While the first set of visual images printed, he opened a second directory, this one filled with infrared images. The IR images peeled away the green of the foliage and showed heat. And the heat of different types of vegetation told him what he needed to know. The lowland Maya used limestone to build their structures and even when the forests had consumed those structures the heat they emitted was different than that of the regular ground.

As the image resolved on the screen McCarter felt hope growing quickly, followed by fear and a certain sense of hopelessness. There were hundreds of unexplored ruins in the Yucatan, two dozen or more within a twenty-mile radius. How the hell would he decide where to start?

A phone rang behind him, a cellphone in the pocket of another customer. It was a familiar ring, the same ringtone as his own, and it sent him into a moment of reflection. He recalled a conversation with Arnold Moore several months before.

“Hope I’m not bothering you,” Moore had said. The tone in his voice was that of a salesman who knew he was in fact bothering someone and didn’t really care.

“Do we have to do another hearing?” McCarter had asked, referencing the series of congressional inquiries that had focused on his few moments with the NRI.

“No,” Moore had said, “nothing like that.” A brief pause and then, “I understand you’ve been asking for access to the stone. I think I can arrange it.”

That had surprised McCarter. “Terrific,” he said.

“First I have some questions,” Moore replied. “What do you know about December twenty-first, 2012?”

Two thousand twelve: the supposed end date of the Mayan calendar. For the next ten minutes McCarter tried to explain that the date did not mean the end of times to the Maya, which so many people perceived it to mean. At least not universally.

“How’s that?” Moore asked.

“First off,” McCarter said, “there are monuments with inscriptions predicting events, often very mundane events that are supposed to happen well after that date. Second, the number of Mayan references to that particular date are relatively few given the overall hieroglyphic record. And third, because the Mayan Long Count was written like an odometer of sorts, some of the current theory suggested that even those apocalyptic descriptions were really references to things that happened on the previous rollover, 5,114 years ago.”

He tried to use an analogy that Moore would be familiar with. “It’s similar to the Revelation of John. Many biblical scholars would tell you that Revelation was not a prophecy of the end of times but a hidden description of contemporaneous events in Rome and the persecution of Christians in the first century.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Moore said, or something like that. It sounded as if he wasn’t really listening. Then, serious again, he asked, “Do you know of anything that would suggest otherwise, something reliable?”

McCarter racked his brain. “There is a monument, called Tortugero Monument Six. It’s heavily damaged, but the glyphs that remain reference an event at the end of the calendar, the folding of the Thirteenth Baktun, the end of the thirteenth period of 144,000 days, which occurs on December twenty-first of 2012. They tell us that the god of change, Bolon Yokte, will descend from the Black something and carry out … something.”

Stunned silence followed. “Something,” Moore said. “What do you mean, something?”

McCarter shrugged. “No one knows. The glyphs that describe what those somethings are have been destroyed. Much like some of the glyphs we found in Brazil. Almost as if they had been smashed deliberately.”

“So not the ever-present concern for the Maya that we’ve been led to believe,” Moore noted dejectedly.

“No,” McCarter said. “More like one strand of thought. Perhaps an outcast strand. Like most apocalyptic beliefs it was not really considered valid or worthwhile to the greater culture itself.”

“And yet it persisted throughout, unbowed,” Moore said. “What does that tell you?”

McCarter considered Moore’s words. What was Moore looking for? A strand of truth that could not be proved? All that could be proved by such persistence is that some group would not let the story die. A group within a group. A group with knowledge. The priests, perhaps. Or even a subset of them, making sure the date and the prophecy lived on despite its actual dismissal and unpopularity among the greater culture and its leaders.

“Keepers of the flame,” McCarter said. “But still just a fanatical devotion.”

“What if I told you I had something that might explain their fanaticism, something to indicate that an event of great importance will in fact occur on that day?”

McCarter knew what Moore was suggesting: the very subject of their call, the Brazil stone. “Then I’d tell you there may be others,” McCarter said.

Silence followed once again, long enough that it almost seemed the call had been dropped. This time McCarter sensed calculation behind the quiet. Deliberation, even concern. Finally Moore spoke again, asking, “Have you been sleeping well, Professor?”

It was an odd question, and odder still because McCarter had been suffering terrible insomnia for months. “No, I haven’t,” he said.

“Neither have any of us,” Moore replied. “You’d better come to Washington.”

“Book me a ticket,” McCarter said, “then we can talk.”

A loud bang startled McCarter back to the present. He whipped around defensively. Another patron had stood up and accidentally knocked over a chair.

McCarter found his heart pounding and his hands shaking. The young man and his female friend were laughing. She was urging him to be more careful.

They were Americans. Several buttons adorned her jacket. One read, 2012, PARTY LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW. The second was a reference to Dick Clark’s long-term stint as official Times Square New Year’s host. It read, 2012, KUKULCAN’S NEW YEAR’S ROCKIN’ EVE.

They just had no idea.

The pending date had brought thousands of extra tourists to Mexico for this moment. Most were from America, but large numbers had come from Europe and Asia, too. A few were there with legitimate interest, but the vast majority had come to enjoy the weather and another excuse to party.

Certainly McCarter couldn’t blame them, and their presence had made it easier to hide among the crowds while he and Danielle conducted their research. But now he worried who else might be hiding among those crowds.

The American couple looked his way; the man stared at him. Suddenly McCarter needed to get out of there.

He gathered his papers, logged off the computer, and handed ten dollars to the clerk. Hobbling out into the street he glanced back at the shop. The clerk and the other patron were watching him and for a moment a wave of paranoia swept uncontrollably over him.

Getting into a rhythm with his walking staff, McCarter moved quickly, albeit awkwardly, down the edge of the street. So what if they were watching him. They were nobodies, university-age tourists. They’re not with the enemy, he told himself. They’re not with the enemy.

He could hear the thoughts reverberating through his mind, thoughts that seemed to grow stronger the harder he fought against them.

“Help me,” he whispered to the air around him, in search of the spirit of his deceased wife. “Olivia, if you can, please help me.”

Hearing no reply, he rushed forward, seeking the only place he felt marginally safe: his small room at the guesthouse. He needed to get there and sit down and study the printouts and the data. There he could make notes undisturbed and try once again to make sense of the inscription he’d seen on the Island of the Shroud.

But as he hobbled along a new thought occurred to him. His notes would be extremely valuable to their competitor. A treasure that could be found or stolen. Of course the very act of making notes and conclusions in the first place would endanger him, perhaps even make him superfluous if he were caught.