The Devil Colony (Sigma Force 7)

No . . . how could this be?

Shadows danced across the ice floor. He swung his light up and saw Painter and Kowalski peering down at him.

“Are you hurt?” Painter asked, out of breath, clearly concerned.

“No, but you might want to hop down here yourself. I’m not sure I should be touching this.”

Painter frowned, but Hank waved, urging him down.

“Okay,” Painter conceded, and turned to his partner. “Kowalski, go secure a rope and toss it down to us.”

After the big man left, Painter twisted around and dropped smoothly into the ice-flooded chamber. “So what did you find, Doc?”

Hank waved to encompass the chamber. “This is a kiva, a spiritual center of an Anasazi settlement. Basically their church.” He pointed his beam up. “They built them in wells like this. That hole we both dropped through is called a sipapa; to the Anasazi it represented the mythical place where their people first emerged into the world.”

“Okay, why the religious lesson?”

“So you’d understand what they worshipped here, or at least preserved as some sort of token to the gods.” He swung his light to the large alcove. “I think this object may be what the thieves stole from the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev—what led to the Anasazi’s doom.”

5:06 P.M.

Painter stepped closer to the alcove, adding the shine of his own flashlight to the professor’s. Not that the object needed any better illumination. It shone brightly, without a speck of tarnish, just a thin coating of ice.

Amazing . . .

Within the niche stood a gold jar, about a foot and a half tall, topped by the sculpted head of a wolf. The tiny bust was perfectly detailed, from the tipped-up ears to the furry scruff of mane. Even the eyes looked ready to blink.

Moving his light down, he recognized a familiar writing inscribed across the front of the jar in precise and even rows.

“It’s the same writing found on the gold tablets,” Painter said.

Hank nodded. “That must be proof that this totem once belonged to the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev, don’t you think? That the Anasazi stole it from their cache.”

“Maybe,” Painter mumbled. “But what about the container itself? Am I wrong, or does it look like one those vases used by ancient Egyptians to hold the organs of their dead?”

“Canopic jars,” Hank said.

“Exactly. Only this one has a wolf’s head.”

“The Egyptians adorned their bottles with animals from their native lands. If whoever forged this jar did so in North America, then a wolf makes sense. Wolves have always been powerful totems here.”

“But doesn’t that ruin your theory about the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev? Aren’t they supposed to be the lost tribe of Israel from the Book of Mormon?”

“No, it doesn’t dash my theory.” Excitement rose in the professor’s voice. “If anything, it supports it.”

“How so?”

Hank pressed his hands to his lips, trying to control his elation. He looked ready to fall to his knees. “According to our scriptures, the gold plates that John Smith translated to compose the Book of Mormon were written in a language described as reformed Egyptian. To quote Mormon chapter nine, verse thirty-two. ‘And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.’ ”

Hank turned to face Painter. “But no one’s ever actually seen that writing,” he stressed, “because the original golden plates vanished after John Smith translated them. They were said to have been returned to the angel Moroni. All we know about this writing is that it was supposed to be a derivation of Hebrew, a variant that evolved since the time the tribe left the Holy Lands.”

“Then why call it Egyptian at all? Reformed or otherwise.”

“I believe the answers are here.” Hank pointed. “We know the tribes of Israel had complicated ties to Egypt, a mixing of ancestries. As I told you before, the earliest representation of the moon-and-star symbol goes back to the ancient Moabites, who shared bloodlines with both the Israelites and the Egyptians of the time. So when the lost tribe came to America, they must have had a heritage with a foot in each world. Here is that very proof, a pure blending of Egyptian culture and ancient Hebrew. It must be preserved.”

Painter reached for the jar. “On that we can agree.”

“Careful,” Hank said.

The base of the vessel was lodged a couple of inches into the ice, but that was not what worried the professor. They’d all seen what happened when someone mishandled artifacts left behind by the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev.

“I think it should be okay,” Painter said. “It’s been frozen for centuries.”

Painter remembered Ronald Chin’s contention that the explosive compound needed warmth to keep it stable, or extreme heat to destroy it. It only destabilized when it got cold. Still, he held his breath as he reached toward the wolf’s-head lid. He lifted it free, cracking through a thin scrim of ice, then shone his flashlight down inside.

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Just as I thought. It’s empty.”

He passed the cap to Hank, then set about breaking the jar loose from the ice. With a few sharp tugs, it came free.

“It’s heavy,” he said as he replaced the cap. “I wager this gold is the same nano-dense material as the plates. The ancients must’ve used the metal to insulate their unstable compound.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The denser the metal, the better it retains heat. It might take longer to warm, but once this gold heats up, it would retain its warmth for a longer span of time. Such insulation would act like an insurance policy in case there were any sudden variations in temperature. It would also allow them additional time to get the substance from one heat source to another.”

Hank shook his head at such ingenuity. “So the gold helped these ancient people stabilize their compound.”

“I think this jar might have been one of their unused containers. But considering what happened at Sunset Crater, the Anasazi must have also stolen one that was full.” Painter turned the jar over in his hands. “And look at this. On the opposite side of the jar.”

Hank moved closer, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

Inscribed on the back was a detailed drawing of a landscape: a winding creek, a steep mountain fringed by trees, and in the middle of it all, something that looked like a small erupting volcano.