Canyon of the Sphinx (26 page)

Robert nodded his head, feeling
pity for what Kathlyn and Marcus were going through. They had suffered far too
much. “It looks that way. Mike is going to testify at the trial next week and I
can guarantee this will be a slam-dunk.”

Kathlyn stopped by the great
arched windows, looking down at the traffic below. It was crowded, smoggy, and
busy with life. So much activity when her life seemed to be standing still
right now. But she saw light at the end of the tunnel, for all of them.

“So Marcus is off the hook?” she
asked softly.

“For the most part. There are
still Sexual Harassment issues, but I’m confident that once Mike testifies,
those too will be dismissed. It was all a set-up.”

“What about the IRS?”

“If we can prove the documents
are forged, then the case is non-existent.”

“And our site? Do we get that
back, too?”

Robert stood up and went to her.
“I am confident that with all charges cleared, the Egyptians will be begging
you to come back.”

Kathlyn turned around and threw
her arms around her brother’s neck. He smiled at Marcus, patting her arms
gently as she lovingly strangled him.

“You’re welcome,” he said softly.

She sniffled, fighting off the
tears, and kissed him loudly on the cheek. “I swear that you are the best
brother anyone has ever had. I love you, Robert. I just love you.”

Robert beamed at his younger
sister, whispering something to her that Marcus couldn’t hear. She simply
nodded as if he has said something deeply profound, something perhaps only
siblings would understand.  Kathlyn released her brother and walked back over
to where Marcus was sitting. She curled up in his lap, suit, pantyhose,
high-heels and all.

“Do you realize what this means?”
she snaked her fingers though his dark hair. “We can continue on. You can
continue on. All of this will finally be over and we can get our life back.”

Marcus wrapped his arms around
her; she was so light now that she was barely a slip of a woman. He was afraid
to hold her too hard lest he break her.

“Ay had been there for three
thousand years,” he said. “He’ll wait a little while longer.”

“Are you happy?”

He sighed heavily, thinking on
her question. “You know, I really haven’t thought about missing Egypt until
this very moment. There was so much more going on that I just couldn’t waste the
energy. But now that I think on it… yeah, I’m happy. Happy to get this bullshit
behind us and get back to where we belong.”

Her green eyes glistened. “No
more professorship?”

He shook his head. “No. I need to
feel the sand in my hands, not a laser pointer.”

“Bardwell will be disappointed.”

“No, he won’t. He’ll be glad to
have his A-Team back.”

Kathlyn snuggled up against her
husband and allowed herself, for the first time, to actually feel the emotions
she had kept at bay for so long. So much had happened over the past few months
that she had forced herself to be numb to it. She just needed to be strong a
little longer until it all blew over.

 Robert left his office and
closed the door. He knew, quite correctly, that his sister and her husband
needed the private space at the moment more than he did. They needed to pull it
together for one last stand. He knew, from experience, that it wasn’t going to
be as rosy as he had painted it.

It could get downright ugly.

***

Late
May

Yucatan
Peninsula

Site B was steamy as hell. For
some reason, the weather patterns in the region had put three tropical
depressions in six weeks across the area and the ground was over-saturated. It
was like a steam bath when the temperatures soared, creating a mop of wet air
rising from the earth and turning everything into a sopping mess.

But Christopher was used to it.
No use complaining since he basically chose the hell he lived and worked in. He
and his team were into their seventh week of the Site B investigations, now
their main focus based in large part to Dr. Trent’s information. It was, in
fact, data that had been right on the money; within eight days of beginning
excavations, they had run into a stone-paved street along a culvert that he had
once thought to be a small valley. As Kathlyn had told him, his city had been
all around him. The polished, well-fitted stones at the base of a five-foot pit
had told him that she had been correct.

Eventually, houses made from
flat, well-fitted stones had emerged from the muck. They were small, one or two
rooms, but mostly intact and thoroughly beautiful. The World of Exploration
Magazine, Kathlyn’s rag, had caught wind of the find and had been begging
Murphy to write for them for the past several weeks. He would have liked to,
but hadn’t had the time. So he had tried to contact Dr. Trent in the States to
see if she would be able to do the article but had received no answer. He
suspected why she hadn’t returned his calls and the thought left him depressed.
But considering what she was currently going through, he wondered if the World
of Exploration would even let her do such a thing; every article and program
she had written or recorded was still on hold until the outcome of her trail.
None of that had changed.

He hadn’t heard anything about
her legal problems lately, but that was because he had stopped listening to the
news from America. Adam and Kimberly listened to the news every night but
hadn’t filled him in on anything, and he hadn’t asked. They knew about the
incident with Drs. Trent and Burton on that night those long weeks ago.
Christopher had told them over a large bottle of tequila that he had personally
emptied. It was the first, and last, time he had ever spoken of it. No one
dared mention it again, nor did they mention the name of Dr. Kathlyn Trent if
they could help it. The subject was taboo.

Today they were excavating at the
base of the avenue they had uncovered. It was at an angle, emptying into a wide
green clearing that they suspected was a courtyard of some kind. They had already
used grids to cordon off the entire area and more workers had been brought in
from UIR since the university had let out for the summer. The jungle was
teaming with fresh, ripe archaeology students, riddled with bug bites, who were
eager to help.

Adam was working on what he
thought was a wall of some kind; it was covered in vegetation and hard to
clear. He had been working on it for seven straight days and his work had been
slow and meticulous. He’d managed to scrape off several layers of earth and was
hard at work on what appeared to be a large boulder wedged into the earth. He
had a couple of students with him, gently picking with their dental explorers,
when a huge piece of mud and debris suddenly fell away and crashed at their
feet.

