The Mayan Codex as-2

by Mario Reading

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Sabir.’ Abi sidestepped towards the door. ‘You saved your house. Be satisfied with that. Shame, though. I enjoy a good blaze. But it’ll have to wait for another day. We’ll take a rain check on this one.’

  Sabir stood with the gun still trained on Abi. He couldn’t think what else to do.

  Vau went to join his brother at the door.

  ‘Look. Now you can get both of us again with just one barrel. But you’d have a hard time explaining it away, wouldn’t you? And you’d have an unpleasant bit of rearranging to do before the cops got here. That sort of thing takes a cooler head than yours.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What do you think? The back door was open. You even let us in yourself. No sign of breaking and entering anywhere. And as you can see, we aren’t armed.’ Abi had slipped the fighting baton back inside his sleeve ten minutes before, after finding the bedroom empty. ‘No. What really happened was we travelled all the way out here to the United States just in order to forgive you for our brother’s death. To reach closure on it for our family. The Yanks love all that psycho stuff. But you turned crazy, like your mother, and threatened us with a shotgun. Just think how that would play out in a court of law – especially as it’s common knowledge that you were suspected of murder, and on the run from the French police, just five short months ago. Cops have long memories, Sabir. Shit sticks. And there’s no stink without shit.’

  Sabir snatched at the telephone. What else was there to do? Pull the trigger on an empty chamber? If there’d been any slugs in his shotgun he might have let them have it, if only for the crack about his mother. But as things stood, he could only watch them back out of the door while his finger tapped out three random numbers on the telephone keypad.

  As soon as the twins were downstairs and he heard the back door safely slam, Sabir pressed down on the receiver button, cancelling the call.

  He wouldn’t be calling any cops on this particular watch.

  7

  Sabir stood at his bedroom window and watched the twins get into their car, fire up the engine, and roar away from the kerbside with predictably screaming tyres.

  He turned around and tossed the useless shotgun onto his bed. Then he lay down beside it and closed his eyes. God, if he could only sleep. Instead he lay awake, the adrenalin rush triggered by the implicit violence of the last fifteen minutes slowly leaching out of his system.

  One thing he knew for certain. From now on his house would be as good as dead to him. That much was obvious even to an imbecile. Maintaining a fixed station like this, with Achor Bale’s twin brothers on his trail, would make him more than merely vulnerable. It would confirm him as suicidal.

  No. The only thing for it was to get on the road and keep moving, taking any information he needed with him in his head. Curiously, the thought of going on the run again didn’t worry Sabir overmuch. In his mind he was a thousand miles away from Stockbridge already.

  Much to his surprise, his investigation of the 52 lost Nostradamus quatrains had moved on by leaps and bounds in the past few weeks, to the extent that he was becoming increasingly eager to test out his new theories in the field. Maybe, just maybe, he could squeeze a book’s worth of material out of the thing without giving anything crucial away.

  Sabir realized that only by publishing a rigorously expurgated version of the prophecies – with his own tentative suggestions as to their significance – could he protect both himself and the future of Alexi and Yola’s unborn child. He would, in effect, be conducting a damage limitation exercise in expedient disinformation.

  When Captain Joris Calque of France’s Police Nationale had visited him in hospital all those months ago, the man had not come bearing a punnet of grapes. He had come on a fishing expedition for reasons as to why the Countess’s eldest son, Achor Bale, had been pursuing Sabir and his two Gypsy friends, Alexi Dufontaine and Yola Samana, halfway across France with such a murderous and single-minded intensity.

  At first, Sabir had refused to enlighten him. Then Calque had reminded him of the sacrifices made by his late assistant, Paul Macron, and by the seriously injured Sergeant Spola in an effort to keep Sabir and his friends alive. Sabir had been forced to acknowledge that Calque had played fair by both him and by Yola and Alexi. At least according to his lights.

