Tyrannosaur Canyon

4

DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT JIMMIE Wilier sat in the back of the police chopper, tired

as hell, feeling the thudding of the rotors in every bone. He glanced down at the ghostly nightscape slipping by underneath them. The chopper pilot was following the course of the ChamaRiver, every bend shimmering like the blade of a scimitar. They passed small villages along the banks, little more than clusters of lights-San Juan Pueblo, Medanales, Abiquiii. Here and there a lonely car crawled along Highway 84, throwing a tiny yellow beam into the great darkness. North of Abiquiii reservoir all lights ceased; beyond lay the mountains and canyons of the Chama wilderness and the vast high mesa country, uninhabited to the Colorado border.

Wilier shook his head. It was a hell of a place to get murdered.

He fingered the pack of Marlboros in his shirt pocket. He was annoyed at being roused out of his bed at midnight, annoyed at getting Santa Fe's lone police chopper aloft, annoyed that they couldn't find the M.E., annoyed that his own deputy was out at the Cities of Gold Casino, blowing his miserable paycheck on the tables, cell phone turned off. On top of that it cost six hundred dollars an hour to run the chopper, an expense that came straight out of his budget. And this was only the first trip. There would have to be a second with the M.E. and the scene-of-crime team before they could move the body and collect evidence. Then there would be the publicity . . . Perhaps, thought Wilier hopefully, it was just another drug murder and wouldn't garner more than a day's story in the New Mexican.

Yeah, please make it a drug murder.

"There. Joaquin Wash. Head east," said Broadbent to the pilot. Wilier shot a glance at the man who'd spoiled his evening. He was tall, rangy, wearing a pair of worn-out cowboy boots, one bound together with duct tape.

The chopper banked away from the river.

"Can you fly lower?"

The chopper descended, slowing down at the same time, and Wilier could see the canyon rims awash in the moonlight, their depths like bottomless cracks in the earth. Spooky damn country.

"The Maze is right down there," Broadbent said. "The body was just inside the mouth where the Maze joins JoaquinCanyon."

The chopper slowed more, came back around. The moon was almost directly overhead, illuminating most of the canyon bottom. Wilier saw nothing but silvery sand.

"Put it down in that open area."

"Sure thing."

The pilot went into a hover and began the descent, the chopper whipping up a whirlwind of dust from the dry wash before touching down. In a moment they had come to rest, dust clouds billowing away, the thudding whistle of the rotors powering down.

"I'll stay with the chopper," said the pilot. "You do your thing."

"Thanks, Freddy."

Broadbent piled out and Wilier followed, keeping low, his eyes covered against the flying dust, jogging until he was beyond the backwash. Then he stopped, straightened up, slid the pack out of his pocket, and fired one up.

Broadbent walked ahead. Wilier switched on his Maglite and shined it around. "Don't step on any tracks," he called to Broadbent. "I don't want the forensic guys on my case." He shined the Mag up the mouth of the canyon. There was nothing but a flat bed of sand between two walls of sandstone.

"What's up there?"

"That's the Maze," said Broadbent.

"Where's it go to?"

"A whole lot of canyons running up into Mesa de los Viejos. Easy to get lost in there, Detective."

"Right." He swept the light back and forth. "I don't see any tracks."

"Neither do I. But they have to be around here somewhere."

"Lead the way."

He followed Broadbent, walking slowly. The flashlight was hardly necessary in the bright moonlight, and in fact it was more of a hindrance. He switched it off.

"I still don't see any tracks." He looked ahead. The canyon was bathed from wall to wall in moonlight, and it looked empty-not a rock or a bush, a footprint or a body as far as the eye could see.

Broadbent hesitated, looking around.

Wilier started to get a bad feeling.

"The body was right in this area. And the tracks of my horse should be plainly visible over there . . ."

Wilier said nothing. He bent down, snubbed his cigarette out in the sand, put the butt in his pocket.

"The body was right in this area. I'm sure of it."

Wilier switched on the light, shined it around. Nothing. He switched it off, took another drag.

"The burro was over there," Broadbent continued, "about a hundred yards off."

There were no tracks, no body, no burro, nothing but an empty canyon in the moonlight. "You sure this is the right place?" Wilier asked.

"Positive."

Wilier hooked his thumbs into his belt and watched Broadbent walk around and examine the ground. He was a tall, easy-moving type. In town they said he was Croesus-but up close he sure didn't look rich, with those crappy old boots and Salvation Army shirt.

Wilier hawked up a piece of phlegm. There must be a thousand canyons out here, it was the middle of the night-Broadbent had taken them to the wrong canyon.

"Sure this is the place?"

"It was right here, at the mouth of this canyon."

"Another canyon, maybe?"

"No way."

Wilier could see with his own damn eyes that the canyon was wall-to-wall empty. The moonlight was so bright it was like noon.

"Well it isn't here now. They're no tracks, no body, no blood-nothing."

"There was a body here, Detective."

"Time to call it a night, Mr. Broadbent."

"You're just going to give up?"

Wilier took a long, slow breath. "All I'm saying is, we should come back in the morning when things look more familiar." He wasn't going to lose his patience with this guy.

"Come over here," said Broadbent, "looks like the sand's been smoothed."

Wilier looked at the guy. Who the hell was he to tell him what to do?

"I see no evidence of a crime here. That chopper is costing my department six hundred dollars an hour. We'll return tomorrow with maps, a GPS unit-and find the right canyon."

"I don't believe you heard me, Detective. I am not going anywhere until 1 ve solved this problem."

"Suit yourself. You know the way out." Wilier turned, walked back to the

chopper, climbed in. "We're out of here."

The pilot took off his earphones. "And him?" "He knows the way out." "He's signaling you." Wilier swore under his breath, looked out at the dark figure a few hundred

yards off. Waving, gesturing.

"Looks like he found something," the pilot said.

"Christ Almighty." Wilier heaved himself out of the chopper, hiked over. Broadbent had scuffed away a dry patch of sand, exposing a black, wet, sticky layer underneath.

Wilier swallowed, unhooked his flashlight, clicked it on.

"Oh, Jesus," he said, taking a step back. "Oh, Jesus."

5

WEED MADDOX BOUGHT a blue silk jacket, silk boxer shorts, and a pair of gray

slacks from Seligman's on Thirty-fourth Street, along with a white T-shirt, silk socks, and Italian shoes-and put them all on in the dressing room. He paid for it with his own American Express card-his first legitimate one, printed right there on the front, Jimson A. Maddox, member since 2005-and stepped out into the street. The clothes drove off some of the nervousness he'd been feeling about his upcoming meeting with Corvus. Funny how a fresh set of clothes could make you feel like a new man. He flexed the muscles of his back, felt the rippling and stretching of the material. Better, much better.

He caught a cab, gave the address, and was whisked uptown.

Ten minutes later he was being ushered into the paneled office of Dr. Iain Corvus. It was grand. A blocked-up fireplace in pink marble graced one corner, and a row of windows looked out over Central Park. The young Brit was standing at the side of his desk, restlessly sorting through some papers.

Maddox halted in the door, hands clasped in front, waiting to be acknowledged. Corvus was as wound up as ever, his nonexistent lips tight as a vise, his chin jutting out like the bow of a boat, his black hair combed straight back, which Maddox guessed was the latest style in London. He wore a well-cut charcoal suit and a crisp Turnbull and Asser shirt-collar buttoned down-set off by a bloodred silk tie.

Now here was a guy, Maddox thought, who could benefit from meditation.

Corvus paused in his sorting and peered over the tops of his glasses. "Well, well, if it isn't Jimson Maddox, back from the front." His British accent seemed plummier than ever. Corvus was about his own age, mid-thirties, but the two

men couldn't be more different, from different planets even. Strange to think that a tattoo had brought them together.

Corvus held out his hand and Maddox took it, experiencing the crisp shake that was neither too long nor too short, neither limp nor aggressive. Maddox suppressed a welling of emotion.

This was the man who got him out of PelicanBay.

Corvus took Maddox's elbow and guided him into a chair in the little sitting area at the far end of the office, in front of the useless fireplace. Corvus went to his office door, said something to his secretary, shut and locked it, and then sat down opposite him, restlessly crossing and uncrossing his legs until he seemed to get it right. He leaned forward, his face dividing the air as cleanly as a cleaver, his eyes shining. "Cigar?" "Gave 'em up." "Smart fellow. You mind?" "Hell no."

Corvus took one from a humidor, clipped the end, lit it. He took a moment to draw a good red tip on it, then lowered it and looked at Maddox through a turning veil of smoke.

"Good to see you, Jim."

Maddox liked the way Corvus always gave him his full attention, speaking to him like an equal, like the stand-up guy he was. Corvus had moved heaven and earth to free him from prison; and with one phone call he could put him back in. Those two facts aroused intense, conflicting feelings that Maddox hadn't yet

sorted out.

"Well," said Corvus, sitting back and releasing a stream of smoke.

Something about Corvus always made him nervous. He withdrew the map from his pocket and held it out.

"I found this in the guy's pack."

Corvus took it with a frown, unfolded it. Maddox waited for the congratulations. Instead, Corvus's face reddened. With a brusque motion he flipped the map onto the table. Maddox leaned over to pick it up.

"Don't bother," came the sharp reply. "It's worthless. Where's the notebook?"

Maddox didn't answer directly. "It was like this ... I followed Weathers into the high mesas, but he shook me. I waited two weeks for him to come back out. When he did, I ambushed him, killed him."

There was an electric silence.

"You killed him?"

"Yeah. You want the guy running around to the cops, telling everyone you jumped his claim or whatever you call it? Look, trust me, the guy had to die."

A long silence. "And the notebook?"

"That's the thing. I didn't find a notebook. Just the map. And this." He took the metal box with the switches and LED screen out of the bag he was carrying and laid it on the table.

Corvus didn't even look at it. "You didn't find the notebook?"

Maddox swallowed. "Nope. Never found it."

"He had to have had it on him."

"He didn't. I shot him from the top of a canyon and had to hike five miles to get to the bottom. Almost two hours. By the time I reached him someone had gotten there first, another prospector, hoping to cash in. A guy on horseback, his tracks were all over. I searched the dead man and his donkey, turned everything inside out. There was no notebook. I took everything of value, swept the site clean, and buried him."

Corvus looked away.

"After burying Weathers, I tried to follow this other guy's tracks, but lost him. Luckily the guy's name was in the papers the next day. He lives on a ranch north of Abiquiii, supposedly a horse vet by profession, name of Broadbent." He paused.

"Broadbent took the notebook," Corvus said in a monotone.

"That's what I think, and that's why I looked into his background. He's married, spends a lot of time riding around the back country. Everybody knows him. They say he's rich-although you'd never know it from looking at him."

Corvus locked his eyes on Maddox.

"I'll get that notebook for you, Dr. Corvus. But what about the map? I mean-

"The map's a fake."

Another agonizing silence.

"And the metal box?" Maddox said, pointing to the object he had retrieved from Weathers's burro. "It looks to me like there's a computer in there. Maybe on the hard disk-"

"That's the central unit of Weathers's homemade ground-penetrating radar unit. It has no hard disk-the data's in the notebook. That's why I wanted the notebook-not a worthless map."

Maddox turned his eyes away from Corvus's stare, slipped his hand into his pocket, and retrieved the chunk of rock, putting it down on the glass table. "Weathers also had this in his pocket."

Corvus stared at it, his whole expression changing. He reached out with a spidery hand and plucked it gently from the table. He retrieved a loupe from his desk and examined it more closely. A long minute ticked by, and then another. Finally he looked up. Maddox was surprised to see the transformation that had taken place on his face. Gone was the tightness, the glittering eyes. His face had

become almost human.

"This is... very good." Corvus rose, went to his desk, slipped a Ziploc bag out of a drawer, and placed the rock inside with the utmost care, as if it were a

jewel.

