The Codex

by Douglas Preston

  Tom said, “Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that simple.”

  “How so?”

  Tom glanced at his brothers. “We’ve got a problem, and his name is Hauser.”

  “Hauser!” Broadbent was astonished.

  Tom nodded and told their father all the details of their respective journeys.

  “Hauser!” Broadbent repeated, looking at Philip. “You teamed up with that bastard?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Philip. “I figured ...”

  “You figured he’d know where I went. My fault: I should have seen that was a possibility. Hauser’s a ruthless sadist, almost killed a girl once. The biggest mistake in my life was partnering with him.” Broadbent eased himself down on a shelf of rock and shook his shaggy head. “I can’t believe the risks you took getting here. God, what a mistake I made. The last one of many, in fact.”

  “You our father,” said Borabay.

  Broadbent snorted. “Some father. Putting you to a ridiculous test like this. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I can’t understand what got into me. What a damn stupid, foolish old bastard I’ve been.”

  “We haven’t exactly been My Three Sons,” said Philip.

  “Four sons,” said Borabay.

  “Or ... perhaps there are more?” Vernon asked, raising one eyebrow.

  Broadbent shook his head. “Not that I know of. Four fine sons if only I’d had the brains to realize it.” He fixed his blue eyes on Vernon. “Except for that beard, Vernon. Good Christ, when are you going to trim that hairy appendage? You look like a mullah.”

  Vernon said, “You don’t look too clean-cut yourself.”

  Broadbent waved his hand and laughed. “Forget I said that. Old habits die hard. Keep your damn beard.”

  There was an awkward silence. The sun was rising higher above the mountains, and the light was turning from gold to white. A flock of chattering birds flew past, dipping and rising and swerving in unison.

  Tom turned to Borabay. “We need to think of our plan of escape.”

  “Yes, brother. I think of this already. We wait here until dark. Then we go back.” He glanced up at the clear sky. “It rain tonight, give us cover.”

  “What about Hauser?” Broadbent asked.

  “He search for tomb in White City. He not yet think of looking in cliffs. I think we get by him. He not know we here.”

  Broadbent looked around. “You didn’t bring any food with you, by any chance? That stuff they left me in the tomb wasn’t fit for an in-flight meal.”

  Borabay unpacked food from his palm-leaf backpack and began setting it out. Broadbent shuffled over a little unsteadily. “Fresh fruit. My God.” He picked up a mango and bit into it, the juice running out of his mouth and dripping onto his shirt. “This is heaven.” He crammed the mango into his mouth, ate a second one, and then polished off a couple of curwa fruits and some smoked lizard fillets.

  “Borabay, you could open a restaurant.”

  Tom watched his father eat. He could hardly believe that the old man was still alive. There was something unreal about it. Everything, and nothing, had changed.

  Broadbent finished his meal and leaned back against the stone wall, gazing out over the mountains.

  “Father,” Philip asked, “if you don’t mind telling us, what happened to you in that tomb?”

  “Philip, I’ll tell you how it was. We had a big funeral—no doubt Borabay told you all about it. I drank Cah’s infernal drink. The next thing I knew, I was waking up. It was pitch-black. As a good atheist I’d always believed death was the end of consciousness. That was it. But here I was, still conscious, even though I was sure I was dead. I’ve never been so frightened in my life. And then, as I fumbled around in the darkness in a total panic, I had a sudden thought: Not only am I dead, but I’ve gone to hell!”

  “You didn’t really believe that,” said Philip.

  He shook his head. “I did. You have no idea how terrified I was. I wailed and howled like a lost soul. I begged God, I prayed on my knees, I repented, I swore I’d be good if only he’d give me one more chance. I felt like one of those poor sods in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment crying out for forgiveness while being dragged down by demons into a lake of fire.

  “And then, when I was all tired out with wailing and self-pity, I began to recover a bit of my sanity. That’s when I crawled around and realized I was in the tomb—and it dawned on me that I wasn’t dead after all, that Cah had buried me alive. He’d never forgiven me for what I’d done to his father. I should have known it; Cah always struck me as a shifty old fox. When I found the food and water I knew I was in for a long ordeal. I had planned this whole thing to be a lighthearted challenge for the three of you. And then suddenly my life depended on your success.”

