Reston resumed his bid for dry land. Mal was now much closer to him, just a few strokes behind, cutting through the swirls of surf left by his kicks. Reston reached the shallows and rose to his feet. The riverbed was thick, sticky mud. He waded laboriously towards a rusting, weed-draped ladder that would take him to street level. Mal, with a final frantic burst of effort, lunged out of the water after him.
For once, being less heavily built than her quarry served her well. She didn’t sink as deeply into the mud as Reston did, and was able to traverse it more quickly. At the same time that Reston latched a hand onto a rung of the ladder, she latched a hand onto the back of his running singlet. She yanked hard, catching him off-balance, pulling him down into the mud.
“You had to make a run for it, didn’t you?” she panted. “Had to make life as difficult as possible.”
Reston reared up from the mud, but Mal whacked him back down with an elbow jab to the crown.
“I was trying to appeal to the gentleman in you,” she said. “I thought you’d appreciate decency.”
Reston struggled to rise again, while also aiming a punch at Mal’s knee. She foiled him with another vicious, stunning strike to the head.
“Just stay put, will you? You’re under fucking arrest.”
Reston grabbed for her ankle but she kicked his hand away with one muck-caked trainer.
“I said stop resisting. You’re only going to get hurt.”
He was weakening, exhausted. Mal was exhausted too, but charged up with adrenaline and righteousness. She stamped on Reston’s chest, forcing him so far down into the slimy shoreline ooze that his face almost went under. The mud sucked at him and held him fast, resisting his best efforts to writhe out of it. He scrabbled and clawed, but couldn’t free himself.
Helmeted heads appeared above, peering over the embankment’s barrier railings. Mal looked up, still with one foot on Reston’s sternum like a safari hunter posing with a fresh kill.
“Got him,” she said. “I want three of you down here now, with handcuffs and leg manacles. We’re bringing him in.”
Cold, wet, trembling, steeped in mud up to her thighs, Mal had never felt better.
TEN
Same Day
WITHIN MINUTES, A bedraggled, mud-encrusted Stuart found himself being prodded at gunpoint into the back of a paddy wagon.
He liked to think he had given the Jaguar Warriors a run for their money. He’d known, though, from the moment they sprung their little surprise for him on Tower Bridge, that there was a strong possibility the outcome would be this. When that boat had come by he thought his luck had turned, but it was not to be. He was in the authorities’ clutches now. At the mercy of Jaguar Warriors. Things could have looked less bleak, but Stuart refused to be discouraged. As long as he was alive there was always a chance of turning the situation around. Something could be done.
He was made to sit on one of the narrow benches lining the interior walls of the paddy wagon. A chain was clamped onto his handcuffs, the other end secured to an eye-bolt in the floor. Jaguars crowded in on either side of him. Chief Inspector Vaughn planted herself directly opposite, so near that her knees were almost touching his. She looked extraordinarily pleased with herself, and frankly Stuart didn’t blame her.
The rear doors slammed and the paddy wagon revved and pulled away.
Stuart noticed noses wrinkling around him.
“Yes, I know, I stink,” he said. “Phew! Sorry about that, everyone. The Thames isn’t the most pleasant of rivers to take a dip in. And all this mud too. Ninety per cent human waste, probably, and the rest fish shit.”
The Jaguar to his right chuckled. Vaughn shot the man a look and he instantly fell silent.
“Confined space,” Stuart continued. “Can’t be much fun for you people. At least the chief inspector here’s as guilty of reeking as I am. Although of course in every other respect she’s come up smelling of roses.”
“Do you ever shut up, Reston?” Vaughn snapped.
“I just felt I should apologise.”
“Well, don’t. Don’t feel you should do anything.”
The paddy wagon rumbled on for a little while. The rear section was windowless, partitioned off from the driving cab. A dim overhead bulb was the only illumination, and for Stuart there was nothing to see but policemen and l-guns.
