“They welcomed him,” she added. “In fact, according to Martin, they insisted that they’d been foretold of his arrival. And they took him to their village in the forest, a few days’ hike from the river.”

She finished up. “By using this information, along with the help of a local trader who claims to have been told of the wall and taken near it, we think we can find it rather quickly. In a week, or perhaps two at the most.”

A week or two. McCarter almost laughed at the timetable. He wondered if she knew how absurdly hard it was to locate anything within the jungle. But then again, that was the least of their problems.

“My interest is piqued,” he said. “Especially by what Martin apparently found out there. But all you’ve really shown us are grainy pictures, a man’s self-serving writings and computer-generated guesses that, with all due respect, might as well be Rorschach inkblot tests. In other words you’re seeing what you want to see. I’m afraid it’ll take more than that to convince me.”

Curt but polite, Danielle replied, “I would expect no less. But then, I’m not finished yet.” She brought up another image, a photo displaying a group of four clear hexagonal crystals.

“These are the Martin’s crystals. A group of quartz objects our intrepid explorer claimed to see during a Chollokwan rain-calling ceremony. The crystals themselves are unremarkable, made of simple quartz with various inclusions. What turned out to be quite remarkable was another object related to them. An object Martin called the cradle.”

Danielle brought up the next image: a golden tray with slots in it, one for each of the crystals, with a fifth slot that went unexplained. “This is the cradle. It’s made of a gold/brass alloy similar to today’s eighteen karat blend. The crystals from the earlier photograph were stored in it—hence the name. That connection was of great interest to Martin, but our research focused on something he largely ignored.”

She switched to a new photo, which showed a design carved into the gold; it almost looked like Braille.

“This is a close-up of the underside of the cradle,” she explained. “It is in fact a highly detailed star pattern. A representation of the night sky as viewed from the southern hemisphere. It is consistent with Mayan art at other ceremonial centers.”

McCarter stared at the picture. It did look like a view of the night sky. He saw a horizon line and what he thought was the Southern Cross. He also realized that the photo had been taken so closely that it showed only a small portion of the underside of the cradle.

Before he could ask why, Danielle clicked to the next photograph. And as he stared at the new image, McCarter forgot about his previous question and found himself struck silent. This time the symbols appeared clearly, perfectly preserved in the surface of the non-corrosive metal. No guesswork was involved, no highlight or computer enhancement needed. The symbols were easy to read in the unretouched photograph, and he knew them well.

Danielle explained to the rest of the group. “This glyph represents a place the Mayan people called Xibalba—the equivalent of Hades or Perdition, sometimes described as a dwelling place of the punished and at other times as the dominion house of the Lords of Darkness. Like Dante’s inferno, it was considered to be an underground realm. There’s even a famous relief depicting Xibalba as a mirror world of the earth, with the Xibalbans and the Lords of Darkness walking inverted on the ceiling of their world, their feet directly beneath those of the humans standing around on the earth’s surface above.”

Still staring at the screen, at evidence he could not refute or explain, McCarter realized that Danielle was looking toward him. “Remarkable,” he said quietly, still in utter astonishment.

“We think so,” she said with a grin.

“And you’re sure Martin found this tray in the Amazon?”

“Apparently,” Danielle said, returning to her spot beside the podium. “It seems the Chollokwan showed it to him before a ritual performance designed to bring forth the season’s rains. Not a rain dance, per se, but roughly the same concept.”

“And they just gave it to him?” he asked.

Danielle rolled her eyes slightly. “Well, that’s a matter of some debate—not just in this case, but in many of Martin’s recoveries. According to his log, the crystals and the cradle were traded to him for a telescope, a kerosene lantern and a compass.”

McCarter sat back, crossing one leg over the other. “I find that a little hard to believe.”

“Count me in on that,” Devers added. “To begin with, the Chollokwan are an extremely violent tribe. When I was here ten years ago they’d just been involved in an attack on a BrazCo mining party. Five team members were killed, a lot of others badly wounded. It wasn’t the first time either.”

McCarter nodded. “Makes it doubtful that things went as Martin suggests. More than likely the negotiations were conducted at gunpoint.”

Danielle took the conversation back. “I would tend to agree. One assumes he didn’t get the name Blackjack for nothing. But we’re not here to pass judgment on the man, just to try and determine what he found out there. And it’s our belief that the cradle and the crystals came from a Mayan ruin that the Chollokwan ransacked in their wanderings. Perhaps even this Wall of Skulls itself, which certainly sounds like a place the Xibalbans might make their presence known.”

McCarter turned back to Danielle with excitement in his voice. “Where’s the cradle now? Can we see it?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Danielle said. “The Martin’s crystals and the golden cradle were housed until recently at the Museum of Natural History, back in your home port of New York.”

“Until recently,” McCarter repeated. That didn’t sound promising.

“They were stolen over a year ago,” Danielle explained, “along with five additional crates of Central and South American antiquities. In a theft that made the headlines.”

McCarter recalled seeing a news clipping, but he did not recall any headlines. “It was a backroom theft,” he said, cautiously. “Wasn’t it?”

Danielle nodded. “None of the items had been on display for quite some time. In Martin’s case, never. The prevailing theory was an inside job from someone who picked and grabbed from an unmonitored area. Security was so lax that the authorities couldn’t even determine when it happened. The items may have been missing for several months before the theft was even discovered.”

“Did they catch anyone?” McCarter asked.

Danielle shook her head. “No one was ever charged. Two boxes of items were recovered at Miami International just prior to being shipped out of the country, but neither the cradle nor the crystals were among them. It’s feared that the cradle may have been melted down for its rather marginal value as a precious metal and the crystals were probably sold for pennies or simply thrown away.”

McCarter sighed. Strangely enough he’d seen it before. Discoveries made and then lost, artifacts recovered after a thousand years only to be misplaced or destroyed by accidents. “At times, some hidden things seem to posses an almost sentient desire to remain that way,” he said.

Danielle smiled at him and put down the remote. “I couldn’t agree more.”

Susan closed her notebook. “I can’t believe no one saw this before. It’s so obvious, it’s crazy.”

McCarter stroked his chin, wondering if she meant crazy good or crazy bad. The only thing he knew for sure was that it no longer seemed crazy foolish. In fact, as he thought about it, he found himself genuinely excited, almost giddy at the possibility that they might be right. Stones with the names of the first humans in Mayan mythology, others with Tulan Zuyua’s descriptive name: Seven Caves. It certainly pointed toward something early in the Mayan culture. And even if the stones had been inaccurately morphed by the NRI’s computer program, the untouched golden cradle proved that Mayan writing was being performed in the Amazon. As Danielle had told him the night before, something was out there.