16
‘Madame Mastigou has arranged the flight plans, Abiger. Your brothers and sisters will be arriving at New York’s JFK airport in eight hours’ time. They will each have a rental car at their individual disposal. You will keep in touch by cell phone. I will suggest to the others that they buy pay-as-you-go, to avoid any public record of their calls. They can contact you from the airport and you can exchange numbers. Then you and Vau must dump your old phones and buy new ones too.’
‘What if our trio head north?’
‘Then you will head north after them, and your brothers and sisters can catch up with you later.’
‘You’re assuming they are going to travel by car.’
‘No I’m not. But if they’re taking a plane, they won’t leave from a local airport. Calque’s no fool. He knows that airports have gaping holes in them in terms of security. Sabir will try to shake you first. Then he’ll aim for a hub airport with a lot of traffic. Somewhere like O’Hare, Baltimore, or Boston. Trusting that he can lose himself in the crowd.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better for us just to take them all here? Ambush them nearby? I can’t see Sabir carrying his shotgun with him in the vehicle. Too risky. We could bundle them off to a deserted barn somewhere and sweat them for the information we need.’
‘No. Sabir’s been forewarned, thanks to your and Vau’s mistake. He’ll have covered his tracks already. Destroyed all written documentation. The man has a memory like an elephant, or so I understand from certain sources in America that I’ve paid for information about him.’
‘Ah. I see.’ His mother had wrong-footed him again. Abiger could feel the resentment eating away at his guts.
‘In addition, I think it extremely unlikely that he will have told Lamia and Calque any more than he feels they need to know. So he’s still our primary link to the whereabouts of the Second Coming. And to the possible identity of the Third Antichrist. The man carries it all about with him in his head. If he’s backed into a corner he’s perfectly capable of sacrificing himself for some perceived greater good – he’s just that sort of bleeding heart. Remember what he did to my darling Rocha? The man’s morbidly claustrophobic, but still he managed to figure out a way to get back at Rocha and kill him. He looks soft, but he has a core of steel. No, I’d rather he leads us inadvertently to wherever he is going. It’s better like that.’
‘If you say so, Madame.’
‘I say so, Abiger.’
17
‘Are they still behind us?’
‘They’re still behind us. And making no attempt whatsoever to hide themselves.’
The trio had just passed through Scranton, and were now on the thruway towards Harrisburg, heading south.
‘What if we head towards Miami, and not towards Texas, as we decided? There must be a ferry of some sort from Florida to Campeche? Or to Veracruz? Or even to Cancun?’ Calque was feeling irritable. He had come to a grudging understanding with Lamia and Sabir that every hour, on the hour, he could crack open a widow and smoke a cigarette. But he needed more than one cigarette an hour to feel like a human being. He glanced surreptitiously at his watch to see if his hour was up. ‘It would save us three days’ driving.’
‘And it would set us up as sitting targets. While we move, we’re safe.’ Sabir glanced over his shoulder. ‘Smoke your damned cigarette, Calque. You may not realize it, but you’re kicking the back of my seat about eighty times a minute.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Calque speared the window button with his finger. ‘I do get nervous when I’m thinking things through.’ He lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘And I’m thinking things through now.’ He allowed the cigarette smoke to trickle luxuriously through his nostrils. ‘So what are we going to do tonight?’
Sabir turned to Lamia. ‘You tell me your brothers won’t give up without a fight?’
‘That’s an understatement.’
‘Then what do you think they are waiting for? Why are they holding back?’
‘Just as you said. While we’re moving, we’re safe. But the minute we stop, we’re vulnerable. And we’re particularly vulnerable at night. I assume you don’t intend to sleep in the car?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Then it seems we have only one choice.’
‘And what is that?’
‘We have to lose them before we bed down for the night.’
Sabir snorted.
‘It’s three in the afternoon. By nine o’clock this evening we’ll be well beyond Harrisburg. If we don’t intend to drive all night, we’ll have to come up with a plan before that.’
‘Great. Any ideas anyone?’
Calque had finished his cigarette. He threw the used butt out of the window. His face wore a placid expression, as if he had just taken a hit of raw opium, and not a toke or two of flue-cured Virginia tobacco. ‘I have a plan.’
Sabir glanced in the rear-view mirror. The twins’ car was keeping station a steady third of a mile behind them. ‘Okay. Give.’
‘Ah. Your elegant American expressions. How poorly they translate into French.’
Sabir understood what Calque meant. Translate most American expressions into French and they sounded abrupt – lacking in politeness. French was a language in which requests, and even orders, were customarily couched in velvet. Sabir decided to wind Calque up a bit. ‘Esteemed Captain Calque. Mademoiselle Lamia and I would very much appreciate hearing your proposal to rid us of the unwanted attentions of Mademoiselle Lamia’s mortiferous twin brothers. In addition, any light that you may be able to shed on their possible future plans would be very welcome indeed. Suffice it to say …’
‘Sabir?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up.’
