‘Yeah. I got a car. Easy to move the stuff into the back.’
‘You ever done this before?’
‘No.’ Alastor smiled. The stress lines in his face looked like glacial grooves. ‘This is all new to me.’
The Mexican grinned. He already knew he had a real sucker here. This proved it once and for all. No one admitted to inexperience in his world. In his world everybody had done everything a thousand times over. ‘We meet this evening. Six o’clock. There’s a cave complex near Valladolid. They call it the Gruta de Balancanché. We meet in the car park there. You can’t miss it, man. It’s only a few kilometres south of Chichén Itzá.’ He frowned at Alastor. ‘You remember now. Nothing bigger than twenty-dollar bills?’
‘Seven thousand. That’s what we agreed?’
The Mexican almost gave himself away then. He almost laughed. This gringo was priceless. One felt tempted to pick him up in one hand and twirl him about one’s head like a lasso. ‘Yeah. Seven thousand. You get the best ordnance in the whole of Mexico, I promise. I tell you this. You’ve come to the right place.’
‘I know that, my friend. I know that very well.’
67
Lamia settled herself on the ground. She curled her legs beneath her and off to one side just like the Maya women she saw scattered about the compound, all of whom were either weaving, pounding maize, cooking, or endlessly patting tortillas into shape – and pretending not to watch the gringos, and, in particular, the gringa with the damaged cheek.
Lamia flashed a look at Sabir. There was a hunted expression on her face he had never seen there before.
‘What do you think they are going to do with us?’
Sabir squatted down beside her, his eyes fixed on the two guards standing at the edge of the clearing, their rifles at the ready. ‘Between you and me, they can do anything they want. Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody gives a damn about us. They could kill us and bury us somewhere in this endless scrubland and no one would be any the wiser. Then all they’d have to do would be to strip down the Grand Cherokee and ship it over to Guatemala. We changed our dollars into pesos on the US side of the border, Lamia, and we paid cash all the way down for everything we bought, including gas, food, and accommodation. It seemed like a heck of a good idea at the time. As a result there’s no official record of us anywhere beyond Brownsville.’
‘I don’t think they’ll do what you suggest. Acan is a nice boy. He’s not a killer.’
‘I don’t think so either.’
Lamia let out a heavy sigh. She was clearly grateful that Sabir was agreeing with her. ‘What have they done with Calque?’
‘They’ve got him over the other side of the clearing. He’s probably eating something. Or perhaps the priests are putting on his skin like a cloak and eating him? Christ, maybe I got it all wrong, and we’re next for the pot after all?’
Lamia threw a handful of dirt at him. She laughed in delight when he lost his balance trying to dodge it, and went sprawling.
Sabir stood up and made a great play out of shaking out his shirt. ‘I guess I deserved that. I never realized you were such a dangerous and impulsive woman.’ He grinned and resettled himself at the squat, pleased that he had triggered her change of mood.
‘Do you have any idea where we are?’
‘Yes, oddly enough, I do. On the way here I saw a sign that said Ek Balam. And there’s a pyramid over there. Can you see it? Just peeking through the trees. So it seems we’re at or near the site, which, if I remember correctly, is situated a few miles north of the main Cancun turnpike, just up from Valladolid. Frankly, they don’t seem too worried about us knowing where we are.’
‘That might mean that they don’t need to bother themselves with what we know because they’re going to kill us anyway. Maybe you were right in the first place?’
‘Yeah. And maybe the cup’s half empty, and never half full. No, Lamia. I think we’ve set them a problem that they’re going to have to work out for themselves. You saw how they responded to the crystal skull? And now they’ve got this man with the book to deal with too. That’s quite enough for one day. I’m convinced these guys are bona fide Maya, and that they genuinely thought we were grave robbers or something, and simply stepped in to protect their holy sites. I’m trusting that Calque can straighten them out on that angle. He’s good at that sort of thing.’
‘And my brothers and sisters?’
