The Annihilators

by Donald Hamilton

  I found myself watching her long slim hands as she talked to us easily. Browner than her body, since they could not so readily be shielded from the hot sun under which she often worked, they were beautiful hands, but they were not as relaxed as her voice. She was still a lady under pressure and I wondered who was exerting it and how. I’d been tempted to discuss her predicament, whatever it was, with Ricardo Jimenez, but I’d been afraid I might be giving him information he didn’t already have, to her detriment.

  I found myself wishing that the lady would take a deep breath and trust me; but that’s the trouble with very bright people, particularly very bright female people who’ve fought their way up in what is still essentially a male world. They’re too damn bright to trust anybody.

  Before the Mayas came the Olmecs, she said, the carvers of those great brooding heads; and before the Olmecs came the Melmecs. Somewhere in the still unraveled tangle of Melmec history had appeared the two great inventions that had placed these New World civilizations on a level with their Old World counterparts. These inventions had formerly been attributed to the Olmecs; but the Copalque discoveries had already shown that the archaeology books would have to be rewritten in this respect. Somewhere much further back in history than previously thought, the Melmecs had constructed, and so been able to pass on to subsequent civilizations in the area, a perfectly viable numerical system—something the Romans with their idiot capital letters had never accomplished—and an accurate calendar.

  As a matter of fact, Frances said, it was well known that the Mayas had inherited not just one, but two, calendars from their predecessors. One had a three-hundred-sixty-day year to keep track of ordinary secular events like the planting and the harvest, with a five-day limbo period at the end to make it come out even with the astronomical year. The second calendar was a religious one with a two-hundred-sixty-day year, by which they scheduled all their religious ceremonies and festivals.

  One theory that had been advanced, not altogether jokingly, she said, was that this dual system had been set up deliberately to make things so complicated that only the priests could figure out on what days which gods had to be propitiated, adding to the mystery and power of the priesthood. Naturally, the short religious year came around faster than the long secular year; but the mathematics of it insured that once every fifty-two years the two moved into synchronization briefly; and this was a very important year in the lives of these people.

  The lady was good, I reflected; she had us listening to all this dull history and arithmetic as if we were watching our favorite TV shows. Perhaps it was her own enthusiasm that gripped us. When she paused and reached for her drink and sipped from it briefly, there was a stir of movement around the table as her listeners took advantage of the opportunity to change the positions they’d held while she was talking.

  “Well, you saw the great Aztec calendar wheel in Mexico City,” Frances went on, “with its two concentric calendars, the ones I’ve just described. It represents the previously accepted thinking on the subject. But there have been a few clues found, a few glyphs discovered in various sites, Olmec and Maya both, that seem to indicate that these theories are, if not inaccurate, at least not quite complete. My husband, after studying these anomalies carefully, came to the conclusion that there had to be something missing, and that it might be found in the area to which we’ll be driving tomorrow. Well, I’ve told you about our discovery of the previously unsuspected Copalque site. And we’ve already uncovered there clear evidence that his tentative hypothesis was correct: The Melmecs used and passed on to the later civilizations in the area a system involving not just two calendars, but three. The third one was apparently very secret, indeed, and was known only to the very highest of the high priests. It was too secret, too sacred, too dangerous, to be shown on the ordinary calendar wheels; however, we’ve discovered a large cavern—those limestone formations are riddled with caves and cenotes, or water holes—in which was established a so-far unique three-calendar wheel. Apparently some very special mysteries were celebrated in this cave according to this calendar; ceremonies we’re still trying to understand.”

  Her voice stopped. After a moment she gave a deprecating little laugh, as if embarrassed, and tasted her drink, and looked at us.

  “I don’t suppose this seems very important to you,” she said in a lighter voice, “any more than the medieval question of how many angels could dance on the point of a pin. Two calendars or three, what’s the difference? I must admit that we archaeologists get carried away by our pretty theories; but I do think you’ll find our museum tour tomorrow morning very interesting. The bus leaves the hotel at eight-thirty sharp. Thank you.”

  Leaving, I made no effort to approach her, mindful of her warning that we must not spend much time together in public; but somehow I found myself walking beside her, anyway, as we crossed the lobby toward the dining room, now open.

  “Dr. Dillman?” I said, playing safe in case we had an interested audience.

  “Yes?”

  I put on my face the look of an eager student in search of knowledge. “That five-day limbo period, as you called it, at the end of each year of the secular calendar. What was the significance of that, besides making the year come out with three hundred and sixty-five days, as it should?”

  “It was a bad-luck time,” she said. “You had to watch yourself during those five days and perform all the right religious rites, or the next year would be shot to hell.”

  “And how about that fifty-two-year period? What happened when those two calendars got together every half century and a little?”

  She glanced at me oddly, as if she hadn’t expected these questions from a nonarchaeological dope like me. She said carefully, “It was a time of doom, Mr. Felton; a time when the gods had to be propitiated with extreme care; a time of change and nobody knew in what direction, good or bad. But it was damn well going to be bad if you didn’t do exactly the right things, the things the priests told you to do.”

