The Mayan Codex (60 page)

Madame, his mother, had also telephoned earlier. Sensing that the whole affair was now entering its final phase, she had recently taken to calling him every hour on the hour. Abi felt a deep sense of satisfaction, therefore, that he had been in a position to tell her pretty much the entire truth about their situation. They were doing exactly what she had asked them, after all – monitoring events with no direct intervention. No one, bar Athame, had made anything like a proactive move. No one was going against her wishes. Yet.

Abi knew that the Countess was disturbingly adept at discerning lies. He had stuck to the strict letter of the truth, therefore, in a desperate effort to stave off the evil day. He wanted to be able to report total success to her: the securing of the Maya codex and the thirteenth crystal skull; the identity and geographical location of the Second Coming and of the Third Antichrist; and the gruesomely drawn-out
murder of Adam Sabir, for which he had already earmarked Aldinach and her deliriously transformational scalpel – then, and only then, might he expect to be forgiven. The deaths of Joris Calque and Lamia would simply add an extra layer of icing to the celebratory cake.

He looked at the time on his cell phone – 2.30 in the morning. He’d better get on with it. People woke up early here, and he reckoned some might be moving by as soon as four o’clock, if they needed to get to distant places of work.

He began the necessary round of telephone calls.

The snake was approaching him again. The same snake he had seen whilst imprisoned in the cesspit below the Maset de la Marais safe house waiting for Achor Bale’s return.

This time the snake slithered past him. He could feel the roughness of its skin kissing his.

Sabir tried to turn his head to follow the snake’s progress, but he was unable to move. It was then that he realized that his skull was being held in a vice.

He corrected his eye-line and stared to his front. He instantly knew what he was looking at. It was the exact same scene described by Akbal Coatl, the chief guardian of the sacred books, in Maní, in the run-up to the burning of the Maya relics.

Sabir tried to shout. To break through the reality he now found himself in, and back to the reality he felt he should be inhabiting. But his words were eaten – no sound came out of his mouth.

He remembered then that time was a spiral. Wasn’t that what both the Maya and Nostradamus believed? That at any given moment, granted the right conditions, you could encounter time past, or even time future, in time present? The poet, T.S. Eliot, had taken the idea and run with it in the ‘Burnt Norton’ section of his
Four Quartets
:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future
,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

The words repeated and repeated themselves in your brain.

You were clearly going crazy. A Spanish soldier was approaching you. He held a
garrotte
in his hands.

The soldier turned towards a friar dressed in the dark-brown habit of a Franciscan Minorite. Friar de Landa. It couldn’t be anybody else. The man’s face was smooth and blameless – the face of someone who knows that whatever they do, whatever outrage they choose to commit, is, by godly implication, the right thing. Beside him a man you also recognized was busy scribbling onto a vellum sheet, supported on a lectern. You knew this man well – he was a member of your family. For a moment you resented him. What was he doing, hobnobbing with the Spaniards? He should be out here, with you, suffering for his beliefs.

Then you remembered. He had taken an oath. You had administered it yourself. In this oath he had undertaken to protect two sacred items – the last remaining copy of the sacred codex, designed by the priests as the final back-up to the library revealed to Friar de Landa by the terminal folly of Nachi Cocom – and the thirteenth crystal skull, the so-called ‘singing skull’, without which
the twelve remaining skulls of wisdom might not speak. To fulfil his task, Akbal Coatl had agreed to placate – even to become one with – the Spaniards. This he was clearly doing to the best of his ability.

The Spanish soldier wired the
garrotte
in place over your forehead. The snake was close behind you too. He was whispering in your ear.

You knew now that the snake was the Vision Serpent. The Serpent who only appeared to those whose eyes were no longer sufficiently acute to view the reality about to encompass them.

The first turn of the
garrotte
was made. You shrieked in pain. You could feel the blood starting from your forehead.

The Vision Serpent whispered the first of the seven secrets to you.

Then came the second turn. Your eyes clouded. Your ears began to hum with the pressure of the
cordeles
. Four turns. That was the maximum you had ever heard inflicted. You would be able to withstand that much. You were a strong man. You would be scarred, yes. Badly scarred. But you would live.

The Vision Serpent whispered the second of the seven secrets to you.

When they turned the garrotte for the fifth time, you no longer knew or cared what they were asking you to say. You could feel the
cordeles
knotting against the bones of your skull. Blood clouded your vision. Pain was your only reality. You could feel the teeth breaking off in your mouth as you ground your jaws together in a vain attempt to loosen the pressure.

The Vision Serpent whispered the fifth of the seven secrets to you.

With the seventh turn, your eyes burst out of their sockets and fell onto your cheeks. This you could see. For
you were seeing through the eyes of the Vision Serpent. You were dead and you were alive at the same time. Your skull was cracking under the pressure of the
garrotte
. Your brain was compressed inside the
cordeles
, which were binding it as in a vice.

You were dead. No man could survive seven turns of the
garrotte
.

The Vision Serpent whispered the seventh of the seven secrets to you.