Sabir threw back his head as though he’d been slapped. ‘Let’s hope that they did indeed lose us back there near Jaltipan.’
‘Have you any reason to suppose that they didn’t?’
‘No. None whatsoever. But I wouldn’t like to imagine how far they’d go to get their hands on the skull and the book. The minute you bring firearms into an equation, like these Maya have, all rational judgement flies out the window. People behave like animals. I’m not so dumb that I don’t realize that if it came to a fight between these people and the Corpus, the Corpus would win hands down. That the way you read it?’
Lamia nodded. Here eyes were like dark wells within the paler framework of her face.
68
It was late afternoon by the time the Halach Uinic had succeeded in assembling all the people he would need for the ceremony of the tearing of the flesh. For this was what he now felt was necessary if the decision he had come to that morning in the car was to be acted upon.
After private prayer and a lengthy internal debate, the Halach Uinic had decided that he must offer himself up as a sacrifice to propitiate the gods, and through them, the composite, alchemical God that was Hunab Ku – the one monotheistic God who encapsulated and concatenated both Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan.
The Halach Uinic didn’t intend to sacrifice himself in any purely physical sense, needless to say. That sort of thing was well past its sell-by date. The Spanish colonizers had been right to ban human sacrifices – there was a time and a place for everything, and in the early twenty-first century, unnecessary death, even if followed by inevitable rebirth, was notably inappropriate.
No, the sacrifice the Halach Uinic intended to make was a harder one than simply the giving up of one’s own life. The offering back of the book and the crystal skull to those who had found them needed to be paid for. And he, as chief representative of all the other priests, was the one who needed to do the paying.
He glanced across at the main temple. Everything was ready. The priests and the shamans were in place. The steps up to the top of the pyramid had been decorated with water lilies, pitaya flowers, and fronds from the corozo palm. Ritual objects and offerings of all sorts had been arrayed up the steps, including cigars, orchids, chocolate, sugar candy, aguardiente, burning bowls of sacpom tree resin, and many candles. Prayers had been chanted and fires had been lit. The lilies were correctly placed facing in towards the fires, showing a symbolical willingness to face the flames. The Calendar of the Days had been formally counted out by one of the priests, and white copal incense from the north of Mexico was being burnt as a nod to wider confraternity. Crosses had been drawn in honey on each of the steps leading to the top of the pyramid, reflecting the chaacoob – the four directions of the compass – each direction with its colour laid out in spices within the circle. East was red, north was white, west was black, and south was yellow.
The shamans and the iyoma – collectively known as the ajcuna, or spirit lawyers – each carrying their own personal bag of ritual objects, were arrayed, every one at a different level, up the entire length of the steps. Some of them wore elaborate spondylus shell necklaces and headdresses of quetzal, ibis, flamingo, and parrot feathers. Each person was dressed differently, for there was a hidden language of clothes amongst the Maya, and those able to speak that language could learn many things – about age, rank, status within the community, and even the level of psychic awareness of which that person was deemed capable – simply by what a man or a woman had chosen to wear that day.
The Halach Uinic recognized Acan’s mother, Ixtab, standin
g halfway up the steps leading to the top of the great pyramid. Of all the iyoma he had known in his lifetime, Ixtab was the most perceptive. He was pleased that she had put aside her usual duties and had hearkened to his call. He wanted her to see the gringos. Wanted her opinion.
He closed his eyes and concentrated for a few moments, hoping that amidst all the excitement and anticipation of the ceremony, his usual channels of communication with her might still be open. For the Halach Uinic and Ixtab met regularly inside their dreams. The connection between them might be an unspoken one, but the Halach Uinic knew beyond any doubt that his nawal had chosen Ixtab to be his shadow guide. That it was she who had been detailed to guard him from the mistakes vainglory – and the inevitable vanity of men – might otherwise cause him to make. She was his protector and his conscience. His spirit doctor and his companion in the web of life.
