Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

There were fragmentary symbols on one side of the piece. She couldn’t read them. There simply wasn’t enough left.

“What is it?” Hunter asked.

“It looks like a bit torn from a Maya codex, but…” She shook her head. “All of the five surviving codices are accounted for. This could be a fragment from one of them.” Her tone said it was unlikely. “Bishop Landa and his soldiers were very thorough. If there were any books they didn’t find and burn, the climate eventually destroyed them. Five hundred years in a jungle…” She looked at Mercurio and raised one dark eyebrow. “Any comments?”

“The paper came in the same lot as the beads,” he said. “The owner said it was a fragment of an unknown codex.”

“You believed him?” Hunter asked.

“No,” Mercurio said bluntly. “That would be too much. Simply fantastic.”

“Understatement,” Lina said. “Proof of an ancient, unknown codex would rock the Maya world like a nuclear bomb. Finding a sixth surviving book is the holy grail of every Maya archaeologist.”

“Collectors, too?” Hunter asked.

“Of course,” Mercurio said.

“It could never be displayed,” Lina said at the same time. “You could have a stack of provenance going back to Bishop Landa himself, and Mexico would still scream patrimony.”

“Not all collectors would care,” Hunter said.

“But gossip goes through solid stone walls,” Lina pointed out. “A sixth Maya book is a secret that I can’t imagine being kept.”

“Okay. You see anything here that looks like the photographs?”

“No.”

“What photographs?” Mercurio asked.

Watching the other man, Hunter reached into one of the cargo pockets on his new pants. He spread the photos across an empty worktable and turned to watch Mercurio. The man came to a point, all but quivering like a bird dog as his eyes swept from photo to photo, then began again for a more leisurely look.

“Well cared for,” Mercurio said. “The photographer should be fired.”

Hunter waited.

So did Lina. She didn’t need Hunter’s neutral expression to know that he wanted her quiet right now.

“Anything else?” Hunter asked when Mercurio remained silent.

“What is their provenance?” Mercurio countered.

“Zero.”

The other man didn’t look surprised.

“You missing any pieces from your digs?” Hunter asked.

“None that I know of. Certainly no artifacts of this quality. My digs share a similar style—especially with that scepter, but I’ve found nothing like that mask. Is it real or of modern manufacture?”

“I don’t know,” Lina said. “I’ve never studied the artifact itself, only the photos.”

“And you think I have?” Mercurio asked, looking at her. “You flatter me, querida. I have found some hints of Kawa’il, some sigils on goods. But I can’t prove they weren’t imported from Yucatan. In fact, anything regarding Kawa’il can’t be proved beyond academic doubt as indigenous to my Belize digs.”

“Then why is Philip…” Her voice dried up.

“So paranoid about my digs?” Mercurio’s smile was different from his earlier ones. Harder.

“Yes,” Lina said.

“Because he is not quite sane. Digs of this quality and apparent age”—Mercurio gestured to the photos —“have only been discovered on Reyes Balam land. I don’t know what your father has found since I left. Certainly he never found artifacts of this magnificence when I was with him, querida.”

“If you wanted to buy them, who would you go to?” Hunter asked, his eyes the color of winter ice. He was really tired of hearing the other man call Lina “darling.”

“To you, of course,” Mercurio said. “You’re the man with the photos.”

“These photos are as close as I can come to the real thing,” Hunter said. “Who would you try next?”

“Cecilia Reyes Balam,” Mercurio said.

“Not Simon Crutchfeldt?” Lina asked. “Or Philip?”

“If Crutchfeldt owned these, he wouldn’t keep them long enough for word to get out,” Mercurio said. “He is a businessman as much as he is a collector. Only a collector would be fool enough to keep artifacts such as those. As for Philip, if he had them, I would be the last to know. He wouldn’t spit on my grave. Vindictive bastard.” Then, quickly, “My apologies, Lina.”

“Not necessary.” Her voice, like her face, revealed no emotion.

“That takes care of the obvious suspects,” Hunter said. “Anyone else?”

“Carlos, of course,” Mercurio said. “But, assuming those artifacts are as good as they look, he wouldn’t sell them.”

“He’d give them to the museum,” Lina said.

Carlos laughed softly. “Such beautiful innocence, querida. It is one of your greatest lures.”

“I don’t find it alluring to be called naive,” she said evenly. “Are you saying Carlos would sell those artifacts on the black market?”

“No. I’m saying that the only way Carlos would let go of those artifacts is if he had better pieces in his collection.”

“We have nothing to equal them in the museum,” Lina said.

Mercurio’s smile was both gentle and amused. “You must be the only person in Mexico who doesn’t know that Carlos has a personal collection, and I’m not referring to your Houston museum.”

“So he might know about these artifacts?” Hunter asked quickly.

The quick flare of temper in Lina’s eyes had warned him that she was reaching her limit on being patronized by Mercurio ak Chan de la Poole. That was fine with Hunter, but they had more questions to be answered before he let her shred the handsome Mexican.

“Carlos?” Mercurio shrugged. “He is a man who keeps his own counsel. Lina’s abuelita might know. She and Carlos are close.”

“Why?” Hunter asked. “She’s two generations older than he is.”

“He is the only reasonably direct male descendant of the Reyes Balam line,” Mercurio said. “He is the focus of the backward villagers who see him as a conduit to the old gods.”

“He’s CEO of a cement company,” Lina said. “Not real godlike.”

“To you and me, no. He is just one more spoiled son of an old family. The villagers are more foolish. They look for anything to make their dirt-scratching lives more important.”

“Take a good look at those photos,” she said impatiently.

Mercurio’s disdainful attitude toward poor Maya villagers was one of the major reasons she hadn’t let their relationship go beyond a few dates with him. Despite his handsome face, fit body, and love of field archaeology, Lina couldn’t see him as a potential mate.

Too bad Mercurio didn’t feel the same way.

“What do you see?” Lina pressed. “What do you think the function of the artifacts was?”

“Is that cloth really a god bundle?” Mercurio countered.

“I don’t know,” Lina said.

He looked at Hunter.

“Same here,” Hunter said. “That’s why we knocked on your door.”

“If I assume that the artifacts are as represented in the pictures,” Mercurio began.

“This isn’t a peer review,” Lina said. “You’re not being recorded or judged or asked to buy or sell. Spare me all the academic qualifiers.”

“So direct,” Mercurio said. “So American.”

About time you noticed, Hunter thought sardonically.

“I’m not the starry-eyed teenager you knew on the digs,” she said. “I’m way past that.”