Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Page 7
Worse?
The dean cleared his throat. “The board of regents has also granted you a leave of absence.”
“What?” Indy thought for half a second, then realized what that implied. “Are you telling me I’m fired?”
“No. A leave of absence.” The dean shifted his eyeglasses and rubbed a finger along his brow line. “In this particular instance, an indefinite leave of absence—”
“So you are firing me!”
Stanforth held up a hand. “—during which time they have agreed to continue to pay your full salary”
Indy swung away. One hand balled into a fist, the other pressed to his forehead. “I don’t want their money.” He turned back, his voice rising. “In fact, you can tell them where they can deposit their damn money!”
“Please don’t be foolish, Henry. You don’t know what I had to go through to get that concession for you.”
Indy clamped back stronger words. He stared at the dean with dismay. “What you went through? What exactly did you have to go through, Charlie?”
The dean stared him in the eyes, facing his anger. “Henry, I resigned.”
The battered old suitcase landed on the bed in Indy’s room, crinkling the threadbare comforter. Indy threw open the latches and swung the lid wide. He’d barely unpacked from his last trip. He crossed to his highboy dresser and began pulling out socks and shirts. He threw them at the case in no particular order. He would sort it all out when he got there.
“Where will you go, Henry?” Stanforth asked, seated in a chair at Indy’s desk.
Indy straightened with an armful of shirts and a rumpled suit jacket. He shrugged and crammed them into the suitcase. He had many options.
Stanforth idled at Indy’s cluttered desk, shifting a few objects, seeking to make some semblance of order out of the chaos. The desktop was crowded with artifacts: Maori masks, Inuit whalebone carvings, an Egyptian scarab beetle. A pile of dusty journals threatened to topple over, presently propped up by a bottle of red wine, already half empty, and it was only the middle of the afternoon.
“You should have a plan.”
Indy had a plan, though it might be a tad rudimentary. “A train to New York,” he explained. “Then overnight to London, for starters. Might end up teaching in Leipzig. Heinrich owes me a favor . . . a big favor, now that I think about it.”
“I suppose there’s nothing to keep you here.” Stanforth swirled the wine in his glass and stared into its dark depths. “I barely recognize this country anymore. The government’s got us seeing Communists in our soup.” He sighed loudly. “When the hysteria reaches academia, I guess it’s time to call quits to the career.”
Indy slowed down, leaned a hand on the dresser, and faced the newly resigned dean of Marshall College. Indy could sometimes get too self-centered. Someone—several people, in fact—had been only too happy to inform him of this flaw. It had taken him until this age to begin to see it.
“How’d Deirdre take the news?” Indy asked.
Stanforth shrugged. “How does any wife take such things? The look on her face was a combination of pride and panic.”
Indy read the same mix of emotions on the dean’s face, along with regret. “I feel like a heel. I should never have doubted you for a second.”
“You have good reasons to question your friends these days.”
Indy sighed and sat on the bed. “It’s been a brutal couple of years, Charlie. No doubt. First my dad, then Marcus . . .”
“Both great men.” Stanforth lifted his glass in silent acknowledgment. “They’ll be missed.”
“And now Mac may as well be dead . . .”
Stanforth slowly nodded. “We seem to be at the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.”
A long moment of heavy silence stretched. Indy rubbed his sore knee. Stanforth continued to swirl the wine, seeking some answer in its depths. Both men snapped out of their melancholy at the same time.
Indy bolted up to resume his packing, and Stanforth reached for the bottle of wine. “Maybe just another half glass,” the dean mumbled.
Indy rifled through the contents of a desk drawer. He collected a few papers, including his passport, and tossed them into the open suitcase.
Stanforth filled his wineglass to the rim and leaned back. “I wish you’d met someone like my Deirdre, to help you through times like this. Or if you’d realized it when you did meet her . . .”
Indy rolled his eyes. “Let’s not tug on that thread right now, okay, pal?”
