The blackware vases were perfect—suspiciously so to Lina, but it wasn’t her collection, so she said nothing. Their glyphs were outlined in red. Kawa’il’s sigil was absent.
Hunter absorbed each artifact in turn. The ornamental carved stones were new to him.
“What’s their purpose?” he asked aloud.
“Perhaps good luck, perhaps simple offerings flung into a sacred cenote,” Mercurio answered. “I haven’t had time to translate the glyphs, which appear to be Terminal Classic on first look.”
Hunter switched his attention to tiny pottery faces, misshapen and broken, as though cast aside. “These?” he asked.
“Supernatural faces,” Lina said when Mercurio didn’t answer. “Some of the many, many gods of the Maya. They look like imports from the highlands. Anywhere from Classic to Late Terminal Classic. Probably cenote offerings.”
“Very good,” Mercurio said in surprise. “But then, you always had an enviable eye. Are you certain I can’t lure you to the Yucatan full-time?”
“Quite certain,” Lina said absently.
Her attention was on pots with knobby animal feet at the bottom. Again, probably made as offerings to one god or another. But it was a string of pale, carved jade beads that made her breath stop. The beads looked like a snake swallowing its own tail. Some of the beads were chipped or cracked, but it didn’t detract from the impact of the whole.
Lina had seen only one thing like the beads—a big jade medallion of a jaguar head wreathed in a feathered snake devouring its own tail. The piece probably had been part of a priest’s regalia. She had found it at one of her father’s digs.
The piece had vanished into her father’s scholarly collection. She wondered if he had ever written the article he had talked about doing on the jade. If he had, it hadn’t been published in any source she knew. And she knew all of the scholarly ones as well as some that were more shadowy.
“This is extraordinary, Mercurio. Where did you get it?” she asked
“I traded for it,” he said.
Hunter managed not to laugh out loud. He’d bet that the beads were—at best—a gray-market trophy.
Lina frowned. “Was the previous owner Mexican?”
“He had the requisite papers,” Mercurio said. “The beads came from the first dredging of Chichén Itzá. One of the worker’s descendants sold them for cash before anyone had dreamed up antiquities laws. Someone strung the beads. The result came down through the years in a Maya family. They sold it to pay for doctors for their son.”
“You’re very fortunate they came to you,” Lina said carefully.
“Yes.”
She waited, but Mercurio said no more.
Listening with a small part of his attention, Hunter had ruthlessly moved from artifact to artifact while Lina and Mercurio danced around the subject of questionable provenance. Obviously Mercurio wasn’t into the Caesar’s wife strategy of business.
“What’s that?” Hunter asked finally. “Paper?”
Instantly Lina was at his side. “Looks like it. Birch bark.”
There were fragmentary symbols on one side of the piece. She couldn’t read them. There simply wasn’t enough left.
“What is it?” Hunter asked.
“It looks like a bit torn from a Maya codex, but…” She shook her head. “All of the five surviving codices are accounted for. This could be a fragment from one of them.” Her tone said it was unlikely. “Bishop Landa and his soldiers were very thorough. If there were any books they didn’t find and burn, the climate eventually destroyed them. Five hundred years in a jungle…” She looked at Mercurio and raised one dark eyebrow. “Any comments?”
“The paper came in the same lot as the beads,” he said. “The owner said it was a fragment of an unknown codex.”
“You believed him?” Hunter asked.
“No,” Mercurio said bluntly. “That would be too much. Simply fantastic.”
“Understatement,” Lina said. “Proof of an ancient, unknown codex would rock the Maya world like a nuclear bomb. Finding a sixth surviving book is the holy grail of every Maya archaeologist.”
“Collectors, too?” Hunter asked.
“Of course,” Mercurio said.
“It could never be displayed,” Lina said at the same time. “You could have a stack of provenance going back to Bishop Landa himself, and Mexico would still scream patrimony.”
“Not all collectors would care,” Hunter said.
“But gossip goes through solid stone walls,” Lina pointed out. “A sixth Maya book is a secret that I can’t imagine being kept.”
“Okay. You see anything here that looks like the photographs?”
“No.”
“What photographs?” Mercurio asked.
Watching the other man, Hunter reached into one of the cargo pockets on his new pants. He spread the photos across an empty worktable and turned to watch Mercurio. The man came to a point, all but quivering like a bird dog as his eyes swept from photo to photo, then began again for a more leisurely look.
“Well cared for,” Mercurio said. “The photographer should be fired.”
Hunter waited.
So did Lina. She didn’t need Hunter’s neutral expression to know that he wanted her quiet right now.
“Anything else?” Hunter asked when Mercurio remained silent.
“What is their provenance?” Mercurio countered.
“Zero.”
The other man didn’t look surprised.
“You missing any pieces from your digs?” Hunter asked.
“None that I know of. Certainly no artifacts of this quality. My digs share a similar style—especially with that scepter, but I’ve found nothing like that mask. Is it real or of modern manufacture?”
“I don’t know,” Lina said. “I’ve never studied the artifact itself, only the photos.”
“And you think I have?” Mercurio asked, looking at her. “You flatter me, querida. I have found some hints of Kawa’il, some sigils on goods. But I can’t prove they weren’t imported from Yucatan. In fact, anything regarding Kawa’il can’t be proved beyond academic doubt as indigenous to my Belize digs.”
“Then why is Philip…” Her voice dried up.
“So paranoid about my digs?” Mercurio’s smile was different from his earlier ones. Harder.
“Yes,” Lina said.
“Because he is not quite sane. Digs of this quality and apparent age”—Mercurio gestured to the photos—“have only been discovered on Reyes Balam land. I don’t know what your father has found since I left. Certainly he never found artifacts of this magnificence when I was with him, querida.”
“If you wanted to buy them, who would you go to?” Hunter asked, his eyes the color of winter ice. He was really tired of hearing the other man call Lina “darling.”
“To you, of course,” Mercurio said. “You’re the man with the photos.”
“These photos are as close as I can come to the real thing,” Hunter said. “Who would you try next?”
“Cecilia Reyes Balam,” Mercurio said.
“Not Simon Crutchfeldt?” Lina asked. “Or Philip?”
“If Crutchfeldt owned these, he wouldn’t keep them long enough for word to get out,” Mercurio said. “He is a businessman as much as he is a collector. Only a collector would be fool enough to keep artifacts such as those. As for Philip, if he had them, I would be the last to know. He wouldn’t spit on my grave. Vindictive bastard.” Then, quickly, “My apologies, Lina.”
“Not necessary.” Her voice, like her face, revealed no emotion.
“That takes care of the obvious suspects,” Hunter said. “Anyone else?”
“Carlos, of course,” Mercurio said. “But, assuming those artifacts are as good as they look, he wouldn’t sell them.”