April 6, 1952
With calloused hands and bare feet, Balam Chel climbed a ladder made of saplings and twine out of the mugginess of the tunnels to breathe in the cool, fresh air. On the surface, clad in a ragged white camisa and knee-length pantalones, he paused to take in his surroundings. Balam—the Maya word for jaguar—was standing on the incline of a mountain, at an elevation most men rarely reached, let alone a sixteen-year-old.
There were two primary reasons for that: first, there was little of value at eleven thousand feet that couldn’t be cultivated or caught at lower altitudes; and second, perhaps more crucially, palpable fear. As children, they had been warned by the principales never to venture up here, for within this mountain lay the home of the gods. The admonition had been seared into their minds time and again, reinforced with vivid tales of rivers of blood, swarms of scorpions, and places of terror with names like Bat or Cold House. There, intruders were tested by spiritual beings such as Ah Puch, the swollen, spider-like god of death, or Xtabay, the seductive spirit who lured travelers from their paths to drown them in pits of pus. These stories of the underworld—Xibalba—were especially drilled into teenage boys, who had a notorious tendency to test boundaries. Yet here he was, among a gang of boys his age and grown men, not merely treading on sacred soil but excavating it, with scant thought for the consequences.
Was everything the elders had told him a lie? Were the ancient ways nothing more than folklore, leyendas? It seemed to Balam that every day, the customs of the lowlanders—the Ladinos, the Kaxlan—their faith and values, were being adopted by his people. At the same time, their own heritage faded into obscurity. Still, for all their assimilation, he couldn’t shake the conviction that, beneath the surface in the damp and dark, the men of Cotzal had strayed too far from their traditions. And because of it, they had awakened a demonic lord—one malevolent and vindictive.
He could feel his imagination running wild, but before it could overwhelm him, Balam tightened the sash around his waist to secure his chisel pouch and began the long descent along wooden gangways to a cluster of huts. Near a mountain stream, a makeshift village had sprung up. There, the women went about their daily chores—grinding maize, weaving, cooking, cleaning, minding infants—while children dashed about exuberantly at play. All of them were oblivious to the work unfolding underground: the insults their men and boys had heaped upon the mountain deities, and the potential wrath they might yet unleash.
Short of breath, threading his way among the single-room rectangular structures called otzotz, Balam halted at the largest dwelling. A Caucasian man sat at a wooden table inside, poring over books, notes, and a map spread out before him. Frightened of the man almost as much as of what he himself had fled, Balam squatted silently in the doorway.
Absorbed in his work, Dr. Hegel glanced up to refill his pipe. Only then did he notice the boy. That year, The Diary of Anne Frank was published, the King of England passed away, and President Jacobo árbenz enacted agrarian reform. All trivial facts to the youth, who knew nothing of the world beyond his village—save perhaps the plants and animals of the surrounding highland forest, and Xibalba, the infernal realm where his gods and ancestral spirits dwelled. Hegel had yet to master the Ixil tongue, but in that moment, it hardly mattered; the boy’s eyes said it all. The men had found something.
***
Fifty feet beneath the surface, in a tunnel better suited to the brown-skinned workers than to a man of his build, Hegel proceeded cautiously, hunched over, following Balam’s father. Dressed much like his son and sharing his name, the elder Balam differed only in his stocky, muscular frame—a physique nearly perfect for the backbreaking labor. While the other workers waited above, he, as foreman, had led Hegel to the discovery. But upon reaching it, Balam Senior had spun on his heel and scurried away in hasty retreat, abandoning the professor to the darkness.
The primitive worldview that Hegel found so endearing in children—and often fascinating in adults—was, if he were honest, at times profoundly frustrating and boorish. An educated man’s first instinct in his field would be elation, not fear: like a cascade of Christmas mornings distilled into one exquisite gift-unwrapping, swiftly chased by curiosity and a hunger for answers. Hegel lifted his lamp higher and brushed the cool, damp surface of the granite wall. What lay behind this architectural barrier, and how would they breach it?
