The Mayan Secrets

  They left the church for the long, roofed-over gallery of the Dominicans’ quarters. They padded along the brick walkway barefoot so their sandals would make no sound. At the end of the gallery, they entered Las Casas’s study. Tepeu went to the simple worktable, where he saw the book. He picked it up carefully and looked at it with such intense devotion that he appeared to be greeting a living person, someone he had feared was lost.

  Tepeu looked around the room. Las Casas had a native pot that was decorated with paintings of a Mayan king’s daily activities. Las Casas had the side turned outward that showed the man’s daily ablutions and not the side that showed him piercing his tongue to give a blood sacrifice. The pot held the friar’s supply of fresh water and was tied with a kind of sling that the Indian acolyte used to carry it.

  Tepeu poured the rest of the water into Las Casas’s washbasin, then reached in and wiped the pot dry with a cloth. He put the precious book inside the pot.

  Las Casas went to the cupboard on the wall that held several writing projects he was working on. He retrieved two more Mayan books and handed them to Tepeu. “We should save as many as we can.”

  Tepeu said, “They will not fit. The first one is worth a hundred of these.”

  “The rest will be gone forever.”

  Tepeu said, “I’ll take the book far away to a place where the soldiers will never be able to find it.”

  “Don’t let them catch you. They think what you’re carrying are messages from the devil.”

  “I know that, Father,” Tepeu said. “Give me your blessing.” He knelt.

  Las Casas placed his hand on Tepeu’s head, and said in Latin, “Lord, let this man’s righteousness be enough. He wants nothing for himself, only to be the preserver of his country’s wisdom for future generations. Amen.” He turned and went to the cupboard, then returned with three gold pieces. He handed them to Tepeu.

  “This is all I have. Use it to get what you need on your journey.”

  “Thank you, Father.” Tepeu walked toward the door.

  “Wait. Don’t go out there yet. I hear them.” Las Casas went to the door and stepped outside. There was a strong smell of burning, and he could hear the shouts coming from the village by the river. He stood with his back to the door while a platoon of soldiers pushed through three of his Dominican monks who were trying to keep them from entering the mission. Four soldiers broke into a storeroom down the gallery to search it.

  Las Casas reached behind him, turned the knob, and opened the door of his study. He caught only a glimpse of Tepeu slipping out. He had the water pot on his back, with the strap around his waist and a tumpline over his forehead so much of the pot’s weight rested there. He was across the clearing and into the trees at a run, but he was visible for only seconds, and utterly silent.

  OFF ISLA GUADALOUPE, MEXICO: THE PRESENT

  Thousands of silvery fish swam past Sam and Remi Fargo, gleaming, turning this way and that in unison, as though they were all controlled by one mind. The water was clear and warm, and Sam and Remi could see far beyond the steel bars of their cage.

  Sam held a three-foot aluminum shaft with a small, sharp barb on the end. It was a tool for the application of tags, and in the weeks since he and Remi had been on this voyage, he’d become adept at using it. He looked at her, and then ahead again, staring into the distance.

  As they watched, a darker spot seemed to form itself at the limit of their sight, as though the tiny particles held in the water were coming together to form a solid shape. It was a shark. And as Sam and Remi had known he would, he turned toward them. He came at an angle, drawn, perhaps, by the dense schools of fish that had gathered near the steel shark cage and flitted in and out between the bars. But there was no question the shark was aware of Sam and Remi.

  The Fargos were experienced divers, and they were both used to the idea that it was not possible to go into the ocean anywhere in the world without having a shark notice their presence. They had seen many sharks over the years, usually small blues that came close to investigate the wet-suited newcomers diving near the kelp beds not far from their home in San Diego, reject them as prey, and swim off. This shark embodied the other possibility—the nightmare predator, always swimming forward to keep the water moving through its gills, equipped with sight, smell, hearing, a network of nerves running along its body that felt even small vibrations in the water, and the ability to sense minute electrical discharges from the muscle contractions of its victims.

  The shark’s large tail gave a series of lazy undulations, and it moved toward them. As its outline became easier to see in the clear water, the shark seemed to grow. In the distance it had seemed large, but now, as it approached them, Sam realized that he had observed it much farther away. The closer it grew, it became immense. It was exactly what he and Remi had come to find—great whites that were over twenty feet long.

  The shark swam through a school of fish that separated into two swirling swarms, then reunited into a school again, but the shark paid no attention to them. Its tail gave another undulation, and it glided ahead. The shark, its nose a flattish, pointed protuberance that seemed about four feet wide, moved through the water toward them, then turned again. The shark’s body swung past the steel cage where Sam and Remi were hanging, so close that they could have reached out and touched it. The body was thick, and the pointed dorsal fin above it looked as tall as a man.

  The shark didn’t leave. It passed by them again. Sam and Remi remained motionless inside their cage. Even after many dives near the island, Sam found that during these long minutes he became conscious of the steel bars that had been welded into the cage. Were they solid? They had seemed to be when the cage had been lifted into the water by the crane. The welds, he now could see, looked short and hasty—maybe unreliable. The welder couldn’t possibly have imagined the size and power of the creature just now passing by.

