He laughed. “You’ve learned to know me so well,” he said. “You’re a perceptive woman. You may actually be the perfect woman.”
She laughed too. “Of course I am. Being a woman is all I do.” She refilled the glasses.
“All right. Tell me how I can be a good friend to you. And then we’ll have lunch. I promise to give you my answer when we’ve finished.”
“Mr. Russell? Can you help me explain?”
Russell was filled with appreciation of her cunning. She knew that San Martin would be most comfortable with her as the ultra-feminine woman who appeared not to know the violent details. He also knew that San Martin had no interest in knowing him, so he had to be brief. “Miss Allersby has a list of Mayan sites that she planned to visit. At one of these sites we had a group of five men clear and guard a helicopter landing area so Miss Allersby could bring journalists with her to see the ruins. The men were heavily armed. Yet they had disappeared by the time Miss Allersby arrived. And we now know that the Fargos visted the site before she did.”
“Thank you,” said San Martin. He turned to Sarah. “And now let’s do justice to your beautiful table and have the lunch you’ve planned.”
Sarah rang the little silver bell by her, and the lunch was served. There was poached salmon with a caper sauce and asparagus. The wine that was poured with it was a 1998 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame. There was sorbet to cleanse the palate before the salad was served, in the French manner, after the entrée, and then small, delicate pastries with strong espresso.
As Señor San Martin finished his coffee, he sat back in his chair. Sarah Allersby looked at the servants, gave a little flip of her hand, and they dissolved into the doorways along the side of the house that led to the kitchen and pantry. Then she poured another cup of espresso for San Martin.
San Martin looked at Russell with eyes so cold and devoid of feeling that they looked dead. “I’ll try to find out what happened to your five men. The forest is a dangerous place, and not everybody with a gun works for me. If the Fargos are responsible, the five might be in jail somewhere.” He handed Russell his calling card. “Here, Mr. Russell. Come and see me tomorrow afternoon. I’ll supply you with a small army of professionals who won’t be troubled by a couple of American tourists.”
ALTA VERAPAZ, GUATEMALA
Sam and Remi loaded their backpacks into a Jeep. This time, it was a rental car and a few years newer. They drove the narrow, winding road toward Santa Maria de los Montañas, the town where they had jumped off the marijuana truck and been helped by the priest and the doctor.
As they drove, Remi said, “Do you think we’re having an effect on her?”
“Sarah Allersby?” Sam said. “I’m sure we are. We’ve visited the six biggest, and probably most important, undiscovered sites mentioned in the codex and registered them. That burns them for her. She can’t claim to discover them if we did.” Sam drove on for a minute. “The police in Belize say the five men who attacked Tim’s helicopter haven’t talked yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she hired them to control access to that Mayan site.”
Remi said, “I know she’s angry. In fact, if nothing else had happened, seeing herself ridiculed in the European magazines would have been plenty. People envy the rich bad-girl celebrities who are always in the tabloids, but envy isn’t the same as admiration. There’s a complicated mixture of feelings involved. Whenever one of these women gets embarrassed or hurt, a lot of the people who were busy fawning on them are delighted to see it happen.”
“She’s pretty sophisticated. The fickleness of crowds can’t be a surprise to someone like her.”
“I know,” said Remi. “I’ve just been thinking about her and feel this isn’t going right. We’re locked in a competition with her, and I’d like to be able to foresee a happy ending, but I don’t.”
Sam said, “The ideal end would be if she would stop pretending to be an archaeologist and send the codex she stole to the Mexican government.”
“Of course. But do you honestly think we’ll wear her down enough for that?”
“Not likely,” he said.
“So maybe what we ought to be doing is thinking of ways to steal the codex back and return it ourselves,” said Remi.
“I have been.”
“Really? What have you thought of?”
“I’m stuck on phase one—finding out where she keeps it.”
In the afternoon, Sam and Remi approached Santa Maria de los Montañas in the only way possible, from the road that rose drastically upward from the valley below. The Jeep climbed back and forth up the hairpin curves, unprotected by guardrails, followed by a long, straight rise through thick forest to the crest. The trees on the forested upper altitudes kept drivers from seeing much of the road ahead.
When they were nearly to the last stretch of road before the rise, Remi pointed at a spot that was bare except for bushes and brush. “I think that was the place where you landed when we jumped off the marijuana truck. Want to do it again in daylight so I can get a picture for my scrapbook?”
“Thanks for offering, but I think I won’t have trouble remembering.”
“Suit yourself,” said Remi. “Can we stop at the church and see Father Gomez?”
“I think we have to,” Sam said. “We said we’d let him know how our meeting with Sarah Allersby went.”
When they reached the top of the hill, they parked on the plaza near the old church, then walked to the small house behind it that served as the priest’s home and office and knocked.
In a moment, Father Gomez appeared at the door. He smiled. “Señor and Señora Fargo. I’m delighted to see you again.”
“Thank you, Father,” said Sam. “We thought we’d stop by for a talk.”
