The Codex (34 page)

At this reminder of their traveling companion, Tom felt a stab of pain.

“I know,” Sally said. “I miss him, too.”

“I’ll never forget the old man and his offbeat wisdom. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.”

They watched Borabay chopping and hacking up the animal and tossing the chunks into a pot. He was singing a chantlike tune that rose and fell with the breeze.

“Has he said anything about this Hauser fellow and what’s going on in the Sierra Azul?”

“No. He won’t talk about it.” She looked at him and hesitated. “For a while back there I thought we were all finished.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember what I said?”

“I do.”

She blushed deeply.

Tom asked, “You want to take it back?”

She shook her head, sending her blond hair aswirl, then gazed at him, her cheeks flushed. “Never.”

Tom smiled. “Good.” He took her hand. What they had gone through had deepened her beauty somehow, made her look spiritual, something he couldn’t quite explain. That prickly, defensive edge seemed to have disappeared. Getting that close to death had changed them all.

Borabay came back with some raw tidbits of meat wrapped up in a leaf. “Hairy Bugger!” he called and made a sucking noise with his teeth that sounded uncannily like the monkey. Bugger popped his head out of Tom’s pocket. Borabay extended his hand, and Bugger, after fretting and squeaking a bit, reached out, snatched off a little piece of meat, and crammed it into his mouth. Then he snatched another, and another, stuffing his face with both hands, his squeaks of pleasure muffled by the food.

“Hairy Bugger and I friend now,” said Borabay, smiling.

Vernon’s fever broke that night. He woke up the next morning, lucid but weak. Borabay fussed around him, forcing a variety of herbal tisanes and other concoctions down his throat. They spent the day resting in camp while Borabay went out collecting food. The Indian returned in the afternoon with a palm-leaf sack, from which he unloaded roots, fruits, nuts, and fresh fish. He spent the rest of the day roasting and smoking and salting the food, then bundling it in dry grass and leaves.

“Are we going somewhere?” Tom asked him.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Borabay said, “We talkee later.”

Philip came limping out of the hut, his feet still bandaged, briar pipe in his mouth. “Glorious afternoon,” he said. He came over to the fire and sat down. As he poured himself a cup of tea Borabay had made, he said, “This Indian chap should be put on the cover of National Geographic!”

Vernon joined them, shakily settling down on the log.

“Vernon, eat!” Borabay immediately filled up a bowl with stew and passed it over. Vernon took it with trembling hands, mumbling thanks.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said Philip.

Vernon wiped his brow and said nothing. He was pale and thin. He placed another spoonful of stew in his mouth.

“Well, here we are,” said Philip. “My three sons.”

There was a sudden edge to Philip’s voice that Tom noted with unease. A piece of wood popped in the fire.

“And what a mess we have gotten ourselves into,” Philip said. “Thanks to Dear Old Dad.” He raised his cup in mock salute. “Here’s a toast to you, Dear Old Dad.” He tossed his tea down.

Tom looked more closely at Philip. He had recovered amazingly well. His eyes were finally alive—alive with anger.

Philip looked around. “What now, brothers of mine?”

Vernon shrugged. He was pale, his face sunken, gray circles under his eyes. He placed another spoonful of stew in his mouth.

“Do we scurry back out, tails between our legs? And let this Hauser fellow help himself to the Lippi, the Braques, the Monet, and all the rest?” He paused. “Or do we head on up into the Sierra Azul and maybe end up with our entrails hanging in the bushes?” He relit his pipe. “Those are our choices.”

No one answered while Philip looked around, staring at each one in turn.

“Well?” Philip said. “I’m asking a serious question: Are we going to let that corpulent Cortez waltz in here and steal our inheritance?”

Vernon looked up. His face was still haggard from his illness, and his voice was weak. “Answer the question yourself. You’re the one who brought Hauser up here.”

