The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  “Not happy.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Josh,” is all she says. It isn’t clear that she understands what I’m getting at.

  “Thing is, Mum, there’s something we can do. We can find out. Who this woman is. We can go and meet her.”

  “You’re talking about going to Mexico?” she says in a dull voice. “I’m not well enough.”

  I squeeze her hand. “Maybe not now. But you could be. In a week or two? The summer holiday begins next week. We’ll talk to this woman in Chetumal. Then we’ll see. How about it, Mum?”

  Mum hesitates. “Will we ask the doctor?”

  I allow myself a little grin. This is progress.

  “Yeah, why not? Something to look forward to. We’ll see what’s going on with this woman. And if we have to, we’ll give her what for.”

  “I suppose . . . I suppose we could. And the funeral,” she says hopefully. “We could have a funeral for your father.”

  So, we begin to plan it. It’s just a matter of time before I’ll be showing the Mexican police why they have arrested the wrong guy.

  I feel a massive surge of excitement. This is it – I’ve cracked it. We’ll get to Mexico, meet this woman, find out that she’s just some friend of Dad’s, or someone who’s helping him with some Mayan archaeology thing. I’ll show DI Barratt the printouts of Dad’s emails and he’ll convince the Mexican police that they’ve arrested the wrong guy.

  It’s amazing what you can do with a bit of snooping around on a computer. When all this is over, Mum will get back to slowly getting over Dad’s death.

  And she’ll do it, too. I’ll help her. We’ll get through this.

  But at the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking about the burglary. They’ve got our computers. They know everything I know, up until now.

  Who are “they”? If they killed Dad for whatever he found, why are they still snooping around here?

  BLOG ENTRY: A FIFTH CODEX OF THE MAYA

  So – the first entry of my Really Secret Blog to track my detective work around finding who really killed my dad and why.

  I’m blogging from a computer in the Summertown Library. When I’m finished, I’ll delete the blog address from the browser history. And anyway, you need a password to access the blog now.

  Why would a lost ancient Mayan book cause such a rumpus? I couldn’t really imagine why until I realized how rare they are.

  Rare archaeological artefacts are Big Money. According to the stories I found on the Internet, all sorts of dodgy characters are involved in the trade. Rich South American drug lords can’t get enough of the stuff. And their favourite flavour in antiquities is Mayan.

  But an as-yet-undiscovered Mayan codex? It doesn’t get any better.

  The Maya made their books – codices – out of folded bark paper, painted hieroglyphics with bright colours. They should have been an incredible record of an ancient civilization.

  Problem was, only four books survived.

  Once there were hundreds of Mayan books. Most of them were about astronomy and mathematics. In 1652, after the Spanish had conquered Mexico, a Spanish bishop named Diego de Landa had all Mayan books rounded up and burned in a Mexican town called Mani. De Landa was apparently shocked by their “blasphemous” content. The Mayans who watched it happen were devastated.

  Well, the Church called de Landa back to Spain and punished him for what he did. But it was too late for the Mayans.

  And yet . . . four codices did survive. They’d been nicked from Mayan cities by Spanish soldiers, the conquistadors. Three codices turned up hundreds of years later, in the houses of these soldiers’ descendents. A fourth was found hidden in a cave somewhere in Mexico.

  There are only four, all owned by museums. No private collector owns one. A fifth codex would be the major archaeological find in the Mayan field – and the prestigous treasure for one of these collectors.

  Could my dad have had some rich, powerful South American gangster after him for the codex? Did they kill Dad only to find that the secret of its location died along with him?

  I stop writing my new blog and start to think.

  In movies, these drug lords always have the local police forces pretty much under their thumb. These are the kind of guys who can kill a man and frame some local guy; probably someone who’d got on the wrong side of them once too often.

  But then again, Carlos Montoyo wrote to Dad, Web searches and emails are routinely monitored by organizations whose interest in the I* Code* might surprise you.

