by M. G. Harris
“Sorry, friend, but I think there is.”
Now he looks really irritated. “There’s stuff going on in my life that’s … complex.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Yeah,” he says. “And I prefer not to talk about it.”
“Have I done something?”
“You?” His show of surprise seems just a tad insincere. “No. It concerns Ixchel, if you must know.”
“Pumas Girl?”
“I’m the one who helped her run away from home,” he admits. “Catching some flak for it now.”
“Why’d she go?”
“A difference of opinion.”
“She told me to say it was a ‘matter of principle,’” I say.
“You could say that,” he agreed.
“A fight with her parents?”
He nods. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“You’re not gonna tell me?”
“Not possible,” he says. “I’m sworn to secrecy in so many ways, you can’t believe it.”
“So you and me, we’re cool?”
Benicio shrugs. “Sure. Why wouldn’t we be?”
I pull what I hope is my most vacant expression. “No reason.”
Who knows whether he’s convinced or not. Either way, he doesn’t pursue it further. He joins me on the couch and draws the coffee table closer. My Mission: Impossible case—the aluminium briefcase from Chief Sky Mountain—sits on top of the table.
We spend the next hour going over the details of the mission to find the codex. When I’m up to speed, Benicio escorts me across the city and back to the aircraft hangar.
I keep a tight grip on to the mission briefcase. There are things in there that they don’t want falling into the wrong hands. The responsibility of keeping all those secrets is beginning to weigh pretty heavily.
When we arrive, the place is lit up by giant arc lamps. A Mark I Muwan is being checked over by two jumpsuited engineers. From behind the Muwan, Chief Sky Mountain appears. He plants his hands on his hips and watches us approach, beaming widely. When we reach him, he puts a wide, heavy palm on each of our shoulders, gives us a proud smile.
“Josh, you are all prepared?”
I give a quick, hopefully competent-looking nod.
“That’s good.” He grins and tips his head slightly at the Muwan with pride. “You like our aircraft?”
I remember that I’m supposed to be seeing them for the first time. I widen my eyes, nod vigorously. “Yeah. Wow!”
“Any questions?”
Mentally I run quickly through Benicio’s instructions and the various gadgets in the case that he showed me how to use.
“Can I get the cell phone out of the case?”
The pockets of my jeans are packed with the cash I salvaged from Camila’s backpack in the jungle two nights ago. My UK cell phone is somewhere among the cash—but it doesn’t work right now. I figure that in an emergency, I’ll need one that does. The chief decides that for extra security, he’ll handcuff the case to me. I take out the little cell phone and pocket it while he cuffs the case to my left wrist.
If I’d been expecting any grand ceremony—the big send-off—I’d have been disappointed. The chief and a few engineers loiter, watching as Benicio leads me to the Mark I Muwan, climbs a ladder, and disappears inside the hawk’s head. He doesn’t invite me to follow, so I make to climb the ladder, glancing at the chief for confirmation. As his eyes meet mine, the chief appears to make a decision of some sort. He waves me to come back. Benicio is already strapping himself in as I climb back down.
“I talked to Montoyo this morning,” begins the chief. “You know about what?”
It’s obvious from his searching expression that he means business. I restrict myself to a short nod.
“So we’re agreed, yes? No revenge. You go to the museum in Jalapa, you break into the room with the wreckage fragments, find the codex if it’s there, bring it right back. Okay? Just stick to your orders.”
Orders.
I nod again.
He pauses; I wait, itching to pull away, to join Benicio in the Muwan once again.
“You don’t know a lot about us yet. Then again, we don’t know a lot about you. But we do know this: you’re family. And there are some things you don’t do with family. You understand? You don’t cheat and lie to your family. That is something we do not forgive.”
He speaks casually, almost fatherly in his manner. But who does he think he’s kidding?
“Are you threatening me?”
The chief gives a mild shrug. “Just telling you how it is. If you’d grown up here, this wouldn’t be necessary. But frankly, I don’t know how you’ve been raised, or with what values. So I’m telling you the way things are with us.”