Stanforth held up his free hand in surrender—then noticed his wristwatch. “Good Lord, I’ve got to get home. Don and Maggie are driving spousum et familia up from the city for dinner. Emergency family council meeting.”
“They’re good kids,” Indy reminded him.
Stanforth acknowledged the truth with a wry smile. “Healthy and employed. I’ll settle for that.” He stood up, swaying a bit from the wine. “And I believe I should walk home. It’s a nice night.”
Indy steadied him with a hand on his shoulder and squeezed his appreciation. “Thank you for what you did, my friend.”
Stanforth nodded and shrugged. “I cut quite the dramatic figure. The regents were stunned into shamed silence. At least that’s the way I’ll tell it to the grandkids.”
He headed toward the door under his own steam—then turned back with one last thought. “You know, when you’re young you spend all your time thinking, Who will I be? And then for years you’re busy shouting at the world, This is who I am!”
As Stanforth spoke, Indy opened the closet door. He found himself staring at a beat-up brown fedora hanging on a hook; his bullwhip was curled on the closet’s top shelf. Both waited to be packed.
This is who I am, Indy thought.
Behind him, Stanforth continued, “But lately I’ve been wondering—after I’m gone, Who will they say I was?”
With a final wave, Stanforth shuffled off, but his words remained behind.
Indy stood in the closet, staring at the whip and fedora.
Who will they say I was?
The thought raised another question
Will there be anyone in my life even to ask that question?
Indy pictured the empty house behind him. Somewhere outside a mother called a child to supper. But inside all he could hear was the lonely ticking of his grandfather’s antique Bavarian clock. This place had once been a home; now it was more like a museum, closed up, the curators gone.
What was he doing with his life?
Indy backed slowly out of the closet—fedora and whip untouched. Maybe with the suspension, it was time for a new path, a new direction.
With a click of the latch, he closed the door on his old life.
THIRTEEN
THE YOUNG BIKER throttled up and raced his Harley-Davidson motorcycle down the street. He was bent low over the bike, outfitted in a black leather jacket, his blue jeans rolled over polished boots. He sported dark sunglasses and leather gloves.
His target was in the backseat of a Yellow Cab. He’d missed him at the house and followed him across town. Ahead, the taxi pulled to the curb in front of the train station. The sharp blast of a train whistle pierced through the roar of the motorcycle’s engine. His target climbed from the cab. He wore a tweed jacket and hauled a battered suitcase, bright with stickers from exotic locales. He was plainly heading out of town—far out of town. Now was the biker’s only chance.
A second blast of a train whistle pierced the station’s tumult.
The outbound 4:10 was readying to leave the station.
His target hurried, climbing two steps at a time.
The biker had almost missed him.
Maybe still would.
Taking no chances, he sped the cycle up to the station, turned sharply, and skidded sideways. He smoked his tires until they gripped. Then with a goose of the throttle, he shot forward, hopped the curb, and raced up the stairs.
Above, his target had vanished out onto t
he platform.
The biker followed, motor screaming. At the top of the stairs, he skirted out onto the platform and stood a bit on the cycle’s foot pegs. The bike bobbled under him as he searched the crowd. The train steamed and smoked, already slowly rolling away.
Where was he?
Then he spotted him—the man with the suitcase. He was jumping into one of the closest cars as it was still moving.
Crap . . .
The biker dropped into his seat and gunned his engine. Platform attendants in red caps yelled at him. He swerved and bobbed through the crowd, drawing alongside the train car as it began to gain steam.
The biker whipped off his glasses, revealing the face of a young man barely out of his teens. He yelled toward the back of a tweed jacket. “Hey! Mister! Hey, buddy!”
Nothing.
He screamed louder, punctuating it with the whine of his cycle. “Hey, Professor!”
The man turned, frowning back at the sight of a motorcycle racing down the platform alongside the accelerating train.
“ARE YOU DR. JONES?”
A bewildered nod answered him. The man leaned out a bit and pointed to where the platform ended at a cement wall. “You’re running out of track, kid!”
