Deity (36 page)

“This
is the fourth clue, alright,” she said, kneeling at a small glyph chiseled into
the side of the pillar. “This is the symbol for Katun.”

Tarah
smiled. “All we need now is the Baktun. So where is this pillar telling us to
go?”

Lori
straightened, eyeing the ball atop the pillar. The palms of the pillar ball’s
hands faced her, the fingertips pointing to the back of the pillar directly
behind the Katun glyph. Lori placed her hands over the carvings and looked directly
in front of her.

Her
fingertips pointed down the ravine, back down the slope of Tacana.

“You
mean we climbed all the way up here just to go right back down into that
jungle?” Rafi complained.

“Follow
the ravine,” Tarah ordered. “See if there’s anything down there.”

Grumbling
beneath his breath, Rafi gathered his rifle and started down the ravine. Tarah
waited patiently. Lori wasn’t
so
relaxed as Rafi
disappeared into the jungle. She tried to anticipate what he might find. What
lay at the end of this mysterious trail? Certainly the original Long Count
Calendar was near, but what did it look like? Lori expected a stone of some
sort, perhaps a rock wall littered with the carvings and brilliant calculations
of the one who’d discovered the five thousand one hundred twenty-five year
cycle of time. But there had to be more to it. If they were about to uncover
the scribble pad of an ancient genius, where did the Talking Cross fit in?

Rafi’s
movements were drawing near once more.

“Do
you see anything?” Tarah called.

Rafi
stepped out of the trees, marching back up the ravine. “There’s nothing,” he
snarled. “I can’t tell where there’s ever been anyone down there.”

Tarah
spun on Lori, her eyes snapping. “Are you sure this is the way we’re supposed
to go?”

Lori’s
breath caught short in her throat. She wasn’t sure of anything except that she
was a long way from the Quetzalcoatl that had lured her to Mexico in the first place. She
didn’t care about this quest for the Long Count Calendar. Not really. It was
increasingly obvious that she was never going to find Dr. Webb and she knew
nothing about the Talking Cross that had drawn her off track. She wished she’d
never heard of Matt Webb. She wished she’d never fallen in with Abe and Tarah. More
than anything, she wished she was far from Tacana, never to return.

“Where
are we supposed to go?” Tarah demanded.

“The
pillar points down the ravine,” Lori insisted.

Tarah
snared Lori’s hair, pulling her down to her knees as she trained her pistol to
her head. Lori didn’t struggle. The ants had taught her that lesson. Her mind
reeled for an explanation. Maybe Rafi hadn’t gone far enough down the ravine. What
if the Katun pillar was pointing them toward a different mountain all together?
There just wasn’t enough information to go by.

Tarah
yanked on her hair, sending sparks of pain across her bug-bitten scalp. “Where
in the ravine do we go?” she demanded.

Lori’s
neck ached from the severe angle Tarah was pulling on her head. “I don’t know,”
she admitted through her tightly drawn throat. She suddenly feared that
exposure, sure now that at any moment Tarah would draw a knife and cut her
throat wide open.

Tarah
didn’t draw a knife. Instead, she shoved Lori’s head aside, smashing the side
of her face against the pillar. “Look again,” she ordered.

Lori
did look, noting a spot of blood staining the stone where her stunned cheek had
just been—where the Katun glyph mocked her from between the carved legs of the
Calendar Deity. And that’s when it dawned on her. The placement of the glyph
was wrong. In Izapa, the Tun glyph was located on the pillar ball, not the
pillar itself. She pulled herself to her feet and glanced at the face of the
pillar ball—that space between the fingertips where she expected a glyph to be.

There
was nothing there. However, if she just aligned the pillar ball’s fingertips
with the Katun glyph on the pillar…

Grabbing
hold of the pillar ball once more, Lori put her weight into it and found that
it was surprisingly easy to turn. She turned the round stone until the hands of
the ball aligned with the legs of the pillar. The Katun glyph was now centered
beneath the fingertips of the pillar ball.