"It's a sample, right?" Maddox asked.

Corvus leaned over, unlocked a drawer, and removed an inch-thick stack of hundred-dollar bills bound in a block with rubber bands.

"You don't need to do that, Dr. Corvus. I've still got money left over-" The man's thin lips gave a twitch. "For any unexpected expenses." He pressed the book of notes into Maddox's hand. "You know what to do." Maddox parked the money in his jacket. "Good-bye, Mr. Maddox."

Maddox turned and walked stiffly toward the door Corvus had unlocked and was holding open for him. Maddox felt a burning sensation prickling the back of his neck as he passed. A moment later Corvus arrested him with a firm hand on his shoulder, a squeeze that was just a little too sharp to be affectionate. He felt the man bending over his shoulder, whispering into his ear, overpronouncing

each syllable.

"The note book."

His shoulder was released and Maddox heard the door close softly. He walked through the now empty secretary's office into the vast, echoing corridors beyond.

Broadbent. He'd take care of that son of a bitch.

6

TOM SAT AT the kitchen table, leaning back in his chair, waiting for the coffee grounds to settle in the tin pot on the stove. A June breeze rustled the cotton-wood leaves outside, stripping the trees of their cotton, which drifted past in snowy wisps. Across the yard Tom could see the horses in their pens, nosing the timothy grass Sally had pitched them that morning.

Sally came in, still wearing her nightgown. She passed before the sliding-glass doors, backlit by the rising sun. They had been married less than a year and everything was still new. He watched her pick up the tin coffeepot on the stove, look into it, make a face, and put it back down.

"I can't believe you make coffee that way."

Tom watched her, smiling. "You look bewitching this morning."

She glanced up, swept her golden hair out of her face.

"I've decided to let Shane handle the clinic today," Tom said. "The only thing on the docket is a colicky horse down in Espanola."

He propped his boots on the stool and watched Sally prepare her own elaborate coffee, foaming the milk, adding a teaspoon of honey, then topping it off with a dash of powdered dark chocolate from a shaker. It was her morning ritual and Tom never got tired of watching it.

"Shane'll understand. I was up most of the night with that. .. business up in the Maze."

"The police have no theories?"

"None. No body, no motive, no missing person-just a few buckets of blood-soaked sand."

Sally winced. "So what are you going to do today?" she asked.

He sat forward and brought his chair back down on its four legs with a thump, reached into his pocket, removed the battered notebook. He placed it on the table. "I'm going to find Robbie, wherever she is, and give her this."

Sally frowned. "Tom, I still think you should have given that to the police."

"I made a promise."

"It's irresponsible to keep evidence from the police."

"He made me promise not to give it to the police."

"He was probably up to something illegal."

"Maybe, but I made a promise to a dying man. And besides, I just couldn't bring myself to hand it over to that detective, Wilier. He didn't strike me as being the sharpest knife in the drawer."

"You made that promise under duress. It shouldn't count."

"If you'd seen the look of desperation on that man's face, you'd understand."

Sally sighed. "So how are you going to find this mysterious daughter?"

"I thought I'd start up at the Sunset Mart, see if he stopped in to buy gas or groceries. Maybe explore some of those forest roads back up in there, looking for his car."

"With a horse trailer attached."

"Exactly."

Unbidden, the memory of the dying man once again came into his mind. It was an image he would never shake; it reminded him of his own father's death, that desperate effort to cling to life even during those final seconds of pain and fear when all hope is lost. Some people could not let go of life.

"I might also go see Ben Peek," Tom said. "He spent years prospecting in those canyons. He might have an idea who the guy was or what this treasure was he was looking for."

"Now there's an idea. There's nothing in that notebook?"

"Nothing except numbers. No name or address, just sixty pages of numbers- and a pair of gigantic exclamation marks at the end."

"You think he really found a treasure?"

"I could see it in his eyes."

The man's desperate plea still rang in his ears. It had affected him deeply, perhaps because his father's death was still fresh in his mind. His father, the great and terrible Maxwell Broadbent, had also been a prospector of sorts-a tomb robber, collector, and dealer in artifacts. While he had been a difficult father, his death had left a huge hole in Tom's psyche. The dying prospector, with his beard and piercing blue eyes, had even reminded him of his father. It was crazy to make the association, but for whatever reason he felt the promise he had made to the unknown man was inviolate.

"Tom?"

Tom blinked.

"You've got that lost look again."

"Sorry."

Sally finished her coffee, got up, and rinsed her cup in the sink. "Do you realize that we found this place exactly one year ago today?"

"I'd forgotten."

"You still like it?"

"It's everything I always wanted."

Together, in the wild country of Abiquiu at the foot of PedernalPeak, they had found the life they had dreamed of: a small ranch with horses, a garden, a riding stable for children, and Tom's vet practice - a rural life without the hassles of the city, pollution, or long commutes in traffic. His vet business was going well. Even the crusty old ranchers had begun calling him. The work was mostly outdoors, the people were great, and he loved horses.

It was a little quiet, he had to admit.

He turned his attention back to the treasure hunter. He and his notebook were more interesting than forcing a gallon of mineral oil down the recalcitrant throat of some ewe-necked, rat-tailed bucket of guts down at Gilderhus's Dude Ranch in Espanola, a man legendary for the ugliness of both his horses and his temper. One of the perks of being the boss was delegating the scut work to your employee. He didn't often do it, and so he felt no guilt. Or maybe only a little ...

He examined the notebook again. It was evidently written in some kind of code, laid out on each page in rows and columns in a fanatically neat hand. There were no erasures or rewrites, no mistakes, no scribbles - as if it had been copied from something else, number by number.

Sally stood up and put an arm around him. Her hair swung down over his face and he inhaled the fragrance of it, fresh shampoo and her own warm biscuit smell.

"Promise me one thing," she said.

"What?"

"Be careful. Whatever treasure that man found, it was worth killing for."

7

MELODY CROOKSHANK, TECHNICAL Specialist First Grade, kicked back and

cracked a Coke. She took a sip, gazing pensively around her basement lab. When she had gone to graduate school at Columbia in geophysical chemistry, she had imagined a very different career path for herself-trekking through the rain forest of Quintana Roo mapping the crater of Chicxulub; or camping at the legendary Flaming Cliffs in the Gobi Desert excavating dinosaur nests; or giving a paper in flawless French before a rapt audience at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Instead, she had found herself in this windowless basement lab, doing dull laboratory research for uninspired scientists who couldn't even be bothered to remember her name, many of whom had an I.Q. half of her own. She'd taken the job while still in graduate school, telling herself that it was a temporary stopgap until she finished her dissertation and landed a tenure-track position. But she had received her doctorate five years ago, and in the years since had sent out hundreds-thousands-of C.V.s, and gotten no offers in return. It was a brutal market, where every year sixty freshly minted graduate students chased half a dozen openings, a game of musical chairs in which, when the music stopped, most were left standing. It was a sad state of affairs when she found herself turning to the obituary column of Mineralogy Quarterly, and getting a thrill of hope from reading that a tenured professor, occupant of an endowed chair, beloved of his students, holder of awards and honors, a true pioneer in his field, had been tragically stricken before his time. Right on.

On the other hand, Melodic was an incorrigible optimist, and she felt, deep down, that she was destined for something greater, and so she continued to send out C.V.s by the hundreds and continued to apply for any and all positions that came up. In the meantime, the present was tolerable: the lab was quiet, she was in charge, and all she had to do to escape was close her eyes and step into the future, that vast and wonderful country where she could have adventures, make wonderful discoveries, accept accolades, and have tenure.

Melodic opened her eyes once again to the mundane presence of the cinder block-walled lab, with its faint hum of fluorescent lighting and steady hiss of the forced-air system, the shelves loaded with reference books, the cabinets packed with mineral samples. Even the million-dollar equipment that had once thrilled her had long grown stale. Her eyes roved restlessly over the monster JEOL JXA-733 Superprobe Electron Probe X-ray Microanalyzer, the Epsilon 5 X-ray Analysis System with three-dimensional, polarizing optical geometry, together with a 600W Gd-anode X-ray tube and lOOkV generator, the Watson 55 transmission electron microscope, the Power Mac G5 with the dual 2.5 gigahertz water-cooled CPUs, two Petrographic research microscopes, a Meiji polarizing microscope, digital camera setups, a complete sample preparation facility including diamond wafering blades, lap-wheel units, automatic polishers, carbon coaters-

What good was it if all they gave you was boring crap to analyze?

Melodie's reverie was interrupted by a low buzz, which indicated someone had entered her empty laboratory. No doubt another curatorial assistant with a request to analyze some gray rock for a research paper that no one would read. She waited, feet on the desk, Coke in hand, for the intruder to come around the corner.

Soon she heard the confident click of wing tips on the linoleum floor, and a slender, elegant man appeared, rustling along in a snazzy blue suit-Dr. Iain Corvus.

She swiftly removed her feet from the table, accidentally allowing her chair to come down with a loud clunk. She brushed her hair out of her reddening face. Curators almost never came to the lab, preferring not to lower their dignity by associating with the technical staff. But here, against all probability, was Corvus himself, who cut quite a figure in his Savile Row suits and handmade Williams and Croft shoes-handsome too, in a creepy kind of Jeremy Irons way.

"Melodie Crookshank?"

She was amazed he even knew her name. She looked into his lean, smiling face, beautiful teeth, hair black as night. His suit rustled lightly as he moved.

"Right," she finally said, trying to keep her voice easy. "That's me, Melodie Crookshank."

"I'm so glad I found you, Melodie. Am I disturbing you?"

"No, no, not at all. Just sitting here." She collected herself, blushing and feeling like an idiot.

"I wonder if I could interrupt your busy day with a sample that needs anaiy/-ing." He held a Ziploc bag up and let it swing back and forth, his teeth dazzling.

"Of course."

"I have a little, ah, challenge for you. Are you game?"

"Well, sure," Corvus had a reputation for aloofness, even arrogance, but now he seemed almost playful.

"Something just between us."

Melodie paused, then said carefully, "What do you mean?"

He handed her the sample and she looked at it. There was a label slid into the bag, handwritten, which said: New Mexico, specimen #1.

"I'd like you to analyze the sample in here without any preconceived notions about where it came from or what it might be. A complete mineralogical, crystal-lographical, chemical, and structural analysis."

"No problem."

"Here's the rub. I'd like to keep this secret. Don't write anything down or store anything on a hard drive. When you run tests on it, download the data onto CDs and hard-delete the data from the system. Keep the CDs locked up in your specimen cabinet at all times. Don't tell anyone what you're doing or discuss your findings with anyone. Report to me directly." He gave her another brilliant smile. "Are you game?"

Crookshank felt a tingle of excitement at the intrigue of it and the fact that Corvus had chosen to take her into his confidence. "I don't know. Why so hush-hush?"

Corvus leaned forward. She caught the faint scent of cigars and tweed. "That, my dear Melodie, you shall know-after you've done your analysis. As I said, I don't want to give you any preconceived notions."

The idea intrigued her-thrilled her, even. Corvus was one of those men who radiated power, who looked like he could have anything he wanted just by taking it. At the same time, he was a little feared and disliked in the museum by many of the other curators, and all this false friendliness only confirmed in her own mind that he was a bit of a rogue-albeit a handsome, charming one.

He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "What do you say, Melodie? Shall we conspire together?"

"All right." Why the hell not? She knew what she was getting into, at least. "Any particular time frame on this?"

"As soon as possible. But don't cut any corners. Do it right."

She nodded.

"Good. I can't tell you how important that is." He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, grinned again as he noticed her eyeing the specimen. "Go ahead. Take a closer look."

She turned her attention to the specimen more closely, her interest aroused. It was a three-, four-hundred-gram chunk of brown rock. Right away she could see what it was, at least in general terms. There was some really unusual structure in there. She felt her pulse quicken, her heart speed up. New Mexico, specimen #1. This was going to be fun.

