incense.
Forming the back of the plaza was a stone cathedral, four hundred years old, cracked by earthquakes, its stone steps scooped by the comings and goings of a million souls. Men in pantaloons and colorful shirts marched up and down the steps swinging censer cans of burning copal leaves while their women knelt on the floor inside the church lighting rows of candles and burning small offerings to gods known only to themselves. The mumbled chants in guttural Mayan added a percussion backdrop to the noise and wild laughter of the marketplace, and the smoke pall drifting over the plaza swirled in the cool mountain sunlight.
'The Catholic priests let them do that? Burn offerings on the floor of the cathedral?' Tomlinson's head was turning this way and that, trying to take in everything at once as they moved through the crowd, both of them a head taller than the earthen-faced Mayas who glanced up at them, expressionless. 'Any way you slice it, that's paganism, man. According to the church, anyway.'
'The priests leave town on market day,' Ford said.
Tomlinson laughed, like it was a joke.
'No, I mean it. In these mountain villages, the priests physically leave town on market day. It's their way of pretending not to know about the religion the Indians practice. If the priests tried to put a stop to it, the Indians wouldn't show up at mass on Sunday. So the priests compromise by ignoring it. The one thing they won't let the Indians do is sacrifice live animals inside the church. Most of these little towns have some secluded spot for sacrifices. A place with an altar, a cross, and usually some kind of stone Mayan deity figure set up. When the Indians want to make a blood offering, they go there. '
'Catholicity. I like that. My respect for the church just went up a notch, man.'
'I'm sure the folks in Rome will be relieved to hear.'
'Hey, I've got a right to judge. I was raised in the church, man; furthermore, I liked it. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a monk; live in an abbey and sing Latin songs.'
'That I believe.'
'But then I found out about the Beatles.'
'I believe that, too.'
'Catholicism is great. They got a franchise everywhere.'
'Uh-huh.' Ford had stopped. 'That little restaurant with the veranda look okay to you?'
'Sure, anyplace is okay with me. As long as they got beans and rice.'
'Then why don't you go on in and order for us and I'll try and find the public phone.'
'I'd bet long odds there isn't one. This little town is still in the bronze age, man.'
'You'd lose. When Pilar was involved in the government, she saw to it that every village with a population of more than five thousand had at least one public phone, a public health facility, and a school.'
Ford left Tomlinson at the restaurant and headed off through the crowd alone. He had to stop three people before he found one who spoke Spanish and could tell him where to find the phone. It wasn't a phone booth with neon lighting. The public phone was inside a house where a short fat Mayan woman sat in attendance. She dutifully noted Ford's call, accepted coins in payment, contacted the overseas operator and told her that the call was to Washington, D.C., person-to-person to Donald Piao Cheng, collect. The operator said it might take a while to get the call through and the Mayan woman assured Ford she would send a runner for him when the call was completed.
Ford ate rice, red beans, and boiled chicken at the little restaurant and drank Masaguan beer served in a liter bottle with a ceramic top. Tomlinson was saying he was anxious to get back to the plaza and take a look at those Mayan stelae, and Ford said he could take his time because they would spend the night in Utatlan. He didn't want to chance stumbling onto Zacul's army after dark and getting shot before they could find a messenger to forward their offer of an exchange. Tomlinson said that was good; he needed a break from all that traveling. Ford said it wasn't going to be much of a break because they were going to spend their free time going over how Tomlinson was going to react to the questions Zacul would surely ask him.
'Damn, man, we went over and over that stuff for the whole six hours it took us to get here.'
'If we had six days, Tomlinson, it still wouldn't be enough time. If Zacul isn't absolutely convinced you're an expert on pre-Columbian artifacts he's going to kill us. It's as simple as that. No judge, no jury, no trial. He'll just take us out and shoot us.'
Tomlinson, finishing his beer, said, 'I don't know what you're so worried about, Doc. I bullshitted my way through Harvard on all kind of subjects I didn't know.'
Ford said, 'It's just that Harvard has a different grading system. With Zacul, it's strictly pass or fail.'
The Mayan woman sent a boy to get him, and Ford followed the boy through the market to the little house and picked up the phone. Donald Cheng was waiting. 'Doc? Jesus Christ, Doc, you sound like you're about a million miles away. What's that echo? You in a plane or something?'
'No, at the base of a mountain. In Masagua—which is strictly between you and me. Did you get to the auction? Tell me you went to the auction, Don. '
'I went to New York. I went to the auction. That painting you described to me never came up for sale—not that I'm surprised.'
'You didn't leave early—-'
'Just to make a phone call. I had to go out and call an agent friend of mine with New York Customs. And I bet a hundred bucks you know exactly why.'
Ford said, 'Oh?' and then waited.
'You said the guy holding the auction, this Benjamin what's-his-name character, Benjamin Rouchard, might be a little shady. Well, he's at least a little shady. Along with paintings, this guy was selling stuff he shouldn't have been selling. Jade carvings of jaguars, parrots, these weird little stone statuettes with nasty-looking faces and great big schlongs. He had about a dozen pieces on the block and a couple hundred more in the back room. I guess he was moving it out slow; didn't want to flood the market. You know what some of that crap sold for?'
'A lot,' said Ford.
'Yeah, it's very popular with interior decorators these days. Pre-Columbian art is illegal, expensive, and bizarre, which makes it chic. One of the statuettes went for just under ten grand. And there was no documentation on any of it. No bills of sale, no statements of provenance, no shipping manifest, nothing. Smuggled goods. We're going to get one of our experts to verify the stuff as authentic, but I think it's real. That's why the high rollers come to his auctions. They know Rouchard sells only the real stuff. All Aztec.'
'Mayan,' said Ford.
'Hah! Caught you, you bastard. I knew you knew. That's why you pumped me about all those laws. Why didn't you just come out and tell me?'
'You're about to find out, old buddy.'
'If it has something to do with that woman artist, you wasted your time being tricky. She was just an innocent bystander as far as we're concerned. We nailed Rouchard and we're checking his records to see if we can pull in any of his partners. But we don't want the woman—unless you count the way some of the guys were drooling when they looked at her. Which I guess explains why you suddenly became an art lover.'
'Rouchard is in jail?'
'Oh, hell no. He's out on bail, first offense and all.'
'Which means he could be out of the country by now. '
'He could be. It's not like he was smuggling in coke or heroin or something. But it's the sort of arrest we like to make to keep our neighbors to the south happy. Lets them know we care about preserving their rich and colorful history and all that shit. As if I care personally, but it's illegal and this guy was doing it in a big way, so I'm glad you steered me in even if you did it in your own weird, convoluted way.'
Ford looked at the Mayan woman sitting there looking out the window, listening to him but not seeming to understand. He pressed the phone closer and said, 'I want to know what else you found there, Don. It's important. There's one particular thing I'm looking for—'
'So now we're getting down to it: the real reason you didn't want a well-organized bust walking into that auction. You want something. Now it's becoming clear—'
'I do want something. It's a manuscript. Very old, written on parchment with no end boards and not very long—maybe forty, fifty pages in script; archaic Spanish with rough illustrations, hand drawn. I don't know for sure that Rouchard had it, but if he did, he may not even have known it was valuable. He'd probably want some expert to
