Fallen Idols

by J.F. Freedman

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

From The New York Times best-selling author of Bird's-Eye View comes this twisting saga of a family changed forever by tragedy. When the husband and wife team of Walt and Jocelyn Gaines travel to South America to contribute their archaeological expertise at a newly uncovered Mayan site, no one could predict what happens next. Fallen Idols is a riveting novel of uncommon discoveries.

Release date: November 15, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 432

Sample

CENTRAL AMERICA — JUNGLE

Sitting up in the darkness, Walt Gaines, his naked body sheeny with sweat, pushed aside the mosquito netting that canopied his cot and pulled on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and his mud-encrusted Tevas. For a man pushing sixty, Walt, who had played varsity football and lacrosse at Middlebury back in his undergraduate days, looked tough and hardy, and he was: at six-one, two hundred pounds, he still had most of his hair, it was still mostly light brown, rather than gray, and his face, despite the lines etched across it from years of toiling in the sun, was surprisingly youthful. People who didn't know his age, upon meeting him for the first time, often took him to be five or six years younger.

In the cot next to his, Jocelyn, his wife, stirred but didn't awaken. As she breathed, steadily and slowly, her thin nostrils fluted out the faintest nasal snore, a delicate, almost musical rasp, like the buzzing of a far-off bumblebee. A woman whose mind and spirit were perpetually in harmony (unlike her husband, who was ever-restless, a man who, by comparison, would make Odysseus look like a layabout), Jocelyn could sleep through storms, hurricanes, even, her husband firmly believed, the wrath of God.

Thirty years of togetherness behind them, and Walt was still amazed by his life-mate's equanimity. It was a wonderful counterbalance to his own headstrong energy. One of the many reasons they had been a good team. Marriages don't last as long as theirs had without the important gears meshing. As Walt watched her he thought back on their thirty years of togetherness. Thirty years! Jesus. Thirty years ago, the Beatles had barely broken up. Thirty years was forever, and at the same time it was yesterday, which in some ways, it was: they still made love like they had when they'd first met, passionately and a lot. Walt was grateful to the gods of sex that he continued to be turned on by his wife; he knew too many men his age who weren't, and what that led to. Okay, so Jocelyn was wider in the hips and ass than when she was a girl, but you had to expect that, Jane Fonda's ass was bigger when she turned fifty, too. Jocelyn's body was damn good for a fifty-year-old woman who'd had three children. She was another reason—the most important one, he knew—that he'd stayed young, especially in spirit.

Their coming together had been a volcanic eruption. Walt was thirty, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, when he met Jocelyn. She was twenty, a junior at the university, a student in his Introduction to Pre-Columbian Civilization course. They had been white-hot for each other from the first day of that long-ago spring semester when she'd entered his classroom, sat down in the front row, and, braless, leaned forward to get her notebook out of her pack. He had looked away, then back, and she was staring at him.

That afternoon they had coffee, that night they made love. It was great, and in the morning it was even better. A week later, she moved in with him.

Partway through Jocelyn's senior year, she got pregnant. She took it more calmly than he did. To his surprise, she didn't want an abortion. More surprisingly, she didn't want to have the child outside of marriage. That was a relief to him—getting involved with a student was bad enough, knocking her up was even worse, but to have a love child? He wasn't sure if the administration would be liberal enough to let that go, even though he was one of their golden boys, a rising star.

They got married over the spring holidays—she received her diploma showing a belly as big as a watermelon. That summer, their first son, Clancy, was born. Having a child completed Jocelyn's maturation process. She quit smoking marijuana—gave up drugs altogether—and became a card-carrying grown-up. Two years later, they had another boy, who they named Tom, and a year and a half after that, Will, their third and last child, was born.

Walt loved his sons, but he would have liked a daughter. Jocelyn, though, was happy with boys. No hidden agendas, no subterfuge. She knew all about girls’ perfidies—hadn't she snagged Walt, the glamorous professor who all the undergraduate girls had drooled over?

