The Mayan Codex as-2

by Mario Reading

  ‘That’s nonsense and you know it.’

  ‘I don’t know it. What are you trying to tell me, Calque? What’s this great call you intend to make on our friendship? You’re not going to tell me that Lamia has somehow moved from being your blue-eyed girl to being one of the enemy again?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Where are your car keys?’

  Sabir slapped his pockets. Then he looked blank. ‘They were in here.’

  ‘But she needed them for something, no?’

  Sabir nodded slowly. ‘Yes. She wanted a change of clothing before the ceremony. Access to her toothbrush. That sort of thing. That still doesn’t put her back in the Corpus camp. Come on, man. What are you thinking? That after all they did to her she’s still loyal to them?’

  ‘But what did they do to her?’

  ‘You tell me. You’re the one that found her. You’re the one that brought her along on this trip. You’re the one that tipped me the wink that she was attracted to me. Christ, Calque. You’re the best friend she has in the world. You’re going to feel like a total asshole when she comes skipping back in from wherever she’s managed to lose herself. I’ll do you a real favour, though. Give you a real proof of our friendship. I won’t tell her what you suspected.’

  Calque stared out at the gradually lightening sky. ‘They tied her up, put her on a table, and gave her a tranquillizer. That’s all they did to her.’

  ‘That would be enough for most people.’

  ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Her name.’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘She lied to us about her name.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘She told us that Lamia was the daughter of Poseidon and the mistress of Zeus. That that was her only significance. That Zeus accorded Lamia the gift of prophecy as a down payment for her services to him in bed. That she was unimportant in the general scheme of things.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I thought about it. And then I thought about it some more. It niggled at me. All the other adoptive names – except for our old friend Achor Bale, aka Rocha de Bale, who was adopted at far too late an age for a name change – which in the case of a teenager like him would have had to have been referred to a juge des affaires familiales anyway…’

  ‘Calque, for crying out loud. You’re not on the police force any longer. You’re not making out a case for the prosecuting judge.’

  ‘The examining magistrate, please.’

  Sabir slapped his forehead in frustration, and then instantly regretted it. ‘What about the names? Tell me.’

  Calque sighed. ‘All the names of the Countess’s adoptive children are specific to some sort of demon or other. To one of the Devil’s henchmen, maybe, or to some other freak out of hell. Lamia explained all that to us. It’s categorical. Another of the Countess’s endearing little tics. So why should Lamia be any different?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ Sabir was beginning to look rather sick.

  ‘So when you were both up in your room doing whatever you were doing in that motel at Ticul, I phoned an old friend of mine in France. Got him to consult Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary. And one or two other books he happened to have to hand.’

  ‘Don’t tell me? Lamia was the Devil’s handmaiden, code name 666? Or maybe the Countess gave her the name of some famous female serial killer? The Countess Bathory, maybe?’

  ‘Nothing like that. The Countess Bathory’s given name was Erzsebet – Elizabeth to you.’

  ‘Come on, Calque. Don’t keep me in suspense. This is Lamia we’re talking about. The woman I happen to be in love with.’

  ‘That’s why I’m finding it so hard.’

  ‘Then make a superhuman effort and get over it.’ Sabir’s face looked livid and tormented in the fractional light of the early dawn. He looked as though he wanted to tear Calque apart with his bare hands.

  Calque cleared his throat. ‘Lamia was indeed Zeus’s mistress. But she wasn’t unimportant. Far from it. In fact Zeus’s wife, Hera, became so jealous of Lamia’s sway over her husband that she killed all Lamia’s children and deformed her.’

  ‘Deformed her? How?’

  ‘She turned her into half woman, half serpent. She became a child-murdering demon. Her name means “gullet” in Ancient Greek. She’d kill other people’s children in revenge for her own, and then suck their blood and eat them. Zeus tried to placate her by offering her the gift of prophecy. He even gave her the ability to pluck out her own eyes, the better to see into the future – a little like your Vision Serpent, no? Horace writes about her in his Ars Poetica: “ Neu pranse Lamiae vivum puerum extrabat alvo.”’