Lori
positioned herself behind the ball once again and with her hands resting over
the ball’s handholds, she gave the pillar ball one last tug. The ball stopped
with a click, budging no further atop the pillar. Straight ahead, amid a giant
black wall of lava rock, a low rumbling suddenly
trembled
the mountain. Stone ground upon stone as though tumbling in an avalanche, but
there were no falling rocks. Instead, a small crack within the wall widened,
opening slowly with the painful screeching of slipping stone.

To
Lori’s amazement, the opening of a cave was suddenly revealed to them like the
secret passageway of a Hollywood movie. Grit
slipped around the edges as the door screeched to a stop, leaving an opening
three feet wide.

Tarah’s
smile returned. “Now that’s more like it,” she said.

Eschatology

Chac
swallowed hard at the sight of Matt’s limp body sprawled out across the jungle
floor. He couldn’t help but feel a touch of remorse. After all, he’d worked
with the man for nearly two years and although he hadn’t realized it until now,
they’d been two men plagued by secret identities. While Matt hid from Chac his
involvement with Abdullah, Chac had kept his position with the Zapatistas
painfully quiet.

His
efforts had been in vain, however, if Matt knew who he was all along. That had
left Chac at a terrible disadvantage. In the two years he’d worked alongside
Matt, he hadn’t considered for a moment that his partner was anyone other than
a researching university professor. Chac supposed he had his trusting nature to
blame. It was a character flaw that ultimately compromised his position. He
wasn’t suspicious enough. He wasn’t ruthless enough. Then again, who really was
these day?

Eighteen
years had gone by since the Zapatistas’ pitiful revolution. Eighteen years
since the North American Free Trade Agreement had sealed the fate of the poor
farmers of Chiapas
into a whole new level of poverty. The farmers foresaw the impending doom even
then, but what voice did they have against a government wooed by the most
powerful nation in the world? Thus the Zapatistas were conceived.

Violence
was the only flag the Zapatistas could wave that would catch anyone’s attention
and for a while, the tactic worked. Even the United States turned a wary eye. But
the Zapatistas’ resources were short lived and running desperately low when the
Mexican Army got involved. They needed some quick and immediate funding and the
only source available was a wealthy Middle-Eastern arms dealer named Abdullah.

It
was Abe’s interest in the end times that benefitted the Zapatistas. Stories of
an original Long Count Calendar had initially attracted Abdullah to Chiapas when he wasn’t
busy north of the border. To ensure his full cooperation, the Zapatistas upped
the ante with the legend of the Talking Cross of the Cruzob.

Legends—that’s
all the depleted Zapatistas could offer, but their gamble worked.

Abdullah
agreed to finance their revolution in return for access to the Talking Cross. The
problem was
,
the agreement came too late. Before the
Zapatistas could regroup, the Mexican Army broke their back in Ocosingo. The
main leader of the movement had been killed and as the group fell under new
leadership, so too did the revolution change. The violence had served its
purpose by turning a few ears to the plight of the Chiapas people. It was time to employ a new
tactic so the revolution turned to more peaceful measures. Coincidentally, the
need for Abdullah’s money disappeared.

But
Abe did not. Fully vested in the Zapatistas’ promises, he continued to demand
access to the Talking Cross. He quickly became a thorn in the Zapatistas’ side.
There, captured by his enemy in the Tacana jungle, Chac felt the thorn festering.

Abdullah
nudged Matt with the toe of his boot, turning the body over and effectively
draining more blood from the hole in his head. One of his cronies approached. It
was Sonjay, Abdullah’s right-hand man. Chac had had skirmishes with the man
before.

“We
might have needed Matt,” Sonjay said, shaking his head as he looked down upon
the body. “We haven’t reached the end yet.”

Abdullah
snickered. “I think we’ll be fine.” His cold eyes quickly darted to Peet. “We
still have Matt’s baggage.”

If
Peet weakened beneath Abdullah’s glare, he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed
to stand a little taller, a little bolder, as all focus turned on him.

