Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

And with that, he walked out of camp and disappeared among the cottonwoods.

53

BLACK PULLED HIMSELF UP THE LAST RUNG of the rope ladder with a grunt and stepped onto the rocky floor of Quivira, slinging the small bag of equipment beside him. Sloane had gone ahead, and was waiting at the city’s retaining wall, but on impulse Black turned around once again to survey the valley. It was hard to believe that, barely four hours before, he had stood at this same spot and witnessed the flash flood. Now, afternoon light, fresh and innocent, glowed off the walls of the canyon. The air was cool, and perfumed with moisture from the rain. Birds were chirping. The camp had been cleaned up and supplies moved to high ground. The only signs of the catastrophe were the torrent of rushing water that divided the small valley like a brown scar, and the appalling wreckage of trees and earthen bank that lay along and within it.

He turned away and approached Sloane, who had arrayed her gear along the retaining wall and was giving it a final inspection. He noticed that she had snugged the camp’s spare pistol into her belt.

“What’s that for?” he asked, pointing at the weapon.

“Remember what happened to Holroyd?” Sloane replied, eyes on the gear. “Or the gutted horses? I don’t want any nasty surprises while we’re documenting that kiva.”

Black paused a moment, thinking. “What about Swire?” he asked.

“What about him?”

Black looked at her. “He didn’t seem too enthusiastic about all this.”

Sloane shrugged. “He’s a hired hand. He has nothing to say that anybody would want to hear. Once our find becomes known, it’ll be front-page news across the country for a week, and in the Southwest for a month.” She took his hand, gave it a squeeze, smiled. “He’ll fall into line.”

Bonarotti came into view at the top of the ladder, the oversized .44 hanging from his side, digging tools slung over his shoulder. Sloane withdrew her hand and turned to retrieve her gear.

“Let’s go,” she said.

With Bonarotti beside him, Black followed Sloane across the central plaza toward the rear of the dead city. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest.

“Do you really think there’s gold in that kiva?” Bonarotti asked.

Black turned to see the cook looking over at him. For the first time that he could recall, Black saw animation, even strong emotion, in the man’s face.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I can’t think of any other conclusion. All the evidence points to it.”

“What will we do with it?”

“The gold?” Black asked. “The Institute will decide, of course.”

Bonarotti fell silent, and for a moment, Black scrutinized the man’s face. It occurred to him that he really had no idea what motivated a man like Bonarotti.

It also occurred to him that, in all his constant dreaming about the kiva, he had never once thought about what might happen to the gold after the kiva was opened. Perhaps it would be put on display at the Institute. Perhaps it would tour the museum circuit, as King Tut’s treasure had. In point of fact, it didn’t really matter; it was the find itself—the initial moment of discovery—that would make him a household name.

They made their way through the Crawlspace to the narrow passageway, then ducked into the inner sanctum. Sloane set up two portable lamps beside the kiva, aiming them at the rock-filled entrance. Then she stood back to prepare the camera while Black and Bonarotti laid out the tools. As if from a distance, Black noticed that his movements were slow, careful, almost reverent.

And then, in unison, the two men turned toward Sloane. She fixed the oversized camera to a tripod, then returned their glances.

“I don’t need to emphasize the importance of what we’re about to do,” she said. “This kiva is the archaeological find of several lifetimes, and we’re going to treat it as such. We’ll proceed by the book, documenting every step. Luigi, you dig the sand and dust away from the doorway. Do it very carefully. Aaron, you can remove the rubble and stabilize the doorway. But first, let me take a couple of exposures.”

She ducked behind the camera, and the dark cavern was illuminated by a quick series of flashes. Then she stepped away and nodded.

As Bonarotti picked up a shovel, Black turned his attention to the rock pile that covered the kiva’s entrance. The rocks had been jammed into place without mortar, and were clearly without archaeological significance; he could remove them by hand, without having to resort to time-consuming excavation techniques. But they were heavy, and the muscles of his arms soon began to grow tired. Although the rock pile itself was curiously free of the dust that had settled so thickly over the rest of the kiva’s surface, Black still found breathing difficult: Bonarotti’s shoveling quickly raised a choking cloud around the kiva’s entrance.

Sloane maintained a supervisory position well back from the kiva, taking an occasional photograph, jotting notes in a journal, recording measurements. Every now and then she would caution Bonarotti against growing too eager. Once she even barked at Black when a stray rock fell against the kiva wall. Almost imperceptibly, she had taken over the role of leader. As he worked, Black realized that perhaps he should be annoyed by this; he had more experience and seniority by far. But he was now too caught up in the excitement to care. He had been the one to first speculate on the kiva’s existence. He had been the one to find it. And his many future publications on the gold of the Anasazi would make that abundantly clear. Besides, he and Sloane were a team now, and—

His thoughts were cut short by a racking cough. He stepped back from the doorway for a moment, wiping his face with his sleeve. The dust had risen to a miasmic thickness, and in the center of it all was Bonarotti, toiling with his shovel. Slanted columns of dust hung in the beams of artificial light. It was a scene worthy of Breughel. Black looked over at Sloane, perched some distance away on a rock, scribbling her observations. She looked up at him and flashed a brief, wry smile.

Taking a few more deep breaths, he waded back in. The upper tier of rocks had been removed, and he began to work on the course below them.

Suddenly he stopped. Behind the rocks, he could now make out a patch of reddish brown.

“Sloane!” he called. “Take a look.”

In a moment, she was beside him. She waved away the dust and took several closeups with a handheld camera.

“There’s a mud seal behind these rocks,” she said. Eagerness elevated her contralto voice to an artificially high pitch. “Clear the rocks away, please. Be careful not to damage the seal in the process.”

Now that Black had cleared the top of the doorway, the going was easier. Within minutes, the seal was fully exposed: a large square of clay stamped against what seemed to be a layer of plaster. A reversed spiral had been molded into the seal.

Once again, Sloane came forward to investigate.

“This is odd,” she said. “This seal looks fresh. Take a look.”

Black examined the seal more carefully. It was definitely fresh— too fresh, he thought, to be seven hundred years old. The mortared door, filled with rocks, had worried him from the start: the door just looked too invasive to be part of the original sealed structure. And it was odd that the omnipresent dust had not settled on the rocks massed in front of the door. For a moment, calamitous despair threatened to settle on his shoulders.

“It’s impossible that anyone was here before us,” Sloane murmured.

Then she looked at Black. “This sealed doorway has been extremely well protected. There are several feet of stones sheltering it from the elements. Right?”