The Mayan Secrets Read online

  Sam and Remi kept turning pages and filming until they reached the one hundred thirty-sixth and final page. Then they started over again at the end of the section and took still photographs of each spread of open pages, using the cameras in their wristwatches.

  When they had finished, Sam folded his glasses and put them into his jacket pocket. “I’m getting tired. Let’s go back to our hotel.”

  They returned the volume to the librarian for reshelving and then retrieved Remi’s purse and the briefcase Sam had brought. They thanked the librarian and left the building.

  As they went down the steps in the late afternoon and turned to walk along the street toward their hotel, Sam reminded Remi, “No matter what happens in the next few minutes, don’t be startled, and hold on to your glasses and wristwatch.”

  As they walked along the Calle de las Cadenas de San Gregorio to the Plaza Mayor, they were only two tourists in a large, open space with hundreds of people. When they were about halfway across the plaza, they heard a new sound—the deep, throaty sound of a motorcycle engine. The engine grew louder as the motorcycle came around a corner somewhere behind them. Remi started to turn to look over her shoulder, but Sam put his arm around her and whispered, “Don’t look or you’ll scare them off.”

  The motorcycle sped up directly behind them, and Sam turned suddenly. On the cycle were a driver and a man riding behind him. Both men were wearing helmets with tinted visors over their faces. As the motorcycle swooped in, the driver made an attempt to snatch Sam’s briefcase out of his hand, but Sam held on to it, tugging back, as the driver pulled. The power of the cycle added to the driver’s force, but Sam trotted alongside, still holding on. When the second man saw the way Sam held on, he joined the struggle, grasped the briefcase with both hands, and wrenched it away. The driver gunned the engine and accelerated, and the motorcycle roared off around the side of the Plaza, turned, and disappeared up a narrow street between tall buildings.

  Sam held up his empty hand so Remi could see it.

  “Sam! He stole your new briefcase!”

  He smiled. “A little engineering project.”

  “What are you talking about? Those men stole your briefcase! We’ve got to call the police!”

  “No need,” he said. “Those are the two we noticed about a week ago outside San Gregorio. I saw them watching us a few times since then. They were too interested to be nobody. So I bought the briefcase and began my project.”

  “Your briefcase is an engineering project?”

  “Didn’t I say that?”

  “Stop being mysterious and tell me what you’ve done.”

  “You know those booby-trapped bags of money that banks give to bank robbers?”

  “The ones that blow up and cover the thief with indelible ink? Oh, no. How did you even get an explosive on the plane?”

  “I didn’t use explosives. This one works with springs. Undo the latch and the first spring pops the case open wide, and that allows the second to spring upward and push a piston, like a jack-in-the-box. The cylinder is full of ink. I bought the briefcase, the springs, and the ink here.”

  “What would have happened if the librarian had inspected it?”

  “He didn’t open anything for the first two days, so why do it later?”

  “What would have happened to him?”

  “He would have a bright blue face. ‘Azul,’ as they say here.”

  “You couldn’t just watch these men and not play some dumb prank?”

  “I did watch them. I noticed they spoke English to each other, and one of them spoke Spanish to everybody else—rapid, fluent Spanish that didn’t leave anybody looking confused. I thought about who would spend several days watching us like that without doing anything. The only answer is that Sarah Allersby must have sent them.”

  “Why would she do that? She has the codex. She doesn’t need a copy.”

  “To find out what we’re doing and what we’ve accomplished.”

  “And?”

  “And now she knows. Once her men followed us to Valladolid, I’m sure she could figure out what else might be here. All I could do is make sure we know them if we see them again in the next few days.”

  They walked quickly to their hotel, downloaded the photographs from the digital cameras to Remi’s laptop computer, and then sent two versions to Selma’s computer in San Diego as a backup. While Remi waited for the transfers to be completed, she made a reservation to fly to San Diego on the red-eye leaving in four hours.

  As she and Sam finished packing, Remi’s phone rang. She said, “Hi, Selma. Are the pictures all clear? Good. We’re coming home.” There was a pause. Then she said, “Because a couple of men stole Sam’s briefcase. When they open it, they’re going to want to kill us. If they don’t succeed, we’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  VALLADOLID, SPAIN

  Russell was in the bathroom of the hotel suite in Valladolid, dabbing at his blue face with a cotton ball soaked in acetone. The thick nail-polish-remover smell stung his sinuses. Added to the smell of the isopropyl alcohol and the turpentine he had tried first, it made the small, enclosed space unbearable. He looked in the mirror above the sink. “This isn’t working either. And it stinks.”

  “Maybe if you rub a little harder,” said Ruiz. He could see through the blue dye on Russell’s face that his chin was getting blotchy and irritated, but Ruiz didn’t feel like going out again searching Valladolid for more chemicals and solvents.

  Russell handed him the bottle and then used soap and water to wash the acetone off his face. “Get something else.”

  Ruiz said, “This stuff almost always works. We used it to wash checks years ago. It would take off the ink in a couple minutes.”

