‘I am a mouthpiece. Yes. That is so. This much they accept.’
‘Then will you offer the gringos back the skull?’
The Halach Uinic closed his eyes. This was the thirteenth skull they were talking about. The skull of power. He had heard tales about this skull for the entire length of his life. Of where it might be hidden. Of the secrets to which it might provide the key. Some thought that it might even hold the answer to what would happen after the time of the Great Change – the date of 21 December 2012 that marked the end of the Maya Long Count calendar.
The Halach Uinic knew that only with this skull in place, and with suitable offerings, would the twelve other ritual skulls agree to sing and tell the Chilans of what might come to pass in the future – of what might come to pass when all was said and done.
You are being a nicanic, the Halach Uinic said to himself – a simpleton. The others priests would do well to tie you up now and throw you into the X’Canche cenote – let you drown upside down as a sacrifice to the gods.
‘I will offer the gringos back the skull. Just as I have offered you back the book that you brought us. Will that satisfy you?’
‘Yes. And when will you do this? Now?’
‘As soon as we reach Ek Balam. I will order the site closed for the day. We will mount the great pyramid together. I will make you both the offer there. In front of the Ahau Kan Mai, the Chilans, the Ah Kin, and the shamans, all of whom I will request to assemble.’
You nodded. What had caused you to make this stipulation? Why had you spoken in this way to the great man? Had you turned mad? In your entire life, you had never spoken back to one in authority. You had surely entered a realm of being beyond even your wildest dreams.
Your stomach gave a sudden lurch, and you found yourself picturing your hut, and the figure of your mother waiting for you in the doorway at the end of the day. You wished to be back in Veracruz, returning from your day’s work, tired but content. You wanted your mother to scrub your back and face with a damp cloth. To tease you about not yet finding a wife to do these things for you. A daughter-in-law to help her in the kitchen and about the hut. To give her grandchildren.
You closed your eyes and you thought of all the money the Halach Uinic had said would be yours if you sold the book to the gringos. Surely the Halach Uinic could copy the book? This way you could take the money with a clear conscience. Wasn’t this what he had been suggesting?
Then you could build a larger house for yourself and your mother. Find a wife to marry, who would honour your mother and make her life a little easier. You might buy a small chayotal. Grow squash and coffee beans. Even run a few cows.
You knew the Halach Uinic was watching you. He had a strange expression on his face. As if he understood the thoughts that were passing through your mind, and was refusing to judge you for them.
66
Alastor de Bale watched the Mexican with what passed for interest. In truth, it had been many years since Alastor had taken an interest in anybody but himself.
He had the wasting disease, cachexia – in Alastor’s case it wasn’t caused by cancer or Aids or any of the other usual suspects, but came about thanks to metabolic acidosis, as a result, his doctors told him, of decreased protein synthesis twinned with increased protein catabolism caused by five or six generations of inbreeding.
Alastor had no idea what any of this meant, nor was he interested enough in his condition to find out. He knew that the cachexia would do for him in maybe two to three years tops, and all that concerned him now was to procure himself a regular adrenalin rush – this was the only thing that cut through the inevitable lethargy, fatigue, and weakness bought about by his condition. And if he read the signs right, the bumptious Mexican he was looking at was definitely going to come up trumps on that score.
‘I can get you anything you want, man. If you can pay, that is. US dollars. Small denominations only. Nothing over a twenty. I get you Uzi. Even Mini-Uzi. I got a Model 12 Beretta. I got a Heckler amp; Koch MP5K. I even get you a Stoner M63. Still in its wrappers. Never used. Guy who ordered it got himself whacked on the way to pick it up.’
‘Handguns?’
‘Anything you want, man. Anything you want. I got Makarov. I got PSM. I got CZ.’
‘I don’t want anything Eastern bloc.’
‘Okay. Okay. I got a Glock 18. I got a Walther P4. I got a Star 30M. I maybe even got a MAB P15.’
‘I don’t want a MAB P15.’
