James Rollins - Excavation

No one had been through this portal since the ancients had sealed it.

Sam forced himself to breathe. Whatever lay past the locked door was more than just a passage to a subbasement. Whoever had sealed it had intended to protect and preserve something of enormous value to their society. Beyond this portal lay secrets hidden for centuries.

Ralph finally broke the silence. “Damn thing’s sealed tighter than Fort Knox!”

His words broke the door’s spell on Sam. He finally noticed Maggie seated cross-legged before the portal. She leaned an elbow on one knee and rested a cheek in her palm. Her eyes were fixed on the door, studying it. She did not even acknowledge their presence.

Only Denal, the thirteen-year-old Quechan boy who served as camp translator, greeted them with a small nod as they entered. The youth had been hired off the streets of Cuzco by Sam’s uncle. Raised in a Catholic missionary orphanage, Denal was fairly fluent in English. He was also respectful. Slouching against a wooden support to the right, Denal held a cigarette, unlit, between his lips. Smoking had been outlawed in the dig for the sake of preserving what was uncovered and protecting the air quality in the tunnels.

Sam glanced around and noticed someone was missing. “Where’s Philip?” he asked. When the professor had left for the States, Philip Sykes, the senior grad student, had been assigned to oversee the dig. He should have been there, too.

“Sykes?” Maggie frowned. A hint of her Irish brogue shone through the tightness in her voice. “He took a break. Left over an hour ago an’ hasn’t been back.”

“His loss,” Sam mumbled. No one argued about fetching the Harvard graduate student for the moment. After assuming the title of team leader, Philip’s haughty attitude had rubbed everyone raw, even the stoic Quechans. Sam approached the door. “Maggie, Ralph mentioned writing on the doorway. Is it legible?”

“Not yet. I’ve cleared the mud, but I’ve been afraid to scrape at the surface and risk damaging the engraving. Denal sent one of the workers to fetch an alcohol wash kit for the final cleaning.”

Sam leaned closer to the archway. “I think it’s polished hematite,” he said as he rubbed the edge of one of the bands. “Notice the lack of rust.” He backed away so Norman could take a few photos of the untouched door.

“Hematite?” Norman asked as he measured the room’s light.

Ralph answered while the journalist snapped his pictures. “The Incas never discovered the art of smelting iron, but the mountains around here were rich with hematite, a metallic ore from old asteroid impacts. All the Incan tools found to date were either made of plain stone or hematite, which makes the construction of their sophisticated cities all the more amazing.”

After Norman had taken his photos, Maggie reached a finger out to the top band of metal, her finger hovering over its surface, as if she feared touching it. With her fingertip, she traced the band where it was fastened to the stone arch. Each bolt was as thick around as a man’s thumb. “Whoever built this meant to keep whatever is inside from ever seeing the light of day.”

Before anyone could respond, a black-haired worker pushed into the chamber. He bore vials of alcohol and distilled water along with a handful of brushes.

“Maybe the etchings will reveal a clue to what lies within,” Sam said.

Sam, Maggie, and Ralph each took brushes and began painting the diluted alcohol solution across the bands. Norman looked on as the students labored. Working on the center band, Sam’s nose and eyes burned from the fumes as the alcohol worked upon the dirt caught in the metal’s inscriptions. A final dousing with distilled water rinsed the alcohol away, and clean rags were passed to the three students so they could wipe away the loosened debris.

Sam gently rubbed the center of his band in small buffing circles.

Maggie worked on the seal above him, Ralph on the band below. He heard a slight gasp from Ralph. Maggie soon echoed his surprise. “Sweet Mary, it’s Latin,” she said. “But that… that’s impossible!”

Sam was the only one to remain quiet. Not because his band was blank, but because what he had uncovered shocked him. He stepped away from his half-cleaned band. All he could do was point to its center.

Norman bent closer to where Sam had been working. He, too, didn’t say a word, just straightened, his jaw hanging open.

Sam continued to stare at what he had uncovered. In the center of the band was a deeply etched cross on which was mounted the tiny figure of a crucified man.

“Jesus Christ,” Sam swore.

Guillermo Sala sat on a stump at the jungle’s edge, a rifle leaning against his knee. As the sun crept closer to the horizon behind him, young saplings growing at the ruin’s edge spread their thin shadows across the ground, stretching toward the square pit fifteen meters away. From the hole’s opening, lamplight glowed out into the twilight, swallowing the shadows as they reached toward the shaft. Even the hungry shadows knew what lay below, Gil thought. Gold.

“We could slit their throats now,” Juan said at his elbow. He nodded toward the circle of tents where the scientists had retreated to study the engravings on the tomb’s door. “Blame it on grave robbers.”

“No. The murder of gringo s always draws too much fire,” Gil said. “We stick to the plan. Wait for night. While they sleep.” He sat patiently as Juan fidgeted beside him. Four years in a Chilean prison had taught Gil much about the price of haste.

Juan swore under his breath, while Gil merely listened to the awakening rain forest around him. At night, the jungle came alive in the moonlight. Each evening, games of predator and prey played out among the black shadows. Gil loved this time of the evening, when the forest first awoke, shedding its green innocence, revealing its black heart.

Yes, he could wait, like the jungle, for the night and the moon. He had already waited almost a year. First, by ensuring that he was assigned as security for this team, then putting the right men together. He came to guard the tomb and did so dutifully – not for the sake of preserving the past for these Yankee scientists, but to safeguard the treasures for himself.

These maricon Americans galled him with their stupidity and blindness to the poverty around them. To raid a country’s tombs for the sake of history when the smallest trinket below could feed a family for years. Gil remembered the treasures discovered in 1988 at Pampa Grande, in an unmolested Moche tomb. A flow of gold and jewels. Peasants, trying to snatch a crumb from the harvest of wealth, had died at the hands of guards just so the treasures could languish in foreign museums.

Such a tragedy will not occur here , he thought. It was our people’s heritage! We should be the ones to profit from our past !

Gil’s hand strayed to the bulge in his vest. It was one of the many gifts from the leftist guerrillas in the mountains who had helped Gil in this venture. Gil patted the grenade in his pocket.

It was meant to erase their tracks after the raid on the tomb, but if these pelotudo American scientists tried to interfere… well, there were always quicker ways to die than by a knife’s blade.

Maggie O’Donnel despised Latin. Not a simple distaste for the dead language, but a heartfelt loathing. Educated in strict Catholic schools in Belfast, she had been forced to study years of Latin, and even after repeated raps across her knuckles from sadistic nuns, none of it had sunk in. She stared now at the charcoal tracings of the door’s inscription spread across the table in the main tent.

Sam had a magnifying lens fixed over one of the filigreed etchings from the top band. A lantern swung over his head. He was the best epigrapher of the group of students, skilled at deciphering ancient languages. “I think this says Nos Christi defenete , but I wouldn’t stake my eyeteeth on it.”