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“He discarded the Mayan ruins that didn’t fit the criteria or if their story came from an Aztec religious figure. The Aztecs had limited interactions with the Mayans, so it’s unlikely that a secret this important would have been imparted to an Aztec priest. Also, back then, travel would have been difficult into the Yucatán from here, and there’s little chance that any pilgrimage made would have stayed secret for long. And last, unless the body was somehow preserved, it would have been buried around the time of Quetzalcoatl’s death—the ruler, obviously, not the deity. Which narrows the field considerably.”
“Makes sense so far,” Remi agreed.
“That leaves us with pyramids that were in existence at the time of his death—which is uncertain but which we can estimate to be between A.D. 980 and 1100. Either way, while that’s a decent number, it’s not huge. And it rules out all the Aztec sites.”
“But what if the tomb had been constructed later and the body moved?” Sam asked.
“Possible, but that’s not the way the text reads if you adjust it for the nuances of the Nahuatl language. The person who wrote the manuscript was recording what he thought the Aztec was saying, but that’s probably not what he actually said. It’s a record of how a Spaniard would interpret what he said. Make sense?”
Remi nodded slowly. “But because that’s your area of specialty . . .”
“Exactly. Our interpretation can adjust for what might have been lost in translation. If that’s the case, and there’s no guarantee, then the site is one of the ruins north or east of Mexico City.”
“Which are Teotihuacan, Cholula, and Tula, right?”
“No, Cholula was south, near where Puebla now is.”
“And you’ve definitely ruled out the Mayan cities?”
“As much as anything can be excluded. It would have been impossible to keep something like the construction of a secret tomb beneath a sacred pyramid secret. No, we’re looking at either Teotihuacan, which was uninhabited by the time Quetzalcoatl died, or Tula, where he ruled but from where he was exiled late in his rule. The likelihood is that it’s Teotihuacan because it would have been empty, so anyone working in secret could have performed the excavation and built the chamber without being discovered.”
“Sounds like a lot of manpower,” Sam said.
“Yes, but the manuscript mentions a secret order that worshipped the ruler Quetzalcoatl as a living god and later dedicated itself to the protection of the sacred tomb. If the followers were suitably zealous, it’s entirely possible that they could have done the construction and then taken up residence in the area, keeping their secret through the generations.”
“Then it’s the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan?” Remi asked. “We’ve been looking at that as one of the candidates, but it seems like it’s too obvious.”
“Sometimes the most obvious place is the best place to hide something of immeasurable value. We have a dig going on there right now. A tunnel system has been discovered beneath the temple, but it was filled in around A.D. 250 and it’s taking forever to excavate it.”
“Then you would have discovered the secret chamber, too, if it was there,” Remi said.
Antonio entered and approached them.
“Maribela was just telling us about your theory about where the temple might be located,” Sam said.
“Ah, yes. Well, it’s all speculative, but, for my money, it would be somewhere beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent,” Antonio said.
“But there’s been sonar done after the tunnel discovery,” Remi said, “and it didn’t reveal anything more. Maybe the tunnel connects to it?”
“Doubtful. One of our colleagues heads up that dig and nothing’s been discovered or hinted at or we would have heard about it. No, if it’s there, it’s somewhere other than the obvious. And the sonar scan that was performed concentrated on that one quadrant after this latest tunnel was found. If it’s in one of the other quadrants, or if it’s deeper than the tunnels, it could be a decade before anything’s found.”
“Then how do we locate it?” Sam asked.
“Based on our interpretation of the manuscript, it seems to point to some fairly specific areas once you narrow it down to that pyramid. Of course, that would have been all but impossible for a sixteenth-century exploration, which may well be why the search was eventually abandoned.”
“How do we get permission to excavate?”
“Well, you’d need a permit from the Ministry. Which I just got finished discussing with Carlos. He’s going to put in a request and see if he can fast-track it.”
“How long will that take?” Remi asked.
“If no resistance is encountered, maybe a week,” Maribela said.
“And there’s the question of funding the undertaking,” Antonio added. “We’re always low on money, and the new find has taken a hundred ten percent of our discretionary fund.”
Sam and Remi smiled at the same time.
“We could make a donation, if that would smooth the way,” Sam said. “Just tell us what you think it would take and we can put the wheels in motion. We’ve funded other digs, so why not this one? Making the discovery is worth more than the cost of a small excavation team . . .”