James Rollins - Excavation

Sam watched Maggie retreat from the room. With a final pass of his light over the deadly chamber, Sam turned to follow, but the pattern of gold and silver fixed in his mind. It was no plain checkerboard, but a complex mix of zigzagging steps with two patches of rectangular gold islands, one at the upper left of the room, and one at the lower right.

Sam stopped, pondering the pattern. It was naggingly familiar. He turned back to the floor, shining his light across it.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie called back to him.

“Just a sec,” Sam stepped to the edge of the chamber. He stood silently, letting his mind calm. There was a clue hidden here. He just knew it. The two men’s corpses had distracted him, shocked him from noticing before. “My god,” Sam mumbled.

Maggie had returned cautiously to his side. “What?”

Sam waved his light across the thirty rows of yard-wide tiles. “You were right about other Peruvian Indians being involved here. This isn’t Incan.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie asked. “That statue sure looks Incan.”

“I don’t mean the statue. The Incas probably added that later. I meant the floor, the room itself. The booby trap.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look at the pattern. It’s so large that I almost missed it.” Sam pointed with his flashlight’s beam. “The various tribes in ancient Peru – the Paracas, the Huari, the Nasca, the Moche, even the Incas – none of them had a written language. But their pictographs and ideograms, found in drawings and woven in their textiles, were elaborate and unique to each tribe. Look at this pattern. The two golden rectangles at opposite corners connected by snaking zigzagging lines. Where have you seen that before?”

Maggie took a step closer. “Sweet Jesus, you’re right. It’s a huge pictograph.” She turned to face Sam, eyes bright with excitement. “It is Moche , not Inca.”

“It’s just like Uncle Hank had figured,” Sam mumbled, his voice awed. “We’re in a Moche pyramid.”

“What? When did Professor Conklin mention anything about the Moche?”

Sam realized he had misspoken, letting out his uncle’s secret. Sam sighed. Considering their circumstances, any secrets now seemed ludicrous. “Listen, Maggie, there’s something my uncle’s kept from you all.” Sam quickly recounted how the professor had discovered that the Sun Plaza here matched the tip of a Moche pyramid found along the coast. “He made the discovery just before he left with the mummy.”

Maggie frowned. “So I wasn’t the only one keepin’ secrets…”

Sam blushed, remembering his own lambasting of Maggie for keeping facts hidden. “I’m sorry.”

A long stretch of silence ensued. Maggie finally spoke. “It makes rough sense. Considering the complexity of the room, the Moche were better at metallurgy than the Incas. They also built elaborate canals and irrigation systems for their lands, with crude pumps and gearwork. If any of the tribes was capable of constructing this trap in precious metals, it would be the Moche.” Maggie nodded toward the pattern. “You’re the expert epigrapher. What does it mean?”

Sam explained, using his flashlight as a pointer. “See how the stair-step pattern connects the two gold rectangles. It depicts the rising of a spirit from this world to the realm of spirits and gods.” Sam turned to Maggie. “It basically means this is the gateway to Heaven.”

“Jesus…”

“But that’s not all.” Sam shone his light on the ceiling, where an inverted image of the floor’s pattern was depicted in tile. “Each gold tile on the floor has a matching silver tile above it and vice versa. The Moche… and the Incas for that matter… believed in dualism. In the Quechan language, yanantin and yanapaque . Mirror imagery, light and dark, upper and lower.”

“Yin and yang,” Maggie mumbled.

“Exactly. Dualism is common in many cultures.”

“So what you’re saying…” Maggie found her eyes drifting to the two mutilated corpses.

Sam finished her statement, “Here also lies the gateway to Hell.”

From across the ruins, Philip stared at the collapsed hilltop. The entire roof of the subterranean temple had caved in on itself, leaving a clay-and boulder-strewn declivity ten feet deep. A smoky smudge still hung over the sunken summit like some steaming volcano, silt forever hanging in the moist air.

Philip remained near his post by the communication tent, but he wasn’t due to contact Sam for another half hour. Philip hugged his arms around his chest. The Quechan workers were all but useless. Pantomiming and drawing out his instructions were the only ways to communicate with the uneducated lot – and still, they often mistook his orders.

However, Philip was beginning to suspect some of their “misunderstandings” were deliberate, especially after he had insisted the Indians attempt to redig the original shaft, defying Sam’s own warnings. The Texan’s assessment had quickly proven valid; the temple had collapsed further when some of the laborers attempted to pry loose a particularly large slab of granite. One of the Indians had broken his leg when the roof gave way. Ever since, the Quechans had grown sullen and slow to respond to his orders.

Upon reaching Sam earlier, Philip had deliberately sidestepped mentioning his own culpability for their near tragedy. Luckily, poor communications had saved him from having to explain in detail.

Philip glanced to the jungle’s edge. If nothing else, at least the workers had discovered the partially excavated tunnel of the looters near the foot of the jungle-shrouded hill. From his calculations, he estimated another forty feet of tunnel would have to be dug before reaching the temple itself – and at the current pace, it would take closer to four days, rather than the two-day estimate he had given Sam.

“That is, unless help arrives first,” he grumbled. If not, the others were doomed. Even if the temple remained standing, which was doubtful, water would become more and more crucial. Even in this humidity, death by dehydration posed a real danger. Help must come. He would not have the deaths of the others on his hands – or his résumé. If such a scandal broke with his name associated with it, he risked losing any chance of a future position at Harvard.

Philip shadowed his eyes against the late-afternoon sun. A pair of workers had left at dawn to seek help, running on long, lean legs. The two young men looked capable of maintaining their pace all day long. If so, they should be reaching the tiny village of Villacuacha and a telephone anytime, and with an expedient response, a rescue operation could be under way within the next two days.

Philip pinned all his plans on this one hope – rescue. With others around, he would be relieved of any direct culpability. Even if the other students died, it would not be his sole responsibility. Shared blame could weaken the blemish on his own record.

But there was one other reason he prayed for the appearance of rescuers. The sun was near setting, and Philip feared another long black night with the forest screeching around him. Guillermo Sala was out there somewhere, surely waiting for the proper time to attack.

Staring off toward the distant village of Villacuacha, Philip sent a whispered prayer to the two Indian runners. “Hurry, you bastards.”

Along a jungle trail, Friar Otera glanced toward the setting sun, then pulled the cowl of his robe higher over his head, shadowing his features. They should be at the ruins by midday tomorrow. “Come,” he ordered, and led the way.

Behind, a row of five brown-robed monks kept pace with him. The brush of their robes was the only sound disturbing the twilight forest. The jungle always grew strangely quiet as the sun began to set, hushed as if the creatures of the forest held their breath against the dangers of the approaching night. Soon the dark predators would be loose again for the hunt.