“Seriously, you’re mistaken,” Stuart insisted. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“Who helped you back into this building, when you were so dazed you could barely walk? Who cleaned you up and put you to bed? Me. And all the while, I couldn’t quite get my head round the fact that this pillar of the community is also the man who would tear down the Empire. The final confirmation came when I inspected the premises while you slept, and found the stash of equipment and spare suits of armour at the back of your wardrobe.”
“All right,” Stuart said, relenting. There was no point trying to brazen it out any more. Chel knew what he knew. “I am the Conquistador. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. Why would I? You think I’m going to turn you over to the Jaguar Warriors?”
“There’s a substantial reward on offer.”
“But I’m an outlaw too,” said Chel. “Remember at the theatre? When you were surrounded by those priests who weren’t priests?”
Stuart recalled the men with the death’s head faces. From the moment a Jaguar Warrior clobbered him on the head, events had taken on a hazy, surreal glow. The death’s heads had dragged him out of the theatre. There’d been a mad dash through the jungle of Regent’s Park, and then…? Chel had mentioned a getaway van, and Stuart had a dim recollection of a tumbling, swerving journey and the tang of diesel fumes. By that point he’d become half convinced the death’s heads were supernatural beings, the souls of the dead come to escort him to Mictlan. It seemed absurd now, especially as he didn’t believe in Mictlan, or Tamoanchan, or any form of afterlife. At the time, though, he’d felt it was a distinct possibility — at the very least, part of a dying man’s fever dream.
And yes, yes. Ah Balam Chel had been one of the death’s heads. Not just one of them, their leader. He’d been barking out orders from the passenger seat, even as he busily scrubbed his makeup off.
“Now, I imagine you’re hungry after your ordeal,” Chel said. “Why not put on some clothes, eat some breakfast? And then we shall talk, you and I. I have things I’d like to tell you, and a proposal to put.”
Stuart studied Chel’s face. He saw neither deceit nor fear there. Stuart trusted no one, but he didn’t sense any danger coming from this man.
Almost without meaning to, he lowered the knife. “All right.”
“How long’s this going to take?” Stuart had just wolfed down a bowl of porridge and two rounds of hot buttered toast. He’d also drunk a pot of proper tea, not coca infusion, which like most of the Empire’s cultural impositions he spurned. He was starting to feel himself again.
“Why, do you have somewhere you’d rather be?” replied Chel amiably. “A holding cell at Scotland Yard, perhaps?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Merely a joke. Perhaps not a funny one.”
“As it happens, I have a business meeting at nine o’clock sharp.”
“Ah yes, your other life. The man you are when you’re not in your Conquistador costume.”
“It’s not a costume,” Stuart said. “It’s a pretence, a necessary disguise. I wouldn’t have been getting away with doing what I’ve been doing for half as long as I have, if I did it as plain old me. Plus, it gives me protection.”
“The image the armour projects, though, that’s important.”
“I don’t deny there’s some theatrics involved. I want the Conquistador’s deeds to stick in people’s minds. I want to be memorable — unignorable. I want TV coverage and newspaper headlines. I’d get none of that if I was just some bloke running about in street clothes and a balaclava.” Stuart pointed an accusing finger at Chel. “All this is pretty rich coming from you. You and your friends with the death’s head faces, the ethnic weaponry. And that jewellery you were wearing. The jade frogs and carved circle pendants. Mayan, right?”
Chel nodded.
“Which explains why you speak Nahuatl without an accent, and you look Anahuac. So why are you over here?”
“To meet you, of course.”
“No, really.”
“Really. Well, it is a little more complicated than that. Have you got time?”
Stuart glanced at his wristwatch. “The meeting’s in half an hour, and it’s twenty minutes from here to Reston Rhyolitic if the traffic’s good.”
“Then we should perhaps do this on some other occasion, when you’re not so busy.” Chel stood up as if to leave. “Mustn’t interfere with the wheels of industry, must we?”
