your mother’s photographs could well have been taken in this area. There are pyramid temples hidden in the jungle there, and borders between the countries in the Yucatan Peninsula are imprecise. Those valleys and mountains in Belize and Guatemala, many of them are impenetrable. They’re dangerous areas where superstition