“Whoa,” Adam jumped back as the
chunk hit the earth. He watched the dirt crumble. “That would not have been
good for the toes.”

The students bent over it.
“Should we sift it, Dr. Levine?” a small, brown-eyed girl asked. “There may be
something of value.”

Adam nodded. “Go ahead. We need
to be thorough.”

The girl started to reply but her
gaze suddenly fell on the surface behind Adam, where the piece of earth had
departed. Her eyes widened.

“Um…” she began. “Dr. Levine, you
should take a look behind you…”

Adam turned around. Almost
staring him in the face was a section about a foot wide by two feet in height,
a solid piece of smooth, black stone. It was a statue, a creature of some kind,
and it took him a moment for the sight to register.

“Christ,” he hissed, leaning in
to inspect it. “Would you look at this.”

The features gazed back at him,
angled and precise, coated in centuries of earth. The eyes were almond-shaped,
the face full, and the teeth barred. Adam almost swallowed his tongue when he
realized what he was looking at.

“Go get Dr. Murphy,” he
stammered. When the girl didn’t move fast enough, he shouted at her. “Go!”

The student fled. A few minutes
later, Christopher showed up, his handsome face red with sun and the rim of his
ever-present baseball cap soaked with sweat. He had been supervising a test pit
about two hundred yards away and had run the entire way at the prompting of
Adam’s frantic messenger.

 He expected to see a buried
treasure chest at the very least based on the young girl’s panic. He opened his
mouth to question Dr. Levine about the need for his immediate appearance but
the words died in his throat when he saw what Adam was looking at. His leaned
in closer, and his pink cheeks visibly paled.

“My God,” he breathed. “You found
it.”

Adam was so stunned he could
hardly speak. “The sphinx.”

They continued to stare at it as
if it was about to suddenly disappear. It had before. For a long moment,
neither one of them could believe their eyes. Finally, Christopher snapped out
of his trance. His normally laid-back manner was suddenly electrified with the
joy of discovery.

“Let’s clear out this whole
area,” he shouted to the students and employees that had gathered. “I want this
object cleared completely so that no run-off will cover it if we have any more
rains. Kimberly, get the bobcat over here – I want the vegetation cleared away,
a twenty-foot radius, and a security perimeter established. Come on, people,
let’s move.”

As the workers scattered,
Christopher motioned for the digital camera that the foreman held. He began
snapping away at the sphinx as Adam reclaimed his brush and began carefully
dusting away at it.

“La barranca de la esfinge,” Adam
muttered as he brushed. “We actually found the damn thing. Can you believe it?”

Christopher continued to click
away. Then he stopped, gazing at the canyon wall behind the statue. “Adam, look
at that.”

Adam stopped brushing, looking to
where Christopher was indicating. At first, all he saw was dirt and heavy
vegetation that had been disturbed. When the chunk of earth had fallen, it had
not only uncovered the head of the statue, but it had also uncovered what
looked to be a column directly behind the sculpture. It was a small window of
material, but the shape was obvious. Christopher took a step back, gazing all
around him. He couldn’t help but remember when Kathlyn had told him there were
ghosts everywhere. Suddenly, he could see them.

 He came to a halt, studying the
topography carefully. “Do you know what I think?”

Adam stood beside him, not
completely following his line of thought. “What?”

“Look how wide this gully, or
whatever you want to call it, is. And also look at the fact that it doesn’t
seem to slope like the one immediately to the north does. It’s almost flat. In
fact, I don’t think this is an avenue at all. I think this is a small courtyard
or temple of some kind. The dimensions just don’t seem to indicate a street.”

Adam looked around, seeing some
of what Christopher was theorizing. He looked back over at the statue and the
hint of the column behind it, marred in centuries of mud and growth. Somehow,
it didn’t diminish the beauty.

“Remember what the manuscripts
called this place?”

“Las columnas del agua florecen,”
Christopher could feel his heart thumping in his chest, his excitement
palpable. His pale blue eyes were focused on the area of the statue just as
Adam’s were. “I say we excavate around that pillar. I’ll bet you a bottle of
tequila and a night in a fancy hotel that we find some kind of flower on it.”

“You’re on.”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Late
June

Los
Angeles, CA

Kathlyn was sitting in the
hallway of the old Federal Courthouse. It was quiet at seven in the morning,
with just a few people filtering in for the day’s business. And she was oddly
alone; she wasn’t normally alone these days, but Marcus and Robert had gone up
to the cafeteria for coffee and she didn’t want to go. She wanted to sit for a
moment and collect her thoughts, privately. Today was the big day and she
wanted to be ready.

The press had gathered outside on
the steps of the Federal Building and had taken as many pictures as they could
of her, Marcus and Robert as they entered the structure. But since it was a
publicized trial, the judicial system had been ready and several marshals had
kept the photographers at bay. They weren’t allowed inside, much to Kathlyn’s
relief. But those who wanted to sit in the gallery were being issued numbers;
she had seen crowds of people outside. She wondered what kind of scrutiny, and
support, she was in for. Any way she looked at it, the thought was nerve-wracking.

Dressed in a navy blue suit with
matching pumps, she looked fabulous. Her long hair was neatly arranged and her
make up perfect. Such was the standard for Kathlyn Trent. She’d had to buy new
clothes because she’d lost so much weight from her illness and separation from
Marcus that the old ones didn’t fit any longer. She didn’t like looking at
herself in the mirror these days; it was like a stranger gazing back at her.
Everything felt strange and disoriented.