  “A lighthearted challenge?” Philip repeated skeptically.

  “I wanted to shock you into doing something more important with your lives. What I didn’t realize is that each of you is doing something important—that is, living the life that you want to live. Who am I to judge?” He paused, cleared his throat, shook his head. “Here I was locked up with what I thought was my treasure, my life’s work—and it was crap. It was useless. Suddenly it meant nothing. In the dark I couldn’t even look at it. Being entombed alive shook me to the core. I found myself looking back on my whole life with a kind of loathing. I had been a bad father to you, a bad husband, greedy, selfish—and then I found myself praying.”

  “No,” said Philip.

  Broadbent nodded. “What else was there to do? And then I heard voices, a bang, then a rumbling sound, and the light came in, and there you all were! My prayers had been answered.”

  “You mean,” Philip asked, “you found religion? You’re a believer?”

  “You’re goddamn right I found religion!” He lapsed into silence, looking out over the vast landscape stretching below, the endless mountains and jungles. He shifted, coughed. “Funny, I feel like I’ve died and been reborn.”

  69

  From his hiding place, Hauser could hear the murmur of their voices carried up on the wind. He couldn’t make out individual words, but he had no doubt what was going on: They were having a grand old time looting their father’s tomb. No doubt they were planning to take out the smaller stuff—including the Codex. The woman, Colorado, knew what it was worth. That would be the first thing they would take.

  In his mind, Hauser ran through the list of other treasures in the tomb. A great deal of Maxwell Broadbent’s collection would be portable, including some of the most valuable items. There were some rare carved gemstones from the Indian subcontinent. There was a large collection of Inca and Aztec gold artifacts, most of which were small, as were the ancient Greek gold coins. There were two extremely valuable Etruscan bronze figurines, each about ten inches high, that weighed less than twenty pounds apiece. All these things could be carried on the back of a single man. Value: between ten and twenty million.

  They would be able to carry out the Lippi and the Monet. These two paintings were relatively small—the Lippi was twenty-eight by eighteen inches, the Monet thirty-six by twenty-six. Both had been packed unframed. The Lippi, painted on gessoed wood, weighed ten pounds and the Monet eight pounds. The two boxes that held them weighed no more than thirty pounds apiece. Both boxes could be tied together, strapped on a pack frame, and carried out on one person’s back. Value: upward of one hundred million.

  There were, of course, many treasures they could not take. The Pontormo, worth perhaps thirty or forty million, was too large. So was the Bronzino portrait. The Mayan stelae and the Soderini bronzes were too heavy. But the two Braques were portable. The smaller of the two was one of Braque’s earliest cubist masterpieces, which might fetch five or ten million. There was a late Imperial Roman bronze statue of a boy, half life-size, that weighed a hundred pounds—probably too much to carry out. There were Cambodian temple figurines in stone, a couple of early Chinese bronze urns, some Mayan inlaid turquoise plaques ... Max had had a good
eye, and he had gone for quality, not quantity. Over the years, a lot of art had passed through his hands, and he had shortstopped only the very best for himself.

  Yes, Hauser thought, if it weren’t for him the four of them below could remove on their backs artworks amounting to perhaps two hundred million dollars. Almost half the value of the entire collection.

  He shifted, stretching his cramped legs. The sun was bright and hot. He glanced at his watch. Five to ten. He had decided to move out at ten o’clock. Time had little meaning out here, but the habits of discipline gave him pleasure. It was, he thought, more a philosophy of life than anything else. He stood up, stretched his arms, and took a few deep breaths. He did a rapid check of his Steyr AUG. It was, as usual, in perfect working order. He smoothed his hair again, then examined his cuticles and nails. There was a rim of dirt under one of them; he scraped it out with the end of his nail file and flicked it away. Then he examined the backs of his hands, which were smooth, hairless, and white and showed only the faintest trace of veins; they were the hands of a thirty-year-old, not a man of sixty. He had always taken good care of his hands. The sun glistened off the array of heavy gold and diamond rings on his fingers. He flexed his hands five times, balling and opening them, and then shook out the creases in his khaki pants, rotated his ankles, rolled his head around on his neck five times, opened his arms wide, and inhaled again. Exhaled. Inhaled. He examined his crisp white shirt. He would consider this op successful if, at the end, his shirt was free of spots. It was such a trial keeping one’s clothes clean in the jungle.

