Fallon stopped complaining when he saw what we began to bring up. There was an enormous amount of silt to be cleared first, but we did that with a suction pump, and the first thing I found was a skull, which gave me a gruesome feeling.
In the days that followed we sent up many objects -- masks in copper and gold. cups, tolls, many items of jewellery such as pendants, bracelets, rings both for finger and ear, necklace Heads, and ornamental buttons of gold and jade. There were also ceremonial hatchets of flint and obsidian, wooden spear-throwers which had been protected from decay by the heavy overlay of silt, and no less than eighteen plates like that shown to me by Fallon in Mexico City.
The cream of the collection was a small statuette of gold. about six inches high, the figure of a young Mayan girl. Fallon carefully cleaned it, then stood it on his desk and regarded it with a puzzled air. 'The subject is Mayan,' he said. 'But the execution certainly isn't -- they didn't work in this style. But it's a Mayan girl, all right. Look at that profile.'
Katherine picked it up. 'It's beautiful, isn't it?' She hesitated 'Could this be the statue Vivero made which so impressed the Mayan priests?'
'Good God!' said Fallon in astonishment. 'It could be-but that would be a hell of a coincidence.'
'Why should it be a coincidence?' I asked. I waved my hand at the wealth of treasure stacked on the shelves. 'All these things were sacrificial objects, weren't they? The Mayas gave to Chac their most valued possessions. I don't think it unlikely that Vivero's statue could be such a sacrifice.'
Fallon examined it again. 'It has been cast,' he admitted. 'And that wasn't a Mayan technique. Maybe it is the work of Vivero, but it might not be the statue he wrote about. He probably made more of them.'
'I'd like to think it is the first one,' said Katherine.
I looked at the rows of gleaming objects on the shelves. 'How much is all this worth?' I asked Fallon. 'What will it bring on the open market?'
'It won't be offered,' said Fallon grimly. 'The Mexican Government has something to say about that -- and so do I.'
'But assuming it did appear on the open market -- or a black market. How much would this lot be worth?'
Fallon pondered. 'Were it to be smuggled out of the country and put in the hands of a disreputable dealer -- a man such as Gerryson. for instance -- he could dispose of it, over a period of time, for, say, a million and a half dollars.'
I caught my breath. We were not halfway through in the cenote and there was still much to be found. Every day we were finding more objects and the rate of discovery was consistently increasing as we delved deeper into the site. By Fallen's measurement the total value of the finds in the cenote could be as much as four million dollars -- maybe even five million.
I said softly, 'No wonder Gatt is interested. And you were wondering why, for God's sake!'
'I was thinking of finds in the ordinary course of excavation,' said Fallon. 'Objects of gold on the surface will have been dispersed long ago, and there'll be very little to be found And I was thinking of Gatt as being deceived by Vivero's poppycock in his letter. I certainly didn't expect the cenote to be so fruitful.' He drummed his fingers on the desk. 'I thought of Gatt as being interested in gold for the sake of gold -- an ordinary treasure hunter.' He flapped his hand at me shelves. 'The intrinsic value of the gold in that lot isn't more than fifteen to twenty thousand dollars.'
'But we know Gatt isn't like that,' I said, 'What did Harris call him? An educated hood. He isn't the kind of stupid thief who'll be likely to melt the stuff down; he knows its antiquarian value, and he'll know how to get rid of it. Harris has already traced a link between Gatt and Gerryson, and you've just said that Gerryson can sell it unobtrusively. My advice is to get the stuff out of here and into the biggest bank vault you can find in Mexico City.'
'You're right, of course,' said Fallon shortly. 'I'll arrange it. And we must let the Mexican authorities know the extent of our discoveries here.'
VI
The season was coming to an end. The rains would soon be breaking and work on the site would be impossible. I daresay it wouldn't have made any difference to my own work in the cenote -- you can't get wetter than wet -- but we could see that the site would inevitably become a churned-up sea of mud if any excavations were attempted in the wet season, so Fallon reluctantly decided to pack it in.
This meant a mass evacuation back to Camp One. Rudetsky looked worriedly at all the equipment that had to be transported, but Fallon was oddly casual about it. 'Leave it here,' he said carelessly. 'We'll need it next season.'
Rudetsky fumed about it to me. There won't be a goddamn thing left next season,' he said passionately. 'Those chiclero vultures will clean the lot out.'
'I wouldn't worry,' I said. Fallon can afford to replace it.'
But it offended Rudetsky's frugal soul and he went to great lengths to cocoon the generators and pumps against the weather in the hopes that perhaps the chicleros would not loot the camp. 'I'm wasting my time,' he said gloomily as he ordered the windows of the huts to be boarded up. 'But, goddamn it, I gotta go through the motions!'
So we evacuated Uaxuanoc. The big helicopter came and went, taking with it the men who had uncovered the city. The four young archeologists went after taking their leave of Fallon. They were bubbling over with enthusiasm and promised fervently to return the following season when the real work of digging into the buildings was to begin. Fallon, the father figure, smiled upon them paternally and waved them goodbye, then went back to his work with a curiously grave expression on his face.
He was not taking any part in the work of the evacuation and refused to make decisions about anything, so Rudetsky tended to come to me for answers. I did what I thought was right, and wondered what was the matter with Fallon. He had withdrawn into the hut where the finds were lined up on the shelves and spent his time painstakingly cleaning them and making copious notes. He refused to be disturbed and neither would he allow the precious objects to be parted from him. They'll go when I go,' he said. 'Carry on with the rest of it and leave me alone.'