  He didn’t even dare write out the phrase “Ix Codex”, for fear it would be picked up by snooping programs on the Internet.

  Dad couldn’t have been too surprised to hear that drug lords were interested in a Mayan relic. It was part of his ordinary life – he’d often told me that he’d been offered bribes to pass Mayan artefacts on to these people.

  Also – how the heck are cocaine barons going to have the kind of technology to snoop on emails? That kind of thing has to be done by the government, and the military, surely?

  Is that the kind of organization that Carlos Montoyo means?

  I rack my brain trying to remember the exact contents of those emails of Dad’s. Apart from the Ix Codex, the main thing I remember is that Dad mentioned a Mayan manuscript he had, which he called the “Calakmul letter”.

  He never mentioned it to us, so far as I know. It must have been a big, big deal to him. He usually talks about this sort of thing to Mum, sometimes even to me.

  I’d never heard so much as a whisper about it in our house. Why not?

  That night, I can’t sleep. I’m still vexed about the burglary. OK, so by now I have to assume they’ve read my old blog, and all the emails. They searched the house. Unless they were much luckier than I was, they’ll be out of ideas round about now. Where would they go next?

  I have to find that Mayan manuscript – if it’s still in Oxford. And there’s only one place left to search.

  I drop by Dad’s Oxford college. The porters there know me. They let me by with a respectful little nod, just enough for me to know they’re still in mourning for Dad. I’ve been dragged along to enough college events to know that Dad was a popular guy here. As I make my way around the immaculate edges of the central lawn in the main quadrangle, I almost bump into one of Dad’s colleagues, Dr Naomi Turnbull – she’s always sweet to me. I tell her that I’ve come to start clearing out Dad’s office.

  “Oh,” she says, with a sympathetic frown. “So your mum doesn’t have to? You’re a good lad, Josh.”

  Like everyone else, Naomi wants the latest update. Dad’s death is making me feel like a news reporter.

  “Yeah, he’s definitely dead . . . turns out he was murdered . . . nope, they don’t know yet who did it, they’re working on some leads. . .”

  I hate myself for censoring the rest. But not everyone is going to have my faith in Dad. For Mum, this is the worst thing of all. She’s gone from the sympathetic widow to the wronged wife. Not an ideal move.

  Naomi seems to be in a hurry anyway. “I have to be going, Josh,” she says, “We had some trouble here this morning and I need to talk to the police.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Oh, just some stupid break-in. Or attempted break-in, actually, in the staircase where your father had his office. They tripped the alarm and ran off. Pretty daft place to try and burgle, though, don’t you think?”

  I freeze, and try to look casual. “Yeah. Weird.”

  Naomi gives me a sympathetic squeeze before she leaves. I hurry to Dad’s office. Inside, a wave of sadness hits me. It’s so strong that I have to sit down for a few minutes. Tears form at the corner of my eyes. I can hardly look around the room without sensing Dad’s presence. His books, his papers on his desk. My photo, taken when I was eight years old, grinning, all gap-toothed. Eventually I get a grip, start hunting for a hiding place. Where would he stash a secret Mayan manuscript?

  I gaze arou
nd the room, taking in all the objects. And suddenly it’s obvious. My eyes land on a framed illustration of a Mayan ruin by Frederick Catherwood.

  My dad loved Catherwood’s illustrations. He used to say that Catherwood’s drawings of some of the Mayan inscriptions were the best work anyone ever did. As good as photographs.

  I lift the frame off its hook. There’s nothing behind it on the wall. I run my fingers over the back of the picture. There’s the slightest bulge in the middle.

  I use my fingernails to scratch the brown paper that seals the back of the picture. A layer comes away in my hand. And underneath, something’s hidden.