  Hauser eased the Steyr AUG back on his shoulder and headed down the trail.

  70

  The four brothers and their father rested in the shade along a shelf of rock to the side of the tomb door. They had eaten most of their food, and Tom passed around a canteen of water. There was so much Tom had wanted to say to his father, and he had no doubt his brothers felt the same way—and yet, after the initial outburst of talk, they had fallen silent. Somehow it was enough to be together. The canteen made the rounds, with a gurgle as each one drank, and ended up back with Tom. He screwed the top on and shoved it back in his small rucksack.

  Finally Maxwell Broadbent spoke. “So Marcus Hauser is out there, looking to rob my tomb.” He shook his head. “What a world.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Philip again.

  “It was my fault,” said Broadbent. “No more apologies. Everything is my fault.”

  This was something new, Tom thought: Maxwell Broadbent admitting he was wrong. He seemed to be the same gruff old man, but he had changed. Definitely, he had changed.

  “There’s only one thing I want right now, and that’s for my four sons to get out of here alive. I’m going to be a drag on you. You leave me here and I’ll take care of myself. I’ll greet that man Hauser in a way that he’ll remember.”

  “What!” Philip exclaimed. “After all we did to rescue you?” He was genuinely outraged.

  “Come now. I’m going to be dead in a month or two anyway. Leave me to deal with Hauser while you escape.”

  Philip rose up, furious. “Father, we didn’t come all this way to abandon you to Hauser.”

  “I’m a sorry reason to risk your lives.”

  “Without you, we no go,” Borabay said. “Wind come from east, bring storm tonight. We wait here till dark, then go. Get across bridge during storm.”

  Broadbent exhaled and wiped his face.

  Philip cleared his throat. “Father?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “I don’t mean to bring up an unwelcome subject, but what are we going to do about the stuff in your tomb?”

  Tom immediately thought of the Codex. He had to bring it out, too—not only for himself, but for Sally and for the world.

  Broadbent gazed at the ground for a moment before speaking. “I hadn’t thought about that. It just doesn’t seem important to me anymore. But I’m glad you brought it up, Philip. I suppose we should take the Lippi and anything else that’s easy to carry. At least we can keep a few things out of that greedy bastard’s hands. It kills me to think he’s going to get most of the stuff, but I guess it can’t be helped.”

  “When we get out, we’ll report it to the FBI, Interpol—”

  “Hauser’s going to get away with it, Philip, and you know it. Which reminds me. There was something odd about the boxes in the tomb, something that I’ve been wondering about. As much as I hate to go back in there, there’s something I’ve got to check out.”

  “I’ll help you,” Philip said, springing to his feet.

  “No. I need to go in there alone. Borabay, give me a light.”

  Borabay lit a bundle of reeds and handed it to his father.

  The old man disappeared through the doorway, and Tom could see the yellow halo moving about in the tomb among the crates and boxes. Maxwell Broadbent’s voice boomed out. “God knows why all this bloody crap was so important to me once.”

  The light moved deeper into the darkness and vanished.

  Philip stood up and walked a tight circle, stretching his legs. He lit his pipe. “I hate to think of Hauser getting his hands on the Lippi.”

  A voice, cool and amused, came floating toward them:

  “I say, did someone mention my name?”

  71

  Hauser spoke softly, soothingly, his weapon leveled and ready to go at the slightest movement. The three brothers and the Indian, sitting on the far side of the open tomb door, turned their heads toward him, blank terror in their eyes.

  “Do not discommode yourselves by rising. Do not move at all, except to blink your eyes.” He paused. “Philip, so good to see you recovered. You’ve come a long way from the effete little snit that walked into my office two months ago, with that ridiculous briar pipe.”

