The Codex (30 page)

“After clapping me in chains, Hauser left five G.I. Josés behind on the Laguna Negra to ambush you all. He took me and the other soldiers up the Macaturi as far as the Falls. I’ll never forget when the soldiers returned. There were only three of them, and one had a three-foot arrow sticking through his thigh. I couldn’t hear all of what they said. Hauser was furious and took the man out, shot him point-blank in the head. I knew they had killed two people, and I was sure one or both of you were dead. I have to tell you, brothers of mine, that when you arrived, I thought I had died and gone to hell—and you were the reception committee.” He gave a dry little laugh. “We left the boats at the Falls and followed Father’s trail on foot. Hauser could track a mouse in the jungle if he had a mind to. He kept me around because he had the idea of using me as a bargaining chip with you. He ran into a group of mountain Indians, killed several, and chased the rest back to the village. He then attacked the village and managed to capture the chief. I didn’t see any of this, I was kept behind under ball and chain, but I saw the results.”

He shuddered. “Once he had the chief as a hostage, we made our way up into the mountains toward the White City.”

“Hauser knows it’s the White City?”

“He learned it from an Indian prisoner. But he doesn’t know where the tomb is in the White City. Apparently only the chief and a few elders know the exact location of father’s tomb.”

“How did you escape?” Tom asked.

Philip closed his eyes. “Kidnapping the chief stirred up the Indians to war. They attacked Hauser while he was en route to the White City. Even with their heavy weapons Hauser and his men had their hands full. He’d taken the chains off me to use them on the chief. At the height of the attack I managed to get away. I spent the last ten days walking—crawling, actually—back here, surviving on insects and lizards. Three days ago I reached this river. There was no way to cross. I was starving, and I couldn’t walk anymore. So I sat down under a tree to wait for the end.”

“You were sitting under that tree for three days?”

“Three, four days—God only knows. They all ran together.”

“My God, Philip, how awful.”

“On the contrary. It was a refreshing feeling. Because I didn’t care anymore. About anything. I’d never felt so free in my life as while I was sitting under that tree. I believe I might have actually been happy for a moment or two.”

The fire had died down. Tom added a few more sticks and stirred it back to life.

“Did you see the White City?” Vernon asked.

“I escaped before they got there.”

“How far is it from here to the Sierra Azul?”

“Ten miles, maybe, to the foothills, and another ten or twelve to the city.”

There was a silence. The fire crackled, hissed. A bird sang a mournful song in a distant tree. Philip closed his eyes and murmured, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “Dear old Father, what a fine legacy you left to your adoring children.”

43

The temple lay buried in lianas, the front colonnade supported by square pillars of limestone streaked with green moss, holding up part of a stone roof. Hauser stood outside, looking at the curious hieroglyphics carved into the pillars, the strange faces, animals, dots, and lines. It reminded him of the Codex.

“Stay outside,” he said to his men and slashed a hole in the screen of vegetation. It was gloomy. He shined a flashlight around. There were no snakes or jaguars, just a mess of spiders in one corner and some mice scurrying away. It was dry and sheltered—a good place to establish his headquarters.

He strolled deeper into the temple. At the back stood another row of square stone pillars framing a ruined doorway leading out to a gloomy courtyard. He stepped through. A few statues lay tumbled about, deeply eroded by time, wet in the rain. Great roots of trees snaked over the stones like fat anacondas, heaving apart walls and roofs, until the trees themselves became an integral part of what was holding the structure together. On the far side of the courtyard a second doorway led into a small chamber with a carved stone man lying on his back, holding a bowl.

Hauser came back out to his waiting soldiers. Two of them held between them the captured chief, a bowed old man, almost naked except for a loincloth and a piece of leather tied over his shoulder and belted around his waist. His body was one mass of wrinkles. He was just about the oldest-looking man Hauser had ever seen—and yet he knew he probably wasn’t older than sixty. The jungle ages you fast.

Hauser gestured to the teniente. “We’ll stay here. Have the soldiers clean this room out for my cot and table.” He nodded to the old man. “Chain him in the small room across the courtyard and put a guard on him.”