  “We’re not washing checks now,” said Russell. “This is my face. But you gave me an idea. Remember, there was a secret to washing checks. If the dye in the ink was polar, the best thing to get it off was a polar solvent, like alcohol and acetone. Well, we’ve tried those. So let’s try a nonpolar solvent like toluene.”

  “Toluene?” said Ruiz. “What’s another name for it?”

  “Methylbenzene.”

  “Where do I go for that?”

  “A paint store, the kind for artists, might have it. You go in and ask for paint thinners. Get every kind they have. Try that first. If you pass by a dry cleaner, try them too. Say you spilled ink on a couch and you’ll pay for some of the stuff they use for ink stains.”

  “I’m getting hungry,” said Ruiz.

  “Buy something to eat on the way, then. I can’t go out like this and shop for thinners, and the smells are making me sick, so I couldn’t eat anyway. Just get me something that will take the ink off. We’ve got to fix this now.”

  Ruiz picked up his jacket off the chair and went down the hall to the narrow, cagelike elevator. When Russell heard the elevator’s grating slide to the side to admit Ruiz, he rinsed his face again and looked in the mirror. His face felt hot, that if the blue were removed, it would be glowing.

  The trap had sprung when he had unlatched the briefcase. One spring mechanism had snapped the briefcase open, and the other had pushed the circular bottom of an ink-filled cylinder upward like a piston. It had been sealed at the top with only a layer of wax paper. Ink had shot out onto his face and chest.

  Fiendish. What kind of person thought that way? The trap had required that Fargo figure out in advance that somebody was going to take his briefcase. Russell was sure he hadn’t been spotted. Had Ruiz made some stupid mistake? Or did Fargo always walk around in foreign cities carrying a booby trap?

  Russell rubbed some cold cream all over his face and neck, desperate to soothe his burning skin. He dialed his satellite phone.

  “Hello,” said Sarah Allersby.

  “It’s me,” he said. “We went to San Diego and then followed them to the airport. They flew to Spain. That’s
where I’m calling from—Valladolid.”

  “What are they doing there?”

  “We’ve been watching them for a few days. At first, all they did was go sightseeing in the daytime and out to expensive restaurants every night.”

  “By now, they must have hit nearly all of them,” Sarah Allersby said.

  “Pretty near. For eight days, they’ve been going to the University of Valladolid every day. They seem to be really interested in all the old buildings in town. But they’ve been doing some sort of research.”

  “I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. Reassure me. What are they researching?”

  “They go to the History Library and look at old books. Everywhere she goes, she has a big leather purse. After a couple of days, he started carrying a briefcase. They had to leave them with the librarian when they got there and pick them up when they left.”

  “What was in the cases?”

  “I figured they might be pulling a scam. The people who go to these old libraries to steal things like valuable prints or maps or illuminated pages all do it pretty much the same way. They go into a rare book room and read the books. They bring in a razor blade, hide it in one hand, and, when nobody’s looking, run it down a page to cut it loose. Then they slip the page under their clothes. I couldn’t watch them much, so I never saw them do anything.”

  “You’re getting me very nervous about this. Did you find out what books they looked at?”

  “Ruiz went in once right after they left and took a look. The binding on the book said Las Casas. That means ‘the Houses,’ right?”

  She sighed deeply, trying to use up a few seconds to avoid calling him an imbecile. She said calmly, “It’s the name of the Dominican friar who colonized the Alta Verapaz area of Guatemala. He was active around the time when the Mayan codex was buried by the landslide. I’m not sure what they could have thought they were accomplishing by reading about him.”

  “I decided today that I was going to find out exactly what they’d been up to. Ruiz and I got on a motorcycle, and while they were walking in the plaza, we went by them fast. I snatched the briefcase out of Fargo’s hand. It’s a kind of robbery that happens all the time in Spain and Italy. Before the mark knows what happened, the bike is gone.”

  “Were there pages inside the briefcase?”

  “No.”

  “What do the notes say? I’m sure you read his notes.”

  “There were none. The briefcase was a booby trap. As soon as I clicked the clasp, a spring mechanism popped the case wide open, and another spring pushed a piston up a cylinder full of blue ink. It’s all over my face.”

  “Oh, my gosh!” she said. “So he saw you watching them.”

  “I don’t think that’s a fair assumption,” Russell said. “The briefcase might have been only a precaution.”

  “Then he knows about you now, doesn’t he?”

  “He only knows that he got robbed. He can’t know why. They’ve been walking around here at night for over a week, wearing expensive clothes, staying in a fancy hotel, eating in exclusive restaurants. That attracts thieves.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Sarah muttered. It sounded to Russell as though she was talking to herself. “These people will not go away and leave me alone. They keep pushing and pushing me. Did I tell you they denounced me to the Guatemala federal police? Well, they did. They’re absolutely relentless, like ants. If you block one way in, they’ll find another. They’re persecuting me. I offered them a fair price. They’re the ones who turned me down.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t stop them in San Diego. Or here, at least.”

