Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Page 9
“Nobody speaks it; hasn’t been heard out loud in three thousand years.” Indy shrugged. “Might be able to read a little.”
He flipped to another page, farther in the book. It was also covered in ancient symbols.
Indy muttered to himself, comparing the two pages and scribbling on a pad of paper on a side table. “—if I walk it through Mayan first.”
He squinted at the squiggles and glyphs. They began to blurrily run together. Indy wished it was just because he was tired. He rubbed at his eyes and finally surrendered to the passage of time.
Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a set of bifocals and slipped them on.
Mutt noticed. “You know, for an old man, you ain’t bad in a fight.”
“Thanks a lot,” Indy said sourly.
“So what are you, like, eighty?”
Indy didn’t look up. “Hard livin’, kid. I don’t recommend it.” He lifted up the page he’d translated. “Follow the lines in the earth only gods can read to Orellana’s cradle, guarded by the living dead.”
He was beginning to understand. He stood up. “Only gods can read,” he repeated. “That must refer to the Nazca lines.”
“The what?” Mutt asked.
Indy crossed and shifted the library ladder, then climbed and retrieved a dusty book, Mirror of the Gods: Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Navigation. He jumped down with a wince at his hip. He flipped through the tome, searching for a certain page.
“Geoglyphs,” he explained. “Giant ancient carvings, scratched into the desert floor in Peru. From the ground, they don’t look like anything, but from the air—ah!”
Finding what he wanted, he joined Mutt on the couch and showed him the open section of the book. Two whole pages were devoted to aerial photographs of beautiful carvings in the Peruvian desert. One looked like a monkey, another like a giant spider. The last depicted a large-headed humanoid figure.
“Only gods can read the Nazca lines, because gods—” Indy pointed to the sky. “—live up there. Oxley’s telling us the skull is in Nazca, Peru. And it’s a good bet the Russians are the ones who’ve got him. The Kremlin must think the skull is some kind of weapon. That’s why they’re after it.”
“If it gets my mom back, they can have it.” Mutt stood up. “Let’s go . . . and try not to slow me down.”
Mutt headed toward the door, but Indy didn’t move. Instead, he continued to flip through the book until he found the page he was looking for. It showed an elaborate sketch of an ancient city, carved atop a jungle plateau.
He spoke as he studied its fine detail. He had to squint even with his bifocals. “Akator. Where Oxley was taking the skull. If it exists, it would be the find of a lifetime. Make a reputation even politicians can’t touch.”
He pictured the faces of Smith and Taylor.
Indy ripped the page from the book, along with another near the front, covered with Mayan symbols. He folded them both into a pocket and finally stood.
“So, old man, are you ready to go or not?”
“Not.”
Indy headed to his bedroom. He crossed to the closet door and yanked it open. His fedora still rested on the hook where he had left it, and his bullwhip lay curled on the top shelf.
Stanforth’s previous words still echoed: Who will they say I was?
Indy knew the answer.
Reaching inside, he snatched the hat and crammed it on his head.
His other hand settled on the whip’s worn handle. He gave it one strong pull with a skilled flip of his wrist.
KUH-RACK!
EIGHTEEN
Nazca, Peru
DIDN’T THE KID ever sleep?
Traveling at twenty thousand feet, Indy drowsed to the thrum of the aircraft engines. They had changed planes in Mexico City, switching from a DC-3 to an Antonov An-2, and were now flying over Peru. It had been a long trip, but they were due to land in another hour.
Indy had the brim of his fedora pulled over his eyes, discouraging conversation with the passenger seated next to him. He wanted to get as much sleep as possible. Once they were wheels-down in Peru, he didn’t want any delays.
“Are those what I think they are?” Mutt asked.
Indy groaned. “More clouds?”
“No, no, not this time.”
Indy pushed back his hat and turned to see what the kid was yammering about. Mutt pointed down from the window. Indy had to shift higher to see. The wing of the An-2 partially blocked his view. Propellers spun in a blur.