The Halach Uinic looked up. Ixtab was staring down at him, her face pale beneath her headdress. In a covert gesture, the Halach Uinic raised his hands and opened them upwards, as if forces greater than himself were at work around him. Ixtab, in an equally covert gesture, turned her palms towards the ground, and gestured downwards, as if she were kneading dough. Male upwards and airborne, female downwards and grounded.
The Halach Uinic understood what she was telling him. Few people knew that this little-known site at Ek Balam was the true spiritual centre of Maya belief. A place to which Maya priests had come for countless generations, sure in the knowledge that a resident guardian would always be on hand to welcome them into the site via the ritual stone archway that still guarded its entrance – known privately as the Temple of the Praying Hands. The resident guardian would then wash the visiting priest’s knees, feet, and hands, before allocating the priest a place in one of the few still unburied stone cubicles. The visiting priest would then use the stone cubicle to re-energize himself and reconnect himself to nature.
For most enlightened Maya, Chichén Itzá, Tulum, Palenque, and many of the other great sites of the former Maya hierarchy were simply sad reminders of lost greatness. They had nothing further to offer. Whatever energy they had left was hidden so far underground that it could only be reached via extreme and thorough ritual. At Ek Balam, however, the energy still brimmed from the ground like a fountain.
In addition, Ek Balam, or the Black Jaguar, was the only site left in the whole of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize that still incorporated all three of the essential elements and energy centres – the sky, the earth, and the underworld. The downward movement of Ixtab’s hands, echoing and counterpointing that of the Halach Uinic, had been a recognition of this fact, therefore – a reminder to the Halach Uinic that he must submit, and trust, and not attempt to dominate.
The Halach Uinic acknowledged Ixtab’s warning with a downward inclination of the head. Then he signalled to Acan, Naum, and Tepeu that they must bring forward the three gringos and the mestizo from Veracruz.
The Halach Uinic could sense the intense interest aroused by the appearance of the strangers. He allowed the collective emotion of the crowd to leach deep into his body until he could feel each individual’s response as if it were his own.
Only when he felt full to the brim – only when he felt as if he were carrying the entire wishes and the hopes of the crowd within himself – did he start up the stone steps.
69
Sabir felt at peace. He didn’t fully understand why this should be so, but neither did he feel any particular desire to investigate his newfound condition. He was content simply to bask in the unfamiliar harmony, and allow the long-awaited healing process to begin.
After half an hour or so of near total detachment, something snapped Sabir out of his reverie. He began to monitor the preparations being made by the Halach Uinic with more than the usual amount of interest. At first he couldn’t understand what had triggered this intense curiosity, but then he realized that the High Priest was communicating in some quasi-telepathic way with a middle-aged woman standing halfway up the stone steps of the pyramid. It was this that had caught his attention.
Sabir was at a loss to understand how he had achieved this insight, but he could definitely sense the energy passing between them. It resembled the sudden flapping of a curtain in the wind, or the unexpected tightening of a sail out at sea in the run-up to a squall. The impression was so overwhelming that Sabir was instantly overcome by the conviction that he could intervene between the two of them if he so desired, transforming their duologue into something approaching a round table discussion – but that it would probably be considered the height of rudeness were he to do so.
He glanced at Calque to his left, and then at Lamia to his right. Both were deeply involved in watching the preparations for the ceremony.
Had he gone stark staring mad? It was obvious that his companions hadn’t the remotest idea of what was going on his head – and neither were they picking up anything of a similar sort themselves. Instead, they were watching the preparations going on around them with the natural interest of the outsider.
Had his never-ending litany of sleepless nights caught up with him at last? Was he hallucinating? Sabir shook himself like a dog and concentrated all his attention on the scene around him. Best drag yourself back to reality, man. No more airy-fairy nonsense. You’ll be dreaming of pixies next.