There was an amused silence in the car while Calque gathered his wits about him. ‘All right. I have my plan. I am ready to give it to you.’
‘Excellent. What is it?’
‘It involves taking three separate motel rooms. One for you. One for me. And one for Lamia.’
‘And to heck with budgetary constraints?’
‘Sabir, you are not endearing yourself to me by this levity.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We take three motel rooms. We enter them, leaving the car out front. But not for long. Soon I exit from my room and get into the car. I drive off. Now, because I am not important to them, the twins will continue watching the two remaining motel rooms. Sabir must then go and knock on Lamia’s door. She must let him in. Her brothers will draw the obvious conclusions. Am I correct?’
‘No. You are not correct.’ Lamia was curled up on the front seat, her stockinged feet tucked beneath her. ‘My brothers are fully aware that my love life is close to non-existent. They tease me endlessly about it, in that endearing way they have. The idea of my having an affair with Monsieur Sabir within a day of meeting him would strike them as so preposterous that they would probably come barging straight in simply out of curiosity.’
‘Oh.’ Calque seemed just a little nonplussed, as if one of his fondest illusions had just been shattered. ‘You really have no love life to speak of? That is outrageous for such a beautiful woman as yourself. I cannot understand it. The men you encounter must be blind.’
Lamia reached behind herself and felt for his hand. Calque brought her fingers lightly to his lips.
‘So what were you imagining for after Lamia came to my room? Beyond the fake sex, that is?’
‘I was going to suggest that you both exit via a back window, leaving the lights still on and the door locked. With a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door handle. Then you both make your way to a pre-arranged rendezvous – a certain number of streets down, say – where I pick you up. Leaving the twins watching a series of empty motel rooms. We drive on for another hundred miles – on minor roads, of course – and only then do we stop for the night.’
Sabir looked at Lamia. ‘Apart from the sex idea, it isn’t bad. I like the bit about Calque taking off in the car, leaving b
oth of us back at the motel. That makes sense. Why don’t we both just climb out of our rooms independently, and forget Calque’s Gallic notions of romance?’
‘We’ll have to find an old-school motel with through rooms.’
Sabir glanced across at Lamia. ‘What do you mean, “through rooms”?’
‘Rooms with back windows. Most modern motels aren’t built like that any more. And they have central parking, anyway. We need an old-style motel, where you park right outside your room.’
Calque leaned forwards. ‘We could do a tour around before we register? Check the layout of the grounds? That’s not so strange, is it? No one would guess what we were looking for.’
‘You know, I think it’s worth a try.’ Sabir glanced at Lamia. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think Captain Calque is what they used to call “a born gentleman”.’
18
Abiger de Bale glanced at his watch. ‘It’s getting late. How far are the others away?’
Vaulderie consulted his cell phone. ‘I have text messages from Athame, Berith, and Oni, saying they are heading in our direction. Our paths should cross within the next hour. The six others can’t be far behind.’
‘Good. Three is ample.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because Sabir is going to try to slip the net before nightfall.’
‘How do you work that one out, Abi?’
Abi shrugged. ‘I should have thought it was obvious. Put yourself in their position. They can’t reasonably bed down in security knowing that we are outside watching them. They will fear that we will damage their car. Or set a tracker on it. Maybe even break in on them. That’s their weak spot.’
‘They won’t all be sleeping in the same room?’
‘They’ll be fools if they don’t. And barricade the door to boot. Once they split themselves up and go independent, they are inevitably weaker. They can be picked off one by one.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Nothing. We let them give us the slip.’
Vau sighed. ‘I don’t get it.’
Abi glanced across at his brother. ‘By the time they settle in for the night, we will have at least four cars following them – three of which they won’t recognize. So we two stay close up front. Make ourselves even more obvious than we have been doing. When they try whatever trick they eventually decide on to give us the slip, we let them think that they have got away with it. Athame, Berith, and Oni can position themselves on every road leading away from the motel. When Sabir drives past them in his beautifully visible Grand Cherokee, they will follow him, not us. They then tell us where they are going, and we join them. Only we’ll have changed our car by then. With any luck, all nine of us will have met up by that point. We then take it in turns to follow them, jockeying positions every twenty minutes or so, so that they never get to see the same car twice. Madame, our mother, has made it clear that we are not to interfere with them in any way whatsoever until they have reached their final destination. If they take a plane, we follow them. If they continue by road, we follow them.’
‘And what about Lamia? What if she recognizes us?’
‘From now on everyone will wear baseball caps. Baseball caps and sunglasses. That way we’ll look really American. Oni can pin his hair back under his cap and use some tanning cream – he’ll look strange, but from a distance, he won’t look like an albino.’
‘And us?’
‘We tag along behind. Way back. So that the three of them never have a chance to see us again. And we keep in touch with the others by cell phone.’