The young biker ignored the danger, racing even with the train. “YOU’RE A FRIEND OF DR. OXLEY, RIGHT?”
The professor stared harder at him. “Harold Oxley, the archaeologist?”
“YEAH!”
“What about him, kid?”
“THEY’RE GOING TO KILL HIM!”
That would have to do. He braked hard, squealing his tires, rising up on his front wheel. Then stopped—an inch from the wall.
The train roared past the platform and away, stirring a wake of smoke behind it.
He’d been too late.
The biker walked his motorcycle around as redcaps closed in on him. He hoped the professor had at least heard what he’d yelled at the end . . .
As the smoke cleared, he had his answer.
On the opposite platform, a man in a tweed jacket waited, suitcase in hand.
FOURTEEN
SEATED IN A BOOTH at Arnie’s Diner, Indy studied the photograph on the Formica tabletop. Across the table, a platter of chili fries was efficiently being consumed by the young man. The kid pointed one of the fries toward the picture.
“That’s Ox.”
Indy recognized the bookish man in the photograph, buttoned-down and polished, in his midfifties. “Haven’t spoken to him in twenty years,” he mumbled.
And they hadn’t parted well.
Indy also recognized the other person gracing the picture: dark hair, already slicked back, accompanied by a devil-may-care grin. He glanced up at the young man. The grin was gone, but his hair was oilier than ever. A comb rested next to the chili fries, ready to make sure every hair was in place.
Indy leaned back, stretched a kink from his spine, and surveyed the diner as the jukebox played “Glory of Love.” The place was all neon signs, black-and-white tile, and U-shaped vinyl booths, set around a long curving counter. It smelled of frying grease and baking peach pie.
And it was packed with people.
The joint seemed equally divided between collegiate types in lettermen jackets with their arms around girls in pink sweaters—and a dozen or so harder-eyed toughs in leather jackets and slick hair. The former kept to the soda bar in front; the latter mostly kept to the back, drinking cheap local pilsner and looking for trouble.
Indy had no problem guessing on which side of the great divide the young man across the table fit. But what was his story? What was all this about?
“Oxley was a brilliant guy,” he started, trying to draw the young man out. “One of the best.”
“The best,” the young man corrected.
“But he could get on tangents . . . talk you right to sleep sometimes.”
This earned a small grin—not at Indy’s pale joke but at some private memory. “When I was a kid, that’s how I did get to sleep,” the kid admitted. “The Ox was better than warm milk.” The young man’s arm slid across the table, hand out. “Name’s Mutt . . . Mutt Williams.”
“Mutt? What kind of name is that?”
The hand withdrew. “The one I picked. You got a problem with that?”
Indy held up a placating palm. “Take it easy.” He slid back the photograph. “What was Oxley, your uncle or something?”
“Kind of. My dad died in the war, and the Ox helped my mom raise me.”
The young man’s fingers slipped to the comb. He mechanically drew it through his hair.
Indy checked his watch. “Listen, kid. I’ve got one last train I can catch. If you’ve got a story, tell it.”
Mutt sighed, sounding much older all of a sudden. “Six months ago my mom got a letter from the Ox. he was down in Peru. He said he found some kind of crystal skull, like the one that guy Mitchell-Hedges found.”
Indy frowned at the odd reference, though he was well familiar with the skull. In 1926 the famed archaeologist F. A. Mitchell-Hedges had discovered a strange crystal skull hidden beneath a collapsed Mayan altar inside a temple in British Honduras. It had been carved from a single block of clear quartz, with dimensions and details that matched a small human cranium, even down to an articulating jaw. The Mayan priests claimed the skull allowed the user to focus his thoughts to kill. Indy had been trying to get a peek at that skull for years. He’d been rebuffed.
But the Maya also told stories of another set of crystal skulls—a collection of ancient cursed skulls—hidden somewhere in the jungles of South America. They numbered an unlucky thirteen. It was said that if you could gather the thirteen together, they would speak and reveal the secrets of the universe.
