The Mayan Codex (35 page)

‘You mean he would have felt a kinship with the Maya?’

‘Exactly. Just as he had previously felt a kinship with the Gypsies. To the extent that he might even have compared the wholesale destruction of Maya culture to similar Inquisitorial threats against the four levels of the
Kabbalah
. As always, therefore, with Nostradamus, he would have Infibulated his quatrain with hidden codes and meanings to protect it from prying eyes – codes which could only be teased out via the use of
gematria
.’

‘Jesus Christ, Calque. “infibulated”? “
Gematria
”?’

‘Infibulated means to interleave, or to lard with a knitting needle – I’m using the word in its figurative
sense, needless to say, rather than in its explicit sense of sewing up the labia majora. And
gematria
is the Hebrew system of numerology.’

Sabir flared his eyes in quiet desperation. ‘Are you trying to tell us that you have somehow deduced a whole series of hidden codes in the – what? – five whole minutes since you have had access to the quatrain?’

Calque threw himself back on his seat. ‘No. I am sorry to disappoint you both. But I have deduced no hidden codes as yet. I am merely speculating that they might – no, change that to must – exist.’

It had been a bad day. Probably the worst day that you had ever suffered in your life.

At Villahermosa you had been robbed while you were sleeping in the market square. The thieves had taken the two hundred pesos that you had been keeping as a reserve in a pouch tied to your waist. But, far worse than that, they had taken the bag in which you were keeping the codex. You had been using this bag as a pillow, and the thieves’ act of slipping it from underneath your head had woken you up.

You had identified the thieves and given chase. But you had not been eating well these past few days, and your strength was, in consequence, diminished. But you were still able to shout, and to summon aid from the other Indios who were sleeping in and around the square.

At first the thieves had seemed certain to escape, but, at the very last moment, two Indios entering the square after a night of heavy drinking had managed to stop them. The thieves did not have machetes, but these two Indios who had been drinking were carrying theirs.

Quickly, a crowd gathered around the thieves, and you were called upon to explain exactly what had happened.

You told about the pesos, and about your bag with the book that you were carrying for a friend.

A policeman came to join the crowd and to see what was occurring at this early hour of the morning, before the market had begun.

The thieves pretended to the policeman that they had not been doing as they had done. They were very convincing. You argued against them, but the policeman was not inclined to listen to you, as you were a stranger, coming from Veracruz. At length the policeman took the two thieves aside, and the three of them stood talking together for some time. The two thieves gave the policeman something, the policeman nodded, and the thieves hurried away. Quickly, like mist dispersing on a lake, all the Indios surrounding you also melted away.

Then the policeman came back. He was carrying the bag in which you kept the codex. ‘Is this your property?’

‘Yes, Señor.’

‘This is a valuable property no doubt?’ The policeman took out the codex and began to leaf through the folded pages.

‘No. It is not valuable.’

‘Then you will not mind if I confiscate it?’

You shook your head. Your heart was as ice in your chest. ‘I would very much mind for it to be confiscated. This thing belongs to another. I have promised to take it to him. I have taken an oath.’

‘The thieves gave me two hundred pesos. What will you give me?’

You opened your hands and turned them upwards. ‘The two hundred pesos the thieves gave you belonged to me. It was the money the thieves stole from me.’

‘I am sorry for this. But I can do nothing. If you want your property, you must pay a fine. That is the law.’ The policeman opened the notebook he was carrying at a certain page, and pointed to the text, which you, of course, could not read.

You reached down and slipped off one of your shoes. In it, you had fifty pesos of your one hundred remaining pesos. You took out the fifty-peso note and placed it in the policeman’s book.

The policeman shrugged. ‘Is that all you have?’

‘The thieves …’ You also shrugged. But still, hidden inside your other shoe, was the remaining fifty-peso note. You prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe that the policeman would not ask you to reveal what was in that shoe as well. If he did this, you would be lost.

The policeman snapped shut his book. ‘Very well then.’ He dropped the bag with the codex onto the ground, as if by error. ‘You have paid your fine. You are free to go now.’

You quickly picked up the codex, bowed to the policeman, and turned away.

Now you knew you would certainly starve. You had just fifty pesos left to your name. And you still had to pass through Ciudad del Carmen, Champotón, and Hopelchén, before you reached your final destination at Kabáh, at the Palace of the Masks.

A friendly Indio had told you that there was a chance, if you waited for the ending of the market, that if one of the market traders had done particularly well, they might possibly agree to take you back with them in their empty truck. Many came from Ciudad del Carmen to
the market in Villahermosa – almost as many as went to Campeche. If you were lucky, and had the patience to wait without complaining, you might find such a person.