The first thing Sabir noticed following his reality check was that the Maya en masse were even smaller than he had imagined them to be – much smaller than a similar random grouping of Westerners, or even Latins, would have been. Both men and women had round faces and wide cheekbones – they smiled a lot, and were quick to mirth. Most of the women standing in the group nearby were squat, square, and useful looking, with a low centre of gravity. Some had an almost Asiatic cast to their features. The older women were stocky, with solid bellies and protruding bottoms, although some of the younger women were very beautiful, with an almost sinister cast to their features – they had curved noses, almond eyes, dark, fine hair, and expressive, sensual mouths. Their colour varied from a light macadamia to a darker chocolate. Few of the women were heavy-breasted, with the young girls in particular seeming to retain their flat chests well into adolescence. Most of the women Sabir could see wore their hair long, while some of the men cut theirs en brosse.
Sabir also noticed that the Maya strolled rather than strode – in fact they almost bundled along, blowing their noses onto the ground whenever they felt like it. Ponytails were popular amongst the women, with the hair pulled tightly back from the forehead. The older women wore white shifts, with floral borders, visible petticoats, and occasional rebozos, worn across the shoulders like a shawl. The younger women wore wheel earrings – Sabir noticed that both the men and the women’s ears aimed backwards, just as in the sculptures.
‘Come on, Sabir. Snap out of it. We’re on the move.’
‘What?’
Calque was staring at Sabir as if the American had taken leave of his senses. ‘The ceremony. The one they’ve been preparing for two hours right in front of your face. All that clattering and banging. Don’t tell me you missed it?’ He turned to Lamia. ‘Do you think an alien life-form has taken over our friend here?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think so too.’ Calque turned back to Sabir. ‘Oh, Alien. Return our friend to us. You have taken all his secrets. You know that he is simply an empty vessel with nothing inside. Be satisfied with that. We earthlings are no threat to you.’
‘Yeah. Very funny. I love a good joke. Maybe you could become a stand-up comedian when you get back to France, Calque? You could call yourself “Flic-Flaque”. Otherwise known as the “Wet Policeman”.’
Calque stared incredulously at Lamia. ‘My God. He really is an alien. That was a halfway good French pun he managed there.’
Acan, Naum, and Tepeu were approaching from the direction of the pyramid. It was this that had triggered Calque’s wake-up call to Sabir. None of the three were carrying rifles, and they had changed from their usual work clothes
into simple white shifts.
Acan split off and came towards Sabir. Naum had clearly been detailed to mind Calque, while Tepeu walked up to Lamia and invited her and the mestizo to accompany him.
Sabir was still feeling awkward following his unintentional detachment from his companions. Even Lamia was staring at him as if he had recently undergone some disastrously botched plastic surgery. He decided to try and patch up their fractured bond with a little forced bonhomie. Plastering an artificial grin on his face, he said, ‘Everything’s sweetness and light, now. Do you see? They’ve even ditched their rifles.’
Calque shook his head in mild despair. ‘Sabir, you probably haven’t noticed, but there are maybe a thousand Maya surrounding us at this very moment. Who the heck needs rifles?’
70
Alastor de Bale sat in his car in the parking lot of the Balancanché caves. It was six o’clock in the evening. He had been there since four o’clock. At five o’clock all the staff had packed up and left. Only the elderly carwash man had stayed behind, hoping for one final commission. Alastor had given him one hundred pesos and told him to get lost.
The man had hung around on the periphery of the lot for a further ten minutes until Alastor had made a throat-cutting motion at him. Then he had fled. The carwash man had never been given one hundred pesos for doing nothing before, and he had been hanging around to make sure that the skeletal gringo was actually real, and not simply the fiend Paqok, come out at night to feast on hapless men and women after tricking them into a false sense of security.
Alastor glanced back at the entrance to the parking lot. The gun-running Mexican wasn’t dumb. There was only one road into the space, and that was hemmed in on both sides by forest and impenetrable scrubland. Behind him were the caves – sealed tight now that the tourists had gone home. And there was no caretaker. What would be the point? There was nothing here to steal.
The Mayan Codex Page 30