With a linen measuring tape, he ascertained that the masonry was built from precisely cut stone blocks, each thirty-nine and three-quarters inches high and wide. Its thickness was impossible to gauge. Only after scraping away the mortar and loosening a stone would they know. The masonry at other sites suggested a high likelihood that this formed a cube. If so, the blasted thing could weigh nearly three tons!
Extracting a single block was all that would be needed. No simple feat—but Balam Senior, his lead man, was a virtual genius at such tasks. Still, it would take time, and the dry season was nearly over.
Worse, until a shaman performed a purification rite, the men would remain idle; their gods would not be trifled with.
Suddenly Hegel felt like he had slammed into a brick wall—or in this case, a granite one—crushed by despair born of decades of failure. He had even contemplated death in the past—a swift, painless end—and kept a revolver handy for the purpose. But the thought of his daughter, his golden-haired child, had always pulled him back from the brink—from squeezing the trigger.
For nearly twenty years, he had lectured at Cambridge, scraping by on his meager salary to fund fruitless expeditions. His obsession had cost his family their wealth, their health—and, more tragically, the life of his dear wife, Liza. Just when he was ready to pack it in, to be sensible at last, to focus his academic career on commonly trodden ground rather than pioneering work, a man had come along to entice him back into the madness, with offers of money and assistance.
His wealthy benefactor shared Hegel’s passion for the ancient peoples of this region. It was the financier who had chosen the site and provided a rudimentary map, the tools, and the manpower. However, it was Hegel’s expertise, knowledge, and research—conducted with no outside interference or meddling from the donor—that would make or break the venture.
His budget, however, was limited.
If he found nothing within those constraints, it would all come to a crashing end. Hegel would be back in Cambridge, lecturing to apathetic students who passed through his classes on their way to becoming barristers or pursuing other careers favored by the upper crust. The thought was almost too depressing to bear, as was the cold and damp of England.
Only a few short weeks ago, he had been conceding defeat, preparing for the inevitable. Now there was a breakthrough—a near miracle—and all the future possibilities that came with it. Something that could compensate for all the years of pain, suffering, and humiliation.
The funds were dwindling, however, and time was running out. In a few weeks, the rains would start, and water would stream down the mountain, bringing rock and mudslides that would make it impossible to excavate. He had to get the men in the tunnels back to work, and fast.
***
The shaman from the workers’ village arrived the next day. He was a man in his forties, assisted by two young apprentices who set up an altar of branches near the tunnel opening. The shaman stood, reciting prayers and holding a chalice. To Hegel, it seemed vaguely familiar—like a mass held in church. Instead of wine, however, the chalice held , a corn liquor whose fermentation was aided by the addition of cow dung. He had tried the home-brewed spirit before; it had more than a kick. For millennia, the indigenous Maya used it for rituals, celebrations, and medicine.
The principal difference was the large earthenware bowl atop the altar. Just before the ceremony, the shaman had decapitated the chicken, and its blood sprinkled on strips of paper provided by every man and boy working in the tunnels. Later, in the midst of the rite—as if lining up for communion—each worker placed their offering—the bloodstained strip—in the bowl. Copal resin was added, and the papers were set aflame. With the bowl partially covered by a lid, the shaman bathed in the billowing smoke.
Hegel understood that, according to their belief, the resin—harvested from a tree struck by a Thunder Being—was imbued with magic. He doubted its supernatural power, but the scent was not unpleasant: somewhat reminiscent of frankincense, with a slight citrus note. With the ritual done, the gods appeased and permission granted, the shaman, his apprentices, and the Mayan laborers entered the tunnels. Banned from participating, Hegel remained on the surface, kept in the dark about the rest of the purification rites.
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Despite how close he and his workers had become, there were aspects of their lives and customs forbidden to outsiders. It was a shame, he believed: the more knowledge he acquired of their contemporary practices, the better he could fathom their ancient ones. At almost every sacred ceremony the villagers gathered for, Hegel had pleaded for an opportunity to observe and document it for posterity. Their leaders rejected his offer, explaining that they had their own means of passing on their collective knowledge to future generations—ways a white man or even a lowlander would never be privy to. Yet he was persistent, as any proper scholar should be. And with or Scotch flowing, his attempts at persuasion sometimes became heated.