“On the ground,” Mutt said. “Over there. Are those the Nazca lines you talked about?”
Below the airplane, a vast desert plain filled the world. Sunlight glared off it, but Indy saw what had excited the kid. Etched across its surface was the stylized figure of a giant monkey with a spiraling tail. The artwork stretched over nine hundred feet long. Hundreds of other figures, flowers, and geometric shapes crisscrossed the landscape like so much graffiti.
“How did they do that?” Mutt asked.
Indy sighed. At least the kid was curious. He motioned down to the ground and up to the sky. “The Nazca Indians used crude surveying equipment and celestial measurements to map out their drawings. Then they formed the lines by digging through the desert surface, which is coated with dark iron oxides, down to the lighter ground beneath.”
“But why did the Nazca people go to all that trouble? You can’t see the drawings on the ground . . . only up here.”
Indy shrugged. “Lots of theories, kid. Religious symbols, celestial sky charts, road maps to underground rivers. But no one really knows. It’s still a mystery”
He settled back into his seat as Mutt continued his vigil on the passing scenery.
“You should get some sleep,” Indy said.
“I can sleep anytime.”
Indy rolled his eyes and yanked the brim of his hat back over his eyes. He offered a final warning. “Once we land, kid, we’re not going to be just sitting around.”
This is why I traveled thirty-two hours?
Mutt sat in an outdoor cantina in the center of the town of Nazca. The sun blazed in a merciless, cloudless sky. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a perspiring glass bottle of soda. More empty bottles were piled in front of him like a stack of bowling pins.
He had been waiting that long.
Off in the distance, red-baked mountains stitched a jagged line across the horizon like fangs. Closer at hand, metal hitching posts outside the cantina were tied up with a horse, a mule, and a llama—the last of which had the nasty habit of spitting, showing its distaste for its surroundings.
Right with you, brother.
At the last post, chained securely, stood Mutt’s Harley-Davidson, ferried all the way from the East Coast of the United States.
Mutt kept it constantly in sight.
Beyond the cantina’s railing stretched a maze of adobe buildings, blindingly white under the blistering sun. Local Peruvians in rainbow ponchos and wide-brimmed hats crammed the streets or hawked trinkets from wooden stalls. Llamas, loaded high, ambled down the packed-dirt road amid carts of every size, some pulled by mules, others by people. Shadier figures haunted crooked alleyways, selling and luring and watching.
You had to always watch here. It was that sort of place.
Teeming, dangerous . . . a regular Casablanca. At any moment, Mutt expected to see Bogie wander around the next corner.
It wasn’t all grim. Children with round, bronzed faces danced through the chaos, laughing brightly, calling to one another, oblivious to the chaos.
Still, even they had to be watched.
A small girl in a dusty sundress relieved an oblivious German tourist of his wallet and darted away.
Bored, Mutt had taken to counting the number of languages he had heard: Dutch, French, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, and a thousand different dialects of Spanish.
But, thank God, not Russian.
At least not yet.
He had half an ear tuned to the professor, who was invol
ved in an animated discussion with a few locals, a conversation that consisted of some strange language and much gesturing. Mutt barely recognized his traveling companion now. The tweed had been replaced with a scarred leather jacket, a crumpled fedora, and a bullwhip over one shoulder. His clean-shaven face had grizzled into darker shadows.
At last, Jones patted each man on the shoulder and turned away. He strode over to Mutt’s table. His eyes shone brightly.
It had to be good news.
Finally.
“Someone saw Ox,” Jones confirmed. “He came staggering into town a few months ago, ranting like a wild man.”
“What?” Mutt shifted to his feet with concern. He pictured the man who had all but raised him, always dapper with a perfectly knotted tie, precisely combed hair, and a briefcase as organized as a file cabinet. Mutt could not balance the description—ranting like a wild man—with the professor he’d known all his life.
Jones continued and motioned him to follow. “The police locked him up in a sanatorium on the outskirts of town. It’s this way.”
