Lamia hesitated. For a moment Sabir feared that she intended to duck the question. Then she shook her head. ‘No. All that ended with the Second World War.’
‘The Second World War? Explain yourself.’
Lamia took a deep breath. ‘Marechal Petain, the leader of Vichy France, was almost certainly a Corpus member. He attended both the St Cyr Military Academy and the Ecole Superieure de Guerre in Paris, both of which were hotbeds of Corpus activity towards the end of the nineteenth century. Later, Petain became a close friend of the Count, my father. But he and the Count disagreed bitterly on the Marechal’s policy of appeasement towards Germany. My father did not believe, for instance, that Adolf Hitler was the Second Antichrist. He thought, instead, that this particular distinction belonged to Josef Stalin. He disagreed, also, with the Vichy government’s policy towards the Jews. If he hadn’t been seriously injured in one of the early German bombardments, he might have been able to take all of this much further – made his influence felt behind the scenes in some way.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Very. He was convinced, for instance, that France was a natural ally of Russia, and not of Germany, and that we should never have tacitly allied ourselves with the Nazis against Stalin.’
‘So he was a communist?’
‘No. But he was prepared to use communists for his purposes.’
‘A nice distinction.’
‘My father’s injury put an end to France pursuing that particular line – in a way, you see, his injury paved the way for the eventual disintegration of the Corpus.’ Lamia glanced back at Calque. ‘A bit like the injury suffered by the Fisher King which diluted the power of the Round Table. You understand the parallels, Captain?’
Calque nodded. ‘Succinctly put. I understand you very well.’
‘Before that time we had been strong in the cadet schools, the military academies, and also in the civil service. Like a sort of Freemasonry, really. But the war changed all that. With Monsieur, my father, hors de combat, and taking into account his virulent dislike of the Hitler regime – which he privately believed to be devil-driven – all Corpus influence collapsed. Laval and Petain had their revenge in the end, you see. By the time my father recovered from both the physical and the psychological damage that he had received, France had changed utterly, becoming riddled with retrospective guilt and denial. The Count simply withdrew from public life in order to allow the Corpus a dignified final disintegration. It was only with the advent of Madame, my mother, thirty years later, that the Corpus was to some extent renewed.’
‘In what form?’
‘In the form that you see before you now. The Count only allowed the Countess to adopt their thirteen children on the strict understanding that she, under the aegis of his still influential family name, would actively attempt to reintegrate the Corpus into public life. At his instigation, she would send each of their children out into the world to begin a new strand of the Corpus’s sworn duty. They would, within their ranks, incorporate all of the four great factors which determine aristocratic prestige – l’anciennete, les alliances, les dignites, and les illustrations. They would represent ancient nobility, they would cement new alliances, they would hold high office, and they would perform great and noble actions. But none of this ever occurred. Society had changed too much. Monsieur, my father, had alienated too many right-wing establishment figures with his excoriation of Nazi Germany. We still had a certain degree of influence, but it was based upon nostalgia rather than on any real access to the corridors of power.’
‘So where does that leave the Corpus now?’
‘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.’
42
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 ou
t 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.’
43
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”.’
Calque acknowledged Sabir’s point with a hitch of his shoulders. ‘And how do you happen to know about this place? It’s not exactly on the beaten track, is it?’
‘A holiday. With my mother and father. The only one we ever took together as a family.’
‘Why here?’
A dead look came into Sabir’s eyes. ‘I was seventeen. My mom was going through a stable period for once. Semi-sane, anyway. My dad paid for us to take a trip to Mexico because he thought it would be good for her. We came down here via Oaxaca and Monte Alban, to see the ruins at Zempoala. It was a disaster. My mom had to be airlifted back to the US under sedation. But La Antigua was the very last place we had something approaching a good time. We ate langostinos al mojo de ajo just up the road there, and drank mojitos, and my father told us all about what happened when Cortes landed here with his men. We even took a boat up to the mouth of the river, and walked around on the headland.’
‘So you speak a little Spanish?’
‘Not a word. How about you, Calque?’
‘My Spanish is a fraction better than my English. And you know how good my English is.’
‘I wondered why you let Lamia do all the talking when we checked into our posada.’
‘I couldn’t help noticing you didn’t say much either.’
Lamia had already started down towards the restaurant. ‘Well, I shall just have to do your translating for you, shan’t I? It will give me a role to play. Fortunately I speak Spanish fluently. As well as Italian, English, Portuguese, German, and a little Greek. Not to mention French.’
‘Show off.’
She turned around and flashed them her most captivating smile.
44
Calque and Sabir chose a table overlooking the river, while Lamia went to visit the powder room. It was the first time the two men had been alone together since they’d crossed the Mexican border two days before.