After Clancy was born Jocelyn went back to school, got her master's, and then, after having her other boys, finished her Ph.D., in sociology. The school offered an instructorship and then an assistant professorship. She didn't shine in her field like Walt did in his—few do—but she was good, she was solid. And everyone who knew her loved her; she was a genuine sweetheart.

The professors Gaines had a good marriage. It had lasted.

Stepping outside their small dwelling, Walt inhaled the night's sweet, almost cloying perfumes and looked around at the familiar surroundings, a group of small, thatch-roofed huts that were clustered in the clearing. Besides those used for sleeping—volunteer diggers were generally bunked four to a hut, although five or six could be squeezed in if there were more workers than space— there was a communications center/kitchen, an open dining pavilion, and two large buildings for storage. Solar-heated showers were located outside, back behind the main building. It was a rudimentary, simple system, but it worked.

The complex had been built over the past three years, from scratch. The small area where the buildings were situated had been hacked out of the jungle by a native crew of chicleros—men who roam the dense forest looking for rubber trees. One of them had discovered this site by accident, which is often how important ruins in Central America are found: he was looking for rubber trees in a remote, unexplored section of the jungle, and had stumbled upon it by accident. The site had been named La Chimenea because the tallest pyramid was shaped like a chimney.

The tight little living structures were similar to the dwellings in which the Maya had lived, on this very spot, over fifteen hundred years ago. The walls were made of thin tree trunks—trumpet trees mostly—held together with strangler vines (and baling wire), and the high-pitched roofs—tight, dense, virtually waterproof—were constructed from bay leaf palms, woven together in a tight mosaic. The few modern conveniences were rough-poured concrete floors, screened windows, and the propane and diesel tanks that powered their electric needs, their computers and other communication devices, and for kitchen essentials like ice. The student-volunteers who stayed and worked here pissed in the jungle and crapped in holes in the ground. They loved it.

Walt had been taking tours to archaeological sites throughout Central and South America for more than two decades. During semester breaks he had led field trips that typically ran for two or three weeks. These groups were comprised of about twenty people, mostly students, but also older people who were interested in archaeology and wanted an experience off the beaten track. The tours hopscotched from ruin to ruin: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras. Two or three days at a location, then moving on to the next one. It was grueling, all that bouncing around on terrible roads in hundred-degree heat, but they covered a lot of ground.

Jocelyn had often accompanied him, especially after their sons had reached adulthood and no longer needed her attention and supervision. These field trips had been important in helping him and Jocelyn supplement their incomes. Being university professors, they were comfortably middle-class, but they liked to live nicely. The income they'd put away from these trips helped augment their modest portfolio of conservative mutual funds.

Once La Chimenea had been discovered, however, and Walt had been given the responsibility of developing it, he stopped conducting these short tours. All his time and energy became concentrated on the site. Being invited to participate alongside him was rigorous and competitive—hundreds of applications flooded Walt's office every term. From these he carefully selected a privileged handful: prime graduate students from universities all over the country, mixed in with a few of his own over-achieving underclassmen.

There was one big difference between these groups and the shorter trips he had led in the past. Nondegree applicants were rarely accepted. There were too many candidates who were deserving and needful of studying in the field under the guidance of the renowned Walt Gaines.

They had been on-site for almost three months this time around. After flying to La Chimenea and settling in, they had immediately begun working their butts off. It was hard, meticulous, back-stiffening labor, like spending eight hours a day taking a splinter out of a baby's foot—you had to be so delicate. A meter-square quadrant at a time, carefully lifting the dirt, sifting it, brushing it one fragment of a pot shard after another.

The students’ attitudes had changed considerably from when they had first arrived at the site. That always happened—it was a rite of passage, especially for those who had never actively worked on a dig. At the start, when they were all bright-eyed and full of gung-ho exuberance, they would take copious notes when Walt would lecture on the day's findings. Then they would all get together for communal dinner, drink beer, and talk. It was like being in the best and most exciting summer camp in the world. They loved it, even when it hurt like hell.

