At the center of the room, directly above the shaft that ran all the way to the entrance of the pyramid’s chambers more than a hundred feet below, Tom was able to see the source of the strange bluish glow. A perfectly round ball, no larger than his fist and made of a dark blue crystal-like stone, resonated light, as though it were a diamond.
Where it drew its light from remained a mystery — Tom could only guess. The Mayans who had built it had somehow drawn light from hundreds of feet above, perhaps so it would always shine on their old king.
It must still be daytime outside.
The room was large, maybe forty feet wide. Its walls rose in a perfect pyramid, culminating in the roof high above and meeting where the blue stone rested, like a world globe illuminating the room. At each of the four walls, a single man stood with his hands above his head as though he were supporting the roof above. There, more than a hundred intricate pictographs and hieroglyphics adorned the room.
At the center of the room, a sarcophagus rested.
On top of it, a pictograph depicted a man holding a scepter. Only, the man was garlanded in colorful stones, and the scepter was formed by an indentation on the sarcophagus, as though the real scepter awaited to be returned.
“What makes you so certain this was king Ajtzak’s tomb?” Sam interrupted his examination of the room.
“Because that’s his family emblem.”
“What is?”
Tom touched the pictograph at the base of the sarcophagus, “Here. See these four horsemen, carrying spears? They’re looking up and worshiping their deity — a man with a hawk head and headdress with a sun disk.”
“AKA, Ra, the Sun God in ancient Egyptian culture,” Sam stared at it in wonder.
“Right you are. Hey, what do you know about Egypt?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Tom ran his hands along the crest of the deity, and then added, “I only remember it because when I called a professor of Mayan archaeology at the University of Mexico, he said that Ajtzak used a very specific symbol, which looked almost exactly like that of Ra, the God of Sun. But, as even I know, the mention of Ra was only ever found in Egypt, never on this side of the Atlantic. What’s stranger still, this reference to Ra, can’t be found anywhere else throughout his bloodline or the rest of the Mayan culture.”
“The Egyptians believed that Ra was swallowed every night by the sky goddess Nut, and was reborn every morning. They also believed that he traveled through the underworld at night,” Sam repeated what he knew about Ra.
“So the real question to ask is, what is an Egyptian sized pyramid and Egyptian God doing on this side of the Atlantic, at the burial site for a Mayan King?”
“I have no idea. But if we can get this cyanide problem fixed, I’m sure some archeologists are going to have a field day in here.” Sam regarded the walls again. “I had a quick look at Mayan mythology on my tablet while waiting for you to come round earlier. It appears this room is an abstract combination of the Mayan beliefs.”
“Such as?”
“The Maya believe in a universe consisting of heavens above and underworlds below, with the human world between. Linking the three realms was a giant tree whose roots reached into the underworld and branches stretched to heaven. The gods and the souls of the dead traveled between worlds along this tree.”
“Interesting. So we’ve just found the inner sanctum of king Ajtzak’s tomb?” Tom tapped on the sarcophagus. “Are you starting to get the feeling that no one really knew this king? As though, maybe, he came from somewhere else?”
“As in, Egypt?” Sam replied.
“Exactly.”
Tom continued to scan the vivid imagery on the walls. There were animals and humans, snakes — all sorts of creatures. Tunnels, similar to the shafts he had just climbed, appeared to swirl around the walls of the room, until he realized that they weren’t tunnels — they were branches of a tree, and its roots.
On the wall was a symbol Tom had never seen before. It was small, and made of bronze, depicting a man with a measuring tool standing above an army. It seemed almost irrelevant compared with the other treasures that adorned the King’s final resting chamber. Yet somehow, it looked like it could have once been important.
One look at Sam’s face when he saw it confirmed his instincts.
“You’ve seen it before?”
“Yes.” Sam was quiet and unusually distant.
“Where?” Tom pursued the question. It was unlike Sam to be coy with him. “What does it mean?”
“Back in Afghanistan… When I was removed from active duty, I was sent to explore a prehistoric ruin, overrun with encryptions and mazes. At the very top of the structure was the symbol of the civilization that built it. Their mark. It was simple, almost bland by comparison with the structure they had created — just like that one…”
“So, you’re saying that these people, who lived in Afghanistan many years ago, also lived in Central America?”
“No.”
“But this is the tomb of a Mayan King?”
“Yes, but the Master Builders lived by building great structures. One theory is that they never even built these things themselves, but instead commanded great armies to do it for them. They would have been more accurately described as Master Engineers. And this, I believe, would have been just one of their many projects — for a price.”
“And what was that price?”
“That I’ve never been able to work out. In fact, so far, I don’t even have proof they ever existed. The only evidence I have is that many of the ancient wonders could not have been built without such a race.”
Eight hours later, after a prolonged decompression period in the Rock, Sam and Tom stepped outside the hyperbaric chamber and onto the deck of the moon pool. Sam looked at the faces of the people who worked and lived aboard the Maria Helena. They were his family, and each face displayed its own way of coping with a near death experience of one of its members.
“All right, you lot. We’re okay.” Sam scanned their faces for relief, and found none. “We all know it takes a lot more than a cracked faceplate at a few hundred feet of water to damage Tom’s ugly face any more than Mother Nature.”
“I’ve had a look myself, and I think the blow might have done some improvements.” Tom spoke with the relaxed self-assurance of a man whose strong jaw line and intensely grey, piercing eyes, had stolen many a woman’s heart.
“Now, as much as I’m glad you all care about our survival, we have some important work ahead of us. Let’s not forget that several tons of hydrogen cyanide are still leaking out of a hole in the seafloor. I want everyone in the mission room within ten minutes. Grab yourselves a quick coffee, or whatever drug you use to keep focused. I need to debrief what we discovered, and plan our next steps.”
Eight minutes later, Sam stood at the head of the table in the mission room. Each person on board the Maria Helena was there, all fifteen of them, and each looked up, focused on what he was about to say. He could feel the tension as he spoke.
“We made our dive to the seafloor in search of one answer, but have instead come back with a multitude of unanswered questions. Two distinctly different challenges, requiring two different teams to resolve. The first, and paramount purpose of our mission is to discover the source of the leaking hydrogen cyanide and block it. The second is of an archeological nature. The pyramid will be treated as an archeological site, with our team primarily providing the logistical needs of the archeologists to investigate.”
Sam drank from his cup of hot chocolate before he continued speaking. “It appears that the source of the hydrogen cyanide leak is through a crack in the outer wall of a subterranean Mayan pyramid. It’s unlikely to have come from the local silver mine as first expected, but instead from a cyanide store.”