  It’s wrapped in several layers of tissue paper, folded, about the size of a piece of letter paper. I unwrap it carefully. A piece of very old-looking bark paper. I’ve seen this kind of paper before – in museums. It’s the kind the Mayans used in their books. Three edges of the bark paper are smooth but the right-hand edge looks rough, as though it has been torn across the middle, vertically. The paper is coated in a white chalky substance and covered with fading Mayan hieroglyphs.

  Whatever it is, it’s incomplete. The section of writing to the right of the tear is missing.

  Is this the Calakmul letter? As I wrap it back into the tissue paper, I notice that the final layer is covered with some writing. In ballpoint pen, just these words.

  Josh, Eleanor, if I don’t make it back from Mexico, BURN THIS. I’m serious. Don’t make a copy. Destroy it.

  Love you both, Andres.

  It’s the lamest farewell note I can imagine. What about saying his goodbyes, telling us how much he loved us and all that? If it’s so dangerous, why didn’t Dad destroy the letter himself? Or was his note just an insurance policy – against a danger he never really believed he would face?

  Is that all we were to him – just someone to burn evidence for him and leave it at that?

  I decide not to tell Mum about the Calakmul letter – if it really is that. Dad’s note doesn’t paint the most encouraging picture of a devoted husband. Even I have to admit that.

  And there’s another reason. Mum might try to talk me into following Dad’s instructions, burning the manuscript. But there’s no way. There’s just too much at stake.

  I peel off the rest of the false back of the Catherwood picture. That’s when I see that something else is hidden there.

  It’s so shocking that I simply stare at it for a long time. A small, square black-and-white photograph, printed on Kodak paper with the processing date – August 1964. The image? I recognize him immediately – it’s the man from my dream. The man who with his dying breath whispers: “Summon the Bakabix.”

  I start boxing up papers, making good on my promise to start clearing Dad’s college office. I can’t resist taking one of the photos, too; there’s a great one of Dad on top of Mont Blanc. I grab the Dictionary of Mayan Hieroglyphs and books on how to read the glyphs. I drop by my house with the two boxes of papers, journals and books that I’ve cleared out. The back windows are boarded up now, until someone comes to replace the glass. I take a few of the books, go back to Summertown Library and start deciphering the inscription on the Mayan manuscript.

  I begin by cross-referencing the place-names mentioned in Dad’s emails with any glyph I can easily make out on the Mayan inscription. Some place-names I’ve heard of, probably even been to at some point. The way it works is this: if they know the original Mayan name for a ruin, they use it. Like Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Calakmul. But sometimes the Mayan name has been forgotten. Like with Palenque – a ruin named for the Spanish-built town nearby.

  With a list of known place-names in one hand, I recognize glyphs for Calakmul and Cancuen in the inscription. The symbols for che (knot), chan (snake) and naab (water) are easy to find too, clumped together to make one glyph. I’ve already researched the cities on the Web, but I haven’t found anything about Chechan Naab. That is pretty unusual in itself. Most Mayan cities have been written about somewhere.

  Could Chechan Naab be a lost city of the Maya? As for the other city mentioned in Dad’s emails – Ek Naab – there’s no sign of those glyphs on the inscription.

  That’s the easy part of the decipherment. As I stare at those columns of glyphs, it strikes me that I don’t have the faintest clue how to read them. Left to right? Top to bottom? I don’t even know where to begin. So I put the Calakmul letter safely out of view, tucked away in a paperback copy of The Subtle Knife. And I settle down to read a book called How to Read Mayan Hieroglyphs.

  As I work, I can’t help noticing out of the corner of my eye that a girl sitting diagonally opposite keeps glancing in my direction. For a while I’m not sure if she intends to look at me at all – there’s probably some cute college student directly behind me. I lift my book to shield my face, then sneak a long look at the girl over the pages.

  She’s gorgeous.

  She’s wearing a blue and white cotton dress. Butter-blonde hair ripples across her shoulders. I swing around, survey the room behind me. There are plenty of students around, but they’re all trolls. Certainly no one worthy of the Total Goddess sitting opposite. When I turn back around, she’s staring openly at me, with this sort of bemused grin.