“Nice takedown, by the way,” he said to Vaughn. “You are one persistent little bloodhound, and no mistake.”
“Why, thank you,” she replied in a sarcastic drawl. “Coming from you, that’s such a compliment.”
“I like to pay beautiful women compliments.”
“Ye gods, what a charmer. I’m getting moist between the legs.”
Several of the Jaguars chuckled at this, and Vaughn was happy to let them.
“I mean it, though,” Stuart said. “You are beautiful – as beautiful as you are formidable. I’m sure I’m not the only man here who fancies you. And I know for a fact that you have something of a reputation. Homework, remember? Word is, your morals are loose and your knicker elastic even looser.”
Vaughn’s expression soured and hardened. “I’d advise you to stop talking right now.”
“Queen of the quickie. Just ask anyone at the Yard.”
Stuart hadn’t in fact spoken to anyone at the Yard. He’d found out about Vaughn’s background by ringing a journalist famed for his Jaguar contacts and offering him a hefty sum of money in return for a spot of private freelance research. The journalist, after a little delving, had come back with the story about Vaughn and her brother and also with rumours, unconfirmed, that the woman liked to put it about a bit and went on the occasional bender. “In every other respect,” the hack had told him, “she’s a model cop. They’ve all got bad habits, and hers, such as they are, are far from being the worst.”
Vaughn was looking daggers at him across the van. “Are you trying to piss me off, Reston? Does it amuse you? Because believe me, down in the holding cells you’re not going to find life nearly so amusing.”
“I’m just making light conversation. Trying to get us better acquainted. You can’t feel this thing between us?” Stuart gestured as expansively as his restraints would permit. “The sexual tension?”
A Jaguar sniggered, then stopped sniggering when he realised no one else was.
Vaughn’s grey eyes had turned to iron.
“I do,” Stuart went on. “I’m looking forward to spending some time being interrogated by you. We can put that reputation of yours to the test. You don’t even have to untie me. I don’t mind a bit of the kinky stuff, and neither, I suspect, do you. We’ll just –”
Vaughn jack-knifed out of her seat and struck him across the face, backhand. It was as good a shot as the one she’d got off in his office, and it hit almost exactly the same spot. Stuart tasted blood. Probing with his tongue, he found that a molar had been loosened.
“Ugh,” he said. “Not nice. Police brutality.”
“That’s just a taster of things to come. Given how many of us you’ve killed, there’ll be no shortage of candidates wanting to come see you downstairs and get a little payback.”
“Allegedly killed, chief inspector.”
“How long are you going to keep up this ‘innocent man’ routine?”
“I don’t know. How long are you going to keep up the pretence that you’re happy being a Jaguar?”
She flinched. “Bollocks. I love my job.”
“So the drinking, the over-reliance on coca, the cheap sordid assignations with strangers – these are all signs of someone content in herself, with a healthy relationship to her work? And not, say, someone whose conscience plagues her constantly and who knows she’s a good person doing bad things and who tries to numb herself so she doesn’t have to think about any of it too hard.”
“Like I told you, solving crimes, keeping the peace, collaring undesirables, where’s the harm in that?”
“You Jaguars are no better than the crooks you round up. The only diffe
rence is you have badges and they don’t.”
“The law –”
“The law is meaningless,” Stuart scoffed. “The law is whatever the Great Speaker wishes it to be. It’s there to keep him in power and quash anyone who disagrees with him or would like to see him dethroned.”
“The Conquistador himself couldn’t have put it better.”
“He’s obviously as much of an advocate of free speech as I am.”
“Freedom of speech doesn’t extend to insulting the Great Speaker.”
“I wasn’t insulting His Imperious Stupendousness, merely criticising. And if that’s not allowed, then my case is proven. QE-fucking-D.”
“I’m not having this argument with you,” Vaughn said brusquely. “It’s pointless. If you’d like to live in a world of anarchy...”
