12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals) Read online

  “What did you do for dating?”

  “Optical, but we’re also running labs using other methods to confirm.”

  Shep began eying the other objects on the work table as well. None of them made sense.

  “Didn’t the Olmec civilization die out before the birth of Christ?”

  Cleo died in 30 BCE. Shep’s grin faltered when he realized the discredit to the discovery even dating it would give.

  Hector nodded. “Around 300 BCE, but this cache was found inserted into a soil layer from around 500 BCE. Definitely Olmec, and several secondary dig sites nearby confirm it. The best we can approximate given the disturbed area where this was buried, someone left it here around 1100 CE. There was a small Mayan settlement here around that time. But the placement at the center of the Olmec site so precisely, and the depth at which it was buried? It seems unlikely that it’s coincidence.”

  “And then there’s these.” Shep motioned to the objects on the table. “Any luck figuring them out?”

  Hector pointed at a small golden object some two inches tall and an inch across, similar to a fleur-de-lis but with several gems mounted on its surface. “This appears to be Mamluk in origin. Some sort of pendant. And this one over here …” He pointed this time at a small green container, a little bowl with a fitted lid. “This is carved jade, and the markings on the bottom place it in the Tang Dynasty, circa 730 CE. The ring over there, we’ve determined that’s Visigoth. And the—”

  “Wait a minute.” A fever came over Shep as he eyed the objects. “Visigoth, Mamluk, Chinese? If it was just Cleo, I’d get why I’m here. But with all these other things?” He exhaled and ran his fingers through his dark blond hair. “Why me?”

  “Because of the scroll,” Hector answered plainly.

  “What scroll?”

  Hector grinned the way only a man sharing a secret can. He motioned to a hand-sized wooden box. “Inside that we found a papyrus scroll, Egyptian hieroglyphs, wrapped around some sort of amulet. The whole box was sealed with resin to stand up to the elements. Whomever put it there meant for it to survive. The amulet was squirreled away by Kronastia’s people the moment we found it, but I was able to sneak a peek. It was jade, cylindrical, linked to the rope by gold fittings. Nothing unique, but still old. The scroll, however, is still here.”

  Shep salivated. “What does it say?”

  “I was kind of hoping you would be able to tell me that.”

  Shep looked back at the collection before him. His mind was struggling to grasp its significance. True, it could all turn out to be fraud, only he didn’t expect someone of Hector’s caliber to become involved in such a fiasco. His inner cynic screamed that this couldn’t be real. The explanation may be daunting, but it had to be there. The little boy inside him who’d dug up arrowheads in his Oklahoma backyard bristled with anticipation.

  Hector broke into his train of thought. “You do understand what this means?”

  “I think so.” He rubbed his eyes, becoming aware of the greasy film on his face and the grime only international travel seemed to induce. “Only, finding a collection like this in Europe or Asia? That alone would be monumental. But this? Here? In the New World?”

  At this, Hector clicked his tongue and shook his head disapprovingly. “You Eurasian archaeologists and your arrogance about time! Civilizations in this so called ‘new world’ can be traced back nearly as far as any on the Tigris and Euphrates. Some of them were even more advanced than the ones in your ‘old world’. What it means, though, Shep is—”

  “—somebody crossed the ocean almost four hundred years before Columbus,” Shep cut off Hector.

  Hector’s face fell. “We already knew that.”

  Shep may simply have been too tired to scramble for the name; the lack of sleep and jet lag were about to destroy him.

  “Leif Ericson,” Hector supplied. “He made it to the east coast of modern-day Canada a thousand years ago.”

  “Yeah, but …” Shep coughed. “I mean, seriously, Hector? It’s one thing to say someone made it here over the ocean. But are you suggesting someone tracked thousands of miles over the North American continent to bury this stuff here? Doesn’t that seem ... impossible?”

  Hector pinched the bridge of his nose. Shep was on a roll of letting down his old friend.

  “You’re missing the biggest mind screw of them all here. These are souvenirs.”

  Shock manifested as an acute pain right between his eyebrows, like someone was driving in a nail. Not only did this mean that someone in pre-Columbian times had toured Europe, Asia, and Africa, it meant someone had gathered these items to bring back.

  Which meant that the traveler had originated in the new world.

  “Holy shit!”

  But it wasn’t dawn of insight that caused these words to fly out of Shep’s mouth.

  It was the realization that a gun was pointing squarely at his head.

  Chapter 4

  Shep would have liked to be able to say it was the first time a gun had been aimed at him. Sadly, this marked occasion number three. A little devilish voice in the back of his head snickered, “Third time’s the charm.”

  Perhaps as the result of a childhood spent watching Miami Vice and MacGyver, Shep instinctively threw his hands out to the side, both as a show that he was unarmed and that he would oblige whatever command the wild-eyed José might give. He kept his eyes downcast, looking up only enough to be able to see if José had any plans beyond the standoff.