Father Gomez said, “I can tell from your serious expression that the news will not bring me joy. But we must talk. Do you have time to have tea with me?”
“Of course,” said Remi. “We’d be delighted.”
“Come in, come in,” he said, and ushered them into his simple office with its dark wooden furniture. If it weren’t for the open laptop computer, the room could have been from the sixteenth century. He led them into a small, old-fashioned dining room, with a long table in the same dark, heavy wood. An elderly lady, with brown skin, pronounced Mayan features, and her gray hair tied in a tight bun, entered the room.
Father Gomez said, “Señora Velasquez, this is Señor Fargo and Señora Fargo. They’ll be joining us for tea.”
Señora Velasquez brought out plain white china and utensils, which Father Gomez and the Fargos arranged on the table. After Señora Velasquez brought the tea and cookies, she returned to the kitchen.
“Won’t Señora Velasquez join us?” asked Remi.
“It’s not her custom,” Father Gomez said. “In a small town parish, when people meet with the priest, they like privacy. Please, Señora Fargo, will you pour for us?”
“I’m happy to,” Remi said. She took over the ceremonial role, pouring the tea and distributing the cups on saucers.
“Now,” said Father Gomez, “are you ready to tell me what happened when you went to visit Miss Allersby?”
Remi and Sam told him the whole story, beginning with Sarah Allersby’s visit to their house to buy the Mayan codex and ending with the ambush that awaited them at the burned landing patch outside the ancient Mayan city. “We’ve learned a lot about Sarah Allersby. She intends to use the map in the Mayan codex to locate and pretend to discover all of the most promising sites. We’re using the same information from Father Las Casas’s copy to get to each of the sites first. A professor at the University of California in San Diego uses our photographs and GPS data to register them with the international archaeological organizations before she can reach them.”
Father Gomez looked troubled. “I’m sorry that she has turned out to be such a selfish, misguided woman. Do you th
ink the authorities will force her to stop letting narcotics traffickers use her land?”
Sam sighed. “I’m told by responsible people in Guatemala City that things will get better in time. The existence of the Mayan site near the fields is known now. And the fields themselves have been drawn to the attention of the national police. But improvements happen slowly, and Miss Allersby has some powerful friends who can make it even slower.”
“It was good of you to come all the way back here to report this to me,” said Father Gomez.
Sam held up both hands. “No, please. That wasn’t the only reason we’re here.”
Remi said, “We told you that we were rushing to verify, photograph, and register the Mayan sites in the codex. That’s the other reason why we’re here.”
“Here?” Father Gomez looked shocked. “Not in Santa Maria de los Montañas?”
“Not in the town,” said Sam. “We think it’s above the town, on a plateau. The map shows it as something that looks like a tower or a fort.”
“Very interesting,” said Father Gomez. He looked uneasy. “Would you please allow me to hire a guide for you? I’d hate to have you get lost up in these hills.”
“No thank you, Father. We have the precise location on GPS and also aerial photographs,” said Remi. “We’re getting good at finding these places. What would be helpful is if you could tell us where we can store our car safely.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “There’s Pepe Rubio’s garage. He’s the town’s mechanic and keeps cars overnight quite often.”
“That sounds perfect,” said Sam. “He can give us an oil change at the same time.”
Remi stood and began clearing the plates from the dining table while Sam and Father Gomez chatted. As she entered the kitchen, she caught Señora Velasquez stepping back from the door as though she had been eavesdropping. Remi smiled and handed her the plates, but Señora Velasquez didn’t return the smile.
They set out from the priest’s house, and Remi told Sam about Señora Velasquez. “I’m sure she was listening,” said Remi.
“No harm done. We would have been happy to have her join in the conversation.”
“I know. But I’ll bet a lot of people around here wonder how their secrets get out.”
Soon they found Pepe’s garage. They could see they had the right place from the cars parked all over the block and in front of the house. They found Pepe putting on a set of tires. Sam hired him to service their car and keep it safe.
Pepe referred them to the nearby house of the Pérez family, who were willing to rent them a guest room for the night. In the evening, they ate at the small restaurant where they’d had breakfast with Father Gomez and Dr. Huerta on their first visit.
The following morning, as the sun grew bright, they set out on foot to find the structure they’d seen on the map in the Mayan codex. It was a beautiful day as they crossed the fields, cleared for planting corn and beans, and then entered the forest. After some searching, they found a path that led up the side of the plateau, above and beyond the town.
After climbing about a hundred feet on the path, Remi stopped. “Look at this.”
She stood at a place where the path turned upward and to the left. There was a steep incline to the next level, but they could see that it had been reinforced with slabs of rock laid horizontally like giant steps.
“I guess this means we’ve found the right trail,” Sam said. He joined her in climbing toward the turn ahead.
“That’s right,” she said. “But in all the other sites we’ve visited, the stone was all overgrown. This is exposed.”
They walked along the path, climbing steadily. Sam said, “This is closer to a place where people live than the other sites were. And it does make sense to use a perfectly good path when you find one instead of blazing a new trail.”