Jones headed out into the blazing sun. Mutt followed, matching him stride for stride.
“Back there,” Mutt said, thumbing toward the cantina. “That language you were speaking. I took Spanish, but I couldn’t make out a word of that. What was it?”
“Quechua. Local Incan dialect.”
“Where’d you learn that one?”
“Long story, kid.” The professor removed a street urchin’s small hand from his back pocket and continued down the street, but not before flipping a coin toward the boy.
“I got time,” Mutt said. He couldn’t explain why he wanted to know more about this man’s life—but he did.
Indy shrugged. “I rode with Pancho Villa.”
Mutt stumbled a step. “Bull—shit!”
“You asked. And watch your language.”
“Pancho Villa, The Mexican revolutionary general.”
“Okay. Technically I was kidnapped.”
“That seems to happen to you a lot.”
“Comes with the territory, kid.”
Mutt shook his head. “So Pancho Villa really kidnapped you?”
“It was during the fight against Victoriano Huerta.” The professor spit to the side, as if mentioning the name Huerta required clearing his throat.
“Wait a sec. That woulda been, what, nineteen years—how old were you, man?”
“ ’Bout your age.”
“Crazy. Your parents must’ve had a cow.”
Jones shrugged. “Worked out okay. Things were—a little tense at home.”
Mutt snorted his understanding. “Yeah, my mom and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now, either.”
“Treat her right, kid,” Jones grumbled. “You only get one. And sometimes not for long.”
Mutt heard something catch in the professor’s voice, and he stayed silent for a few steps. But be still needed to get something off his chest. “It ain’t my problem. It’s hers. She got pissed ’cause I quit school, like I’m a goof or somethin’.”
The professor glanced over at him. “You quit school?”
“Sure . . . lots of ’em. Fancy prep schools. Where they teach you chess, debate, fencing.” He fingered the switchblade in the pocket of his jeans. “I can handle a blade like nobody’s business, school’s a waste of time.”
“You never finished?”
“Nah, it’s all useless skills and the wrong books. I mean—don’t get me wrong—I like books. The Ox made me read everything under the sun when I was a kid. Even one of your books.”
“Really?” There was surprise in the professor’s voice, along with a twinge of pride.
Mutt had grown to suspect that some bad blood had passed between Jones and the Ox. “But now I pick my own books, you get me?”
“So then what do you do for scratch . . . for money?”
“Fix motorcycles. I know my way around most engines.”
“Plan on doing that forever?”
A twinge of irritation spiked through Mutt. “Maybe I do, man. Is there something wrong with that?”
“Not a thing, kid. If that’s what you love doing, don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
The professor led Mutt around a corner and pointed to the end of the next street. Up a slight rise hulked a massive adobe building. It squatted atop the hill, baking under the sun, looking less than hospitable. Adding to the effect, most of its windows were barred in iron.
The sanatorium.
As they approached its looming façade, Mutt read the words carved over the door. “Saint Anthony de Padua.”
The professor grunted under his breath, darkly amused.
“What?” Mutt asked as they climbed the steps.
“Anthony de Padua. He was the patron saint of lost things.”
Mutt studied the carved name again. “Then we’ve come to the right place.”
Down the street, a figure stepped out from behind a fruit stand. He watched the boy and the man shove through the heavy wooden doors of the sanatorium.
He removed his wide-brimmed hat and wiped his brow with a handkerchief, then replaced the hat with a shake of his head.
“Indy . . . you just couldn’t stay away, damn you.” The man’s voice had a distinct British accent.
NINETEEN
INDY FOLLOWED THE NUN down the sterile white corridor lined by closed steel doors with barred windows in them. The nun’s steps echoed on the red adobe tile. The kid lagged behind, looking ill at ease.
The nun held her hands folded in front of her. A heavy key hung from a chain dangling between her palms. She fingered it nervously, like a rosary, as she continued her story in Spanish. “I remember him. He was here a couple of months ago. And then men with guns . . . bad men. They came and stole him away.” She glanced over at Indy. “He was a nice man.”
