As was now usual, his Monday came and went with no further discovery of any great importance. Pierce returned home to his university campus apartment, sat down, and opened his e-mail. After reading the single e-mail in his i n-box, he canceled the ancient history class three weeks from the semester's end and put Agustina in charge of the Antikythera excavations.
Less than a week and more than eight thousand miles later, he arrived in Nazca, Peru, where he stared at crude Greek letters carved into a stone, stunned and silent. Slowly, he reached out and felt the symbol scratched into the stone above the inscriptions. He'd seen it before, but would keep its meaning to himself, for now. He moved on to the letters, tracing them with his fingertips, convincing himself that what he saw really existed. He'd been searching for signs of the great ancient civilizations completing the journey to the Americas long before Columbus — the Vikings and Romans in the northeast United States were nearly common knowledge among his peers — but the Greeks in South America…in Peru, now that would rewrite history.
The e-mail he received disclosed a report about a new nine-headed geoglyph, a massive drawing in the earth created thousands of years ago, from a friend in the U.N. who oversaw worldwide heritage sites. The 175-square-mile region in which the famous Nazca lines were found had been declared a world heritage site in 1994. The very first Nazca drawings, discovered in 1929, didn't reach true worldwide fame until planes began flying over the desolate region and people began spotting more geoglyphs — a lot more. From the air, massive line drawings in the desert floor emerged that could not be discerned from the ground. Some, reaching lengths of a thousand feet, could not be seen in their entirety below an altitude of fifteen hundred feet. The geoglyphs came in all shapes and sizes, from spiders to monkeys to men and deities. The discovery of any new geoglyph in the region was immediately reported to the U.N., not because important information might have been gleaned, but because even though the region was officially "protected," looters still pillaged most finds long before researchers set foot in the country.
As a precaution, all archaeological finds had to be cata l oged, researched, and removed to secure locations before news of a new find reached the looters, who would descend like vultures. The geoglyphs rarely held anything more interesting than potsherds and crude digging tools, but surveying and photographing the ancient drawing before the image was marred by the looters' tire tracks was equally important.
During the initial aerial photography session, a large stone that looked like half an egg rising from the desert at the end of the odd creature's central neck leaped out at the photographer. A geoglyph with a three dimensional feature had never been found before. The following day, a team hurried to the site, inspecting the stone and the area around it. All were amazed when they found an inscription on the stone, but no one could read it, though one young college intern recognized the language — Greek.
The discovery had been made one day before Pierce received the e-mail. Given his previous work with the U.N. World-Heritage Commission and his expertise on ancient civilizations, Pierce had been called to the scene. After three plane flights and a long, bumpy, and dusty jeep ride, he arrived on site, where a small base camp had been set up on the hill that overlooked the glyph. He'd exited the jeep only ten minutes ago and, upon seeing the nine-headed glyph, had run down the hill to where he now stood. He stared at the Greek inscription on a stone that couldn't possibly have come from Greece, which meant that someone from Greece had been to Peru, to this very spot, more than two thousand years ago.
He turned to Molly McCabe, the U.N. heritage commission archaeologist who'd first documented the site from the sky. The Irish woman had been researching the glyphs since the late eighties and had spent more time in the desert than anywhere else. Generally, the Nazcan geoglyphs were her area of expertise, but she couldn't even recognize Greek, let alone read it.
"You're sure the site was untouched? This has to be a hoax," he said.
"No tire tracks for miles around," she said. "You can't hide those here. No wind. No rain. No erosion. Once something scratches the surface it stays scratched. That's why the geoglyphs have lasted for thousands of years. If someone had been out here in the past two thousand years with a vehicle or so much as a donkey, the evidence would still be plain to see. I suppose someone could have walked here, but only a fool would do that."
"Why's that?" he asked, as he gently brushed the inscription clean.
"It'd be a death sentence. You couldn't carry enough water to get you here and back to the world without dehydrating. You'd be a dried-out husk within a month." McCabe huffed and ran a hand through her long, gray ponytailed hair. "So?"
"So…" he said. "What?"
"What the hell does it say?" she said, throwing her hands up.
"Right. Sorry." Pierce usually took his time with new discoveries. If he had things his way the whole glyph would be fenced off then segmented into a grid of strings so the location of any discovery could be marked and later scrutinized. He preferred to work slowly and methodically, but he also understood that time was an issue. With each passing day they risked word reaching looters, who had perfected the art of the nighttime raid, focusing on expensive research equipment as much as ancient relics.
He looked at the inscription again, marveling at the text.
E8co sivoii Oajujnevos TO 0T|pio mo ao-XT^T. $^070: Kai TO £;i(pos TOD Boppa eKave aOavorro KecpaXi, TravTa KOTW OTTO TT|V ajujuo Kai TreTpa. Na Trpoei8oTroiT|<oei OXODS TTOD 8ia3a^oDv ODTO TO \o71a. AO^ODV ao^apa VTTOI|JT TODS (ppoDpoDS 'avoiKTa aKpa Kai va KpaTT|o~ei OTe7vT TT 7T (pofioDvTai eras jneTa TO Tepas Kai TT 7eDO" T TODS jne7aXeico8ais eK8iKT|O~T
The carving was crude, but the stone, like the surrounding desert, hadn't been weathered in two thousand years. The inscription was still as legible as it had been when it was first inscribed.
He translated the lines of text, writing down letters in his small notepad without reading the results in full. McCabe bounced a nervous leg next to his face as he crouched to translate the lowest line. He glanced at her leg and noticed it was quite fit for a woman in her fifties.
"Twenty years ago, George, you might have had a chance," she said with a grin. "Now I prefer men my own age."
Pierce smiled and made a final note. "You can't make an exception for me, Molly?"
"George," she said, leaning close to his face.
"Yeah?"
"Read the damn inscription."
Pierce chuckled and read through the inscription that he'd translated. His face fell flat. "It's a hoax."
"George, I guarantee you, this is not a hoax. What does it say?" Her voice was a barely contained shout.
Pierce read from the small notepad. "Here is buried the beast most foul…Fire and sword did sever the head immortal, forever entombed beneath sand and stone. Be warned all who read these words. Heed the screaming guards within and keep dry the earth lest you wake the monster and taste its mighty… vengeance."
McCabe's brow furrowed. "It's a grave?"
Pierce rubbed his eyebrow while he thought. Then, like a horse at the races, he bolted back up the incline. McCabe chased after him. Gasping at the hot, dry air, they stopped at the top of the hill where the U.N. World-Heritage base camp had been set up — a small village of tents and trucks. He turned around and looked at the geoglyph with new eyes, which quickly widened. "It's the Hydra."