“Velázquez has been most helpful. The codex still exists. It was located in a bookcase in the cathedral in Seville. Thanks to our knowledge of the cipher, uncovering its secrets, though exhausting, proved straightforward.” He picked up his empty glass and refilled it. “However, there is a problem. The final three emeralds are all missing.”
Pizarro looked at him with a sombre expression, questioning what he had just heard. He glanced at Claude and back to Juan, finally succumbing to laughter.
Claude was confused; Cortés indignant.
“You think I am joking?”
“What concern is it of mine even if you aren’t?”
Cortés bit his lip. “My father once told me great things about you – his ‘noble cuz’. When I was a small boy, he would come home and fascinate me with the tales. Why fill my imagination with protagonists of the fictional world when he could inspire with those of his own kin?”
“That was a long time ago. It is the past.”
“No.” Cortés shook his head; against the shadowed backdrop his hair and dark attire created an ominous silhouette. “It is our past, present and future. The location of the lost city, Claude tells me, is no longer a mystery. Only the final door needs to be accessed. Together the emeralds are like keys. Only in possession of all five can the final path be walked.”
Pizarro wetted his lips and viewed him quietly. “Why are you telling me this?”
“It was you, Fernando, who retrieved the lost hoard from the mine of La Serena. You who found the tools to uncover the location of the lost city. You who first looked upon its walls. You who uncovered its dark secret.”
Pizarro sighed deeply. “I have told you many times before, I do not speak of it.”
Cortés threw the glass down on the floor, the glass shattering, the liquid splattering. “Your son told me you were a coward. Till now, I never believed him.”
“How dare you?”
“Please, please.” Claude ran between them. “Please, do not antagonise each other with your hate. Juan Pablo, please show some compassion. The man has lost his son.”
“The man had no son.”
“Juan Pablo, please. You do not understand what it means to lose one closest of all. Your father understood the pain only too well. What would he say if he were here right now?”
Juan took a deep breath and grabbed a towel from the nearby radiator. He knelt down and slowly dabbed at the stain. “Without the final stones, continuing to the city is useless. The final three are all that remain.”
“Even with what you seek, your path is fraught with danger.” Pizarro remained unmoved. “Haven’t you already suffered enough? Hasn’t enough blood already been spilt?”
“It was also you, Fernando, who uncovered the first of the stones, retrieved from the pit in Hispaniola. Thanks to you, the location of the second was obvious; all that was required was a way into the monastery. I would have thought the discovery would have pleased you.”
Pizarro sank into his chair and gazed sadly at his surroundings. “Do you have any idea how long I searched? All of my life wasted on unworthy pursuits. My father died; I barely noticed. My mother followed; I did not mourn.” He exhaled deeply and heavily. “You know I never even attended my own wife’s funeral.”
Cortés glanced at Claude and moved nearer. “The tunnel remains long, but at last there is light at the end.” He remained on one knee and grasped the man’s hand firmly in his. “Help me. Together we can complete the journey.”
“If the original locations have indeed been breached, you’re unlikely to find them in Spain. Even if the royal agents did succeed in getting their hands on certain things, they wouldn’t have dared take the chance of allowing such a discovery to become public.”
Cortés got to his feet and circled the rug, satisfied that he had removed most of the spilt liquid and stain. “The men who Velázquez hired in Seville to open the tomb estimated the seals had lasted over a century. If that is true, the signs indicate an intrusion was made during the last century.”
“In that case, the old manuscripts will be useless to you.”
“I have already accepted this. And because of this, personal knowledge now becomes priceless. You, Fernando, have dedicated your life to this. Together, let us finish it.”
Pizarro offered a tired smile, his eyes close to tears. “I’m old, Juan Pablo. I may not look it, but I feel it.” The wrinkled lines in his forehead thickened as he gestured, while heavy skin sagged from his cheeks as he moved his mouth. “If you’ve come to me looking for reassurance, I’m sorry I can’t be of greater help. In truth, my need for that is perhaps greater than any.”
“I did not come for reassurance or to reassure. I came only to ask of your experience. And to tell you of your son.” Juan approached again cautiously, his attention firmly on the man’s eyes. “Help me. Do not allow it that your son, that all who have gone before us, should have done so in vain.”
Pizarro turned to his left. “Claude, come a little closer. I fear my voice is close to breaking.”
Claude obliged. “What is it?”
Pizarro took a deep breath and began. “Claude, do you remember many years ago? That summer we spent at the castle.”
“Yes, Fernando. I remember.”
“In the vaults. Do you remember where we put all the presumed forgeries?”
“Yes, of course. I remember. It took us weeks. If I had had my way, we would have burned every last one.”
Pizarro coughed deeply, clearing catarrh from his throat. “For many years I have often wondered whether we may have been too hasty.”
“What is he talking about?” Cortés asked.
“I am not yet senile, Juan Pablo. Nor have I lost the other key senses to which I still owe my powers of judgement. There are many discoveries you are still to make, many of which will surely be of profound importance to you. You will understand their importance fully, I believe, should you search the contents of the vaults.”
Cortés was both alarmed and intrigued. “What does he mean?” The question was for Claude.
