“I have a program that will analyze the position of the moon, stars, and sun based on rough coordinates. It’ll take a while to process all this. Lazlo’s assuming that the final procession would have been at a key celestial event. Something monumental. Fitting for the burial of the greatest ruler of his time. So I entered in all the possible obvious events. The equinoxes, other alignments that are viewed in Mesoamerican cultures as significant.”
A screen popped up. He and Lazlo studied it and then overlaid it on a model of Teotihuacan. After changing the screen several times, Antonio stepped back.
Lazlo tapped the screen. “There’s your temple. The first one on the right as you face the Pyramid of the Moon.”
Remi looked to Antonio. “Have there ever been any excavations there?”
Antonio shook his head. “I don’t believe so, other than clearing the land away on the front side so you can see the temple. The secondary pyramids were considered trivial in the scheme of things, so resources went to the larger buildings.”
“Then they’ve never been thoroughly explored,” Remi said.
“We only have limited resources—” Maribela bristled.
Antonio held up his hand, cutting her off.
“I don’t think Remi is saying we’ve been negligent. I think her intent was to establish that nothing much is known about them since all the serious digs focused around the more spectacular sites.”
“That’s right. So there very well could be a tomb there. Either under it or along one of the bases,” Remi said.
“Actually, if you look at how things line up, you’ll see the rear of the temple on the axis.”
“How long is that side?” Sam asked.
“They’re all about thirty-six meters square. So almost a hundred twenty of your feet.”
“Not that much smaller than the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.”
“A little more than half the size, actually, but you’re correct that it’s a large area.”
“Let’s go over and have a look. Would we need a new permit?”
“I think as the senior functionary of INAH here, I’d say no.”
They piled into Antonio’s official Suburban and crawled the length of the Avenue of the Dead, taking care to avoid the scattered groups of tourists taking in the sights. When they reached the temple, they climbed the slope behind it, which had only been partially cleared, and stared at the rear of the smaller pyramid as if they could intuit where the lost chamber was with instinct alone.
“Call it ninety feet to excavate. But this is considerably more dirt to move. Could we get a backhoe here?” Remi asked. “Just to do the gross-level clearing and then we could have the crew take over . . .”
“I don’t see why not,” Antonio said. “There are numerous places in town that rent equipment and a man to operate it. Perhaps we could get one this afternoon. And with sufficient financial incentive, the man would probably be willing to work late. We might get it done in a day or so, then move in after that with the men as you suggested.”
“Then let’s stake out an area to clear.”
A huge backhoe arrived at two and worked till nine, doing so by the glow of the work lights once the sun set. Sam, Remi, and Lazlo left when the operator did and took a taxi to the restaurant where they’d eaten the prior night. The food was good and the mood excited, the sense of having made significant progress palpable, as they discussed the project in hushed tones.
The next morning the excavation started at eight and by two-thirty the entire back section of the pyramid base was ready for the waiting men to begin the more careful digging with picks and shovels. The crew went to work, continuing till dark.
They resumed the following day, clearing the dirt under the relentless glare of the hot sun. At six p.m., one of the picks broke through the hard clay into a cavity below. The hole was widened enough to allow entry. This time, Remi insisted on being the first one in, and after similar warnings as Sam had gotten before, she was lowered into the opening with a high-powered portable light and a radio.
“What do you see?” Sam asked after thirty seconds.
“It’s a crude tunnel. It goes under the temple.”
“How far?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” Remi said, her tone short. Sam decided to leave her in peace and allow her to explore until she felt a desire to communicate. After a long pause, the radio crackled again with her voice. “There’s an entryway. Stone, and carved far more elaborately than any we’ve seen before. But it’s blocked with smaller rocks mortared in place. We’ll need something to break through. And it would probably be a good idea to shore up the tunnel, although if it hasn’t caved in over the centuries, it’s probably okay for now.”