She lowered the baggie and her eyes met his. He was looking at her intently, his pale gray eyes almost colorless in the fluorescent glow of the lab.

"This is amazing," she said. "If I'm not mistaken this is-"

"Ah!" He placed a finger gently against her lips, and winked. "Our little secret." He removed his hand, rose as if to go, then turned back as if on an afterthought. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a long velvet box. He held it out to her. "A little thank you."

Crookshank took it, TIFFANY was written on the front.

Yeah right, she thought, taking the box. She snapped it open and was dazzled by the sight of gemstones, blue stars. She blinked, hardly able to see. Star sapphires. A bracelet of star sapphires set in platinum. She peered closely and recognized immediately they were real, not synthetics. Each one was different, each one slightly flawed, each one with its very own nuance of color and hue and personality. She turned the box in the light, seeing the stars on each stone move, the light reflecting off their rutilated depths. She swallowed, feeling a sudden lump in her throat. No one had given her anything like this, ever. Ever. She felt a hot tickling in her eyes, which she instantly blinked away, horrified to discover herself so vulnerable.

She said in an offhand way, "Nice collection of aluminum oxide you got here."

"I was hoping you would like star sapphires, Melodic."

Crookshank swallowed again, keeping her face turned to the bracelet so he couldn't see her eyes. She didn't think she had ever loved anything so much as this bracelet. Sri Lankan star sapphires, her favorite, each one unique, forged in the depths of the earth by immense heat and pressure-mineralogy incarnate. She knew she was being shamelessly and openly manipulated, but at the same time she thought: Why not? Why shouldn't she take it? Wasn't that the way the world worked?

She felt Corvus's hand come to rest on her shoulder, giving it the gentlest of squeezes. It was like an electric shock. To her mortification a tear escaped and ran hotly down her cheek. She blinked rapidly, unable to speak, grateful that he was standing behind her and couldn't see. Another hand took the other shoulder, squeezing just a little in unison, and she could feel the heat of his presence on the nape of her neck. An erotic charge ran through her like a bolt of lightning, and she flushed and tingled all over.

"Melodic, I'm awfully grateful for your help. I know how good you are at what you do. That's why I entrusted this sample to you-and to no one else. That's why I gave you the bracelet. It's not just a bribe-although it is a bit of that." He chuckled, patting her shoulder. "It's an expression of my faith in you, Melodic Crookshank."

She nodded, her head still turned away.

The hands squeezed, rubbed, caressed her shoulders. "Thank you, Melodic."

"Okay," she whispered.

8

WHEN TOM'S FATHER had died, and he had inherited an ocean of money, his sole

indulgence had been buying his truck. It was a 1957 Chevy 3100 pickup with a turquoise body and a white top, chrome grill, three-speed on the floor. It once belonged to a classic car collector in Albuquerque, a real fanatic who had lovingly rebuilt the engine and drive train, machined the parts he couldn't find, and rechromed everything down to the knobs on the radio. As an ultimate touch, he'd upholstered the interior in the finest, creamiest white kid leather. The poor man had died of a heart attack before he could enjoy the fruits of his labor, and Tom had picked it up from an ad in the Thrifty Nickel. He had paid the widow every penny it was worth-fifty-five grand-and still he felt he'd gotten a bargain. It was a work of driveable sculpture.

It was already noon. Tom had driven everywhere, asked around at the Sunset, and had wandered as many of the forest roads that he knew near the high mesas, to no avail. All he learned was that he was merely retracing the footsteps of the Santa Fe Police, who were also trying to find out if anyone had encountered the murdered man before his death.

It seemed the man had been very careful to hide his tracks.

Tom had decided to visit Ben Peek, who lived in the funky hamlet of Cerril-los, New Mexico. A former gold-mining town that had seen better days, Cerrillos lay in a cottonwood-filled hollow off the main road, a cluster of old adobe and wooden buildings scattered along the dry bed of Galisteo Creek. The mines had played out decades ago but Cerrillos had avoided ghost-town status by being revived by hippies in the sixties, who bought up abandoned miners' cabins and installed in them pottery studios, leather shops, and macrame factories. It was now

inhabited by a curious mixture of old Spanish families who once worked the mines, aging freaks, and curious eccentrics.

Ben Peek was one of the latter, and his place looked it. The old battenboard house hadn't been painted in a generation. The dirt yard, enclosed by a leaning picket fence, was crowded with rusted mining equipment. In one corner stood a heap of purple and green glass insulators from telephone poles. A sign nailed to the side of the house said,

THE WHAZZIT SHOP EVERYTHING FOR SALE

including proprietor no reasonable offers refused

Tom stepped out. Ben Peek had been a professional prospector for forty years until a jack mule broke his hip. He had grudgingly settled down in Cerrillos with a collection of junk and a stock of dubious stories. Despite his eccentric appearance, he had an M.S. in geology from the Colorado School of Mines. He knew his stuff.

Tom mounted the crooked portal and rapped on the door. A moment later the lights went on in the dimness beyond, a face appeared, distorted by the old rippled glass, and then the door opened to the tinkle of a bell.

"Tom Broadbent!" Peek's rough hand grasped Tom's and gave it a bone-crushing squeeze. Peek was no more than five feet five, but he made up for it with vigor and a booming voice. He had a five-day growth of beard, crow's-feet around a pair of lively black eyes, and a brow that wrinkled up so much that it gave him a perpetual look of surprise.

"How are you, Ben?"

"Terrible, just terrible. Come on in."

He led Tom through his shop, the walls covered with shelves groaning under heaps of old rocks, iron tools, and glass bottles. Everything was for sale, but nothing, it seemed, ever sold. The price tags were yellowing antiques themselves. They passed into a back room, which functioned as a kitchen and dining room. Peek's dogs were sleeping on the floor, sighing loudly in their dreams. The old man snagged a battered coffeepot off the stove, poured out two mugs, and gimped over to a wooden table, seating himself on one side and inviting Tom to sit on the other.

"Sugar? Milk?"

"Black."

Tom watched as the old man heaped three tablespoons of sugar into his, followed by three tablespoons of Cremora, stirring the mixture into a kind of sludge. Tom sipped his coffee cautiously. It was surprisingly good-hot, strong, brewed cowboy style the way he liked it.

"How's Sally?"

"Fantastic, as always."

Peek nodded. "Wonderful woman you got there, Tom."

"Don't I know it."

Peek rapped a. pipe out on the edge of the fireplace and began filling it with Borkum Riff. "Yesterday morning I read in the New Mexican that you found a murdered man up in the high mesas."

"There's more to the story than what was in the paper. Can I count on you to keep this to yourself?"

Of course.

Tom told Peek the story-omitting the part about the notebook.

"Any idea who the prospector was?" he asked Peek at the end.

Peek snorted. "Treasure hunters are a pack of credulous half-wits. In the whole history of the West nobody ever found a real honest-to-God buried treasure."

"This man did."

"I'll believe it when I see it. And no, I haven't heard anything about a treasure hunter up there, but that doesn't mean much-they're a secretive lot."

"Any idea what the treasure might be? Assuming it exists."

Peek grunted. "I was a prospector, not a treasure hunter. There's a big difference."

"But you spent time up there."

"Twenty-five years."

"You heard stories."

Peek lit a wooden kitchen match and held it to his pipe. "Sure did."

"Humor me."

"When this was still Spanish territory, they say there was a gold mine up there north of Abiquiu called El Capitan. You know that story?"

"Never heard it."

"They say they took out almost ten thousand ounces, cast it into ingots stamped with the Lion and Castle. The Apaches were tearing up the country, so instead of packing it out they walled it up in a cave waiting for things to settle down. It so happened that one day the Apaches raided the mine. They killed everyone except a

fellow named Juan Cabrillo, who'd gone to Abiquiu for supplies. Cabrillo came back and found his companions dead. He took off for Santa Fe and returned with an armed group to collect the gold. But a couple of weeks had passed and there'd been heavy rains and a flash flood. The landmarks had changed. They found the mine all right, the camp, and the skeletons of their murdered friends. But they never could find that cave. Juan spent years looking for it-until he disappeared in those mesas, never to be seen again. Or so the story goes."

"Interesting."

"There's more. Back in the 1930s, a fellow named Ernie Kilpatrick was looking for a maverick bull in one of those canyons back up there. He was camped near English Rocks, just south of the Echo Badlands. As the sun was setting he claimed he saw where a fresh landslide on a nearby rock face-just up TyrannosaurCanyon-had unseated what looked like a cave. He climbed up and crawled inside. It was a short, narrow tunnel with pick marks in the walls. He followed it until it opened up into a chamber. He just about died when his candle lit up a whole wall of crude gold bars stamped with the Lion and Castle. He pocketed one and rode back to Abiquiu. That night he got drunk in the saloon and like a damned fool started showing the gold bar around. Someone followed him out, shot and robbed him. Of course, the secret died with him and the gold bar was never seen again."

He spit a piece of tobacco off his tongue, "All these treasure stories are the same."

"You don't believe it."

"Not a damned word." Peek leaned back and rewarded himself by lighting his pipe afresh and taking a few puffs, waiting for comment.

"I have to tell you, Ben, I talked to the man. He found something big."

Peek shrugged.

"Is there anything else he might have found of value up there besides the El Capitan hoard?"

"Sure. There's all kinds of possibilities up there in terms of minerals and precious metals. If he was a prospector. Or maybe he was a pot-hunter, digging up Indian ruins. Did you get a look at his equipment?"

"It was all packed on the burro. I didn't see anything unusual."

Peek grunted again. "If he was a prospector, he might have found uranium or moly. Uranium is sometimes found in the upper member of the Chinle Formation, which crops out in TyrannosaurCanyon, HuckbayCanyon, and all around lower Joaquin. I looked for uranium back in the late fifties, didn't find squat. But then again I didn't have the right equipment, scintillation counters and such."

"You mentioned TyrannosaurCanyon twice."

"Big damn canyon with a million tributaries, cuts all the way across the Echo Bandlands and up into the high mesas. Used to be good for uranium and moly."

"Is uranium worth anything these days?"

"Not unless you have a private buyer on the black market. The feds sure aren't buying-they've got too much as it is."

"Could it be of use to terrorists?"

Peek shook his head. "Doubt it. You'd need a billion-dollar enrichment program."

"How about making a dirty bomb?"

"Yellow cake, even pure uranium, has almost no radioactivity. The idea that uranium is dangerously radioactive is a popular misconception."

"You mentioned moly. What's that?"

"Molybdenum. Up there on the backside of TyrannosaurCanyon there's some outcroppings of Oligocene trachyandesite porphyry which has been associated with moly. I found some moly up there, but they'd already high-graded the deposit and what I found didn't amount to day-old piss in a chamber pot. There could be more-there's always more, somewhere."

"Why do they call it TyrannosaurCanyon?"

"There's a big basaltic intrusion right at the mouth, weathered in such a way that the top of it looks like a T. Rex skull. The Apaches wouldn't go up it, claim it's haunted. It's where my mule spooked and threw me. Broke my hip. Three days before they medevacked me out. So yeah-if it isn't haunted, it should be. I never went back."

"What about gold? I heard you found some back there."

Ben chuckled. "Sure I did. Gold is a curse to all who find it. Back in '86 I found a quartz boulder all spun through with wire gold in the bottom of Maze Wash. Sold it to a mineral dealer for nine thousand dollars-and then I spent ten times that amount looking for where it came from. The damn rock had to have come from somewhere but I never did find the mother lode. I figure it somehow rolled all the way out of the CanjilonMountains, where there's a bunch of played-out gold mines and old mining towns. Like I said, gold is a loser. I never touched the stuff after that." He laughed, drew another cloud of smoke from his pipe.

"Anything else you can think of?"