Claude grabbed Fernando’s hand, but answered the question. “Back in the 1970s, a full investigation was made into the content of the castle vaults. You have seen with your own eyes the many great treasures that exist there. Letters written by Hernán, writings of the ancient Maya, instructions from the King of Spain.”
Cortés bit down on his lower lip. “I did not realise our vaults held forgeries.”
“Before you were born, Fernando, myself, your father and our father decided that in order to conduct a prudent search, a full inventory of our vaults would be necessary. Fortunately, our father was a learned man, a great scholar who could easily separate the fabrications from the genuine articles. When the job was completed, it was decided the forgeries, instead of being burned, would be given their own place in the vaults. Away from prying eyes.”
“Why is this important?”
“For over five hundred years, our ancestors’ attempts at rediscovering the lost hoards have been blighted by the unchecked greed of others,” Pizarro said. “They are like plagues, worse than those endured by the Pharaoh. Yet amongst the charlatans and crooks who sought to fill their pockets, there was one who, at least to his credit, never acted in hope of personal gain. His actions, instead, were guided only by those who instructed him.”
Cortés folded his arms. “What are you saying?”
“In the time of our great-grandfather, there was a renowned man from England. He had previously worked as a captain in the British Army when Kitchener was fighting the Arabs in the desert. When the learned gentleman came to Spain to visit the places you have recently visited, it is believed he discovered much, perhaps things we had not previously considered. Eventually his luck ran out; yet, in many ways, his death was unfortunate. His task was close to completion, but he died before he could make the journey home. Before the repercussions could be felt.”
Cortés was inwardly furious. “An Englishman on
a secret mission? What has this to do with our vaults?”
“The man in question later became targeted by members of our own family for his, shall we say, questionable activities. Especially when he turned up at our door.”
“He visited Medellín?”
“Originally, the correspondence regarding his visit was assumed a forgery, just like many others stored within our archives. It seems to our great shame, many unfair things were assumed of our great-grandfather, Carlos, who was accused of fabricating many himself after suffering bouts of insomnia and paranoia in his early seventies.”
“What does the letter say?”
“The exact words, I do not remember, but read it yourself and it will surely reveal the path you need to follow.”
“You mean?”
“Yes, Juan Pablo.” Pizarro nodded. “Find what became of the Englishman and perhaps at last you will be in a position to accomplish what the rest of us never could.”
*
As the silver Mercedes departed the elegant, white-fronted, mid-terrace mansion in the heart of Madrid, a BMW of identical colour set off in the same direction. Unlike the preoccupied Spaniards in the Mercedes, the grey-haired man in his early fifties kept a sharp eye on the car in front as it merged with the Madrid traffic.
Stopping at a red light, he typed quickly into the keypad on his inbuilt command console.
In pursuit. Target heading south.
15
Juliet opened the codex to the first page, her tired mind attempting to digest Ben’s latest theory. The page layouts still seemed strange; it was as if the author had somehow attempted to combine the Aztec symbols with an English writing style.
There were too many errors to take it seriously. Even in the Latin script, she had never seen a Mesoamerican codex – whether written on paper or bark cloth – that appeared so obviously European. The spacing patterns were erratic, which indicated that each pictogram or letter probably represented a letter of the alphabet, possibly English or Spanish.
Cracking it could take a lifetime.
She scanned quickly through the remaining pages, taking great care not to damage the fragile nineteenth-century paper. She noted that each of the twenty-one and a half pages contained eighteen lines of writing, on the front only. Finished, she placed the document down on the table, removed her glasses and looked questioningly at Ben.
“What on earth makes you think this is the work of Hernán Cortés?”
“According to Colts’s predecessor, before he died, Cortés wrote a journal of some kind that he later entrusted to his next of kin, quite possibly Catalina, so that the lost treasure would remain accessible after he was gone. Sometime after that, the book found its way to a bookcase in Seville Cathedral. TF must have gained access and made a copy.”
Juliet remained dubious. “What makes you so certain?”
“Colts here and his former colleague saw the original in the late ’80s. Back then, translating it proved a nightmare.”
Juliet looked at Colts, still struggling to make head or tail of him. He looked like an American: the cowboy hat, the southern accent, the way he thought he could charm the pants off her just by a casual raising of the eyebrow. He looked less like an archaeologist, least of all one who would be hired by the Duke of Cornwall to work on something of apparent national importance.
“Mr Colts, what did you say your first name was?”
“Folks in these parts usually call me Geoff. Though I’ll leave it to you to decide what suits you best.”
“Very well, Geoff. Tell me about the original.”
“Well, Miss Waters, see it’s just like I’ve been telling your colleague here. My interest in this whole train of events goes back about as long as I can remember. Sometimes when you’ve been working on a project for the time I have, it becomes mighty difficult remembering things exactly as they were. It would be almost like asking you to remember every piece of coursework you’ve ever marked.”
Her scepticism escalated. “You mean you don’t remember?”
“Back in the 1980s, Colts here worked on the project with an academic named Sir Arthur Bavage,” Ben said. “I looked him up. His reputation was respected.”