  Hector had never watched MacGyver and hadn’t even heard of Miami Vice. Shep looked on with a mixture of dread and awe as Hector wheeled around and began spouting Spanish obscenities quick enough to disprove—or was that, confirm?—Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. José, however, matched his rebuffs tit for tat. After several tense moments and what likely involved degrading statements concerning mothers, José lowered the gun and Hector jerked his head, telling Shep to follow him above ground. He chanced one last look at the table of artifacts before complying. With a sigh, he eyed Cleo, hoping a chance of seeing the scroll Hector mentioned wasn’t too far off.

  They couldn’t have been underground in the site for more than ten or fifteen minutes, but the atmosphere had gone through a quick change routine. Even for the rainforest, the humidity stifled. Hector looked up in the sky and grimaced.

  “Helene is coming in a bit earlier than we expected.”

  Shep resisted the urge to let all of his pent up anxiety manifest into grabbing Hector’s shirt and shaking him senseless.

  “The weather? You’re going to stand there and make comments on the weather? What the hell just happened down there?”

  “Security protocols,” Hector answered briefly. Shep’s demanding stare forced him to continue. “Policy is that no one is allowed to enter the main site without the okay from Plaxis. José went over my head to report what I did, taking you in like that.”

  “You knew he’d do that, didn’t you?” Shep spit out with sudden realization. “That’s why you rushed me down here the second I arrived.”

  A nonchalant shrug nearly drove Shep mad. “Whatever, it is done. The site is secure, your profile’s been sent to Plaxis for screening, no doubt with some urgency, and José will handle the lockdown during the hurricane. But now, best get to the shelters. You could probably do with a rest after that, anyhow.”

  Yeah, Shep thought, a stiff drink wouldn’t hurt either.

  “You’ll be in that one over there.” Hector pointed to the far ridge to the right, which was lined with green, boxy structures about the size of a garbage dumpster. “Two to each. You’ll be with Vick.”

  Shep smirked. Make that two stiff drinks.

  Five minutes later, the door of the shelter had been sealed behind him. Shep knew if either he or Victoria needed to get out, a few simple s
teps undid the locks. He looked at his cot to the right, then to Victoria’s—and at Victoria herself—on the left. She reminded him of a corpse laying in state, her fingers interlaced across her stomach, her eyes closed. The weariness of travel badgered Shep like an insistent grad student at office hours. He found himself thankful for the opportunity to let his mind rest, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist interrogating his roommate about Anathea had she been awake.

  He placed his shoes on the floor beside the cot, toes pointing toward the door incase circumstances called for a quick escape. In the field, one always planned for contingencies. He was never surprised at how often a small set of simple survival skills like these had saved his tail. In Arabia, you never knew when an earthquake might strike or a popular uprising would take you by surprise. Thinking ahead was keeping your head. He saw Victoria had done the same.

  A small wash basin allowed him to clean up enough to feel human again. Never one accused of overt modesty, the twist of unease surprised Shep as he took off his shirt and set it aside. Too tired to assuage decency at the moment, he looked over his naked shoulder to see if she had stirred. His breath caught when he found Victoria on her side. The lapel of her shirt, top two unbuttons blessedly unused, fell slightly, giving Shep an intriguing view. Just at that moment, she yawned, causing her chest to heave and pushing her cleavage hard against the fabric of her shirt. The view put Shep’s mind into a place it hadn’t been since before Christine died.

  Nope, he didn’t like the direction his mind was tracking one bit. Rather, he liked it a little too much, and he knew it was both ill-advised and, frankly, a little creepy. After all, she was more than a dozen years his junior. Even an archaeology professor recalled enough from literature class to remember how Lolita ended.

  -Ψ-

  A ballpoint pen scratched over a sheet of paper, pulling Shep from his slumber. The howling wind created disharmonious chords against which a snare drum cadence of gust-driven rain pounded the outside of their shelter. Shep rolled over cautiously, making sure to keep the thin blanket covering as much of his bare chest as possible.

  Victoria sat, notebook on lap, and scribbled with nearly superhuman speed. Every so often, she would pause, trace her fingers over the margin of a book that lay open on the cot next to her, and resume with renewed vigor.

  “Hey there, Vick. Whatcha working on?”

  She jolted at the sound of his voice. Victoria’s hand fluttered to the delicate curvature of her neck, leaving a nick of ink on the bottom of her chin when the pen notched between her fingers made contact. “You gave me a fright.”

  Shep smiled his apologies. “Not intended, I assure you.”

  She beamed back at him, her feline green eyes twinkling. “Of course not. I’m, um, translating something. Some of these characters, however ... I haven’t seen them used in Mayan writing before, so I’m trying to reference them against variant dialects.”

  Her eyes narrowed in observation. Feeling a blush come over him as if he were a sixteen-year-old school girl, Shep sat up and grabbed his forsaken button-down from the foot of his cot.

  “Too bad it’s not Egyptian,” Shep commented as he slid the tee over his torso. “I’d be able to help you on that.”

  Victoria chuckled. “Not to try to show you up, Dr. Smyth, but if it was Egyptian, I wouldn’t need your help.”

  “Cocky, aren’t we? And why are we back to Dr. Smyth again? I told you, you can call me Shep.”

