The Codex

by Douglas Preston

  That day was worse than before, for when the rains ceased the insects appeared. The travelers struggled up and down a succession of steep ridges on trails deep in muck, falling and sliding constantly, hounded by swarms. Toward afternoon they descended into another ravine echoing with the sound of roaring water. As they descended the roar became louder, and Tom realized a major river lay at the bottom. As the foliage broke at the banks of the river, Don Alfonso, who was in front, halted and retreated in confusion, motioning them to stay back in the trees.

  “What’s wrong?” Tom asked.

  “There is a dead man across the river, under a tree.”

  “An Indian?”

  “No, it is a person wearing North American clothing.”

  “Could it be an ambush?”

  “No, Tomás, if it was an ambush we would already be dead.”

  Tom followed Don Alfonso to the riverbank. On the other side of the river, perhaps fifty yards up from the crossing point, there was a small natural clearing with a large tree in the middle. Tom could just see a bit of color behind the tree. He borrowed Vernon’s binoculars to examine it more closely. A bare foot, horribly swollen, was visible, with part of a ragged pantleg in view. The rest of him was hidden behind the trunk. As Tom looked he saw a bluish puff of smoke drift from behind the tree, then another.

  “Unless a dead man can smoke, that man’s alive,” said Tom.

  “Mother of God, you are right.”

  They felled a tree across the river. The sound of the axe echoed through the forest, but whoever was behind the tree did not move.

  After the tree had come crashing down, forming a wobbly bridge, Don Alfonso stared suspiciously across the river. “It may be a demon.”

  They crossed on the rickety tree using the pole. On the far side of the river they could no longer see the man.

  “We must go on and pretend we have not seen him,” whispered Don Alfonso. “I am sure now it is a demon.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Tom. “I’m going to check it out.”

  “Please do not go, Tomás. He will steal your soul and take it to the bottom of the river.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Vernon.

  “Curandera, you stay here. I do not want the demon to take all of you.”

  Tom and Vernon picked their way along the polished boulders on the riverbank, leaving Don Alfonso muttering unhappily to himself. They soon arrived at the clearing and stepped around the tree.

  There, they beheld a wreck of a human being. He sat with his back against the tree, smoking a briar pipe, looking at them steadily. He did not seem to be an Indian, although his skin was almost black. His clothing was in tatters, and his face was scratched raw and bleeding from insect bites. His bare feet were cut and swollen. He was so thin, the bones of his body stuck out grotesquely, like a starving refugee’s. His hair was stringy, and he had a short beard full of sticks and leaves.

  He made no reaction to their arrival. He merely stared up at them out of hollow eyes. He looked more dead than alive. And then he gave a start, like a little shiver. The pipe came out of his mouth, and he spoke, his voice little more than a harsh whisper.

  “How are you, brothers of mine?”

  41

  Tom jumped, he was so startled by hearing his brother Philip’s voice coming from this living cadaver. He bent down to scrutinize the face, but he could find no point of resemblance. He recoiled in horror: Maggots were squirming in a sore on the man’s neck.

  “Philip?” Vernon whispered.

  The voice croaked an affirmative.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Dying.” He spoke matter-of-factly.

  Tom knelt and looked into his brother’s face closer up. He was still too horrified to speak or react. He laid a hand on his brother’s bony shoulder. “What happened?”

  The figure closed its eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Later.”

  “Of course. What am I thinking?” Tom turned to his brother. “Vernon, go get Don Alfonso and Sally. Tell them we found Philip and that we’re making camp here.”

  Tom continued looking at his brother, too shocked to speak. Philip was so utterly calm ... it was as if he had already resigned himself to death. It was unnatural. There was the serenity of apathy in his eyes.

  Don Alfonso arrived and, relieved to find that the river demon had turned out to be a human being, began clearing an area to set up camp.

  When Philip saw Sally he removed the pipe and blinked.

  “I’m Sally Colorado,” she said, taking his hand in hers.

  Philip managed a nod.

  “We need to clean you up and doctor you.”

  “Thank you.”