“Tell
me, professor,” Abdullah said. “What are we supposed to find on this volcano?”

Peet
shrugged. “I don’t really know for sure.”

Abdullah
scowled. “That wasn’t the answer I was looking for.” He calmly trained his
pistol on Peet. One step over Matt’s body and he had the muzzle pressed against
the side of Peet’s head.

The
professor stood firm.

“We’re
looking for a pillar,” Father Ruiz jumped in.

Abdullah
studied the priest a moment but his gun remained trained on Peet. “Where
exactly is this pillar?”

“A
villager said we’d find it in a ravine.”

Abdullah
turned back to Peet. “Are you telling me you’re entrusting your science to the
word of some bushman?”

Peet
hesitantly nodded.

Abdullah’s
face fell stone serious as he pressed the pistol tighter against Peet’s head. “That
doesn’t sound like Matt at all. What are you trying to hide?”

“There’s
nothing to hide,” Peet said.

Chac
was tired of the charade. In fact, their captor’s pleasure in holding Peet’s
life in his hand sickened him. If there was anything Chac could take away from
Abdullah now, it would be that simple act of dominant control.

“He
doesn’t know anything,” Chac interrupted.

Abdullah
steadied his pistol. “He must know something. Matt was too much of a tactician
to just leave everything to chance in this jungle.”

“He
would if he felt time running out on him.”

Abdullah
hesitated. Chac knew he’d struck a nerve. December 21, 2012 was the day he’d
been waiting for. Apparently it was the day Matt was expected to have the cross
ready for him. When confronting the end times, desperate measures could be
taken to meet the deadline.

Abdullah
finally pulled away from Peet and returned to stand over Chac once again. “You
know where the next clue is.” It was more of a statement than a question.

Chac
didn’t hesitate. “I know where it is.”

It
was a lie. Chac had no clue where they were supposed to go next, but he had to
give the man something. He needed to buy them all time. He needed to appear
useful or else they’d all meet Matt’s fate. More time allowed him to think
things through, to work things out. More time would give the Zapatistas a
chance to—

A
radio buzzed somewhere nearby. Abdullah reached for his hip. His eyes never
left Chac, warning him not to make a move, yet challenging him to do so. Chac
remained steady.

“Come
in,” Abdullah said into his radio.

A
woman’s voice returned. “Do you need assistance?”

Abdullah
smirked as though the very idea of needing the aid of a woman amused him. “Negative.
All is contained here. We are preparing for phase two.”

“Cease
preparations. Phase two is complete.”

Abdullah
scowled as though her words made no sense to him. “Come again,” he said.

“Phase
two is complete.”

Abdullah’s
smile returned with even greater strength. In fact, Chac could see his
excitement grow as the impact of the woman’s words sank in. “That’s my girl!”
he finally blurted.

He
spun back to his troops, inspiring sudden energy from them. “Let’s go, boys!”
he barked. “We’ve found The Calendar!”

Ravine

Peet
was hot, but he couldn’t determine if it was the heat or the anger boiling
inside that caused him to sweat. For a man accustomed to the dry Rocky Mountain
winters, he was not at all acclimated to the December humidity of the jungle. But
that was trivial compared to the prisoner parade he was now marching in, hands
bound behind his back with the constant display of firepower all around, ready
to kill should he or Chac or Father Ruiz make a wrong move.

And
Matt Webb was still fresh in his mind.

It
seemed inappropriate to feel hatred toward a dead man, and yet Matt’s deceit
was frustrating, even maddening, to comprehend. He’d known Matt for years, and
in all those years the BYU professor that he thought he knew had been nothing
but a mirage, a cover for a sort of espionage in this battle against the
Zapatistas. The most heartbreaking of all was that the man Peet had once
considered a colleague was the very same man that had planted the bomb that had
killed Lori. Matt Webb had lived a double life and now, somehow, Peet had
stumbled into his secret. He was trapped in a world he didn’t belong, amid a
war that wasn’t his. Peet was, as Matt so bluntly put it, baggage.