Serpent (9 page)

The computer was hooked up to a small suitcase that contained a satellite phone. The solarpowered package cost her an arm and a leg, but it put her in touch with her home base from anywhere in the world. She punched out a number and sent the electronic packet of words and photos winging through the ether until it bounced off a loworbit Inmarsat global communications satellite, which inlayed it to a dish that fed the information at the speed of light into the database at the University of Pennsylvania.

Nina clicked off her computer, satisfied that her reports and pictures were safely in the databank at the university. She was unaware that even on the 'information highway, there are such things as dangerous detours.

San Antonio, Texas

3 ON OFFICIAL BLUEPRINTS THE WINDOWLESS room near the top of the glass office tower overlooking the peaceful waters of the San Antonio River did not exist. Even the city inspectors had no idea it was there. The subcontractors who installed the soundproof walls, the separate electrical conduits, and the voiceactivated security locks were paid well to keep their mouths zipped. If they thought it strange to build a secret door through the shower stall of a private bathroom, they kept their opinions to themselves.

The room's decor was as clinically functional as a laboratory. Uncluttered beige walls. A bank of oversized IBM computer monitors and hard drives, a document safe, and a center worktable. A man sat in front of a computer, his hardened face washed by the cold light from the oversized monitor. He scrolled down several pages of type and photos and stopped at a series of line drawings.

With a click of the cursor he enlarged one particular sketch and zoomed in on a section of the screen, hard blue eyes taking in every detail. Satisfied he had seen the entire file, he saved it on a floppy disk and pressed the print command. As the highspeed printer whirred away, he put the disk in an envelope and locked it in the safe. He gathered the printed file into a manila folder, stepped through the shower stall, went through another door into his office, and switched on an intercom.

"I'll need a few minutes. Right away" he said.

"He has time now," a female voice replied. "Ten minutes in between appointments."

He left his office with the folder and walked through a maze of thickly carpeted hallways. He was tall, at least six feet, no longer young, but the only concession to age was his close-cropped silver hair and a slight stoop to his muscular shoulders. His athletic body was still limber and rock hard thanks to a Spartan regimen of diet and exercise. Because he rarely smiled or frowned, his face was relatively unlined around the mouth and eyes, as if the skin had been lifted off and stretched over the square jaw and high cheekbones.

The floor held the company's administrative offices arid could be entered only by those with hand and voice ID: The work spaces were all on other levels, and he saw nobody until he came to the spacious reception area.

The highceiling space was done in burnt red, brown, and green earth colors, repeating a stylized arrow and square Indian pattern on floor and walls. Behind the receptionist was a semiabstract mural whose brownskinned figures and giant sprouting quetzal feathers were so intertwined it was hard to tell whether the painting depicted a human sacrifice or a cocktail party. The receptionist sat at a desk that seemed to float on a carpeted sea of burnt orange, unmindful of the painted drama behind her head.

The man stopped in front of the desk and without speaking glanced toward a thick, darkwood door carved with dozens of writhing figures being tormented in a peasant artist's depiction of hell.
  

"Mr. Halcon will see you," said the receptionist, a middle-aged woman chosen for her blandness; efficiency, and unquestioning loyalty.

The carved door opened into a corner office that was almost as big as the reception area and repeated the Central American theme. Halcon stood at a floor-to-ceiling window, his back to the door.

"Sir, if you have a moment"

Halcon halfturned, displaying the aquiline nose, set in a pale, narrow face, the profile that had earned him his nickname in the bullring. "Come here, Guzman," he said.

Guzman crossed the room as ordered and stood beside the younger man. Halcon was in his forties, taller than Guzman by an inch or two. He was ascetically lean, almost delicatelooking. Like everything else about Halcon, appearances were deceiving. In a concession to his role as a businessman he had long ago cut off the matador's pigtail, trimmed the Valentino sideburns, and set aside the glittering uniform of the bullring. Yet under his expensive tailored suit still lurked the cruel body of the matador known as the Hawk, who had used his quickness and power to dispatch dozens of brave bulls. If there had been any complaint from the aficionados who followed his brief but illustrious career, it was that the Hawk's kills were coldly efficient and lacked passion. In another age he would have been a deadly swordsman whose blade would have found the beating hearts of men, not bulls.

"Do you know why I chose to build this particular office in this particular location, Guzman?"

"If I would venture a guess, Don Halcon, it offers a good view of many of your company's holdings."

Halcon chuckled at the response. An honestly blunt answer, as I would expect from my old guardian, but hardly a flattering one. I am not some burgher keeping an eye on his fields."

"My apologies, Don Halcon, I did not mean to offend."

"No offense taken. It was a natural assumption, but an erroneous one." His smile vanished, and his words took on the quiet, steely edge dangerous people give their voices. "I chose this office for one reason: the view it offers of the Mission San Antonio de Valero. It reminds me of what. is past, what is present, and what will be." He gestured out at the sprawl of the city visible through the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows. "I often stand here and think of how history can veer off in unexpected directions, drastically changed by the actions of the few. The Alamo was a defeat for its defenders, but it was the beginning of the end for Santa Anna. He was captured at San Jacinto, and in one decisive engagement Texas became independent from Mexico. The lesson of history is clear, is it not?"

"It wouldn't be the first time the death of martyrs brought down the powerful."