"This 'treasure' of his might have been an Indian ruin. There are a lot of Anasazi ruins back up in there. Before I knew better I used to dig around some of those old sites, sold the arrowheads and pots I found. Nowadays a nice Chaco

black-on-white bowl might fetch five, ten thousand. That's worth troubling about. And then there's the LostCity of the Padres."

"What's that?"

"Tom, my boy, I've told you that story."

"No you haven't."

Peek sucked on his pipe, with a gurgle. "Back around the turn of the century, a French padre named Eusebio Bernard got lost up there somewhere on Mesa de los Viejos on his way from Santa Fe to Chama. While wandering around trying to find his way out, he spied a huge Anasazi cliff dwelling, big as Mesa Verde, hidden in an alcove in the rock below him. It had four towers, hundreds of room blocks, a real lost city. No one ever found it again."

"A true story?"

Peek smiled. "Probably not."

"What about oil or gas? Could he have been looking for that?"

"Doubt it. It's true that the Chama wilderness lies right on the edge of the San JuanBasin, one of the richest natural gas fields in the Southwest. Trouble is, you need a whole team of roughnecks with seismic probes for that game. A lone prospector doesn't stand a chance." Peek stirred the ashes of his pipe with a tool, tamped it down, relit it. "If he was looking for ghosts, well, they say they're quite a few up there. The Apaches claim they've heard the T. Rex roar."

"We're getting off the subject, Ben."

"You said you wanted stories."

Tom held up a hand. "I draw the line at ghost dinosaurs."

"I suppose it's possible this unknown prospector of yours found the El Capitan hoard. Ten thousand ounces of gold would be worth ..." Peek screwed up his face, "almost four million dollars. But you have to consider the numismatic value of those old Spanish bars stamped with the Lion and Castle. Hell, you'd get at least twenty, thirty times the bullion value. Now we're talking money . . . Anyway, you come back and tell me more about this murder. And I'll tell you about the ghost of La Llorona, the Wailing Woman."

“Deal”.

9

IN THE FIRST-CLASS cabin of Continental Bight 450 from LaGuardia to Albuquerque, Weed Maddox stretched out. Easing his leather chair back, he cracked his laptop and sipped a Pellegrino while waiting for it to boot up. Funny, he thought, how he was just like the other men around him, wearing expensive suits and tapping away at their laptops. It would be rich, really rich, if the executive vice president or managing partner next to him could see what it was he was working on.

Maddox began sorting through the batch of handwritten letters-illiterate letters laboriously written out on cheap lined paper in blunt pencil, many with grease stains and fingerprints. Clipped to each letter was a snapshot of the ugly bastard who had written it. What a bunch of losers.

He pulled the first letter out, smoothed it down on his tray table next to the computer, and began to read.

Dere Mr. Madocks,

Im Londell Franklin James A 34 year old White Aryan Man from Arun-dell, Ark. my dick is 9 inchs rock hard all the way and Im lookenfor a blond lady no fat ass back talking bitches please just a lady who likes 9 inchs right up to the hilt plus im 6foot two pure pumped up rock hard mussle with a tatoo of a deaths head on my right deltoid and a dragon on my chest Im looken for a slim lady from the Deep South no niggers quadroons or New York femminatzi bitches just an oldfashoned White Aryan Southern Girl who knows how to please a man and cook chicken and grits Im doing five to fifteen armed robbery the DA lied about the plea bargin but I got a parole hearing in two yeares 8 months I want a hot lady waitenfor me on the outside reddy to take it right up to the hilt.

Maddox grinned. Now there was a mother who was going to spend the rest of his life in prison-parole or no parole. Some people were just naturally born to it. He started typing into his laptop:

My name is Lonnie F. James and I'm a thirty-four-year-old Caucasian male from Arundell, Arkansas, doing five to fifteen years for armed robbery, with parole expected in less than three years. I am in superb physical condition, six feet two inches tall, 190 pounds, a serious weight lifter and body builder. Ladies, I am very well endowed. My sign is Capricorn. I have a tattoo of a death i head on my right arm and a tattoo of St. George killing the Dragon on my chest. I'm looking for a petite, blond, blue-eyed, old-fashioned Southern Belle for correspondence, romance, and commitment. You should be trim and shapely, twenty-nine or younger, sweet as mint julep-but at the same time a woman who knows a real man when she sees one. I like country music, good country cooking, pro football, and holding hands on long walks down country roads in the misty morning.

Now that was inspired, thought Maddox, reading it over. Sweet as mint julep. He read through it again, deleted the "misty morning" bit, saved it on his computer. Then he looked at the photograph that came with the letter. Another ugly mother-this one with a bullet head and eyes set so close together they looked like they'd been squeezed in a vise. He would scan it and post it all the same. In his experience looks didn't count. What counted was that Londell Franklin James was in there and not out here. As such, he offered the right woman a perfect relationship. A woman could write him, exchange sex-letters, make promises, swear undying love, talk about babies and marriage and the future-and none of it would change the fact that he was in there, and she was out here. She had ultimate control. That's what it was all about-control-plus the erotic bang it gave some women to correspond with a chiseled-up guy doing serious time for armed robbery who claimed he had a nine-inch dick. Yeah, and who was to prove otherwise?

He clicked on a fresh screen and moved to the next letter.

Dear Mr. Maddox,

I am looking for a woman to mail my jizum to so as she can have my baby-

Maddox made a face and crumpled that one up, shoving it into the seat pocket in front of him. Christ, he ran a dating service, not a sperm bank. He had started Hard Time while working in the prison library, where there was an old IBM 486 computer being used as a card catalog. His days in the Army as a gunnery sergeant had taught him all he needed to know about computers. In this day and age you could hardly fire a projectile bigger than a .50-caliber round without a computer. Maddox was surprised to find he had a major talent for computers. Unlike people, they were clean, odorless, obedient, and didn't haul around a bullshit attitude. He started off collecting ten bucks from cons for posting their names and addresses at a Website he had created, soliciting female penpals on the outside. It had really taken off. Maddox soon realized the big money was to be made not from the cons, but from the women. It amazed him how many women wanted to date a man in prison. He charged twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents a month to belong to Hard Time, $199 a year, and for that you got unlimited access to the personals-photos and addresses included-of more than four hundred real cons doing serious time for everything from murder and rape to kidnapping, armed robbery, and assault. There were now three women subscribers to every con, almost twelve hundred ladies, and after deducting expenses he was pulling down three bills a week, free and clear.

A "prepare for landing" announcement came over the intercom and a flight attendant came through, nodding and smiling, murmuring for all the businessmen to shut down their laptops. Maddox stowed his under the seat and looked out the window. The brown landscape of New Mexico was passing by as the jet approached Albuquerque from the east, the land rising to the slopes of the SandiaMountains, suddenly dark with trees and then white with snow. The plane passed the mountains and they were over the city, banking toward the approach. Maddox had a view of everything, the river, the freeways, the Big I, all the little houses climbing up into the foothills. It depressed him to see so many useless people living such pathetic lives in those ant boxes. It was almost like being in prison.

No, he took that back. Nothing was almost like being in prison.

His mind drifted to the problem at hand, feeling a sudden rush of irritation. Broadbent. The man must have been waiting for his moment up there in the Maze. Just waiting. Maddox had done all the work, popped the guy, and then Broadbent stepped in, helped himself to the notebook, and split. The son of a bitch had wrecked a perfect finish.

Maddox took a deep breath, closed his eyes, said his mantra over a few times in his head, tried to meditate. No sense in getting all worked up. The problem was fairly simple. If Broadbent was keeping the notebook in his house, Maddox would find it. If not, then Maddox would find a way to force it out of him. The

man simply had no idea who he was dealing with. And since Broadbent was up to his neck in it, it was unlikely he'd call in the cops. This was going to be settled between them privately.

He owed it to Corvus; Jesus, he owed him his life.

He settled back as the 747 came in for a landing, nice and soft, the plane barely kissing the ground. Maddox took it as a sign.

10

THE NEXT MORNING Tom found his assistant, Shane McBride, at the hot walker, eyeballing a sorrel quarter horse trudging around the circle. Shane was an Irish guy from South Boston who went to Yale, but he'd picked up western ways with a vengeance and now he looked more cowboy than the locals. He stomped around in roping boots and sported a bushy mustache, with a dented Stetson with a scoop-brim jammed on his head, a faded black bandanna tied around his neck, his lower lip packed with chaw. He knew horses, had a sense of humor, was serious about his work, and was loyal to a fault. As far as Tom was concerned he was the perfect partner.

Shane turned to Tom, pulled off his hat, wiped his brow, and screwed up one eye. "What do you think?"

Tom watched the horse move. "How long's he been on there?"

"Ten minutes."

"Pedal osteitis."

Shane unscrewed his eye. "Naw. You're wrong there. Sesamoiditis."

"The fetlock joints aren't swollen. And the injury is too symmetrical."

"Incipient, and sesamoiditis can also be symmetrical."

Tom narrowed his eyes, watched the horse move. "Whose is it?"

"Noble Nix, belongs to the O Bar O. Never had a problem before."

"Cow horse or hunter-jumper?"

"Cutting horse."

Tom frowned. "Maybe you're right."

"Maybe? There ain't no maybe about it. He just came back from competing in Amarillo, won a saddle. The workout, combined with the long trailering, would do it."

Tom stopped the walker, knelt, felt the horse's fetlocks. Hot. He rose. "I still say it's pedal osteitis, but I'll concede that it might be pedal osteitis in the sesamoid bones."

"You should've been a lawyer."

"In either case, the treatment's the same. Complete rest, periodic hosing with cold water, application of DMSO, full leather pads for the feet."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Tom grasped Shane by the shoulder. "You're getting pretty good at this, eh, Shane?"

"You got it, boss."

"Then you won't mind running the show today, too."

"Things go a lot better when you're not here-cold cerveza, mariachis, bare-assed women."

"Don't burn the place down."

"You still looking for that gal whose daddy was killed in the Maze?"

"I'm not having much luck. The police can't find the body."

"It ain't no surprise to me they can't find the body. That's a big damn country back up there."

Tom nodded. "If I could figure out what he'd written in that journal of his, it would probably tell me who he was."

"It probably would."

Tom had told Shane everything. They had that kind of relationship. And Shane, despite his garrulousness, was implicitly discreet.

"You got it on you?"

Tom pulled the notebook out of his pocket.

"Lemme see." He took it, flipped through it. "What's this? Code?"

"Yes."

He shut it, examined the cover. "That blood?"

Tom nodded.

"Jesus. The poor guy." Shane handed him back the notebook. "If the cops learn you held out on 'em, they'll weld the cell door shut."

"I'll remember that."

Tom walked around behind the clinic to check the horses in the stalls; he went down the line, patting each one, murmuring soothing words, checking them out. He finished up at his desk and sorted through the bills, noting that some were overdue. He hadn't paid them, not through lack of money but through sheer laziness; both he and Shane hated the paperwork end of the business. He dumped them back into the in-box without opening any. He really needed to hire a bookkeeper to handle all this paperwork, except that the extra expense would put them back into the red, after a year of hard work getting themselves to the breakeven point. The fact that he had a hundred million dollars in escrow didn't matter. He wasn't his father. He needed to turn a profit for himself.

He shoved the papers aside and pulled out the notebook, opening it and laying it on the table. The numbers beckoned-in there, he felt sure, was the secret to the man's identity. And of the treasure he found.

Shane poked his head in.

"How's that O Bar O gelding?" Tom asked.

"Doctored and in his stall." Shane hesitated in the door.

"What is it?"

"You remember last year, when that monastery up the ChamaRiver had a sick ewe?"

Tom nodded.

"When we were up there, remember hearing about a monk up there who used to be a code breaker for the CIA, gave it all up to become a monk?"

"Yeah. I remember something like that."

"Why don't you ask him to take a crack at the notebook?"

Tom stared at Shane. "Now that's the best idea you've had all week."

