“The Emperor, as Hernán Cortés described him,” Eduardo said quietly, almost reverently. “Chief Montezuma, discovered at long last. Charles has been vindicated for his belief in this temple as Montezuma’s tomb. So many at the ministry doubted him, calling him a fool, saying Tlateloco could not possibly be the right place for burial of a mighty king… there can be no doubt now. The animals, the robes, the tablets, are proof of Montezuma’s identity. There, on this clay tablet near his feet, is the royal Aztec symbol used during Montezuma’s reign.”
Eduardo moved his flashlight beam to a piece of flattened clay covered with etchings. “This is priceless, a discovery beyond measure.” He inched forward, approaching the sepulcher, squatting down to read pictographs on the tablet.
Lauren took a deep breath, wondering if Charlie truly felt vindication now or if it mattered at all. Knowing him as she did, he would have placed a much higher value on the lives of his students and coworkers. No discovery on earth would have been worth the price paid in human lives to Charles Adams.
“What is this?” Eduardo asked, reaching into an urn where, in the illumination of moving light from his flashlight, small green stones glittered on some sort of object fashioned from a piece of bone.
Remembering Charlie, at the moment Lauren truly did not care what it was.
“Look!” Eduardo exclaimed, carefully withdrawing a long flint knife with a jewel-studded bone handle. “A sacrificial dagger, the sacrificial dagger of Montezuma.”
He held it before him, examining it closely, and the sparkle of gold filigree encircling bright green emeralds inlaid in a piece of bone reflected off his faceplate. “What a treasure. Just think, Lauren, this very knife was probably used to cut the beating hearts out of Montezuma’s enemies so they could be eaten by the high priests to gain their courage and strength. This find alone will occupy archaeological scholars for years to come.”
He was turning to Lauren, extending the knife to her, when suddenly his foot slipped off the side of a rock imbedded in the dirt floor of the chamber.
As he started to fall he dropped his flashlight to protect the precious relic he took from the urn.
She heard a cracking sound, then a muffled shriek before she could aim her beam of light downward.
“My mask!” he cried. “The knife has broken my face mask!”
“Eduardo!” Lauren screamed, forgetting that her scream was being broadcast through every headset worn by the Wildfire Team.
Lauren quickly ripped a spare piece of duct tape off the hip of her Racal where all the team members carried them for just such an emergency. Moving rapidly she slapped it over the gaping crack in Matos’s faceplate.
Trying to calm him down and stop his hysterical moaning, she led him out of the chamber and down the tunnel toward the mobile lab where all of the other team members were already gathered, having heard the commotion over the radios.
Dr. Williams frowned, looking around the duct tape on Dr. Matos’s mask to examine the cut on his cheek in the light from one of the portable lamps resting on stands outside the mobile lab. Mason and Dr. Jakes had come outside to gather more samples while Lauren and Eduardo were in the tomb.
“I’m afraid we can’t let you leave, Dr. Matos,” he said gravely. “You’ve potentially been exposed to the germ now, whether it’s airborne or transmitted by contact, and by leaving, you could carry it with you. Until we know what it is, you’ll have to be quarantined here.”
“But I must get to a hospital immediately,” Eduardo said.
“They won’t have the slightest idea what to treat you for,” Dr. Jakes remarked, after his own examination of Eduardo’s face. “We don’t know yet what this bug is. We’re working on it, but for now you’ll have a much better chance here with us.”
Eduardo stiffened. “You have no authority in my country to tell me whether or not I can leave,” he said with the crisp air of one who knows his rights. “I want you to radio for a helicopter at once to take me to Mexico City to Sanato-rio Medico.”
Dr. Williams wagged his head. “And do what? Spread this disease all over your capital city? Until we can identify what this is, there can be no treatment. I’m sorry, Dr. Matos, but you’ll have to stay until you’ve passed the longest possible incubation period, at least ten days, possibly longer. There is no other alternative.”
When Matos opened his mouth to object, Mason added, “Of course, we’ll immediately start a course of every antibiotic that might possibly be effective against whatever bug this is, and hopefully in a week or so you’ll remain uninfected.”
Lauren sank to a canvas stool, feeling faint. The noise of a portable generator buzzed faintly through her headset. Had Montezuma’s plague claimed yet another victim?
“This is too much,” she said, staring at the ground where light from a halogen bulb cast eerie shadows among trimmed vines and stalks of cut brush in the clearing. “I can’t stand any more of this. I have to go home.”
“We can send you back tomorrow, Lauren, after the last identification is made,” Mason promised. “Unfortunately, due to the violation of Dr. Matos’s suit and the cut on his face, he can’t leave until we identify the causative agent here and figure out how to treat it.”
Lauren heard someone sob into a microphone on a headset as Eduardo took a step back from the two doctors.
“Am I going to die?” Eduardo asked, holding out the knife as if he wished he’d never found it.
“No one can say for sure, Dr. Matos.” It was Mason Williams who spoke. He glanced at Lauren. “Thanks to Dr. Sullivan’s quick action in putting duct tape over the crack in your faceplate, you may not even be infected.”
Dr. Jakes turned to Mason. “This may give us an excellent chance to study the symptoms as they develop. We’ll have a better fix on the incubation period and an opportunity to perform blood work while the disease progresses if this subject has contracted…”
“That’s enough, Sam,” Mason interrupted harshly, glancing over at Matos, who had surely heard the inconsiderate remark. “We can discuss this later. Now get back to work!”
Eduardo slumped against one side of the mobile lab, looking down at the dagger. “Madre! What have I done?”
Lauren’s thoughts bordered on total disbelief. This simply could not be happening. First Charlie and every student at the site, and now Charlie’s dear friend, Eduardo Matos, had come in contact with something so deadly inside Montezuma’s tomb it was apparently unstoppable.
“As I said, we can’t say for sure you’ve contracted it,” Mason said to Eduardo. “We’re only playing it safe. Some of the top doctors and specialists in infectious diseases in the world are here. If anyone can do anything to help you, it will be a member of this team. Once we identify it. Right now, we haven’t the slightest idea what this bug is.”
“A bug? You keep calling this monster a bug?” Eduardo asked incredulously, his voice breaking.
“It’s a matter of terminology, Doctor. Under a microscope this thing, whatever it is, will be a living organism. We call them bugs. I suppose it’s medical slang.”
“I must call my wife to explain,” Eduardo said, his voice calmer now, but Mason could see his face was covered with sweat and tears. “She will be worried if I am not home tomorrow.”
“We’ll ask Joel to arrange it in the morning,” Mason assured him.
Lauren sat on her stool remembering the moment when Eduardo found the dagger. While she could never make herself believe in curses, it was as if Montezuma himself had arisen from the grave to bury his jeweled knife into the heart of Charlie’s friend, Eduardo Matos. Although she was not a believer in the supernatural, it certainly seemed as if there was a curse surrounding this ancient tomb.