The Kukulkan Manuscript Read online

  The Kukulkan Manuscript

  by

  James Steimle

  Contents

  FOREWARD

  PROLOUGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  About the Author

  Copyright

  FOREWORD

  Due to the controversial nature of the facts presented in this book, the names of the primary universities involved have been altered to avoid legal entanglements.

  Despite the many well-published intellectuals involved, the events surrounding the unwanted codex of 1997 have skillfully passed into the realm of the quickly forgotten. While I recognize the dangers that will become apparent to the reader in the following pages, I have recorded, to the best of my limited ability, the only existing record of the ancient American book worth murder to keep buried.

  Stratford University will deny everything written here.

  The FBI will have no comment, for all related issues are currently under investigation and top clearance is required to validate the bulk of these words.

  Erma Alred is more than willing to tell her side of the story, and Porter even more so.

  But the voice of the individual is often little more than the cry of a cricket in a gale.

  PROLOGUE

  May 7, 1997

  I, John D. Porter, have done at last that which I thought I would never do.

  Who will blame me? Who can be my judge after all the trials that have eaten at me since Dr. Ulman found the codex?

  I fear I am trapped at the end of the chase.

  No more games.

  No more answers.

  I honestly believe that no human starts a day with the clear intention of engaging in a crime which is undeniably evil. Even Cain in the Old Testament thought he was doing that which served his best interests. That’s the motto of modern culture.

  It is an angry mouth chewing on me each minute now, a creature which ignores intelligence while feigning a prudent brow for a reason I have yet to understand.

  I know this shall progress no further than today. I may never learn the end of the story.

  Who is left to trust? What mortal can I lean on…in this, my final hour?

  I wish Alred had never gotten involved. She can’t hide anymore behind those strong eyes and her stalwart posture. Alred’s a good person. She’s the only one who’s been with me from the beginning. I’d like to think she even understands….

  Now I cling to the only thing that hasn’t been taken from me: my painful testimony of the reality of the unwanted codex.

  Surrounded by many, I feel…alone.

  I pray this is not my last journal entry.

  CHAPTER ONE

  January 31, 1997

  10:42 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  “I know they are going to kill me.”

  New year rains fell like needles from unseen clouds in a black sky, a constant and cruel battery warning him of the doom to come.

  But Christopher Ulman had never been more excited!

  Automatic gunfire pounded in Ulman’s ears as he slammed the door shut and bolted it with a thick piece of wiring. Dropping his papers on a makeshift desk and his duffel bag on the ground, he lowered himself quickly in the dark onto his bed and rammed his fingers into his temples.

  The bed was made up of an old sleeping bag with a broken zipper, a sheet that badly needed to be washed, and a beaten pouch of lumpy feathers that he called a pillow, all laid out on a solid board he’d procured from a stranger.

  His shaking fingers scraped a match against the rough metal of a Spanish lantern. The flare reflected off the cold glass and momentarily filled his nostrils with sulfuric fumes.

  Lighting the wick, Ulman turned off his flashlight.

  He tried to smile, but had to squeeze his eyes shut. He forced happy thoughts into his mind of Greenwich, the small town in eastern Illinois which had spawned him. He remembered the white porches and the picket fence that surrounded his boyhood front yard. He conjured up visions of the dry leaves of autumn smashing between his toes, and for a moment he wondered if he could smell the sweet dust kicked up by new rainfall.

  But the booming thunder above beat at his forehead, reminding him that his cozy memories were only lies now. His past was gone forever.

  Buckets of water splashed down on the roof, which had proudly been made by the son of a roof-mender—Ulman was at last happy for the skill his father had pushed upon him.

  And the gunshots started up again.

  AK-47, he thought, remembering Vietnam. Painful emotions exploded to life: friends left in the jungle for good; old companions absorbed by a chaotic war, never returning. He wiped his forehead, his mouth gaping and then slamming shut. “How can I be thinking about the war?!” he whispered, digging his fingers into the inner corners of his closed eyes. A taste of salty water laced his lips. It was the same sweat and rain mixture he recalled from the Orient.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Would he live to see tomorrow? he wondered. Would they raid his tiny fort, or bomb him without warning? Best to die in a sudden bang than to know you are being killed? Smiling and frowning, Ulman recognized he’d asked the same question on a daily basis in Vietnam.

  The gun fired again, hurling waves of bullets from afar. He pinched his eyes closed and thought about the weapons carried in the unclean hands of the guerrilla soldiers. He could picture the short warriors, drenched like he was; black eyes poking out of dark faces; brown skin hiding them in the shadows; Ulman felt the chill of the fear and anger of the Vietcong.

  Shaking his head slowly, he rubbed his temples as tears slid down his cheeks. He was soaked, but still certain of the tears. With a smile he realized there really were no Vietcong soldiers around him. The shots came from the sky; the normal roar of thunder.