  They carried Philip down to the river, laid him on a bed of banana leaves, and stripped him. Philip’s body was covered with sores, many of which were infected and some of which were crawling with maggots. The maggots, Tom thought, examining the wounds, had actually been a boon, as they were consuming the septic tissue and reducing the chance of gangrene. He could see that in some of the wounds where the maggots had been at work there was already fresh granulation tissue. Others didn’t look so good.

  With an awful feeling he looked at his brother. They had no drugs, no antibiotics, no bandages, only Sally’s herbs. They carefully washed him and then carried him back to the clearing and laid him down, stark naked, on a bed of palm leaves near the fire.

  Sally began sorting the bundles of herbs and roots she had collected.

  “Sally is an herbal healer,” said Vernon.

  Philip said, “I’d prefer an injection of amoxycillin.”

  “We don’t have any.”

  Philip lay back on the leaves and closed his eyes. Tom doctored the sores, scraping out the necrotic flesh, irrigating and flushing out the maggots. Sally dusted the wounds with an herbal antibiotic and bandaged him up with strips of pounded bark that had been sterilized in boiling water and then smoke-dried in the fire. They washed and dried his tattered clothes and redressed him in them, having no others. They finished as the sun was beginning to set. They propped him up, and Sally brought in a mug of herbal tea.

  Philip took the mug. He was looking better. He said, “Turn around, Sally, and let me check you for wings.”

  Sally blushed.

  Philip took a sip and then another. Don Alfonso, meanwhile, had pulled a half dozen fish out of the stream and was now grilling them on skewers at the fire. The smell of roasting fish came wafting over.

  “Strange how I have no appetite,” said Philip.

  “That’s not uncommon when you’re starving,” said Tom.

  Don Alfonso served out the fish on leaves. For a while they ate in silence, and then Philip spoke:

  “Well, well, here we are. A little family reunion in the Honduran jungle.” Philip looked around, his eyes sparkling, and then he said: “G.”

  There was a silence and then Vernon said: “H.”

  Tom said “O.”

  Philip said “S.”

  There was a long silence and then Vernon said, “Goddamn it. T.”

  “Vernon has to wash the dishes!” crowed Philip.

  Tom turned to Sally to explain. “It’s a game we used to play,” he said with a sheepish smile.

  “I guess you three really are brothers.”

  “Sort of,” said Vernon. “Even if Philip is an ass.”

  Philip let out a guffaw. “Poor Vernon. You always did end up in the kitchen, didn’t you?”

  “Glad to see you feeling better,” said Tom.

  Philip turned his hollow face to him. “I am.”

  “You feel like telling us what happened?”

  Philip’s face grew serious, losing all its archness. “It’s a heart-of-darkness story, complete with a Mistah Kurtz. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “Yes,” said Tom. “We want to hear it.”

  42

  Philip carefully filled his pipe from a tin of Dunhill Early Morning and lit it, his movements slow and
deliberate. “The one thing they didn’t take from me was my tobacco and pipe, thank God.” He puffed slowly, his eyes half closed, gathering his thoughts.

  Tom took the opportunity to examine Philip’s face. Now that it had been cleaned up he could finally recognize his brother’s long, aristocratic features. The beard gave him a raffish appearance that made him look curiously like their father. But the face was different: Something had happened to his brother, something so awful it had altered his basic features.

  His pipe lit, Philip opened his eyes and began to speak.

  “After I left you two, I flew back to New York and looked up Father’s old partner, Marcus Aurelius Hauser. I figured that he would know better than anyone where Father might have gone. He was a private eye, of all things. I found him a rather plump, perfumed fellow. With two quick phone calls he was able to learn that Father had gone to Honduras, so I figured he was competent and hired him. We flew to Honduras; he organized an expedition and hired twelve soldiers and four boats. He financed it all by forcing me to sell the beautiful little Paul Klee watercolor that Father gave me—”

  “Oh, Philip,” Vernon said. “How could you?”

