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Aaron Elkins: Curses!

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Aaron Elkins Curses!

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The prop was knocked off its footing, and for a breathless moment it hung askew, suspended from the crossbeam above it. Then the crossbeam groaned and came down, and it seemed as if half the vaulted ceiling followed with a roar and a billow of sour, choking dust. There were frightened shouts, but when the coughing stopped they found, amazingly enough, that none of the big, wedge-shaped stone blocks had hit anybody, although everyone had been showered with the rubble that the ancient Maya had used to fill their interior walls. Gideon came out of it with another dent in his straw hat and a scrape on the back of his hand. One of the crew had broken his watch; another had chipped a tooth somehow. Almost everyone was coughing and spitting.

While Gideon was still checking to make sure they were all right, Howard hissed sharply; a sigh of relief.

"It's okay,” he called shakily, meaning the codex.

It had been shielded by the lid, which still lay across the chest at an angle. Only Gideon seemed to notice that the wonderful bas-reliefs had been chipped by falling rock in four or five places. Add those to the broken corner, and a gloriously preserved find was now just another piece of moldering Mayan art. And it was going to get worse if Howard persisted. But surely he would quit now and sit down to do some planning.

But no. “All-right,” he said in a way that told Gideon he was just getting started. “All right now."

He spat dirt from his mouth, leaned over the chest, and shoved his sleek arm under the lid as far as he could, grimacing with the effort. But he could only get it in up to his elbow, and with a grunt of frustration he jerked it out. He got to his feet and stared sullenly at the lid, as if it were keeping him from the codex out of stubborn perversity. Two angry-looking welts from the rough stone ran down his forearm, slowly oozing blood. Apparently he hadn't noticed.

"I'm going to need everyone's help,” he said. “Preston, Gideon, Leo, you three-"

Gideon decided there had to be a confrontation, like it or not. “Howard-” He had to stop to wipe the dust from his lips with the back of his hand. Perspiration had turned it to a gritty mud. “I think we'd better stop right now and get everyone out of here. This place is going to need more shoring up."

Howard turned on him. “Are you out of your mind? Just leave the codex?"

"It'll wait. Somebody's going to get killed if we stay here."

And that was only part of it. There was the material itself. Howard had already mutilated the magnificent lid, and now he was trying to haul out the codex with all the delicacy of a nineteenth-century grave robber. You didn't simply reach in with sweaty fingers and grab a precious thing like that. Before the contents of the chest were touched they had to be recorded, photographed, drawn in situ. And the codex had to be studied to see what its state of preservation was before it was removed and exposed to the outside air. Howard knew all that, damn him. He was letting his excitement get the better of him.

For a moment the director glared at him. Then it was all sweet, slippery reasonableness. “Now, Gideon, don't get melodramatic. Nobody's going to get killed. Don't you think I know what I'm doing?"

Gideon was silent.

"We can have it out in fifteen minutes if everybody cooperates.” Howard's voice edged upward. “We can't just leave it here unprotected!"

"We can get guards,” Gideon said.

As Howard opened his mouth to answer, a beam let out a sharp, popping crack somewhere above them, and dirt showered from the ceiling onto the top steps. A few pebbles skittered down the stairs toward them.

"Uh, I think Gideon's right,” Leo Rose said tentatively. Leo had been a building contractor at one time, and knew about these things. “This whole thing could come down any minute.” A few others murmured agreement.

"Guards?” Howard said with a husky chuckle; he was going to try treating it as a joke. “Now just where in the hell are we supposed to get guards we can trust by tonight?"

"Tonight we can guard it ourselves,” Gideon said. “We can take turns.” He put what he hoped was an implacable expression on his face. The quicker this was over, the better; he just wanted everybody out.

Howard continued to smile at him, but in his cheek a sinew popped. And all at once, he threw in the towel.

"All right, fine,” he said genially, as if the whole thing struck him as a silly quibble he could afford to be magnanimous about. “Let's go, everyone."

Once outside, he reestablished his authority. “We'll take turns standing guard all night; four-hour shifts, two people per team, men only."

"Why only men?” one of the three women demanded. Howard ignored her. “I'll take the first shift. Worthy, you take it with me."

"Me?” Worthy Partridge was a prunish, middle-aged writer of children's stories. “I'm afraid I know very little about standing guard."

"What is there to know? All right, now-” He stopped, scowling and suspicious. Avelino Canul, the Mayan foreman, was hovering nearby, paying close attention.

"What do you want, Avelino?” Howard asked in brusque Spanish. “You can go home now. You too, Nas. All of you."

Respectfully the foreman explained that they were waiting for their pay. It was Friday.

Muttering and impatient, Howard patted the rear pockets of his tan shorts. “Hell, I forgot all about it,” he said, slipping into English. “I left my wallet at the hotel."

"We should wait until Monday?” Avelino asked hopefully. This was not the first time it had happened, and Howard had made a practice of giving them a little something extra for the inconvenience. By Mayan wage standards, it was considerably more than a little something.

Howard nodded curtly and waited for them to go. “Now, the rest of you go on back and get some dinner. Gideon, you and Leo take the next shift. Be back at-what time is it now, anyway?"

"A little after five,” Worthy told him.

"Okay, be back at nine. Worthy and Joe, you're on at one to four. Then you and me, Preston, from four to eight.” He paused and looked accommodatingly at Gideon. “How's that? Does that meet with your approval?"

Gideon hesitated. He would have been happier taking the first shift himself; Howard could use some time to settle down. And Worthy wouldn't have been his first choice as a partner. But he'd already won the big battle, and he didn't feel like having another argument. Besides, the chances of temple robbers materializing in the next four hours to steal a codex that had been discovered less than two hours ago were remote, to say the least.

"Okay,” he said. “We'll see you at nine."


****

"Something's wrong here,” blurted Leo, not normally the most intuitive of men.

It was ten to nine. They had returned to the site under a sultry, darkening sky to find the work shed empty, Howard and Worthy nowhere to be seen. On the work table was the empty, cracked holster of the old. 32 caliber revolver that Howard kept at the site as protection against bandidos. The lights were on, the generator humming. An opened but untouched bottle of Coca-Cola rested on the floor near a chair.

"They're probably just looking around,” Gideon said. “That's all."

"Yeah, sure, that figures."

All the same they glanced uneasily at each other and began walking quickly across the plaza toward the temple. They had reached the foot of the pyramid when they heard scraping noises above them and looked up into the half-darkness to see Worthy floundering sideways down the steps.

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