“Oh, one of those. Resisting arrest.”
“No, a genuine accident. There was a rat in his cell – crawled in via the toilet. He caught it and tried to swallow it whole. Choked to death.” Necalli chuckled ghoulishly at the memory. It seemed there wasn’t a Jaguar in the world who didn’t have a streak of gallows humour. It went with the territory. “The forest can do things to a man’s mind. Make him lose it completely, sometimes. I think that’s what may have happened to your Mr Reston.”
“He’s not ‘my’ Mr Reston,” Mal said, but in a way he was. She felt about him much as a lioness must feel about the carcass of her prey – proprietorial, covetous.
“Visitors, Reston,” Necalli called out, peering through the spy hole in one of the cell doors. “Up and at ’em.” To Mal and Aaronson he said, “He’s not very lively. All he’s done since he got here is wallow on the bunk. I doubt he’ll give us any trouble, but let’s keep our macuahitls at the ready just in case.”
He patted his sword and nodded at Mal’s. She was reminded that she hadn’t yet got round to upgrading to a DCI’s macuahitl yet, the version with the crystal snowflake patterns embedded in its obsidian. She’d been, to say the least, preoccupied.
The cell reeked of unwashed body. Reston lay on his back on the narrow, mattress-less bunk. He stirred as they entered, blinking groggily and rolling onto his side. His hair was lank and matted and several days’ growth of stubble coarsened his chin. Scabs and swellings stippled his forearms and neck, constellations of infection, and he’d shed several pounds. His clothes were torn and caked in dirt. All in all, he was a far cry from the sleek, groomed businessman Mal had met at Reston Rhyolitic or for that matter the fit, muscular jogger she had run alongside the Thames with. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked fragile. No, cracked, that was the word. Like a dropped cup.
“Stuart Reston,” Mal said. “Fancy meeting you here. You should have realised you could never get away. Long arm of the law and all that.”
At the sound of his native tongue, Reston become more animated. He propped himself up into a sitting position. He peered up at the faces of his three visitors, his gaze alighting last on Mal’s.
“Fuck me, it’s you,” he croaked. “My supercop nemesis.” He forced a smile. “Well, welcome to my new abode, Inspector Vaughn. Slightly more humble than I’m accustomed to, but make yourself at home anyway. I’d offer you and your friends seats, except...”
There was barely floorspace in the cell for the three Jaguars to stand.
“You’ve been having a hell of a time of it, by the looks of you,” Mal said. “Hard, isn’t it, living rough and on the run? And ending up in this grotty little cell – it must make you regret all the choices you’ve made.”
“I never had you pegged as the gloating type, but you’re just loving this, aren’t you?”
“I am feeling a warm rosy glow inside, I can’t deny. You’ve put me through several tons of shit, Reston. It would take a better person than I am to not get some satisfaction out of seeing you in the state you’re in now. The phrase ‘how are the mighty fallen’ springs to mind. That and ‘serves you bloody well right.’”
“So what now? I’m getting dragged back to England, presumably.”
“That’s the general idea. A few arrangements have to be made first, but basically you’re coming back with us to face the music.”
“Any chance we can use Nahuatl?” Necalli interjected. “I don’t like being excluded from a conversation in my own station.”
“Fine by me,” said Mal, in Nahuatl.
“If we must,” said Reston, likewise.
“Ah, bilingual after all,” said Necalli. “I was starting to wonder.”
“I wasn’t in the frame of mind to co-operate before. Wasn’t in the frame of mind to do much at all, as a matter of fact. But now that the delightful Inspector Vaughn has appeared...”
Reston accompanied the remark with a gesture in Mal’s direction. Instantly, all three Jaguars’ hands flashed to their sword hilts.
“Hey,” Reston said. “Easy does it. I’d be crazy to try and take on three of law enforcement’s finest. Especially at such close quarters. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“But you are crazy,” Mal said, “that’s just it. Haven’t you realised? Nutty as squirrel shit.”