  “Next question,” I said. “On this three-calendar system you and your husband discovered, what happened when all three calendars came into sync, once every few hundred or thousand years, or whatever?”

  She drew a long breath and glanced around; but there was nobody within hearing. “Samuel,” she said softly, “I think we’re going to make an archaeologist of you yet. That is the question, isn’t it?” She licked her lips and spoke precisely. “Since you’re so interested, I’ll tell you that the periods between the critical times of three-calendar synchronization, as far as we can determine with our present data and our present methods of dating, coincide with reasonable accuracy with the life spans of each of the three civilizations we are considering. Interesting, don’t you think?” She shivered abruptly and said in a totally different tone, “Well, I’d better go see how Dick Anderson is making out. Until I started wrestling that damned wheelchair, I didn’t realize how many stupid, unnecessary steps people built in how many stupid, unnecessary places.”

  In the morning, the bus took us to the museum, housed in a magnificent old mansion that had been beautifully restored for the purpose but was already deteriorating rapidly, since they had apparently spent money on everything except the roof. We’d been told that the rainy season down there is a real duck-drowner; and it’s just as well, since it’s otherwise a very dry country, on the surface at least. When it doesn’t rain, the only water comes from underground rivers and the cenotes Frances had mentioned: places where limestone caverns have collapsed to expose underground pools, very important to the ancients unable to drill for their water. The cenotes had largely determined the locations of the great cities.

  Anyway, the walls of the fine museum were disfigured by ugly watermarks, and some of the exhibits had had to be moved out of the way of drips from above; which I suppose said something about the administration of Armando Rael, although I could think of worse things against his regime than a casual attitude toward ceiling leaks. The exhibits were not as dramatic
as those of the Museo Anthropologia in Mexico City; nor had the Melmecs, as far as I could make out, produced any sculpture as spectacular as that of their successors, the Olmecs. However, Frances loved her Melmecs dearly; and her I-was-there account of the discovery of the various pieces was worth the price of admission.

  Then we were released for lunch; and I took a taxi to the plaza and the Restaurante Tolteca, which turned out to be a rather formal establishment, as many of them are down there. I was glad I’d thought to put on a necktie in spite of the warmth of the day—we’d come down five thousand feet from Mexico City and the weather was quite tropical. Since I was moderately respectable in appearance, in spite of the camera bag I was lugging, the maitre d’ condescended to indicate to me the table of the señorita Matson.

  Miranda was one or two ahead of me already; she always had been. A big woman with white untidy hair and a square brown face, she was wearing a seersucker pantsuit—well, I couldn’t quite make out the pants as she sat at the table, but I knew they were there because Miranda had never, to the best of my knowledge, been seen in a skirt.

  “Hey, do you know what they charge for Scotch down here?” was her greeting to me. “Forty dollars a fifth! Forty bucks!”

  I said, “What do you care? You’ve always been a bourbon baby. How are you, Miranda?”

  “About the way I look, and that isn’t good,” she said. “Hell, you don’t look much worse than the last time I saw you,” I said, sitting down. “What are you doing in this hole, anyway?”

  She shrugged. “Somebody thinks something’s going to break wide open here and they want a man on the spot when it happens and the closest thing they could get was me.”

  “That’s pretty close,” I said.

  “You bastard. What do you want to drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having. If it hasn’t killed you yet, it probably won’t kill me.”

  “Don’t count on it. Years of heavy exposure tend to build up the immunity, dearie.”

  She gave the order. Apparently she already had the waiters trained to jump; the man was back in double-quick time. We saluted each other, drank; and then we looked at each other across the table for a moment, kind of catching up with the time that had passed since we’d last met.

  The trouble with Miranda Matson was that she was a big ugly competent sophisticated woman who’d seen everything; but when she looked at you with her surprisingly—considering the amount she drank—clear brown eyes you felt sure that somewhere behind them was a pretty, innocent little girl begging to be let out. There were rumors about her sexual proclivities; I guess there always are when the lady is built like a horse. I was in no position to confirm or deny them and didn’t care. She was a hell of a reporter and a good friend when one was needed; but I didn’t think friendship had brought her here. As it turned out, I was more or less wrong.

  “In case you’re wondering,” she said, “I owe you people one. One of your guys bailed me out of one of those halfass African countries where they’re always killing each other and anybody else who happens to be handy. I said if there was ever anything I could do; and when your big man in Washington found there was nobody in Costa Verde he could use but Miranda, he told me what I could do. Get it out of my purse, will you? I don’t even like to touch the damn things.”

  I reached under the table and dug into the enormous leather bag she had sitting there and found the gun—a two-inch-barreled job by the feel, in a tricky little holster—and the small plastic bag of cartridges. I judged fifteen rounds or three cylindersful. Not enough to fight a war, but I might manage a small battle if I was careful. I tucked the stuff away in my camera bag.

