via their cell phone, and each was covering one particular section of the camp.
Thanks to Aldinach – who was in fully female distaff mode at the moment for reasons best known to himself – he knew to an inch where the skull and the codex were. Thanks also to Aldinach’s intuitive genius in policing areas he was not directly responsible for, he also knew that Athame was hidden somewhere inside the sweat lodge, cosying up to all the major players.
He had cursed Athame’s impetuosity at first – what had she been thinking of, putting herself in imminent danger of detection? But once he’d calmed down and began to think rationally about the whole thing, he started to feel better. He’d tried her once on the phone, moments before Aldinach had told him where she was hiding, and if that degree of buzzing hadn’t give her away to the sky pilots, he reckoned nothing else would.
Madame, his mother, had also telephoned earlier. Sensing that the whole affair was now entering its final phase, she had recently taken to calling him every hour on the hour. Abi felt a deep sense of satisfaction, therefore, that he had been in a position to tell her pretty much the entire truth about their situation. They were doing exactly what she had asked them, after all – monitoring events with no direct intervention. No one, bar Athame, had made anything like a proactive move. No one was going against her wishes. Yet.
Abi knew that the Countess was disturbingly adept at discerning lies. He had stuck to the strict letter of the truth, therefore, in a desperate effort to stave off the evil day. He wanted to be able to report total success to her: the securing of the Maya codex and the thirteenth crystal skull; the identity and geographical location of the Second Coming and of the Third Antichrist; and the gruesomely drawn-out murder of Adam Sabir, for which he had already earmarked Aldinach and her deliriously transformational scalpel – then, and only then, might he expect to be forgiven. The deaths of Joris Calque and Lamia would simply add an extra layer of icing to the celebratory cake.
He looked at the time on his cell phone – 2.30 in the morning. He’d better get on with it. People woke up early here, and he reckoned some might be moving by as soon as four o’clock, if they needed to get to distant places of work.
He began the necessary round of telephone calls.
93
The snake was approaching him again. The same snake he had seen whilst imprisoned in the cesspit below the Maset de la Marais safe house waiting for Achor Bale’s return.
This time the snake slithered past him. He could feel the roughness of its skin kissing his.
Sabir tried to turn his head to follow the snake’s progress, but he was unable to move. It was then that he realized that his skull was being held in a vice.
He corrected his eye-line and stared to his front. He instantly knew what he was looking at. It was the exact same scene described by Akbal Coatl, the chief guardian of the sacred books, in Mani, in the run-up to the burning of the Maya relics.
Sabir tried to shout. To break through the reality he now found himself in, and back to the reality he felt he should be inhabiting. But his words were eaten – no sound came out of his mouth.
He remembered then that time was a spiral. Wasn’t that what both the Maya and Nostradamus believed? That at any given moment, granted the right conditions, you could encounter time past, or even time future, in time present? The poet, T.S. Eliot, had taken the idea and run with it in the ‘Burnt Norton’ section of his Four Quartets:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
The words repeated and repeated themselves in your brain.
You were clearly going crazy. A Spanish soldier was approaching you. He held a garrotte in his hands.
The soldier turned towards a friar dressed in the dark-brown habit of a Franciscan Minorite. Friar de Landa. It couldn’t be anybody else. The man’s face was smooth and blameless – the face of someone who knows that whatever they do, whatever outrage they choose to commit, is, by godly implication, the right thing. Beside him a man you also recognized was busy scribbling onto a vellum sheet, supported on a lectern. You knew this man well – he was a member of your family. For a moment you resented him. What was he doing, hobnobbing with the Spaniards? He should be out here, with you, suffering for his beliefs.
Then you remembered. He had taken an oath. You had administered it yourself. In this oath he had undertaken to protect two sacred items – the last remaining copy of the sacred codex, designed by the priests as the final back-up to the library revealed to Friar de Landa by the terminal folly of Nachi Cocom – and the thirteenth crystal skull, the so-called ‘singing skull’, without which the twelve remaining skulls of wisdom might not speak. To fulfil his task, Akbal Coatl had agreed to placate – even to become one with – the Spaniards. This he was clearly doing to the best of his ability.
The Spanish soldier wired the garrotte in place over your forehead. The snake was close behind you too. He was whispering in your ear.
You knew now that the snake was the Vision Serpent. The Serpent who only appeared to those whose eyes were no longer sufficiently acute to view the reality about to encompass them.
The first turn of the garrotte was made. You shrieked in pain. You could feel the blood starting from your forehead.
The Vision Serpent whispered the first of the seven secrets to you.
Then came the second turn. Your eyes clouded. Your ears began to hum with the pressure of the cordeles. Four turns. That was the maximum you had ever heard inflicted. You would be able to withstand that much. You were a strong man. You would be scarred, yes. Badly scarred. But you would live.
The Vision Serpent whispered the second of the seven secrets to you.
When they turned the garrotte for the fifth time, you no longer knew or cared what they were asking you to say. You could feel the cordeles knotting against the bones of your skull. Blood clouded your vision. Pain was your only reality. You could feel the teeth breaking off in your mouth as you ground your jaws together in a vain attempt to loosen the pressure.
The Vision Serpent whispered the fifth of the seven secrets to you.
With the seventh turn, your eyes burst out of their sockets and fell onto your cheeks. This you could see. For you were seeing through the eyes of the Vision Serpent. You were dead and you were alive at the same time. Your skull was cracking under the pressure of the garrotte. Your brain was compressed inside the cordeles, which were binding it as in a vice.
You were dead. No man could survive seven turns of the garrotte.
The Vision Serpent whispered the seventh of the seven secrets to you.
‘He is still alive, sir. Shall we tighten the garrotte another turn so that his skull breaks in two?’
‘No. Let him live. As a lesson to the other chiefs.’
At first, when they untied the garrotte, it was found impossible to free it from your skull. The cordeles had ground so far inwards that they and your skull had become one.
You were dead. You felt nothing.
You could see the soldiers still, but only via the eyes of the Vision Serpent. One soldier cut the membranes that supported what remained of your out-spurted eyes. Another cut the cordeles and ripped them from your forehead, just as you would rip a congealed bandage from an infected wound.
You were lifted. You saw this clearly. Lifted by four men and a woman. Your head lolled backwards. You could see the blood rushing from your wounds.
You were dead. No man could survive what you had endured.
Then the pain came. And with it the final whispers of the Vision Serpent. The final sighting of yourself through the Vision Serpent’s eyes.