“In your opinion. Although I must say, there are things I’ve seen recently that have made even me begin to doubt my own sanity.” Reston’s voice trailed off. He became lost in some deep inner musing, grappling with bafflement and despair. “Men as gods,” he said, mostly to himself. “Gods as men. Demigods? Who knows? Where do you draw the line? How do you distinguish?”
“Nahuatl,” Necalli growled. Reston had reverted to English. “If you please.”
Mal shook her head in an exaggerated show of pity. “Maybe you aren’t mad, Reston. Maybe for the first time in a long while you’re lucid and the consequences of your actions are hitting home. The guilt’s catching up. In which case, now is the time to ask if you’ve given any thought to what’s going to become of your company now that its CEO has been unmasked as an anti-Imperial seditionary? Did you even think that far ahead? All those people on your payroll – however many hundreds it is – suddenly their jobs are up in the air, their livelihoods on the line, thanks to you and your psychopathic dog-and-pony show. Do you have any idea how far Reston Rhyolitic stock has fallen since word got out who the Conquistador really is?”
“I imagine the shares hit rock bottom but bounced back. Some other company has launched a takeover bid and now owns a controlling stake. Am I right?”
“Well, yes actually, but –”
“Who is it? CCMM in Italy? One of the Indian consortiums?”
“I have no idea, and I care even less. I only know that someone has.”
“No surprise. Reston Rhyolitic’s too good and too successful that anyone would ever let it fall by the wayside. I made provision, you see. If something untoward were to happen to me – and being arrested and having to flee the country definitely qualifies as that – I arranged things so that the company would immediately be put out to tender, lock, stock and barrel. That way it wouldn’t be broken down and sold off piecemeal but kept as a whole entity, a going concern. My people’s jobs are safe. There may be some restructuring, a handful of compulsory redundancies perhaps, the odd boardroom resignation, but the vast majority of the workforce will still be clocking on as usual, for the same salaries and pensions as before. I’m not a complete idiot, inspector. I’d always assumed the Conquistador would get his comeuppance sooner or later. His lifespan was finite. It was a good run while it lasted. Only now...” His eyes took on that faraway, despairing look again. “Now I really don’t know that it matters. That anything matters.”
“What happened to you out there?” Mal waved to indicate the world beyond the cell’s humidity-blotched walls – the land, the rainforest.
“I’m touched by the concern,” Reston said, coming back to himself. “I didn’t think I mattered to you so much.”
“I’m curious, that’s all. Necalli here says there’s this phenomenon called bewilderness, a delirium people can lapse into in the forest, a kind of fugue state. Is that it? Is that why you’ve come over all weird and spacey?”
“No. I couldn’t really explain it if I wanted to.”
“Why not try?”
Reston deliberated. “I think,” he said eventually, “that the world is a lot stranger and more complex than any of us suspects. I think there are truths we’ve forgotten or been forbidden from remembering. I think you and I, inspector, locked in our own little struggle, our own little battle of wits and wills, just have no conception of the bigger picture around us. We’re fleas. No, ants. We’re ants. Tiny, insignificant, anonymous, scurrying about on our missions and errands, oblivious to the fact that there are giants among us. They can control us, stamp on us, manipulate us, squash us without even trying. We’re nothing to them except objects of curiosity and sometimes distan
t affection. Am I making any sense?”
“None whatsoever,” said Mal.
“But keep going with the deep philosophical stuff,” said Aaronson archly. “It’s really enlightening. I can feel my brain expanding. Wow.”
“I’m wasting my breath,” Reston said. “You can’t know unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. Seen them in action.”
“Them?” said Mal. “Who’s them? Your Xibalba chums?”
“Oh no, not them.” Reston looked pained. “No, they learned the same lesson I’ve learned but, sadly, the hard way.”
There was only one inference Mal could draw. “They’re dead?”
“All of them. Wiped out, like crumbs off a tablecloth. It’s not even like they had a chance. They might as well have not been there.”
Necalli leapt in. “You’re saying a whole band of separatists has been eliminated? Well, that’s marvellous. I need details. Is there some kind of proof? Where are the bodies?”