In the meanwhile you knew you would be forced to loiter around the market all day, praying that you would not meet the policeman again, and that one amongst the many market traders might throw some of his rotting fruit away into the gutter. If this was the case, then you would be able to eat a little, and settle your stomach. For the fifty pesos that you had left in your shoe would doubtless be needed at Kabáh – as a bribe, maybe, in case the man at the main gate would not let you in to wait.

When you fell to thinking about this waiting, your stomach pained you even more than it had before. It was like the ache of a blow – your belly seemed to expand and contract with the pain at one and the same time. Originally, you had promised yourself eggs – in the form of
salsa de huevo –
for breakfast that morning, in a bid to keep up your strength. But now, because of the thieves, you dared not waste your remaining money on such luxuries.

Truly, this had been a bad day. Probably the worst day that you had ever suffered in your life.

‘Despite all that you say about her, Madame, my mother, is an honourable woman.’

Sabir checked out Calque’s response to Lamia’s statement in the Cherokee’s rear-view mirror. Calque
was clutching his head as if somebody had just struck him a glancing blow on the temple with a meat mallet. Fortunately for Calque, Lamia did not appear to notice the movement.

‘What’s all this “Madame, my mother” bit? I’ve been meaning to ask you that for some time now.’ It wasn’t the smartest question in the world, but Sabir knew he had to do whatever was necessary to divert Lamia’s attention away from Calque, who was behaving as if he wanted to trigger a riot. Where it concerned the Countess, the ex-detective’s mind was unquestionably a no-through-road.

‘It’s a term of respect. All of us children use it. Monsieur, my father, was a very old man when we knew him – more like a grandfather than a father, really – and it seemed only right to show him respect. The usage then carried over to Madame, my mother. And we have never seen any reason to change it.’

‘So you still respect her?’

‘Of course. But I also disagree with her. In the strongest possible terms.’

Sabir pulled into a lay-by and switched off the engine. They were a little way short of Ciudad Madero and Tampico. The trucks and pickups on nearby Highway 80/180 buffeted the Grand Cherokee each time they passed, causing the vehicle to rock on her springs like a spavined old lady. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t possibly drive and concentrate on a conversation like this at the same time.’ He turned to Lamia. ‘Let me get this straight. You still respect the woman who had you drugged and tied up, and who would most probably have had you killed if Calque’s buddy hadn’t ridden in on his white charger and rescued you?’

‘Madame, my mother, would never have had me killed.’

‘Oh, really? Well she sicced Achor Bale, your brother, onto a bunch of entirely innocent Gypsies, two of whom
he killed, one of whom he as good as crippled, and the other one of whom he tried to give permanent, screaming nightmares to. And that’s not to mention a security guard, his Alsatian dog, and Calque’s assistant, Paul Macron, each of whom suffered lethally in the fallout.’

‘Rocha thought they had information we needed.’

‘Oh. So that’s okay then?’

‘I don’t believe Madame, my mother, knew quite how out of control Rocha was. I don’t believe she wanted to have anyone killed. Rocha was working to his own agenda.’

Calque chose that moment to wade back into the conversation. ‘Rocha, or whatever you want to call him – I can’t think of him as anything other than Achor Bale myself – was definitely not working off his own bat. He was working at your mother’s instigation, and doing her bidding in everything.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Of course not. That has always been my problem. Which is why the Countess got away with her dirty little scheme. In any halfway decent society she would have gone down for at least five years as an accessory before the fact. But she was far too well connected for that, wasn’t she? My Commandant actually admitted as much to my face. Which is one of the reasons why I took early retirement.’

‘Perhaps you were wrong? Perhaps she was innocent all the time? Have you thought of that?’

Calque made a pfaffing sound through his nose, like an irritated horse. ‘I knew it then, and I know it now – she’s guilty as hell.’

Sabir turned to Lamia. He took a deep breath. One part of him felt he needed to pin Lamia down about her family – the other part felt he ought to cut her a little slack. The first part won. ‘And your twin brothers? Were
they just out to have a friendly little conversation with me up there in Stockbridge? Just chewing the fat, so to speak? Did I misunderstand their intentions? Maybe they didn’t really intend to burn down my house. Maybe they were just joshing me?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lamia. What’s got into you? Are you regretting coming with us? Would you rather go take your chances back with the Corpus?’

Lamia turned on Sabir. The unmarked side of her face had gone a deathly white. ‘No, of course not. But I don’t want you to demonize my family either. They really believe in what they are doing. They really believe that the de Bales have been tasked with protecting the world from the thousand-year return of the Devil. We have been doing it – not unsuccessfully – for nearly eight hundred years now.’

‘Well thank Christ someone’s been on the job.’ Sabir’s patience was wearing thin. How could an intelligent woman like Lamia act so blindly when it came to her family? He felt like reaching out and shaking her.

‘Just how have you been achieving this?’ This from Calque, who had taken advantage of his companions’ temporary lapse of attention to light a cigarette. As he spoke, he puffed smoke busily out through the open window.