The soldiers hustled the old Indian chief into the temple. Hauser settled himself down on a block of stone and drew a fresh cigar tube from his shirt pocket, unscrewed the cap, and slid the cigar out. It was still covered in a cedarwood wrapper. He smelled the wrapper, crushed it in his hand, smelled it again, inhaling the exquisite fragrance, and then began the ritual that he loved so well of lighting the cigar.

As he smoked, he looked at the ruins of a pyramid directly in front of him. It was nothing like Chichén Itzá or Copán, but as Mayan pyramids went it was impressive enough. Important burials were often found in pyramids. Hauser was convinced old Max had reburied himself in a tomb he once robbed. If so, it had to be an important tomb, to hold all of Max’s stuff.

The stairway going up the pyramid had been heaved apart by tree roots, which had levered out many blocks and sent them tumbling to the bottom. At the top was the small room held up by four square pillars, with four doors and a shallow stone altar where the Maya sacrificed their victims. Hauser inhaled. That would have been something to see, the priest splitting the victim at the breastbone, wrenching apart the rib cage, cutting out the beating heart and holding it up with a shriek of triumph while the body was tumbled down the stairs, to be hacked up by waiting nobles and made into corn stew.

What barbarians.

Hauser smoked with pleasure. The White City was fairly impressive even covered as it was by vegetation. Max had hardly scratched the surface. There was a great deal more worth taking here. Even a simple block with, say, a jaguar head carved on it could fetch a hundred grand. He’d have to be careful to keep the location secret.

In its heyday the White City would have been amazing—Hauser could almost see it in his mind’s eye: the temples new and gleaming white, the ball games (where the losers lost their heads), the roaring crowds of spectators, the processions of the priests decked out in gold, feathers, and jade. And what had happened? Now their descendants lived in bark huts and their head priest was a man in rags. Funny how things change.

He drew in another lungful of smoke. It was true that not all had gone according to plan. No matter. Long experience had taught him that any op was an exercise in improvisation. Those who thought they could plan an op and execute it flawlessly always died following the book. That was his great strength: improvisation. Human beings were inherently unpredictable.

Take Philip. In that first meeting he had seemed all show in his expensive suit, with his affected mannerisms and phony upper-class accent. He could still scarcely believe the man had managed to escape. He would probably expire in the jungle—he was already on his last legs when he made off—but still, Hauser was concerned. And impressed. Perhaps a little of Max had rubbed off on the effete little bastard after all. Max. What a crazy old shit he’d turned out to be.

The main thing was to keep his priorities straight. The Codex, first, and then the rest of the stuff, later. And then third, the White City itself. Over the past few years Hauser had followed with interest the looting of Site Q. The White City was going to be his Site Q.

He examined the end of his cigar, holding it up so the curl of smoke tickled his nostrils. The cigars had weathered the journey through the rainforest well—you might even say they’d improved.

The teniente came out and saluted. “Ready, sir.”

Hauser followed him into the ruined temple. The soldiers were fixing up the outer part, raking up the animal crap, burning out the cobwebs, sprinkling water to keep down the dust, and carpeting the ground with cut ferns. He ducked through the low stone doorway into the inner courtyard, passed by the tumbled statues, and went into the room in the back. The wizened old Indian was chained up to one of the stone pillars. Hauser shined the light on him. He was an old bugger, but he returned the gaze, and there wasn’t even a trace of fear on his face. Hauser didn’t like that. It reminded him of the face of Ocotal. These damn Indians were like the Viet Cong.

“Thank you, Teniente,” he said to the soldier.

“Who will translate? He speaks no Spanish.”

“I’ll make myself understood.”

The teniente withdrew. Hauser looked at the Indian, and once again the Indian returned the look. Not defiant, not angry, not fearful—just observing.

Hauser seated himself on the corner of the stone altar, carefully rubbed the ash off his cigar, which had gone out, and relit it.