‘Anything you say, man. I get you anything you say.’
‘You got a Beretta 92SB?’
‘What? US military model?’
‘With the extended hammer pin. Yes.’
‘I get you that too.’
It was at this exact moment that Alastor knew that he was about to be taken for a ride. Manna from heaven was all very well, but, like walking on water, you had to believe in it in the first place. ‘We need eleven guns in total. Get me everything we talked about bar the big Uzi. And no Eastern bloc crap, remember?’
‘No. No. I’m not stupid. The customer always king in my book.’
‘How much?’
The Mexican almost drooled. ‘Ten thousand bucks.’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Eh, man. I don’t want to do that. I get girls for that. All sorts. You want girls too? I get you anything you want. Green. Black. Red. White. Pussy on the slant. Pussy straight up. You call it.’
‘I’ll give you five thousand bucks.’
‘Now you got to be kidding me, man. You know how hard it is to get these things into the country?’
‘About as hard as trafficking those girls you told me about. I know all about the tunnels you guys have got below Agua Prieta.’
‘Lower your voice, man. Are you crazy?’ The Mexican didn’t seem too bothered by Alastor’s comments though – his eyes were still flashing dollar signs. ‘Okay. Nine thousand. But that’s my final offer. The Federales are cracking down on illegal guns. We got serious trouble here now. We got extra expenses.’
‘Six thousand.’
‘No. No. Man. That’s impossible.’
Alastor was enjoying the Mexican’s discomfiture. The guy was having to decide just how amenable he could appear to be in order to reel in his prey. Too amenable, and the minnow would run. Not amenable enough, and the same thing happened – Alastor would simply put two fingers up and go someplace else. It would take fine judgement.
So Alastor sat watching the Mexican. Waiting. He had learned that waiting nearly always produced results.
‘You need to eat something, man. You real thin. Too thin.’
‘Six thousand.’
‘Is impossible. But I tell you what. We forget the Stoner, and I can do it for seven thousand straight.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’
‘I didn’t want the Stoner anyway. Too big. Too loud. Too easy to fucking trace.’
‘I thought the same, man, I thought the same.’ The Mexican was sweating now. The thought of the seven thousand dollars was eating into him like nitric acid. Maybe he could have driven the gringo up to eight?
‘Where do I pick up the material?’
The Mexican glanced around the cantina. It was an all-male watering hole, as good as empty now in the early afternoon, with most of its denizens either taking their siestas or pretending to work. ‘You coming alone?’
‘Yeah. I got a car. Easy to move the stuff into the back.’
‘You ever done this before?’
‘No.’ Alastor smiled. The stress lines in his face looked like glacial grooves. ‘This is all new to me.’
The Mexican grinned. He already knew he had a real sucker here. This proved it once and for all. No one admitted to inexperience in his world. In his world everybody had done everything a thousand times over. ‘We meet this evening. Six o’clock. There’s a cave complex near Valladolid. They call it the Gruta de Balancanche. We meet in the car park there. You can’t miss it, man. It’s only a few kilometres south of Chiche
n Itza.’ He frowned at Alastor. ‘You remember now. Nothing bigger than twenty-dollar bills?’
‘Seven thousand. That’s what we agreed?’
The Mexican almost gave himself away then. He almost laughed. This gringo was priceless. One felt tempted to pick him up in one hand and twirl him about one’s head like a lasso. ‘Yeah. Seven thousand. You get the best ordnance in the whole of Mexico, I promise. I tell you this. You’ve come to the right place.’
‘I know that, my friend. I know that very well.’
67
Lamia settled herself on the ground. She curled her legs beneath her and off to one side just like the Maya women she saw scattered about the compound, all of whom were either weaving, pounding maize, cooking, or endlessly patting tortillas into shape – and pretending not to watch the gringos, and, in particular, the gringa with the damaged cheek.
Lamia flashed a look at Sabir. There was a hunted expression on her face he had never seen there before.
‘What do you think they are going to do with us?’