“I’m for my family. That’s how I’ve been raised. You don’t have to worry.”
“Good.”
“But if I find the people who killed my dad, or my sister, I want my chance,” I add. “Today, tomorrow, next year—it’s all the same to me.”
We stare each other down until my eyes almost water. The chief nods slowly, considering. “If that’s so,” he eventually says, “better wait. See how you feel next year.”
I can’t imagine that it’s ever going to change. How could it? Dad and Camila—they’re never coming back.
And part of me can’t help wondering … will I?
Chapter 32
It feels amazing to be back in a Muwan. The minute we lift out of the underground hangar, my spirits soar. The sun hasn’t risen yet; there’s a pinkish sky. I’m hoping that Benicio will fly back over the ruins of Becan, but he takes some other route, flying straight toward the sea, which fills our field of vision quite suddenly: immense, flat, gray.
Finally I see a real chance to check in with my friends. I’m desperate to know what’s happened to them. “Is there any way we can drop by Hotel Delfin?”
Benicio sounds doubtful. “It’s kinda risky.”
“I need to know. Please. It’s really important. I can’t relax until I know if they’re okay.”
“We don’t need you relaxed. We need you focused.”
But I’m adamant. “Relaxed, focused. Whatever you want to call it.”
I can hear him sighing. “I can’t get anywhere near Chetumal. We’ll be noticed.”
“There has to be a secluded spot somewhere. Maybe up the beach?”
My watch says 5:30 a.m. The beaches will be deserted.
“Okay,” he says after a long pause. “About a mile north. There’s a place I know, trees on both sides of the inlet. I’ll drop you and wait an hour. You walk to Chetumal, make a call from a pay phone in the doughnut place across the road from the Delfin. Whatever they tell you, you don’t go into the hotel. If you speak to your friends, you tell them to walk out, to meet you in the pizza place next door. Got that? Not the doughnut place. You watch to make sure they come alone. If not, you wait until they leave. If they come alone, you follow them into the pizza shop. Take a few minutes with them—no more than five. Tell them you’re safe, you’ll be back soon, not to follow you. Not to follow you! But if you hear that your friends are still with the NRO guys, you hang up. Right away. And you come back to the Muwan. If you don’t return in one hour, I’ll raise the alarm. Believe me, if you don’t come back in one hour, the chief will give me hell. And then I’ll hand it over to you.”
Benicio makes me repeat his instructions back to him three times. When he’s convinced I know them, he takes the Muwan down. As we drop through the clouds, the sea sweeps into view, rapidly filling our entire field of vision. I see the landing spot that Benicio’s aiming for—it’s a small cove surrounded by trees.
He lands the craft with a rapid vertical descent that reminds me of the Tower of Terror ride at Disney World in Orlando. It’s just fast enough to be thrilling, but I don’t quite lose my lunch. Which is what I think he may have been hoping for, judging by the mischievous look Benicio flashes me as he leans over his seat once we’ve landed.
“This plane—seriously, it’s incredible.”
“You think this is good,” he remarks, removing his headset, “you ought to see the Mark II.”
Three rungs spring from the body of the craft just under the cockpit. They’re enough to bring me within jumping distance of the sandy beach. The metal briefcase swings down, dealing me a slap to the thigh.
Benicio waves as I start a slow jog back toward Chetumal’s main beach. I don’t even hear the Muwan take off, but I do hear it humming as it flies overhead. The sound seems vaguely familiar—like a cloud of swarming honeybees.
I check my watch: 5:40. As I round the outline of palm trees on the beach, Chetumal comes into view. It’s farther than I’d guessed. Time to pick up some speed. The briefcase doesn’t help. Before long I’m cursing the irritating way the handcuff cuts into my wrist.
It’s 5:51 as I cross the seafront boulevard and stroll down Chetumal’s main road. Hotel Delfin is about a hundred yards away, the pizza and doughnut places slightly farther.