  ‘Go on. Translate it for me. You’re dying to. My everyday Latin’s a little rusty.’

  ‘“Shall Lamia in our sight her sons devour, and give them back alive the self-same hour?” Forgive my English accent. That’s Alexander Pope’s translation. The best, really.’

  ‘There’s more. I can smell it on you. Don’t tell me you’re not enjoying this?’

  ‘I’m not enjoying it, Sabir. It’s making me sick to my stomach.’

  Sabir looked up quickly. The expression on his face underwent a brief transformation, as if a searchlight had shone across it. ‘I’m sorry, Calque. I must be feeling a little rattled. That was unfair. I know how fond you are of her. Go on. Tell me the rest. I promise not to murder the messenger.’

  Calque shrugged, but he was clearly touched by Sabir’s change of heart. ‘Some authorities even link her with Lilith, the first wife of Adam, believing they were one and the same person. Jerome, in the fifth-century Vulgate – Isaiah 34:14 to be precise – even translates Lilith as Lamia. His version of Lamia conceived a brood of monsters with Adam, and then later transmogrified into the sort of fairy-tale nasty that nurses and nannies used to threaten their charges with.’

  ‘My name is also Adam, Calque. The same as Lilith’s husband. You may not have noticed that.’

  ‘I noticed it. As, I believe, did she. She seduced you on purpose, man. Because she’d been told to. In Apuleius’s time, they used Lamia as a name for seductresses and harlots. John Keats said “Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake/Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake…”’

  ‘All right. Enough now. I can see why that poor bastard Macron found you so intensely irritating.’ Sabir was hiding it well, but the nausea in his stomach was rapidly overtaking the pain in his head. ‘I think I’m about to be sick.’ He pushed Calque away, and then doubled up, retching.

  When Sabir finally straightened up again, he realized that Calque had been joined by two new figures – one on either side of him. The first, an almost dwarf-like figure, was holding a very large pistol straight out ahead of her. Despite the fact that her hands could scarcely encompass the grip, the pistol was rock steady.

  The second person, also a woman, but this time of normal height, had her head cocked to one side, as though she was secretly rather amused by Sabir’s temporary affliction. ‘Is this them?’

  The smaller woman nodded. ‘It’s them.’

  ‘They don’t look like much. I say we kill them now and have done with it. We’ve got most of what we need already.’

  ‘Do you want to wake up the whole camp?’

  ‘I could slit their throats with my scalpel. No one would hear that. The foot drumming would be lost amidst all the snoring.’

  Sabir was still dry-retching after his major evacuation of two minutes before. He pinched his nose between two of his fingers and snorted the final remnants of his stomach contents on to the ground. Then he looked up and shook his head fatalistically. ‘Are you two who I think you are? No. Don’t answer that.’ He reached inside his pocket. ‘How the heck did you find us again?’

  ‘Keep your hands out where we can see them.’

  ‘I only want my handkerchief.’

  ‘A bit of vomit never hurt anybody.’

  Sabir t
ook his handkerchief out anyway. ‘Then shoot, why don’t you?’ A part of him didn’t care any more whether they killed him or not. He walked over to the water bucket he and Lamia had shared and began to rinse his face. Aldinach accompanied him, her pistol held casually at hip level.

  Sabir’s oddball mixture of acute oversensitivity and irrational bravado never ceased to amaze Calque. Sensing that the tall woman was getting ready to pistolwhip his friend, Calque raised his voice in an effort to deflect her attention. ‘They are who you think they are, Sabir. I’ve seen them before. At the Countess’s house. The smaller one is Athame. The taller one is…’ He hesitated, praying he’d got his timing right.

  Aldinach stopped what she was about to do and turned towards Calque. ‘Aldinach. I am Aldinach. The hermaphrodite. You remember? Half man, half woman. But today I am only a woman.’ Aldinach did a sarcastic little pirouette to show off her figure.

  ‘Where is Lamia? Have you taken her?’

  ‘Ah. Our elusive elder sister. Do you know where she is, Athame?’