  His hands trembled, but he wasn’t cold.

  Ulman knew he was in trouble. He wanted to think about Illinois again, but his exhausted mind failed to comply. His dreams came to life and fought to choke his perception of reality. He didn’t want to sleep. He worried that if he lost consciousness…he might not ever wake up again.

  Having not rested to the degree human bodies require, Ulman could feel the thick cotton in his brain. It was hard to concentrate on anything. His thoughts slid from dark visions to unwanted memories, from his trapped reality to dream and then back into his haphazard hut again. When his eyes opened, they looked to the soiled papers on his desk.

  The table, as skillfully thrown together as his precarious shelter with the nice roof, did not look much like a desk at all. Off-white food-storage buckets with another flat board set on top had become a garden for steadily growing piles of note sheets and worn books. Many of the volumes were open, and a thought rushed through his mind that the spines were being damaged. He didn’t care anymore.

  His face
dropped, and his right cheek pressed against his sleeping bag. Ignoring the men’s-locker-room smell of the bedding, his eyes looked to his more important treasure. A small chest, two feet long and one foot wide, held his prized discoveries.

  With glazed eyes closing on their own, he smiled again.

  As his mind, longing to dream, interrupted his coherent thoughts, he saw James G. Masterson, the chair of the Department of Ancient History and Anthropology at Stratford University, standing behind his oval desk. Ulman watched the old man lean on his desktop with two spidery hands, his brow hard and his lips shoving up into his large nostrils. “Do you honestly think I can allow you to publish this paper?” Masterson’s voice boomed. “Don’t you realize the ripple effects this kind of report would cause?”

  “I don’t care what happens!” Ulman heard his own voice reply in dream. “In fact, I’m looking forward to the outcome!”

  “Looking forward to it?” the Chair said. “I cannot allow it! I will not!”

  “Then I’ll publish it on my own!” Ulman said, his voice stern and unwavering.

  “I will not permit it!” Masterson said.

  “How can you stop me?” Ulman said.

  Masterson bent his neck like a buzzard across his desk, his blue eyes bulging out of his wrinkled head. His baldness reflected a lamp somewhere in a corner of the office. “If you publish a work on this find, identifying yourself as a professor at this University, I’ll have you dismissed! It will destroy the school! It will ruin anyone who touches it! Take my word! Let it decapitate and bury you if you will, but don’t drag the world down with you!” Violently lifting off of his desk, Masterson walked out of his room, his eyes holding solidly onto Ulman until he disappeared. He slammed the large wood door hard behind him.

  Ulman jerked and opened his eyes. The crack of the door had been the blasting of thunder again. He looked back at the chest and licked his lips. A small grin turned the corners of his mouth for a fleeting moment. Masterson had only been a dream. He let his eyes close and then forced them open.

  No one would believe him. They would all see the evidence and be unable to deny its existence, but no one would take his find seriously. Ulman himself felt that the discovery had to be a mistake, a lie. Yet there it was in the box. As an expert in ancient Mesoamerican studies, he knew of few people more qualified in the entire world to judge such a find! And like all the other professionals, Ulman couldn’t believe it was real, but he did. He had to!

  It was his discovery! It ruined everything! He almost laughed. What would the world think? Already, Ulman had dispatched letters to some of his more prominent colleagues. He regretted sending a few of the memos. It didn’t take a genius to realize that his find would not be something the world would be eager to see. Dr. Masterson in his dream had spoken the truth. The breakthrough posed particular questions for which the scholarly world would be forced to seek answers, though they would despise the necessity of the operation. The results would contradict many of their previously written and spoken statements concerning the early history of Central America. Modern historical textbooks would become as obsolete as all the maps and globes depicting the Soviet Union as a single country.

  Archaeologists and ancient historians are interesting people. They seek the truth, but hate it at the same time. They publish a thesis or write their masterpiece—their greatest attempt at eclectic scholarship—and within fifteen years someone overthrows their facts, their theories with new ones. And rather than accepting their previously incorrect suppositions, they spend the rest of their lives attempting to back up what they’ve already said. Ancient history is a fluid science, ever-changing as new facts and theories bridge the gaps of older hypotheses and mysteries. Of course, no one likes to be proved wrong. History is a constant argument concerning the past.

  Both archaeologists and historians would come to abhor the name Christopher Ulman.

  Why?

  Ulman smiled, shivered, and fought to stay awake.

  His find was unbelievable! Would the world accept it at all? Ulman didn’t want to! Why should the world believe in it? But as Ulman translated what he could from his precious codex, the thing looked up at him and said, You cannot deny that I am in your hands! Could Ulman renounce his long years of academic training? Could he shout to the memories of his pushy professors at Yale, “Look at it yourselves! It is here in my hands! You cannot dispute that tangible fact! You cannot and I cannot!” Would they believe him?

