The Mayan Codex (45 page)

‘What forfeit will you pay me if I’m right?’

Calque sighed. His face took on the expression of a
cartoon dog being forced to placate an over-bumptious puppy. ‘I’ll speak up for you with Lamia whenever she asks me about you. Which she does, incidentally, nearly all the time. How would that be? Previously I’ve always tried to drop you in it on account of my sexual jealousy. But from now on I’ll praise you to the skies. Will that satisfy you?’

‘It’s a deal.’

‘Of course, if we don’t find whatever it is we’re looking for, I will still consider myself free to undermine you at every opportunity.’

Sabir shook his head. ‘Thank God you’re French and not Belgian, Calque. Otherwise I might have a real problem with your sense of humour.’

‘Your turn to stick your hand in, Calque. Are there any particular bequests you wish to make? I’ll see to it that your posthumous instructions are carried out to the letter.’

Calque ignored him. He felt around in the first of their new series of holes. Then he closed his eyes. ‘There’s something in here. Something smooth. And cold.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘No. I can feel it quite clearly. It’s got teeth. And a nose. I can even feel the indentations of the eyes.’

‘Jesus Christ. What is it? I’ll kill you if you’re bullshitting me.’

‘I’m not bullshitting.’ Calque withdrew his hand from the hole. ‘We’re going to have to take the whole sconce
out. There’s no way I can lever this thing through the size of hole I have here.’

Sabir stuck his hand into the hole and felt around. ‘You’re right. But we can’t risk taking the whole mask out of its niche. It’ll be too heavy. We’ll never get it back inside again.’

‘Then we’ll just have to leave it here on the ground. Maybe they’ll think it fell out due to condensation?’

‘Yes. That’s likely. Good call, Calque. I can just see the curator now. “Hey, guys! We just lost another of these 1,200-year-old masks. Bastard thing must have fallen out due to condensation.”’

Both men stepped back and stared at the sconce.

‘We’ll just have to tug like hell and then get out of the way. Thing’ll probably lose its nose when it hits the ground. That’ll really buff up our grave robber credentials. One thing I can tell you, Calque. When we get hold of whatever it is that’s tucked in behind this mask, I’m not sticking around.’

‘Neither am I. Come on. Let’s do it.’

The two men levered with their tyre irons until the mask was teetering at the very edge of its sconce.

‘It’s going to tip. Watch your feet.’ Sabir pulled at the mask, and then stepped quickly back as the entire structure overset towards him.

The mask hit the ground and bounced.

‘Christ. It’s still going.’ The two men turned around to watch the mask pounding its way down the steps behind them, stone-chips skittering in every direction.

Only then did they see the eight Maya standing in the moonlit courtyard. Each man held a rifle in his hands. Lamia was standing beside one of the Maya. Her mouth was bound with a cloth.

Sabir glanced at Calque. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Any more funny jokes to share?’

Calque sucked at his teeth. ‘Not offhand.’ He gave a sudden Burt Lancaster grin. ‘No. Wait. Maybe these gunmen aren’t interested in us after all? Maybe they’re on a night training exercise for the Mexican army?’

‘Yeah. Right on, Calque. That’s a good one. Glad I fucking asked.’

Tepeu watched the two gringos with a horrified sort of fascination. They were smiling. It seemed impossible, but it was true. Here they were, facing eight armed men, seconds after being caught by the Halach Uinic in the very act of plundering the holy temple, and they were smiling. Had they no idea what might happen to them? Had they no idea of the severity of what they had been doing?

The younger man sat down at the top of the stone steps and put his head in his hands. The older man stood beside him, staring down at the Halach Uinic.

The Halach Uinic stepped forwards and indicated that the band should be taken from the woman’s face.

It had been Tepeu who had captured her. He felt very proud indeed of this fact. He had turned his
triciclo
over in the middle of the road and had lain beside it, as if he had been involved in an accident.

For one brief instant he had thought that the woman had not seen him and was about to run him over. But at the very last moment she had stopped and climbed out of the car – it later transpired that she had been talking on her telephone at the time.

Tepeu had then stood up and covered her with his rife. His cousin Acan had warned him about the
mal de ojo
, but Tepeu only saw that this woman had a defect from birth on her face. This he had seen before, in Mérida, on a man in the market. It was certainly no
mal de ojo
, but something to be regretted instead. How would it be to spend your entire lifetime being looked on and pitied by everyone who passed? And the woman was beautiful, too, apart from her blemish – at least for a gringa. Acan, as always, was dramatizing the situation out of all proportion to its significance. Still. The man was little better than a
guero
. Endlessly chasing after girls, and dollars, and the main chance. Tepeu was fond of his cousin Acan, but he did not respect his way of life.