“Or,” said Stuart, “I could phone my PA and have her postpone the meeting. It’s not urgent urgent. Just going over the half-yearly figures with the accounts team.”
“That would be your decision. If you’re interested in listening to what I have to say…”
“I don’t know.” Stuart genuinely didn’t know. He was intrigued by Chel, that was for sure, and there was no getting around the fact that this man and his band of bolas-wielding paramilitaries had pulled the Conquistador’s fat out of the fire last night. Stuart owed him for his continued liberty — his life, indeed. Hearing him out seemed the least he could do.
“It shouldn’t take too long,” Chel said.
“I’ll make the call.”
“There is, of course, no such thing as the Mayan nation,” Ah Balam Chel said. “Everyone knows that. The Maya are no more. We were the last of the Aztecs’ conquests in Anahuac, before the Empire’s expansion out into the rest of the world began. The Olmec, the Zapotec, the Inca and the Mixtec had been enslaved and become tributary states. The Aztecs then swarmed across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and up into the Yucatan Peninsula. Urged on by the Great Speaker, they slaughtered and pillaged, committing atrocities on a scale you wouldn’t believe. Mayan men were killed in their thousands, children too, and women raped in their tens of thousands. That, the mass rape, was a vital plank in the Aztecs’ plan. Their footsoldiers took a particular, vindictive pleasure in carrying out that particular duty. Within months, countless mixed-race infants were born. The bloodline of the Maya was thinned and sullied and would never be pure again.”
“Yes, yes, a history lesson,” said Stuart. “I already know all this. Everybody does.”
“You should not be so dismissive. It may have happened a long time ago, but it is as fresh in my people’s memory as if it were last week. We make sure to keep it that way. It is our duty as Mayans never to forget how we were treated. Other early Aztec conquests were mild by comparison. For us, they reserved a special contempt, perhaps because we were so civilised and they were not. Where they knew only aggression, we knew peace. Where they had their god-given technology, we had astronomy, sciences, art, all of which we had devised on our own. Where they had a single supreme ruler, we had a system of sovereign city states that worked collectively for the good of the nation as a whole. They loathed us for being all they could never be, and we paid for their envy by being abused like dogs and butchered like cattle.”
“Conquest is never pretty. You want to compare sob stories? How about Southampton, eh?”
“One city destroyed is hardly the equivalent of an entire race nearly wiped out.”
“The Aztecs flattened the place with fusion warheads. Well, the French navy did, on their behalf. I visited there once, sort of a pilgrimage. It’s marshland now, all the way to the sea. A few bits of building left standing, covered in moss. The spire of an old church. And no graves. Thousands upon thousands killed, all in a single day, and not a single headstone to mark it, because there were no bodies to be buried. They’d all been incinerated.”
“I see the outrage in your eyes, hear it in your voice. Southampton happened long before you were born, yet you feel considerable anger about it. You must understand it’s the same for us. The injury on the Maya was inflicted longer ago, but it was terrible, and we have not recovered.”
“We both hate the Empire, then. We have that in common.”
“We do. And we, my men and I, have been doing our bit to let the Aztecs at home know that their act of near
-genocide has been neither forgotten nor forgiven.”
“So you’re, what, a local guerrilla faction?” said Stuart.
“Precisely.”
“I’ve heard the rumours. Rebels in the rainforest, carrying out hit-and-run raids on Empire targets. That’s you?”
“We’re one of several loosely affiliated Mayan groups who’ve made it their mission to harry the Aztecs in Anahuac — sabotaging installations, killing dignitaries, and so forth. It’s a thankless task. There are very few real Maya left. Most of the inhabitants of the Yucatan are so homogenised, so downtrodden, so under the yoke, that they regard us as traitors. Everybody around us scorns us and would rather we were dead. Yet we fight on, in the name of our distant ancestors, exacting revenge for their deaths and seeking to re-establish an independent Mayan state.”
“And of course the Empire reciprocates.”
