“It’s a spectacular find,” said Caine. “Do you have a place to put it where it will be safe?”

“We do,” said Sam. “We’ll lock it up tight.”

“Good. I’d like to get started on the dating process and then come back tomorrow to start examining the codex. Is that possible?”

“I’d say it’s mandatory,” said Sam. “We’re as curious as you are and we can’t satisfy our curiosity without you.”

Chapter 7

LA JOLLA

The next afternoon, Sam and Remi were waiting when David Caine arrived. After Sam and Remi took him into the climate-controlled room, Remi put on surgical gloves, opened one of the glass cabinets, and set the codex on the table. Caine sat for a moment, staring at the cover. “Before we begin,” he said, “the carbon dating is complete on the seeds and husks that were in the wooden bowls and on the wood itself. The samples all had 94.29 percent of their carbon 14. The wood and the plants died at about the same time, which is four hundred seventy-six years ago, in 1537.”

“Isn’t that sort of late for a classic Mayan?” asked Remi.

“It’s well into the end-time of the civilization. Most major classic cities had been abandoned by around 1000 A.D. Others stood until the Spanish got to them, beginning around 1524, when Pedro de Alvarado attacked the Maya with a huge army of native allies from Tlaxcala and Cholula. But there were many Mayan kingdoms that took a long time to be conquered. The last few fell in 1697, more than a hundred fifty years later.”

Remi said, “So what we found was a high-ranking man who picked up a pot from somewhere near Copán in Honduras. He put a book inside it and set off on foot. He went four hundred miles or so, then climbed all the way up the side of the Tacaná volcano in Mexico and put it in a shrine.”

“I would say it’s almost certain that something of that sort happened. Why he did it, we can only guess at this point.”

“Do you have a guess?” asked Sam.

“I think that he was taking an extremely precious book to a secret and remote place to hide it from the Spaniards. Judging from your photographs of the site, you’re probably right that it was a small stone shrine. Inside are pictures of Cizin, god of earthquakes and death, who was the bringer of earthquakes. He’s the dancing skeleton with the dangling eyeballs.”

“Then, what?”

“I’m just guessing, remember. At some point, the shrine was covered by a lava flow from the volcano. It’s even possible that he intentionally placed the book in the shrine, knowing the likelihood that it would be covered by lava, believing that a god was giving him a perfect way to seal the book in a safe place.”

“Do you think he would do that?”