Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

Abi could make fun of Lamia’s face and her near sexless way of dressing all he wanted, but Vau knew that there were men out there who found Lamia attractive. Take that oaf Philippe, for instance. The dead footman. He had been sniffing after Lamia for years, hadn’t he? It was only Madame, his mother’s, complete lack of interest in matters sexual that had allowed the man to continue in his job. And much good it had done him. He was now languishing below six feet of reinforced concrete at a new Catholic girls’ school the Countess was subsidizing at the Couvent des Abbesses de Platilly, near Cavalaire-sur-Mer. Nothing like keeping things cosy and in the family.

Still, Vau had all but decided that there was no way he was going to try breaking into the car again after this recent little contretemps. He would simply lie through his teeth to Abi and pretend he had planted the tracker in the spare tyre well. Instead he would attach it to the underframe of the car, and hope for the best. He had identified the perfect spot whilst lying prone beneath the Cherokee’s skirts. He would do the deed the minute the two lovebirds stopped babbling and went back inside again, and to hell with the consequences.

Abi watched his twin brother climbing back into the rental. ‘You’re filthy. What have you been doing all this time? Rolling around in a midden?’

‘What’s a midden?’

‘A shit heap.’

‘Then why don’t you say it the first time, instead of showing off how clever you are?

‘Answer my question, Vau.’

‘The answer is no. I haven’t been rolling around in a shit heap. If you want to know what I’ve been doing all this time, I’ll tell you. I’ve been lying underneath Sabir’s car, in the parking lot of the motel, listening to his cosy late-night conversation with Lamia.’

‘You’re kidding me? You’re not serious?’

‘Deadly serious. Plus she recognized Dakini earlier on today, while we were transiting Houston.’

‘Christ.’

‘It’s all right. She’s managed to convince herself that she was seeing things. Your trick with the baseball cap and the dark glasses worked a treat. It was so unlikely a disguise, that Lamia thinks she was simply imagining the vision from hell that Dakini represents, and not really seeing it.’

‘She is plug ugly, isn’t she?’

‘That’s the understatement of the year.’

Abi laughed. ‘Did you plant the tracker?’

Vau shrugged. ‘Of course I did. What do you think?’

‘Where?’

‘Where? In the tyre well of course. Where I usually plant them.’

‘Which key did you use to get in?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I’m not stupid, Vau. You got surprised on the job and you were forced to hide. Then you were constrained to listen to the pair of them yakking on about Dakini for half an hour. You’re lying under the car, at this point, pissed off to the nines. Don’t tell me it didn’t occur to you to take a shortcut?’

Vau hesitated. He was briefly tempted to try and compound his felony. Then he aimed a frustrated punch at the stowaway compartment. ‘Okay, Abi. Okay. You got me. As you always do. I slipped the fucking thing underneath the chassis, not in the tyre well. Between you and me there was no way in hell that I was going to break into that car with the pair of them wide awake inside their bedroom fantasizing about each other.’

‘What are you talking about? Fantasizing about each other?’

‘I heard Lamia’s voice. She’s my sister, remember. I’ve never heard her speaking like that to a man before.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like she gives a damn about what he thinks of her.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘I’m convinced she’s got the hots for Sabir.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Yes, it does stretch the imagination a little. When you think of all the millions of women with unblemished faces out there. I mean, why take second best when you don’t need to? Anyway, either she’s kidding herself, or Sabir must have detached retinas.’

‘Seriously. Does Sabir have the hots for her?’

Vau made a face. ‘Sabir hides it better, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’ He grinned at his brother, pleased that he was contributing something of value for once. ‘Can you use that knowledge in some way, Abi?’

Abi shrugged reflectively. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m sure as hell going to give it some thought.’

That morning saw the trio crossing the Rio Bravo at the Puente Nuevo, and driving through into Matamoros from Brownsville, Texas. They paid their $2.25 toll, and arranged for their temporary vehicle permit from the CIITEV office. Then they headed south down Highway 101 towards San Fernando.

Abi and Vau, who had crossed by foot earlier that morning, and secured a new, Mexican registered rental for themselves, picked up the Grand Cherokee about two miles out of town. The tracker was working fine, so they were able to follow the Jeep at a distance of about three quarters of a mile, with no possibility of a surprise sighting. The nine remaining members of the Corpus had been detailed to hire themselves two people carriers, one for the men and one for the women, and to keep in touch with Abi and Vau via cell phone. They would rendezvous every night near whatever motel the trio had chosen for themselves.

Abi had decided against concealing the existence of the tracker from his brothers and sisters for the simple reason that keeping a close tail on a car you don’t really need to follow is a smart way of asking for trouble. And to hell with Madame, his mother’s, worries about her children feeling she didn’t trust them any more. If the others didn’t tell her and trigger the predictable scene, then he certainly wouldn’t. And who in their right mind trusted anybody anyway?

Any further cock-ups, and Abi knew that the Countess would take him off the case. Christ, she might even give the job to Brain-of-Europe Vau – or, even worse, to the next man down the list in the seniority stakes. Mr Harelip himself. Bullshitter Berith. The world’s greatest Pseudologist.

Abi knew that his best bet with the Countess always lay in seducing her into liking him face to face. Alongside Oni and Athame, he was undoubtedly her favourite. But keeping in touch with her by cell phone was a sheer disaster. The Countess hated using telephones, and was always constrained in what she said. She started in on the offensive and stayed there. And wasn’t it always so much easier to cashier somebody when you didn’t have to look them in the eye?

Abi decided that he would tread very carefully indeed for the next few days. When the perfect moment came to move in on Sabir, he would be ready. He wouldn’t blow things twice in a row.

‘I think it’s time you told us a little more about the Corpus Maleficus.’ Calque was luxuriating across the Grand Cherokee’s rear bench. Sabir was driving, and Lamia was beside him on the passenger seat.

The air conditioning was working at full stretch, and Sabir could feel the deterioration in the car’s power as a result. He was sticking to a steady sixty-eight miles an hour on the assumption that any contact with Mexican traffic cops this close to the border could only lead to tears. This was drug country. Everyone was corrupt in one way or another. It was simply a matter of scale.

‘Why now? Why did you not ask me this before?’ Lamia glanced back at Calque. It wasn’t a suspicious look so much as an old-fashioned one. The sort of look that says ‘You’d better not be trying to spin me a line, matey.’

Calque straightened up. The expression on his face was that of a man who suddenly means business. ‘We are maybe two, or at the most, three days’ driving away from where we need to be. Sabir has chosen not to share with us the key element of his revelatory quatrain – although I should have thought he would have learned to trust us both by now. It has occurred to me that if you showed good faith, Lamia, in opening up the skeletons in your family’s cupboard, then the ever elusive Sabir might prove more amenable to also confiding in his friends.’