The Mayan Codex

by Mario Reading

  ‘What are you going to do now, Abiger?’

  ‘We’ve flushed him out, Madame. He will go on the run now. We must follow him.’

  ‘Have you tagged his car?’

  ‘Impossible, Madame. He has it sealed up tight. And the garage is alarmed. When he leaves, he will leave fast.’

  ‘And Lamia?’

  ‘She is here with the policeman. They are all three sitting in the public rooms of the White Horse Inn. We can’t even get close.’

  ‘Will you be able to follow him?’

  ‘Of course, Madame.’

  ‘Abiger, you are talking arrant nonsense. Two men cannot follow a man twenty-four hours by twenty-four. It’s an impossibility. And once you’ve lost him, he is lost for good. I am sending your brothers and sisters over to help you.’

  ‘But, Madame—

  ‘Be quiet, Abiger. I want to know exactly what he does, and why he is doing it. It’s not enough simply to deal with him any more in the way we discussed previously. There’s more involved. We’ve got Calque to deal with too. So all eleven of you will conduct a full surveillance on the three of them – if they split up, all well and good. If they stay together, even better. I want to know everything they do – everywhere they go. And I shall decide when it is the right moment for you to strike, Abiger, not you. Have I made myself clear?’

  There was a brief hesitation.

  ‘Have I made myself clear, Abiger?’

  ‘Yes, Madame. But I’m still running this operation, aren’t I? I’m still in charge?’

  ‘Until I decide otherwise. Yes, Abiger. You are.’

  12

  At first, you were lucky. The travelling went well. A man taking chayotes down to Veracruz gave you a lift in his truck. Through Orizaba and Cordoba, as far as La Tinaja. He dropped you off there, and you stood on the Tierra Blanca road for three hours, hoping for another lift. But no one stopped. Everyone was going the other way. Towards the volcano. In order to see the free show, you supposed.

  It was then you began walking. You had money for food, but not for buses. But there was no hurry. The volcano had done its worst. No one had been killed. A number of villages close to the summit had been damaged, some by lava, some by dust, but the people had had ample time to evacuate, even when on foot. Now the State had promised to rebuild their homes. All this you had heard on the radio of the truck.

  The State was indeed a powerful thing, you said to yourself. When things went badly, it was the State which put things right. You did not fully understand this, nor how the State functioned, but you suspected that its benevolence was, as it were, inbuilt. That things had always been like that.

  You clutched the thin cotton bag that held the codex to your chest. You were hungry. In the excitement of the eruption, and of knowing that you had a job to do, you had forgotten to eat. Now you stopped at a roadside shack and bought some tacos. You ate half the tacos immediately, and secured the remaining ones in a piece of rough paper for later. You suspected that you might have to sleep out in the open, and for this you would need energy.

  You drank some Coca Cola for your stomach, and because, amongst your people, it was sometimes offered as a gift in the church. Somewhere, far back in your mind, you wondered how you would manage to live when you reached your destination, and the little money you had was exhausted. You had never been outside your own province before. What if there was no one there to welcome you? What if you were not expected? Perhaps, then, you should ask the State for help? But you did not know how to contact the State, or how to communicate with it. Perhaps, being all-powerful, it would try to take the codex away from you? Which would leave you with no function. With no reason to live.

  No. You must keep away from the State. Something would arise. Someone would recognize you. The protection of the codex had gone on for far too long, and for far too many generations, to mean nothing at all.

  13

  ‘Why are you doing this, Sabir? Why are you still sticking your neck out in this way? What’s in it for you?’

  Calque had an unlit cigarette dangling out of his mouth. He had come to a grudging understanding with the staff of the inn that he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, actually light it, but simply suck on it for the taste of the tobacco. Lamia had had to do the translating for him, because Calque’s mastery of the English language was marginally inferior to that of the average first-grader.

  ‘But I thought you knew? I’m in it for the money.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Look, Calque. You’d better get one thing straight. The only reason I responded to Samana’s ad last May was because I thought there was a book’s worth of material in it. I write books. And I live off the money I make from writing them. I’ve put nearly six months of work into this project already. It’s cost me the ability to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch. It’s cost me part of my ear. And it’s turned me into a killer. Beyond that, I’ve been chased and intimidated and shot at, and an attempt has even been made to bury me alive. People have threatened to castrate me. I’ve had knives thrown at me. An effort has been made to burn down my house. The French police, in the guise of your good self, have even had me on their Most Wanted list. I think I’m entitled to some comeback after all that – some sort of a quid pro quo. And I am finally beginning to figure out a way to get it.’