Sam passed the information on to Antonio, who was standing by the opening with Lazlo, staring into the void. He ordered the men into action. The foreman brought a tall ladder, and three workers dropped into the dark. The rest stayed above and passed down wooden beams and boards to build primitive shoring.
“I’m coming down,” Sam said, and after the first wave of workers was clear, he descended, a pick in his free hand, followed by Lazlo, Antonio, and Maribela, all carrying heavy iron pry bars. Their flashlight beams played along the clay walls until they saw Remi around a bend in the tunnel, facing a crudely mortared rock wall framed by carved stone—the carvings much like those they’d all seen in the crypts at the find in López Mateos.
“Look. The pyramid with the moon,” Remi said, pointing at the procession depicted at the top of the doorway. “This is it. It has to be.”
Sam nodded. “Stand clear,” he warned. “Let’s see if we can get through this rock, shall we?”
Everyone stepped back. He swung the pick and it connected with stone. A chunk of mortar flew off. He swung it again and another, bigger piece dropped at his feet. “This will work. It’ll just take a little time.”
“Let’s have the laborers do this,” Maribela suggested.
Sam shook his head. “No way. Just give me a few minutes.” He continued beating at the wall, and, after several dozen blows, one of the rocks fell into the empty space beyond. “We’re through! I’ll knock out a few more of these and then let’s put those crowbars to use.”
Two crudely squared stones collapsed inward after his next blow, then another on his next. He dropped the pick by a side column as Lazlo and Antonio moved in with their crowbars, the area too limited for Remi or Maribela to help. More of the rocks dropped into the space, and then the lower part of the wall collapsed in a heap of rubble. A dust cloud rose from the pile.
“I think Remi should do the honors,” Sam said.
Antonio motioned to her with a small bow of assent. “Absolutely. Señora?”
She lifted the bulky portable light and held it in front of her and then leaned into the newly open area and glanced around. “It’s a vault.”
Remi climbed through the opening, light in tow. They heard her gasp, and a shiver of fear went up Sam’s spine.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, shining his flashlight into the dark.
“Perfect. I think it’s safe to say we found the tomb.” She paused. “There’s a body covered in jade on a stone platform, and several mounds of offerings around it. They’re dusty, but I see some glinting, so probably gold. And jade masks.”
“Gold? The Toltecs didn’t have any gold,” Maribela said.
“Perhaps they traded for it? Obsidian, too. And Toltec pottery. Ceramics.”
“Any reason I can’t come in?” Sam asked through the hole.
“No, but be careful. This will be a significant find and we don’t want to crash around like buffalo.”
Sam eased himself through the gap. Maribela and Lazlo followed him in, trailed by Antonio.
They found themselves in a twelve-by-fifteen-foot chamber of carved stone walls. Remi stepped gingerly around a pile on the ground and leaned down, holding the lamp in front of her. The LED bulbs illuminated the interior of the crypt in an
eerie white glow. She lifted a small figure from the mound and held it up. “Gold.”
Sam and Lazlo were standing by the figure on the platform. The mummy’s skin was desiccated, the color of coffee and the texture of beef jerky. Lazlo peered at it and did a quick calculation. “Looks like he was no more than five feet tall, so clearly indigenous. Not exactly the tall, imposing, bearded figure of the legends, is he?”
Maribela moved to his side, gazing down at the body. “But the robe is consistent with the stories. White, or what was once white, animal hide. The robe of a prophet . . .”
“Or a god,” Antonio whispered.
“But no Eye of Heaven,” Sam said.
“Alas, probably part of the legend that grew over time,” Maribela said. “As you know, the enormous riches could have increased in these tales with the telling, along with Quetzalcoatl’s height.”
Remi had moved past the offerings and was studying the symbols on the wall. “Look, almost all of them are snakes. Quetzalcoatl. And here—the procession theme is reprised, but they’re carrying the body of a feathered serpent in this depiction. A funeral procession.”