“Not anarchy, Miss Vaughn. Just democracy. A world where we choose who rules us and how we’re ruled. We had a world like that, Britain did, up until a hundred years ago, before the Empire finally ground us down. I can see a time when we might have it again.”
“Well, I can’t, and neither can anyone else in this van. You’re in a minority of one, Reston.”
“Maybe if you stopped boozing and spreading your legs like a bitch in heat, you’d have a clearer head and clearer vision too.”
Vaughn leapt to her feet and drew back her fist to sock him as hard as she could.
WHAAAMMMM!!!
The entire paddy wagon took to the air. It rolled and rolled, and everyone inside rolled with it. Bodies tumbled. Limbs tangled. Heads collided. Only Stuart, thanks to his bonds, stayed more or less in one place. The Jaguar Warriors were thrown about helplessly while he swung, hung, crash back against his seat; swung, hung, crashed. There were resounding, thunderous thumps as the paddy wagon somersaulted, striking the ground repeatedly. There were also screams, shouts and grunts from its occupants, and once or twice the deep snap of a bone breaking.
The paddy wagon came to a rest on its side. In the back, Jaguar was piled on Jaguar in a jumbled heap. Low groans filled the air. Someone whimpered in pain.
Then, with a wrenching squeal, the rear doors were crowbarred open. Men rushed into the stricken vehicle. They had skull-face makeup and paramilitary jumpsuits. One wielded a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters.
The Xibalba guerrillas dug through the tangled mass of semiconscious Jaguar Warriors to find Stuart buried beneath. The one with the bolt cutters made short work of the chains securing Stuart, and in no time Stuart was being helped out into the daylight.
Blinking around him, he realised he was at the large intersection north of Whitehall, Tenochtitlan Square. Traffic had come to a complete standstill in all directions. Horns honked. Drivers yelled from their windows, and some leaned out to gesticulate.
The guerrillas hustled Stuart across to their van, which stood nearby with a severely dented front bumper and radiator grille. The engine was turning over, rattling somewhat. Stuart was shoved into the back and the van howled off, tyres screeching.
In the passenger seat, Ah Balam Chel swivelled round.
“Hello again, Mr Reston,” he said, grinning. “So Xibalba plucks you from the clutches of the Jaguar Warriors a second time. This is becoming a habit.”
PART TWO
ANAHUAC
ELEVEN
2 Snake 1 Lizard 1 House
(Thursday 6th December 2012)
STUART SET DOWN the binoculars in order to slap at something biting his wrist. Inspecting the palm of his hand, he found the mushed remnants of a mosquito the size of a bumblebee, along with what seemed like several fluid ounces of his blood, the insect’s last meal.
The rainforest. There was nothing here that wasn’t trying to sting you, eat you, poison you, suck your blood, or keep you awake half the night with hundred-decibel screeching. Anahuac, the holy land, cradle and hearth of the Empire. Well, you could fucking keep it.
He raised the binoculars and zeroed in again on the object of his scrutiny. It lay at a distance of two miles from his vantage point, across the placid blue waters of Lake Texcoco, on an island approximately a mile long. It covered the whole of the island, its walls rising sheer above the lake to a height of around a hundred metres, Stuart estimated.
Tenochtitlan, home of the Great Speaker. More citadel than city and more fortress than either.
Ziggurat rubbed shoulders with ziggurat. Some of them were topped with roof gardens, others with glassed-in solariums, a couple with aerodisc landing pads. There was one waterfront entry point only, a harbour with a road that led up to a large gate at the city’s southern tip. The gate was built as an inverted trapezoid, in true Aztec fashion, and was well defended. There was no other mooring place around the island perimeter as far as Stuart could see, but there were watchtowers at regular intervals along the walls and any number of armed patrol launches circling in the vicinity. Tenochtitlan had been designed to be unbreachable. The Great Speaker’s personal army, the Serpent Warriors, added a further layer of security.
Beside Stuart, Zotz shifted impatiently. “Seen enough?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
Ah Balam Chel’s second-in-command grunted and popped a flake of jatoba bark into his mouth to chew on; it settled his stomach.