‘Do you really think we can trust her, Calque? After what she said about the Corpus back there in Tampico? About still respecting the Countess?’
‘If she was trying to outwit us, Sabir, do you think she would have been quite so painfully honest?’
‘She might be trying a double bluff?’
‘Yes, and God is an Englishman. Come on, man. One has only to look at her to see that she is a decent person. I feel privileged to be travelling with her. Just think what it would be like if there were only the two of us here. What a state we would be in by now. At least she is keeping us focused. Not to mention up-to-date with our laundry.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s clear that you’ve got an almighty crush on her, Calque. You fuss around her like an old mother hen.’
Calque straightened in his chair. ‘And what about you? Haven’t you noticed yourself recently? Your own behaviour?’
Sabir pretended to watch some fishermen jump-starting their boat. ‘That’s bullshit.’
‘It’s not bullshit. I know you both hold secret assignations together. I woke up one night and heard you.’
Sabir shrugged. He was still pretending to watch the fishermen. ‘It’s because we both can’t sleep. I have nightmares, and you snore. So between us it’s no wonder Lamia needs a break now and again. If we meet outside the room, it’s only by accident – not by intent.’
‘I do not snore.’
‘Oh, really? When did you last share a room with anybody, Calque? The early 1950s? Of course you snore. Like a steam locomotive winding up before its first big run of the day.’
Calque threw both hands out as though he was trying to snatch at a runaway loop of knitting yarn. ‘I object to your example, Sabir. You are purposely exaggerating. I may snuffle a bit, but that is only when I inadvertently lie on my back. It is a common enough ailment.’
‘Snuffle. Snore. Have it your own way.’
‘You are still artfully avoiding my question.’
‘Which is?’
‘You and Lamia.’
‘Are you her daddy?’
Calque bridled. ‘I feel I am somewhat in loco paternis, yes. I inadvertently brought her into this, therefore she is my responsibility.’
‘Admit it. You’d like her to be your daughter, wouldn’t you?’
‘See? You are changing the subject again? Perhaps you are simply too stupid to acknowledge your feelings for her?’
Sabir gave up all pretence of staring at the fishing boat. ‘Who the heck are you calling stupid? And this from a man who doesn’t even realize he’s got an Oedipus complex.’
Calque slapped the table. ‘I do not have an Oedipus complex. You’ve completely mixed up your Freudian terms. An Oedipus complex is when a boy competes with his father for his mother’s attentions. So you are certainly wrong there. My mother paid no attention eithe
r to me or to my father, so there was nothing even to play for. And don’t tell me I have the opposite of an Oedipus complex, because that is an Electra complex, and Lamia certainly does not have that about me.’
‘I’m not talking about her. And I’m not talking about your mother. I’m talking about you. Who’s changing the subject now?’
‘I do not deny that I still feel very damaged about the loss of my own daughter’s affections. Although I’m surprised and a little disappointed that you should choose to bring the matter up again. I told you about it in confidence, in a weak moment, Sabir, and I foolishly supposed that the subject would end there. However neither do I deny that I feel a quasi-paternal interest in Lamia. It would be strange, in the circumstances, if I did not.’
Sabir snapped his fingers together. ‘I’ve got it. I’ve remembered it. It’s called a Lear complex. When a father has a libidinous fixation on his daughter.’
Calque’s voice rose effortlessly above the hubbub surrounding them – a hubbub which was further aggravated by the restaurant’s resident trio attempting their own unique version of Besame Mucho on matching marimbas. ‘I most emphatically do not have a Lear complex, Sabir. And I would like to point out that Lamia is not, in fact, my daughter. And that therefore if I did happen to feel any sexual desire for her, it would not, in and of itself, be incestuous. Nor even inappropriate in terms of age difference. For you may not have noticed it, Sabir, but I am not quite in my dotage yet. I am still only fifty-five years old.’ Calque fumbled around in his pockets for a cigarette. He found one and lit it, flicking the extinguished match through the open window beside him. ‘However it is not predominantly sexual desire that I feel for Lamia, but rather admiration and liking. I also feel a curious protective urge to shield her from the attentions of younger men such as you.’
‘Younger men such as me? And what are younger men such as me, when they are at home?’
‘Younger men who have taken immaturity to an entirely new level. Younger men who mistake bravado for experience. Younger men who have no earthly sense of self-preservation. I remember you in France, Sabir, blundering from one disaster to the next without the faintest effort at self-control. It was an absolute miracle that you and your two Gypsy friends survived the eye-man’s attentions. In a rational world, you would all three be dead by now.’
The Mayan Codex as-2 Page 22