The Codex

by Douglas Preston

  “The Lippi!” cried Philip. “Was it in good condition? Had it survived the journey?”

  “It is most beautiful thing I ever see, brother. When I look at it, I see something in white man I not see before.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s one of the finest things Lippi did. To think of it stuck in a damp tomb!”

  Borabay went on: “But Cah trick Father. At end of funeral, he supposed to give Father special poison drink to make him die painless death. But Cah not do this. Cah give Father drink to make him sleep. No one know this except Cah.”

  “This sounds positively Shakespearean,” said Philip.

  “So sleeping Father is carried into tomb with treasure. They shut door, lock him in tomb. We all think he dead. Only Cah know he not dead, he only sleeping. So he later wake up in dark tomb.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Vernon, “I’m not following this.”

  “I am,” said Philip calmly. “They buried Father alive.”

  Silence.

  “Not ‘they,’ ” said Borabay. “Cah. Tara people know nothing about this trick.”

  Philip said, “With no food and water ... My God, how horrible.”

  “Brothers,” said Borabay, “in Tara tradition, much food and water put in tomb for afterlife.”

  Tom felt a crawling sensation in his spine as the implications of this sank in. He finally spoke. “So you think Father’s still alive, then, locked in the tomb?”

  “Yes.”

  Nobody said a word. An owl hooted mournfully in the dark.

  “How long has he been sealed in the tomb?” Tom asked.

  “Thirty-two days.”

  Tom felt sick. It was unthinkable.

  Borabay said, “This is terrible thing, brothers.”

  “Why in hell did Cah do this?” Vernon asked.

  “Cah angry that Father rob tomb long ago. Cah was boy then, son of chief. Father humiliate father of Cah by robbing tomb. This is Cah’s revenge.”

  “Couldn’t you stop it?”

  “I not know Cah’s plan until later. Then I try to save Father. At tomb entrance is giant stone door. I cannot move. Cah find out I go to Sukia Tara to save Father. He very angry. Cah take me prisoner and he going to kill me. He say I dirty man, half Tara, half white. Then crazy white man and soldiers come and capture Cah, take him to White City. I escape. I hear soldiers talk about you, so I come back for you.”

  “How did you know we were here?”

  “I hear soldiers talk.”

  The fire flickered as the night gathered about the five silent people sitting on the ground. Borabay’s words seemed to hang in the air a long time after he had uttered them. Borabay’s eyes traveled around the fire, looking at each one of them in turn. “Brothers, it is a terrible way to die. This death for rat, not for human being. He our father!”

  “What can we do?” Philip asked.

  Borabay spoke after a long pause, his voice low and resonant: “We rescue him.”

  52

  Hauser poured over the crude diagram of the city that he had drawn over the past two days. His men had surveyed the city twice, but it was so overgrown that making any kind of accurate map was almost impossible. There were several pyramids, dozens of temples and other structures, hundreds of places where a tomb could be hidden. Unless they got lucky, it could take weeks.

  A soldier came to the doorway and saluted.

  “Report.”

  “The sons are twenty miles back, sir, beyond the Ocata River crossing.”

  Hauser slowly laid down the map. “Alive and well?”

  “They are recovering from sickness. There is a Tara Indian taking care of them.”

  “Weapons?”

  “One useless old hunting rifle belonging to the woman. Bows and arrows and a blowgun, of course—”

  “Yes, yes.” Hauser, despite himself, felt a certain twinge of respect for the three sons, particularly Philip. By all rights they should be dead. Max had been like that, too, stubborn and lucky. It was a potent combination. A brief image of Max came into his mind, the man stripped to the waist, slashing his way through the jungle, his sweaty back peppered with chips, twigs, and leaves. For months they had hacked their way through the jungle, bitten, cut, infected, sick—finding nothing. And then Max had ditched him, gone upriver and found the prize for which they’d been searching for over a year. Hauser went home broke and had to enlist ... He shook his head, as if to throw off the resentment. That was past. The future—and Broadbent’s fortune—belonged to him.