Sabir squatted down beside her, his eyes fixed on the two guards standing at the edge of the clearing, their rifles at the ready. ‘Between you and me, they can do anything they want. Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody gives a damn about us. They could kill us and bury us somewhere in this endless scrubland and no one would be any the wiser. Then all they’d have to do would be to strip down the Grand Cherokee and ship it over to Guatemala. We changed our dollars into pesos on the US side of the border, Lamia, and we paid cash all the way down for everything we bought, including gas, food, and accommodation. It seemed like a heck of a good idea at the time. As a result there’s no official record of us anywhere beyond Brownsville.’
‘I don’t think they’ll do what you suggest. Acan is a nice boy. He’s not a killer.’
‘I don’t think so either.’
Lamia let out a heavy sigh. She was clearly grateful that Sabir was agreeing with her. ‘What have they done with Calque?’
‘They’ve got him over the other side of the clearing. He’s probably eating something. Or perhaps the priests are putting on his skin like a cloak and eating him? Christ, maybe I got it all wrong, and we’re next for the pot after all?’
Lamia threw a handful of dirt at him. She laughed in delight when he lost his balance trying to dodge it, and went sprawling.
Sabir stood up and made a great play out of shaking out his shirt. ‘I guess I deserved that. I never realized you were such a dangerous and impulsive woman.’ He grinned and resettled himself at the squat, pleased that he had triggered her change of mood.
‘Do you have any idea where we are?’
‘Yes, oddly enough, I do. On the way here I saw a sign that said Ek Balam. And there’s a pyramid over there. Can you see it? Just peeking through the trees. So it seems we’re at or near the site, which, if I remember correctly, is situated a few miles north of the main Cancun turnpike, just up from Valladolid. Frankly, they don’t seem too worried about us knowing where we are.’
‘That might mean that they don’t need to bother themselves with what we know because they’re going to kill us anyway. Maybe you were right in the first place?’
‘Yeah. And maybe the cup’s half empty, and never half full. No, Lamia. I think we’ve set them a problem that they’re going to have to work out for themselves. You saw how they responded to the crystal skull? And now they’ve got this man with the book to deal with too. That’s quite enough for one day. I’m convinced these guys are bona fide Maya, and that they genuinely thought we were grave robbers or something, and simply stepped in to protect their holy sites. I’m trusting that Calque can straighten them out on that angle. He’s good at that sort of thing.’
‘And my brothers and sisters?’
Sabir threw back his head as though he’d been slapped. ‘Let’s hope that they did indeed lose us back there near Jaltipan.’
‘Have you any reason to suppose that they didn’t?’
‘No. None whatsoever. But I wouldn’t like to imagine how far they’d go to get their hands on the skull and the book. The minute you bring firearms into an equation, like these Maya have, all rational judgement flies out the window. People behave like animals. I’m not so dumb that I don’t realize that if it came to a fight between these people and the Corpus, the Corpus would win hands down. That the way you read it?’
Lamia nodded. Here eyes were like dark wells within the paler framework of her face.
68
It was late afternoon by the time the Halach Uinic had succeeded in assembling all the people he would need for the ceremony of the tearing of the flesh. For this was what he now felt was necessary if the decision he had come to that morning in the car was to be acted upon.
After private prayer and a lengthy internal debate, the Halach Uinic had decided that he must offer himself up as a sacrifice to propitiate the gods, and through them, the composite, alchemical God that was Hunab Ku – the one monotheistic God who encapsulated and concatenated both Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan.
The Halach Uinic didn’t intend to sacrifice himself in any purely physical sense, needless to say. That sort of thing was well past its sell-by date. The Spanish colonizers had been right to ban human sacrifices – there was a time and a place for everything, and in the early twenty-first century, unnecessary death, even if followed by inevitable rebirth, was notably inappropriate.
No, the sacrifice the Halach Uinic intended to make was a harder one than simply the giving up of one’s own life. The offering back of the book and the crystal skull to those who had found them needed to be paid for. And he, as chief representative of all the other priests, was the one who needed to do the paying.