  Reluctantly, he had taken pity on the man. He had begun by explaining how he believed that Nostradamus’s 52 lost quatrains constituted a 52-year rundown towards the date of a possible Armageddon. And that in his opinion the 52-year cycle had begun in 1960, leading to a possible end date circa 2012. And that this end date corresponded as near as dammit to the Mayan Great Change, which was predicted, according to the Maya Long Count Calendar, to occur on 21 December of that same year.

  He had gone on to explain how each quatrain in the cycle appeared to point towards the events in just one specific run-up year. The list, in its entirety, covered the first French nuclear test in Algeria, the serial end of the French and British Empires, the Berlin Wall, Yuri Gagarin’s trip into space, the Kennedy brothers’ assassinations, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Arab/Israeli Six Day War, the US Defeat in Vietnam, the Cambodian Genocide, the Mexico City earthquake, the First and Second Gulf Wars, the 9/11 Twin Towers Disaster, the New Orleans Floods and the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

  According to Sabir’s theory of Nostradamus’s intentions, as each event unfolded just as the seer had predicted, the exact End date of the cycle would, in consequence, became ever more firmly fixed in people’s minds. This would then enable the world’s population to come to terms with what awaited them and – if at all possible – do something about it. This part of Nostradamus’s master plan had not worked out quite as the seer intended.

  Instead of being one amongst millions in on the secret, Sabir was now the only man on earth who knew that the prophecy earmarked for the present year purported to describe the location of a new visionary who would either confirm or deny the end date – a person capable, like Nostradamus, of seeing into the future and channelling the information found there. Only this person could tell the world what awaited it – regeneration or apocalypse.

  The final-but-one prophecy in the 52-year cycle went on to describe the birth and identity of the Second Coming and his symbolic role against the Antichrist. It described how the knowledge of the birth of the Second Coming would dilute the Antichrist’s power, and make him vulnerable. And how this knowledge would gather together both believers and non-believers in a tidal wave of righteousness combating the forces of evil.

  This information Sabir kept rigorously to himself. There clearly had to be a reason why Nostradamus had given his prophecies to the Gypsies for safekeeping, and that reason was that the Second Coming, ergo the Parousia, was due to be born of the direct line of the guardians of the prophecies.

  This child was now on the way, and Yola, Sabir’s blood sister, was to be its mother. She had conceived the child on the beach at Cargese, in Corsica, after her notional – although entirely voluntary – kidnap by her long-time sweetheart, Alexi Dufontaine. Yola had confided to Sabir that she had conceived the child at the exact moment she lost her virginity, just as a flight of ducks had cast their shadow over the mating couple. Later, after Alexi had symbolically plucked out her eyes – Yola had used the Gypsy euphemism for female sexual ecstasy when describing the event – a male dog had run up to her on the beach and had licked her hand. This was how she knew their child would be a son.

  More than four centuries before, Nostradamus had given the Samana family the location and safekeeping of the prophecies precisely in order to protect them from the prophecies’ unintended consequences. The fact that the Parousia was to emerge from the most hated, reviled, and discriminated-against portion of the world population – people with no clear land of their own, and no clear identity beyond that which they carried with them – would form a necessary part of the supranational healing process. The Gypsies were a nomadic people, shunned and sideline
d by virtually all established cultures. Always the optimist, Nostradamus must have reckoned that if the world were ever to accept a saviour from amongst such a company, it must first – almost by definition – have learned the virtues of tolerance and inclusiveness.

  Sabir shook his head in despair. It was clear that the world simply hadn’t come that far yet. Forbearance and inclusiveness were as far off the agenda as they had been in Nostradamus’s time. People paid lip service to ideas of colour-blindness, religious tolerance, and fair play, but if ever their own little bailiwicks were threatened, they very swiftly reverted to racial protectionism and national isolationism – ‘strangers out’ still seemed to be the motto in extremis. As a result of this, nothing on earth would ever get Sabir to divulge Yola’s true identity and whereabouts, and through her, the identity of her unborn son. Not to Calque. Not to anybody.

