“Did you see anyone at my booth after I went into the restroom?” she said.
Bruno shook his head beside her. “Was keep’n my eye on you and my work. Someone take your purse? No one steals from my place! I’ll-”
“No, no. I just thought…”
Slowly she turned back into the warm cafe, and Bruno left her alone, though she felt his eyes following her.
She went back to her table and read the words again, written just to the left of the title. She sat and stared at the two sentences and Albright’s title for a full minute. “What’s going on here?” she asked the air in a whisper.
Catching Bruno watching her from a distance with a concerned look on his face, she closed the scholarly magazine and gathered everything in haphazard order to leave. Freezing, she thought about all the people who could have written the words. Why? What did they mean? She opened the magazine again and read the message.
Can you believe this?!! Figure it out Alred!
Bruno appeared again, looking busy and just conveniently in the area, though Alred had seen no customer near her booth for the past hour. “Everything all right, ma’am?”
Her face wouldn’t change shape. She pictured other students she knew writing the message. What would they know about it? How did they know this was her booth when she wasn’t present? She pictured Professor Masterson scrawling out the message with his thin fingers holding a gold pen, his face smiling in a twisted knot of tight flesh. Or Professor Kinnard, or Wilkinson, or Arnott, or Goldstien. She had seen professors pop into the cafe twice since she’d arrived this evening. Both had been from the Math department. Why would any of these instructors write these words?
Perhaps Porter had come by, seen the journal, and deduced it to be hers!
But Alred had the nagging feeling that this was what Ulman’s handwriting would look like in a hurry. He’d written her from Guatemala when he first thought he was close to finding something.
Porter or one of the other professors wouldn’t have seen her journal since she sat so faraway from everything.
She crushed her eyelids together, not wishing to ponder the question any longer. She moved to pack up again, but saw the old man with the wise blue eyes. “You wouldn’t know anyone by the name of John Porter would you,” she said. But realizing how silly that must have sounded, she quickly looked away, amending the question with the words, “No, of course you-”
“John D. Porter? Know him good and well! The tall skinny Mormon boy who gets a grin when he knows he’s make’n other scholars sweat under their collars? Just haven’t learned what the D stands for!”
“Have-have you seen him? Has he been in at all this evening? Maybe just now?”
“Not today,” he said with a grin. She could see the wheels working behind his gaze. This Bruno was obviously one of those fellows who thought twice as much and three times as fast as common folk. He looked more regular than anyone else, but could likely solve all the world’s problems from right here in his cafe.
But Alred didn’t want his help.
“Thanks,” she said. “Another water please.”
“Haven’t finished your first,” he said, indicating the one by her left hand.
She looked across the cafe to the glass door and the darkness beyond. “Yeah,” she said, with her mind searching the street again for someone leaving the place. She hadn’t been in the bathroom that long! No matter how many times she went through the possibilities in her mind, she couldn’t figure out what had happened. There were more questions than there were answers.
She nodded at the old man, and he smiled and left her with the journal. She opened her notebook and prepared to read what looked like a waste of time, but was now tied to…to what? Blue ink?
If there were answers, Alred had to find them. More now than before. If it was a race to study the new find, then she’d burn the oil of all ten virgins. She’d stand on the shoulders of Albright and Porter. She would succeed and benefit. But most of all, she would find the answers to her new questions. And she’d figure out what had happened to Ulman.
With new resolve, Alred looked down at the page. THE MESOAMERICA MIDDLE-EAST CONNECTION Codex KM-1 and Related Finds by Dr. Dennis Albright, Ohio State University Introduction When I first arrived in the Valley of Guatemala, I was surprised by the intensity of the beautiful surroundings and the simple humility of the native people. But surprise is too shallow a word to describe the immense shock I felt when I walked around the new archaeological site just outside of the small Indian village called Kalpa in the Cuchumatan mountains. One point solidified in my mind when I beheld all the facts for the first time. I would have scoffed at the thought only hours before! ^i There is an ancient Mesoamerican connection with the Middle-East. The academic world can have no doubt about it anymore. ^ii When my companions expressed their impressions, I simply couldn’t believe it. In fact, I refused to! Then I saw the codex which we have come to term KM-1 (Kalpa Manuscript, One). ^iii Part of a larger library, KM-1 and its apparent home illustrate three points which I shall illuminate below. First, Kalpa sits on the outskirts of an ancient city far greater than any metropolis previously discovered in Central America. That fact alone demands years of investigation. Second, KM-1 contains both words and pictures correlating directly to certain localities of the Middle-East, suggesting more than arbitrary evidence of the transoceanic contact discussed by a small number of recent and heretofore relatively unrecognized scholars over the last twenty years. ^iv Last of all, I suspect KM-1 is the most complete and detailed codex of the ancient inhabitants of Highland Guatemala c. 700 BCE. I do not wish to mislead the reader. The aforementioned finds are completely new and require a thorough study, which will surely tax Mesoamerican archaeologists for at least the next fifty years. I acknowledge certain flaws involved in our present study. We have found so far no definitive name for the ancient center, nor are we unified in supposing exactly who lived at the site. Dating has been assumed from the language of KM-1 alone, and the writing has been a tremendous point of argumentation for the few of us at the Kalpa dig. ^v No part of the manuscript has been interred into a lab. KM-1 is unlike anything we have found in the past, and is subject to numerous questions that we have no time for in this paper. ^vi The first and foremost argument against this paper might be an attempt to show that KM-1 was planted at a later date by evil-designing persons bent on fame or religious prestige. ^vii But the codex, coming forth from a small library tightly sealed from the outer world, speaks for itself. It exists! It is tangible evidence of the study presented below. We shall soon see the day when KM-1 will meet every conceivable scientific test, all careful scrutiny, and each critical eye, revealing to the public the fluidity of the past as we know it. There is an unquestionable relationship between Mesoamerica and the Middle-East. Allow me to be your guide!
Alred tossed the magazine to the far edge of the table and slammed her eyelids shut. There is no connection whatsoever between ancient America and the Near East, she told herself.
Figure it out Alred!
Who’d written these words in blue ink by the paper’s title?
Where was Dr. Ulman? And what had he found?
Worth ruining his life for?
Hers?
She dropped her head until it thudded against wood.
CHAPTER NINE
April 15
6:48 p.m. PST
Dorado went insane.
That had to be the reason.
Running mad into the dark, brave Dorado, now deranged.
Alred tried not to think about it, but the feelings, the memories came like a tidal wave…forty-two feet above the shoreline and hovering…
He escaped when everyone thought him securest. Somehow he bypassed the massive birthday celebration. Everyone was present. Alred couldn’t believe Dorado went unnoticed. His black hair on end like Mr. Hyde. His mouth dripping with hot saliva.