They climbed for a while, unimpeded by thick brush or centuries of fallen earth. Remi said, “The part I haven’t figured out yet is why.”
“I know,” Sam said. “Maybe there’s something else up there—good fields or something.”
“I’d hate to carry the harvest down this path,” Remi said.
“Then what do you think it could be?”
“I’m hoping it’s a shortcut to another village that has an air-conditioned spa and restaurant.”
“A good working theory,” he said. “I’ll accept it until we find something better. That’s the way we scientists operate.”
In ten more minutes, they reached the head of the path. They climbed up onto the level top of the plateau and looked around. There were several large mounds of earth that might be buildings, but they were not on the scale of the buildings in the cities they had found. They weren’t high or steep, and the plateau wasn’t large enough for monumental architecture. It was only about three hundred feet across.
They both noticed something else. The perimeter of the plateau had a low ridge around it like the rim of a bowl. They walked along the ridge, taking pictures, and then Sam stopped at a section that had fallen down. It revealed the ridge to actually be a pile of stones and earth.
“It’s a wall. It’s like the old Roman forts you find in Europe—low walls of stone piled up to stop an enemy attack. This was built for a battle.”
“It’s not like any of the other ruins we visited,” Remi said. “It feels different—not empty, somehow.”
They walked the rest of the way around the plateau. In the middle of the flat space, there were more low mounds of earth and stone, all of them overgrown with small plants. The only sounds on the plateau were the movements of the leaves in a soft wind and the calls of birds. At times, it was so quiet that Sam’s and Remi’s footsteps were the loudest sounds.
Remi said, “This isn’t a place where people would live. It reminds me of the cenote a few miles from here. The wall around it seemed to be made for a last stand too.”
“I know what you mean,” said Sam. “This and the cenote must be relics of a war between cities.”
They came across a trench about three feet deep and only wide enough for a man to stand in it and dig. It ran from the stone wall at the rim of the plateau for about a hundred feet and directly into one of the mounds. “Uh-oh,” said Remi.
“Do you know what that is?”
“I think it’s the kind of trench that pot hunters and grave robbers dig to find underground chambers and caches.”
Sam raised his satellite phone and took a few pictures of it, then sent them to Selma. He and Remi walked along the trench, looking into it. “If that’s what it was, it seems to have failed. It doesn’t lead to a bigger hole, where they might have found something and dug it up.”
The trench stopped at the base of the mound. When they reached the spot, Remi said, “It doesn’t seem to have stopped here. The rocks that are piled on the side of the mound are different. I think somebody dug into the mound and then covered the hole after they were done.”
“It’s puzzling,” said Sam.
“The word is ‘creepy,’” Remi said.
“Creepy, then.” He bent and began to lift the stones that had been placed in the opening and toss them to one side.
“You’re going to dig into it? That’s not why we came here. We were just locating sites, photographing them, and describing what’s in them so David Caine can register them.”
“I can’t very well describe what’s here unless I know,” said Sam. “This could be anything.”
“It could be a tomb. Judging from the trench, that’s what whoever beat us here thought.”
“Or it could be a pile of the right-sized rocks for throwing down at invaders. Or a big pile of potsherds, which, as you know, is the most common find at any archaeological site.”
Remi sighed, knelt beside Sam, and began lifting stones from the mound and tossing them aside. They worked until the stones revealed the straight,
even sides of an entrance. “A doorway,” she said. “So much for the rock-pile theory and the broken-pot theory.”
“Still have a bad feeling?”
“More and more,” said Remi. “I’m just going along with this to show you what a great sport I am.”
“We’re almost in,” Sam said.
Remi stepped back from the opening and let Sam haul the last few rocks away. Then he said, “We’re in.” He stood, took the flashlight from his pack, aimed it into the opening, and crawled inside.
There was silence. Remi sat still for a minute, listening. Finally, her curiosity overpowered her caution. She took her own flashlight out and entered.
As soon as she was inside, she realized that the space was large and hollow. Her flashlight beam caught white stucco walls covered with realistic murals of old Mayans. There were many glyphs, and between them were pictures of dozens of men in feathered headdresses and wearing jaguar skins. Some carried short spears, round shields, clubs with sharp obsidian teeth. They were going into battle.
When her flashlight reached the floor, Remi jumped and gave a small cry. Lying on the other side of the chamber was a corpse. The body was in a state similar to the mummified man she and Sam had found on Volcán Tacaná in Mexico. His skin was brown and leathery, his body skeletal. He was lying near a second doorway. There were strips of cloth, a tanned belt, and boots on him, and beside him was a broad-brimmed felt hat.
Sam appeared in the second doorway. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you.”
“Every day is Halloween lately,” she said. She knelt by the dead man and gave him a closer look. “What do you suppose got him—a jaguar? His clothes are torn, and he has big wounds.”
“Take a look at his revolver.”
Remi saw the old-fashioned, long-barreled revolver by his right hand. She bent low to look into the front of the cylinder and then rotated it. “He fired all six.”
“Right. And I don’t see any jaguar bones.”