Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils Read online

  Indiana Jones

  and the

  Seven Veils

  Rob MacGregor

  Don't miss any of Indy's exciting adventures in

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  SECRET OF THE SPHINX

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  HOLLOW EARTH

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  DINOSAUR EGGS

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  WHITE WITCH

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  SKY PIRATES

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  DANCE OF THE GIANTS

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  SEVEN VEILS

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  GENESIS DELUGE

  INDIANA JONES AND THE

  PERIL AT DELPHI

  Coming soon from Bantam Books!

  A FATAL FALL

  The cable car suddenly jolted to a stop and they swung in midair high over the city. Indy glanced at Oron, who shrugged at his wordless question. He didn't know what had happened, either.

  Indy looked over the side.

  "Don't even think about jumping out of here," Oron said. "It's at least a hundred feet and it's steep. You wouldn't make it and even if you did live, you wouldn't be any better off."

  Indy believed him. But there was another option. "I'm going up." Before Oron could respond, Indy climbed out the window and onto the top of the car. He reached up, grabbed the cable, and pulled himself hand over hand.

  But he'd only gone a dozen yards or so when it dawned on him that he'd taken a bigger challenge than he'd thought. The angle was steep, and the cable was greasy. More important, there was no end in sight.

  Better go back.

  Just then he heard a noise and felt the cable vibrate. The car was moving forward again, coming right at him. Panicking, he climbed hand over hand, his legs kicking below him as if he were running a race—a race he was losing.

  Shudders of fear rippled through him. He was losing his grip. It didn't matter. The race was over. He dangled from one hand, spun around, let go....

  THE INDIANA JONES SERIES

  Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

  Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi

  Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants

  Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils

  Indiana Jones and the Genesis Deluge

  Indiana Jones and the Unicorn's Legacy

  Indiana Jones and the Interior World

  Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates

  Indiana Jones and the White Witch

  Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone

  Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs

  Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth

  Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx

  INDIANA JONES AND THE SEVEN VEILS

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam mass market edition published December 1991

  Bantam reissue / May 2008

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TM and © 1991 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.

  Used under authorization.

  Cover art copyright © by Lucasfilm, Ltd.

  Cover art by Drew Struzan

  * * *

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  * * *

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  * * *

  ISBN 978-0-553-29334-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  www.bantamdell.com

  OPM 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9

  An S522 eBook conversion

  For Daemian & Dean

  As a topic for controversy and conjecture the Colonel's fate enjoys in Brazil a popularity accorded elsewhere only to the sea-serpent. Nothing so stimulates the Brazilian's power of invention, nothing so enlarges his credulity, as a conversation about Colonel Fawcett. Enough legend has grown up around the subject to form a new and separate branch of folklore. Everyone has his own theory; and since the best sort of theory is clearly one based on personal experience or private information, personal experience and private information are coined for the occasion. It became harder than ever to believe that Fawcett had really existed; under this battery of apocryphal sidelights our ignis fatuus threatened to vanish altogether.

  —Peter Fleming,

  Brazilian Adventure

  Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

  —Jonathan Swift

  Prologue

  14 August, 1925

  I'm anxious to get moving. My bruises and sores are healed and I have new hope. The canoe is stocked with supplies: rifles, ammunition, clothing, and food. The amounts of the latter are meagre, but the fish are plentiful in the river and when we take to the land, we will hunt game.

  I'm waiting now in the canoe for my two companions. They're not the pair Id have chosen as my travel mates, but there is little choice at this point. Harry Walters is the name of one of them. He seems to survive on rum, but he claims to know this treacherous jungle like the back of his hand. We'll see.

  The other is a woman, Maria.

  Most of my colleagues would scoff at the very idea of taking a woman into the jungle. I can hear them now: She'll get in the way. She won't have the courage, the will, or the determination of a man. Women are trouble, a distraction, prone to faintness of heart and physical weakness. Maybe true. But they don't know Maria.

  From my observations of this woman these past few weeks, she knows nothing of the expected weakness of her sex, not the physical, nor the mental, nor the emotional. She's a levelheaded lady if there ever was one. She's extremely patient, honourable, and trustworthy. I'm not sure yet that I can say the same qualities are true for Walters.

  Maria and I have taken walks together, and by God she's more of a man than half the men I've met in my day. I am particularly impressed by her familiarity with and knowledge of the jungle, as well as her fleetness of foot. But I am most enthralled by something which she has only hinted at: the place where she came from. She is my guide, after all, and her former home is where we are headed.