  ‘Saudi Arabia, you mean?’

  ‘Listen. The prophecy talks of the eruption of a “Great Volcano”. A man, “Ahau Inchal Kabah”, lives in the country of this volcano. This man is capable of looking into the future. Through him, the world will know whether 21 December 2012 will bring the feared Armageddon, or the beginning of a major new spiritual era.’

  ‘Why Saudi Arabia?’

  ‘It sounds simple. But it’s taken me weeks to work out. The key word is “Kabah”. This obviously relates to the Kaaba, or the House of Allah – the most sacred site in Islam. I mean the spelling is pretty much exact, isn’t it, give or take an extra a at the beginning and an h tacked on at the end? The Kaaba building is more than two thousand years old – meaning Nostradamus would certainly have known of it. And every Muslim, wherever they are in the world, turns towards the Kaaba when they pray. Next we have “Inchal”. The Muslims traditionally call the Will of Allah, Insha’Allah – pretty close, wouldn’t you say? With all that in hand, I went to check on what Nostradamus calls the “land of the Great Volcano”. I immediately found another link to Saudi Arabia. I now believe the Great Volcano to be the 5,722-foot-high Harrat Rahat, which last erupted in 1256, its lava flow travelling to within three miles of the holy city of Medina. Many think that this volcano is the actual location of Mount Sinai. Exodus 19:18 describes it as “And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly”.’

  Calque glanced across at Lamia. Then he turned to Sabir. ‘Has this volcano erupted recently?’

  Sabir made a face. ‘Not in the last 950 years, no, it hasn’t. I acknowledge that. But then some scholars think Mount Sinai is actually Mount Bedr – or Hala-’l Badr.’

  ‘I suppose that one has erupted?’

  Sabir was beginning to lose his temper. ‘No. No, it hasn’t. Not yet.’

  ‘But you’re living in expectation?’

  ‘Well, Nostradamus can’t be expected to get everything right, can he?’

  ‘And the word “Ahau”? What about that?’

  ‘I can’t get a handle on that one. It doesn’t seem to be an Arabic word at all.’

  Calque glanced back at Lamia. ‘Shall we tell him? Shall we enlighten our intrepid researcher? Who obviously doesn’t bother to listen to the news, just as he doesn’t bother to answer his telephone?’

  Lamia returned Calque’s look. ‘Why tell him? We don’t need him any more. Probably better that we let him swan off to Saudi Arabia, as he intends – that way he can draw my brothers after him, leaving us free to head down to Mexico u
nmolested.’

  Sabir was looking from one to the other of them as if he suspected that he was the victim of some elaborate practical joke. ‘Mexico? What are you people talking about?’

  ‘Seriously, Sabir. Are you a complete technophobe? Have you really not listened to the news for the past few days?’ Calque had chewed his existing cigarette into a pulpy mash. He snatched the opportunity to replace it with a fresh coffin nail.

  The clerk behind the front desk did a quick double take, and then studiously avoided looking in Calque’s direction, through fear, Sabir supposed, of triggering an embarrassing confrontation with his only non-English-speaking guest.

  Sabir sensed that he was being set up for a fall – he remembered Calque’s intellectual vanity from their last meeting, and did not relish a return performance. ‘Who the heck are you calling a technophobe, Captain? I seem to recall your refusing to use a cell phone on more than one occasion, much to the frustration of your second-in-command.’

  ‘My question remains the same.’

  Sabir drew himself up. ‘Okay. You’re right. I haven’t been following the news these past few days. I’ve been in a bad place in my head. And I’ve been working way too hard on my Saudi Arabia theory. I really don’t see why you guys are so fired up about Mexico, though, just because “Ahau” is a Maya sun god. Anyway, that’s Ahau-kin. Or Kinich Ahau, depending on context. You see. I’ve done my homework there too.’