They spent another hour inside the chamber as the workers continued propping wooden beams along the tunnel’s length, and then Remi set her dimming light down and brushed a hand through her dusty hair. “I think we’ve had a productive day, don’t you? It’s probably time to leave this to the experts.”
Antonio nodded. “It’s one of the most significant discoveries in the last hundred years. You should be very proud of yourselves. The discoverers of Quetzalcoatl’s final resting place. It’s an incredible honor to work with you both.”
Maribela smiled. “Yes. It’s a remarkable achievement. The Mexican people owe you a tremendous debt for restoring an important piece of their history to them. Another tremendous debt,” she added, referring to the Mayan Codex the Fargos had retrieved only months before.
“The honor is ours,” Sam said, “for being allowed to explore a sacred site. And you should be congratulating yourselves as well. This will be a huge event in the archaeology community. Quetzalcoatl’s lost treasure and his body all in one day. Most don’t have that kind of a find in a lifetime.”
Remi cleared her throat, the dust thick in the air. “What we’ve found we couldn’t have done without you,” she said graciously, although the truth was more complicated.
Lazlo was staring at the mummy, shaking his head.
“What is it, Lazlo?” Sam asked.
“We’re still missing something. I don’t know what, but we are.”
Maribela chuckled. “Lazlo, you did it. If the find isn’t what you’d hoped for, that doesn’t mean anyone’s missing anything.”
“Perhaps. But I want to do a careful inspection of the interior. Just as the information that led us here was overlooked in the López Mateos tombs, my sense is it’s too early to assume we’ve cracked this nut.”
Antonio stepped forward.
“Of course we’ll do a detailed analysis of the find and go over every inch of it. We’re all after the same thing, and I think Lazlo’s instincts should be respected. It’s always possible that there are more secrets here and that Quetzalcoatl hasn’t revealed them all to us yet.”
When they were back at ground level, Antonio placed calls to arrange for more security as night fell. They wanted to take no chances with a room that contained gold and priceless artifacts. In a rural area of Mexico well away from the reaches of the police departments, Antonio was naturally cautious—enough of the workers had seen what lay in the chamber for rumors to begin and an armed presence was the sensible precaution.
Antonio’s cell phone chirped and he excused himself. He listened for a few moments and his face went white. When he returned, he looked shaky.
“What’s wrong, Antonio?” Remi asked.
“It’s . . . They found Carlos’s body.”
They fell silent, the excitement over the find now muted by the reality of their colleague’s violent demise. Antonio shared the slim facts he’d been given, which explained nothing. Another senseless death in a brutal world and a good man taken from the Earth for no reason. As the daylight waned, a hot wind blew across the ruins like the breath of an angry god, moaning through the surrounding structures, a funeral dirge for their departed friend. After contemplating the news of Carlos’s passing, Sam and Remi packed their backpacks as the siblings issued instructions to the two security men. When Antonio was finished, he approached the Fargos, his mood somber.
“I’m going to stay here until the additional security shows up. I’ve asked for a contingent of soldiers from the nearby military base.” He checked the time. “They should arrive in an hour. Are you leaving?”
“We’ll come by tomorrow to see what’s being unearthed, if that’s okay,” Remi said.
“It would be my pleasure.”
They followed the last of the straggling tourists down the Avenue of the Dead, moving toward the entry gates on automatic pilot. Remi and Lazlo were quiet on the way back to the motel.
The next morning Lazlo, Remi, and Sam rode an INAH-supplied golf cart toward the Pyramid of the Moon. Antonio’s SUV was parked near the research tent that was being erected by a sleepy crew. When they approached, he was giving an orientation to a group of earnest-looking students. Maribela stood at the edge of the gathering and her eyes brightened when she saw them roll up.
“Hola! You’re here early,” she called out as she walked over to them, her stride as fluid as a dancer’s.
“We wanted to get a second look at what we found,” Sam explained.