Three minutes later I’m calling from the doughnut place. The first batch of doughnuts is just being dropped onto cinnamon sugar—an unbelievably delicious smell. In a corner there’s a slot machine and a pay phone to entertain customers while they wait. The reception desk at Hotel Delfin takes their sweet time answering the phone. It’s Paco. Yes, of course he remembers me. They hadn’t given the game away to the gringos, no way. The hotel’s owner wouldn’t hear of it—the Professor was one heck of a guy. Lying to the gringos to protect the Professor’s son? Paco considered it a privilege.
Tyler and Ollie, though—that couldn’t be helped. The gringo agents had caught the hotel staff napping as far as that went. Poor kids—they’d spent a whole night in the cells down with Detective Rojas and those agents. Who knew what they’d been through. So, where was I? Come on, I could tell Paco! Was Andres really a secret agent or something? They’d suspected something like that all along.
Paco talks at me like it’s going out of fashion. Eventually I manage to squeeze in a question of my own: “Can you call them to the phone?”
At 6:11, just as I’m pacing the tiny doughnut place and checking my watch for the millionth time, Tyler and Ollie appear at the door of Hotel Delfin, dressed in pajamas. They’re headed my way. I duck behind the slot machine and watch them run toward the pizza place to the left. As it happens, the shop is still closed. Who knows where Benicio gets his fast-food-store intelligence, but on this occasion it’s unreliable. Tyler and Ollie press their noses up against the glass of the pizza shop, looking frantic. I check back toward the hotel. No sign of anyone following. So I risk it. I break from Benicio’s instructions: I step into the street, beckon them around the corner.
“Where did you go?” “God, what a nightmare!” “The NRO, Josh, the NRO!”
And of course, “What’s in the case?”
I want to listen to everything that spills out of them, but I can’t listen, answer questions, and ask them all at the same time. At least, not in less than five minutes.
“Guys, listen, listen, listen, dammit!”
That gets their attention.
“I’m leaving, okay? In three minutes. So, just listen.”
I tell them how Camila died. How I escaped, got lost in the jungle, wandered. Someone helped me, brought me back. “Now I need to get back into hiding. Until I know it’s safe to be around here. So I’m going. I’ve found a place to stay. I’m safe there.”
“Josh, what the hell’s going on?” Tyler says, eyes full of doubt and anxiety.
“With these U.S. agents? I’m not sure. But I think they’re the ones who killed my dad. I don’t trust them for a second.”
“It’s true,” says Ollie. “This has to do with your father. They asked hundreds of questions about him. And about your sister. Josh, it’s awful about Camila.”
“Yeah. She was really cool.”
I want to hug them both just for being there. They feel real, concrete. They make me feel real again too, plugged into the world. But I’m already splitting in two; fifteen minutes down the beach, the legacy of an ancient world waits for me.
“So, I’ll be seeing you,” I tell them both, giving Ollie a grin. They’re still protesting as I open the door. And I’m jogging down the street before I remember to shout my final instruction to them.
Don’t follow me.
In another four minutes I’m down the avenue, turning left onto the seafront boulevard, vaulting the low wall into the beach parking lot at Chetumal. I check my watch: 6:15.
With timing this perfect, the mission to fetch the codex seems like a simple errand.
I dash across the parking lot.
I notice it but don’t notice it.
Well, I have a lot on my mind.
It’s a common enough car in Mexico. In hindsight, it’s as obvious as a lonely fishing boat on a fine, windless day.
A blue Nissan.
And that’s the last thing that goes through my mind before I hit the ground with my face, mouth open in a yelp of pain and surprise.
Chapter 33
I was terrified when the car carrying Camila and me hit the swamp in the dark and bubbled under. That was a wild panic. It doesn’t hold a candle to the desperate sensation of feeling alone, helpless, tiny, insignificant—all the forces of nature and evil ranged against me, slowly becoming aware that all options have run out and that death looms, inevitable, just minutes away.
I wake up in the dark, the back of my head violently throbbing. In my mouth there’s the taste of the sea and the hard, salty crunch of sand.
How did I miss seeing that blue Nissan?