  The teniente spoke. “Shall I send back a detail of soldiers to kill them? This time we will be sure to finish them, jefe, I promise you.”

  “No,” he said. “Let them come.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hauser turned to the teniente. “Don’t molest them. Leave them alone. Let them come.”

  53

  Philip recovered more slowly than the others, but after three more days of Borabay’s ministrations he was able to walk. One sunny morning they broke camp and set off for the Tara village in the foothills of the Sierra Azul. Borabay’s herbal concoctions, ointments, and teas had had a remarkable effect on them all. Borabay went first with his machete, setting a fast pace. By noon they had reached the broad river where they first discovered Philip, covering in five hours the distance that had taken them five days to travel on their desperate retreat. Beyond the river, as they got closer to the Sierra Azul, Borabay began to move more cautiously. They entered the foothills and began to gain altitude. The forest seemed to get sunnier, less somber. The limbs of the trees were decked with orchids, and cheerful patches of sun speckled the way ahead.

  They spent the night in an old Tara encampment, a semicircle of palm-thatched shelters, sunken among rioting greenery. Borabay waded through the waist-high vegetation, his machete singing, clearing a path to the best-preserved cluster of huts. He ducked inside, and Tom heard the smack of the machete, the stomping of feet, and some muttered cursing, first in one small hut, and then in another. Borabay appeared with a small writhing snake impaled on the point of the machete, which he flicked into the forest. “Huts now clean. You go in, set up hammocks, get rest. I make dinner.”

  Tom looked at Sally. He felt his heart beating so strongly in his chest that it was almost audible. Without exchanging a word, they both knew what they were going to do.

  They entered the smaller of the huts. It was warm inside and smelled of dry grass. Rays of sunlight pierced little holes in the palm thatch, dappling the interior with flecks of afternoon light. Tom hung up his own hammock and then watched her set up hers. The spots of light were like a handful of gold coins flung into her hair, which flashed on her as she moved. When she was done, Tom stepped toward her and took her hand. It was trembling slightly. He drew her to him, ran his fingers through her hair, and kissed her on the lips. She moved closer, her body touching his, and he kissed her again. This time her lips parted and he tasted her tongue, then kissed her mouth, her chin, the side of her neck, and she pulled him close and gripped his back as he kissed the top of her shirt, moving downward, kissing each button as he unfastened it. He freed her breasts and continued kissing them, first their soft sides and then around her nipples, hard and erect, and then slid his hands down her smooth belly. He could feel her hands massaging the muscles on his back. He unbuckled her pants and knelt, kissing her belly button and sliding the palms of his hands around to grip her from behind as he slid down her pants. She thrust her hips forward and parted her thighs with a short intake of breath as he continued kissing her, holding her buttocks, until he felt her fingers dig into his shoulders and heard her sharp intake of breath, a sudden gasp, her whole body shuddering.

  Then she undressed him and they lay down together in the warm darkness and they made love while the sun set, the little coins of light turning red and then fading as the sun sank behind the trees, leaving the hut in a hushed darkness, the only sound the faint cries that filled the strange world around them.

  54
/>   They were awakened by Borabay’s cheerful voice. Night had fallen, and the air was cooler, the smell of roasting meat drifting through the hut.

  “Dinner!”

  Tom and Sally dressed and emerged from the hut, feeling embarrassed. The sky was resplendent with stars, the great Milky Way arcing like a river of light over their heads. Tom had never seen the night so black or the Milky Way so bright.

  Borabay was sitting by the fire, turning shish kebabs while he worked on a dry gourd, drilling holes in it and slicing a groove in one end. When he was finished he lifted it to his lips and blew. A sweet, low note came out, and then another and another. He stopped and grinned.

  “Who want to hear music?”

  He began to play, the wandering notes gathering into a haunting melody. The jungle fell silent as the pure, clean sounds spilled from the gourd, faster now, rising and falling, with runs of notes as clear and hurried as a mountain stream. There were moments of quiet while the melody remained suspended in the air around them, and then the song resumed. It ended with a series of low notes as ghostly as the moan of wind in a cave.