11

MELODY CROOKSHANK ADJUSTED the angle on the diamond wafering blade and

upped the rpm. It was a beautiful piece of precision machinery-you could hear it in the clear singing noise it made. She set the sample in the cutting bed, tightening it in place, then turned on the laminar water flow. A gurgling noise rose above the whine of the blade as the water bathed the specimen, bringing out flecks of color in it, yellow, red, deep purple. She made some final adjustments, set the automatic guide speed, and let it rip.

As the specimen encountered the diamond blade there was a note of pure music. In a moment the specimen had been cut in half, the treasure of its interior exposed to view. With the deft experience of years she washed and dried it, flipped it, embedding the other side in epoxy resin on a steel manipulator.

As she waited for the epoxy to harden she examined her sapphire bracelet. She'd told her friends that it was a cheap bit of costume jewelry and they believed her. Why wouldn't they? Who would have thought, she, Melodic Crookshank, Technical Assistant First Grade, making all of twenty-one thousand dollars a year, living in an airshaft apartment on upper Amsterdam Avenue, with no boyfriend and no money, would be walking around wearing ten carats of Sri Lankan blue star sapphires? She knew very well she was being used by Corvus- such a man would never take a serious romantic interest in her. On the other hand it wasn't coincidence that he had entrusted her with this job. She was good-damn good. The bracelet was part of a strictly impersonal transaction: compensation for her expertise and discretion. Nothing dishonorable in that.

The sample had hardened. She placed it back in the cutting bed and sliced again on the other side. In a moment she had a slender wafer of stone, about half

a millimeter thick, perfectly cut with nary a crack or chip. She quickly dissolved the resin, freed the wafer, and cut it into a dozen smaller pieces, each one destined for a different kind of test. Taking one of the chips, she fixed it in epoxy on another manipulator and used the lap wheel and polisher to thin it further, until it was beautifully transparent and about twice the thickness of a human hair. She mounted it on a slide and placed it on the stage of the Meiji polarizing scope, switched it on, and put her eyes to the oculars.

With a rapid adjustment of the focusing knobs a rainbow of color leapt into her vision, a whole world of crystalline beauty. The sheer splendor of the polarizing scope always took her breath away. Even the dullest rock bared its inner soul. She set the magnification at 30x and began stepping through the polarization angle thirty degrees at a time, each change producing a new shower of color in the specimen. This first run was purely for aesthetics; it was like gazing into a stained-glass window more beautiful than the Rosette in Chartres Cathedral.

As she moved through 360 degrees of polarization, Crookshank felt her heart accelerating with every new angle. This was truly an incredible specimen. After a complete series she upped the magnification to 120x. The structure was so fine, so perfect-astonishing. She could now understand the secrecy. If there were more of this in situ-and there probably was-it would be of the utmost importance to keep it secret. This would be a stunning coup, even for a man as distinguished as Corvus.

She leaned back from the eyepieces, a new thought entering her head. This might be just the thing she needed to leverage a tenure-track position for herself, if she played her cards right.

12

CHRIST IN THE Desert Monastery lay fifteen miles up the Chama River, deep in the Chama wilderness and hard alongside the enormous cliff-walled bulk of Mesa de los Viejos, the Mesa of the Ancients, which marked the beginning of the high mesa country. Tom drove up the monastery road with excruciating slowness, hating to subject his precious Chevy to one of the most notorious roads in New Mexico. The road had so many potholes it looked bombed, and there were sections of washboard that threatened to shake loose every bolt in the vehicle and chip his teeth down to stubs. The monks, it was said, liked it that way.

After what seemed like a journey to the very ends of the earth, Tom spied the adobe church tower rising above the junipers and chamisa. Gradually the rest of the Benedictine monastery came into view-a cluster of brown adobe buildings scattered helter-skelter on a bench of land above the floodplain of the river, just below where Rio Gallina joined the Rio Chama. It was said to be one of the most remote Christian monasteries in the world.

Tom parked his truck in the dirt lot and walked up the trail to the monastery's shop. He felt awkward, wondering just how he would go about asking for the monk's help. He could hear the faint sound of singing drifting down from the church, mingling with the raucous cries of a flock of pinon jays.

The shop was empty, but the door had tinkled a bell when Tom had opened it, and a young monk came in from the back. "Hello," said Tom.

"Welcome." The monk took a seat on a high wooden stool behind the shop's counter. Tom stood there indecisively, looking at the humble products of the monastery: honey, dried flowers, handprinted cards, wood carvings. "I'm Tom Broadbent," he said, offering his hand.

The monk took it. He was small and slight and wore thick glasses. "Pleased to meet you."

Tom cleared his throat. This was damned awkward. "I'm a veterinarian, and last year I doctored a sick ewe up here."

The monk nodded.

"While I was here, I heard mention of a monk who'd been in the CIA."

The monk nodded again.

"Do you know who I'm talking about?"

"Brother Ford."

"Right. I was wondering if I could talk to him."

The monk glanced at his watch, a big sports watch with buttons and dials, which looked out of place on the wrist of a monk, Tom wasn't sure why. Even monks needed to know the time.

"Sext is just over. I'll go get him."

The monk vanished up the trail. Five minutes later Tom was startled to see a gigantic figure marching down, his enormous feet in dusty sandals, a long wooden staff in his hand, his brown robes flapping behind him. A moment later the door was flung open and he came striding into the shop, his robes astir, and without a beat he strode up to Tom and enveloped his hand in a large, but surprisingly gentle, grasp.

"Brother Wyman Ford," he graveled out in a distinctly unmOnkish voice.

"Tom Broadbent."

Brother Ford was a strikingly ugly man, with a large head and a craggy face that looked like a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Herman Munster. The man didn't seem particularly pious, at least on the surface, and he certainly didn't look like a typical monk, with his powerful six-foot five-inch frame, beard, and unruly black hair that spilled over his ears.

A silence ensued and Tom once again felt the awkwardness of his visit. "Do you have a moment to talk?"

"Technically, on the grounds we're under a vow of silence," said the monk. "Shall we take a walk?"

"Fine."

The monk set out at high speed along a trail that wound down to the river from the shop and skirted the riverbank, Tom struggling to keep up. It was a beautiful June day, the orange canyon rims standing against the blue sky in a brilliant contrast of color, while above puffy clouds drifted along like tall ships at

sea. For ten minutes they hiked, saying nothing. The trail ascended, terminating at the top of a bluff. Brother Wyman tossed back the skirt of his robe and sat down on the trunk of a dead juniper.

Sitting beside the monk, Tom studied the canyon country in rapt silence.

"I hope I haven't taken you from anything important," he said, still unsure how to begin.

"I'm missing a terribly important meeting in the Disputation Chamber. One of the brothers swore at Compline." He chuckled. "Brother Ford-" "Please call me Wyman."

"I wonder if you'd heard about the murder in the Maze two days ago." "I gave up reading the paper a long time ago." "You know where the Maze is?" "I know it well."

"Two nights ago, a treasure hunter was murdered up there." Tom recited the story of the man, finding the body, the notebook, the disappearance.

Ford was silent for a while, looking out over the river. Then he turned his head and asked, "So . . . where do I come in?"

Tom removed the notebook from his pocket.

"You didn't give it to the police?"

"I'd made a promise."

"Surely you gave them a copy."

"No."

"That was unwise."

"The policeman investigating the case didn't inspire much confidence. And I

made a promise!'

He found the monk's steady gray eyes on him. "What can I do for you?"

Tom held out the notebook but the monk made no move to take it.

"I've tried everything I know to identify the man so I can give this to his daughter. Nothing's worked. The police haven't a clue and tell me it may be weeks before they find the body. The answer to the man's identity lies in here- I'm sure of it. Only problem is, it's written in code."

A pause. The monk continued to gaze steadily at Tom.

"I heard you were a code breaker for the CIA."

"A cryptanalyst, yes."

"Well? How about taking a crack at it?"

Ford eyed the notebook but again made no move to take it.

"Well, take a look," said Tom, holding it out.

Ford hesitated, then said, "No, thank you."

"Why not?"

"Because I choose not to."

Tom felt a surge of irritation at the high-handedness of the answer. "It's for a good cause. This man's daughter probably has no idea he's dead. She may be worried sick about him. I made a promise to a dying man and I'm going to keep that promise-and you're the only man I know who can help me."

"I'm sorry, Tom, but I can't hdp you."

"You can't or you won't?"

"Won't."

"Are you afraid of getting involved because of the police?"

A dry smile creased the man's craggy face. "Not at all."

"Then what is it?"

"I came up here for a reason-to get away from just that sort of thing."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"In less than a month I'm going to take my vows. Being a monk is more than wearing a habit. It's taking on a new life. That"-he pointed to the book- "would be a throwback to my old life."

"Your old life-?"

Wyman stared across the river, his craggy brows contracted, his lantern jaw working. "My old life."

"You must've had a pretty rough time of it, to run away to a monastery."

Ford's brow contracted. "Monastic spirituality is not about running away from something, but about running toward something-the living God. But yes, it was rough."

"What happened? If you don't mind me asking."

"I do mind. I guess I'm no longer used to the kind of prying inquisitiveness that in the outside world passes for conversation."

Tom was stung by the rebuke. "I'm sorry. I'm out of line."

"Don't be sorry. You're doing what you feel is right. And I think it is right. It's just that I'm not the man to help you."

Tom nodded and they both rose, the monk slapping the dust off his robes. "About the book, I don't think you'll have much trouble with that code. Most homemade codes are what we call idiot ciphers-designed by an idiot, decipherable by an idiot. Numbers substituted for letters. All you need is a frequency table of the English language."

"What's that?"

"A list of the most to least common letters in the English language. You match that list up with the most to least common numbers in the code." "Sounds easy enough." "It is. You'll crack that code in a jiffy, I bet." "Thanks." Ford hesitated. "Let me take a quick look at it. I might be able to crack it on

the spot."

"You sure you don't mind?"

"It won't bite me."

Tom handed it to him. Ford leafed through it, taking his time with each page.

Five long minutes passed.

"Funny, but this is looking a lot more sophisticated to me than a substitution code." The sun was descending into the canyons, suffusing the arroyos in a bright golden light. Swallows flitted about, the stone walls reverberating with their cries. The river tumbled by below, a whisper of water.

He shut the book with a slap. "I'll keep the book for a few days. These numbers are intriguing-all kinds of weird patterns in there."

"You're going to help me out after all?"

Ford shrugged. "It'll help this girl learn what happened to her father."

"After what you told me I feel a little uncomfortable about this."

He waved a large hand. "Sometimes I get a little too absolutist about things. There's no harm in giving it a quick try." He squinted at the sun. "I better be getting back."

He grasped Tom's hand. "I admire your stubbornness. The monastery doesn't have a telephone, but we do have an Internet connection via satellite dish. I'll drop you a line when I crack it."

13

WEED MADDOX REMEMBERED the first time he had blown through Abiquiii on a

stolen Harley Dyna Wide Glide. Now he was just another asshole in khakis and a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt driving a Range Rover. He was really coming up in the world. Beyond the town of Abiquiii the road followed the river, past green alfalfa fields and groves of cottonwoods, before climbing out of the valley. He took a left on 96, drove over the dam and up along the southern side of the valley, in the shadow of PedernalPeak. In another few minutes the left-hand turn to the Broad-bent place appeared, with a hand-painted sign on a weathered board: Canones.

The road was dirt, not well maintained. It paralleled a small creek. There were some small horse ranches on either side, forty to eighty acres, with cute names like Los Amigos or Buckskin Hollow. The Broadbent place, he'd heard, had a strange name, Sukia Tarn. Maddox slowed at the gate, passed it, continued on for another quarter of a mile, and parked the car in a thicket of gambel oaks. He got out and eased the door shut. Strolling back to the road, he made sure the car wasn't visible. Three o'clock. Broadbent would probably be gone, at work or out. They said he had a wife, Sally, who ran a riding stable. He wondered what she looked like.