“Nice to see you trust Google over me, Ben.” Colts raised his eyebrows. “Though I can’t dispute the facts of the matter.”
To Juliet, the name meant nothing. “Who was he?”
“Bavage originally worked as a housemaster at Harrow, the school he attended before taking his degree at Imperial College, where he later spent most of his career. He wrote a paper in the early fifties on the colonisation of the New World, having first spent some time visiting the Indies’ archive in Seville. At some point, he was asked by the Duke to spearhead the job of looking for the lost Aztec treasure that was alleged to have been lost somewhere around the Isles of Scilly.”
Colts sat down alongside Juliet and made close eye contact. “What you must understand, Miss Waters, as I hope has already been made clear by now, is that what you’re witnessing here is not your run o’ the mill academia; nor is it something that can be shared with outsiders. I know for a fact that there are many such people who would pay top dollar to learn the location of our newly discovered hoard. And those who would stop at nothing to find what is still to be found.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr Colts?”
Colts laughed loudly. “No, ma’am. Us friends here have no need for threats. But your colleague here has already had one lucky escape, poking his nose into affairs he knew nothing about. Now that you’re here, happy though I am to have someone with a greater intellect and smile than me, it’s only fair I warn you now. This isn’t an endeavour for the faint-hearted.”
Juliet glanced at Ben, unclear whether she was dumbfounded or simply bored. “You say you’ve been working on this since the ’80s? Your colleague longer still?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.”
“And then he just comes along and finds everything within a week.”
Ben grinned, satisfied. “In his defence, I had a bit of help.”
“You’re damn right you did. Not that I’m complaining. Had it not been for Dr Thomas’s work notes, successful entry of the mine could never have been possible.”
“So what actually is the significance of this?” Juliet pointed again to the Aztec codex. “It sounds to me as if you’ve already discovered the lost Tenochtitlán treasure.”
“We’ve discovered the hoard that was rediscovered by Lady Catalina, true; if Ben here is correct, progress has also been made in tracking down other bits that Cortés successfully smuggled back to Extremadura. However, the question remains regarding what, if any, was lost along the way. And, more importantly, what the conquistadors left behind.”
“Colts believes the city of Tollan to be real. That the original treasures still lie buried there. However, it won’t be possible to enter the inner sanctum without the correct keys.” Ben sat down on the other side of Juliet, his attention on her eyes. “Imagine if this was real. That Cortés discovered a hidden city, the site of Mesoamerican creation; the city that ties every culture together: a site sacred to the Olmecs, Toltecs, Aztecs, Maya . . . the secrets behind Teotihuacán solved forever. This could be the greatest discovery since Troy.”
Juliet pursed her lips, clearly unmoved. “I learned a long time ago of the folly of being taken in by pretty stories.” She turned to Colts. “Despite what Ben says, I’m unwilling to follow fantasies.”
Colts grinned. “I can see why they made you head of department ahead of him.” He rose to his feet, his attention falling on his reflection in the antique silver-framed mirror that hung over the fireplace. “The city itself is out there. Its location remains a mystery to all but a select number. Finding the location is not a problem. The problems are the other dangers it possesses.”
“Colts believes it is heavily guarded by an otherwise unrecorded tribe,” Ben said.
“Successful infiltration of the inner sanctum will require the s
ame resources that were needed to pass the entrance here. The design of the door to the mine, it would be abundantly clear to anyone who has seen the old city, was inspired by the original temple.”
“Am I to assume from your tone of voice that you’ve visited this city yourself?” Juliet asked.
“The city exists; whatever is hidden behind its temple’s doors is going nowhere in a hurry. Only with the five original stones can what is inside be accessed. Now, Ben tells me you’re a fine scholar, among the best in the world on Mesoamerican culture. The location of the city will mean nothing to you unless we find the original emeralds. Find the emeralds, well, I reckon that’s the kind of thing that can make one’s career!”
Juliet glanced at Ben before staring once more at Colts. It was clear to Ben she was acting her usual self. Reluctant to commit or incriminate.
“What’s so important about this codex? What’s that got to do with this?”
“Bavage believed the location of the missing emeralds was recorded only in the book Cortés left behind,” Ben said. “TF must have visited the cathedral at Seville sometime before his second visit to St Lide’s and made a copy of the book. This book is that copy.”
Juliet replaced her glasses and turned again to the early pages. “It’s a shame neither he nor your late colleague discovered the correct cipher. Sadly cryptology isn’t exactly my forte.”
“But you are familiar with the original language and symbols?” Colts pressed.
“I’ve been studying them since I was an undergrad, if that’s what you mean?”
“The original book, contained in the bookcase in the cathedral at Seville, was over a hundred pages thick. It contained no spaces, from what I can remember. This book, on the other hand, is far shorter and does contain spaces.”
“Then how can it be the same one?”
“It isn’t,” Colts agreed. “At least not exactly. However, by and large the symbols appear to be the same, and more importantly the spaces allow us to work on a certain structure. And, even more importantly still, this book is currently in our hands.”
The Cortés Trilogy: Enigma Revenge Revelation Page 73
