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.