I had better things to dream about: Benicio waiting for me up the coast in the Muwan, the amazed and admiring gazes of my two friends.
I can’t deny it. That had felt great.
Result? I was attacked, surprised from behind—by Blue Nissan. The blow was clean enough—I can feel a lump now but no blood. The hand attached to the briefcase is chafed and raw. I have vague memories of someone repeatedly trying to pull the cuff free.
I’m in the trunk of a car. Moving. I check my pockets. I still have my soaked UK cell phone and the wad of cash. But the cell phone from Ek Naab is gone.
There is no way to call the Mayas to rescue me.
After about thirty minutes, motion sickness gets the better of me. The inevitable happens—I throw up. Then I get tumbled around in it. Which makes me throw up some more. I finally figure out a way to brace myself in the trunk so that I don’t move around too much. That, and working hard on keeping my stomach muscles tight, helps stop the vicious cycle of nausea.
All pretty grim. But as a prelude of what’s to come, it’s no big deal.
I lose track of time. The car slows to a stop. The driver’s door opens. Someone pops the trunk. I blink, dazzled by the sunlight. The driver is just a dark silhouette. I still can’t see his face and have no idea where we are.
I hear him say, “Get out.” American, definitely.
Reluctantly, I climb out. We’re alone on a beach, totally isolated. On the coast, cliffs rise to the left, rocks to the right. After a few seconds my eyes adjust. I get my first good look at the guy—Simon Madison—whom I still think of as “Blue Nissan.”
My mouth falls open. “You!”
It’s him—the burglar, the guy who bought that book from under me back in Oxford.
The NRO—they’ve been on to me from the beginning!
He doesn’t smile—too busy making faces. He’s just figured out that the nauseating smell is coming from me. He holds his nose, calls me a variety of disgusting insults.
“Now look what you’ve done, you stupid jerk. You messed up my trunk. Do you know what rental companies charge for cleaning that? I should make you do it yourself.”
“You broke into my house … you stole my book …,” I say, my voice getting louder. “Why? Why take the book?”
Now he does smile, a nasty, self-satisfied grin. “If you don’t know the answer to
that, then there’s no way I’m telling you.”
Simon Madison sounds pretty American, but now that I really see him, there’s a definite Hispanic touch. I pick up the same whiff of cologne that I first noticed when he burglarized my house. Unlike his two Hawaiian-shirted counterparts who came calling for me at Hotel Delfin, there’s something vaguely refined about his accent, clothes, and grooming.
I scan the surroundings for any hint of other people. It’s no use; we’re alone and not far from the coast road—that much I can hear. Unless a passerby were to actually stop and walk right to the edge of the road, I doubt they’d see anything.
This is the sort of beach you’d search for hours to find and be excited to discover you had all to yourself on a clear, perfect morning like this. But I see it another way. This could be the last place I ever see.
Madison slaps me hard across the face. The attack takes me by surprise; I’m still woozy from the car trip. But the burning pain from my cheek does wonders for my state of alertness.
He uses his right fist the second time. I sidestep easily enough, moving in to trip him up with a wide arcing swipe at his legs. I don’t wait around to watch him hit the ground; I’m already running back toward the road.
I don’t get far. There’s a loud crack of gunfire. I throw myself to the ground, head tucked under my arms.
He calls out, “Hey, scumbag, think I enjoy chasing you? Now, stand, slowly.”
I get to my feet, turn to see him about ten yards away. There’s an automatic pistol in his hand pointed straight at me. They say it’s tricky to shoot a moving target, but once I hear that bullet whiz past me, I stop being able to think rationally. I’ve never faced a guy with a gun before. And I have no idea what to do.
Walking toward me and still pointing the weapon, he says, “Undo the handcuff. I want that briefcase.”
I shake my head. There’s no way he can remove it without my help.
Madison cocks his head and a nasty smile turns the corners of his mouth. “No? Oh well, I had to try.” He turns away, then whirls around. This time, he hits me for real; this time, it’s with the gun. I’m knocked over, clutching my ear. It rings with pain.
