“Where do we start?” she said.
Tyler consulted his camera, then pointed to the northwest corner of the pyramid. “According to Easter Island, that’s where we’re supposed to look.”
They clambered down the steps until they reached the spot that corresponded to the photo of the drawing on the cave ceiling.
“I bet if we did a survey of the actual Nazca lines, they would eventually intersect right here,” Jess said.
Tyler nodded. “Dombrovski had a lot more time to analyze them than we’ve had. But now that the pyramid is completely uncovered, the entrance should be much easier to find.”
“One question: if we do find the xenobium, it’ll be radioactive. How are we going to carry it?”
Tyler tapped the backpack he’d taken from their rental trunk. “This morning I stopped at a medical supply store and bought one of those protective vests used for patients getting x-rayed. I also picked up a couple of lanterns and a short crowbar.”
Jess was agog. “You knew this might happen.”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Next time, give it to me straight. I can take it.”
“Will do.”
The wall at this corner, like the others, was built out of adobe brick, fabricated by mixing mud and straw. The pieces fitted together in a zigzag pattern, mimicking the stair-step construction of the pyramid itself.
Tyler knelt next to the bricks, running his hands over the rough surface.
“It wouldn’t be an obvious opening,” Tyler said, “or someone would have found it long ago merely by accident.”
“Do you see any symbols?” Jess asked.
“Nothing.”
“If this is a secret entrance, why would the Nazca make it so you had to tear the bricks apart to get in?”
“They wouldn’t. Dombrovski entered through here somehow. If he’d hammered the bricks away to get in, there’d be evidence, and these bricks are intact. We just have to figure out how to open it.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the Mandala image,” Jess said. “That would fit the pattern of the drawings, that the Nazca were providing a set of instructions to the gods.”
Tyler nodded. “Makes sense. It has a square overlaid with another square that’s turned at a forty-five degree angle. Which implies that something needs to be turned to set it to the proper alignment.” He studied the picture from the cave, then an aerial photo of the Mandala itself. “But what has to turn?”
Then Jess saw the difference between the drawing and the photo. She snatched the camera from his hand. “Look at this line in the drawing. It’s faint, but you can see that it bisects only the northwest corner of the larger square.”
Tyler’s eyes widened. “It’s as if that corner is supposed to divide in two.”
He didn’t have to utter the same conclusion that they had both reached. The bricks would have to swing away in either direction to reveal the secret opening.
Tyler’s finger followed the path of the stair-step seam created by the bricks. Then he stuck the tip of the crowbar between the bricks. The dirt fell away.
“The mortar’s crumbling,” Jess said.
“It’s not mortar. It’s dirt that’s worked its way into the crack. That explains why no one has noticed the gap.”
He jammed the crowbar farther in and pried at the bricks. At first they didn’t move, but Tyler pulled again, and Jess heard the bricks scrape against each other.
“It’s working!”
Tyler put his back into it, and the bricks separated far enough for Jess to get her fingers in. While Tyler pulled, Jess pushed from her side. The more room they got, the easier it became to swing it aside until the adobe segment was flush against the pyramid wall.
They repeated the process for the other side. With the other half of the corner out of the way, this one was no problem to move. Only three feet across, this hole was even less inviting than the one on Easter Island.
It didn’t matter. If this was the way to get Fay back, Jess wanted to get started as quickly as possible.
She held out her hand. “Give me a damn lantern.”
FORTY-FIVE
The passageway into the pyramid was not much wider than Tyler’s shoulders, so he had to adjust the backpack to keep it from scraping the walls. Jess led the way, holding her electric lantern high enough to illuminate the tunnel sixty feet ahead.
Tyler could make out soot on the ceiling from the torches that must have been carried through here over fifteen hundred years ago. The sunlight quickly receded behind him, and at the first turn in the passage, it was completely gone.
They crept forward another forty feet where they reached an opening on the left. The tunnel continued straight ahead.
“Which way?” Jess said.
“Let’s see what’s in this room.”
She turned and stopped so suddenly upon entering that Tyler almost ran into her.
He didn’t have to ask why. The room was filled with debris, a haphazard pile of bricks that stretched halfway to the ceiling thirty feet above.
“What the hell happened here?” Jess said. “Sure is a weird way to store bricks.”
Tyler raised his lantern to get a better look at the ceiling. Around the edges he could see a few bricks still teetering atop the inner wall that made up part of the room.
“It looks like they built an outer room around the inner room and the inner ceiling and walls collapsed.”
“Or they built the outer room over it after the old one caved in. But why would they do either one?”
“You’ve got me,” Tyler said. Even if there was another outlet on the other side of the room, it would be a dangerous trek to get to it. “Let’s keep going down the tunnel.”
They exited and this time Tyler took the lead.
After another forty feet, the tunnel opened into a vast space, this one so large that their lanterns barely illuminated the opposite side. Tyler estimated the ceiling was sixty feet high, and the circular space was big enough to hold a couple hundred people.
They had to be in the pyramid’s primary chamber.
Jess walked to the other side of the room and shined her lantern into a large opening.
“This must be the main entrance,” she said.
“Is it walled off?”
“Not that I can see from here.”
In the center of the room was an enormous pillar holding up the domed ceiling. Stepped risers surrounded the brick tower and led up to its mid-point. Something about the layout seemed familiar …
He whipped out the camera and checked the aerial image of the Mandala.
The layout of this room was exactly the same as the shape of inner part of the Mandala — a circle inside a square with rectangular steps surrounding a starburst image in the middle. The starburst had to represent the xenobium locked inside the pillar.
The Nazca designers had drawn an overhead plan of the pyramid for their gods.
“This is it!” Tyler said.
Jess ran over to him. “The xenobium?”
“It has to be in the center pillar.” He took out the radiation meter and pointed it at the brick structure.
The reading was in the middle of the scale. He climbed to the second level of steps, and the reading increased.