  This animal was at Guadaloupe Island to find elephant seals and tuna, and Sam and Remi didn’t look much like either. In their black wet suits, though, they looked a bit more like California sea lions, which could make them seem very tasty to a great white. Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the shark gave a few twitches of its tail and glided away from the cage. For a few seconds, Sam felt intense disappointment. Considering their size and ferocity, great whites were sometimes surprisingly cautious. Had Sam missed his only chance to get this giant on record?

  Then, without warning, the shark wheeled about, flicked its tail four or five times, and barreled into the broad side of the steel cage, its huge mouth gaping, revealing the rows of triangular teeth. Sam and Remi clung to the bars on the opposite side of the cage while the shark shook the forward part of its body, working to get its jaws around the cage but unable to accomplish it.

  As the shark pushed the cage forward, the cage tilted, and Sam saw his chance. He jabbed the aluminum shaft into the skin at the base of the tall dorsal fin and immediately withdrew it, pulling it back inside the cage. The shark seemed not to have felt it or noticed. The barb was set, and the bright yellow shark tag, with its six-digit number, trailed from the base of the fin, looking tiny on the enormous fish.

  The shark swam below the cage, and Sam and Remi waited. They half expected him to turn around, build up even greater speed, and ram the cage again, this time snapping the careless welds and breaking open the cage and spilling them out in front of his big, toothy mouth. But he continued about his business, farther and farther away, until he was gone. Sam reached up and tugged on the signal rope three times, then three more times. Somewhere in the other world above them there was the vibration of a motor, and the cage jerked, then began to rise.

  They came up out of the water, lifted entirely up into the air in the bright sunlight, and swung onto the deck of the yacht. Remi took off her mask and mouthpiece, and said to Sam, “So what do you think it was—that we didn’t look appetizing enough for a second try?”
br />   “Don’t worry,” he said. “You look scrumptious. I’ve been practicing looking indigestible to prepare for this.”

  “My hero.”

  He pulled back the hood of his wet suit, smiling. “That was amazing.”

  “Thanks to you, I’ll never run out of subjects for nightmares.” She kissed his cheek as they stepped from the cage and walked toward their cabin to change out of their suits.

  A few minutes later, Sam and Remi stood on the foredeck of the chartered seventy-eight-foot Marlow Explorer. It was a modern luxury yacht that could do twenty-four knots wide open, but, in the two weeks they’d been aboard, Captain Juan Sandoval never had the need to open up the twin Caterpillar C30 diesels. They were not in a hurry, crossing stretches of ocean to look for promising spots for finding great white sharks, occasionally putting into pleasant Mexican ports to refuel or buy provisions. The yacht was a bigger vessel than Sam and Remi needed. It had three full staterooms with their own baths, as well as separate quarters for the three-man crew. Captain Sandoval, mate Miguel Colera, and cook George Morales were all from Acapulco, which was the charter boat’s home port. Sam and Remi had chartered the boat to take them to Isla Guadaloupe, about one hundred sixty miles off the coast of Baja California, because it was a well-known spot to see large sharks.

  They had volunteered to participate in a marine biology study run by the University of California at Santa Barbara to learn more about the movements and habits of great white sharks. The work of tagging them had been going on for years, but it had met with only limited success because most sharks that had been tagged were never seen again. Keeping track of individual great whites presented many difficulties. They were reputed to travel vast distances, they were very difficult to capture, and they were dangerous. But Isla Guadaloupe seemed to offer a special chance. It was a place where very large, mature great whites reliably appeared year after year. And if members of an expedition were willing to get in the water inside a shark cage, it might be possible to tag them without attempting a capture. Sam used his satellite phone to report the tag number and description of today’s shark.

  As the boat moved along easily on the open water toward Baja California, Remi let the wind blow through her long auburn hair to dry it. Sam leaned close to her. “Still having fun?”

  “Sure,” she said. “We always have fun together.”

  “That’s not what you were thinking. Something’s bothering you.”

  “To tell you the truth, I was thinking about our house,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought spending some time away on a research project would help the time go faster. I figured you were getting tired of the repairs and remodeling.”

  A few months ago, they had returned from the excavation of hoards of plunder hidden in crypts across Europe by the Huns during the fifth century. Three rival treasure seekers either believed that the Fargos had taken some of the valuable artifacts home with them or they simply wanted to take revenge on the Fargos for beating them to the treasure. They had mounted an armed attack on the Fargos’ four-story house on Goldfish Point in La Jolla and battered it to pieces. Since then, the Fargos had been overseeing the repairs and rebuilding.

  “I was tired of it,” she said. “Contractors were driving me nuts. First, you have to go with them to the plumbing showroom to pick out exactly the fixtures you want. Then you need a meeting to hear that they’ve stopped manufacturing that model and you have to pick out another one. Then—”

  “I know,” he said, and threw up his hands.

  “I hate the repairs, but I miss our dog.”

  “Zoltán’s fine. Selma is treating him like king of the pack.” He paused. “When we started this trip over a month ago, they were hoping we’d be able to tag ten sharks. That big guy we just got is number fifteen. I guess it’s time to hang up our tagger and head back.”