  He knew that all the dating techniques would work, but they were unnecessary. Anyone capable of translating the codex could see the truth it bellowed to the world! Let them call the document a fake, but they would have to acknowledge that no better forgery existed, for it was flawless.

  Besides the writings themselves, Ulman had discovered the city from which they came. The world would shake at the sight of this ancient metropolis!

  It was final! These new truths would come forth and make Christopher Ulman as famous as the discoverer of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, Howard Carter. His work would be in all the papers and journals! He imagined a smiling picture of his face beneath the red letters of Time Magazine. Scholars would argue over it all for decades, as they did with the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the Middle East.

  Only one thing could suppress the appearance of these findings: the death of Christopher Ulman.

  With a frown and foggy eyes, Ulman looked at the door.

  He heard the gunshots again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  March 21

  11:03 a.m. Pacific Standard Time

  “Mr. John D. Porter?” Mrs. Welch said in a flat voice.

  “Yes.”

  “What does the D stand for?”

  “It stands for: Does That Matter?”

  “Do you know why you’re here Mr. Porter?”

  Mrs. Welch, a forty-three year old with tight brown curls, which were obviously dyed, and matching color contacts in her eyes, sat behind a neatly organized desk in her pin-striped business suit. Her skin had been tanned too often and showed the splotchy signs of sun and age, but her face wore enough make-up to look almost normal, except where it cracked near the wrinkles around her mouth. She knew her position was high and mighty relative to his, and her relaxed eyes examined Porter’s with only an occasional glance to his face.

  Porter let his eyes drop to her name plate, Debby-Anne Welch—Degree Assessment, Office of Admissions and Records. Without a smile, Porter asked, “Am I safe in assuming that I’m here for assessment?”

  “Do you know what your problem is Mr. Porter?” She spoke again in her flat voice. She really didn’t want to bother with this. In her mind, John Porter was just another smart-aleck student who wasn’t mature enough to leave the university and step into the real world. Though he never smiled, his eyes were lit with a fire that looked for an opportunity to burn someone.

  Had Porter been particularly handsome, Mrs. Welch might have treated him differently. But he had as normal and plain a face as one could get. His eyes were small, his nose average, his lips not too thin, but not thick. A light complexion showing little time spent in the sun. So he was probably a bookworm know-it-all. His brown hair, cut short, neatly fell to one side. He wore no earring, no wedding ring, and was dressed in gray slacks and a white button-down shirt. His features might have appeared attractive in their simplicity on anyone else, but not on Porter. But neither was he ugly—just bland and somewhat colorless.

  Most of all, she didn’t like his attitude. If he wanted to have a hard time, she’d be happy to give it to him.

  “I have lots of problems, Mrs. Welch,” his lips curved in a slight smile, and his eyes seemed to sigh. “To which might you be referring?”

  Mrs. Welch looked at him for a moment without speaking. There was just something else she didn’t like about him. And it wasn’t due to her bad-hair day. “Mr. Porter,” she said, sighing as she looked down at his record. “Let’s see now.” Pause. “You graduated with a bachelor of arts in history from Berk
eley and went on toooo—”

  “Chicago,” he said. His face smiled the way it had since he’d stepped into the office, his mouth barely moving, his eyes glowing. A little pride held his head aloft.

  Mrs. Welch looked through his file to confirm his words. “An MA in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. And you wrote your thesis on—”

  “Semitic temples,” he said as she read it.

  She took a long breath. “It says here that you graduated in the top of your class, summa cum laude, from Chicago University,” she flipped backward through the file. “But you didn’t do so well at Berkeley.”

  “It was a real liberal school,” he replied, looking at the white walls with colorless Yosemite photos and a matching calendar hanging as if set by a professional decorator. His gray eyes stopped on the framed shot of her father’s yellow catamaran in high waves.

  “What’s wrong with liberal schools?”

  She saw the smile as he looked back into memories of Berkeley. “Nothing, as long as there are some rules attached. We had people come to class on a daily basis with barely a stitch of clothes. I got my mortarboard. Personally, I think an anti-conservative theater allows me to do better work. But it can be a bit distracting.”

  “Berkeley didn’t have regulations?” she said sarcastically.

  He returned to his normal smile and smooth tone. “Berkeley had rules, but a great deal of the students thought they had the right to rewrite them.”

  “Maybe they did,” she said, her eyes dry and locked onto his.

  He smiled again with his mouth, but his eyes didn’t shine. “You graduated from Berkeley.”

  She nodded. “A fine school.”

  “I assume the students wore clothes in your day.”

  “We had streakers in my time,” she said, getting personal, but keeping her face hard.

  He realized that he had walked into a mine field and should back out slowly, but he couldn’t resist the set-up. “Was Berkeley an accredited university way back then?”

  She lifted her eyebrows at the insult and dove into his file. “Mr. Porter, might I assume that you have a problem with our liberal university?”