“No bodies.” Reston gave a hollow laugh. “Only dust. Proof? I suppose you could go looking for a dirty great hole that’s been blasted somewhere in the forest. I couldn’t begin to tell you where, but get an aircraft up there, go scouting around, you’re sure to find it.”
“And what was responsible for this ‘dirty great hole’?”
“A disc. Blown to smithereens. I watched it go up. I was there, right in the middle of it. Right in the middle of the explosion, and I just stood, wasn’t touched, safe as houses.”
“Yeah, right,” said Aaronson.
“Hmm,” said Necalli, thinking. “Now that might account for it.”
“For what?” said Mal.
“We got multiple reports yesterday – some sort of loud bang to the north of here, early in the morning. Like a single clap of thunder, only there were no storms in the region yesterday. People heard it in locations as much as fifty miles apart. We just assumed it was coincidence. Hunters in the forest, perhaps. A distant gunshot here, another one there, each fired at approximately the same time. Separate instances giving the false impression of being the same one. But if Reston’s telling the truth, it seems it could have been a single major event after all. A disc, you say? Whose disc?”
“Theirs,” said Reston. “Xibalba’s.”
“And why were they in possession of an aerodisc? What were they proposing to do with it?”
Before Reston could reply, there was a commotion in the corridor outside. Marching feet tramped briskly. Leather creaked and weaponry clattered. Then a brusque voice rang out.
“I’m looking for Stuart Reston. Which cell is he in?”
Next moment, a Serpent Warrior appeared in the doorway. He glanced in officiously. Two more Serpents came to a halt behind him.
“That him?” said the first, nodding at Reston. “Certainly looks like an Englishman to me.”
“Who are you?” Necalli challenged.
“Who does it fucking look like I am?” came the sharp retort. “I’m a Serpent Warrior, I’m personally answerable to the Great Speaker, and whoever you are and whatever post you hold in this pissant little police station of yours, I outrank you by at least one thousand. So shut up and answer my question.”
Mal could see Aaronson bracing himself to ask how someone was supposed to shut up and answer a question. A swift kick to the shin silenced him before he could speak. Now was not the moment for smart-arsery. There were few people who genuinely looked as if they shouldn’t be messed with, and this Serpent was one.
“I meant,” said Necalli, with tremendous self-restraint, “please identify yourself.” He added, “Sir,” almost having to cough the word out.
The Serpent Warrior entered the cell, ducking his snake-head helmet under the door lintel. “Not that I’m under any obligation to tell you, but my name is Colonel Tlanextic. The salient part of that sentence is ‘Colonel.’ As in, ‘Fuck you, I’m a fucking colonel.’”
He thrust his face close to Necalli’s, who, to his credit, didn’t bat an eyelid and didn’t back away.
“You need to justify why you’ve come barging in like this, Colonel Tlanextic,” Necalli said. “What are you after?”
“Again, it’s not your place to ask.”
“It is. This is my station and I’m the duty officer.”
“No,” said Tlanextic, “what you are is a nobody in a nowhere town who’s talking to someone to whom you’re about as important as a smear of dog shit on the sole of his boot. Your lips are moving, but all I can hear coming out is a sound like a fart, and not even a loud one, just one of those hissy, squeaky ones that you sneak out between your arse cheeks on the bus and the passenger sitting beside you doesn’t even notice because it’s one of those farts that doesn’t even have the decency to stink, it’s not a manly fart, it’s an effeminate fart, a five-year-old girl’s fart. I can stand here and you can tell me whatever the hell you like about yourself and I won’t pay a blind bit of attention because, have I mentioned this already? I. Am. A. Fucking. Serpent. Warrior. Colonel.”
“All right,” Necalli said, “you’ve made your point.”
Tlanextic turned to his two colleagues. “Lieutenants? Either of you hear anything?” They shrugged, their faces deadpan but their eyes smirking. “Because I know I didn’t. Nope, definitely didn’t hear a thing. Perhaps a cockroach just scuttled past, I’m not sure.”
Necalli sighed. “Just tell me what you want.”
