Gabriel glanced back. Joyce was breathing hard and fanning herself with her notebook. Her face and neck were glistening. His own body was already soaked in sweat, and the intense humidity didn’t seem like it was going to let up anytime soon.
“Do you want to rest?” he asked.
Joyce shook her head, catching her breath. “No, I’m fine. We should keep going.” She undid the top few buttons of her thin cotton blouse. Gabriel quickly turned away to chop at the vines again.
Stay focused.
“It shouldn’t be much farther now,” she said. “Maybe another fifty yards.”
Gabriel hacked some more branches out of their way. “Any idea what we should be looking for? Did the Hittites say how the Eyes were hidden?”
“The legends say this Eye was ‘buried in the earth’s embrace, where only the dead shall see its beauty.’ Scholars think this means the gemstone is hidden in a cemetery.” Gabriel remembered Noboru’s comment on their way out from the airport, that Joyce had been asking about a cemetery in the jungle. He also remembered Noboru saying there wasn’t any in Borneo. But Borneo was a big place, most of it covered with jungle. With the right map…
They came out of the densely packed trees into a small clearing, roughly forty yards across. On the far side, the ground rose up in a steep slope before the thick foliage resumed. Gabriel sheathed the machete in his belt. Joyce pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head.
“This isn’t right,” she said, her eyes darting over the layer of twigs and leaves covering the grass. She checked the compass against her notes. “This is the spot. The first Eye of Teshub is supposed to be here.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like a cemetery,” Gabriel said.
She shook the compass, as if that would somehow change its reading. She flipped through the pages of her notebook. “It should be here.”
“First lesson of field work,” Gabriel said. “Don’t rely on maps to stay accurate for more than, oh, a thousand years.” He squatted, scanning the clearing. “Even assuming you read the Star right, any number of things could have changed.”
“For instance, a cemetery could get buried, right?” Joyce said. “We’re probably standing right on top of it.”
Gabriel shook his head and ran a hand through the grass. “Maybe,” he said, “but didn’t Hittite death rituals mostly involve cremation? As I recall, only high priests and kings were preserved and buried—and they got huge stone tombs built for them. If something that size had ever been here, there would still be some sign of it. But there’s nothing.” He stood.
“No.” Joyce shook her head. “It’s here, I know it is. It has to be.”
Gabriel walked over to her. “Look, I know you were excited about your first find, but—”
Joyce grabbed the handle of the machete and pulled it out of his belt so fast he didn’t have time to stop her. She started marching toward the slope at the far end of the clearing. “I’m going to keep looking,” she called back to him. “Come or don’t come, it’s up to you.”
He sprinted up behind her. “Joyce…don’t let yourself be blinded by what you want to find. For every legend that points to something real, there are dozens that are just stories. You have to prepare yourself for the fact that sometimes what you’re looking for just isn’t there. Believe me, it’s happened to me plenty of times.”
She ignored him and continued storming up the slope. Nearly at the top she lost her footing amid the twigs and roots littering the hillside. She slipped suddenly, cried out and slid back down toward the clearing.
“Joyce!” Gabriel ran to her. She had tumbled to the base of the hill. When he got to her, her cheek was smeared with dirt, but thankfully she looked okay otherwise. He held his hands out. She glared at him, then cursed under her breath, took his hands and let him help her back to her feet.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, yanking her hands away. She bent to pick up the machete she’d dropped. Then she froze and stared at the grass on the side of the hill. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Come here. Look at this.”
He bent down next to her. “What is it?”
“There,” she said. She pointed at a patch of grass that had been torn up by her fall. She’d struck a stone with the machete, dislodging it, and where it had been there was now a narrow hole. The sun reflected off of something inside the depression. She pushed the tip of the machete into the hole. It hit something flat, smooth and hard. Gabriel recognized the sound it made right away: the tink of metal on metal.
“Something’s buried under there,” Gabriel said.
“The first Eye was given to the earth,” Joyce murmured.
They looked at each other, then back at the hill. Joyce started scraping the dirt away with the edge of the machete while Gabriel dug with his fingers, pulling out divots of soil and tossing them over his shoulder. It was slow work, but after twenty minutes they’d cleared away enough earth to reveal a stretch of dark metal with a long seam in it. A few minutes later, they uncovered the rusty bulk of a hinge.
“It’s a door,” Gabriel said. “There must be a whole structure under here.”
They attacked the hill again, digging faster now in their excitement. Joyce plunged and scraped with the machete like a coal miner working a pickaxe, and Gabriel dug until his fingers cramped. Another half hour passed without his even noticing it, and though his back and shoulders ached and he was tired and drenched in sweat, thoughts of what lay beyond the mysterious metal door kept him going. Joyce didn’t waver either, didn’t even take a break. Finally, they’d cleared away a rough rectangle of earth, exposing the metal door that lay beneath. The seam around it was caked with dirt, as were the ornate carvings that decorated the door. There was no knob or handle visible, but there was a lock.
Gabriel knelt to inspect it. He picked the dirt away and saw that the keyway was shaped almost like an upward-pointing arrow, with not one but three slots. Above the lock was a rough etching of a skull with a diamond between its eye sockets. Gabriel recognized it right away. The muscles in his back tightened.
It was the same design that had been on the Death’s Head Key.
Vincenzo de Montoya had found the key somewhere in Asia—but no one knew exactly where. Even de Montoya’s own journals were vague on the specifics. Now Gabriel had the answer: Borneo. De Montoya had taken the key with him upon leaving the island and died in the Amazon with it still on a strap around his neck. Five hundred years later, Gabriel had found it, only to lose it again almost immediately.
No, scratch that. He hadn’t lost it. It had been taken from him at gunpoint. Stolen by someone who claimed to know what the key unlocked.
“Gabriel Hunt, I presume?” a reedy voice called from behind them.
Gabriel whirled around. A man stood at the tree line where Gabriel and Joyce had entered the clearing. He was not tall, maybe five-foot-five, and dressed in khaki shorts and a beige short-sleeved shirt. A Tilley hat the same color as his shirt rested atop his head, throwing a band of shade across his eyes. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. Behind him stood four men in jungle camouflage, their guns drawn.
“And this must be the enchanting Joyce Wingard,” the man continued. He tipped his hat. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Edgar Grissom, and I owe you my thanks. You have saved me a great deal of time and effort.”
Gabriel scanned the treetops. Why hadn’t Noboru sent off a flare to warn them?
The answer came a moment later when Noboru came into view, his hands behind his back.
Then Gabriel saw the man behind Noboru. A blond man wearing a thick cargo vest and pressing a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum against Noboru’s neck. The sunlight glinted off a ring on the man’s hand. A horned stag’s head.