But his free hand was already pulling a drawer open. Envelopes, pens, a small tape recorder.
He slammed it quietly and grabbed the next drawer. Wrenching it open He almost fell backward at the sight. He swayed, but his free hand caught his weight on the sinking leather of the chair.
Warm leather.
The pages in the drawer were the same. Crisp, but malleable.
Someone had been heating the seat only a few moments ago.
It was definitely bark paper, just like KM-2. And it was real! And it was in the states! And it was right in front of him! He saw the letters. All of them less Mayan, more pseudo-Egyptian.
Instinctive hands grabbed the codex, took up the fallen rolls Crack!
Porter turned his eyes to the fireplace again.
Only the flames.
Cold metal gently touched the back of his neck.
“John D. Porter…I presume?” said a British voice.
Nickel-plated. 44 Magnum, Porter’s subconscious said as he raised himself slowly. He hadn’t heard the professor enter and couldn’t see him now-it had to be Dr. Peterson. Porter looked down at the ancient manuscript in his hands, unable to believe its reality, unsure there was really anyone in the room with him at all. The blood drained quickly from his head. “I’mmm…going to pass out,” his voice slurred.
“Well then, think boy!” came the British voice through a cloud. “Put your head at knee level.”
Trapped, caught, subdued, and losing the real world as he stood there, Porter lowered himself away from the cold barrel of the pistol until his head sunk below his waist. His throat made a weird sound, and he felt tears rising in his eyes.
Dad’ll be proud of me now! Porter said to himself sarcastically, considering his situation. “I can explain why-”
“I already know the reason you are here, John,” said the Englishman as he walked around the desk into Porter’s peripheral vision.
The doctoral candidate (turned madman) lifted himself to his full height. He looked into the professor’s squinting eyes, realizing the man didn’t hold a gun at all. inlaid with silver, a brown cane with a steel tip pointed at Porter like a spike. “Put it down.”
Porter swayed as if he didn’t understand the words. His eyes glanced at the door on the other side of the desk.
“Unless you have a metal plate in your head, I doubt you would stand a single blow of this blunt weapon, Mr. Porter, now put my papers down!”
Porter dropped all of it carefully onto the desk and backed away as Peterson examined the attempted theft. Everything was present, though a little crushed and out of place in this organized room.
The fire spit sparks.
“They said you would arrive, but I didn’t expect you so soon,” Peterson said with life in his voice, as if he were addressing one of his students and not a thief.
“I know why the others were killed,” said Porter. “I know the truth, and I’m not turning my head.”
“There is nothing for you to see,” Peterson said with eyebrows raised, flipping the cane under his right arm. He took up the codex and inspected a new tear with his fingers.
“You know there’s more than ten years of investigation on that desk and you say-”
“That’s all behind us now,” Peterson said.
Porter stood breathless. “What?”
“Do you play chess, Mr. Porter?” said the professor hanging his cane on his arm. He took up the maps.
Porter didn’t say anything.
“Sometimes…you have to sacrifice a piece,” said Peterson.
“They’re pushing you, professor. I know about it. I can vouch-”
“You don’t have a clue as to what I’m saying,” said the professor. Dr. Peterson smiled, his skin tight as if he’d had a facelift or two. “Sometimes it’s…best to play a game that way. Keeping the end in mind, of course.”
The professor looked back at the fireplace.
His hand shot away from his body.
The codex dropped.
Starving, the fire attacked like golden hyenas over a sick wildebeest. The bark pages arched in pain, but the fire kept coming, biting, chewing. The ancient characters on the cover disappeared in mists of darkness. The book melted and began flying through the chimney to heaven in chunks of floating ash as Porter and the professor watched.
“Stay where you are,” Peterson said, lifting his cane as Porter took a step.
Porter stopped, his mouth loose, his eyes sagging out of his skull, his fingers trembling.
The maps went next, burning entirely and then soaring away in pieces.
“You’re…a…scholar,” Porter said in disbelief, his eyes still on the fire. “ Who could make you do this?!?”
Peterson smiled, but Porter sensed pain behind his eyes as the professor took up his journals and set them neatly inside the overheated hearth. “Oh, my dear Mr. Porter. We probably would have been friends one day, you and I, under different circumstances. For you to come all this way… so quickly…”
“Who is making you do this!” Porter said, keeping his voice down so as not to draw any more attention.
But the door had already opened again, and the young lady stood looking at the professor. “Everything all right in here?”
Peterson gazed at her with his eyes unfocused, the typed pages in his murdering hands now screaming to the world’s subconscious for help. “All is well, Cerina. Please give us some time together.”
She closed the door as Peterson tossed the pages of his manuscript into the raging torrent of heat.
“ They have no name,” the professor said.
“That can’t be true. I want to know who’s behind all this. It’s illegal!” Porter smelled the smoke of the sour bark.
Peterson grinned, his face flickering with yellow and orange firelight. “It’s all been against the law, Porter, you have to know that.”
“Is it the FBI?” Porter said. “Why would they be involved?!”
“They aren’t, to my knowledge.” He chewed his molars together. “You would do well to forget about them, young man.”
“I never will,” said Porter, his cheeks trembling.
“If they had a name, it would be a metonymic displacement for professional obfuscation,” said Dr. Peterson. “You will never find them, for they do not exist. Erase your name from their blackboard, Mr. Porter… You’ll live longer.”
Porter stared at the professor. “You’re letting me go?”
“At your age,” said the professor with a look upward as he thought, “I may have worn your shoes and matched your footsteps. I have nothing against you. But if you do not look away, they will ponder what reason you should remain on the planet… Get out.”
“I-”
“The conversation is over, Porter, I have been cordial enough.” Peterson pulled on the handle off his cane revealing a long blade of thin metal no longer hidden in the wood.
He pointed the short sword at the student.
“It’s an antique,” said the professor. “Handy. Its forgotten existence in this modern world makes it priceless for someone like me. Do you like it?”
“I won’t stick around for it,” said Porter, his face cold limestone. He felt numb in the warm room.
“Bad joke, Mr. Porter.”
“Not much left to do,” he said, leaving the room. “Everyone’s made sure of that.”
“On the contrary,” came the British accent behind him. “If you’re that obsessed…I’d start looking for Dr. Ulman. He sent me an unfriendly e-mail last week.”
Porter turned slowly. “Ulman’s…alive?”
“Unsigned, of course, but I know the fool too well.”
Porter stared at the professor who glanced at the fire with aching eyes.