  “Whew, it’s a relief to be rid of that!” Miranda said. “And here’s the material on Montano you asked for. Don’t read it here; they don’t like to have people puking all over their nice white tablecloths.” She waited until I’d slipped the envelope into my jacket pocket, and went on: “Next, I’m supposed to tell you that Bultman’s gone underground, whatever that means. Got it?”

  “Bultman underground. Check.”

  “Now look around and see if there’s somebody you recognize, maybe from a photograph or description.”

  I glanced around casually. It was a big, high-ceilinged room with elaborate lighting fixtures. There were, as Miranda had indicated, tablecloths on the tables, and linen napkins. There seemed to be other dining rooms, perhaps more intimate, behind the main one in which we. were seated. On the street side, big windows gave a good view of the main plaza of Santa Rosalia, and of the impressive cathedral on the far side. It was of stone construction, but the religious architecture was lighter and more graceful than that of the massive fortress-mission we’d seen yesterday. I noted two groups of armed and uniformed men out there, keeping watch over the tree-shaded square…

  My glance stopped abruptly at a table by the window. Red-haired and red-bearded Latins do exist, but they aren’t common; and I had no doubt of the identity of the man I was looking at. Red Henry. Enrique Rojo. He was sitting at a table with three army officers in uniform; and in his dark business suit he looked more dangerous than all three military men put together. He was in his late thirties or early forties. He had a hawklike Spanish face. Mephistopheles with a henna rinse, I thought; but instinct told me this was nobody I really wanted to make jokes about.

  “Pretty, ain’t he?” Miranda shivered slightly. “The Lord High Executioner of Costa Verde. I need another drink.”

  11

  It took us most of the following day to drive to Copalque. The bus was air-conditioned, which was just as well, since we were heading down into the real lowlands now, and the temperature increased significantly as the altitude diminished. For a while we ran between large sisal fields hacked out of the jungle and not very carefully cultivated. Maybe they don’t need to be, since the plant is kind of an overgrown agave cactus: a great sunburst of thick fleshy leaves with spiny points and edges. It looks like a tough, self-reliant desert plant that shouldn’t require much cultivation. They use the fibers for cordage. It’s not up to modern nylon and dacron, or even old-fashioned manila; but it’s still a thriving industry down here.

  The road got progressively worse as we left the capital city of Costa Verde behind; but what really slowed us was being stopped at one roadblock and checkpoint after another. It was apparently the great local sport: Make the lousy rich Americanos climb out of their cool vehicle and stand in the hot sun while their papers are examined, and discussed with the guide, in minute and endless detail. Then on to the next bunch of sloppy, uniformed gun-toters—ironically, the weapons being waved at us were good old American Ml6s—and the next arrogant bantam rooster of an officer, who hadn’t had his hassle-the-gringos jollies for the day and was very happy to see us.

  The Hotel Copalque, when we finally reached it, turned out to be a sprawling new tourist resort complete with swimming pool, gardens, and fountains, a real oasis in the strange, low, dry jungle they have down there. There was a main building with desk, bar, restaurant, and curio shop; behind it were the guest cabins, built in the oval native style with heavy whitewashed walls and thatched roofs. But it had been a long, dry drive with just a brief break for a picnic lunch in a village along the way, and most of the party made straight for the bar and to hell with luggage and accommodations. I got Ricardo a drink.

  “Save a little time for me this evening, amigo,” I said. “I’ve got something to show you, but in private.”

  He glanced at me curiously. “Sure, Sam. Whenever you say. I’m not planning on one of my long jungle hikes tonight.”

  I went looking for Frances and found her by the hotel desk being her usual efficient self.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said. She handed me a room key. “Oh, and here’s Dick’s too; you can give it to him. They’ve taken the suitcases out already. It’s the two single cabins right over there, no steps to negotiate. I’m just down the hill from you.” She glanced at me. The slight blush that came to her face was very
becoming and made her look much less formidable and businesslike. “That’s information-information, not action-information, darling. We can’t… risk anything here; everybody knows Archie and me.”

  I said, “Sure. But if I should decide that I desperately need pictures of the Temple of the Sun by moonlight, you wouldn’t let me go wandering around out there at night all alone, would you? I might get lost.”

  She said, “There is no Temple of the Sun. Be good, Sam. When we first came here we slept in tents,” she said in a totally different tone, looking around the elaborate tiled lobby. “There was nothing here but the jungle and the past. But the government decided that if the Guatemalans could coin money at Tikal, and the Mexicans could cash in on Uxmal and Chichen Itza, Costa Verde had to have its little tourist goldmine, too.”

  “Well, they’d better clean up their act,” I said. “They’re not going to get many tourists here if they subject them to the kind of stupid harassment we got today.”

  “Shhh,” she said uneasily, with a glance toward where our guide was chatting with the desk clerk. “Please, not so loud!”