  Philip closed his eyes wearily. Vernon fell silent. Then Philip continued: “So we all flew down to Brus and piled into dugout canoes for a jolly punt upriver. We picked up a guide in some backwater hamlet and proceeded across the Meambar Swamp. And then Hauser staged a coup. The pomaded prick had been planning it all along—he’s one of those wicked micromanaging Nazi types. They chained me up like a dog. Hauser fed our guide to the piranhas and then set up that ambush to kill you.”

  At this his voice faltered, and he sucked on his pipe a few times, his bony hand trembling. The story was told with a certain humorous bravado that Tom knew well in his brother.

  “After clapping me in chains, Hauser left five G.I. Josés behind on the Laguna Negra to ambush you all. He took me and the other soldiers up the Macaturi as far as the Falls. I’ll never forget when the soldiers returned. There were only three of them, and one had a three-foot arrow sticking through his thigh. I couldn’t hear all of what they said. Hauser was furious and took the man out, shot him point-blank in the head. I knew they had killed two people, and I was sure one or both of you were dead. I have to tell you, brothers of mine, that when you arrived, I thought I had died and gone to hell—and you were the reception committee.” He gave a dry little laugh. “We left the boats at the Falls and followed Father’s trail on foot. Hauser could track a mouse in the jungle if he had a mind to. He kept me around because he had the idea of using me as a bargaining chip with you. He ran into a group of mountain Indians, killed several, and chased the rest back to the village. He then attacked the village and managed to capture the chief. I didn’t see any of this, I was kept behind under ball and chain, but I saw the results.”

  He shuddered. “Once he had the chief as a hostage, we made our way up into the mountains toward the White City.”

  “Hauser knows it’s the White City?”

  “He learned it from an Indian prisoner. But he doesn’t know where the tomb is in the White City. Apparently only the chief and a few elders know the exact location of father’s tomb.”

  “How did you escape?” Tom asked.

  Philip closed his eyes. “Kidnapping the chief stirred up the Indians to war. They attacked Hauser while he was en route to the White City. Even with their heavy weapons Hauser and his men had their hands full. He’d taken the chains off me to use them on the chief. At the height of the attack I managed to get away. I spent the last ten days walking—crawling, actually—back here, surviving on insects and lizards. Three days ago I reached this river. There was no way to cross. I was starving, and I couldn’t walk anymore. So I sat down under a tree to wait for the end.”

  “You were sitting under that tree for three days?”

  “Three, four days—God only knows. They all ran together.”

  “My God, Philip, how awful.”

  “On the contrary. It was a refreshing feeling. Because I didn’t care anymore. About anything. I’d never felt so free in my life as while I was sitting under that tree. I believe I might have actually been happy for a moment or two.”

  The fire had died down. Tom added a few more sticks and stirred it back to life.

  “Did you see the White City?” Vernon asked.

  “I escaped before they got there.”

  “How far is it from here to the Sierra Azul?”

  “Ten miles, maybe, to the foothills, and another ten or twelve to the city.”

  There was a silence. The fire crackled, hissed. A bird sang a mournful song in a distant tree. Philip closed his eyes and murmured, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “Dear old Father, what a fine legacy you left to your adoring children.”

  43

  The temple lay buried in lianas, the front colonnade supported by square pillars of limestone streaked with green moss, holding up part of a stone roof. Hauser stood outside, looking at the curious hieroglyphics carved into the pillars, the strange faces, animals, dots, and lines. It reminded him of the Codex.

  “Stay outside,” he said to his men and slashed a hole in the screen of vegetation. It was gloomy. He shined a flashlight around. There were no snakes or jaguars, just a mess of spiders in one corner and some mice scurrying away. It was dry and sheltered—a good place to establish his headquarters.

  He strolled deeper into the temple. At the back stood another row of square stone pillars framing a ruined doorway leading out to a gloomy courtyard. He stepped through. A few statues lay tumbled about, deeply eroded by time, wet in the rain. Great roots of trees snaked over the stones like fat anacondas, heaving apart walls and roofs, until the trees themselves became an integral part of what was holding the structure together. On the far side of the courtyard a second doorway led into a small chamber with a carved stone man lying on his back, holding a bowl.