By the end of the first week, though, when they'd had bellyfuls of work under their belts, the note-taking became more desultory. Days of painstaking toil under the hot, unrelenting sun made them too exhausted to make much of an effort, and their notepaper turned to mush in the heavy, oppressive vegetal moisture. Besides, being here wasn't about learning from books, observing a subject from a distance through an abstract prism. This was learning by way of your calluses, performing hard, meticulous, grinding work. The expectation was no longer a good grade and being part of history-making, as it had been when they signed up. Their desires became immediate and mundane—a cold beer at the end of the day, a change into dry clothes. Maybe sex, if you got lucky. In that regard a loose decorum was observed, which was breached easily and without fuss—those who needed privacy would disappear into the jungle for an hour at the end of the workday.

Now, their summer of work was over. Everyone except Walt was sleeping—they were exhausted. The last few days had been spent cataloguing the work they'd done here on-site, gathering the items they were allowed to remove for study, and securing their tools, photo equipment, all their various and sundry gear they were bringing back home.

Walt wasn't wearing his watch, but he could tell from the position of the moon that it was well past midnight. From out of the darkness came the cacophony of the jungle: howler monkeys screeching in the trees, cries of predatory cats like puma, calls of frogs, insects, other nocturnal animals. After decades of living in the jungle, Walt's mind, on a conscious level, had adjusted to tuning out the noise. Now, though, he wished to hear every sound as clearly and distinctly as he could. He wanted all his sensations to be acutely tuned in, this last night before departing.

Savoring the feeling, he was still for a moment. Then he switched on his flashlight and set off for the center of La Chimenea, half a mile away.

Despite the lateness of the hour it was powerfully hot out, and as humid as the inside of a Turkish bath—the normal state of affairs for this time of year. Earlier, shortly before sundown, it had rained, a hard, fast downpour. That was another of Walt's concerns—that his small convoy reach the paved road before the skies opened tomorrow. This was the rainy season; it rained almost every day. An hour or two, usually in the late afternoon. That didn't matter when they were here, on-site; but to get stuck in the middle of the jungle in a downpour could screw things up badly, even though the vans they were traveling in had four-wheel drive. There's a point where even four-wheel drive won't cut through the deep, sucking mud. That's the point where you can find yourself in serious trouble.

Walt didn't want to think about that now. He'd deal with whatever came up, when and if it happened. He always did.

He walked along the narrow path that cut through the thick growth and high trees, taking care to avoid the thorn trees that can pierce flesh worse than saguaro cactus. The thin beam of light from his flashlight was a slender knife-cut through the darkness, a darkness so deep he could almost feel it, like a cloak around his body. He was careful to stay on the path; so close was the jungle that in twenty minutes, if you didn't pay attention, you could be hopelessly lost and at the mercy of the elements. Tourists had gone lost at sites as developed as Tikal and Palenque. La Chimenea, by contrast, was almost virgin, a small clearing surrounded by dense, threatening jungle.

Walt relished these moments of being alone. He could let his mind go wherever it wanted, conjure up all kinds of magnificent visions, the stuff of dreams: what the life here was like in those long-ago times when this wouldn't have been jungle, but a bustling metropolis.

He had originally come to Central America on a whim, between his junior and senior years in college. He had been fired from his summer construction job for showing up drunk, so he had gone down to Tikal, in Guatemala, with a friend from Princeton who was studying archaeology. It was going to be a vacation, a lark; but instead, from the moment he climbed to the top of the highest temple and looked out over the endless jungle, the rest of his life had fallen into place: he had discovered his life's work. He went to graduate school at Penn, got his Ph.D., started teaching at Wisconsin, met Jocelyn, married her, became renowned in his field. And fathered three boys.

Thinking of his sons brought him back to the present. He missed them. He'd be glad to see them in a couple of days, when he and Jocelyn were back home and they'd all get together again. They were grown now, they were capable men, but they would always be his boys.

He felt the jaguar's presence before he saw it. He didn't know what it was, precisely, that he was sensing, but he knew it was something extraordinary. It was as if one of the ancient kings of this city-state had suddenly materialized here; that's how powerful the jaguar's proximity felt to him. The rest of the jungle knew it, too—the sounds had died away, almost as a homage.

