Curses!

It was ten to nine. They had returned to the site under a sultry, darkening sky to find the work shed empty, Howard and Worthy nowhere to be seen. On the work table was the empty, cracked holster of the old .32 caliber revolver that Howard kept at the site as protection against bandidos. The lights were on, the generator humming. An opened but untouched bottle of Coca-Cola rested on the floor near a chair.

'They're probably just looking around,” Gideon said. “That's all.'

'Yeah, sure, that figures.'

All the same they glanced uneasily at each other and began walking quickly across the plaza toward the temple. They had reached the foot of the pyramid when they heard scraping noises above them and looked up into the half-darkness to see Worthy floundering sideways down the steps.

'Gideon!” he called. “Leo! My God!'

He came perilously close to slipping on the uneven stones, righted himself after some gawky flapping with his long arms, and continued coming down with more care. “My God,” Gideon heard him murmur again. “Oh, dear Lord.'

This, Gideon said to himself, is not going to be good news.

When he got to the bottom, Worthy looked apprehensively at both of them. “Where's Howard? Have you seen him?'

No, definitely not good news.

'What do you mean, have we seen him?” Leo said. “Where is he?'

Worthy clutched Gideon's arm, an uncharacteristic gesture. “It's terrible up there—it's—it's—'

Gideon was off, taking the steps of the pyramid two at a time. Worthy gave a little whimper and scrambled up behind him, trying to keep up, to catch his breath, and to explain, all at once.

'He said—Howard said—he heard something...about an hour ago. He took that wretched gun, and a crowbar too, and went to check...'

'You didn't go with him?” Gideon called over his shoulder without slowing down.

'He said not to. He said he'd do a...do a patrol himself. You know the way the man is...'

Gideon did indeed. He reached the top and ran across the weedy, stonelittered terrace to the temple. In every direction the dense mat of tropical forest stretched to the flat horizon, a bleak irongray in the fading light.

It was black inside the windowless temple. He switched on the flashlight he'd brought with him,

Worthy caught up to him. “He was gone so long...I began to wonder. I went to check. And when I got here I found—I found—'

It wasn't necessary for him to tell what he'd found. Gideon stood rock-still, disbelieving, the flashlight beamed directly at the square opening in the stone floor.

There was no landing below. There was no passage. There were no steps, or none after the top two or three. All there was was a square space filled with rubble and jumbled blocks of worked stone.

Behind them Leo clumped bulkily through the entrance. “Oh, shit,” he said. “The whole goddamn thing caved in. I knew it.'

It was true. The secret passage that the Maya had excavated down into the rubble-packed pyramid—and then filled with more rubble to hide it—had collapsed. The years Horizon had spent digging out the stairway had been undone in seconds. It was all buried again, the way the Maya had wanted it in the first place.

Worthy stared at Gideon. His lips twitched. “Where's Howard?” he said. “Where's the codex?'

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Chapter 5

* * * *

'And that's the whole story,” Gideon said. “Good-bye Howard, good-bye, codex.” They were on their third cup of coffee. “Nobody's seen them since. If he's really managed to sell it, he's probably in Rio living like a millionaire. Change that; if he's sold it, he is a millionaire.'

'But how can you be sure he took it?” Julie asked. “Maybe the stairwell just caved in on it. It was already pretty shaky, right? Maybe the codex is still there, under all the rubble. Maybe Howard is still there—'

'No, we dug it out, or rather the police did, all the way back down to the landing. Took them two days,” Gideon remembered. “Police dig faster than archaeologists.'

'And when they got there they didn't find anything?'

'Well, the chest itself was still there. He'd smashed the lid to pieces to get it off. That was a crime in its own right. It was a hell of a piece of art.'

'Maybe the cave-in smashed it.'

'No, it was done with the sledgehammer. He left it upstairs on the temple floor, with some of the other tools. The police matched a couple of the gouges on the lid with the head of the hammer. “ He shook his head, freshly pained at the memory. “That beautiful, beautiful carving.'

Julie commiserated silently, caressing the back of his hand.

'The earrings and plates and things were still inside,” he went on, “crushed by the cave-in—or maybe by the sledge for good measure; who knows—but the codex was gone.'