Under these circumstances, there was no time for bickering; thus, the practices performed in the tunnels below would remain as mysterious as what lay beyond the wall. To Hegel’s relief, as secretive as the rites were, they were also short and sweet—lasting a matter of hours, not days or weeks. Sure enough, once the shaman departed with his apprentices, the chicken, and his stipend, the men resumed their work, eager to make up for lost time and wages.
***
With painstaking care, the mortar was chiseled away using fine steel tools and trowels, the workers’ hands steady under Hegel’s watchful eye. His hunch about the stone block proved right—they first undercut its base with narrow chisels and wooden wedges driven in with mallets, loosening it from the surrounding matrix without undue damage to the ancient masonry. As much as it pained him to do so, workers drove Lewis pins into the block, and using a system of pulleys and ropes shrewdly devised by Balam Senior—one leading up to a team of mules above ground—the extraction of the massive block began in earnest.
In unison, the entire group of men and boys assisted in the endeavor, chanting rhythmically as they pulled on the manila rope. Inch by inch, with the creak of straining fibers, the colossus moved and was eased onto a bed of packed earth, revealing the dark void beyond.
Though they had done the grueling work, none of the men sought the honor of entering first, nor would Hegel permit it. The discovery was his—all his—and everything lying inside. To be shared with no one, except perhaps his benefactor. Ordering the men back to the surface, he stood absolutely alone, carbide lamp in hand, its hiss the only sound in the humid stillness. He crawled through the narrow opening, the rough-hewn edges scraping his shoulders as the tunnel’s cool breath enveloped him.
***
The Maya laborers would not enter the tomb, regardless of the purification rites. A blessing in some respects, it allowed him to work in solitude, free from disruptions and distractions. The men were remarkably hard workers, especially considering their pay, but Hegel couldn’t trust them with delicate fieldwork. Typically, an undertaking of this kind would involve a team of five or six of his colleagues—and even then, the process was slow. Working alone—one of the conditions set by his benefactor—a task that might have taken days would stretch out into weeks, well into the rainy season. On the bright side, he had sent word of the find to his benefactor, and the men were kept busy preparing for his arrival.
Having chiseled, chipped, scraped, and brushed away most of the deposit, Hegel opened a leather-bound notebook and, with pen in hand, recorded his first impressions:
On April eleventh, in the year of our Lord, nineteen fifty-two, at the Q7c site—after carefully removing the siliceous concretions of accumulated silica, which date the find to the Late Pre-Classic era—I am persuaded that what I am looking at are the interred remains of six human sacrifices. The size and morphology of the skeletons, particularly the pelves, suggest that they were all young females. Reasoned conjecture, of course, as it is difficult in the field to conduct a proper osteological analysis; however, the missing crania and hands are consistent with Maya sacrificial practices found at Nebaj and Zaculeu. Suffice it to say, I am ecstatic.
***
“They’re wrong!” Hegel snorted, barely opening his eyes.
“Poppet… let Daddy sleep.”
“They’re wrong!” his six-year-old daughter repeated forcefully. Hegel raised his head and looked at her.
“What… what’s wrong?”
“Your drawings!” Still groggy, Hegel climbed out of the hammock and moved to the table. His daughter sat beside him. For days and nights, he had been sketching epigraphic reproductions in an attempt to document as much as he could, in case they had to seal the wall to prevent flooding. It was meticulous, necessary work—a task typically undertaken by his spouse, something he did not excel at. His daughter, on the other hand, had inherited her mother’s keen eye and artistic talent, and Hegel had learned not to dismiss her precocious observations.
“See,” she said, pointing at her father’s sketches, at one of the glyphs. Hegel looked closer: a slight variance, a line angling to the left when it should have been vertical. He examined another. Fully alert now, he grabbed a book off the shelf titled A Study of Classic Maya Epigraphy, authored by his beloved wife and filled with her black-and-white illustrations. Opening it, he compared each glyph found in the tomb to the corpora documented at previous sites in the Yucatan, such as Tikal, Uxmal, or—closer still—Kaminaljuyu, which, as the crow flies, was only about eighty miles away.