  But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack, for I did not arrive at this juncture without great effort and considerable discomfort. It's all in my other journals, but I'll summarize it here. The jungle, I should begin, is no place to venture alone, and after months of trekking through this harsh, land, which conspires daily to kill anyone who would dare challenge it, I was indeed desperate and alone. My son, lame from a bad ankle and feverish from malaria, turned back some weeks ago, and I sent our last guide with him. God save them.

  I followed a river upstream for several days, but saw it was veering from the direction I was headed. I left it and marched directly north toward uncharted territory. On the third day I ran out of water, and for the next two or three days my only source of liquid was the dew I licked from leaves. How I questioned myself over and over about my decision to go on alone! I called myself a fool, an idiot, a madman, and more names than I care to mention. I wandered aiml
essly and soon found myself talking to old friends and even animals that appeared and vanished. Finally, I could walk no further, and crawled. Insects chewed on me. I desperately needed water, and knew I had but hours to live. I fought against death, and refused to give up. But I must have lost consciousness.

  When I awoke I found myself in a mission outpost on the Rio Tocantins. Maria had found me and dragged me through the jungle. She nursed me back to health, so I can say nothing against her.

  Indeed, she is clearly a most unique individual. She claims that she knew that I was coming and needed help, and that she had gone out to search for me. Under normal conditions, I would say her comments were just so much poppycock. However, I am beginning to understand that survival in the jungle requires a certain sharpness of the senses that we citizens of the civilised world have disposed of in favor of logic and analysis. So maybe she did actually sense my imminent arrival.

  Now about Walters. He's an Englishman like myself, but he has lived in and out of the jungle for years. From what I gather, he is charged with locating Indians for the missionaries. He gives the heathens pots and pans, trinkets, and clothing, and prepares them for their eventual submission and conversion.

  I was surprised to learn from Walters that he is something of a religious mercenary. Within a few miles of one another are Protestant and Catholic missions, and Walters works for both of them. Besides laying the groundwork for the missionaries, he also spies on each of them, gathering information about the competition's activities and progress. This I find rather humorous, but Walters considers it to be normal jungle communication between rival clergies. Oddly enough, this foul-mouthed drunkard is the missionaries' most important link to the outside world. Since money isn't much good in the jungle, the missionaries pay him mostly in rum, which they obtain from traders.

  One day a few months ago, Walters showed up at the Catholic mission with a young woman who was not from any tribe anyone had ever seen. He isn't the sort who scares easily, but he has confessed to me that he was extremely frightened the day he encountered her. He had almost finished a bottle of rum when the woman suddenly appeared in his camp. He was sure he was seeing things. Her skin was white, and her long chestnut hair reflected a reddish tinge in the firelight. She talked in a strange language that was like nothing he'd ever heard. When he reached for his gun, she swiftly vanished as strangely as she had appeared.

  Walters thought he must have encountered the jungle spirit, Yaro, guardian of jungle beasts. According to the Indian legend, she lures men into the jungle at night where she kills them and feeds their body parts to her animal children. Walters vowed to stay awake all night, but eventually he dozed off. When he awoke at the first light, she was standing over him. He saw that she was no spirit, but he didn't know what she was. Without a word, he packed his gear and returned to the mission. She followed him.

  The woman, of course, is the one I mentioned, Maria. That is the name the missionaries gave her when they baptised her. I had been recovering at the mission for a couple of weeks when I heard Walters's tale. I was fascinated and uplifted, because I knew immediately where she had come from, the place which has been my destination all along. My destiny. I speak, of course, of the lost city known as Z.

  —From the journal of Colonel Percy Fawcett

  1

  Camozotz's Revenge

  Tikal, Guatemala—March 7, 1926

  The torchlight flickered in the close quarters. The tunnel was tight, the air choked with dust and the dank smell of earth. After two days of slowly removing one stone after another from the clogged passage, Indy had reached the end. A hole the size of his arm now opened into a dark chamber inside the pyramid.

  "Can you see anything yet?" a woman's voice asked from behind him. The hole grew brighter as she thrust the torch closer to the opening.

  "Hey, get that torch out of my face," Indy said in a hoarse voice. "You're burning my hat."

  "Sorry."

  He shook his head, annoyed by her impatience. While Deirdre Campbell was every bit as knowledgeable as the graduate students who had accompanied him and Professor Bernard to Guatemala, she lacked the patience of her mother, who had been one of Britain's most distinguished archaeologists. She could also be as stubborn as he was, something he liked to attribute to her Scottish upbringing.

  Carefully, Indy brushed away several stones with a gloved hand. He was anxious to get inside the pyramid, but he didn't want to bulldoze his way inside, either. There could be traps at the entrance awaiting an unwary intruder.