  The penultimate prophecy in the cycle went on to describe the Third Antichrist – a being who would, if nothing was done to prevent him, trigger 2012’s final holocaust. That, too, needed to be kept secret.

  But Sabir had to have something to sell to his publishers and the public at large. A suitable hook on which to hang his story. Or what old-time comedians would have called a shtick.

  The safest bet seemed to consist of the narrative of his search for the unique visionary Nostradamus had spoken of in that year’s prophecy. A person apparently so in tune with the matted web of time that they could disentangle its threads and read the future from them.

  If this person existed then Sabir would find him. And to heck with the Countess, the Corpus Maleficus, and the de Bale twins.

  8

  Sabir straightened up from checking underneath his three-year-old Grand Cherokee. The garage had been locked tight. He didn’t think there had been any way that the twins could have gained access to his vehicle.

  Still, forewarned is forearmed. Both Achor Bale and the French police had used electronic tracker systems during their pursuit of Sabir and his friends in France. Sabir had never encountered such systems before that time, but he would certainly not overlook them again. He needed his car to get to the airport, and he needed that car to be clean. The last thing he wanted was for the twins to dog his trail all the way to Saudi Arabia.

  He locked and alarmed the garage door behind him and trudged back towards the house. Since the events of the night before he had taken to carrying the shotgun with him wherever he went, trusting that his neighbours wouldn’t think he was partly off his trolley, and call the cops. He’d worked out a possible cover story to deal with that eventuality – something about a rogue opossum that had been eating through his telephone wires – but he hadn’t had cause to try it out on anyone yet, as none of the neighbouring householders appeared to have noticed his new, military-style incarnation.

  Once inside the house he flung a few articles of clothing into a carryall, and gathered up his emergency reserve of travellers’ cheques, his credit cards, his passport, and his cell phone charger. Then he stowed the shotgun back on its meat hook in the wine cellar, sealed the house as tightly as he was able, and started back towards the garage.

  Halfway there he slowed down, ready to run again. A car was parked outside the garage door, completely blocking the entrance. There was no way on earth the gate could be swung up and over, as it was designed to be.

  Sabir looked swiftly behind him. Surely they wouldn’t come at him here, out in the open?

  The driver’s door of the car opened, and a familiar face appeared over the lip of the roof-rack.

  Sabir dropped his carryall. ‘Captain Calque. Jesus H. Christ. You almost gave me a heart attack. I thought it was the twins again. What the heck are you doing here?’

  ‘The twins?’ Calque stepped away from the car, his facial expression taking on a new urgency. ‘The twins have been here already? And you are still alive?’

  Sabir flashed Calque a look. ‘As luck would have it.’ He picked up his carryall and continued walking. He glanced inside Calque’s car. It was empty. ‘This an official visit of some sort? Tidying up loose ends?’ Sabir was trying hard to make his voice casual. He didn’t want Calque interfering in his plans. Muddying the waters. Queering his pitch for the new book.

  Calque allowed his gaze to play up and down the road. He, too, was now busy playing a part. ‘No. I took early retirement. I was invalided out of the service. I’m working on my own time now.’

  ‘You? Invalided out? That surprises me. I’d have thought they’d have had to tie you to a stretcher and wheel you out of your office in a straitjacket before that ever happened.’ Sabir cocked his head to one side. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? Are you on vacation? Come to see the fall colours, perhaps? And so you just dropped by to see me for old times’ sake?’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘Christ, Calque, you’re not really a leaf peeper, are you?’

  Calque shook his head. The sarcastic undertones in Sabir’s voice were unmistakable. He realized he’d have to cut straight to the chase or risk losing him. ‘No. I’m not a leaf peeper, as you so charmingly put it. I came out here to warn you, Sabir. About the twins. And there didn’t seem to be any other way to do it except in person. I assumed, you see, that you would prefer I didn’t contact you through the local constabulary.’ Despite his best efforts, Calque had shifted back into police mode again. ‘Why don’t you leave your damned telephone switched on, man? And why don’t you answer your messages? You must have a death wish.’