  When he stopped, the silence lasted for minutes. Gradually the jungle noises began to enter the space vacated by the melody.

  “Beautiful,” said Sally.

  “You must’ve inherited that ability from your mother,” said Vernon. “Father had a tin ear.”

  “Yes. My mother sing very beautiful.”

  “You’re lucky,” said Vernon. “We hardly knew our mothers.”

  “You not have same mother?”

  “No. They were all different. Father pretty much raised us himself.”

  Borabay’s eyes widened. “I not understand.”

  “When there’s a divorce ...” Tom stopped. “Well, sometimes one parent gets the children and the other one disappears.”

  Borabay shook his head. “This very strange. I wish I had father.” He turned the shish kebabs. “Tell me what growing up with Father like.”

  Philip laughed harshly. “My God, where to begin? When I was a kid I thought he was terrifying.”

  Vernon broke in. “He loved beauty. So much so that he sometimes wept in front of a beautiful painting or statue.”

  Philip gave another sarcastic snort. “Yeah, weeping because he couldn’t have it. He wanted to own beauty. He wanted it for himself. Women, paintings, whatever. If it was beautiful he wanted it.”

  “That’s putting it rather crudely,” said Tom. “There’s nothing wrong with loving beauty. The world can be such an ugly place. He loved art for itself, not because it was fashionable or made him money.”

  “He didn’t live his life by other people’s rules,” Vernon said. “He was a skeptic. He marched to a different drummer.”

  Philip waved his hand. “Marched to a different drummer? No, Vernon, he whacked the different drummer upside the head, took his drum, and led the parade himself. That was his approach to life.”

  “What you do with him?”

  Vernon said, “He loved taking us camping.”

  Philip leaned back and barked a laugh. “Appalling camping trips with rain and mosquitoes, during which he brutalized us with camp chores.”

  “I caught my first fish on one of those trips,” Vernon said.

  “So did I,” said Tom.

  “Camping? What is camping?”

  But the discussion had outrun Borabay. “Father needed to get away from civilization, to simplify his existence. Because he was so complicated himself he needed to create simplicity around him, and he did that by going fishing. He loved fly-fishing.”

  Philip scoffed. “Fishing, next to Holy Communion, is perhaps the most asinine activity known to man.”

  “That remark is offensive,” said Tom, “even for you.”

  “Come now, Tom! Don’t tell me in your old age you’ve taken up that flapdoodle? That and Vernon’s eightfold way. Where did all this religiosity come from? At least Father was an atheist. There’s one good thing for you, Borabay: Father was born a Catholic, but he became a sensible, levelheaded, rock-ribbed atheist.”

  Vernon said, “There’s a lot more to the world than your Armani suits, Philip.”

  “True,” said Philip, “there’s always Ralph Lauren.”

  “Wait!” cried Borabay, “you all talk at same time. I no understand.”

  “You really got us going with that question,” said Philip, still laughing. “Got any more?”

  “Yes. What you like as sons?” Borabay asked.

  Philip’s laugh died away. The jungle rustled beyond the light of the fire.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” said Tom.

  Borabay said, “You tell me what kind of father he is to you. Now I ask what kind of sons you are to him.”

  “We were good sons,” said Vernon. “We tried to get with the program. We did everything he wanted. We followed his rules, we gave him damn musical concerts every Sunday, we went to all our lessons and tried to win the games we played, not very successfully, perhaps, but we tried.”

  “You do what he ask, but what you do that he not ask? You help him hunt? You help him put roof back on house after storm? You make dugout with him? You help him when he sick?”

  Tom suddenly had the sensation of being set up by Borabay. This was what he had been getting at all along. He wondered what Maxwell Broadbent had talked about with his eldest son in the last month of his life.

  Philip said, “Father hired people to do all those things for him. Father had a gardener, a cook, a lady who cleaned the house, people to fix the roof. And he had a nurse. In America you buy what you need.”