Slowly, he looked up. And there it was, lying on a thick tree branch twenty feet above him, right over him, its head between its big paws, looking down at him. The great cat, the lord of the new world.

It was a male—he could tell from the size. Jaguars in this region rarely weighed much more than one hundred pounds, but this one looked like it weighed close to two hundred: a mighty specimen.

It didn't seem afraid of him, like big cats usually are of humans, especially jaguars, which are elusive, shy creatures. This one seemed to be sending out a telepathic message: I'm the king here. You and the others are merely passing through, handfuls of dust in the wind, and long after you've gone to dirt and the jungle has once again reclaimed all of this, I will still be here. My spirit will always be here.

Walt felt this, strongly. The jaguar was the defining animal symbol of the ancient Maya. And here, against the greatest of odds, was one in the flesh. In all the years Walt had been traveling throughout Central America, to this site and others, he had never seen a jaguar up close like this; the few times he'd spotted one the animal had been a flash, running away in the undergrowth.

He stared at the jaguar. To his astonishment, the jaguar stared back. Fleetingly, he wished he'd brought his camera with him; but then he thought, no, it's better to be here with this as it is, in the moment. To live it, but not to capture it. Because you can't—no photograph could do justice to what he was feeling.

Slowly, as Walt watched, frozen in place, the jaguar stood on the thick branch. Then it leapt from the tree and was gone, a flash of mottled fur disappearing into the jungle.

For how long Walt stood there he didn't know; maybe a minute, probably less. He didn't believe in God, not in any traditional, Western fashion, but this brief but spectacular encounter had been a truly religious experience. Maybe this was a portent that something special was going to happen. What that might be, he didn't know. But this was so unique a sighting that it had to have an incredible meaning to match its specialness.

He realized, too, that he wasn't breathing—he might not have drawn a single breath since he'd seen the jaguar. Now he sucked in air greedily. He was shaking. What a way to end this journey! And the phenomenon was his, his alone. He owned this moment, he wasn't sharing it with anyone, not even his wife, with whom he shared almost everything. Almost everything; a few situations, he had learned from the hard-gained wisdom of hindsight and painful revelation, are best kept secret.

Gathering himself with one more deep, cleansing breath, Walt entered the Central Plaza. Several structures were clustered around the courtyard: a large acropolis, two massive temples, each over forty meters high, that faced each other, east and west, so that the sun could be worshipped when it rose and when it set, a palace in which the nobility would have dwelled, two pyramids as big as the temples, and a ball court.

This area was the only section of the ancient kingdom that had undergone excavation. At other parts of the vast site there had been some minor digging, but most of it was still overgrown by jungle. That wasn't going to change, certainly not in Walt's lifetime. It took years to unearth one sector, and incredible amounts of money. Over the course of the past three years, since those first chicleros stumbled on to the site, over five thousand mounds, each covering a building of some kind beneath them, had been located. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand people had lived here at the height of its prominence.

Walt walked until he was in the center of the plaza. He could feel the pulse of the place surging, a psychic feeling signifying the turbulent life that had existed here for almost two millennia. In some unknowable but very palpable way, the ghosts of the ancients still dwelt among these stones. This was hallowed ground, a place upon which one should tread lightly, with reverence.

He stood still, taking everything in. There was an elegant grandeur to this reaching back into the past, digging up ancient burial grounds, unearthing old secrets. As some men dream of reaching for the stars, traveling to distant planets and pushing forward into the future, others, like him, look back to ancient worlds of mystery and desire. He had thought at times, over the years, about what his life's work said about him. Why was the past more important to him than the present or the future?

He had never come up with an exact answer; he wasn't sure he wanted one. What he did know was that the discovery of a new site, a new branch of an old civilization, seemed as fresh and real to him as flying through the heavens must feel to an astronaut. When he was at an ancient site, as he was now, those who had occupied this space came alive, and were here with him.