  ‘She bolted. I think at the end, that she suspected my presence in the touj. I had only a split second to decide on my priorities. So I chose these two.’

  ‘Good choice.’

  ‘You were inside the touj? That’s impossible.’ Sabir sank to his knees beside the bucket. He could still feel the cramping effects of the datura at work on his stomach. ‘We would have heard you.’

  ‘All of you were as high as kites in there. You were busy screaming that your eyes were being torn out, and the other idiots were chanting like a bunch of Hare Krishnas. None of you would have heard a siren in a snowstorm. Later on, after you all left, I even crept to the entrance and listened to your absurd post-mortem discussion.’

  Sabir doubled up with another intestinal cramp.

  ‘Interesting about the identity of the Second Coming. I think a visit to Samois – for that’s where my brother Rocha told us your Yola Samana lives – will soon be in order. Shame you didn’t follow through with information about the Third Antichrist. It’ll make things harder for you. My brother Abi is still very unhappy about Rocha’s death. When he finds that you’ve been holding out on us…’ Athame stopped. ‘What do you think, Aldinach?’

  ‘I think both you boys will be gratified to know that we’ve reached a consensus. We’ve decided not to kill you for the time being.’ Aldinach waved her pistol at the two men. ‘Avanti. And don’t make a sound going through the camp. If you wake anybody up, we’ll kill them.’

  97

  Abi watched the four figures approach with a half-smile on his face.

  Everything had gone far more smoothly than he had expected. Vau, Rudra, and Alastor had secured the codex and the thirteenth crystal skull with no difficulty whatsoever. The priests, and the three Maya who the Halach Uinic had clearly detailed for guard duty, had all been fast asleep, with the two objects wrapped in calico situated plumb in the centre of their sleepover. Like presents left by Father Christmas.

  Now both Sabir and Calque, looking very much the worse for wear, were shambling towards him, flanked by Athame and Aldinach.

  Abi chucked his chin at Aldinach. ‘Where’s Lamia? You didn’t kill her, did you?’

  Athame approached him and began to whisper in his ear. Abi hunched down, nodding.

  ‘Right. I want you and Aldinach to take the fastest car we have. There’s only one possible direction she can have gone in, and that’s back towards the Cancun toll road. If she’s got any sense at all she’ll be heading out of the country. Fast. If you push it, you should be able to pick up her transponder signal after maybe fifteen or twenty miles. This whole country is as flat as a damned graveyard.’

  ‘But I thought you wanted me to question Sabir?’ Aldinach looked crestfallen, like a child who has unexpectedly been deprived of her fair share of the birthday cake.

  ‘We can manage all that. You and Athame are by far the best shadowers amongst us. I want you to follow Lamia wherever she is going. If she leaves the country, go with her. If you lose her, go straight to the Gypsy camp at Samois. My guess is that you’ll encounter her again there. There’s something more to this than meets the eye. But first things first. Calque and Sabir are going to come on a little trip with us. Put them both in the trunk of the Hyundai.’

  ‘So you did have a tracker in our car?’ Calque muscled his way a little nearer to Abi. By temperament he was unwilling to engage any further than was strictly necessary with those he thought of as the enemy, but, this time at least, his curiosity had got the better of him. ‘Where did you put it? We turned that vehicle inside out. I’m willing to guarantee that there was nothing concealed inside it.’

  ‘My brother Vau here is an electronic genius. You hear that Vau? I’m giving you a compliment.’ He turned to Calque. ‘He stuck it underneath the chassis.’

  ‘Underneath the chassis?’ Calque looked crestfallen. ‘But that’s the best way to ensure it gets knocked off over the first speed bump. Or in heavy rain. Or going through a field. We travelled thousands of miles in that vehicle. You people just struck lucky, that’s all.’

  Abi laughed. ‘I said Vau was an electronic genius. I never said he was smart.’

  Still shaking his head, Calque allowed himself to be manhandled into the narrow trunk. Sabir was unceremoniously tipped in beside him.

