Clive Cussler - The Mayan Secrets

After dinner, they walked on the beach and then went to the bar on the patio to sip a Cabo Uno Lowland Extra Añejo tequila that had mellow undertones of vanilla. Remi said, “Thanks, Sam. I like it when I can tell you remember I’m a girl and not your old army buddy.”

“Not a likely mistake unless I get hit on the head.” He sipped the aromatic, powerful tequila. “This is a nice change for both of us. Living in a tent and spending your days burying sewer pipes is only fun for so long.”

They finished their tequila, and Remi stood, stepped behind Sam’s chair, put her hands on his shoulders, and leaned down to kiss his head, letting her auburn hair fall to both sides of him like a silky curtain for a second, then straightened. “Shall we?” she said.

They walked, holding hands, to the entrance and went up in the elevator. Sam opened the door of their room but suddenly put his arm out to keep Remi from entering. He turned on the light and stepped in. The room had been ransacked. His pack and Remi’s had been poured out on top of the bed. The closet doors were open, and the extra pillows and blankets had been swept off the shelf to the floor. Sam said, “Luckily, we didn’t use the room safe. What’s missing from the packs?”

Remi pushed some of her clothing aside, opened a zippered compartment in the pack, then stepped back and looked around the room. “Not a thing. I don’t bring fancy jewelry on boat trips, and our only expensive gear is the satellite phones and dive watches. We had them with us.”

“I’m not missing anything either.”

“Please tell me you still have the receipt from the parking attendant,” she said. “The pot is in the trunk of the car.”

“Here’s the receipt.” He held it up so she could see it.

“Let’s check anyway.”

They took the elevator to the parking garage, found their rental car, and opened the trunk. There was the pot and Remi’s computer, wrapped in their jackets, and the airtight packages of seeds and husks with the wooden vessels the Mayan had used.

“Everything is here,” Remi said.

“Whoever it was apparently didn’t see the car or didn’t connect it with us or couldn’t get to it.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I don’t think it was a regular hotel room robbery. I think somebody recognized us from the newspaper article, or the viral Internet version, and figured we had something valuable from the shrine.”

“The pot?” she asked.

“It might be valuable, and it’s the only thing in our possession, but they couldn’t know that, whoever they are.”

“Then the thing to do is get out of here,” she said. “We need to make sure these people don’t follow us.”

Sam said, “We’ll check out right now and move to another hotel.”

“Where?”

“On the other side of the country.”

“Sounds far enough.”

“Wait here. I’ll go up and use the express checkout and bring the packs down here by the back stairs.”

“While you’re doing that, I’ll call Selma and let her know where we’re going.” She paused. “Where are we going?”

“Cancún.” He hurried into the hotel.

In a half hour they were on the road in the rental car, beginning the nine-hundred-mile drive from Huatulco to Cancún. It was now late in the evening so there was little traffic. Sam drove hard, watching to be sure they weren’t followed. Remi took her turn driving after two hours, and they kept going until four. They pulled over at a closed gas station in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and slept until it opened at eight, filled the tank, and drove on to Centro on the Gulf Coast. All day they kept changing drivers at intervals until they reached Cancún. They checked into the Crown Paradise Club, showered, and slept until morning.

In the morning, they drove to El Centro, the central part of the city, to shop. They found a number of small stores that had been designed, built, and stocked with American tourists in mind. They bought a number of souvenirs, all of them cheap replicas of Mayan artifacts — pots, bowls, wall hangings, mats, and fabrics that more or less reproduced Mayan art and writing. Everything bore images of Mayan kings, priests, and gods, but crudely and garishly painted. At a hobby shop, they bought a water-soluble acrylic paint set that included silver and gold paint and brushes.

At the hotel, Sam went to work on the genuine Mayan pot from the shrine. He painted designs and altered pictures to make the painting on the pot look as cheap and crude as the souvenirs he and Remi had bought. He used sparkly gold paint to cover the pieces of jewelry the Mayan king wore. Parts of his shield and war club Sam highlighted with silver.

When the paint was dry, Sam and Remi asked the concierge at the hotel where they could find a mailing company that would ship their souvenirs home. He replied that the hotel would do this for them. Sam and Remi watched him pad a large packing box, load the pot into it, fill all the spaces around it with the mats, wall hangings, and fabrics, then fill the box the rest of the way with Styrofoam peanuts and seal it up. With the concierge’s help, Sam and Remi filled out the customs declaration, saying the contents were “souvenirs from Mexico,” and declared the price they’d paid to be under a hundred dollars.

They paid the cost of shipping the souvenirs to their house in La Jolla, gave the concierge a large tip, and went off to the beach to do some snorkeling in the shallows after their hot morning in the city.

That night, Sam and Remi called Selma from their room.

“Hi, you two,” Selma said. “What is it this time, a flood?”

“Not yet,” said Sam. “We just wanted you to know that we’ve sent some souvenirs from Yucatán to the house in La Jolla.”

“I’ll watch for them. Is this one big box?”

“Yes,” said Remi. “There’s some pottery, which we really don’t want broken.”

There was a very slight pause, during which they could tell that Selma had understood what the package was. “Don’t give it another thought. Are you on your way home?”

“As soon as we can get a flight,” Sam said.

“Have you given any thought to where you plan to sleep when you get to San Diego? The fourth floor of the house is still a process, not a product.”

“Until yesterday, we’ve been sleeping on the side of an active volcano,” Remi said. “We’ll manage.”

“You could stay at the Valencia Hotel. I can reserve a suite or even a villa. Then each day you can walk home across the lawn or down to the beach.”

“Sounds good,” said Remi. “If we rent a villa, will they let Zoltán stay with us?”

“I’ll see if they can arrange it. I can even bring him there to show them what an exemplary animal he is,” Selma said.

“Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” Sam said. “A hundred-twenty-pound dog who sits when you say sit is still a little scary.”

“I’ll sing his praises, then, and offer to put up a damage deposit.”

“Make sure it’s enough to cover any kindergartners he might eat.”

“Sam!” said Remi.

“We’ll call before we get on the plane.”

Sam used Remi’s computer to buy plane tickets home. Then he researched the names of American archaeology professors specializing in the Mayans. It was a pleasant surprise that one of the most distinguished seemed to be Professor David Caine at the University of California at San Diego. Sam e-mailed Dr. Caine and said that he and Remi had made an unusual find at Volcán Tacaná, and attached the Mexican news article about it. He asked Caine if he would meet with them when they returned home. He asked Remi to read the e-mail before he sent it.

She did, and said, “My advice is, click send.”