“Very good. We’re just going over the protocols with the team. We’ve been assigned a dozen helpers. We want to ensure we don’t harm anything as we document the contents of the crypt.”
“We’d like to spend some time inside, photographing everything as it was found before it all gets shifted around.”
“Of course. Come this way and I’ll get you some gloves and brushes in case you spot anything you want to clean off.”
“Thank you, but we’re mostly interested in the carvings. We’re hoping to find something that will shed some light on why Quetzalcoatl was described in a number of accounts as a tall, bearded white man. The mummy is anything but . . .”
“Ah, yes, the legends,” Maribela said.
“It never hurts to be thorough,” Remi said, her voice even, her tone firm.
Lazlo sensed a rising tension between the two women and moved quickly to diffuse it.
“How much longer before your brother’s done with the lads?” he asked Maribela.
“He’s been at it for fifteen minutes, so I think he’ll be finishing up pretty soon.”
Antonio joined them once he wound down his orientation and greeted them like visiting royalty.
“There they are! Come to celebrate?”
“We wanted to get photos of the find before everyone really gets to work.”
Sam glanced at the six soldiers standing in a loose ring at the site perimeter, their M4 rifles hanging from shoulder straps, not one of them more than nineteen.
“I see you’ve got the big guns in. Literally.”
“It wouldn’t do to have Quetzalcoatl’s treasure walk off, would it?”
The day went by in a blur of photographs and dusting of carvings to get all the detail. Sam finally came up for air, done with the crypt. Remi joined him under the tarp, where Lazlo was methodically poring over the photographs on the big monitor with rapt concentration, seemingly oblivious to the noise around him.
“Did you get everything you wanted?” Sam asked.
“I think so, although I was struck by the same sensation I had yesterday. Not much of a treasure, really, compared to some.”
“The Toltecs probably weren’t a rich people.”
“True. But the legend just seems so overblown compared to what’s down there,” Remi said, her fingers brushing her gold scarab. “Maybe it’s just my lucky charm sending out skeptical vibes.”
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“I’d say it’s been pretty lucky so far. Still, vibes or no vibes, I’d count it as a win. We solved another of history’s riddles. Not a bad day’s work.” Sam glanced at Lazlo. “You about ready to pack it in, Lazlo?”
Lazlo seemed only then to register them. “We’re missing something. I don’t know what, but we are.”
“I start to get worried when you and Remi agree on so much,” Sam joked. “But, come on, it’s been a long day. The photos will still be there tomorrow and your eyes must be burning out of your head by now. You hungry, Remi?”
“When am I not? But you look like you could use some freshening-up.”
“You haven’t looked in a mirror lately, either, have you?”
They said their good-byes to Antonio and Maribela and, having checked out of the motel that morning, took a taxi to the St. Regis in Mexico City, first dropping Lazlo off at the clinic. They agreed to regroup the following morning and drive out to the site together, once they were rested and fortified, the hard work now done.
Teotihuacan was deadly still at three a.m. The towering pyramids were almost invisible against the deepening vault of the night sky, the ancient city’s wide boulevard an inky strip devoid of life. A sliver of moon peeked through the patchwork of clouds, giving barely enough light for the soldiers guarding the newly discovered crypt to see one another’s faces. A hardened sergeant roamed the temple perimeter, ensuring that his dozen men were alert and vigilant. Although they were only twenty-five miles from the hum of Mexico City, this was another world, the glimmer of lights from the nearby town of San Martín de las Pirámides as unlike the capital’s neon brilliance as water and wine.
A corporal stood near the barricade that had been erected to make the excavation area more manageable, telling a joke in a low tone to one of his men. He stiffened when he saw the sergeant approach and fell silent—their commander was known as a hard case, a career soldier who’d spent fifteen years in the service stationed all over Mexico during the upheaval of the drug wars. He took this dull guard duty dead seriously, whereas his men, most of whom were barely old enough to shave, viewed it as yet another in a long string of boring postings that seemed random and pointless.