  Remi pulled away a little so she could look into his eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I love the ocean, and I love you. And who wouldn’t like to travel around on a state-of-the-art yacht, going from one gorgeous spot to another?”

  “But?”

  “But we’ve been away for a long time.”

  “Maybe you’re right. We’ve accomplished more than we set out to do, and maybe it’s time to go home, get our house finished, and start on a new project.”

  Remi shook her head. “I didn’t mean right this minute. We’re heading for Baja already, and we’ll reach land at San Ignacio Lagoon. I’ve always wanted to see where the gray whales go to mate and calf.”

  “Maybe after that we can keep going straight to Acapulco and get on a plane.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Let’s talk about it then.”

  After another day, they anchored in San Ignacio Lagoon, then launched the plastic ocean kayaks. Remi and Sam climbed down into them, George Morales tossed their two-bladed paddles down, and they glided into the lagoon. It wasn’t long before the first of the gray whales rose to the surface before them, spouted water and steamy spray from double blowholes, and then made a rolling dive downward, its tail working to leave a roiling, bubbly trail on the surface. They were silent for a few seconds—an animal the size of a city bus had risen in front of them and sunk again, leaving their little, orange plastic kayaks alone on the lagoon.

  The Fargos spent the rest of that day and the following out in their kayaks. Whenever they met a gray whale, it would come close to them, apparently curious. Sam and Remi petted each whale on its head and back and then watched it go.

  In the evening, the Fargos would sit at the table on the rear deck of the yacht with the crew and share a dinner of fresh-caught fish or Mexican delicacies brought from a restaurant in the small town of San Ignacio. They would stay out until long after dark, talking about the sea and its creatures, about their lives and their friends and families, as the night sky filled with brightening stars. After Sam and Remi retired to their cabin to sleep, they could sometimes still hear the sound of the whales spouting in the darkness.

  Next, they moved south along the coast, making for Acapulco. On arrival, they called Selma Wondrash, their chief researcher. They had given her and the young couple who worked under her, Pete Jeffcoat and Wendy Corden, the month off, but Selma had insisted on staying in La Jolla and supervising the construction while they were away.

  Selma answered, “Hi, Remi. Zoltán is just fine.”

  “It’s both of us,” said Sam. “Glad to hear that. And how’s the construction going?”

  “Just remember, the cathedral at Chartres took a few hundred years to build.”

  “I hope you’re joking,” said Remi.

  “I am. There’s not a single piece of woodwork left with a bullet hole in it. The lower two floors are pretty much finished, and everything works. There’s still a bit of painting they’re finishing up on the third floor, but your suite on the fourth floor still needs at least two weeks of work. You know what that means.”

  “That there will finally be enough closet space for my shoes?” Remi said.

  “Yes,” Sam said. “And two weeks means four weeks in contractor language.”

  “I love working for a pessimist. When anything goes right, you’re so surprised. Where are you, by the way?”

  Sam said, “We’re through tagging sharks. We’re in Acapulco.”

  “Is everything still okay?”

  “It’s lovely,” said Remi. “Fresh fish, chicken mole, dancing under the stars, et cetera. It beats being shark bait. But we’re thinking of coming home soon.”

  “Just let me know. The jet and crew will be waiting to bring you home. I’ll pick you up at the Orange County airport.”

  “Thanks, Selma,” said Remi. “We’ll let you know. It’s time to have some more fun. Our dinner reservation is in ten minutes. Call if you need us.”

  “Of course I will. Good-bye.”

  They were staying
in one of the two towers at the hotel, and that night, just after they got into bed, they felt a brief tremor. The building seemed to rock for a few seconds, and they heard a faint rattling, but nothing more. Remi turned over and held on to Sam, then whispered, “Another reason I love you is that you take me to hotels that have been remodeled to stand up to earthquakes.”

  “It’s not a trait women usually list for the guy of their dreams, but I’ll take credit for it.”

  The next day they checked out of the hotel and returned to the yacht. As soon as they reached the dock, they sensed something had changed. Captain Juan was up in the bridge listening to a Spanish-language radio station with the volume up so loud that they could hear it as soon as they were out of the taxi. George was standing at the rail watching them approach, his face a wide-eyed mask of worry. As soon as they stepped aboard, Sam heard the words “sismo temblor” and “volcán.”

  “What is it?” asked Sam. “Another earthquake?”

  “It just came five or ten minutes ago. Juan might know more.”

  Sam, Remi, and George all climbed to the bridge and joined Captain Juan. When he saw them, he said, “It hit down the coast in Tapachula, in Chiapas. Right near the border with Guatemala.”

  “How bad?” asked Remi.

  “Bad,” he said. “They’re saying eight-point-three, eight-point-five. Since then, there’s smoke coming from Tacaná, the volcano north of the city. The roads are all closed by landslides for a long distance. People are hurt, maybe some killed, but they don’t know how many.” He shook his head. “I wish we could do something.”

  Sam looked at Remi and she nodded. “We’ve got to make a phone call. Start getting the boat ready to move. Anything you haven’t done since we put in here, get it done now.”