Philip turned to Vernon with a cool look. “I should think the time for recriminations had passed.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the time for recriminations has just begun.”

“This isn’t the time or place,” said Tom.

Vernon turned to Tom. “Philip brought that psychopath up here, and he needs to answer for it.”

“I was acting in good faith. I had no idea this man Hauser would turn out to be a monster. And I did answer for it, Vernon. Look at me.”

Vernon shook his head.

Philip went on. “The real culprit here, since no one else seems inclined to admit it, is Father. Isn’t anyone here just a wee bit angry at what Father’s done to us? He nearly killed us.”

Tom said, “He wanted to challenge us.”

“You’re not defending him, I hope.”

“I’m trying to understand him.”

“I understand him only too well. This Tomb Raider bullshit is just one more challenge in a long list of them. Remember the sports tutors, the ski instructors, the art history lessons and horseback lessons and music lessons and chess lessons, the exhortations and speeches and threats? Remember report card day? He thinks we’re fuckups, Tom. He’s always thought that. And maybe it’s true. Look at me: thirty-seven years old and still an assistant professor at Gobshite Junior College—and you, doctoring Indian horses in Hayseed, Utah—and Vernon spending the prime of his life chanting with Swami Woo-Woo. We’re losers.” He erupted in a harsh laugh.

Borabay rose to his feet. The action itself was simple, but it was done with such slow deliberation that it silenced them. “This not good talk.”

“This doesn’t involve you, Borabay,” said Philip.

“No more bad talk.”

Philip ignored him, speaking to Tom. “Father could’ve left us his money like any other normal person. Or he could have given it away. Fine. I could’ve lived with that. It was his money. But no, he had to come up with a plan to torture us with it.”

Borabay glared at him. “Shut up, brother.”

Philip turned on him. “I don’t care if you did save our lives, stay out of our family business.” A vein pulsed in Philip’s forehead; Tom had rarely seen him so furious.

“You listen me, little brother, or I wimp your ass.” Borabay said defiantly, standing up to his full five feet of height, his fists balled.

There was a beat, then Philip began to laugh and shake his head. His body relaxed. “Christ, is this guy for real?”

“We’re all a little stressed,” said Tom. “But Borabay’s right. This is no place to argue.”

“Tonight,” Borabay said, “we talk, very important.”

“About what?” Philip demanded.

Borabay turned to the stewpot and began stirring, his painted face unreadable. “You see.”

48

Lewis Skiba settled back in the leather armchair of his paneled den and shook out the Journal to the editorial page. He tried to read but the distant squeaks and blats of his son’s trumpet practice kept him from concentrating. Almost two weeks had passed since Hauser’s last call. The man was evidently playing with him, keeping him in suspense. Or had something happened? Had he ... done it?

His eyes fastened on the lead editorial in an effort to drown out the rush of self-accusation, but the words just ran through his head without any of the meaning sticking. Central Honduras was a dangerous place. It was quite possible Hauser had slipped up somewhere, made a mistake, misjudged something, caught a fever ... A lot of things could have happened to him. The point was, he had disappeared. Two weeks was a long time. Maybe he had tried to kill the Broadbents and they proved too good for him and killed him instead.

Skiba hoped against all hope that this was what had happened. Had he really told Hauser to kill them? What had he been thinking? An involuntary moan escaped him. If only Hauser was dead. Skiba now knew, too late, that he would rather lose everything than be guilty of murder. He was a murderer. He said it, Kill them. He wondered why Hauser had been so insistent on having him say it. Christ. How was it that he, Lewis Skiba, high school football star, graduate of Stanford and Wharton, Fulbright scholar, CEO of a Fortune 500 company—how was it that he had allowed himself to become trapped and bullied and dominated by a cheap polyester criminal? Skiba had always thought of himself as a man of moral and intellectual weight, a man of ethics, a good man. He was a good father. He didn’t cheat on his wife. He went to church. He sat on boards and gave away a good portion of his earnings to charity. And yet a collar-sniffing gumshoe dick with a combover had somehow gotten the drop on him, pulled off his mask, shown him for what he really was. That’s what Skiba could never forget and never forgive. Neither himself nor Hauser.