  “That’s not what he means,” said Vernon. “He wants to know what we did for Father when he was sick.”

  Tom felt his face flushing.

  “When he sick with the cancer, what you do? You go to his house? Stay with him?”

  “Borabay,” Philip said, his voice shrill, “it would have been utterly useless to impose ourselves on the old man. He wouldn’t have wanted us.”

  “You let stranger take care of Father when he sick?”

  “I’m not going to stand a lecture from you, or anyone, on my duties as a son,” cried Philip.

  “I not lecture. I ask simple question.”

  “The answer is yes. We let a stranger take care of Father. He made our lives miserable growing up, and we couldn’t wait to escape from him. That’s what happens when you’re a bad father—your sons leave you. They run, they flee. They can’t wait to get away from you!”

  Borabay rose to his feet. “He your father, good or bad. He feed you, he protect you, he raise you. He make you.”

  Philip stood up in a fury himself. “Is that what you call that vile eruption of bodily fluid? Making us? We were accidents, each one of us. What kind of father is it who takes children away from their mothers? What kind of father is it who raises us like we’re some kind of experiment in creating genius? Who drags us out into the jungle to die?”

  Borabay took a swing at Philip, and it happened so fast that it seemed Philip just disappeared backward into the darkness. Borabay stood, five feet of painted fury, his fists clenching and unclenching. Philip sat up in the dust beyond the fire and coughed. “Ugh.” He spat. His lip was bloody and swelling rapidly.

  Borabay stared at him, breathing hard.

  Philip wiped his face, and then a smile spread across it. “Well, well. The eldest brother finally asserts his place in the family.”

  “You no speak about Father like that.”

  “I’ll speak about him any way I want, and no illiterate savage is going to make me change my mind.”

  Borabay clenched his fists but did not make a further move toward Philip.

  Vernon helped Philip stand up. Philip dabbed at his lip, but the look on his face was triumphant. Borabay stood with uncertainty, seeming to realize that he had made a mistake, that by striking his brother he had somehow lost the argument.

  “Okay,” said Sally. “Enough talk about Maxwell Broadbent. We
can’t afford to fight at a time like this, and you all know it.”

  She looked at Borabay. “Looks like dinner’s burned.”

  Borabay silently removed the blackened shish kebabs and began parceling them out on leaves.

  Philip’s harsh phrase rang in Tom’s mind: That’s what happens when you’re a bad father—your sons leave you. And he wondered: Was that what they had done?

  55

  Mike Graff settled in the wing chair by the fire, folding his neat legs one across the other, an alert, pleasant expression on his face. It amazed Skiba how, in spite of everything, Graff managed to keep that crisp B-school aura of self-confidence. Graff could be paddling Charon’s own boat down the River Styx toward the very gates of hell, and he’d still be sporting that fresh-faced look, persuading his fellow passengers that heaven was just around the corner.

  “What can I do for you, Mike?” Skiba asked pleasantly.

  “What’s with the stock these past two days? It’s gone up ten percent.”

  Skiba shook his head. The house was on fire while Graff was in the kitchen complaining about cold coffee. “Just be glad that we survived the piece in the Journal about Phloxatane.”

  “All the more reason to worry why our stock is going up.

  “Look, Mike—”

  “Lewis, you didn’t tell Fenner last week about the Codex, did you?”

  “I did.”

  “Christ. You know what a scumbag that guy is. We’re in enough trouble as it is without adding insider trading to our bill of fare.”

  Skiba looked at the man. He really should have gotten rid of Graff before. Graff had so compromised them both that now dismissal was out of the question. What did it matter? It was over—for Graff, for the company, and especially for him. He wanted to scream at the irrelevancy of it. A bottomless gulf had opened below him—they were in free fall—and Graff still didn’t know it.

  “He was going to downgrade Lampe to a sell. I had to, Mike. Fenner’s no fool. He won’t breathe a word of it. Would he risk throwing his life away for a few hundred thousand on the side?”