  Sarah was feeling more and more sorry for herself. “Have you gotten cleaned up from the ink yet?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “We’ve tried several solvents, but, so far, no luck. I just sent Ruiz out for more.”

  “Russell, I need somebody to rid me of these people. They’ve become vicious now, and dangerous—not only to my reputation and my business, but even to you. That ink trap could just as easily have been acid, or an explosive.”

  “I’m sure he meant me to understand that. Any nonfatal attack is a warning.”

  “We can’t go on this way,” she said. “If someone threatens your life, you’re justified in using any force to save yourself.”

  “I’m not sure the authorities here would see it that way,” he said. She was assuming he’d just kill the Fargos for free. He had been planning to offer that option for a high price.

  She said, “It doesn’t matter what the authorities want. There’s such a thing as natural rights.”

  “I’m afraid that if you decided on an aggressive defense, I would have to charge an additional fee,” he said. “I have to pay Ruiz, and so on.” He waited for an answer.

  When it came, she sounded distracted, distant. “Oh. Yes. I was thinking of you as an equal. But, of course, I had no right to do that. You’re someone who works for me and has to think about money. How does an extra five thousand sound?”

  “I was thinking it would have to be ten,” he said.

  “Oh, Russell. I’d hate to think you called to get me all upset about what they’d done to you so you could take advantage of my sympathy to raise your prices.”

  “No, Miss Allersby,” he said. “I’d never do that. The figure is the minimum I’d actually need. I’ll have to get my color back so I don’t stand out, buy weapons for one-time use in a European country where they’re heavily controlled, pay to dispose of the bodies, find a quiet way out of Spain and back to the U.S., and compensate Ruiz.”

  “All right, then. Ten.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “But you have to do it, not just promise it and take the money in advance.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. I haven’t gotten rid of my blue face yet.”

  “You may not know this, but cosmetic companies sell opaque makeup that’s designed to cover scars, birthmarks, and discolorations. If the blue doesn’t wash off, you can cover it up until your skin recovers on its own.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Do. When those horrible Fargo people disappear from my life, I’ll make you glad they did.” He heard the click as she hung up.

  Sarah sat in the big office in the old quarter of Guatemala City. Why was her patience being so sorely tested? These little people, these nothings, were making her life unbearable. Since they had left Guatemala, Diego San Martin had come to her home to tell her that the Fargos had killed several members of one of his security patrols before they had slipped away into the jungle.

  An enraged drug lord was not a pleasant guest. He had labor issues too. If men who worked for him were killed, he had to send big payments to their wives. If he didn’t, the others would become timid and reluctant to do their jobs. If Diego San Martin couldn’t keep people off the small corner of her land where he was raising and shipping marijuana, he couldn’t make a profit and he would stop the commission he was paying her. In the current international economy, having a large stream of passive income was what kept her business profitable.

  Sarah opened her computer and tapped in the name Bartolomé de Las Casas. She read the entry quickly, and then came to the end. Las Casas had left his whole personal library to the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid. What could a monk’s personal library have been in 1566? The man had been the first colonizer of the north of Guatemala, a friend and teacher of Mayan kings. Could he have left a set of directions to find an abandoned Mayan city? A tomb with a fabulous treasure? All this time, Sarah had been thinking that the way to the next big discovery was going to be a Mayan codex, but it could just as easily be a Spanish priest’s journal. She had never before considered such a thing, but if the Mayans were going to tell anyone a secret, it would have been Las Casas. He was their confessor, their protector.

  The bloody Fargos mig
ht have discerned the one way to confound her. Of course, just the fact that they had beaten her to an idea didn’t mean the idea was worth anything. The whole idea depended on something that might not have happened at all. Had Las Casas learned any secrets from the Mayans? Probably. Had he written them down and left them in his library of hymnals and catechisms and tracts? Who knew?

  She had to get going now, to choose her destination and begin assembling the components of her first expedition. The idea of being beaten to a major discovery by a pair of inquisitive, jealous, and resentful upstarts was maddening.

  Sarah picked up her telephone and called the vice president in charge of the financial arm of her company.

  “Yes, Miss Allersby?” he said. The Spanish-speaking employees of her companies had been instructed never to address her as Señorita because it sounded disrespectful to her English-trained ears.

  “Ricardo, I need a favor.”

  “Certainly, Miss Allersby,” he said. “If you ask me, it’s not a favor. It’s my job.”

  “I would like you to run credit checks on an American couple. The names are Samuel and Remi Fargo. They live on Goldfish Point in La Jolla, California, which is a section of San Diego. I want to know exactly what charges they’re making on their credit cards and where.”

  “Do you have any identifiers? Social Security numbers, dates of birth? Anything like that?”

  “No. But you can buy them from their banks, can’t you?”

  “Of course, Miss Allersby, or from middlemen.”

  “Then go ahead. They were here in Guatemala a couple of weeks ago. Their hotel will probably have made copies of their passports and will certainly have their credit card numbers.”

  “Yes, Miss Allersby,” he said. “I’ll find out where they are and what they’re doing and call you.”