Maddox slung the rucksack over his shoulder. First thing, he thought, was to reconnoiter the land. He was a firm believer in reconnaissance. If no one was home he'd search the place, get the notebook if it was there, and get out. If the little woman was home that would make things easier. He had yet to find the person who wouldn't cooperate with the business end of a gun grinding the back of their mouth.

Leaving the road, he hiked along the bank of the creek. A thread of water appeared, then disappeared among white stones. Cutting to the left, he passed through a grove of cottonwoods and brush oaks before coming up behind Broad-

bent's barn. Moving slowly, being careful not to leave footprints, he climbed through a triple-strand barbed-wire fence and edged along the back wall of the barn. Crouching at the corner, he parted the rabbitbrush to get a view of the back of the house.

He took it in: a low adobe, some corrals, a couple of horses, a feeding area, a watering trough. He heard a high-pitched shout. Beyond the corrals there was an outdoor riding arena. The wife-Sally-held a lunge line dallied around her elbow, with a kid riding on a horse, going around and around in circles.

He raised his binoculars and she leapt into focus. He watched her body turn with the horse, front, side, back, and around again. A breeze caught her long hair and she raised a hand to brush it from her face. Jesus, she was pretty.

He moved his view to the kid. Some kind of retard, a mongoloid or something.

He turned his attention back to the house. Next to the back door was a picture window opening into the kitchen. They said in town that Broadbent was loaded-big time. He'd heard that Broadbent had grown up in a mansion surrounded by priceless art and servants. His old man had died a year ago and he'd supposedly inherited a hundred million. Looking at the house, you'd never know it. There was no sign of money anywhere, not in the house, the barn, the horses, the dusty yard and gardens, in the old International Scout sitting in the open garage or the Ford 350 dually sitting under a separate car port. If Maddox had a hundred million, he sure as shit wouldn't live in a dump like this.

Maddox set down his pack. Taking out his sketchbook and a freshly sharpened number two artist's pencil, he began sketching as much as he could of the layout of the house and yard. Ten minutes later, he crawled around behind the barn and through some brush to get a fresh angle to sketch the front and side yards. Through a pair of patio doors he studied a modest living room. Beyond was a flagstone patio with a Smoky Joe barbecue and some chairs, bordered by an herb garden. No swimming pool, nothing. The house looked empty. Broadbent, as he had hoped, was out-at least his '57 Chevy was gone from the garage and Maddox figured he'd never let anyone drive that classic except himself. He'd seen no sign of a handyman or stable hand, and the nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away.

He finished his sketch and examined it. There were three sets of doors to the house: a back door to the kitchen, a front door, and the patio doors leading to the side yard. If all doors were locked-and for planning purposes he assumed they would be-the patio doors would be the easiest to get into. They were old and he'd opened quite a few in his day with the pair of shims he carried in the rucksack. It would take less than a minute.

He heard a car, crouched. A moment later it appeared coming round the back of the house, a Mercedes station wagon, and parked. A woman got out and walked over to the arena, shouting and waving at the kid on the horse. The kid waved back, yelled some unintelligible expression of joy. The horse slowed and Broadbent's wife helped the kid off the horse. The kid ran over to the woman, hugged her. The lesson was finally over. They chatted for a while and then the kid and his mother got in the car and drove off.

The wife, Sally, was left alone.

He watched her every movement through the binoculars as she led the horse to a hitching post, unsaddled it, and groomed it, bending over to brush the belly and legs. When she was done, she led the horse to a corral and turned it loose, threw a few flakes of alfafa into a feeder, and then headed toward the house, slapping bits of alfalfa off her thighs and butt. Was there another lesson in the works? Not likely-not at four o'clock.

She went in the back door to the kitchen, letting the screen door bang. A moment later he saw her pass by the picture window, go to the stove, and start making coffee.

It was time.

He took one last look at the sketch before shoving it into his rucksack. Then he began pulling out his equipment. First he slipped the green surgical booties over his shoes, the hair net over his hair, then the shower cap. Over that he slid a stocking. After that he put on the plastic Wal-Mart raincoat, the kind that came in a small packet and cost four dollars. He slid on a pair of latex gloves and took out his Clock 29, 10mm Auto, 935 grams fully loaded with ten rounds in the magazine-a very slick firearm. He wiped it down and shoved it in his pants pocket. Finally he took out an accordion of condoms, tore off two, and tucked them into his shirt pocket.

He'd leave no DNA at this crime scene.

14

DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT WILLER slid out of the cruiser and tossed his cigarette butt onto the asphalt in front of him. Walking over it with a twist of his toe, he entered the back entrance to headquarters, passing through a slate-and-Plexiglas lobby. He swung through the glass doors of homicide, walked down the hall past a potted ficus and into the briefing room.

His timing was good. Everyone had arrived, and the murmur of voices fell as he entered. Wilier hated meetings but in his line of work they were unavoidable. He nodded to his deputy, Hernandez, a couple of others, pulled a foam cup out of the stack and filled up on coffee, laid his briefcase on the table, sat down. For a moment he focused on only his coffee, took a sip-freshly made for a change-then set down the cup. He opened the briefcase, took out a sheaf of papers marked MAZE, and slapped them on the table with just enough vigor to get everyone's attention.

He opened the folder, laid a heavy hand on it, looked around. "We all here?"

"Think so," said Hernandez.

Nods, murmurs all around.

Wilier took a noisy sip, set the cup down. "As you know, ladies and gentlemen, we got a killing up in the Chama wilderness, in the Maze, that's attracted a lot of press attention. I want to know where we stand and where we're going. If anyone's got any bright ideas I want to hear them."

He looked around the room.

"First, let's have the M.E.'s report. Dr. Feininger?"

The police pathologist, an elegant-looking, gray-haired woman in a suit who looked out of place in the dingy briefing room, opened a slim leather folder. She did not rise to speak, and her voice was quiet, dry, just a touch ironic.

"Ten and a half quarts of blood-soaked sand containing most of the five point five quarts of blood found in a typical human body were recovered from the site.

No other human remains have been found. We did what tests we could blood

type, presence of drugs, and so forth."

"And?"

"Blood group O positive, no drugs or alcohol detected, white blood cell count apparently normal, blood serum proteins, insulin, all normal. The victim was a male in good health."

"Male?"

"Yes. Presence of the Y chromosome."

"You do any DNA testing?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"We ran it against all the databases, no matches."

"What do you mean, no matches?" broke in the D.A.

"We have no national DNA database," the M.E. said patiently, as if talking to an idiot-which, Wilier figured, she probably was. "There's usually no way to identify a person from his DNA, at least not yet. It's useful only in comparisons. Until we find a corpse, a relative, or a spot of blood on a suspect's clothing, it's useless."

"Right."

Wilier took a swig of coffee. "That all?"

"Give me a body and I'll tell you more."

"We're working on it. K-9?"

A nervous, carrot-haired man hastily squared some papers: Wheatley, from Albuquerque.

"We took six dogs up to the area in question on June fourth-"

Wilier interrupted. "Two days later, after there'd been a hard rain that got all the washes running, swept the Maze free of tracks or scent trails." Wilier paused, staring aggressively at Wheatley. "I mention that for the record."

"It's a remote area, hard to get to." Wheatley's voice had ridden up a notch.

"Go on."

"On June fourth, with three handlers from the Albuquerque K-9 tracking division, the dogs picked up a scent. . ." He looked up. "I've got maps here if you want to-"

"Just give the report."

Picked up a possible ground scent at the scene. They followed it up the canyon and up onto the rim of Mesa de los Viejos, where it was noted that there was insufficient ground cover to hold a good scent-"

"Not to mention that half inch of rain."

Wheatley paused.

"Proceed."

"The dogs were unable to maintain tracking. Three subsequent attempts were made-"

"Thank you, Mr. Wheatley, we get the picture. And now?"

"We've got the dogs on cadaver-sniffing duty. We're working a grid, starting from the crime scene and using GPS to cover the canyon floors. We're working simultaneously deeper into the Maze and down toward the river. Next we'll go up on top."

"Which brings us to the river search. John?"

"The river's low and slow. We've got divers going into all the deep holes and snags, working downstream. So far nothing-no personal effects or remains. We're almost at Abiquiu lake. It doesn't look likely the perp disposed of the body in the river."

Wilier nodded.

"Scene-of-Crime?"

It was Calhoun from Albuquerque, the best guy in the state. At least they'd lucked out on the forensics. Calhoun, unlike the K-9 team, had gotten his ass up to the site at first light.

"We did a complete particle and fiber search, which was a real bear, Lieutenant, given that we're basically working in a dirty sandbox. We picked up anything that looked artificial within a hundred feet of the killing. We also sifted a second site, 220 yards to the northeast, where it appears a burro was standing- we found his droppings. We also looked at a third point on the bluffs above."

"A third point?"

"I'll get to that in a minute, Lieutenant. The killer covered things up pretty good, erased his tracks, but we got a fair amount of hair, artificial fibers, dried foodstuffs. No latents. Two M855 rounds."

"Now we're talking." Wilier had heard about the bullets but not the results.

"These are standard NATO rounds, 5.56mm, metal-jacketed, lead alloy core with a steel penetrator, mass of sixty-two grains. Instantly recognizable because of the green tip. Our shooter was probably using an Ml6 or similar military-type assault weapon."

"Could be ex-military."

"Not necessarily. There are a lot of gun enthusiasts who like these weapons too." He consulted his notes. "One round was embedded in the ground; we found the entry channel-gave us an idea of the angle. The killer was shooting

from above, thirty-five degrees off the horizontal. With that we were able to nail the location of the shooter: an ambush point on the rim. That was the third point you asked about. We found some partial boot prints, couple of cotton fibers from what might have been a bandanna or thin shirt. No shells. We had a hell of a time getting up to the shooter's vantage point. The guy knew the country and must've planned the killing ahead of time."

"Suggests a local."

"Or someone who scoped it out pretty carefully."

Hair?

"None at point three."

"And the second bullet?"

"Deformed and fragmented by passing through the victim. Traces of blood on it, matched the blood in the sand. Again, no latents."

"Anything else?"

"Wool and cotton fibers at the site of the killing-we're still analyzing-and a human hair with root. Golden brown, straight, Caucasian."

"From the killer?"

"Could be anyone: victim, killer, one of your cops. Maybe even me." He grinned, ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Won't be the first time. We're getting DNA on it, see if it matches the blood. Might need to get some hair from your guys for elimination purposes."

"Broadbent, the guy who found the body? He's got light brown, straight hair."

"Might need a sample from him, too."

Wilier thanked Calhoun, turned to his deputy. "Hernandez?"

"I checked out Broadbent's story. Seems he rides around a lot in the high mesas."

"So what was he doing in the Maze?" Wilier asked.

"He says he was taking a shortcut up JoaquinCanyon."

"A long cut, you mean."

"Says he likes the ride. Says it's nice country."

Wilier grunted. "I thought he was a vet. Vets are supposed to be busy."

"He's got a partner, a guy named Shane McBride."

Wilier grunted again. He hadn't liked Broadbent from the beginning and he had a feeling that the guy was holding out on him. It was asking a lot to believe he just happened to be up there when the man was shot. "Hernandez, I want you to ask around, see if Broadbent's shown any recent interest in that area up there-prospecting, pot hunting, that sort of thing."

"Yes, sir."

You consider him a suspect?" asked the D.A. He's what you'd call a 'person of interest.' ' was a guffaw from the D.A. "Yeah, right.

No wonder they couldn’t convict, anyone ,these days, with guy’s like that in the D.A’S office. He looked around. “Any bright ideas"

Calhoun said, “This is a bit out of my field, but I’m curious - is there any permanent water up in those canyons?

"I don't know. Why?"

