‘She is here with the policeman. They are all three sitting in the public rooms of the White Horse Inn. We can’t even get close.’
‘Will you be able to follow him?’
‘Of course, Madame.’
‘Abiger, you are talking arrant nonsense. Two men cannot follow a man twenty-four hours by twenty-four. It’s an impossibility. And once you’ve lost him, he is lost for good. I am sending your brothers and sisters over to help you.’
‘But, Madame ‘Be quiet, Abiger. I want to know exactly what he does, and why he is doing it. It’s not enough simply to deal with him any more in the way we discussed previously. There’s more involved. We’ve got Calque to deal with too. So all eleven of you will conduct a full surveillance on the three of them – if they split up, all well and good. If they stay together, even better. I want to know everything they do – everywhere they go. And I shall decide when it is the right moment for you to strike, Abiger, not you. Have I made myself clear?’
There was a brief hesitation.
‘Have I made myself clear, Abiger?’
‘Yes, Madame. But I’m still running this operation, aren’t I? I’m still in charge?’
‘Until I decide otherwise. Yes, Abiger. You are.’
12
At first, you were lucky. The travelling went well. A man taking chayotes down to Veracruz gave you a lift in his truck. Through Orizaba and Cordoba, as far as La Tinaja. He dropped you off there, and you stood on the Tierra Blanca road for three hours, hoping for another lift. But no one stopped. Everyone was going the other way. Towards the volcano. In order to see the free show, you supposed.
It was then you began walking. You had money for food, but not for buses. But there was no hurry. The volcano had done its worst. No one had been killed. A number of villages close to the summit had been damaged, some by lava, some by dust, but the people had had ample time to evacuate, even when on foot. Now the State had promised to rebuild their homes. All this you had heard on the radio of the truck.
The State was indeed a powerful thing, you said to yourself. When things went badly, it was the State which put things right. You did not fully understand this, nor how the State functioned, but you suspected that its benevolence was, as it were, inbuilt. That things had always been like that.
You clutched the thin cotton bag that held the codex to your chest. You were hungry. In the excitement of the eruption, and of knowing that you had a job to do, you had forgotten to eat. Now you stopped at a roadside shack and bought some tacos. You ate half the tacos immediately, and secured the remaining ones in a piece of rough paper for later. You suspected that you might have to sleep out in the open, and for this you would need energy.
You drank some Coca Cola for your stomach, and because, amongst your people, it was sometimes offered as a gift in the church. Somewhere, far back in your mind, you wondered how you would manage to live when you reached your destination, and the little money you had was exhausted. You had never been outside your own province before. What if there was no one there to welcome you? What if you were not expected? Perhaps, then, you should ask the State for help? But you did not know how to contact the State, or how to communicate with it. Perhaps, being all-powerful, it would try to take the codex away from you? Which would leave you with no function. With no reason to live.
No. You must keep away from the State. Something would arise. Someone would recognize you. The protection of the codex had gone on for far too long, and for far too many generations, to mean nothing at all.
13
‘Why are you doing this, Sabir? Why are you still sticking your neck out in this way? What’s in it for you?’
Calque had an unlit cigarette dangling out of his mouth. He had come to a grudging understanding with the staff of the inn that he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, actually light it, but simply suck on it for the taste of the tobacco. Lamia had had to do the translating for him, because Calque’s mastery of the English language was marginally inferior to that of the average first-grader.
‘But I thought you knew? I’m in it for the money.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Look, Calque. You’d better get one thing straight. The only reason I responded to Samana’s ad last May was because I thought there was a book’s worth of material in it. I write books. And I live off the money I make from writing them. I’ve put nearly six months of work into this project already. It’s cost me the ability to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch. It’s cost me part of my ear. And it’s turned me into a killer. Beyond that, I’ve been chased and intimidated and shot at, and an attempt has even been made to bury me alive. People have threatened to castrate me. I’ve had knives thrown at me. An effort has been made to burn down my house. The French police, in the guise of your good self, have even had me on their Most Wanted list. I think I’m entitled to some comeback after all that – some sort of a quid pro quo. And I am finally beginning to figure out a way to get it.’
‘Saudi Arabia, you mean?’
‘Listen. The prophecy talks of the eruption of a “Great Volcano”. A man, “Ahau Inchal Kabah”, lives in the country of this volcano. This man is capable of looking into the future. Through him, the world will know whether 21 December 2012 will bring the feared Armageddon, or the beginning of a major new spiritual era.’
‘Why Saudi Arabia?’
‘It sounds simple. But it’s taken me weeks to work out. The key word is “Kabah”. This obviously relates to the Kaaba, or the House of Allah – the most sacred site in Islam. I mean the spelling is pretty much exact, isn’t it, give or take an extra a at the beginning and an h tacked on at the end? The Kaaba building is more than two thousand years old – meaning Nostradamus would certainly have known of it. And every Muslim, wherever they are in the world, turns towards the Kaaba when they pray. Next we have “Inchal”. The Muslims traditionally call the Will of Allah, Insha’Allah – pretty close, wouldn’t you say? With all that in hand, I went to check on what Nostradamus calls the “land of the Great Volcano”. I immediately found another link to Saudi Arabia. I now believe the Great Volcano to be the 5,722-foot-high Harrat Rahat, which last erupted in 1256, its lava flow travelling to within three miles of the holy city of Medina. Many think that this volcano is the actual location of Mount Sinai. Exodus 19:18 describes it as “And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly”.’
Calque glanced across at Lamia. Then he turned to Sabir. ‘Has this volcano erupted recently?’
Sabir made a face. ‘Not in the last 950 years, no, it hasn’t. I acknowledge that. But then some scholars think Mount Sinai is actually Mount Bedr – or Hala-’l Badr.’
‘I suppose that one has erupted?’
Sabir was beginning to lose his temper. ‘No. No, it hasn’t. Not yet.’
‘But you’re living in expectation?’
‘Well, Nostradamus can’t be expected to get everything right, can he?’
‘And the word “Ahau”? What about that?’
‘I can’t get a handle on that one. It doesn’t seem to be an Arabic word at all.’
Calque glanced back at Lamia. ‘Shall we tell him? Shall we enlighten our intrepid researcher? Who obviously doesn’t bother to listen to the news, just as he doesn’t bother to answer his telephone?’
Lamia returned Calque’s look. ‘Why tell him? We don’t need him any more. Probably better that we let him swan off to Saudi Arabia, as he intends – that way he can draw my brothers after him, leaving us free to head down to Mexico unmolested.’
Sabir was looking from one to the other of them as if he suspected that he was the victim of some elaborate practical joke. ‘Mexico? What are you people talking about?’
‘Seriously, Sabir. Are you a complete technophobe? Have you really not listened to the news for the past few
