Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

‘I, too, know about it. For obvious reasons.’

‘Where is the scar?’

‘There are two. One is the main scar. The other is a drainage scar. From when he lost a kidney in his late twenties thanks to a congenital malformation. The drainage scar is below the main scar. Both are very beautiful.’

Yola laughed. ‘You finds his scars beautiful? Damo really must have closed your eyes.’

‘He finds my face beautiful.’

Yola gave a slow nod. The expression on her face began to transform itself from one of wariness into one of acceptance. ‘Your face is beautiful. In our tribe, if a person has a mark on their face or body, we say that they have been touched by O Del ’s own hand. That it is a mark of His especial favour.’

‘ O Del?’

‘It is our name for God.’

‘Do you really say that?’

‘I promise you.’

‘It is nice to hear such a thing.’

Both women stood looking at each other. Still measuring each other up. Yola was the first to break the silence. ‘Why does Damo want you to speak to me?’

‘Can we talk in a less public place? I can drive you somewhere.’

‘No. We must talk here.’

Lamia glanced around. The longer she remained in the public arena, the more likely someone was to remember her – she was not, after all, inconspicuous. She decided that she must get her point across as swiftly as possible – get Yola out of there and into an isolated location without further ado. She had bought herself a lock-knife back at Madrid airport, in a hardware store situated just outside the main departure gates – rather surreally, for an airport shop, the place specialized in locally sourced Toledo steel.

Milouins had shown her exactly where and how to strike when she, and Madame, her mother, had been preparing their plans. The way he had explained it, it would only take one blow. Both child and mother would be dead in seconds, with very little pain. All she’d have to do would be to curl Yola’s hand about the haft of the knife, and then leave the mess for the police to sort out. Suicide as a result of pre-natal depression? Internecine Gypsy feuds? There was fertile ground for potential obfuscation.

‘The Corpus Maleficus are after you. We encountered them in Mexico. Through a terrible piece of bad luck, they learned who you are and who you are carrying.’ Lamia motioned with one hand towards Yola’s stomach. ‘Adam sent me out here to warn you. To get you away from the camp and to a safe place. He will be over here himself in maybe two days, when he gets the passports sorted.’

All the colour drained from Yola’s face. ‘What did you say? About who I am carrying?’

‘Listen to me, Yola. During a hallucinatory experience in a touj, deep in the Yucatan, Adam inadvertently let slip that you were to be the mother of the Second Coming. He was half crazy with datura at the time. And we had been the subject of a number of extreme experiences in the run-up to the seance, so he wasn’t in his right mind to start with. The drug just made it worse. We thought we were finally amongst friends. That all the people present would be instrumental in welcoming the birth of your child. In promulgating the good news. But a member of the Corpus Maleficus was also in the room. He heard Adam’s words. Now he is coming over here to kill you. I am just ahead of him. I need to take you to a safe place where we can wait for Adam and Calque. You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘I believe that you are Damo’s lover. I can see it in your eyes. Women can’t lie about such things. Emotions like that go deeper with us than they do with men.’

Lamia could sense the blood flushing into her face. She tilted her head a little to one side, in an old habit she had of protecting herself when she felt particularly threatened. ‘Yes. They do.’ Lamia could sense that this was her moment. If she blew this chance, she would be forced to act prematurely, and in a public place. It would be a disaster. It would mean exiling herself for life from everything she knew and cared for – but it would be a sacrifice Madame, her mother, would expect her to make. ‘Will you come with me? We can go back to the camp if you want. Fetch whatever you need. We would only need to be away for a few days.’

‘Can’t Captain Calque and his people protect me?’

‘He is no longer a policeman. He retired, Yola. A little while after you met him. He is helping Sabir now. But on a strictly private level. They are both working together on this. We travelled in a group through Mexico. Captain Calque is a good man.’

Yola nodded. ‘Yes. He is. For a payo he is a good man. He let me collect my brother’s hair from the morgue so we could bury him within the allotted time.’

‘Yes. He told me that.’

Yola straightened up. Early comers to the bakery were already eyeing both women with suspicion. One was a Gypsy, and one was freak. Yola felt an unexpected degree of kinship with Lamia. She understood only too well from her own experience why the other woman might not want to remain in the full public gaze. ‘Okay. I go with you. If Damo says I should trust you, I will trust you. He would never do anything against my interests. But first we go to my caravan. We collect Alexi. He goes with us.’

‘Of course.’

Yola hitched her shoulders. ‘Maybe I should call this number anyway?’

‘There’s no one there. I promise. You can call it if you want to.’

‘And Damo? Does he not have a phone he carries?’

‘It was stolen. Along with his passport, his money, and his credit cards. And Calque never uses a cell phone anyway. He’s a technophobe.’

‘A what?’

‘He hates modern technology. He works entirely from his mind.’

‘Yes. Yes he does. That is what Damo told me. That is what I have seen for myself. Come. Let us go to your car. I don’t need to call the number.’

The two women headed for Lamia’s Peugeot. On a whim, Lamia darted into the bakery and bought a large bag of croissants and three baguettes. She was counting on them to provide her with a further level of camouflage. How could anyone think that a young woman loaded down with bread and croissants could possibly be a threat?

It was this five-minute delay, however, that dictated the way future events would pan out. For Athame, catching the fragrance of freshly baked bread wafting towards her from the bakery, blithely stuck her head above the door frame of the car she and Aldinach were sleeping in, and wound down her window.

The clutch on Sabir and Calque’s hire car burnt out just north of Melun.

‘I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it.’ Sabir hammered on the steering wheel. ‘Fucking rentals. Fucking assholes. Why don’t they fucking service their fucking cars?’

Calque stared at him. ‘Have you finished, Sabir? There is nobody here but me to hear you. And I’m all for swearing alongside the next man, but at 2.30 in the morning, it can be a little hard on the nerves. And you’ve been riding this car like it’s a Formula 1 Ferrari. Not an imported hatchback that has been used by a hundred people already. And all of them with markedly different gear-changing techniques.’

Sabir collapsed back into his seat. ‘What do we do now?’

Calque pondered for a moment or two. ‘We find a telephone. We phone the rental company. They send a trailer out here with a new car on it. They winch the old car up on the trailer. Then we continue on our way.’

‘But what about Lamia? And the other two maniacs?’

‘We can do nothing about that, Sabir. Yola has no phone. It is in the lap of the gods.’

‘Did we pass an emergency telephone recently?’

‘No.’

‘So what do we do? Flag down a passing car?’