  Hauser came back out to his waiting soldiers. Two of them held between them the captured chief, a bowed old man, almost naked except for a loincloth and a piece of leather tied over his shoulder and belted around his waist. His body was one mass of wrinkles. He was just about the oldest-looking man Hauser had ever seen—and yet he knew he probably wasn’t older than sixty. The jungle ages you fast.

  Hauser gestured to the teniente. “We’ll stay here. Have the soldiers clean this room out for my cot and table.” He nodded to the old man. “Chain him in the small room across the courtyard and put a guard on him.”

  The soldiers hustled the old Indian chief into the temple. Hauser settled himself down on a block of stone and drew a fresh cigar tube from his shirt pocket, unscrewed the cap, and slid the cigar out. It was still covered in a cedarwood wrapper. He smelled the wrapper, crushed it in his hand, smelled it again, inhaling the exquisite fragrance, and then began the ritual that he loved so well of lighting the cigar.

  As he smoked, he looked at the ruins of a pyramid directly in front of him. It was nothing like Chichén Itzá or Copán, but as Mayan pyramids went it was impressive enough. Important burials were often found in pyramids. Hauser was convinced old Max had reburied himself in a tomb he once robbed. If so, it had to be an important tomb, to hold all of Max’s stuff.

  The stairway going up the pyramid had been heaved apart by tree roots, which had levered out many blocks and sent them tumbling to the bottom. At the top was the small room held up by four square pillars, with four doors and a shallow stone altar where the Maya sacrificed their victims. Hauser inhaled. That would have been something to see, the priest splitting the victim at the breastbone, wrenching apart the rib cage, cutting out the beating heart and holding it up with a shriek of triumph while the body was tumbled down the stairs, to be hacked up by waiting nobles and made into corn stew.

  What barbarians.

  Hauser smoked with pleasure. The White City was fairly impressive even covered as it was by vegetation. Max had hardly scratched the surface. There was a great deal more worth taking here. Even a
simple block with, say, a jaguar head carved on it could fetch a hundred grand. He’d have to be careful to keep the location secret.

  In its heyday the White City would have been amazing—Hauser could almost see it in his mind’s eye: the temples new and gleaming white, the ball games (where the losers lost their heads), the roaring crowds of spectators, the processions of the priests decked out in gold, feathers, and jade. And what had happened? Now their descendants lived in bark huts and their head priest was a man in rags. Funny how things change.

  He drew in another lungful of smoke. It was true that not all had gone according to plan. No matter. Long experience had taught him that any op was an exercise in improvisation. Those who thought they could plan an op and execute it flawlessly always died following the book. That was his great strength: improvisation. Human beings were inherently unpredictable.

  Take Philip. In that first meeting he had seemed all show in his expensive suit, with his affected mannerisms and phony upper-class accent. He could still scarcely believe the man had managed to escape. He would probably expire in the jungle—he was already on his last legs when he made off—but still, Hauser was concerned. And impressed. Perhaps a little of Max had rubbed off on the effete little bastard after all. Max. What a crazy old shit he’d turned out to be.

  The main thing was to keep his priorities straight. The Codex, first, and then the rest of the stuff, later. And then third, the White City itself. Over the past few years Hauser had followed with interest the looting of Site Q. The White City was going to be his Site Q.

  He examined the end of his cigar, holding it up so the curl of smoke tickled his nostrils. The cigars had weathered the journey through the rainforest well—you might even say they’d improved.

  The teniente came out and saluted. “Ready, sir.”

  Hauser followed him into the ruined temple. The soldiers were fixing up the outer part, raking up the animal crap, burning out the cobwebs, sprinkling water to keep down the dust, and carpeting the ground with cut ferns. He ducked through the low stone doorway into the inner courtyard, passed by the tumbled statues, and went into the room in the back. The wizened old Indian was chained up to one of the stone pillars. Hauser shined the light on him. He was an old bugger, but he returned the gaze, and there wasn’t even a trace of fear on his face. Hauser didn’t like that. It reminded him of the face of Ocotal. These damn Indians were like the Viet Cong.