After about an hour of comparative analysis, Hegel turned to his daughter. “Good God, Poppet, you’re absolutely right; they were all wrong.”
***
While Hegel conducted his research in solitude, far below and deep within the mountain, the Maya men labored above ground, building a fifty-foot helipad of packed earth and stone. Completed on time, solid and precise, it was a Neolithic structure that would have impressed their ancestors.
A day later, a sound far off in the distance caused everyone in the village—including Hegel and his daughter—to leave their huts and look to the sky. No one had actually seen one of these marvels of engineering before.
Appearing as a dot at first, then looming larger, the Bell 47D—with its distinct clear bubble canopy—approached and hovered over the landing zone. Despite the downwash kicking up dirt and rocks, the men and boys who had gathered refused to disperse. They tightened their circle to welcome the arrival of a god.
It wasn’t, of course. And to Hegel’s surprise, not even the man he expected to see.
When the dust settled and the helicopter’s rotors came to a standstill, a dapper man in a white linen suit and tie, wearing a Panama hat, climbed out from the passenger side. Quite young and appearing wholly out of his element, he walked to where Hegel stood, trying not to muddy his bespoke Italian shoes. Failing, he took a second to wipe one clean with a handkerchief before standing erect to face him.
The young man shook his hand and introduced himself. After a brief exchange of formalities, he removed a bottle of Scotch from his satchel, offering it to him.
“I come bearing gifts.”
“Royal Brackla Single Malt,” Hegel said, eyeing the label. “The King’s own whisky.” He smiled, cradling the bottle as if it were a newborn.
“And this missive.” He handed over an envelope.
***
That evening, Hegel sat at his desk, reading a letter penned by his benefactor that had been included with the agreement:
Congratulations, Dr. Hegel. You have succeeded where many others have failed, and for this, your reward will be a lifetime of not wanting for anything—not for you, not for your daughter, and not for your future grandchildren. The spirit—no doubt you are enjoying—is only a wee taste of the finer things the world has to offer, and they will be yours merely by the asking, as my generosity is limited only by my wealth and power, which I assure you is boundless.
Hegel took another sip of the single malt from the crystal glass he kept for such occasions. The taste and its mood-altering magic were almost sublime. He read on:
I suspect, however, that treasure and hedonistic delights have little bearing on what drives you, and that your ultimate passion is knowledge: unearthing the ancient world not for the sake of collecting artifacts or letting them gather cobwebs and dust in the basement of a museum like so many trophies, but for what they might reveal about the true nature of our cosmos.
Twenty years ago, I would have traveled there on foot and on a mule, just for the sheer adventure of it. Unfortunately, with all my responsibilities, I am now desk-bound and cannot afford to be as intrepid as I once was. This is why I have sent someone in my place—someone I trust immensely—and he will speak and set the terms on my behalf. Under normal business conditions, I would advise you to seek counsel. I think we both agree that what we are embarking upon transcends commerce—that it’s not just a matter of signing documents, but far more solemn, a pact that must be fulfilled in blood.
“Surprisingly pleasant here,” said his benefactor’s proxy, standing at the doorway and smoking a cigar. “I was expecting insects, humidity, and all kinds of hellish things.”
Hegel polished off the rest of his glass, stood up, and poured himself another.
“I’m ready to sign,” he said, “but this business about the blood—is that necessary?”
“The gods must be fed, Professor. You of all people must appreciate that. Without a bloodletting, the Covenant is null and void. Fortunately, a pinprick will do.”
He moved toward Hegel, removing a lapel pin from his suit. Like everything about the man, it was elegant and refined: made of gold, with a jade inlay of a serpent. Summoning up liquid courage, Hegel downed his glass and then jabbed the gold pin into his thumb—perhaps a little too hard. Bleeding copiously, he pressed his thumb on the signature line, leaving a red stain. Wrapping his thumb with a handkerchief, he picked up a pen to sign his name.
“Not necessary, Dr. Hegel.”
“Then it’s done.”
The suited man looked toward Hegel’s daughter, sleeping soundly in her room.
“Not quite.”
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