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“Yes, three.” Selma brought them up on screen:
Remi peered at them for a few moments, then said, “Do we have images we can use to compare?”
Selma picked up the phone to check.
Remi went on: “Unless I’m wrong, they’re all Aztec, too. The one on the right is Tecpatl, which represents flint, or obsidian knife; the middle one is Cipactli, or crocodile; the last one is Xochitl, or flower. It represents the last day of the twenty-day month.”
Sam asked Selma, “And these were isolated like the first one? No annotations?”
Selma was off the phone. “None. Wendy’s uploading some clean images onto the server now.” Selma used the pointer to back out of the current image files until she found the new ones.
They were labeled “Flint,” “Crocodile,” and “Flower”:
“They look like a match to me,” Selma said.
“Me too,” replied Sam. “Remi, all of these are from the Aztec calendar, correct? It might be useful to see the whole thing.”
“I have the one Remi downloaded for me,” Selma said. She scrolled around the screen, found the correct file, and double-clicked it:
“Now, that’s a calendar,” Sam muttered. “How in the hell did they make sense of that?”
“Patience, I would imagine,” Remi replied. “The symbols we’ve found so far all belong to the month ring. It’s the fourth one from the edge.”
“No wonder the one in Mexico City’s so big. How big exactly?”
“Twelve feet in diameter and four feet thick.”
“It’d have to be that big for anything to stand out. It’s fascinating.”
“More so when you realize it’s over five hundred years old. Three hundred of those it spent buried under the main square. Workers found it while doing repair work on the cathedral. It’s one of the last vestiges of Aztec culture.”
The three of them went silent.
Selma’s cell phone rang. She answered, listened, then said, “We’ll be here. Bring it to the side gate. I’ll have Pete meet you.” She disconnected and told Sam and Remi, “Dobo’s on his way with the bell.”
“That was fast,” said Remi.
“Feels like Christmas morning,” Sam replied.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Pete Jeffcoat and Dobo came through the workroom’s side door, one pushing and the other pulling a chest-high wheeled enclosure constructed of two-by-fours; hanging inside it was the Shenandoah’s bell. Aside from a few darkened patches, the tarnish and barnacles were gone, swept away by Dobo’s magic. The bronze exterior fairly glowed under the workroom’s halogen pendant lights.
Standing arms akimbo in his denim coveralls and white T-shirt, Dobo surveyed his handiwork. “Nice, yes?”
“Beautiful work, Dobo,” said Sam.
If not for his frequent and easy smiles, Alexandru Dobo would have looked sinister, with his bald pate and thick, drooping mustache. He was, Remi had once observed, a Cossack lost in time.
“Thank you, my friend.” He clapped Sam on the back. Sam took a steadying step, then one more—away from Dobo. “You see inside?” the Romanian asked. “See inside! Pyotr, help.”
Dobo and Pete unlatched the bell from its hook, lifted it free, turned it upside down, then returned it, mouth up, to the cage. “Look, look!”
Sam, Remi, and Selma stepped forward and peered into the bell’s interior. Remi sighed. After a few moments Sam said, “Wish I could say I was surprised.”
“Me too,” replied Remi.
Carved haphazardly into the bell’s bronze interior were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of what appeared to be Aztec symbols.
After a few moments Sam muttered, “All aboard the Blaylock crazy train.”