As Indy wondered if Oxley truly had found one of these skulls, a waitress passed, drawing both their eyes. Mutt reached up and absently removed a bottle of beer from her tray without her noticing it.
Indy snatched the beer back from the young man and returned it to the waitress’s tray. She remained none the wiser.
Frowning, Indy spoke. “About those skulls. Back in college, Ox and I were obsessed with the Mitchell-Hedges skull. How do you know anything about it?”
“You kidding? That obsession didn’t end in college for Ox. He could talk about that thing till the cows came home. But what was that skull exactly, an idol or something?”
“More likely a deity carving. Meso-American. There’re a few crystal skulls around the world. I saw one at the expo at the British Museum. Impressive craftsmanship, but that’s about it.”
“Then why was Ox going on and on about its psychic powers?”
Indy shook his head. So the kid had heard an earful of that, too. Oxley had been particularly fascinated by claims of the paranormal properties of the skulls.
“I know. Believe me,” he said, having borne the brunt of Oxley’s hypotheses during their college years. He did his best Bela Lugosi impersonation. “Stare into its eyes, and it’ll drive you mad.”
Mutt was not amused. “Laugh if you want, but Ox said he found one of those things. This one was real different, he said, and he was on his way to a place called Akator with it.”
Akator . . .
Indy sat straighter and leaned forward. “Akator? He said that? Are you sure?”
Mutt’s eyes widened at Indy’s sudden intensity. “Yeah, I’m sure. What is that place?”
Indy settled back again. “A lost city in the Amazon. The conquistadores called it El Dorado. Supposedly a tribe, called the Ugha, was chosen by the gods seven thousand years ago to build a great city out of solid gold. They say it had aqueducts, paved roads, technology we wouldn’t see for another five thousand years. Francisco de Orellana disappeared into the Amazon in 1546 looking for it. So did a British explorer, Colonel Percy Fawcett, in the 1920s. I almost died of typhus searching for it myself. I don’t think it exists.”
“But why would Ox want to take the skull there?”
“Because of a legend.”
Indy went on. “It’s said that a crystal skull was stolen from Akator sometime in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. They say whoever finds this skull and returns it to the city’s temple will be given control over its power.”
“What kind of power?”
“I don’t know, kid,” Indy snapped sourly. “It’s just a story.”
The young man nodded, as if expecting to hear this. “From his letter, my mom thought the Ox was going crazy.” He tapped his head with his comb. “Smog in the noggin. She went down to find him. Only somebody had kidnapped him, and now they’ve got her, too. Ox hid the skull someplace, and if my mom doesn’t come up with it, they’re gonna kill ’em both. She said you’d help.”
“Me?” That made no sense. “What’s her name?”
“Mary Williams.”
Indy struggled to place the name, but his file was long—with most entries brief, and a few anonymous. He didn’t have enough to go on.
He sighed. “There were a lot of Mary Williamses, kid.”
“Shut up, man. That’s my mother!”
Indy raised a placating hand. Again. “Look, you don’t have to get sore all the time just to show everybody how tough you are, okay?”
Mutt glowered back. “My mom said if anybody could find the skull, it’s you. Like you’re some kind of grave robber or something.”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Whatever. Look, she called me two weeks ago from South America, told me she’d escaped but they were after her. She said she’d just mailed me a letter from Ox, and I had to get it to you. Then the line went dead.”
Indy opened his mouth, but he read the fear in the other’s eyes—a boy’s fear for his mother. He remained silent. It was a virtue after all.
Mutt pulled out an envelope from his jacket and passed it to Indy. Indy opened it and shook out a single sheet of yellowed paper. It was crammed with lines of script.
“Gibberish,” Mutt mumbled. “Not even English.”
“Be quiet,” Indy said under his breath.
He feigned interest in the note while studying the two men at the counter. They were wearing suits too tight for their massive shoulders. Indy had been watching them since they’d come into the diner. After sitting down at the counter, they had kept a steady focus on their booth. Then as Mutt had pulled out the note, they’d suddenly shifted away from the diner’s counter and stood up.