As Stuart scanned Tenochtitlan’s roofline he caught sight of a private aerodisc making its descent towards the city. The moment the disc touched down, it was surrounded by a dozen Serpent Warriors. Some dignitary or other – an ambassador, a delegate here to crave a boon, a priest, perhaps even a High Priest – came down the gangplank. He waved warily at all the lightning guns that were pointed at him. Only after he had presented identifying documents and a seal of office were he and his entourage permitted off the rooftop, into the city. Several Serpents were posted to stand guard around the disc and would remain there until it was the dignitary’s time to leave.
Stuart turned his attention to the outer walls. They were impossible to climb. The battlements were too high to be reached by any kind of grappling device, and the stonework was pure traditional Aztec – slabs of basalt cut so precisely and wedged together so tightly that you couldn’t insert even a sheet of paper between them, never mind a piton or a fingertip. You’d have to be some kind of human spider to have any hope of scaling the walls successfully, and all the while you’d be inviting the Serpents in the watchtowers to take potshots at you. They were elite troops, the best of the best, cherry-picked from the ranks of Eagles and Jaguars all over the world. You could be sure that whatever they aimed at, they would not miss.
“Come on,” said Zotz. “We can’t stay here much longer. Serpent discs make regular sweeps along the lakeshore. Besides, we’re losing the light.”
“Sun’s still well above the horizon,” Stuart commented.
“You forget, Englishman, this is the tropics. When the sun goes down, it goes down fast.”
Stuart took one last look at Tenochtitlan, hoping against hope that he would find some gap in its defences, some chink in its armour of stonework and sentry. Perched in the middle of an inland sea, it was like a castle with an immense moat. Its army of protectors were disciplined and dedicated, and had the highest wage packet known in professional soldiering, with substantial bonuses awarded for exceptional initiative or diligence in the line of duty. The Great Speaker was ensconced in a remote, impenetrable bastion. He ventured out from it only on rare occasions, and outsiders could not get in unless they were invited, expected, and fully accredited.
So how on earth did Chel think Xibalba could pull off an assassination?
The question rattled around in Stuart’s brain as he followed Zotz back through the forest to their canoe. Chel claimed to have the basic ingredients of a plan, but Stuart had wanted to reconnoitre Tenochtitlan to assess the parameters of the situation first-hand before making any sort of commitment. If he was going to throw in his lot with Xibalba, he had to be satisfied that it would be a worthwhile exercise. No point jumping off the fence if there was nowhere to land.
Stuart and Zotz reached the edge of one of the tributary rivers that fed into Lake Texcoco. Their kapok-wood canoe was where they’d left it – hauled ashore and secreted among undergrowth. They slid it out onto the water and unshipped the paddles. There was an outboard, but they wouldn’t use that until later. A sudden burst of engine noise might attract attention.
The thin, flat-bottomed boat glided along against the sluggish current, propelled by its two oarsmen with slow, easy strokes. The sky purpled quickly and dusk fell, and the forest animals set up their usual nocturnal hullabaloo, as if this was the cue they had been waiting for. As the stars came out, everything with lungs and a throat started to shriek, gibber or howl, while everything that had chitinous body parts to scrape together started to chirp, all at deafening volume.
Zotz switched on a powerful lamp affixed to the canoe’s bows to light their way. Instantly a pair of eyes shone from the darkness of the riverbank. They disappeared from sight as the creature that owned them padded its way into the water and slithered under the surface with a just audible splash.
“Caiman,” said Zotz. “Didn’t look too big. Nine, maybe ten feet long.”
“Ten feet sounds big enough to me,” Stuart said. “Any danger to us?”
“Not unless it attacks.”
“But it won’t attack a boat.”
“Not unless it thinks the boat is a rival caiman coming to take over its territory or steal its mate.”
“How do we know it won’t think that?”
Age of Aztec Page 12