days?’ Calque had chewed his existing cigarette into a pulpy mash. He snatched the opportunity to replace it with a fresh coffin nail.
The clerk behind the front desk did a quick double take, and then studiously avoided looking in Calque’s direction, through fear, Sabir supposed, of triggering an embarrassing confrontation with his only non-English- speaking guest.
Sabir sensed that he was being set up for a fall – he remembered Calque’s intellectual vanity from their last meeting, and did not relish a return performance. ‘Who the heck are you calling a technophobe, Captain? I seem to recall your refusing to use a cell phone on more than one occasion, much to the frustration of your second-in- command.’
‘My question remains the same.’
Sabir drew himself up. ‘Okay. You’re right. I haven’t been following the news these past few days. I’ve been in a bad place in my head. And I’ve been working way too hard on my Saudi Arabia theory. I really don’t see why you guys are so fired up about Mexico, though, just because “Ahau” is a Maya sun god. Anyway, that’s Ahau-kin. Or Kinich Ahau, depending on context. You see. I’ve done my homework there too.’
Calque settled back in his chair, unlit cigarette dangling, a Cheshire Cat grin on his face. ‘If you’d bothered to turn on your television set for just two minutes in the past twenty-four hours, you couldn’t have avoided seeing that the Pico de Orizaba, otherwise known as the Volcan Citlaltepetl, has just erupted. We saw the news report on the plane coming over. I would say that that is your Great Volcano, not the Harrat Rahat or the Hala-’l Badr. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl are the two great volcanoes of Mexico. Everybody knows that. Why should this Orizaba hill transmogrify into the Great Volcano just because it’s picked this particular moment in history to erupt?’
‘Why?’ Calque raised an eyebrow. ‘Because it dwarfs the other two volcanoes, that’s why. Orizaba is over 5,600 metres high – that’s nearly 18,500 feet to you Yankees. That makes it seven hundred feet higher than its nearest rival. And it looks like a volcano, man. It sits there, just like Mount Fuji, looking exactly like a great volcano should – I mean with a caldera, and snow on its peak, and a sneer on its face. Except that it’s more than 6,000 feet higher than Mount Fuji, and it’s a stratovolcano, just like Mount Mahon, Mount Vesuvius, and Stromboli. And it knocks your two Saudi Arabian volcanoes into a cocked hat.’
‘All right, Calque. I’m impressed. You’ve earned your kewpie doll.’
‘My what?’
‘Forget it. It was just a turn of phrase. But you got one detail wrong, Calque. Mount Fuji’s a stratovolcano too.’ Sabir became aware that Lamia was glaring at him, as if the grilling he was undergoing constituted some sort of indefinable test. He instantly regretted the stratovolcano jibe. He’d been trying to score cheap points off Calque in an effort to cover up his embarrassment at being so spectacularly wrong-footed. And now Lamia knew about his insecurities as well. Well, there was nothing like a critical female audience to cement a man’s public humiliation. ‘What about Inchal and Kabah, then? What of them?’
Lamia stood up. ‘Give me five minutes.’ She walked across to the desk.
Sabir raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s that all about?’
Calque shrugged. ‘Search me.’ He mashed his latest unsmoked cigarette onto the tabletop in front of him and reached for another.
14
Lamia sat down beside the men. During her absence, Sabir had ordered coffee, and now she busied herself ‘being mother’, an elusive smile hovering about her face.
‘Well who’s going to be the first to ask, then?’ Sabir was still feeling slightly sick that he might, at this very moment, have been jetting off towards Saudi Arabia, if Calque and Lamia hadn’t happened by.
There was silence. Calque and Lamia sipped their coffee.
‘Okay. I’ll admit it. I ballsed-up. I was on the total wrong track. But I still don’t get the “Inchal” bit. Or why “Kabah” doesn’t apply to the Kaaba.’
Lamia glanced up. ‘I’ve just been using the hotel’s internet connection. I typed in “Kabah”. With an h. Just as you tell us it’s written in Nostradamus’s prophecy. Number two on the list of Google hits, after the Kaaba, takes you straight to Kabah, a Maya site down in the Yucatan. Kabah means “strong hand”, or, in its original form, Kabahaucan, a “royal snake in the hand”. The place is famous for the Codz Poop – the Palace of the Masks – in which hundreds of stone masks dedicated to the long-nosed rain god, Chaac, stretch along a massive stone facade. Chaac, if you don’t know it, is also the god of thunder, lightning, and rain, and he is considered capable of causing volcanic eruptions with his lightning axe.’
‘Jesus.’ Sabir had always known he possessed a single-track mind. But his recent inability to think laterally constituted something of a record, even for him.
‘The word “Inchal” was harder. At first, I only came up with a place in India, with no link at all to the Maya. In the end I decided to play around with it a little, and came up with “Chilan”.’
‘And what the heck is a Chilan when it’s at home?’
‘It’s a Maya priest. The word actually means an “interpreter”, a “mouthpiece”, or a “soothsayer”. The Chilans were responsible for teaching the sciences, appointing holy days, treating the sick, offering sacrifices, and acting as the oracles of the gods.’
‘Holy shit.’
‘And Chilans traditionally wore the “Ahau”, which is the Maya sun belt. The word also means “Lord” in Maya. So Nostradamus’s phrase “Ahau Inchal Kabah”, and his insistence that this person, blessed with the ultimate gift of prophecy, lives in the land of the “Great Volcano”, is so far from implying a place in Saudi Arabia, that it almost beggars belief how you could ever have allowed yourself to be so disastrously sidetracked, Mr Sabir.’
Sabir leaned forward and placed his head in his hands.
Calque squirmed deliriously in his seat. ‘Don’t tell me, Sabir. You haven’t been sleeping recently. Your brain is not functioning to quite its usual standard.’ The ex-policeman was enjoying himself. He was behaving as if he had somehow magicked Lamia out of his jacket pocket and presented her, in triumph, to a wildly applauding gallery.
‘Don’t rub it in, Calque. You’re beginning to sound like Svengali.’
Calque glanced towards Lamia. ‘What do you think? Shall we let him travel with us? Or shall we go it alone? We have all the material we need.’
‘Oh really?’ Sabir sat up straighter. ‘You’ve got everything you need?’
Calque hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes. I think we have.’
Lamia rolled her eyes.
‘You’ve got the full text of Nostradamus’s quatrain, have you? Including the key indicator of where to look for this man once you get to Kabah?’
Calque fiddled with his unlit cigarette.
‘Well you don’t need me any more, then, do you?’ Sabir stood up. ‘But if you should happen to change your minds, you can probably catch me any time within the next half hour. My house. A silver Grand Cherokee. After that I’m gone. Out of here. Capeesh, wiseasses?’
15
Sabir didn’t pull off his ‘leaving in a snit’ stunt. He was dealing, after all, with two companions to whom – due to either familial or professional habit – compromise was a sine qua non.
Whilst he refused point blank to cough up the key part of the quatrain that referred to the actual whereabouts of Nostradamus’s Ahau Inchal Kabah, he did agree that the three of them might, at the very least, pool their resources and travel together. It had become blindingly clear to him, over the past few hours, that three minds