His mind drifted once again to his childhood summers at the lake, the battenboard cottage, the crooked dock running into the still water, the smell of woodsmoke and pine. If only he could roll back the clock, go back to one of those long summers and start his life anew. What he would give to do it all over again.

With a groan of agony he forced it all from his head, taking a sip from the glass of scotch at his elbow. It was gone, all gone. He had to stop thinking about it. What was done was done. He couldn’t turn back the clock. They’d get the Codex, and maybe there would be a fresh beginning for Lampe and no one would ever know. Or Hauser was dead and they wouldn’t get the Codex, but still no one would know. No one would know. He could live with that. He’d have to live with it. Except he would know. He would know that he was a man capable of murder.

He angrily shook out the paper and began the editorial again.

At that moment the phone rang. It was the corporate phone, the secure line. He folded the paper down, walked over, and picked it up.

He heard a voice speaking as if from far away, yet as clear as a bell. It was his own voice.

Do it! Kill them, goddamn you! Kill the Broadhents!

Skiba felt as if he’d been punched. He lost all his air in a rush; he couldn’t breathe. There was a hiss, and then his voice repeated, like some ghost from the past:

Do it! Kill them, goddamn you! Kill the Broadbents!

Hauser’s voice came on next, the scrambler back on, “Did you catch that, Skiba?”

Skiba swallowed, gasped, tried to get his lungs working.

“Hello?”

“Don’t ever call me at home,” Skiba croaked.

“You never told me that.”

“How did you get the number?”

“I’m a private eye, remember?”

Skiba swallowed. No point in responding. Now he knew why Hauser had been so insistent on him saying it. He’d been trapped.

“We’re there. We’re at the White City.”

Skiba waited.

“We know this is where Broadbent went. Had a bunch of Indians bury him in a tomb up here that he’d robbed forty years ago. Probably the same tomb he found the Codex in. How’s that for irony? We’re here now, in the lost city, and all we have to do is find the tomb.”

Skiba heard a muffled thump, distorted by the scrambler into a long squawk. Hauser must have turned off the scrambler at just the right moment to record his words in his own voice. There’d be no stiffing Hauser now out of his fifty million. On the contrary, Skiba had a feeling he’d be paying more, a lot more—for the rest of his life. Hauser had him by the short hairs. What a goddamn fool he’d been, outmaneuvered at every turn. Unbelievable.

“Hear that? That’s the beautiful sound of dynamite. My men are working over a pyramid. Unfortunately the White City is a big, overgrown place, and Max could be buried anywhere. Anyway, I called to tell you there’s been a change. When we find the tomb and get the Codex, we’re heading west, out over the mountains, through El Salvador to the Pacific. On foot and then downriver. It’ll take a little more time. You’ll have the Codex within a month.”

“You said—”

“Yeah, yeah. Originally I was planning to helicopter the Codex out to San Pedro Sula. But all of a sudden we got a couple of dead Honduran army soldiers to explain. And you never know when some tinhorn general’s going to expropriate your property as national patrimony. The only helicopters down here belong to the military, and just to fly out here you have to cross military airspace. So we’re continuing west in an unexpected direction, nice and quiet. Trust me, it’s the best way.

Skiba swallowed again. Dead soldiers? Talking to Hauser made him feel sick. He wanted to ask if Hauser had done it, but he couldn’t bring himself to mouth the words.

“In case you’re wondering, I haven’t followed through on your order. The three Broadbent sons are still alive. Tenacious buggers. But I haven’t forgotten. I promise you, I’ll do it.”

His order. That lump was forming in Skiba’s throat again. He swallowed, just about choked on it. They were alive. “I’ve changed my mind,” he croaked.