  Victoria smirked and leaned over her notepad toward him. “Some call it cocky, I call it confidence. And I’ve decided that Dr. Smyth is the appropriate nomenclature. It appears, after all, that you are my senior, both in terms of age and experience. It would be good of us both to keep that in mind.”

  She looked away abashedly. Could she possibly be feeling this same, odd draw to him as well? Was that why she was trying to form this wall of formality between them?

  “Well, I guess Hect– Dr. Gonzalez would approve of that decision,” Shep conceded.

  She nodded. “Yes, and it’s the way I was taught as well by my mentor.”

  “And here I thought I was going to have to engineer some trivial conversation to ask you about Anathea.”

  She grinned and continued her penning. “Dr. Gonzalez told you, huh?”

  “He knows I’m a disciple of her work. How did you manage to get in with her?”

  Victoria sighed, folded her notebook, and set it aside. “She’s kind of related to me.”

  That didn’t make sense. Anathea had been an only child, never married, and he couldn’t recall hearing about her having any children.

  “Distantly,” Victoria added, answering almost directly on cue to his unspoken question. “You have to go back more than a few generations to make the connection, but still. However, that doesn’t mean she let me off easy. Her expectations were high, and I like to think I delivered. I dare say I know everything she knows, and then some.”

  “Confident in that, are you?” Shep asked.

  “No,” Victoria boasted through her smile, “cocky. I could tell you, for example, what’s on that scroll.”

  “You’ve seen the scroll?” She nodded. “And you could read it?” She nodded again. “But, then, why would Hector say he needed me to translate it if you already did?”

  Victoria feigned innocence. “Let’s just say, he doesn’t exactly know that I’ve seen it. Besides, he assumes that because I’m ‘so young’,” finger quotes and a smirk suggested she found the description demeaning, “I couldn’t possibly have a grasp on Ptolemaic-era script well enough to be able to decode it. He’s a bit of an ageist, you know?”

  “And?” Shep waited impatiently for her to continue, and nearly screamed despite himself when she didn’t. “Damn it, Victoria, what does it say?”

  “That knowledge seems such a petty thing to die for, doesn’t it?” Her eyes were mischievous. She continued, “It’s one thing for someone like me to have read it, but another to share classified information.”

  “I appreciate your concern.” Not that he was about to accept that. “And, of course, I understand your reluctance. After all, I can imagine how embarrassing it would be for you if later, when I read it, your translation turned out to be wrong. Not to mention, that would support Hector’s opinions of your age vis-à-vis your ability.”

  Her head shot up. “You think I’m lying.”

  “Not for a moment, I believe you’ve seen it.” He smirked. “But like you said, you’re so young and the language, so very, very old.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “What?”

  Victoria sighed, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and arching her back to stretch. “I’m not going to tell you what it says.”

  Shep approximated disappointment. Sometimes appearing to give up was the best way to lure an adversary into the open. Victoria only took her notebook back up. He stood and stretched, deciding to visit the topic again later. He found his cell in the pocket of his carry-on bag and checked the time: 9:14 p.m. A glance out the small window of the shelter didn’t yield much; all he could see was the rain pounding against the book-sized glass.

  “Is that one anything you can share with me?”

  Victoria sighed. Obviously, she’d forsaken her desire to chat, and quite frankly seemed a little annoyed. Perhaps that was why when Victoria did give him a response, it was anything but conversational.

  “Not really, but I’ll tell you this: Anathea thinks you’re right,” she declared. Shep only looked at her blankly. “About Cleopatra.”

  He nearly spit his own tongue from his mouth. “Sh–she ... she said that?”

  “Maybe you didn’t know that she’s quite a fan of your work. Thinks you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

  Pride and vanity surged through him. He couldn’t resist in
quiring. He may never meet Anathea himself, but Victoria seemed to be close enough to give him some sort of friendship-by-association buzz.

  “Does she ... has she ... said anything else about me?”

  “Yeah, she passed me a note in homeroom that said you’re really cute and wants to know if you’ll go steady,” Victoria returned sarcastically. “We didn’t discuss you at length.”

  Shep chuckled just to amuse her. “Sorry. Not trying to pry. I know she’s very private.”

  “No problem, I understand.” She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “She was also very upset when Christine died.”

  He went instinctively numb at the mere mention of the name. “Me, too,” was all he could respond.

  A tense silence hung between them for several moments. They both found different spots on the floor to study. It was annoying; he was rested enough that the need to sleep wasn’t pressing on him, yet the time of day and his current locale made working impractical. He figured, since there was nothing better to do, he’d take advantage of the company of the beautiful woman sitting across the way, even if she didn’t seem in the mood.

  “Seems unfair that you know so much about me, yet I know so little about you,” he began.

  “Do you always have such an acute interest in lowly interns? How Clintonian of you.” Victoria shifted around uncomfortably, tucking her hands under her legs. “Not too much I can tell you. I’m originally from this area, actually, but I’ve spent much of my life abroad. I always get a little homesick this time of year, and an internship on an Olmec dig seemed a good excuse to spend some time here.”