He glanced across at the main temple. Everything was ready. The priests and the shamans were in place. The steps up to the top of the pyramid had been decorated with water lilies, pitaya flowers, and fronds from the corozo palm. Ritual objects and offerings of all sorts had been arrayed up the steps, including cigars, orchids, chocolate, sugar candy, aguardiente, burning bowls of sacpom tree resin, and many candles. Prayers had been chanted and fires had been lit. The lilies were correctly placed facing in towards the fires, showing a symbolical willingness to face the flames. The Calendar of the Days had been formally counted out by one of the priests, and white copal incense from the north of Mexico was being burnt as a nod to wider confraternity. Crosses had been drawn in honey on each of the steps leading to the top of the pyramid, reflecting the chaacoob – the four directions of the compass – each direction with its colour laid out in spices within the circle. East was red, north was white, west was black, and south was yellow.
The shamans and the iyoma – collectively known as the ajcuna, or spirit lawyers – each carrying their own personal bag of ritual objects, were arrayed, every one at a different level, up the entire length of the steps. Some of them wore elaborate spondylus shell necklaces and headdresses of quetzal, ibis, flamingo, and parrot feathers. Each person was dressed differently, for there was a hidden language of clothes amongst the Maya, and those able to speak that language could learn many things – about age, rank, status within the community, and even the level of psychic awareness of which that person was deemed capable – simply by what a man or a woman had chosen to wear that day.
The Halach Uinic recognized Acan’s mother, Ixtab, standing halfway up the steps leading to the top of the great pyramid. Of all the iyoma he had known in his lifetime, Ixtab was the most perceptive. He was pleased that she had put aside her usual duties and had hearkened to his call. He wanted her to see the gringos. Wanted her opinion.
He closed his eyes and concentrated for a few moments, hoping that amidst all the excitement and anticipation of the ceremony, his usual channels of communication with her might still be open. For the Halach Uinic and Ixtab met regularly inside their dreams. The connection between them might be an unspoken one, but the Halach Uinic knew beyond any doubt that his nawal had chosen Ixtab to be his shadow guide. That it
was she who had been detailed to guard him from the mistakes vainglory – and the inevitable vanity of men – might otherwise cause him to make. She was his protector and his conscience. His spirit doctor and his companion in the web of life.
The Halach Uinic looked up. Ixtab was staring down at him, her face pale beneath her headdress. In a covert gesture, the Halach Uinic raised his hands and opened them upwards, as if forces greater than himself were at work around him. Ixtab, in an equally covert gesture, turned her palms towards the ground, and gestured downwards, as if she were kneading dough. Male upwards and airborne, female downwards and grounded.
The Halach Uinic understood what she was telling him. Few people knew that this little-known site at Ek Balam was the true spiritual centre of Maya belief. A place to which Maya priests had come for countless generations, sure in the knowledge that a resident guardian would always be on hand to welcome them into the site via the ritual stone archway that still guarded its entrance – known privately as the Temple of the Praying Hands. The resident guardian would then wash the visiting priest’s knees, feet, and hands, before allocating the priest a place in one of the few still unburied stone cubicles. The visiting priest would then use the stone cubicle to re-energize himself and reconnect himself to nature.
For most enlightened Maya, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Palenque, and many of the other great sites of the former Maya hierarchy were simply sad reminders of lost greatness. They had nothing further to offer. Whatever energy they had left was hidden so far underground that it could only be reached via extreme and thorough ritual. At Ek Balam, however, the energy still brimmed from the ground like a fountain.
In addition, Ek Balam, or the Black Jaguar, was the only site left in the whole of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize that still incorporated all three of the essential elements and energy centres – the sky, the earth, and the underworld. The downward movement of Ixtab’s hands, echoing and counterpointing that of the Halach Uinic, had been a recognition of this fact, therefore – a reminder to the Halach Uinic that he must submit, and trust, and not attempt to dominate.
The Mayan Codex as-2 Page 29