  Hauser took a light step forward, braced, ready to mow them down at the slightest movement. “How kind of you to guide me to the tomb. And you’ve even opened the door for me! Very considerate. Now listen carefully. If you follow my directions no one will be hurt.”

  Hauser paused to examine the four faces in front of him. No one was panicking, and no one was gearing up to play the hero. These were sensible people. He said, as softly and pleasantly as possible, “Someone tell the Indian he needs to put his bow and arrows down. Slowly and smoothly—no sudden movements, please.”

  Borabay took off his quiver and bow and let them fall in front of him.

  “So the Indian understands English. Good. And now I will ask each of you fellows to unsheath and drop your machetes one at a time. You first, Philip. Remain seated.”

  Philip unsheathed his knife and dropped it.

  “Vernon?”

  Vernon did the same and then Tom.

  “Now, Philip, I want you to go over to where you have piled your packs, get them, and bring them to me. Easy does it.” He made a little gesture with the muzzle of his gun.

  Philip collected the packs and placed them at Hauser’s feet.

  “Excellent! Now let’s empty our pockets. Turn the pockets inside out and leave them that way. Drop everything on the ground in front of you.”

  They complied. Hauser was surprised to see that they had not, as he supposed, been loading up on treasure from the tomb.

  “And now you’ll stand up. All at once, in unison, in slow motion. Good! Now, just moving your legs from the knees down, taking small steps, keeping your arms very still, you will move back. Keep in a group there, that’s right. One step at a time.”

  As they shuffled back in this ridiculous fashion, Hauser stepped forward. They had bunched up, instinctively, as people did when in danger—especially family members herded under gunpoint. He had seen it before, and it made everything so much easier.

  “Everything’s just fine,” he said softly. “I don’t want to hurt anybody—all I want is Max’s grave goods. I’m a professional, and like most professionals I dislike killing.” Right. His finger caressed the smooth plastic curve of the trigger, found its place, began to tighte
n it back to full auto position. They were in place. There was nothing they could do now. They were as good as dead.

  “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” And then he couldn’t help adding: “Nobody’s going to feel a thing.” He squeezed for real now, felt that imperceptible give in the trigger that he knew so well, that millisecond release after the feeling of resistance, and simultaneously Hauser saw a swift movement in his peripheral field of vision, and there was an explosion of sparks and flame and he fell, firing wildly as he went, the bullets ricocheting off the stone walls, and he had a terrifying glimpse of what had struck him before he hit the stone ground.

  The thing had come straight out of the tomb, half naked, face white as a vampire, sunken-eyed, stinking of decomposition, its bony limbs as gray and hollow as death, holding aloft a burning brand that it had just struck him with, and it was still coming at him with a shrieking mouth full of brown teeth.

  Damned if it wasn’t the ghost of Maxwell Broadbent himself!

  72

  Hauser rolled when he hit the ground, still clutching his weapon. He twisted, trying to get back into firing position, but it was too late and the ragged specter of Maxwell Broadbent had fallen on top of him, roaring and stabbing and slashing him across the face with the burning brand; there were showers of sparks, and he smelled burning hair as he tried to ward off the blows with one hand, clutching his gun with the other. It was impossible to get off a shot while the attacker was trying to gouge out his eyes with the burning brand. He managed to wrench free, and then fired blindly, from on his back, wildly sweeping the muzzle back and forth, hoping to hit something, anything. But the specter seemed to have vanished.

  He stopped firing and gingerly sat up. His face and right eye felt like they were on fire. He yanked the canteen out of his pack and doused his face.

  Christ, how it hurt!

  He dabbed the water off his face. Hot coals and sparks from the brand had lodged inside his nose, under one eyelid, in his hair and his cheek. The monstrous thing that had come out of the tomb—could it really have been a ghost? He opened, painfully, his right eye. As he gently probed around it with his fingertip, he realized the damage was all to the eyebrow and lid. The cornea was intact, and he hadn’t lost his vision. He poured some water into his handkerchief, wrung it out, and blotted his face.