The Moses Riddle (Thomas McAllister 'Treasure Hunter' Adventure Book 1) (11 page)

As he scrambled to his feet, Thomas saw the small .38 automatic pistol. This Ann was a tough one, and smart. Any woman who worked alone in central Mexico would be a fool not to carry a gun.
He took two steps up and reached down to pick up the tin can contraption. “What’s this for? Why do you need a warning system? Digging for treasure?”
In the night, he still hadn’t seen her face, but now jaw muscles bulged, as she glared at him, “I like to know when someone is spying on me! And as for what I’m doing over there . . . it is absolutely none of your goddamn business.” She turned and walked back to her site.
Thomas wondered, as he hurried back to collect Arturo and the equipment, what he would tell her tomorrow when she saw them back out here, and found out they were not hunters at all, but archeologists, come to dig at her site.

Thomas and Arturo took a table by the entrance. A few dimly lit chandeliers—formerly iron wagon wheels—dangled haphazardly from the ceiling. The tables were wooden and square. On the opposite wall, where Ann was sitting, was a long, dark, mahogany bar with a huge mirror behind it. The bar was nice. Much too nice compared to the strictly functional dining room. The owners had obviously imported it from somewhere in the States, or Europe, and it made for a memorable cross between rustic and cosmopolitan. Thomas relaxed. He liked the place. It felt more homey than his house in Arizona had these past few weeks.

Thomas had a Carta Blanca, Arturo, a glass of El Presidente brandy. After the drinks came, they ordered dinner.
“What do you think of her, Arturo? Have you heard of anyone who is supposed to be working El Manati?”
Arturo sipped the brandy, scrunched his face at the first taste, and said, “I honestly don’t keep track of what goes on here. Ask me what’s going on at Copan, and I can tell you anything. But El Manati? No idea, amigo.”
“Before I set off that damn can alarm of hers, I got a look at what she was doing. She was digging furiously out there. Just like we had been. She’s looking for something, and she’s in a hurry.”
“I’ve been an archeologist a long time, Thomas, longer than you. I can see the excitement of yesterday is gone. You’re worried. We’re the same, you and me. We believe that nothing is safe until it is home, under lock and key. And I know that having someone already working your site is killing you. But don’t jump to conclusions. Right now we don’t know anything about her. Except that she’s cute.” He smiled and winked. “She might even be a looter, you know.”
When Thomas didn’t comment, Arturo continued. “Then again, could she be looking for the same thing you are, Thomas? Could there have . . . been . . . any leaks?”
“It’s possible. But I doubt it. Aside from the
Builders Notes
being stolen, I’ve kept this close to the vest. And I can’t believe anyone could’ve figured out the clue in the
Notes
already. Maybe she found it through other means. I’ve talked to quite a few people about different pieces. Martha. Sinistar. Don Ozgood. Dick Hightower. I guess it’s possible someone could have pieced it together. My activities may have aroused suspicion. Thank God Martha is destroying the riddle. I don’t think I could take it if one more person shows up out here.”
Thomas took a long drink of his beer, content for the moment with the knowledge that, by now, Martha would have already been to Saqqara to chisel away the sediment that held the riddle. Somewhere just above his subconscious and below his conscious mind, he noted that Ann had great calves.
Their dinners came, green peppers stuffed with corn and shrimp served with rice and beans, and they ate quietly and quickly. It had been a long and challenging day.
Occasionally, Thomas glanced over at Ann. She was eating slowly, while reading from a journal. Her sun bleached hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail. She had removed the safari hat and he could see strong lines of jaw and neck.
She wore standard khaki shorts with wool socks and heavy Vasque boots that jungle archeologists often use. Thomas, a sand dweller, preferred expedition Filsons, but knew a lot of good field people who wore Vasque because of the Gortex. She didn’t wear jewelry or makeup and would have looked ridiculous if she had. It would have been like putting a bow on a lion. Thomas saw the owner, Jose, clear Ann’s plate and bring her another beer.
Arturo finished his after-dinner drink and excused himself. “That’s it for me. I’ve got to call home. I’ll meet you at breakfast. Have a good sleep.”
Thomas watched Arturo as he waved at Jose and walked out of the room. He wondered if he had decided too quickly about Arturo. He had come highly recommended, but he’d never had a major find of his own. Might this be his chance? How easy it would be, to get rid of Thomas out in the middle of nowhere after they’d unearthed the treasure. Thomas had seen treasure do amazing things to people. He’d seen it turn good, honest people against each other, exactly like Bogart and his buddies in the great study on greed,
Treasure of the Sierra Madres
.