"Precisely. Nor will it be the last. What happened once can happen again. The Alamo had one hundred eighty three defenders against six thousand Mexican troops, showing that the determined few can transform the world for the many" He paused, alone with his thoughts, staring out at the sprawling city. After a moment he turned to Guzman like a man emerging from a dream.

"Why did you want to see me?"

"There's a matter of some importance, sir. I just intercepted this transmission from Morocco to the University of Pennsylvania." He handed the file over.

Halcon leafed through the material, finally fastening on the sketch, and murmured, Astounding." He looked up. "There can be no mistake?"

"Our surveillance system is practically foolproof. As you know, every archaeological expedition in the world sends proposals to our Time-Quest foundation asking for funds and volunteers. Those with serious potential are assigned priority. The computers automatically access all transmissions from the field to their home base and search for preprogrammed keywords, or fax, telex, and email messages."

"Los Hermanos has a watcher on site?"

"Yes. Gonzalez is there."

"Excellent," Halcon said. "He knows what he has to do."

Guzman nodded and clicked his heels softly As he turned to go his lips seemed to curl in a lopsided smile. But it was only a trick of the light and shadow caused by the white scar that ran from his right cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.

Morrocco

4 NINA BROUGHT THE CAMERA UP TO her face mask, framed the foundation wall in the viewfinder, and squeezed . the shutter release on the waterproof housing. The motor drive whirred softly. The last shot she needed for the photomosaic. Finally.

With a quick, sharp expulsion of air she cleared the water from her snorkel. Using an easy sidestroke, she swam toward the stairs. Mapping the bottom singlehanded had been tedious.. She first laid out a number of small, spherical plastic buoys in a tic-taetoe pattern as a guide. Then it was swim, stop, shoot. Again and again. She carried a mental blueprint of the port in her head. Had the water miraculously receded, she could have strolled blindfolded on the old quay and not bumped into a wall or fallen into a piscina
 
or cothon

The task of assembling dozens of photos into a composite map would be formidable. She had tried to match the photos using the buoys coupled with distinctive bottom landmarks. A crude system at best, but fine for now. Nina wasn't looking for scientific precision, she wanted a dramatic package that would have the tightfisted bean counters who controlled expeditionary money dreaming of frontpage headlines in USA Today and feature stories in Time and on Unsolved Mysteries.

She hoisted herself onto the steps and got out of her dive gear. As she toweled her body dry, she looked out over the lagoon and decided to put off the buoy removal until the morning. She'd be as wrinkled as a white raisin if she spent any more time in the water. Minutes later she was loping along the path to the camp with a discernible jauntiness in her stride. There was good reason to be pleased. She had accomplished an incredible amount of work in a short time.

People were still working on the excavation, and the camp was deserted. Well, almost. As she neared the tents she saw Gonzalez at the periphery of the campsite talking to someone in a Jeep. As she approached, the Jeep drove off before she got a look at the driver's face.

"Who was that?" she said, watching the dust cloud thrown out by the departing vehicle.

The automatic Gonzalez smile clicked on as if somebody had pressed a switch. "Someone who was lost. I gave him directions."

Lost?. What was Gonzalez talking about? This wasn't like taking a wrong turn off a freeway The camp was miles from anywhere or anything. It was lonely country with nothing to attract anyone except a bunch of crazy bonediggers. You'd have to want to get lost out here. When she first saw the man in the Jeep she thought he might have been called in by Fisel, so while she didn't buy the explanation, she was relieved to hear it.

At breakfast Dr. Fisel had announced the expected arrival of Moroccan divers within a few days. He strongly "advised" Nina to curtail her explorations so as not to disturb the site. Nina leaned over the table and stuck her chin right in his fare. A camera was hardly intrusive, she said quietly, but with such cold fury in her gray eyes that Dr. Knox complained after breakfast that icicles had formed on his mustache. Fisel prissily reminded everyone of . his responsibility to his cousin the king, then retreated into an unconvincing apology about only wanting to preserve the integrity of the site.

Nina had to admit she was being somewhat devious herself. She was removing artifacts from the site, a big nono, and had told neither Fisel nor Nox. Nor was Fisel aware that her preliminary findings were sent winging off to UPenn's cybervault. The stone head still remained her secret as well. She rationalized her uncharacteristic behavior. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

Kassim, Feel's tea boy, gave her a friendly wave. Dumb as a fencepost but not a bad kid when you got to know him. Savoring the tranquility, Nina went into her tent, slipped out of her bathing suit and into dry clothes. She switched on her computer and saw the email icon blinking. The message was from Dr: Elinor Sanford, the faculty member at UPenn to whom she had directed her computer transmission.

Sandy Sanford and Nina had been undergraduate classmates before branching into their own specialties. Sandy went into Mesoamerican studies, explaining that her preferences had more to do with cuisine than with cultures. She preferred burritos to couscous. Her culinary tastes might be open to question, but her scholarship was not. She had just been appointed a faculty curator at the university's museum. Nina scrolled down her message:

Congratulations, Nina! You don't have to bring me Hannibal's head to convince me you've hit a Phoenician port! Wish I could show tire fabulous stuff you transmitted to the Jurassic set here in the hidebound halls of archaeological academia. Could start another Punic War. But I'll abide by you wishes to keep things quiet What does El Grando Professoro think? Can't watt to see you. Stay dry. Love, Say