“Show me,” he said.
“Here,” she said, pointing to the photo.
The flash had made an explosion of light against the highly reflective obsidian. The result obscured part of the knife while throwing the rest into relief.
“Go on,” he said.
Her full lips tightened, but all she said was “These are first, very quick reactions to the artifacts. A gut response. If you want academic detail, I need more time.”
“Give me what you can right now. I’ll wait for the rest.”
There was no double meaning in that, Lina told herself. And he’s not breathing in the scent of my skin.
She forced herself to think, to multitask despite the looming presence of Hunter Johnston, but every breath she took was flavored with warmth and something clean, healthy, male.
“Give me room,” she said tightly.
He shifted an inch away. When she met his eyes, she knew that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She set her teeth and forced herself to concentrate on the second photo.
“A mask,” she said. “Those are feathers or wings flaring away from the sides of the face.” Inhuman lips parted, a god’s words pouring out. “Gaping mouth, eyes large and not filled in with shell or obsidian. This was designed to be worn, to give some visual freedom to the wearer. Again, likely for ceremonial use.”
Her fingers paused.
“What?” Hunter said instantly.
She shook her head as though throwing off cobwebs. “It…echoes something, but I’ve never seen a piece like it before.”
“What’s the echo of?”
“I don’t know. It was just a feeling. Nothing academic.”
“I do feelings.”
Lina felt a wild laugh bubbling in her throat. She swallowed it. Twice. The idea of someone as hard-looking as Hunter “doing feelings” was far too intriguing. She forced herself to look at the third photo.
Her breath caught.
“Talk to me,” Hunter said, his voice flat.
“The bundle is vaguely heart-shaped, wrapped in clear plastic.” Her fingers moved silently over the electronic keyboard. “Color beneath could be white or beige. Again, the flash interferes.”
“What are the stains?”
“Mud, blood, coffee, cinnamon, chocolate. Impossible to say without chemical analysis.”
Hunter grunted. He wasn’t getting much that was useful. He watched her fingers—clean, short nails, no rings—touch the edge of the first photo.
“The glyph in this,” she said, tapping the photo of the ritual knife, “looks like it has some jagged lines. Or it could be glare.”
She shifted the photo of the knife, changing the light, trying to peer through the glare.
It was impossible.
“Is it a common glyph?” he asked.
“As I can’t really see it, I can’t make a judgment.”
“This isn’t academia. Give me your best guess.”
“If the artifacts came from the same area as the stolen truck—a big ‘if’—then the glyph might possibly be related to Kawa’il, a Maya deity worshipped after the destruction of the Maya rule by the Spanish.”
Lina’s father probably knew more about Kawa’il than she did, but she had no intention of mixing Hunter with her obsessive, erratic father.
“Do you have an electronic image of the knife?” she asked. “You might be able to run a digital photo through a computer program and clean up the glare from the flash.”
“I’ll check into it, but I doubt it. Looks like it was taken right after the raid. ICE uses a lot of digital cameras. The photos on the card were probably printed out with the report and then wiped from the card’s memory to make digital room for the next bust. How much does it matter?”
“Kawa’il wasn’t a common deity. His worship was confined to small areas of the Quintana Roo and, perhaps, Belize. Many Maya scholars don’t even believe Kawa’il existed.”
“But you do.”
“Yes. Some glyphs related to Kawa’il have been found on…” Her voice died.
“Reyes Balam land.”
It wasn’t a question.
“If you already know so much, why mousetrap me into helping you?” she asked sharply.
“The presence or absence of Kawa’il was central to the scandal that got your father thrown out of academia.”
“He is still a Harvard professor.”
“Technically,” Hunter agreed. “He’s on indefinite leave to ‘pursue scholarly interests.’ You have to look real hard to find Dr. Philip Taylor’s name attached to a university of any repute, including in Mexico.”
Lina didn’t say anything. It was the harsh truth, one that had driven Philip to ever greater lengths of obsession and secrecy. He was determined to regain his reputation no matter what it took.
“If my father knows of these artifacts,” she said quietly, “I’m useless to you. Philip doesn’t confide in anyone, including me.”
Hunter nodded. “It was a long chance, but one I had to eliminate.”
“You believe me?”
“Until I find a reason to do otherwise.” He smiled thinly. “That’s more slack than the academic community will cut you.”
Again, a harsh truth.
“Well, at least you don’t fancy things up,” she said.
“I’m a simple man.”
“I don’t believe it. The bunch of fabric,” she said, tapping her finger on the photo of the cloth, “could be rubbish or it could be a god bundle. Again, without tests, I can’t be more precise.”
“If it’s a god bundle?”
“It would be highly, highly rare. Pretty much unique, as far as I know. Such bundles are represented in glyphs and verbal legends, but none have survived to modern times.”
“So it’s worth a lot of money on the market,” he said.
“Without proper provenance, no reputable dealer or establishment would touch it.”
As Hunter had arrived at the same conclusion himself, he wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.
“That covers some of the market,” he said. “What about the rest of it?”
Lina frowned. “Frankly, I doubt anyone would pay or trade anything significant for it. So unique an object is automatically suspect. Fraud is a fact of life when you’re dealing without provenance. And a god bundle…”
He watched her face, the change in her eyes, like she was looking at something far more distant than the photos.
“A god bundle was the most sacred of artifacts,” Lina said. “It was believed to contain talismans created by the god himself. The talismans were said to literally hold the strength of that god given in promise to the village or city-state that worshipped and was guarded by the god. The bundle was carried in a carved box at the forefront of soldiers going into battle. Capturing a god bundle meant the end of a deity and the people who followed it. We have no analogue to it in modern times.”
“National flags?”
Her short nails drummed on the desk. “Not really. It’s like comparing a tennis game to World War Two. You must realize the depth of the Maya belief system. That god bundle was the god itself. It was real, like birth or death. A fact.”
She looked at him, saw that he understood what she was saying, and shifted her focus back to the photo.
“Losers in a war lost their real god,” Lina said after a moment. “The belief that the clash of armies was in fact a clash of deities is one of the things that made the Maya relatively easy to conquer. If an enemy’s god was more potent, you abandoned your losing god. You accepted the victorious god, worshipped it, and shared in its power. Because the Spanish were more powerful than the Maya, it followed that their god was more powerful. Christ rather than Kukulcán, as it were. Of course, not everyone gave up their god. Some only gave lip service.”