But, at this point, he had to trust Arturo. He couldn’t do this on his own, and that was the bottom line. He hoped Arturo was really going up to his room, and not back out to the site, to work all night with friends who had followed them in, and who would help him extract the treasure, leaving Thomas with a hole in the ground where his treasurehis future-had once been.
Quickly, before he could give in to his negativity, he pushed back his chair and, sore from the day’s workout, sauntered over to the bar. He chose a stool at the opposite end from Ann. He ordered a Carta Blanca, and then another. Occasionally, he glanced down at her, but she didn’t look up. She was still reading the journal, still drinking beer. She had long, honey blond hair, tied back with a light blue ribbon. She had a certain feline quality that he hadn’t observed in a woman in a long time. Narrow, smiling eyes, full lips, sureness of foot. And that supreme catquality, equally proportioned contentedness and confidence, mixed with an air of authoritarian control.
He wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t want it to come off like he was pumping her for information. Even more, he didn’t want it to seem like he was coming on to her.
Jose appeared, busily writing on his order pad. “Mr. McAlister, would you like to pay for dinner now, or would you rather I add the bill to your room?”
“Add it to my room bill, Jose. I may stay for another couple of days.” Thomas watched Ann from the corner of his eyes. Had she heard Jose use his last name?
At first nothing happened. And then he saw it come over her. Her posture changed. She became more erect. She looked up from her book and her head whirled, until she was looking straight at Thomas. He met her gaze.
“Did he say
McAlister
?” .
Oh man, he thought. She’s already getting pissed. “Yes.”
“And your
first
name is Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“You bastard!”
“Pardon me?”
“
The
Thomas McAlister?”
Thomas looked back over each shoulder, as if she were talking about someone else. “You’ve heard of me?
“You pretentious son-of-a-bitch. You’re asking me if I’ve ever heard of the man who made the most significant Egyptian find in the last fifty years? The man who pioneered the archeological use of sound wave analysis to determine density? Um . . . let me think of an appropriately sarcastic answer to that question.”
“I think you just did.” To archeologists engaged in their trade, Thomas was well known. But he never knew how far that limited celebrity went outside of his University. “How did you know all of that?”
“Don’t patronize me. I have my doctorate in archeology. That stuff about you is taught in Archeology 101.”
“I taught some lower level classes and the subject rarely came up,” he replied.
“Well, your classes were always full, weren’t they?”
Thomas shrugged and took a drink of his beer. “Packed.”
“See.”
There was a pause, she shook her head and said. “Hunting! Hunting mountain lions! No. No. Puma! Oh that’s rich, Thomas. Is that what you always do? Show up at a site and lie? Is that why you’re so renowned?”
“So, you’re an archeologist?” He changed the subject. Jose brought another beer without being asked.
“Yes, I am, but only a humble female Mayanologist. Nothing to compare with the great Thomas McPharaoh, Prince of Egyptology! But then, why do you care? You probably don’t want to talk shop. You’re on a hunting expedition with your buddy. Is that your guide?”
“That’s Arturo Bandera.”
“Jesus H. Christ! Is the Convention of Famous Archeologists in town or something? Arturo’s a legend. I read he was at Copan right now.”
Thomas sipped his beer and waited. Maybe this hothead would understand that she was attacking him for no reason. It was common to try to deceive others around a site, if you were in danger of jeopardizing your find.
They sat in silence. Thomas drinking, Ann feigning reading.
It struck him that she might not know the rules. He watched her take a drink in the mirror behind the bar. She was younger than he . . . quite a bit younger. She might even be fresh out of graduate school. She had probably worked sites on commercial digs, but never her own. That was it, of course. She had probably never discovered anything herself, never known the thrill and the fear; never had to lie, to protect her goal.
He would have to treat her as he would treat some of his best students, if they had just graduated and were out to make a name for themselves. He remembered when he was in her shoes. He had been a cocky hothead.
“Listen, Ann, I’m sorry I lied about hunting. I’m here on business.” He carried his beer to her end of the bar. Jose moved to the other end, to give them privacy.
Ann shoved the chair out for him with her foot. “So Thomas, I guess the ten thousand dollar question is, what the hell is an Egyptologist doing in Mexico?” It’s worth more than ten thousand, Thomas thought.
“You’re asking me to lie to you again, Ann.”
“No, you do that on your own, without being asked.”
“How did you get interested in the Maya?”
She paused, obviously considering whether or not she wanted to share it with him, then said, “I was interested in math. I was going to major in finance my freshman year at Stanford. I took an anthropology course as an elective: Introduction to Central American Cultures. I learned that the Maya had an elaborate, extremely advanced arithmetic system that was more complicated but better thought out than the calculus course I was taking, not to mention their astronomy. That was it. I was hooked.”