One of the inmates beckoned to them through the barred window. His hair was wild, standing up. His teeth were crooked—all three of them. He babbled at them in a furious blur of words, unintelligible, as if he were speaking in tongues.
Mutt drifted closer. “I think I can make out a few words. Something about an arqueólogo. An archaeologist.”
The inmate lunged out with both arms and grabbed Mutt by the collar of his leather jacket, by his hair. The kid yelped as he was hauled toward the cell door.
Indy reached over, snagged Mutt by the belt, and yanked him free. He dragged the kid a step along with him. “No speaking with the locals.”
With a shake of his head, Indy resumed following the nun.
Mutt stuck closer to his heels now, his eyes wide. “What is going on?”
The professor nodded to their guide. “She says Oxley was deranged. Obsessed. He drew pictures all over the walls of his cell.”
As a sullen-eyed janitor slowly passed with his squeaking cart, Indy pulled out Oxley’s letter. He read it again out loud.
“. . . the lines that only the gods can read . . . Orellana’s cradle . . .” He folded the note. “That makes no sense. Cradle. Orellana wasn’t born in Peru. He was a conquistador, born in Spain. He came looking for gold. Disappeared along with six others. Their bodies were never found.”
Ahead, the nun stopped at a door. She pulled up her thick key and unlocked the door. “This is where your friend was kept. We keep it locked. It disturbs the others.”
She looked back along the corridor. As soon as the key had freed the tumblers, the chatter and calls of the deranged men and women in the other rooms went deathly silent. With a nervous look over her shoulder, she stepped away from the door. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
The nun tapped her way back down the passage, sticking to the center of the hallway. The inmates remained silent.
Indy entered first.
The room was twenty feet square. It held only a cot with a neatly folded blanket at the foot and a small white sink. Two small windows, barred, were high up on the wall. The walls and floor were plastered stone.
Indy knew the nun’s diagnosis was correct.
Deranged obsession.
Across every surface of all four walls, as high as a man could reach, were scrawled hundreds of pictures. Different sizes, altered angles, some detailed to a lifelike realism, others more abstract. But the subject matter was all the same.
The crystal skull.
Indy was drawn to the back wall. It was filled with a single image of the skull. The room’s two small windows were its eyes, aglow with the blaze of the sun.
Mutt slowly turned in the center of the room. “Ox, man, what happened to you?”
Indy turned to the kid, recognizing the depth of the emotion. He thought he should say something, offer some consolation. But Mutt turned away, embarrassed. Indy took a step in the kid’s direction—then realized he didn’t know what to say. What was there to say?
Indy did the only thing he knew how to do well. He returned his attention to the walls. He made a slow circuit, examining each surface, searching for some clue. When he was done, he stretched a kink from his back. He had come to one realization.
“This skull—” He approached the most detailed drawing on one wall. “It isn’t anything like the Mitchell-Hedges skull. Look at the cranium—how it’s elongated at the back.”
Mutt drew closer. He hugged his arms around him, but he seemed more in control again. “Why’s it like that?”
“There’s a tradition among the Nazca Indians. Head binding. The Indians used to bind the heads of royal infants so their skulls would distort like that.”
Indy studied the drawing of the elongated skull. The scientific term for the procedure was plagiocephaly. It was accomplished by tying boards to an infant’s skull, deforming the natural growth. The practice was not limited to the Nazca. It could be found throughout early civilizations: ancient Egyptians, Aborigines of Australia, even the Chinookan and Choctaw tribes of North America.
“That’s nuts,” Mutt said. “Why would they do that?”
“To honor the gods,”
“God’s head ain’t like that.” Mutt pointed to the skull.
Indy studied the charcoal etching. “Depends who your god is,” he mumbled. His attention caught on a word written below the skull. The word was repeated throughout the chaos of artwork, buried among the skulls—the same word translated into a hundred languages.