despite himself, more susceptible to the feminine than he cared to admit. ‘Come on, we’d better get out of here before they cotton on to what we are doing.’
Sabir grabbed Lamia’s bag alongside his own, and started to edge around the parked cars. Now I’m even carrying her bag, he said to himself. Fantastic. Like an on-the-make schoolboy carrying his girlfriend’s schoolbooks.
They made their way to the outskirts of a nearby motor court, and ducked in between the parked cars.
‘We’ll cut through here, and then down a block, so that there’s no chance at all of them seeing us. Then we cross three blocks over and up a block – Calque ought to be waiting for us.’
‘My brothers aren’t as stupid as you seem to think they are, Monsieur Sabir.’
‘Adam. Please.’
‘Adam.’
‘I’m sure they’re not, Lamia. But what are they going to do? If they haven’t followed Calque, it means they’re stuck waiting in front of the motel. If they’ve followed Calque, we aren’t any the worse off than we were before. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I know so.’
22
The hermaphrodite, Aldinach de Bale, was the first one to see the Grand Cherokee.
‘I’ve got them. They’re heading north out of town.’
‘Then follow them.’
‘It’s already in process.’
Aldinach pulled into the stream of late-night traffic heading out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. At the very last moment, the Grand Cherokee swung across the oncoming traffic flow, and switched its heading to south.
‘They’re heading south now. They’ve switched lanes on the highway.’
‘For Christ’s sake don’t follow them. Oni’s facing in the right direction. They can’t help but come past him. He can pick them up from there. We must let them believe they’ve given us the slip. We want them relaxed and at ease.’
Aldinach continued on the way he was going. Only when he was a mile or so down the road, and well out of sight of the Grand Cherokee, did he switch lanes and head south too. He had a sudden, amusing picture in his head of one of those cable-channel helicopter camera shots of an endless trail of cars following the as yet unaware silver Grand Cherokee.
He wondered idly what sort of journey Sabir had in store for them. It looked like south. And Aldinach liked south. He liked the heat, and the opportunity to dress as a woman. In the north, he stuck to his masculine identity, because it seemed more appropriate. But in the south, he was very definitely a girl.
23
‘That’s it. We’ve lost them.’ Calque was rather keen to pass the driving over to Sabir, but didn’t quite know how to engineer it. He desperately needed a cigarette, and didn’t fancy driving a monster like the Cherokee with only one hand on the steering wheel.
‘Do you want me to take over the driving?’
Calque grinned. ‘That would be excellent. Excellent. And do you think, now that we’re finally clear of the twins, that we could stop somewhere for some real dinner? I don’t know about you, but my stomach is reminding me every instant that it has not eaten since approximately two o’clock this afternoon.’
‘Great. We’ll stop at a Wendy’s.’
‘No!’ It was almost a scream. A cold sweat had broken out on Calque’s face. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. But surely, if we park around the back, we could find a nice little family restaurant, serving local, homemade food.’
Sabir looked at Calque as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘It’s eleven o’clock in the evening, Captain. And we’re in the United States. People eat at seven o’clock here. You’ll be lucky to find even a diner open at this hour of the night.’
‘A diner. A diner, then.’ Calque had a sudden mental image of a whole series of 1940s Hollywood films in which either Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart sat in one of these so-called diners, eating homemade pie with coffee.
‘Okay. A diner. But it’ll still mean a burger and fries. You realize that?’ Sabir understood Calque’s recalcitrance only too well, but he had decided to enjoy himself a little at the Frenchman’s expense. He hadn’t entirely forgiven Calque for humiliating him in front of Lamia over the matter of her birthmark, and for being so damned cute with his theories on the land of the great volcano.
‘A burger and fries? You cannot be serious? This is grotesque.’
‘Don’t worry, Calque. Things will pick up when we get to Mexico. You’ll be able to last another three days or so on a typical US diet, won’t you?’
Calque gave him a sickly grin. ‘Three days? On burgers and fries? I might last, but my liver will not.’
24
At first you had a good run of it. Two lifts in as many hours. The first to Loma Bonita, in a feed truck, and the second as far as Isla Juan. Then the lifts dried up.
You slept that night in a roadside coffee plantation, under a banana tree. You wrapped yourself in your mother’s rebozo, which you had brought along in the absence of any other form of portable sleeping cover. You kept your machete clasped tightly to your side, in case you encountered a rabid dog, a snake, a rat, or a black widow spider.
You slept well, despite the cold. In the early morning, when you woke up, you had no idea where you were, nor exactly how far it was to the Palace of the Masks. Someone you asked had told you six days. But then when you had asked them if that was by bus, or by car, or by horse, they were unable to answer you. All you knew was that you must head south – south all the time – keeping the coast always on your left. When you were near Campeche, then that would be the time to ask. Someone would doubtless point you in the right direction then.
You had grown up believing in a greater power – a power which you served, and which you therefore obeyed, as any servant should. This power would protect you if it chose, and it would allow you to die if that was its will. Asi es la vida. ‘That is how life is.’ Pointless to fight against it. Pointless to argue.
What you were doing now was at the behest of this power. Your family had been chosen to guard the codex. Your grandfather told you how the original guardians – the ones who had saved the codex from the vengeful ignorance of the Spanish priests – had ultimately paid the price with their lives. He had told you, too, of how his father had come by the codex from the hands of a dying man. How he had been forced to promise this man, upon pain of damnation, that he would protect the codex, and not give it up to the Spanish. Or else they would burn it, as they had with all the other great books of the Maya priests.
‘But I am not Maya,’ your great grandfather had said. ‘I am part Totonaca and part Spanish. I understand nothing of this. We do not even believe in the same God as you.’
‘There is only one God,’ said the dying man. ‘And everyone believes in Him. It is only the names that differ, and that cause strife.’
‘But when must I take it? And to whom?’
‘You, or your son, or your grandson, or even his son, must wait until the great volcano blooms once again