  "What's that?" Deirdre asked.

  "What?"

  "I see something. It's above the hole, not in it."

  Indy scowled, but now he saw the glint of green.

  "Give me more light."

  "Maybe you should take your hat off," she said.

  He leaned closer and carefully picked away the pebbles from around the object. Then he pulled a stiff-bristled brush from his knapsack and scraped at the dirt and rubble.

  After a few minutes, he took off one of his gloves and felt a polished jade surface. He exchanged the brush for one with softer bristles and whisked away crumbled bits of dried mud. He knew it was something unusual, something significant and precious.

  "What is it, Indy?"

  "Take a look." He moved aside and they both stared at a jade mask that was half animal, half man. It had white almond-shaped eyes that curved upward on the outside, an extra pair of ears, and a sharp nose. "It's Camozotz, the bat god."

  "Oh, my God." Deirdre's voice was a whisper.

  "Friendly looking fellow, isn't he?" The bat god was one of the lords of Xibalba, the underworld, and ruler of the House of Bats. In legend, as recorded in the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of mythology, he beheaded the father of the twin heroes.

  "Maybe we've found the entrance to Xibalba," he said. "Can you see him, Esteban?" he asked the Mayan, who was squatting behind Deirdre.

  Esteban nodded and Indy wondered what he was thinking.

  "It must have been placed above the doorway to guard the inner chambers," Deirdre said. "Don't you think?"

  Deirdre's pale blue eyes were glazed with wonder. Her face, smudged with dirt, was framed by cascading auburn hair. Even after digging a hole she looks great, he thought.

  "Good guess."

  Now he had a choice to make. Bernard no doubt would want to see the mask in place, but Indy wanted to get into the pyramid as soon as possible, and he couldn't clear the opening any further without removing the mask. He was about to tell Deirdre to go and get Bernard when the mask slipped a couple of inches. He caught it and carefully removed it from the wall.

  "Well, that takes care of that."

  "Takes care of what?" she asked.

  "Never mind." He took off his shirt and wrapped the jade mask with it. "Take this down to Bernard for me, and tell him I've broken through." He carefully handed her the mask as he took the torch from her. "The entrance will be open by the time he gets here."

  "Where is he?"

  "Down by the river cleaning up."

  "I hope he's dressed."

  "Knock first."

  She uttered a short, curt laugh. "Right."

  "You know what I mean. Just make a lot of noise so he hears you coming."

  It seemed almost as if Bernard didn't like getting dirty. He hadn't spent more than a couple of minutes in the tunnel since they'd discovered the entrance to the rock-filled passage. Instead, he'd placed Indy in charge of the excavation and requested reports every couple of hours.

  A smile brightened Deirdre's face and she leaned toward Indy. "Why don't we both go? You can give the mask to Dr. Bernard, then we can take a swim in that pool I found about half mile down from the bend. It's nice and private."

  He couldn't miss the implications, but her timing was terrible. "Just get Bernard, will you," he said, impatiently. "And be careful with the artifact."

  "Sorry I mentioned it," she snapped, turning away. "I bet John will go with me for a swim." She stomped
out of the tunnel without another word.

  Swell. Go swim with John, he thought. For the past two days, she'd shadowed him everywhere. She hadn't given him a minute alone, and he knew why. She was playing defensive.

  She'd caught him with his arms around Katherine, one of the graduate students. Actually, Katherine had started it. They'd literally bumped into each other on the trail between the camp and the river where the dinner dishes were being washed. Katherine was an attractive blonde and he knew that if Deirdre weren't here with him, he'd be tempted by her. They'd started a casual conversation and then her arms slipped around him. He didn't exactly fight her off, but he hadn't been pursuing her either. The next thing he knew he was kissing her, and when he opened his eyes Deirdre was standing in the trail, her hands on her hips.

  Katherine immediately moved off in one direction and Deirdre stormed away in the other. He followed Deirdre and apologized to her, but she said he was only apologizing for getting caught, that he wasn't sincere. But the next morning, the day he began the excavation of the tunnel, she'd taken a new tack. She stayed by his side like a watchdog, and hadn't given Katherine a chance to even wink at him.

  He knew the pattern; he understood it. He and Deirdre had spent almost a year together in a relationship that had gone from hot to cold and back again several times. There'd been talk of marriage, but after Deirdre's initial enthusiasm she'd said she needed more time to think about it. Then, as the fall classes began, Indy had begun seeing another woman from time to time. When Deirdre found out about it, she was angry. Then, suddenly, she wanted to get married. Indy felt she was pushing him into a corner, and told her he wanted to wait. Since then, there'd been no more talk about marriage.