Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

‘Working to a different stage of logic. What we cannot steal, we buy. And what we cannot have by right, we seize. With us, it has become a case of the law of the jungle.’ Lamia raised her head defiantly. ‘If you wish to defeat the Corpus, you will only do so by using the law of the jungle against them in return. Otherwise the Corpus will chew you up and spit you out like a piece of rotting meat.’

Sabir scrunched himself back into his seat, his neck against the window frame, his head against the glass, so that he could see both Calque and Lamia at the same time. ‘So now we come to the million-dollar question, Lamia. The one that secures the prize. Why are your people still pursuing us? What can they conceivably hope to gain? What do they figure to get from the lost prophecies of Nostradamus?’

Lamia looked shocked. ‘But it is obvious, Adam. I thought you knew this without my having to tell you? It is all about power. The need to know what the future holds. And for this they require three things.’ She marked the points off on her fingers. ‘They need to know the identity and whereabouts of the Third Antichrist, whom some people call the “Wilful King”. They need to know the identity and whereabouts of the Second Coming. And they need to know whether 21 December 2012 marks the true end of the world, or merely the start of the predicted thousand-year return of the Devil. If it is the latter, then the Corpus will protect the Antichrist and kill the Parousia – in this way they will effectively delay the advent of the Devil because he will no longer feel that he is under-represented on earth. In this manner, also, they will have fulfilled their ancient task. If it is the former, they will commit collective suicide, and be translated into heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.’

Calque let his unlit cigarette flutter from his fingers. ‘Mary, Jesus, Joseph, and all the Saints. What? Like the Rapture?’

‘A little like that.’

‘But the Rapture relies on the Second Coming, Lamia. It relies on the Parousia. It’s not about killing Him, for pity’s sake.’

‘But the Pre-Wrath Rapture is, Captain. This is the moment when we are told the sun turns black and the moon turns red. An era of wars, famines, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis – what the Bible calls the time of the “abomination of desolation”. God’s wrath will fall on the unbelievers when the sixth seal is finally opened. There will be a long period of tribulation before the Second Advent.’ Lamia looked at her two companions. ‘Does any of this sound familiar to you, gentlemen? Does any of this ring a bell with you?’

Sabir felt as if his brain had been run through a clothes’ mangle. ‘You mean the eruption of Orizaba? The earthquake in L’Aquila? Global warming? The Indian ocean tsunami? The melting of the polar ice cap? That sort of thing?’

Lamia made a tired face. ‘Yes. And all the rest of it too.’

Abi was acting as look-out and Vau was driving. At first glance, the tracker had appeared to be misbehaving, which meant that the twins found themselves blundering past the stationary Grand Cherokee when they were least expecting it.

‘Christ. Did you see them? Did you see what they were doing? It was them, Abi, wasn’t it? Did they see us?’

‘Calm down, Vau. There’s no damage done. They were just sitting in their car talking. Or at least so far as I could see. We were moving way too fast when we passed them. Plus we’ve got a fresh car. Plus we’re wearing these stupid American baseball caps. They won’t have made us.’

‘I wish we’d planted a proper bug on them when we had the chance.’

‘Oh yes? And this from the man who couldn’t be bothered to break into their car when the opportunity was handed to him on a plate, but simply latched his tracker onto the fucking undercarriage in the fond hope that it wouldn’t fucking jerk off when they fucking went over their first fucking speed bump?’

‘Okay, Abi. Okay. You don’t have to rub it in.’

‘What do you think they were talking about? Maybe you’ve got a view on that too, Vau?’

‘How do I know? What do you think?’

Abi closed his eyes. He scrubbed at his face, then let his head fall back against the built-in headrest. He motioned to Vau to pull the car over. ‘Us, probably.’

‘How do you figure that, Abi? They don’t even know we’re following them.’

‘What? You think they’ve just relaxed down and forgotten about us, maybe? Put us out of their minds completely?’

‘No, Abi. I don’t think that.’

‘Why ever not?’

Vau’s face lit up. ‘Because they’re too smart. Lamia knows we’ll never give up. And she’ll have told them that. They’ll be shit scared we’ll spring out from nowhere and get them.’

Abi hunched down even further in the passenger seat in case the Cherokee overtook them again. ‘You know something, Vau? I think you’re right.’ He nodded his head a few times, thinking. ‘I think we need to rush things a little. I think we need to put the fear of God into them, and get them to make a few unforced errors. I’m fed up to my back teeth with all this pussy-footing around.’

‘But Madame, our mother, told you to hang back, Abi. I heard her say so. She told you to let them lead us to wherever they are going, and not to interfere with them until she tells you to do so.’

Abi glanced across at his brother. ‘Well we know that wherever they are going is in Mexico. And probably in either Veracruz or the Yucatan.’

‘How do we know that, Abi?’

‘Because they are taking the coastal route, dummy. If they were transiting through to Guatemala, for instance, or Honduras, or Panama, they’d go the fuck down the centre, wouldn’t they? Past Mexico City.’

‘I suppose so. But you don’t have to swear at me all the time to get your point across.’

‘You suppose right. And yes I do.’ Abi yawned. He was beginning to lose interest in winding Vau up. ‘So we’re getting near to where we need to be. And they don’t know we’ve got a tracker planted on them. So I say we scare the living bejasus out of them, and set them to running at double speed. Because if we carry on the way we are going, Aldinach’s going to get ants in her pants again, and trigger another riot. Or that stupid bastard Oni is going to fall foul of the Mexican cops. I mean, have you seen him recently? He’s taken to wearing floral shorts. The idiot stands out like a cockroach on a teacake.’

Vau slapped at the steering wheel. ‘Hey, that’s funny. I like that. A cockroach on a teacake.’

Abi gave Vau a pitying look. ‘It’s not original, Vau. I stole the idea from Raymond Chandler. Only he said “a tarantula on a slice of angel food”.’

‘Angel food? What’s that?’

‘Fairy cake.’

‘Fairy cake? And Raymond who, did you say?’

‘Forget it, Vau. It’s really not that important.’

Sabir pulled off the Veracruz cuota road and into the village of La Antigua for lunch. The trio had approximately two days’ driving left before they reached Kabah, and Sabir figured that a treat was called for.

‘What is this place?’ said Lamia.

‘It’s where stout Cortes scuttled his ships so that his men wouldn’t dare back out on him and return to Cuba.’

‘Stout Cortes?’ Calque stretched both hands above his head, like a man trying to reach for a light bulb. He stared down towards the river, which curled like a dirty brown ribbon towards the nearby Gulf. ‘The man was a barbarian. He almost single-handedly destroyed two great empires.’

Sabir threw back his head. ‘I’m not giving him a testimonial, Calque. I’m quoting Keats’s “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”.’