Crossing the plaza to the far end, he went into the ball court and climbed the steep limestone steps that had been cut into one of the walls. Only a small section of this area had been reclaimed from the jungle; most of it was still under a fifteen-meter-high mound of dirt and trees. Plopping himself down on the top step, his back against the wall, he looked to the floor below.

Ball courts were Walt's favorite locations—he was an old ex-jock, he loved those areas where physical action had taken place. And this was definitely where the action had been; the ball game was the Maya's version of the seventh game of the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl.

This was a particularly impressive ball court. Seventy meters long, it wasn't as large as the famous one at Chichén Itzé, but it was still impressive—grander than those at Tikal, Caracól, or Palenque. And like the great Yucatan ball court—the largest in the Maya world, measuring a hundred and forty meters, longer than a football field and a half—the acoustics were startling. A person standing at one end, talking in a normal voice, could be heard clearly all the way at the other end, almost an eighth of a mile away. This unique feature reminded Walt of the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building, which also had this wonderful, eerie quality. Walt had visited the House and Senate numerous times as an archaeological expert witness. He was very persuasive in those committee meetings—senators and representatives ate out of his hand.

The cleared-away section of the wall that Walt was using as a backrest was adorned with elaborate hieroglyphics, which told of a fierce battle between La Chimenea and a nearby rival that had taken place during the Late Classic Period, around A.D. 800. La Chimenea, whose ruler was named Smoke-Jaguar—and a mighty ruler he was, so it was carved in stone—had crushed its rival, burned the other city to the ground, and had captured many of the losers’ nobles and brought them back here. And then, in homage to the Maya gods, the losers played a ball game, a prelude to sacrificing one of them to the gods.

The ball game and its attendant rituals were highly structured, beginning with the king's preparations. On the morning of the day the game began Smoke-Jaguar would undergo a bloodletting ceremony. Hidden away in the sanctum sanctorum of the holy temple, he would pierce his penis with a sharp nettle, and, spinning like a dervish, would bring forth his own offering of blood, that he and his people might be blessed with victory, as they had been in this battle. After he was finished his bloodletting a priest would bind his wound, and he would join the other high-ranking members of the kingdom in watching the ball game, right where Walt was sitting now.

Ball games, although violent and physical, were not sporting contests. They were solemn religious events, homages to the gods. The object of the ball game was for a player to get the ball through one of the rings, which were slightly larger than the ball. The ball was solid rubber, and heavy—it weighed thirty or forty pounds. The rings, carved out of stone, were suspended from the sides of the walls that surrounded the court. The game was similar to soccer, except that players not only couldn't use their hands, they also couldn't use their feet. They had to advance the heavy ball by use of wrists, elbows, shoulders, rear ends, knees, hips, and their heads.

The game could go on for a long time—it wasn't easy knocking a thirty-pound ball into a hoop without the use of your hands or feet. If a player managed to put the ball through a hoop, the game was over. The winners were awarded the losers’ clothing and jewelry, as well as clothing and jewels from some of the spectators, who would make bets on the outcome.

Then would come the sacrifice. One of the losers, generally the highest-ranking of the captured nobles, sometimes even their king, would be killed, usually by beheading. Even if no one from either team got the ball through a ring, there would still be a sacrifice.

Walt closed his eyes and entered into the past.

Perched on his royal chair, which was adorned with pieces of jade, lapis lazuli, and other semiprecious stones, jaguar pelts, and feathers from parrots of every color in the rainbow, and surrounded on all sides by his warriors and subjects, the great ruler watched as the ball game was played on the court below him. It had been going on for a long time. The participants were ragged, tired. But they had to keep playing.

The game flowed back and forth, like the sun crossing the sky on his journey throughout the day. The spectators cheered on the participants. Smoke-Jaguar watched intently. Below him, his rival, the ruler he had defeated in battle, captured alive, and brought here, was almost spent. Still a young man, strong and in his prime, he was moving more and more slowly around the court. He knew his destiny, and he had lost the will to change it.

The ruler watched all this with great satisfaction and entitlement. When this game was over, his victory, here and on the battlefield, would be written on the walls of the court for all to see, those who followed in the days and years to come. He was going to have a long dynasty, his blood was strong.