Now he looked furtively around for a sign of his new friend, the mestizo from Veracruz. He had to be here. Wisely, though, he was hiding. Tepeu liked this man. It was not his fault that he was of mixed blood. But he was an honest man. And modest. This shone out of him.

When Tepeu had first come across the mestizo, he had immediately realized that the man was close to starvation. At first he had not known how to play the situation. It was not customary among the Maya to invade a stranger’s privacy unless specifically requested to do so. Tepeu had decided to leave the outcome up to God. He had told the man that he was going hunting, but that when he came back he would take the man with him to his home. In this way face had been saved by both parties.

If the man did not wish Tepeu to feed him, he would go away. If he was too weak to go away, Tepeu would find him again, and take him under his wing. Tepeu had always taken people under his wing. This was his nature. The first animal that had crossed the invisible circle his mother had marked around his birthing bed had been a
hen. From that moment on, Tepeu had had no choice in the matter.

Now the Halach Uinic was walking up the steps towards the two men. The woman was accompanying him, as well as Acan, and his brother, Naum. Tepeu hurried up to join them. From there, he would get a better view of the surrounding forest. If he saw the mestizo, he might be able to signal him away. Indicate to him in some manner not to become involved.

The older of the two gringos was speaking to the Halach Uinic in broken English. Pointing backwards to the hole where the mask had been ripped out. Making a shape with his hands.

The Halach Uinic flapped his fingers, and this older gringo now started up the remaining steps ahead of him. The whole party, Tepeu included, followed the gringo until they stopped near the opening.

The older gringo then stepped forwards and thrust his hand into the hole he and the younger gringo had made.

Tepeu could feel his breath catch at the back of his throat.

Something was about to occur.

Would the gringo bring out a weapon of some sort? And why was the Halach Uinic humouring him? Tepeu had not fully understood the English the gringo had used. Perhaps the older man had begged for his life, and the Halach Uinic had agreed to spare him if he thrust his hand back into the rain god’s mouth?

The older gringo pulled an object out of the hole. This object was pale and round, and appeared to capture the light of the moon within its circumference.

The gringo held it up so that the Halach Uinic could see it.

The Halach Uinic dropped to his knees. Acan and Naum dropped to their knees. Tepeu, without quite
knowing why, did the same. Behind him, the three remaining men who had accompanied them prostrated themselves on the ground.

It was at this exact moment that Tepeu’s friend, the mestizo, chose to appear from behind the shelter of his carob tree.

Tepeu froze into place, halfway between kneeling and stretching himself out. There was a sudden noise in his head like the hissing of a thousand snakes. Through this noise Tepeu could hear the mestizo’s voice echoing off the walls of the buildings.

‘What you are holding,’ the mestizo said, ‘is pictured. Here. In this book I have. This book that I must now give to you. See? I have it here in my hands. I have brought this book all the way from Veracruz, but it is too heavy a burden for me to carry alone any more. My father, and my grandfather, and my great-grandfather protected this book for you before I did. Now that the great volcano of Orizaba has burst into flame, the time has come for the book to return to its own people. This is what I have been told to tell you. That we have done as we promised.’

‘You’re not going to believe this, Abi.’

Abi stared at his cell phone. ‘What am I not going to believe? Wait. Don’t tell me. There’s been a
crime passionel
. Calque has murdered Sabir through thwarted love for our sister.’ He shook his head, half convinced by his own casuistry. ‘All joking aside, Sabir must be blind.
Or maybe Lamia’s just hot as hell in bed, and they’ve both gone pussy crazy?’

‘No. No. It’s nothing like that, Abi. It’s not that at all.’ Oni was so excited that he failed to pick up the customary sarcasm in Abi’s voice, or even to notice the new wave of mosquito attacks that were being unleashed against him. ‘You’ve still got all the roads out of here covered, haven’t you, Abi?’

‘Oni, get to the point.’

‘The point. Yes.
Putain
. The point.’ Oni was sweating even worse now – the perspiration was streaming off him in runnels, diluting the ‘Scoot’ until it was only fractionally better than useless. ‘You should have been here, Abi. It was like an Indiana Jones movie. Picture this. Sabir and Calque are standing out there in the moonlight, levering away at one of the temple masks, and trying to grab at something that is tucked away behind it. Then the mask they are levering at topples out of its niche and clatters down the temple steps like that bouncing bomb that flattened the dam in that stupid war movie the
Rosbifs
have.’