“Violently, which doesn’t aid our cause one bit. The retaliation for our attacks is always wildly disproportionate. Ten civilians are killed for every one Aztec official we execute. Whole villages are razed to the ground on suspicion of harbouring rebels. People are tortured horribly if it’s believed they’re withholding information that could lead to our capture.” Chel raised his hands and let them drop into his lap. His eyes had lost some of their amiable twinkle. “It’s awful. I feel guilt for the deaths of these innocents as if I personally have slain each and every one of them. Yet we must soldier on, because our motives are good, our goal a noble one.”
“This is all very fascinating,” Stuart said, “but…”
“But how does it relate to you? We in Xibalba have been following the Conquistador’s activities for a while, Mr Reston. Following them closely.”
“Xibalba?”
“My group’s name. Taken from the Mayan word for the underworld, the land of the dead. We consider ourselves as belonging there. Our skull makeup is disguise, like your mask and armour, and is intended to unnerve and intimidate our enemies. But it also symbolises our creed. We are, we believe, as good as dead. Every raid we embark on could be our last. Each of us isn’t simply prepared to lay down his life, he has in effect done so in advance. ‘Only by dying do you leave leave Xibalba.’ That is our motto. We are committed to the hilt. We fight, liberated from fear by the knowledge that nobody can kill the man who is, in his mind, deceased already.”
“Kind of fatalistic. Didn’t the Japanese have a similar philosophy during the Pacific Takeover years? And look at them now. Among the Empire’s most ardent supporters. The hub of Aztechnological development.”
“What are you implying? That resistance is futile? Doomed to failure? Ironic, coming from a man who so nearly got brought down by Jaguar Warriors last night. If we hadn’t rescued you…”
“I was doing fine,” Stuart snapped.
“Bah!” Chel snorted. “Delusion. The Jaguars had you at bay. You were incredibly lucky that Xibalba chose to stake out that show, expecting the Conquistador would put in an appearance. We at least had foreseen what you had not: the possibility that the whole thing was a setup, those priests imposters.”
“I realised there was a chance of that. It seemed remote, though, and the opportunity was too good, too juicy, to pass up. Twenty priests in one fell swoop.”
“Admit it, you got overconfident. You saw a big fat prize you couldn’t resist, and you didn’t think twice.”
Stuart kept his expression impassive, but inwardly he couldn’t deny the truth of Chel’s statement. He had got overconfident. Zeal had overcome prudence, and he had blundered straight into a trap. If not for Xibalba, right now he would be dead, the Conquistador’s campaign at an end.
“I’m not looking for gratitude,” Chel said. “I’m glad we were there and able to help out in your hour of need. But it does seem to me, as an observer, that you’ve been taking ever wilder risks. Your stunts are becoming more extreme by the day, as if you’re trying to outdo yourself. Sooner or later you’ll slip up, as you did last night — sorry, nearly did. You’ll be caught and killed, and I for one would hate to see that happen. You see, we’ve been admiring your handiwork greatly, Mr Reston. Inspiring stuff. In just a few short months you, on your own, have caused the Empire as much grief as Xibalba’s many members have in years. That’s why we’re here in Britain.”
“To congratulate me? Give me a medal?”
“Don’t be obtuse. To recruit you. We have need of your skills and expertise. Xibalba could truly do with a man like you in its ranks.”
“I’m a solo operator,” Stuart said immediately.
“I know, but — ”
“It’s worked okay for me so far. I don’t think I could be part of a unit. I wouldn’t mesh well.”
“I would debate that. With your Eagle Warrior background, you know about giving and taking orders, chain of command, watching a comrade’s back, teamwork, all of that.”
“That was a long time ago. I’ve been my own boss ever since.”
“You’d still be an invaluable asset to us,” said Chel. “And, really, don’t you yearn for a chance to hit the Empire right at its very heart? Destroy it once and for all?” The Mayan paused, then smiled. “I saw it — that telltale flash of curiosity on your face, just before you concealed it. You were thinking, Is it possible? Is this funny little round man really saying he can bring down the Empire?”
“I’d like to think it can be done,” said Stuart. “Of course I would.”