Tlanextic feigned a look of apology. “No, sorry, still getting nothing. Could be I’m going deaf. However, in the event that someone of the lowly stature of an earthworm’s sphincter is talking to me, what I want is that Englishman over there, and I’m taking him. Where, why, or what fucking for, is none of your business. All you have to do is hand him over, say, ‘You’re welcome,’ and then say, ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Colonel Tlanextic?’ At which point I’ll say, ‘No,’ and then I’ll say, ‘Oh wait. There is one thing. You can shove your head right up your own rectum.’ And you’ll reply, ‘Of course, sir, and how far up would you like it to go? Colon? Ileum? Duodenum?’ And I’ll say, ‘I honestly don’t mind, as long as you’re wearing that stupid pointy-eared pussycat helmet while you’re doing it.’”
Necalli seemed to be visibly swelling up, as though outrage was a physical force inside him, an increase in air pressure. Mal watched him struggle to contain it. Necalli understood, as she did, that men like Tlanextic could not be argued with or resisted. They could only be endured.
“Have him, then,” he said, with a pathetic, hapless gesture in Reston’s direction.
“Yes, your permission wasn’t required,” said Tlanextic. “It wasn’t even being sought. Boys?”
The two Serpent lieutenants elbowed their way into the cell, forcing Mal, Aaronson and Necalli to huddle up against the far wall. One of them unclipped a stun gun from his belt. He flipped a switch, the stun gun whined, and before Reston could move or resist he placed it against his neck and depressed the trigger. There was a sharp crackle of electricity, and Reston’s entire body went slack. The two lieutenants hoisted his limp form between them and dragged him out into the corridor by the armpits.
“You’re too kind,” Tlanextic said to Necalli, then saluted him with sneering condescension and followed his men out.
IT WAS SEEING Reston actually being removed from her sight that spurred Mal to action. Up until then she’d understood what was going on, but been unable to process it. All at once she grasped that her quarry was being taken from her. Once again. For a third fucking time.
That was an insult that could not be borne. An affront too far. Nobody deserved to have Stuart Reston except her. Not even a high-and-mighty Serpent. Reston belonged to her by every moral right there was. Her future, her career, her self-respect, everything hinged on her carting the Conquistador back to London and depositing him at the commissioner’s feet. Colonel Tlanextic, overbearing megabastard though he was, was not depriving her of what was probably her one and only shot at redemption.
&nb
sp; She propelled herself out of the cell, barging Necalli and Aaronson aside. In the corridor she grabbed hold of Tlanextic just below the armlet that bore the five-circles symbol denoting his rank. He stopped in his tracks but didn’t deign to turn.
“Whoever’s hand that is, they’d better remove it by the count of three,” he said, “or be prepared to lose it. One. Two.”
“Give him back.”
“Three.”
He swung round. Mal let go. “Colonel, please. I’ve come five and a half thousand miles for that man. I know this isn’t my jurisdiction, but he’s a British citizen, a British criminal, and I’m a British Jaguar. He’s mine.”
Slowly, patiently, Tlanextic said, “Listen, dear. That was a very brave thing you just did, grabbing me. Well done. You should be proud of yourself. Not many would have had the nerve. But let’s leave it there, eh? You do not want to take this any further. Quit while you’re ahead.”
“No,” Mal said, terrified by her own boldness. “Give him back. He’s not yours to take.”
A flicker of amusement passed across Tlanextic’s face. Then his eyes hardened, his mouth twisted, and next thing Mal knew, something struck her with sledgehammer force and she was down on the floor, her ears ringing, pain lancing down her jaw and up through her skull.
Tlanextic shook out his fist. “By all the Four, that girl’s got a hard head.” He peered down at Mal as she squirmed and groaned. Then he about-turned and motioned to his lieutenants to carry on. They resumed dragging Reston towards the staircase.
“Wait,” said a thick, unsteady voice behind them.
Tlanextic looked back to see Mal rising to her feet. She was using the wall for support. Her legs seemed barely able to function.
“What?” he said, exasperated. “You want me to deck you again?”
“By the power vested in me by His Very Holiness the High Priest of Great Britain,” she said, “I demand that you hand Stuart Reston over.”
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