Finally, just as the sun was disappearing behind the jungle in the west, one of Smoke-Jaguar's warriors knocked the heavy ball through one of the rings. Pandemonium broke out. The crowd rose as a mob, screaming and cheering.

Smoke-Jaguar, too, stood up. He was flush with the fruits of victory. As he turned to receive the accolades of his people—

“God, it's so incredible here. I'm really going to miss this place.”

Walt jerked with a start. He turned to the woman, who was standing a few feet to his right.

“You snuck up on me, Diane,” he chided her. He hadn't heard her approaching; he'd been too deep into the past. “You should be sleeping. We have a long, hard day ahead of us tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “I can't sleep. Not our last night here.”

The tall, slender woman was wearing a simple native cotton shift she'd bought in a local market, and expensive sandals. She was without makeup; her dark blond hair was worn in a single braid that went halfway down her back. Even unadorned, however, she was very attractive, in a classy, understated way.

Diane Montrose was distinctive among this group of volunteers. She was in her early thirties, while the rest of his team were younger, some by more than a decade. And although she was a good worker, competent, helpful, and uncomplaining, there was an air of reserve about her. All the others had morphed into a big, messy family, like summer campers. She stood apart, friendly with everyone, but close to no one.

She took a couple steps toward him; they were almost touching. He could smell her. This was the jungle—bodily odors were stronger here than at home, even those of refined ladies who showered and used deodorant daily.

She smelled like sex.

“I hate it that we're leaving,” she said. She seemed at ease standing close to him; as if being alone with him, late at night, in this exotic setting, was the most natural thing in the world. “It feels like we're leaving paradise. The original fall.”

Her analogy was too close to the bone for comfort. “You can always come back,” he replied. “The work here will be going on for decades.”

“I know I can come back, but whether I will or not, who's to say?”

That was another difference between her and the rest of them: she wasn't an archaeology student, nor did she have any practical experience in the field. Under normal circumstances her application wouldn't have been considered, let alone accepted.

She'd gotten in on a fluke. Before the trip began she had sent him an e-mail, asking to be allowed to join his summer tour. He had explained via return e-mail that, unfortunately, he couldn't accommodate her—the trip was full, he was turning down worthy candidates, and he was opposed to including anyone who wasn't academically qualified.

A week before they were scheduled to depart, however, one of the accepted applicants, another woman, had e-mailed the unfortunate news that she had to drop out, which left an open space that needed to be filled—the plane fares and other bookings had already been made, and he was financially responsible for them.

He started digging through his files, scrounging for a replacement, which wasn't going to be easy—most of those he'd rejected had already made other plans. And then, while he was sitting in front of his computer, another e-mail from Diane, as if conjured by a genie, popped up on his computer screen. It was one last, eleventh-hour, impassioned plea that he reconsider her application. She wasn't an archaeologist, true, but she was an ardent student of cultures, ancient, modern, everything, she loved off-the-beaten-path experiences, she'd traveled all over, under every kind of adverse condition, she'd take on whatever lousy job no one else wanted to do. She'd scour the pots and pans every night if that was what was needed, she'd clean the latrines. Whatever it look. She really, really, really wanted him to let her be part of this.

Who could resist such an entreaty? Especially when you're holding the bag for more than three thousand dollars and you need a body to fill the space—a female body, for room-sharing in some of the locations.

He ran it by Jocelyn, who agreed that given the time constraints, this woman was the easiest answer to their problem. He had e-mailed back to Diane, advising her of her acceptance, along with instructions; three days later she met him at the airport with Jocelyn and the others, and off they all went.

She had worked out fine. No shirking—she pitched in as hard as anyone. She was always a lady, even when she was doing a scummy detail, but she'd never been a prima donna, or caused any trouble. And she had an adventurous spirit. He could understood that, because his was, too. It was why he'd become who he was.

Diane looked at him, her eyes steady, unblinking. “It's wonderful here, but you're the real attraction.”

She raised her arms above her head and loosened the tie that held her ponytail in place. Unlike most of the othe