  I redden, but manage to mouth, “Who, me?” in what I hope is a comic fashion. She nods. I push my chair back, walk over as slowly as possible, trying desperately to think of something cool to say.

  In the end I go with, “Hey, stranger.”

  The girl grins. “Hey yourself . . . Josh.”

  I blanch.

  “The boy with the blog,” she continues. “You know who I am?”

  It seems too incredible. But could it really be. . .?

  “TopShopPrincess. . .?”

  “Olivia,” she says. “Olivia Dotrice. You can call me Ollie – everyone does.”

  “But you are TopShopPrincess?”

  “Of course. How else would I know where to find you?”

  “Um. About that . . . I thought we were both having a laugh.”

  “Well, yeah, until you went and deleted your blog. . . So, you can guess why I’m here?”

  I stick my hands deep into my pockets. “Err . . . nope. I really can’t.”

  She frowns. “I wanted to apologize, Josh. When I saw that you’d deleted your blog, I guessed that my comment upset you. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  I shrug. “It’s OK.”

  “Were you upset?”

  “I was annoyed, yeah. You didn’t even know my dad.”

  “I know. It was stupid, thoughtless. I guess I felt for your mum. I just thought that’s where your priorities should be. But it was a hasty judgement. Also. . .” She stops, glances around, lowers her voice. “I was getting worried about how much you were giving away on that blog. Didn’t you think that the people who burgled your house might know about your blog? You even wrote about where you were. You should be more careful!”

  “Actually, yeah. That’s why I deleted it. Not cos you upset me or anything.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she says, smiling.

  We’re getting major shushing from the librarian, so we step outside into the garden and find a bench near one of the many sculptures dotted around. It’s a fabulous summery day, sizzling hot. The garden is practically empty.

  “I’ve been thinking about your mystery,” begins Ollie. “Hope you don’t mind. I don’t mean to be nosy, but you’ve got me intrigued now, with the whole UFO thing and all. You really think it’s a coincidence that your dad was murdered round the same time that a massive UFO sighting happens?”

  I haven’t dared to go on about it, what with Mum in the state she’s in. Ollie’s right, though – I never thought it was a coincidence. I just haven’t any idea how UFOs tie in with drug barons in search of a lost relic.

  Ollie continues. “Seeing that UFO really changed me. Something like that, it makes you question everything you ever read, ever heard.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well,
like the links between the Maya and UFOs, for one thing.”

  If I’m honest, growing up, the part of archaeology that did excite me was the whole connection between UFOs and ancient history. That stuff is amazing. But of course, the subject was practically banned in our house. Dad worked hard to keep me from being interested in the more bizarro theories about the Maya that you find on the Internet.

  “What, the whole ancient-Mayans-came-from-the-lostcity- of-Atlantis thing? Ancient astronauts and all that? My dad always laughed at that.”

  “I’ll bet he wasn’t laughing when he was abducted.”

  “If he was abducted.”

  “You don’t think there’s a connection?”

  I sigh.

  Ollie presses her point. “Wouldn’t you like to be the one to find proof that UFOs have something to do with the Mayan civilization? It’s like – one of the major secrets of history!”

  “Well . . . my dad was pretty down on all that new-age stuff. Plus, things have moved on a bit since you last read my blog. I know now why my dad was killed.”

  “I think I do too.”

  We stare at each other for a few seconds.

  “What did you say?”

  “Think about it,” she whispers, tugging at my arm. “What if your dad found some link between the ancient Maya and UFOs? I mean, real evidence? What if the codex actually proves that the Mayans had contact with extraterrestials? Wouldn’t that be worth something?”

  I’m confused. “Who to?”

  “Well, lots of people. Art collectors. Those new-age religion gurus, they’d love that.”

  “Yeah . . . but they’re hardly going to kill anyone. . .”