  Calque settled back in his chair, unlit cigarette dangling, a Cheshire Cat grin on his face. ‘If you’d bothered to turn on your television set for just two minutes in the past twenty-four hours, you couldn’t have avoided seeing that the Pico de Orizaba, otherwise known as the Volcán Citlaltépétl, has just erupted. We saw the news report on the plane coming over. I would say that that is your Great Volcano, not the Harrat Rahat or the Hala-’l Badr. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl are the two great volcanoes of Mexico. Everybody knows that. Why should this Orizaba hill transmogrify into the Great Volcano just because it’s picked this particular moment in history to erupt?’

  ‘Why?’ Calque raised an eyebrow. ‘Because it dwarfs the other two volcanoes, that’s why. Orizaba is over 5,600 metres high – that’s nearly 18,500 feet to you Yankees. That makes it seven hundred feet higher than its nearest rival. And it looks like a volcano, man. It sits there, just like Mount Fuji, looking exactly like a great volcano should – I mean with a caldera, and snow on its peak, and a sneer on its face. Except that it’s more than 6,000 feet higher than Mount Fuji, and it’s a stratovolcano, just like Mount Mahon, Mount Vesuvius, and Stromboli. And it knocks your two Saudi Arabian volcanoes into a cocked hat.’

  ‘All right, Calque. I’m impressed. You’ve earned your kewpie doll.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Forget it. It was just a turn of phrase. But you got one detail wrong, Calque. Mount Fuji’s a stratovolcano too.’ Sabir became aware that Lamia was glaring at him, as if the grilling he was undergoing constituted some sort of indefinable test. He instantly regretted the stratovolcano jibe. He’d been trying to score cheap points off Calque in an effort to cover up his embarrassment at being so spectacularly wrong-footed. And now Lamia knew about his insecurities as well. Well, there was nothing like a critical female audience to cement a man’s public humiliation. ‘What about Inchal and Kabah, then? What of them?’

  Lamia stood up. ‘Give me five minutes.’ She walked across to the desk.

  Sabir raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s that all about?’

  Calque shrugged. ‘Search me.’ He mashed his latest unsmoked cigarette onto the tabletop in front of him and reached for another.

  14

  Lamia sat down beside the men. During her absence, Sabir had ordered coffee, and now she busied herself ‘being mother’, an elusive smile hovering about her face.

  ‘Well who’s going to be the first to ask, then?’ Sabir was still feeling slightly sick that he might, at this very moment, have been jetting off towards Saudi Arabia, if Calque and Lamia hadn’t happened by.

  There was silence. Calque and Lamia sipped their coffee.

  ‘Okay. I’ll admit it. I ballsed-up. I was on the total wrong track. But I still don’t get the “Inchal” bit. Or why “Kabah” doesn’t apply to the Kaaba.’

  Lamia glanced up. ‘I’ve just been using the hotel’s internet connection. I typed in “Kabah”. With an h. Just as you tell us it’s written in Nostradamus’s prophecy. Number two on the list of Google hits, after the Kaaba, takes you straight to Kabáh, a Maya site down in the Yucatan. Kabáh means “strong hand”, or, in its original form, Kabahaucan, a “royal snake in the hand”. The place is famous for the Codz Poop – the Palace of the Masks – in which hundreds of stone masks dedicated to the long-nosed rain god, Chaac, stretch along a massive stone facade. Chaac, if you don’t know it, is also the god of thunder, lightning, and rain, and he is considered capable of causing volcanic eruptions with his lightning axe.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Sabir had always known he possessed a single-track mind. But his recent inability to think laterally constituted something of a record, even for him.

  ‘The word “Inchal” was harder. At first, I only came up with a place in India, with no link at all to the Maya. In the end I decided to play around with it a little, and came up with “Chilan”.’

  ‘And what the heck is a Chilan when it’s at home?’

  ‘It’s a Maya priest. The word actually means an “interpreter”, a “mouthpiece”, or a “soothsayer”. The Chilans were responsible for teaching the sciences, appointing holy days, treating the sick, offering sacrifices, and acting as the oracles of the gods.’

  ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘And Chilans traditionally wore the “Ahau”, which is the Maya sun belt. The word also means “Lord” in Maya. So Nostradamus’s phrase “Ahau Inchal Kabah”, and his insistence that this person, blessed with the ultimate gift of prophecy, lives in the land of the “Great Volcano”, is so far from implying a place in Saudi Arabia, that it almost beggars belief how you could ever have allowed yourself to be so disastrously sidetracked, Mr Sabir.’

  Sabir leaned forward and placed his head in his hands.

  Calque squirmed deliriously in his seat. ‘Don’t tell me, Sabir. You haven’t been sleeping recently. Your brain is not functioning to quite its usual standard.’ The ex-policeman was enjoying himself. He was behaving as if he had somehow magicked Lamia out of his jacket pocket and presented her, in triumph, to a wildly applauding gallery.

  ‘Don’t rub it in, Calque. You’re beginning to sound like Svengali.’

  Calque glanced towards Lamia. ‘What do you think? Shall we let him travel with us? Or shall we go it alone? We have all the material we need.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Sabir sat up straighter. ‘You’ve got everything you need?’

  Calque hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes. I think we have.’

  Lamia rolled her eyes.

  ‘You’ve got the full text of Nostradamus’s quatrain, have you? Including the key indicator of where to look for this man once you get to Kabáh?’

  Calque fiddled with his unlit cigarette.

  ‘Well you don’t need me any more, then, do you?’ Sabir stood up. ‘But if you should happen to change your minds, you can probably catch me any time within the next half hour. My house. A silver Grand Cherokee. After that I’m gone. Out of here. Capeesh, wiseasses?’

  15

  Sabir didn’t pull off his ‘leaving in a snit’ stunt. He was dealing, after all, with two companions to whom – due to either familial or professional habit – compromise was a sine qua non.

  Whilst he refused point blank to cough up the key part of the quatrain that referred to the actual whereabouts of Nostradamus’s Ahau Inchal Kabah, he did agree that the three of them might, at the very least, pool their resources and travel together. It had become blindingly clear to him, over the past few hours, that three minds were a heck of a lot better than one.

 
; ‘I vote we fly down to Cancun, and then hire a car from there. That way we can be there in less than a day.’

  Lamia and Calque exchanged glances.

  ‘What is it? What am I missing this time?’

  ‘You’re missing my twin brothers.’ Lamia glanced across at Calque.

  Calque nodded his head in agreement. ‘Airports are our worst bet. They’re too easy to monitor. Flight plans and passenger lists are easily obtainable, if one has either the money or the connections. And Lamia’s brothers have both. Plus these days most hire cars come with either satellite navigation systems or inbuilt trackers. Meaning that they can be followed, and their exact whereabouts pinpointed. Hire companies do it to protect their investments.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘That we ought to go in your car. And that we ought to drive down.’

  ‘Drive down? Jesus. Do you know how long that would take? It’s better than three thousand miles. And I’m probably underestimating.’

  ‘Are we in any hurry? Is there a deadline for this thing?’

  Sabir shrugged. ‘No. I suppose not.’

  ‘And we will be three. To share the driving.’

  Sabir nodded. ‘There is that. But it sticks in my craw to base our plans on the probable antics of a couple of high-class hoodlums. Sorry, Lamia. But you know what I’m getting at, don’t you?’

  Calque intervened before Lamia had time to answer. ‘Ever since I’ve known you, Sabir, you’ve manifested one fatal, but nevertheless entirely consistent, flaw. You’ve always underestimated your opponents. It’s almost a sickness with you.’ Sabir tried to break in, but Calque overrode him. ‘I don’t know anything about these boys beyond what Lamia has told me, but that’s enough to give me pause. They are Achor Bale’s brothers, in the name of God. They come from the same nursery. They’ve suckled at the same diabolical teat.’ Calque was getting into his stride. ‘Unlike Lamia, they have never had doubts about their vocation. They know what they want, and they are prepared to do whatever it takes to get it. I spoke to the Countess two days ago. I was in her presence, Sabir. She is without doubt the most terrifying human being it has ever been my misfortune to meet. She’s worse than any politician, in that she knows she’s right – she doesn’t just act out the role, she is the role. You killed her son, man. You alone have the information that she and the Corpus Maleficus seek. Take my word for it – the Countess is going to allow nothing, Sabir, but nothing, to get between her people and you.’