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 macuahitl s 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 distant 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.”
