Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

Sabir had been looking forward to all this more than he cared to admit. He had no children of his own, and now that his burgeoning relationship with Lamia had been cut off at the neck, he suspected that he never would have. It was becoming painfully obvious that he wasn’t cut out for the world of conventional relationships.

‘What time is it?’

Sabir gave a small jump. He peered down at the car’s clock. ‘It’s

‘Are you intending to head straight to the caravan?’

‘Yes. Do you have you a better plan?’

‘No. But I dearly wish we had a weapon of some sort. That hermaphrodite one. Aldinach. He struck me as particularly sinister. He was all set to skewer you back at Ek Balam.’

‘He wouldn’t have stopped with me, Calque. He had you in his sights too.’

‘Yes. But somehow knowing you were for it first was very comforting to me.’

Sabir burst out laughing. He let up a little on the accelerator.

This had been Calque’s plan all along, and he let out a small sigh of gratification. Dying in a car accident on the Paris peripherique had never been one of his ambitions. ‘I still can’t believe that Lamia intends to harm Yola and her child. We can’t have misread her to that extent.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe we simply misunderstood her motives right from the start, and piled error onto error? My father always told me that one isn’t the sum of one’s past actions.’

‘But we haven’t misunderstood the other two. They mean Yola harm, and we have to stop them.’

‘Whatever it takes?’

‘Whatever it takes.’

Lamia had been counting on the presence of the taxi driver to help convince Yola of her bona fides – if a total stranger asks you to accompany them in a taxi, it is marginally less threatening than if they appear, out of the blue, and try to inveigle you into their own vehicle. Fifty kilometres short of Samois, however, she changed her mind and ordered the taxi driver to take her to the car rental section at Orly Airport. It simply wouldn’t do for Yola and her to be connected in any way at all in the mind of a third party.

She rented herself an inconspicuous Peugeot, and then drove the remaining forty kilometres to Samois, arriving in the village at a little after 7.30 in the morning. She intended to ask for directions to the encampment at the bakery – which was inevitably the first shop open in a village, and the font of all gossip – but almost immediately she saw a young Gypsy woman single-mindedly picking her way through the early morning shoppers to the public telephone booth.

Lamia parked her car in the village square. She got out and stretched. Then she wandered, as if unintentionally, towards the booth.

The Gypsy woman was having difficulty coordinating the dialling of a number she had written on a piece of paper, the use of her phone card, and the control of the handset.

Lamia pretended that she was waiting for the booth to be free. ‘Can I help you? I could hold the piece of paper and call out the number for you while you dial.’

The Gypsy woman looked Lamia over. Lamia forced herself not to look down, in return, at the woman’s stomach. It was too early yet for much to show, so a glance in the wrong direction would give her away before she even had a chance to establish herself as a potential friend. And maybe her hunch was wrong? Maybe this woman was not Yola, but another person entirely? At least, then, she would be able to find out the location of the camp.

Yola took in Lamia’s birthmark and the non-assertive clothes. She had seen her pulling up in the Peugeot, and knew that she was alone. A well-meaning payo, then – they turned up all the time. Some even wanted to become Gypsies themselves, and live the so-called romantic life. What a joke.

Yola nodded, although without smiling. ‘Yes. Please do this.’

Lamia studied the sheet of paper. It was a 001 number. France to the United States. She decided to take a calculated gamble, even though she had no idea whose the number really was. If the woman wasn’t who she thought she was, then nothing would be lost. ‘But this is Adam Sabir’s number, isn’t it?’ She hesitated, as if unsure of her ground. ‘You must be Yola, then? Yola Samana?’

‘I am Yola Dufontaine.’

‘Oh yes. Of course. You’re married now. To Alexi. Adam told me.’

Yola frowned. It was early in the morning. In a small village miles from anywhere. It was impossible that she could have been followed – she had only made the decision to walk down to the phone booth at the very last moment. What did this woman with the marred face want from her? Why was she here? ‘You know Adam?’

‘I’m his girlfriend.’

Yola blushed. It was a rare thing for her, but the strawberry birthmark on the woman’s face was so categorical – so impossible to miss – that it was almost as if it spoke to you of its own accord. The birthmark was telling her that, yes, you thought I could not attract the attention of a man. Summon up his desire. Seduce him. But you were wrong.

‘His girlfriend?’

‘Yes. We’ve just been in Mexico together. I came back yesterday. I came out here especially to find you. So it’s incredibly lucky we’ve run into each other. I can tell you now that you won’t find Adam at home. He’s still in Mexico with Joris Calque. They are trying to arrange for temporary passports, after their own passports were stolen. But the only place to get such things is in Mexico City, at the American and French Consulates. And the two of them are stuck in Cancun. I still had my passport, so Adam asked me to come out here and find you. I was just on my way up to your camp. But I wanted to buy some croissants first. To bring as a present.’

‘As a present?’

‘Yes. In the absence of flowers. I have been driving all night.’

‘Flowers?’ Yola was feeling nonplussed. Who was this strange woman who appeared to know so much about her? And what extraordinary stroke of chance had brought her here, just as Yola was preparing to contact Sabir for the first time in three months? ‘Why did Damo tell you to contact me?’

‘Oh. Damo. That’s your Gypsy name for him, isn’t it? He told me about it.’

‘Are you really his girlfriend?’ Yola was staring at Lamia as if she might be able to sense if the other woman was lying simply through some antediluvian, beyond rational, female instinct.

‘How can I prove it to you?’ Lamia smiled to hide her uneasiness. Yola’s eyes were stripping her bare. No Frenchwoman would ever have looked at her with such a frank and unremitting gaze. She realized that she would have to dig deep in order to come up with something capable, in and of itself, of breaking through the reserve that one race sometimes feels in the presence of another – that one woman can sometimes feel in the presence of another, when both, without being previously acquainted, are nonetheless intimately connected through their mutual love of a third party. ‘I’ve got it. This will sound silly, I know. But have you ever seen Adam without his clothes on? I don’t mean in the obvious way, of course. I know you two were never involved like that. But casually. Like a brother.’

Yola shrugged. But her eyes held Lamia’s in a level gaze. Woman to woman. ‘Yes. I have seen him. On a number of occasions. Both sick and well. Once, even, when I was going to castrate him. When I thought he had killed my brother.’

Lamia’s breath caught in her throat. ‘He never told me about that.’

‘He wouldn’t have done. It is something we both have forgotten.’ Yola cocked her head to one side. ‘Why have you asked me this?’

‘Because you would know about his scar.’

‘Go on.’