Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

‘Okay. It goes like this:

“In the land of the great volcano, fire

When the rock cools, the wise one, Ahau Inchal Kabah,

Shall make a hinged skull of the twentieth mask:

The thirteenth crystal will sing for the God of Blood.” ’

Calque shrugged. ‘Well? What do you make of it? We’ve looked at the Temple of the Masks. By a sheer fluke we’ve established that there were originally 942 masks, just as there were 942 Nostradamian quatrains. My view is that this number linkage is just a ridiculous coincidence, and not worth wasting time on. Do you agree?’

‘Personally? No.’ Sabir glanced across at Lamia. He sensed that she did not have her entire concentration focused on the subject at hand.

He reached across the table and took her fingers in his. He kissed them, and then pressed them to his cheek. He saw the sudden change in her expression caused by his unexpected movement – she seemed to sway back into view again, as if returning from a faraway place.

Frankly, he was astonished at his own audacity. What deep wells had that come from? He had always considered himself inept with women, and here he was working from a part of himself that he had never hitherto known existed.

‘What do you mean, no?’ said Calque. ‘You think there’s some link between an obscure site in the Yucatan and a sixteenth-century French scryer?’

‘But, Calque. We already know there’s some link. You’ve heard the quatrain. It’s categorical. Nostradamus wasn’t making all that up about “Ahau”, “Inchal”, and “Kabah”. He even got the spellings right, give or take an acute accent – except when he was purposefully obfuscating, as with Inchal. Almost as if someone was looking over his shoulder when he was writing the verse and making sure he didn’t blow it. And remember this. The manuscript had been hidden for more than four hundred years in a waxed and sealed bamboo tube secreted in the base of a statue of Sainte Sara when we found it. Impossible to tamper with. Impossible even to know it was there without Nostradamus’s say-so. So yes. I think we need to take every possible connection between Nostradamus and this place seriously.’

‘So what’s our next move?’

Sabir shrugged. ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. We come back tonight, when it’s dark, and we lever out the twentieth mask in the wall with the help of a couple of tyre irons. What else can we do in the circumstances?’

‘They’ve come to a place called Kabah, Madame. It’s an insignificant site, well off the beaten track. This morning we watched them as they made a tour of the site. They seemed to pay particular attention to the Temple of the Masks.’

‘Were they alone? Or did they meet somebody?’

‘They were alone. Apart from a local guide who ran up and bothered them, and whom they subsequently employed.’

‘Have you talked to him?’

Abi hesitated, aware that danger loomed. ‘No. I didn’t think it necessary. It was obvious the man was employed by the site. He was lying there sleeping before Sabir and his little gang arrived.’

‘Maybe he was waiting for them?’

‘Madame, no. I really think not.’

‘Speak to him anyway. Do you understand me, Abiger?’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Where have our trio gone?’

‘To a motel. Twenty kilometres down the road. But I have something else to tell you, Madame. Something of key interest, I believe.’

‘And what is that, Abiger?’

Abi cleared his throat. He didn’t know quite how the Countess was going to take this next piece of information. Still. He knew he had to give it up, or else one of the girls – Athame, maybe, who had always been close to Lamia – would simply get in there ahead of him and queer his pitch.

‘All the way down, the three of them have been sharing a room. Through fear, probably, of us breaking in on them’

‘Get to the point, Abiger.’

‘Now Calque, the policeman, has taken a room on his own.’

‘And Lamia?’

‘She is with the American.’

Lamia stood at the very centre of the small motel room and waited as Sabir got the fan going. The fan made a chopping sound, and then settled into a wheezing rhythm, thanks to its worn-out ball bearings.

She glanced at the twin beds. The late morning heat was already lurching in through the windows. She could feel the moisture gathering in the small of her back, then trickling down the gap between her underwear and the base of her spine.

‘Do you want to move on from this fly tip?’ Sabir was pacing the bounds of the room as though he was trying to memorize it. ‘The drive from Ticul to Merida would only take an hour or so. We could get ourselves an air-conditioned room in a modern hotel. You might be more comfortable.’

‘I don’t want to drive any more.’

‘Okay.’ Sabir stopped his pacing. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘It’s too hot to eat.’ She turned her face up to the fan. ‘Can you make this go any faster?’

‘I hardly dare. Let’s see though.’ He tripped the mechanism. ‘Christ. I think it’s going to take off.’

She laughed, and eased her dress away from her skin so that the air could circulate and cool her.

Sabir checked inside the bathroom. ‘There’s a tiled shower you could fit the entire Pats Football Team in. And we’ve got clean towels and soap. Things aren’t as bad as I thought. Shall I order some cool drinks?’

‘That would be nice, Adam. But who are the Pats? And why would they want to come into our bathroom?’

Sabir closed his eyes. ‘You really don’t want to know. Pretend that I never said it.’ He opened his eyes and flared them at the ceiling. ‘Okay. Maybe you do. They’re the New England Patriots. They play American football.’ He knew he was talking too much, but he couldn’t stop himself. He moved over to the telephone, shaking his head at his own stupidity. He raised the handset to his ear, then let it fall back into place. ‘Doesn’t work. I’ll have to go downstairs and put in the order personally. What do you want?’

‘Something sweet. A 7UP, maybe.’

‘Sure you don’t want a beer?’

Lamia cocked her head to one side and watched him. ‘A beer. That would be nice.’

‘Sol? Corona? Dos Equis? Negra Modelo? Pacifico?’

‘You choose, Adam.’

He hesitated, then headed for the door. As he passed her he stopped. He seemed about to say something, but then he just reached out and touched her arm. He retrieved his wallet from his discarded jacket. ‘I’ll be back soon, okay?’

‘I’m going to take a shower. Without the Pats.’

He nodded absent-mindedly, not even picking up her attempt at a joke. ‘Sure you want beer?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll get some potato chips, too. And maybe some peanuts.’

She turned to him. ‘Adam. It’s all right. I came to this room of my own volition. I’m not regretting it. I’m not going to run away if you leave me alone for two minutes.’

Sabir took a deep breath. He reached for the door. Then he turned back and strode across the floor to where she was standing.

Lamia leaned forwards and rested her head against his collar bone.

Sabir encircled her with his arms and squeezed her against him. ‘I love you. I want to tell you this now. Before anything else happens.’ He swallowed, but his throat didn’t seem to be functioning to quite its usual standard. ‘I’ve never said this to a woman before. I’ve never felt remotely like this.’ He buried his face in the valley between her neck and shoulder, breathing her in.

‘I love you too. I wanted to tell you in the car, early this morning, but I thought you might not like me that way. That you might just be drawn to me in the normal way, because we had been travelling together. You still might be.’ She looked up at him, a fleeting uncertainty on her face. ‘I would understand that. You can make love to me, if you want, and then decide how you feel. You can tell me afterwards.’