‘He is still alive, sir. Shall we tighten the
garrotte
another turn so that his skull breaks in two?’

‘No. Let him live. As a lesson to the other chiefs.’

At first, when they untied the
garrotte
, it was found impossible to free it from your skull. The
cordeles
had ground so far inwards that they and your skull had become one.

You were dead. You felt nothing.

You could see the soldiers still, but only via the eyes of the Vision Serpent. One soldier cut the membranes that supported what remained of your out-spurted eyes. Another cut the
cordeles
and ripped them from your forehead, just as you would rip a congealed bandage from an infected wound.

You were lifted. You saw this clearly. Lifted by four men and a woman. Your head lolled backwards. You could see the blood rushing from your wounds.

You were dead. No man could survive what you had endured.

Then the pain came. And with it the final whispers of the Vision Serpent. The final sighting of yourself through the Vision Serpent’s eyes.

Sabir opened his eyes. He was blind. He closed them again.

It had all been true then. They had taken his eyes. He felt consumed by the darkness. He screamed.

Hands took hold of his body. He was carried out of the
touj
and into the open air.

Sabir threw his forearms across his face. It was dark. All was darkness. He could not bear to acknowledge his blindness.

Ixtab leaned forwards and rested her hands on his. ‘Try to open your eyes again,’ she said. ‘You will see. You are not blind. Trust me.’

‘No. No. I can’t.’

‘Open your eyes.’

Sabir was placed gently on the ground. He could smell the odour of the dust. Smell the bodies of those around him. He could identify each by their smell.

‘Where is Lamia? I need her.’

‘Open your eyes, Adam.’

Sabir opened his eyes. It was still dark, but he was just able to make out the faces of those immediately surrounding him in the first suggestion of pre-dawn.

It was then that he knew that he was not blind. That he had merely been having a mimetic vision. Hacking sobs racked his body. In a sudden cognitive rush he remembered taking the
datura
. He remembered the ceremony. He remembered going to sleep. When he had recovered sufficiently to speak, he made a grab for Ixtab’s arm. ‘What did I do? What did I say?’

‘You told us many things.’

‘Did I tell you the seven secrets?’

‘The seven secrets?’

‘Yes. The seven secrets the Vision Serpent told me.’

There was a heavy silence. Sabir could almost smell the excitement emanating from his companions.

‘No. What are those secrets?’

Sabir sat up. ‘What did I tell you?’

Calque moved in closer. He crouched down beside Sabir. ‘You told us that the Third Antichrist was already living amongst us. That you knew his name and his condition, but that no one else must be allowed to know it. That if they did, the Corpus Maleficus would seize it from them in an effort to support the Antichrist and delay the return of the Devil.’

‘Christ Jesus. That’s it? That’s what I told you?’

‘Yes. You quoted Revelations to us too: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom
is
as the sand of the sea.”’

‘Yes. Yes. It’s what Achor Bale said to me when he had me imprisoned in the cesspit. “AND AFTER THAT HE MUST BE LOOSED A LITTLE SEASON.” The maniac thought he was still protecting us all from the Devil, just like his de Bale ancestors had done for the kings of France.’

The Halach Uinic motioned to Ixtab. She crouched forwards and spoke to Sabir. ‘We do not understand this. How can the de Bales imagine they are protecting us all from a Devil they themselves seem busy conjuring up?’

Calque laid a hand on Sabir’s shoulder to stop him from responding. ‘Let me answer this. I’ve become something of an expert on the subject in recent months. The Devil-Antichrist question is a tricky one. In a nutshell, the Corpus believes that only by
placating
the Devil – that is, by supporting
his earthly representative, the Third Antichrist (the first two Antichrists being Napoleon and Hitler, according to Nostradamus) – can the Devil be
seduced
into allowing the earth to follow its own devices. To run its own shop. Once the Devil himself is tempted to intervene – once he loses patience, in other words, with the machinations of his henchmen – we are doomed to Armageddon.’

Ixtab shook her head. ‘How can this be? Is there no way to stop it? Or does the Corpus think this is all preordained too?’

‘To the de Bales’ way of thinking, the only palpable threat to the Third Antichrist is via the Second Coming. Because the Antichrist is the evil mirror image of Christ – Christ’s dark shadow – the
antimimon pneuma
– the counterfeit spirit, or what have you, only a true representation of Christ – ergo the Son of God – ergo the
Parousia –
ergo the Second Coming – can possibly hope to overcome him. The Corpus Maleficus can’t afford to let that happen, because then they would have failed in their sworn duty. The crazy thing is that they think
they
are the goodies. That whatever they need to do to keep the Devil at bay is justified, within the greater scheme of things. That is their gage. The rest is irrelevant to them. The Devil is God’s evil brother – the Antichrist bears the exact same relationship to Christ. The one, in both cases, presupposes the existence of the other. The Antichrist is therefore Christ’s dark shadow or mirror image, and can only be overcome by his opposite number. And vice versa. You see? It’s simple, really.’