"It'd be a great place to grow marijuana”

"Noted. Hernandez?"

"I'll look into it, Lieutenant."

15

WEED MADDOX WAS just rising from his hiding place in the chamisa when he heard a sound from the house-the shrill of a telephone.

He hastily crouched back down and raised his binoculars. She had gotten up from the table and was walking toward the phone in the living room, disappearing around the corner. He waited. She must have answered the phone and was talking.

At the corner of the house he could see where the phone lines came in. He had rejected the idea of cutting them, because a lot of houses these days had private alarm systems that notified a firm offsite when the phone lines went down. He cursed softly to himself; he couldn't move on her until she was off the phone. He waited, five minutes.. . Ten. The stocking on his head itched, the latex gloves made his hands hot and sticky. She reappeared in the living room, coffee cup in one hand, holding a cordless to her ear with the other, nodding and talking-still on the phone. He felt a rising impatience, which he tried to quell by closing his eyes and reciting his mantra-to no effect. He was already too keyed up.

He clutched the Clock. The unpleasant smell of latex filled his nostrils. He watched her take two turns around the living room, talking away and laughing, her blond hair swinging. She picked up a brush and began brushing out her long hair, head tilted to one side. Now that was a sight to see, the long golden hair sprung out by static, backlit by the sun as she passed a window. She shifted the phone to the other ear, brushed the other side, her hips swinging with the effort. He felt a tingle of anticipation as she went into the kitchen. From his vantage point he could no longer see her, but he hoped she was hanging up the phone. He was right: she reappeared in the living room without the phone, went toward the front hall, and disappeared again-into a bathroom, it looked like.

Now.

He rose, scurried across the lawn to the patio door, flattened himself against the side of the house. He took a long, flexible shim out of his pocket, began working it in between the door and the frame. He couldn't see into the house now, but he would be inside in less than sixty seconds, before she got out of the John. When she emerged, he'd get her.

The shim was through and he now worked it down, encountered the latch, gave it a sharp downward tug. There was a click and he grasped the handle, getting ready to throw it open.

Suddenly he paused. A door had slammed. The kitchen door to the backyard. He heard footsteps crunching on the gravel of the drive, coming around the corner. He ducked down, crouching behind a bush next to the patio door, and through the screen of leaves he saw her striding to the garage, keys jangling from her hand. She disappeared inside. A moment later came the roar of a car engine and the International Scout nosed out, went down the driveway and out the gate in a swirl of dust.

Maddox felt an impotent fury take hold, a mixture of frustration, disappointment, and anger. The bitch didn't know how lucky she was. And now he'd have to search the house without her help.

He waited five minutes for the dust to settle, then he stood up and slid open the patio door, stepped inside, shut it behind him. The house was cool and smelled of roses. He controlled his breathing, calmed himself down, focusing his mind on the search ahead.

He started in the kitchen, working swiftly and methodically. Before he touched anything he noted where it was, then returned it to its original position. If the notebook was not in the house, it would be a mistake to alarm them. But if the notebook was there, he'd find it.

16

DR. IAIN CORVUS strolled to the lone window of his office facing Central Park. He could see the park pond, a bright sheet of metal reflecting the afternoon sunlight. As he watched, a rowboat drifted across the water-a father and his son on an outing together, each manning an oar. Corvus watched the oars slowly dipping as the boat crept across the water. The young son appeared to be struggling with his oar, and finally it hopped out of the oarlock and slipped into the water, floating away. The father rose and gestured in wrath, all of it taking place in silent, distant pantomime.

Father and son. Corvus felt a faint sickness in his gut. The charming little scene reminded him of his own father, late of the BritishMuseum, one the most famous biologists in England. By the time his father was thirty-five, Corvus's present age, he was already a fellow of the Royal Society, winner of the Crippen Medal, and on the Queen's birthday list to receive a K.C.B.E. Corvus felt a shiver of old anger as he recalled his father's mustachioed face, veiny cheeks, and military bearing, his spotted hand perpetually closed around a whiskey-and-soda, his voice offering sarcastic correction. The old bastard had died ten years ago of a stroke, fell over like a dead mackerel, scattering ice cubes on the Aubusson carpet of their town house in Wilton Crescent, London. Sure, Corvus had inherited a bundle, but neither that nor his name had helped him get a job at the BritishMuseum, the only place he'd ever wanted to work.

Now he was thirty-five and still Assistant Curator in the Department of Paleontology, hat in hand, awaiting tenure. Without tenure, he was only half a scientist-half a human being, really. Assistant Curator. He could almost smell the odor of failure clinging to it. Corvus had never fit into the American academic perpetual-motion machine; he wasn't a member in good standing of the

milling gray herd. He knew he was prickly, sarcastic, and impatient. He hadn't joined in their playground games. He had come up for tenure three years before but the decision had been deferred; his paleontological research trips to Tung Nor Valley in Sinkiang had not borne fruit. For the past three years he'd been running around like a blue-arsed fly with precious little to show for it. Until now. He glanced at his watch. Time for the bloody meeting.

THE OFFICE OF Dr. W. Cushman Peale, president of the museum, occupied the southwestern tower of the museum, and it commanded a sweeping view of MuseumPark and the neoclassical facade of the New-York Historical Society. Peak's secretary ushered Corvus in and announced his name in a hushed voice. Why was it, Corvus wondered, as he stood before the august presence with a genial smile sculpted on his face, that one always whispered in the presence of kings

and cretins?

Peale came from behind his desk to greet Corvus, gave him a firm, manly handshake with the second hand grasping his upper arm, salesman-style, then seated him in an antique Shaker chair before a marble fireplace-unlike the one in his own office, this one worked. Only when he was assured Corvus was comfortable did he take his own seat, in a display of old-world courtesy. With his leonine mane of white hair brushed straight back, his charcoal suit, and his slow, old-fashioned way of speaking, Peale looked like he had been born a museum director. It was a show, Corvus knew: underneath the genteel exterior was a man with all the refinement and sensitivity of a ferret.

"Iain, how are you?" Peale settled back into his armchair, making a tent of his fingers.

"Very well, thank you, Cushman," said Corvus, tugging the crease on his

pants as he crossed his legs.

"Good, good. Can I offer you anything? Water? Coffee? Sherry?"

"No thank you."

"I myself enjoy a small glass of sherry at five o'clock. It's my one vice."

Right. Peale had a wife thirty years his junior who was making an ass of him with a young archaeology curator, and if playing the doddering old cuckold wasn't exactly a vice, marrying a woman younger than your daughter was.

The secretary brought in on a silver tray a small crystal glass filled with amber liquid. Peale took it, sipped fastidiously. "Graham's '61 tawny. Nectar of the gods."

Corvus waited, maintaining a pleasantly neutral expression on his face.

Peale set down the glass. "I won't beat around the bush, Iain. As you know,

you're up for tenure again. The department begins deliberations the first of next month. We all know the drill."

"Naturally."

"This second time around is it, as you know. The department makes a recommendation to me. Technically, I have the final say, although in my ten-year stint as president of the museum I haven't once gone against a departmental tenure decision and I don't intend to change. I don't know which way the department's going to fall on your case. I haven't spoken to them about it and I don't intend to. But I am going to give you some advice."

"Advice from you, Cushman, is always welcome."

"We're a museum. We're researchers. We're lucky we're not at a university, burdened with teaching a gaggle of undergraduates. We can devote ourselves one hundred percent to research and publishing. So there's no excuse for a weak publication record."

He paused, one eyebrow rising slightly as if to signal the subtlety of his point, which as usual was about as subtle as a blunderbuss.

Peale picked up a piece of paper. "I have here your list of publications. You've been here nine years, and I count eleven papers. Roughly one per year."

"What counts is quality, not quantity."

"I'm not in your field, I'm an entomologist, so forgive me if I can't comment on the quality. I've no doubt they're good papers. No one has ever questioned the quality of your work and we all know it was just bad luck that the expedition to Sinkiang didn't pan out. But eleven? We have curators here who publish eleven papers a. year."

"Anyone can knock out a paper. Publication for the sake of publication. I prefer to wait until I have something to say."

"Come now, Iain, you know that's not true. Yes, I admit there is some of that publish-or-perish stuff going on here. But we're the Museum of Natural History and most of what we do is world-class. I'm getting off the point. A year has gone by without you publishing anything. The reason I called you in here is because I assume you're working on something important."

The eyebrows went up, indicating it was a question.

Corvus shifted his legs. He could feel the muscles around his mouth straining from the effort to smile. The humiliation was almost unbearable. "As it happens I am working on an important project."

"May I ask what?" Right now it's at a somewhat delicate juncture, but within a week or two I'll

be able to bring it to you and the tenure committee-in confidence, of course. It should answer most satisfactorily."

Peale gazed at him a moment, then smiled. "That's splendid, Iain. The point is, I think you're a fine addition to the museum, and of course your distinguished name, associated as it is with your illustrious father, is also important to us. I'm asking these questions only in the spirit of giving counsel. We take it to heart when a curator fails to make tenure; we look on it more as a failure on our part." Peale rose with a broad smile, extended his hand. "Good luck."

Corvus left the office and walked back down the long, fifth-floor corridor. He was so full of silent rage he could hardly breathe. But he kept his smile, nodding left and right, murmuring greetings to colleagues who were on their way out of the museum at the close of day, the herd heading back to their split-level ranches in faceless American suburbs in Connecticut and New Jersey and Long Island.

17

THE WHITEWASHED ROOM behind the sacristy of Christ in the Desert

Monastery contained only four things: a hard wooden stool, a rough table, a crucifix, and an Apple PowerBook G4 laptop computer with a printer, running on DC solar power. Wyman Ford sat before the computer, tingling with anticipation. He had just finished downloading two cryptanalysis programs and was about to unleash them on the code he had laboriously typed in from the dead man's notebook. Already he knew that this was no simple code; it had not yielded to any of his usual tricks.

It was something truly special.

He lifted his finger and brought it down smartly: the first program was off and running.

It wasn't exactly a decryption program, but rather pattern analysis software that looked at the code and made a determination, based on number patterns, as to what class of code it belonged to-substitution or transposition, placode or encicode, nomenclator or polyalphabetic. He had determined it wasn't a public-key code based on factoring large primes. But beyond that, he'd struck out.

It was only a matter of five minutes for the program to return a beep, indicating the first analysis was complete. Ford was startled when the conclusion popped up:

UNABLE TO DETERMINE CODE TYPE

He scrolled down through the pattern results, numerical frequency tables, probability assignments. This was no random grouping of numbers-the program had picked out all kinds of patterns and departures from randomness. It

proved the numbers contained information. But what information, and how encoded?

Far from being discouraged, Ford felt a shivery thrill. The more sophisticated the code, the more interesting the message. He ran the next program in the module, a frequency analysis on single digits, number pairs, and triplets, matching it against frequency tables of common languages. But that too was a failure: it showed no correlation between the numbers and the English language or with any other common language.

Ford glanced at his watch. He'd missed Terce. He'd been at it now for five hours straight.

Damn.

He went back to the computer screen. The fact that each number had eight jjgits-a byte-implied a computer-based code. Yet it was written with pencil in a grubby notebook, apparently in the middle of nowhere, with no computer access nearby. On top of that he had already tried translating the eight-digit numbers to binary, hexadecimal, and ASCII, and ran those through the decryption programs, still with no success.

This was getting fun.

Ford paused, picked up the notebook, flipped it open, ruffled through the pages. It was old, the leather cover abraded and worn, and there was sand between the well-thumbed pages. It smelled faintly of woodsmoke. The numbers were written with a sharpened pencil, clean and crisp, in neat rows and columns, forming a kind of grid. The evenness of the writing led him to believe that the journal had been written all at the same time. And in the entire sixty pages of numbers there wasn't a single erasure or mistake. Without a doubt the numbers had been copied.