“My name’s Marcus,” he said with a smile. He could already feel this was going to be a hard case. “Here’s the situation, chief. I want you to tell me where you and your people buried Maxwell Broadbent. If you do, no problem, we’ll just go in there, take what we want, and leave you in peace. If you don’t, bad things will happen to you and your people. I’ll discover the location of the tomb and rob it anyway. So which way do you want to go?”

He looked up at the man, puffing vigorously on the cigar, getting a good red tip going. The man hadn’t understood a word. No matter. He was no fool: He knew what Hauser wanted.

“Maxwell Broadbent?” Hauser repeated slowly, enunciating every syllable. He made a universal gesture indicating a question, a shrug with hands turned up.

The Indian said nothing. Hauser rose and walked toward the old man, puffing vigorously on the cigar, getting a good long glow to the tip. Then he stopped, removed the cigar from his mouth, and held it up in front of the man’s face. “Care for a cigar?”

44

Philip’s story was over. The sun had set long ago, and the fire had fallen to a vermilion heap of coals. Tom could hardly believe what his brother had endured.

Sally spoke first. “Hauser’s committing genocide up there.”

There was an uneasy silence.

“We’ve got to do something.”

“Like what?” Vernon asked. His voice sounded tired.

“We go to the mountain Indians, offer our services. In partnership with them, we can defeat Hauser.”

Don Alfonso spread his hands. “Curandera, they will kill us before we can speak.”

“I’ll go into the village, unarmed. They won’t kill an unarmed woman.”

“Yes they will. And what can we do? We have one rifle against professional soldiers with automatic weapons. We are weak. We are hungry. We do not even have a change of clothes among us—and we have a man who cannot walk.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“It is over. We must go back.”

“You said we’d never get across the swamp.”

“Now we know they left their boats at the Macaturi Falls. We go and steal them.”

“And then?” Sally asked.

“I go back to Pito Solo and you go home.”

“And just leave Hauser up here, killing everyone?”

“Yes.”

Sally was furious. “I don’t accept that. He’s got to be stopped. We’ll contact the government, have them send in troops to arrest him.”

Don Alfonso looked very tired. “Curandera, the government will do nothing.”

“How do you know?”

“This man has already made arrangements with the government. We can do nothing except accept our powerlessness.”

“I don’t accept it!”

Don Alfonso gazed at her with old, sad eyes. He carefully scraped out his pipe, knocked the crumbs out, filled it, and relit it with a stick from the fire. “Many years ago,” he said, “when I was a boy, I remember when the first white man came to our village. He was a small man with a big hat and a pointed beard. We thought he might be a ghost. He took out these turdlike yellow lumps of metal and asked if we had seen anything like it. His hands were shaking, and there was a crazy light in his eyes. We were frightened and said no. A month later in the annual flood his rotting boat floated back down the river, and there was nothing in it but his skull and his hair. We burned the boat and pretended it had never happened.

“The next year a man in a black dress and hat came up the river. He was a kind man, and he gave us food and crosses and dunked us all in the river and said he had saved us. He stayed with us for a few months and got a woman with child, and then he tried to cross the swamp. We never saw him again.

“After that came more of the men looking for the yellow shit, which they called oro. They were even crazier than the first, and they molested our daughters and stole our boats and food and went upriver. One came back, but he had no tongue, so we never knew what happened to him. Then came new men with crosses, and each one said the other men’s crosses were not the good kind, that theirs was the only good one, the rest were junk. They dunked us in the river again, then the others redunked us saying the first ones had done it wrong, then others came and dunked us again, until we were thoroughly wet and confused. Later, a white man came all by himself, lived with us, learned our language, and told us that all the men with crosses were deficients. He called himself an anthropologist. He spent a year prying into all our private business, asking us a lot of stupid questions about things like sex and who was related to who, what happened to us after we died, what we ate and drank, how we made war, how we cooked a pig. As we talked he wrote it all down. The wicked young men of the tribe, of which I was one, told him many outrageous falsehoods, and he wrote them all down with a serious face and said he was going to put them into a book that everyone in America would read and that would make us famous. We thought that was hilarious.