  ‘What? No conniptions, Mr Sabir? Rocha told my mother that you were terminally claustrophobic. That he’d seen you locked inside a wood box at the camp in Samois, and that you were half raving when they took you out of it. I understand that a similar event occurred around the time you murdered him. In a cesspit, wasn’t it?’ Abi’s words were lightly inflected, but his eyes were dead.

  ‘I’m not claustrophobic any more. Something happened in the touj. You can lock me in here as long as you want. I won’t care.’ Sabir put as much conviction as he could into the words. The truth was that he was scared witless they’d lock him up in an even tighter space than before. Give him the water treatment, maybe.

  ‘Oh, never fear. We’ll think of something else for you. We have time to spare for all of that.’ Abi slammed down the Hyundai lid.

  98

  Abi stepped out of the Hyundai sixty metres short of the warehouse. He programmed Oni’s number into his cell phone. Then he raised both hands above his head. The dawn was well up now, and visibility was improving by the minute. After ten seconds he cut the connection with a movement of his thumb.

  He knew all about Oni’s itchy trigger finger. And he also knew that two heavy-duty machine guns – the Stoner M63 and the notoriously unreliable AAT – were covering the approach road. He didn’t want Oni and Berith to think the Mexican owners of the arms dump had returned early from their border run, and commence firing. And neither did he want to walk into a trap.

  The cell phone cheeped. Abi put it to his ear. ‘Can you see us?’

  ‘I’ve got you.’

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘We’ll come in then.’

  ‘Yeah. Come on in. You’re a tempting target out there. I nearly let loose on you just for the hell of it.’

  Abi got back in the car and signalled to Alastor behind him. The convoy moved forwards. ‘We’ll go straight to the warehouse and get this over and done with. We don’t want to stay here any longer than we need to.’

  ‘You think the Mexicans are on their way back?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’

  Abi backed the Hyundai up to the warehouse and got out. He slung the rucksack containing the codex and the crystal skull over his shoulder. ‘Get the two of them out of the trunk. Be as rough as you like. They’re both for the cenote, whatever happens. Doesn’t matter what shape they’re in. Nobody will ever find them. I doubt the guys that own this place are sub-aqua enthusiasts.’

  Rudra and Asson manhandled Sabir and Calque out of the trunk of the car.

  ‘Vau. You and Alastor take over from Oni and Berith at the machine guns. They’ll be jaded and res
entful by now. I’ll let them loose on our prisoners in compensation. Give them a little entertainment to take their minds off things.’

  ‘Okay. But do you really think we might have trouble?’

  ‘Unlikely for another few hours. Unless they’ve got access to a helicopter, that is. The guys that own this joint might not even have called in yet. Why should they? Who in their right minds would attack an arsenal? But at some point they will. And then they’re going to be very, very angry. Nobody likes cuckoos in their nest.’

  Abi joined the others inside the warehouse. He dumped the rucksack unceremoniously onto a nearby counter, as if its contents meant nothing to him at all. ‘It’s a shame we don’t have Lamia – that could have been really amusing. I love a quorum. We’d soon have found out whether Mr Sabir is the gentleman he likes to think he is.’ He stood for a while, weighing up his two prisoners. ‘String the policeman up first. Strappado style. Arms stretched behind his back. I don’t care if you dislocate the hell out of him. We’ll see if Mr Sabir enjoys watching his friends whimpering in pain.’

  Oni was beckoning to him from the corner of the warehouse. ‘Abi, have you got a minute?’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  ‘Seriously. I think you ought to come over here and take a look at this.’ Oni was pointing to a trapdoor, now only partially covered by some of the packing cases they’d plundered earlier. ‘I noticed this an hour or so ago when I came in for coffee. Didn’t have time to check it out then, because there were only the two of us here. Don’t you think we ought to take a look? Might be something of interest down there.’

  Abi glanced over at Calque. Rudra had just finished roping him to one of the packing hoists. Sabir was seated between Calque’s legs – his arms were tied behind his back at the wrist and the bicep.

  Asson grinned when he saw the direction of Abi’s gaze. ‘This way the policeman can piss on Sabir’s head when the pain gets too bad.’