“But you’d settle for simply liberating your own country from oppression? Free Britain and leave the rest of the world to sort itself out?”
“Why not?”
“Do you honestly, in your heart of hearts, think that’s going to happen? How?”
“The Conquistador’s example will spark an uprising. People have seen me kill priests. I’ve shown our government to be vulnerable. In time, there’ll be a groundswell, a mounting tide of anti-imperial sentiment that’ll become a full-fledged revolt.”
“Shouldn’t it have begun by now? Where are the protestors on the streets, Mr Reston? Where are the hordes of Conquistador-alikes emulating you?”
“Turning a large ship around takes a long time. If I keep at it, the public mood will shift eventually.”
“Well, perhaps. Or perhaps, if you’re really fortunate, a microbial infection will come along and wipe out all Aztecs, as it did the Martians in Wells’s novel. A somewhat unconvincing conclusion, I’ve always thought. It suggests the author was dredging up hope where he himself felt none. Nevertheless, my proposal to you is this. Come with us to Anahuac. Work alongside us. We have a plan of action that will finish the Empire, and we’d like your assistance is implementing it.”
“Go on, then,” said Stuart. “What is it? What’s the big idea?”
“Simple. Kill the Great Speaker.”
Stuart was silent for a full minute.
Then, shaking his head, he whistled softly and said, “You’re crazy.”
“Am I?”
“It’s not possible. Can’t be done. Tenochtitlan, the guards, the levels of security around him, not to mention his palace is stuck in the middle of a fucking great lake… Out of the question.”
“But if it could be done, would you join us?”
“No.”
“You’re not even tempted? You’ve been a gadfly to the Empire, and that’s all well and good, but what if you could help be its executioner? Kill the Great Speaker, cut off the Empire’s head, and the Empire itself will surely wither and collapse.”
“Still no. It sounds like a recipe for suicide. Pointless suicide. You’d never get anywhere near the Great Speaker. Certainly never get within striking range.”
Chel sighed with heavy emphasis. “Then, alas, it seems I’ve had a wasted journey. Well, not entirely wasted. I’ve met the Conquistador in person, and managed to ensure that he can continue his dissidence a little while longer. That’s something.”
He rose and held out his hand.
“It’s been a pleasure, Mr Reston,” he
said as they shook. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed by the outcome of our chat, but” — he shrugged — “win some, lose some. Oh, we still have your armour, don’t we? I know you have those other suits, but would you like it back?”
“Yes. They don’t come cheap.”
“Let us arrange its return. We’ll be discreet, I assure you. In the meantime, please give further consideration to what I’m suggesting. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t,” said Stuart.
“You might just,” said Chel. “I’ll see myself out.”
SIX
Same Day
Mal awoke with a clanging hangover, her head throbbing as though there was a chainmailed fist inside trying to punch its way out. She made it to the bathroom just in time. Bent double over the toilet, she vomited until there seemed to be nothing left to come up but stomach lining.
A whole bottle of pulque would do that to you.
Trembling, her entire skeleton feeling as brittle as chalk, she fixed herself a mug of coca tea. She sat at the kitchen table, staring out of the window at the glow of yet another furnace-hot day. When the phone rang, she refused to answer it. It would be work calling. Probably Kellaway himself, full of spite and spittle. Where the hell are you, chief inspector? Drag your sorry arse down to the Yard immediately!
Twice more in the next half hour the phone rang. The sound bored into her ears like an electric drill. She nearly picked up the receiver just to stop the pain.
She was tempted to go back to bed, haul the covers over her head, and sleep for as long as she could. But her troubles weren’t going to magically disappear, however hard she ignored them. The fiasco at Regent’s Park had happened, and wishing it hadn’t couldn’t un happen it.
She showered, turning the water as cold as it would go. By means of this chilly dousing and more coca tea, she wrestled the hangover into submission. By the time she was dressed, Mal had regained some semblance of normality.
The phone rang yet again, and now she picked up. Bracing herself for the chief super at full blast, she was relieved to hear Aaronson’s voice instead.
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