She still needed additional information. She had to make sure that if she dangled this carrot in front of potential customers, they would take it right away. She had to create a sense of panic about their business, without giving any hints to the location of the EarthCore mine, or even that EarthCore was involved. She had to deliver a complete information package, so they would be too afraid of waiting another two or three months to gather the information on their own.
Depending on how Connell wanted to play it, EarthCore could potentially try and grab immediate profits by flooding the market with platinum. That large of an increase in supply might drive down platinum's price from over $850 an ounce to maybe $450, possibly even less. That would mean hundreds of millions in lost profits to the other players in the platinum market. If she could get some info, even an inkling, of how Connell planned to play this hand, her information-selling price could go even higher.
Kayla was no master of economics, but she didn't have to be — all she had to do was gather the information and sell it to the highest bidder.
Besides, there was something about the situation that intrigued her. Much of that something was a deliciously dark feeling that seemed to pulse from the mountain. She'd never felt anything close to it.
And she liked it.
Chapter Thirteen
Instead of shades of green and a wet, sauna-like atmosphere, the landscape revealed sharply cut browns and almost zero humidity. Heat was heat, however, and Dr. Veronica Reeves felt right at home. She ought to feel at home, she thought, seeing as she'd grown up rather close to this barren place. She endured the jostling of the so-called road as it wound its way toward the EarthCore mining camp.
A sweaty, dirty, wide-brimmed straw hat perched tightly on top of her severe ponytail. She always wore her hair that way, and yet she could never control the wispy blond tufts that pulled free seemingly of their own accord.
Pure excitement had her squirming in the seat of Sanji's beat-up Toyota Rav4. She'd seen the knife only minutes after Sanji greeted her with a big, crushing hug. It was the same hug he gave her every time she returned to BYU to visit him (which, she reminded herself sternly, was far too rare an occurrence). It was a hug that made everything right, a hug that said I'm always here for you. The first time she'd felt that hug, felt that unspoken promise of infinite support, had been at the age of five when her parents died.
Both of her parents, like her, had been only children. When a plane crash took them away from her, she had no aunts, no uncles, and no grandparents. She did, however, have Sanji.
Her father, also a biologist, had worked closely with Sanji for years. Both were faculty members at BYU, and as far back as she could remember Sanji had been a part of the family in all but name. Her parents’ will named Sanji as her legal guardian, a responsibility he honored. It was a debt of friendship he treasured more than his own life. She often wished she could have known her parents, known what kind of people they were to instill that level of loyalty in their friends.
Sanji proved as good a father as any little girl could ask for. With no family of his own, he doted on her. She grew up deeply loved and cared for, encouraged in everything she did, every dream she chased. He urged her to pursue a doctorate at the University of Michigan. On a professor's salary, he found money to send her anywhere her research demanded: the Yucatan Peninsula, the Kirghiz Steppe, Toros Daglari. Even when she wanted to travel to Argentina to hunt platinum knives on the steep, jungle slopes of the Andes, he'd wholeheartedly urged her to go. He encouraged her knowing full well he would see her rarely, if at all.
And now he was by her side again, helping her chase those same knives in his own backyard. She'd barely believed his call. When she arrived at BYU, exhausted from the trip, she held the Utah knife and knew, instantly, that it was no hoax, no ruse, no mistake.
Cerro Chaltel's culture held a unique place in man's history. Unique up until they found the Utah knife, she reminded herself. A lost civilization more than nine thousand years old. A hidden city built inside a mountain, a city that she estimated had housed perhaps ten thousand people at the zenith of its power.
She'd discovered the culture while examining evidence of an ancient settlement, the remains of which told the story of a brutal massacre. Men, women, and children alike had been butchered and then buried along with most of their belongings.
Clothes, tools, pottery, even food — everything they owned, it seemed, buried right alongside them, as if the attackers despised every last trace of their victims. That part of the mystery had helped hook her, captivate her imagination. What could motivate an enemy to be so brutal, so thorough? Religion, most likely, but she still couldn't say for sure.
The burial preserved the essence of the site for millennia, until shifting erosion exposed the village. Veronica and her team excavated the site, gradually piecing together clues from the 7,500-year-old massacre.
The tools of this destruction were obvious — platinum knives of magnificent craftsmanship. At first they found only two tiny blade tips, broken off in the ancient victims’ bones. Even from the small fragments, Veronica knew the knives were something very unusual. The pieces presented a technological mystery, a culture that had developed a high degree of metallurgy while the rest of South America's tribes were using flint and sharpened sticks. From the moment she saw the blade tips, Veronica was hooked. Careers were made on such tiny discoveries. Legendary careers.
She spent two years acclimating herself to the surrounding culture of the sparsely populated Cerro Chaltel, studying the mountain people, hunting for clues. Those people gradually accepted her presence. After some twenty-five months, a local man presented her with a gift — an unbroken crescent-shaped knife. That's when the mystery really got interesting.
A few scraps of rope tied through the knife's center ring were carbon dated at eight thousand years old. The pieces showed metalworking ability unheard of around 6000 b.c. The craftsmanship rivaled that of master weaponsmiths from Europe or feudal Japan. But those cultures flourished four thousand years after the estimated date of the massacred village. The crescent-shaped knives indicated a people vastly ahead of their time.
A series of caves sat only a mile from the massacre site, far up the slope of Cerro Chaltel, also known as Mt. Fitzroy. The crescent-shaped knife had been found inside that mountain's caves. The locals told her the mountain was cursed, and that only the bravest, most reckless youths visited the steamy slopes. Veronica, of course, paid little attention to such myths, other than to carefully document them for future reference. Alone, she sallied up the mountainside, into the caves, and into history. At the age of twenty-five, she had uncovered an ancient mystery that catapulted her to fame.
The caves turned out to be outlying branches of a massive subterranean complex that sprawled out for miles, both outward and downward. The complex ran deep. So deep, in fact, that the temperature in the lower regions made exploring nearly impossible. She'd been treated for heatstroke twice so far. Much of the complex had yet to be traversed.
While she and her subsequent staff (funded by a well-deserved grant) found no human remains and very few artifacts, evidence of an organized culture abounded. Specific caves within the complex held a few unique, crude glyphs and cave drawings, perfectly preserved through the centuries by the dry, windless caverns.