“Did you do your graduate work at Stanford?”
“Yes, I stayed there. I loved it. I finished at the end of last year. Three years for my doctorate.”
“That’s impressive. Now let me ask you. What are
you
doing out here?”
“Unlike you, I can tell. I’m trying to find information on the origin of the Maya counting system. I want to take it back even further. Try to find out where they got it. The locals say they’ve seen Olmec carvings on the sides of the El Manati pyramids.”
Thomas sighed inwardly. He believed her. He finished his beer and ordered another. He wasn’t sure how many he’d had. He fleetingly thought about slowing down.
Ann said, “Jose, two shots of tequila, salt and lime. On me.”
Thomas could feel himself getting numb. He protested, but couldn’t really say no. When they finished, Ann ordered two more. When they toasted the Maya, Thomas let Ann drink her tequila and he drank beer.
Suddenly she slid off the bar stool, walked over to the old dusty juke box, and dropped a few coins into the slot. Thomas wondered what she would play. Probably something by the Smashing Pumpkins or Pearl Jam, if they had any of that stuff. He prayed it wouldn’t be anything by Garth Brooks. He heard the needle strike the record and skip once. It made him smile. That was a good sound he didn’t hear much anymore. The familiar beat of “Under My Thumb” rolled out of the huge speakers in the bottom of the juke box. Maybe it was the tequila. Maybe the dark cantina with the Manhattan style bar, or the music, or Ann . . . but Thomas began to feel very good, and he knew he would remember this night for a long time.
Ann returned to her bar stool. He saw that she had sharp blue eyes.
“Good selection.”
“Yeah, I played it twice. They have Hot Rocks on that old thing.”
As the music played they talked about archeology, how they had gotten into it, and the things they wanted to accomplish. Ann asked Thomas about Egypt and what it was like to find such a major treasure.
They laughed a lot, but when he asked about her family, she became oddly quiet. Her eyes pooled and she looked close to crying. She said her father had left home when she was very young, and the only thing her mother had ever said about it was that it was for the good of the family. Obviously it was a wound that had not yet healed.
Slowly, imperceptibly, Thomas led the conversation to topics he knew would make her happy. Though it seemed like minutes, they actually talked for several hours, casually drinking the entire time.
At midnight, Thomas realized he was very drunk. It came over him suddenly. One minute he was fine and the next, he was wasted. He watched Ann’s lips move, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. The words were familiar, but he couldn’t get them to make sense.
Could she tell? Was she drunk too? Hadn’t she had more to drink than he? He had been the one refusing shots earlier in the night. In the back of his soused mind, he knew that if she was drunk, he might not appear as drunk as he was. Suddenly, he noticed he had a shot glass and a beer sitting in front of him, but she had only beer. For the last hour, he had taken a tequila shot with almost every beer. Ann had insisted he try one of the true Mexican tequilas. He’d conceded only after Jose had reaffirmed its quality.
Had she lost some of that athletic posture? She was talking about the Maya, their ability to count, their understanding of zero before the Romans . . . she was going and on and on and on. He found it all inordinately interesting, and he wanted to tell her about the incredibly advanced systems the Egyptians used but he couldn’t get a good coherent sentence together. Suddenly, she turned to the bartender, and told him they’d had enough. Then, seemingly in the middle of the conversation, they got up to leave.
“Where are the rooms?” he asked, to no one in particular. He swayed. She helped. “Wha’s my room number? Where is the key? Oh, you have it. Tha’s good! Don’ lose it! Might need it. If we ever find the damn rooms.”
They walked up the stairs with arms draped around each other for support. It was difficult for either to tell who was supporting who. It was very dark. Thomas could feel Ann’s ribs through the firm veneer of skin and muscle. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open.
She was asking him something. Her first question didn’t make it through the fog, but he comprehended the second.
“Why would an Egyptologist be in Mexico?” He repeated. “Why? Hmmm, I think you shouldn’t be asking me that . . . but it’s a good question. Why would I want to be here? Let’s sing and maybe it’ll come to us.” Thomas started singing.
The whole thing was clear in his mind’s eye, through the fog of the tequila, it was so simple, if he could just say it. Just tell beautiful Ann that the Egyptians and ancient Mexicans were linked because Moses had ordered the Ark be buried here . . . for all time . . . until someone solved the Moses riddle which, Ann, no one would have ever done if I hadn’t thought to use an ultrasound which was so important because the wall had crumbled away . . .
“
Oh, here we are! My room
!” They jostled through the doorway, Thomas talking on and on. It felt good to explain, to share freely . . . finally someone he could talk to . . . and then the lips, the soft lips, and then down, down . . . into the black velvety darkness of sleep.