‘Are you sure they’re going to try and make a break for it, Abi? Are you certain?’
‘Dead certain.’
19
Calque climbed back inside Sabir’s Grand Cherokee. He spent a little time adjusting the driver’s seat forwards and upwards to meet his requirements. Then he stared at the gear shift. It was manual. Putain de merde. He had a feel around to work out what trick Chrysler had engineered to protect their reverse gear from inadvertent triggering. When he was satisfied that he had mastered it, he backed the car carefully out of the parking lot.
Next time, he thought to himself, we must think ahead – place the car facing out. For a possible quick escape.
No sooner had he formulated the thought than he shook his head wildly to and fro. What am I thinking of? What am I doing? I could be in France now, having dinner at La Reine Margot – cassoulet, followed by cheese and a tarte tatin. Washed down with half a litre of Brouilly and a café-calva to follow. Instead, here I am sitting in a strange car, in the northern part of the United States, and all I have inside me is the distant memory of a Wendy’s hamburger and so-called French fries, bought on the trot at a drive-thru so that we wouldn’t be vulnerable for more than six static minutes to the attentions of Lamia’s twin brothers.
Calque drifted onto the main drag. He looked neither to his right nor his left, counting on his peripheral vision to mark the twins’ car and to warn him of the lights of any oncoming vehicles. Yes. There they were. Parked right across the road from the motel, where they could cover the way out and all three motel rooms from the same tactical spot. Calque told himself that the very next time that he and his friends stopped for the night they must Definitely split themselves up in different geographical locations. That was the obvious answer.
He slapped the steering wheel in irritation. No. That wasn’t the answer. That wasn’t a clever idea at all. What they should really do is share a room. There was security in numbers. He wondered what Lamia and Sabir would think of that? Calque was aware that he was lamentably prone to snoring. His late assistant, Paul Macron, used to nudge him awake when they were in the car together, solving the problem like that. Maybe, now that no one was looking over his shoulder, he could buy himself a mask? Surely the Americans would have something on the market to deal with his problem? The last thing he wanted to do was to keep on reminding Lamia that he was in late middle-age, and more than a little out of condition. A man could rely on his wit and intelligence to captivate a woman during the day, but a little more finesse – not to mention realpolitik – was required, unfortunately, at night.
Not that Calque wished to seduce Lamia – far from it. She was thirty years his junior, and very nearly the same age as his daughter – the whole idea was grotesque. But it was clear that she needed protecting from Sabir’s continual litany of gaffes. The man was as unaware of the effect of some of his statements as a six-year-old child. Take that nonsense at the White Horse Inn. No Frenchman would have blundered in like that and drawn attention to the catastrophic blemish on a woman’s face in the first few moments of their acquaintance. No. It would take an American to promote such a faux pas.
Calque knew that Sabir had had a French mother, but he privately decided that she must have become Americanized very quickly indeed for a rustre such as Sabir to be the end product of her childhood educative influence. When it came down to it the man was as American as apple pie. His maternal French blood was clearly little more than an accident of history.
When Calque finally emerged from his daydream, it was to the realization that the twins were not following him. They had remained on station at the motel, just as he had anticipated.
Calque consulted his watch. Yes, the time was right. He made a left, and then another, until he was on the road parallel to that on which the motel was situated. Then he counted four blocks off in his head, following which he hung another left. Yes. This was it. This was the road they had agreed on after consulting the town map kindly provided by the motel management. Lamia and Sabir would be leaving their motel rooms by the back window about now. He was to give them twenty minutes to make their way the four blocks that separated them from the car.
He let the engine run. Best be prepared. There was always the chance that the twins would intervene early. In that case he must be prepared to hurry back to the motel and do what he could to save the situation. Call the police if necessary. Interpose h
imself between the twins and their victims. He laid the cell phone he had borrowed from Lamia carefully on the seat beside him.
Then he shook his head. What was he thinking of? He had never been a scrapper or a scrimmager – he simply wasn’t cut out for the rough stuff. In fact he found all physical exertion antipathetical in the extreme. Throughout the entire extent of his police career, Calque had never needed to unsheathe his pistol, far less use physical force on anybody. He had always had a plethora of willing – and more or less able – assistants for that.
Lancelot du Lac he was not.
20
‘Whatever’s going down is going down.’ Vau touched Abi on the shoulder.
Abi, as usual, was taking his sleep where he could. Ever since they were children he had mastered the art of dozing off in the most extreme of circumstances. Once, even, he had fallen asleep in the midst of a burglary. It had been a test run, engineered by their mentor, Joly Arthault, at the instigation of Madame, their mother. Vau had looked around for his brother, only to find him curled up on a sofa in the corner of the living room of the house they were robbing. He had protected his brother’s back on that occasion, too, just as he had done on a thousand other occasions during the course of their childhood and early adolescence.
The Mayan Codex Page 16