He shut it and turned it over. There was a stain on the back cover, a smear that was still slightly tacky, and he realized with a start that it was blood. He shivered and quickly put the book down. The blood suddenly reminded him that this was not a game, that a man had been murdered, and that the journal very likely contained directions to a fortune.

Wyman Ford wondered just what he was getting himself into.

He suddenly felt a presence behind him and turned. It was the abbot, hands clasped behind his back, a faint smile on his face, his lively black eyes fixed on him. "We missed you, Brother Wyman."

Wyman rose. "I'm sorry, Father."

The abbot's gaze shifted to the numbers on the screen. "What you're doing must be important."

Wyman said nothing. He wasn't sure it was important in the way the abbot meant. He felt ashamed. This was just the kind of obsessive work habit that had gotten him into trouble in real life, this compulsive focusing on a problem to the exclusion of all else. After Julie's death, he had never been able to forgive himself for all those times he worked late instead of talking to her, eating dinner with her, making love to her.

He could feel the kindly pressure of the abbot's eyes on him, but he couldn't raise his own to meet them.

"Ora et Labora, Prayer and Work," said the abbot, his gentle voice with an edge to it. "The two are opposites. Prayer is a way of listening to God, and work is a way of speaking to God. The monastic life seeks a strict balance between the two."

"I understand, Father." Wyman felt himself coloring. The abbot always surprised him with his simple wisdom.

The abbot laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'm glad you do," then turned and left.

Wyman saved his work, backed it up on a CD, and shut down the system. Putting the notebook and CD in his pocket, he returned to his cell and placed them in the drawer of his bedside table. He wondered: had he really gotten the spook trade out of his system? Is that what this was about?

He bowed his head and prayed.

18

TOM BROADBENT WATCHED Detective Lieutenant Wilier pacing back and forth

in his living room, the policeman's slow, heavy steps somehow conveying insolence. The detective wore a plaid sports jacket, gray slacks, and blue shirt with no tie, and his arms were short with bony, veined hands swinging at the end. He was about forty-five and no more than five-eight, with a narrow face, blade-like nose, and sagging black eyes rimmed in red. It was the face of a true insomniac.

Standing behind him, notebook flopped open in his hand, was his sidekick, Hernandez, soft, plump, and agreeable. They had arrived in the company of a no-nonsense woman with iron-gray hair who introduced herself as Dr. Feininger, the Medical Examiner.

Sally sat on the sofa next to him.

"A human hair was recovered at the crime scene," Wilier was saying as he slowly turned on his heel. "Dr. Feininger wants to find out if it came from the killer, but to do that we need to eliminate all others who were at the site."

"I understand."

Tom found the black eyes looking at him rather intently. "If you don't have

any objection then, sign here."

Tom signed the permission form.

Feininger came around with a little black bag. "May I ask you to take a seat?"

"I didn't know it was going to be dangerous," said Tom, with an attempt at a smile.

"I'll be pulling them out by the roots," came the crisp answer.

Tom sat down, exchanged a glance with Sally. He felt pretty sure there was

more to this visit than getting a few hairs. He watched as the M.E. removed a couple of small test tubes from her black bag and some sticky labels.

"In the meantime," said Wilier, "there are a couple of points I'd like to clear up. Mind?"

Here we go, thought Tom. "Do I need a lawyer?"

"It's your right."

"Am I a suspect?"

"No."

Tom waved his hand. "Lawyers are expensive. Go ahead."

"You said you were riding along the Chama the night of the killing."

"That's right."

Tom felt the doctor's fingers in his hair, poking around, holding a large pair of tweezers in the other.

"You said you took a shortcut up JoaquinCanyon?"

"It's not really a shortcut."

"That's just what I was thinking. Why'd you go up there?"

"As I said before, I like the route."

Silence. He could hear Hernandez's pen scritching on the paper, then the rustle of a page turned. The M.E. plucked one hair, two, three. "Done," she said.

"How many more miles did you have to ride that night?" Wilier asked.

"Ten, twelve."

"How long would that have taken you?"

"Three to four hours."

"So you decided to take a shortcut that was actually a long cut, at sunset, when you would have had at least three hours of riding in the dark."

"It was the night of the full moon and I'd planned it that way. I wanted to ride home by moonlight-that was the whole point."

"Your wife doesn't mind you coming home late?"

"No, his wife doesn't mind him coming home late," said Sally.

Wilier continued, not varying from his stolid tone. "And you heard the shots, went to investigate?"

"Haven't we already gone through this, Detective?"

Wilier pushed on. "You say you found the man, dying. You administered CPR, which is how you got his blood all over your clothes."

"Yes."

And he spoke to you, told you to find his daughter-Robbie her name was?-to tell her what he'd found. But he died before he could say what it was he found. Am I correct?"

"We've been over all this." Tom had not told, and had no intention of telling, that the prospector had a notebook or had mentioned a treasure. He had no confidence in the police's ability to keep it confidential, and news of a treasure would cause a stampede.

"Did he give you anything?"

"No." Tom swallowed. He was surprised at how much he hated lying.

After a moment Wilier grunted, looked down. "You spend a lot of time riding around up in that high mesa country, right?"

"That's right."

"Looking for anything in particular?"

"Yes."

Wilier looked up sharply. "What?"

"Peace and quiet."

He frowned. "Where do you go, exactly?"

"All over-the Maze, up over Mesa de los Viejos, English Rocks, La Cuchilla-sometimes as far as the Echo Badlands if it's an overnight trip."

Wilier turned to Sally. "You go with him?"

"Sometimes."

"I'm told that yesterday afternoon you went to the monastery up in the wilderness, Christ in the Desert."

Tom rose. "Who told you that? Are you having me followed?"

"Take it easy, Mr. Broadbent. You drive a distinctive truck and I might remind you that most of that road is visible from the top of Mesa de los Viejos, where my men are searching. Now: did you go up to the monastery?"

"Do I have to answer these questions?"

"No. If you don't, I'll subpoena you, and you'll need that lawyer we talked about, and then you'll be required to answer them under oath at police headquarters."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a statement of fact, Mr. Broadbent."

"Tom," said Sally, "take it easy."

Tom swallowed. "Yes, I went up there."

"What for?"

Tom hesitated. "To see a friend of mine."

"Name?"

"Brother Wyman Ford."

Scritch, scritch went the pen. As he wrote, Wilier made a sucking noise through his teeth.

"This Brother Ford a monk?"

"Novitiate."

"What you go up there to see him about?"

"I wondered if he'd heard or seen anything related to the killing up in the Maze." He felt terrible lying again. He began to realize that the others may have been right, that he never should have kept back the notebook. But there was that damn promise.

"And had he?"

"No."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing at all. He didn't even know about it. He doesn't read the newspapers." If the cops went to see Ford, Tom wondered if he would lie about the notebook. It seemed most unlikely-he was, after all, a monk.

Wilier rose. "You going to stick around here for a while? Case we need to talk to you again?"

"I don't have any traveling plans at the present time."

Wilier nodded again, glanced at Sally. "Sorry, ma'am, for the interruption."

"Don't ma'am me," said Sally sharply.

"No offense intended, Mrs. Broadbent." He turned to the M.E. "Got what you needed?"

"Yes."

Tom saw them to the door. As he was leaving, Wilier paused, his black eyes fixed on Tom. "Lying to a police officer is obstruction of justice-a felony."

"I'm aware of that."

Wilier turned and left. Tom watched them drive out, then came back in and shut the door. Sally was standing in the living room, arms crossed. "Tom-"

"Don't say it."

"I am going to say it. You're sinking in quicksand. You've got to give them the notebook."

"Too late now."

"No it isn't. You can explain. They'll understand."

"The hell they will. And how many times do I have to repeat it? / made a. promise"

She sighed, uncrossed her arms. "Tom, why are you so stubborn?"

"And you're not?"

Sally flopped down on the sofa next to him. "You're impossible."

He put his arm around her. "I'm sorry, but would you have me any other way?"

"I suppose not." She sighed. "On top of all this, when I came home this afternoon, I got the feeling that someone had been in the house."

"How so?" Tom said, alarmed.

"I don't know. Nothing was stolen or moved. It was just a creepy feeling-like I could smell some stranger's B.O."

"You sure?"

"No."

"We should report it."

"Tom, you report a break-in and Wilier will be all over you. Anyway, I'm not sure at all-it was just a feeling."

Tom thought for a moment. "Sally, this is serious. We already know the treasure is worth killing for. I'd feel better if you broke out that Smith & Wesson of yours and kept it handy."

"I wouldn't go that far, Tom. I'd feel silly walking around with a gun."

"Humor me. You're lethal with a gun-you proved that in Honduras."

Sally rose, slid open a drawer under the phone, took out a key, and went to unlock a cabinet in the den. A moment later she came back with the gun and a box of .38 cartridges. She opened the cylinder, pushed five rounds into the chambers, snapped it shut, snugged it into the front pocket of her jeans. "Satisfied?"

19

JIM MADDOX HANDED the car keys and a five-dollar bill to the pimply-faced attendant at the curb and walked into the lobby of the El Dorado Hotel, his new Lucchesi snakeskin boots making a pleasing creaking sound. He paused to look around, giving his jacket a little tug. On one side of the large room was a roaring fire, and on the other an old faggot sat at a grand piano, playing "Misty." At the far end stood a bar done up in blond wood.

He sauntered over to the bar, hung his laptop on the back of the chair, eased himself in.

"Coffee. Black."

The bartender nodded, returned with a cup and a bowl of spicy peanuts.

He took a sip. "Say, this is a bit stale, think you could manage a fresh pot?"

"Of course, sir. My apologies." The bartender whisked away the cup, disappeared in the back.

Maddox dipped his fingers into the peanuts, tossed a few in his mouth, watched the people coming and going. They all looked like him, dressed in Polo shirts and sports jackets and nice corduroy or worsted slacks, people who lived their lives on the straight and narrow, two cars in the garage, two point four kids, living off corporate paychecks. He leaned back, tossed in a few more, and bit down. Funny how many attractive middle-aged women-like that one crossing the lobby with the tan slacks and sweater and pearls with her little black handbag-went all wobbly thinking about a tattooed, pumped-up, prison Jeff doing hard time for rape, murder, or assault. He had a lot of work to do tonight, at least twenty new cons to write up and post. Some of the letters were so illiterate he had to make it all up from scratch. No matter: the subscriptions were still

rolling in, the demand for cons growing steadily. It was the easiest money he'd ever made in his life, and what amazed him was that it was legal, all of it handled by credit card through an Internet billing company; they took their cut and the rest was wired to his bank account.

If he'd known how easy it was to make money honestly, he could've saved himself a shitload of grief.

He crunched up a few more peanuts and pushed away the dish, mindful of his waistline, as the bartender arrived with a fresh cup. "Sorry it took so long, and my apologies again."

"No problem." He sipped the coffee-very fresh. "Thanks."

"You're welcome, sir."

Weed Maddox turned his thoughts to the problem at hand. The notebook wasn't in the house. That meant that Broadbent either had it on him or had hidden it off-site, maybe in a safe-deposit box. Wherever it was, Maddox knew he wasn't going to get it now by theft. He felt a swelling of irritation. Broadbent was up to his ass in it in one way or another. Maybe as a rival-maybe even as Weathers's partner.

Maddox could almost hear Corvus's Brit voice ringing in his head-The note book. There was only one way: he had to force Broadbent to give it up. What he needed was leverage.

What he needed was her.

"First time in Santa Fe?" the bartender asked, breaking into his thoughts.

"Yeah."

"Business?"

"What else?" Maddox grinned.

"Are you here for the laproscopic surgery conference?"

Christ, he probably did look like a doctor. A Connecticut doctor on a medical junket, all expenses paid by some pharmaceutical giant. If only the bartender could see the tattoo that covered his back from nape to butt. He'd shit his

pants

"No," said Maddox pleasantly, "I'm in human resources."