  Sabir gave a non-committal shrug. Privately, he was more than a little taken aback by Calque’s tone. ‘It’s a long story. Basically, I can’t sleep at night. So during the day I leave everything switched off so that if I do manage to drop off to sleep, the fucking telephone won’t fucking wake me up.’ He hesitated. ‘If this isn’t an official visit, Captain, what is it? And how come you already know about the twins?’

  Calque chucked his chin in the direction of his car. ‘Get in and I’ll tell you.’

  9

  ‘The White Horse Inn? You’re staying at the White Horse inn?’

  ‘Why is that so strange?’ Calque was concentrating on his driving – he was clearly unused to a manual gear change.

  ‘Don’t you realize you’ll be paying fall rates?’

  ‘Fall rates? What are those?’

  ‘Christ, Calque. Didn’t you hear anything I said to you back there in front of the garage? It’s when the inns and guest houses pump up their prices for the leaf peepers coming in to see the fall colours. You pay maybe 75 per cent over the usual odds.’

  Calque shrugged. ‘It was not my idea. It was that of my companion.’

  ‘Your companion? You’ve come out here with a girlfriend?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. Yes.’

  Sabir shook his head. He screwed himself nervously around in his seat.

  ‘It’s all right, Sabir. We aren’t being followed.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I’m a professional. I’ve been watching all the way. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll stick to the public rooms. We just need to talk, that’s all.’

  The two men got out of Calque’s car. The ride to the inn hadn’t taken them more than eight minutes in toto.

  Sabir nodded to the desk clerk as they walked through the lobby.

  ‘They know you here, then?’

  ‘Calque, I’ve lived here all my life. I was born maybe three miles down the road.’

  ‘It’s nice to belong someplace.’ Calque’s attention was somewhere else, however. He had seen Lamia seated on one of the lobby sofas, near to an open fire. ‘Come with me. I want you to meet someone.’

  When he first caught sight of Lamia’s face Sabir flinched backwards, as though he’d inadvertently stumbled into an electric fence.

  Calque turned towards him, shocked. ‘You two already know each other?’

  Lamia was staring down at the floor. She was clearly mortified by Sabir’s reaction to her.

  Sabir took a deep breath. ‘No. No. We’
ve never met. I’m sorry. It was a bit of a shock.’

  Lamia looked up. The undamaged part of her face was still flushed from the effect of Sabir’s reaction. ‘I know I’m not pretty to look at, Mr Sabir. But few people respond to me in quite the way you did.’

  Sabir could feel Calque’s critical gaze eating through the small of his back. ‘It’s not your face. Please don’t think that.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Sabir shook his head. ‘I’ve seen you in a dream. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Sabir turned entreatingly towards Calque. ‘Maybe the Captain hasn’t explained to you what happened to me earlier this summer? There’s no reason why, I suppose.’

  With a downward thrust of his arm, Calque indicated that Sabir should sit. He was glaring at Sabir as though, given half the chance, he would gladly have smashed one of the hotel chairs over his head. ‘May I introduce Lamia de Bale? Adam Sabir.’

  Sabir didn’t sit down. He simply stood and stared down at Calque. ‘De Bale? She’s one of the de Bales? Jesus Christ, Calque. Are you out of your mind?’

  Calque made another sharp movement with his hand. ‘Do I look as though I am out of my mind? Do I look as though I am subject to sudden sharp rushes of blood to my brain? Mademoiselle de Bale has been of extraordinary service to me in recent days. She has, as it were, fallen foul of the rest of her family. Her life, like yours, is in imminent danger. So please sit down and make a pretence, at least, of being civilized.’

  Sabir dropped onto the chair behind him. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lamia’s face. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve heard of you. Heard your name mentioned. I know who you are now.’

  Lamia let an embarrassed hand flutter in front of her cheek. ‘Well that’s all right then. Would you like me to veil myself, perhaps? Like a Muslim woman? Then you wouldn’t have to stare at me quite so hard.’