The Mayan Secrets

uneasy.

“The pot and the codex are in a climate-controlled room,” said Remi. “It’s right down here.” She and Zoltan walked to the door of the room. She unlocked it. “I’m afraid there’s only space for two of you at a time. We can take turns.”

Sarah Allersby said, “Don’t worry. They’re not here for that. They don’t need to see it.”

She stepped in, Sam followed, and Remi entered and closed the door. Remi put on gloves, went to the cabinet, and produced the pot.

Miss Allersby’s eyes widened. “Incredible. I can see it’s in the classic style of Copan.” She looked up at the rows of shelves behind the glass doors like a spoiled child who had been given a gift and gotten tired of it already. “And the codex?”

Sam and Remi exchanged a glance, a mutual question: Do we really want to do this? Sam went to the rows of cabinets, unlocked one, and took down the codex. He carried it to the table, and Sarah Allersby’s body turned toward it as though it had a magnetism that pulled her only. As Sam set it down, she leaned very close to it — too close.

“Please be careful not to touch it,” Remi said.

Sarah ignored her. “Open it.”

Sam took a moment to pull the surgical gloves up his wrists so the fingers would be tighter. “Open it,” Sarah repeated.

Sam lifted the cover to reveal the page about the jade deposits in the Motagua Valley.

“What is that?” asked Sarah. “Is that jade?”

“We’re pretty sure it’s a group from a jungle city going to the Motagua Valley to trade for it.”

As they went to the next page, she showed more and more signs of excitement. “I think this is part of the Popol Vuh,” she said. “The creation myth and all that. Here are the three feathered serpents. Here are the three sky gods.”

When Sam reached the end of that section, he stopped, closed the book, and lifted it to its place in the glass cabinet, then locked the cabinet. Sarah Allersby took a moment to collect herself, returning slowly from the world of the codex.

They all went back to the couches in the sitting room, where Selma was serving tea and small pastries to the lawyers. As they returned, Selma served Sarah Allersby and the Fargos. Zoltan followed Remi to the couch and sat, watching the four visitors.

“Well, that was a thrill,” Sarah said. “It’s everything I’ve heard and more. If the rest of it is blank, it’s still amazing.” She sipped her tea. “I would like to make a preemptive offer before this goes any further. Does five million dollars sound fair?”

“We aren’t selling anything,” said Remi.

Sarah Allersby bristled. Sam could tell that she had now used the second of her two best weapons to little effect. Her looks had already failed to impress. On rare occasions when that was the case, her family’s money almost always restored the proper awe. Remi had passed over the money without comment.

“Why on earth not?”

“It doesn’t belong to us, for starters. It belongs to Mexico.”

“Surely you aren’t serious. You’ve already smuggled it all the way here. It’s in your house, in your possession. Why would you go to that trouble, risk arrest and imprisonment, if you don’t want it?”

Sam said, “It was an emergency. We did what we could to preserve the find. What we could do was to remove what was movable away from the site before it got carried off by thieves or the earthquakes and the volcano destroyed it. We also enlisted the local people to protect the shrine. Once we’ve given the experts a chance to study and preserve the codex, it has to go back to Mexico.”

Sarah Allersby leaned toward him as though she were about to spit. “Seven million?”

“May I?” asked Fyffe, the British attorney. “Virtually nobody knows that you have the codex. All you have to do is sign a sale agreement and a nondisclosure agreement and the money will be wired to a bank, or collection of banks, of your choice in the next few hours.”

“We’re not selling anything,” said Remi.

“Careful,” said Sarah. “When I walk out that door, it will mean that we couldn’t agree. Since you’ve demonstrated that you weren’t above smuggling it out of Mexico, I have to assume that the true obstacle was that you want a higher price.”

The Mexican lawyer Escobedo said, “I assure you, this is the best way to proceed. At some point, the Mexican government will take an interest. We can deal with them far better than you can. You’ve been in the Mexican newspapers. If you have the codex, you must have stolen it from the shrine on Tacana. If Miss Allersby has it, she can say it came from anywhere — one of her plantations in Guatemala, perhaps. And Tacana is on the Guatemalan border. A few yards this way or that and transporting the codex becomes perfectly legal.”

Salazar took his turn. “If you’re worried that the codex will be locked away where it won’t be studied by scientists, don’t be. The codex will be in a museum and scientists will be able to apply for access to it just as they do all over the world. Miss Allersby simply wants to be the legal owner and is willing to protect you from any litigation or government inquiry.”

“I’m very sorry,” Sam said, “but we can’t sell what we don’t own. The codex has to go to the Mexican government. I believe there’s information in it that might be used by grave robbers, pot hunters, and thieves to locate and destroy important sites before archaeologists could ever hope to reach them. We’re not rejecting your offer, we’re rejecting all offers.”

Sarah Allersby stood and looked at her watch. “We’ve got to be going, I’m afraid.” She sighed. “I made you such a large offer because I didn’t want to wait years to buy it from some Mexican institution at auction. But if waiting is necessary, I can do that. At some point, rationality sets in, and bureaucrats realize that a whole new library is better than one old book. Thank you for the tea.”

She turned and in a moment she was out the door. Her lawyers had to hurry to get out and down the sidewalk in time to open the car door for her.

Remi said, “I have a feeling about her.”

“So do I.”

Zoltan stared out the window at the limousine and growled.

Sam and Remi walked back to the climate-controlled room, put on surgical gloves again, took the pot and the codex and carried them out. They went through the secret door in the bookcase, down the stairs to the lower level of the new firing range. Sam opened the gun cabinet, put the codex on a shelf with the pot, closed the safe, and spun the dial of the lock.

They went back upstairs, and Remi said to Selma, “Are all the new security systems up and running yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good. But don’t sleep here tonight. Arm all the systems and go to your apartment. We’re going to have a break-in tonight.”

It was only quarter to eleven, so Sam and Remi drove to the campus of the University of California, San Diego. They found a parking structure not far from the Anthropology Department, then walked there.

As they approached David Caine’s office, they saw the door open and a male student leave his office, looking down at a paper and frowning. Caine said to the student, “Just get the bibliography and notes in shape before you hand it in.” Then he saw the Fargos. “Sam! Remi! What’s up?” He beckoned them into his office and shut the door, then moved piles of books off chairs for them. “I thought we were going to meet at your house.”

Sam said, “We had a visit about an hour ago from a woman named Sarah Allersby.”

“You didn’t.”

“You know her?” asked Remi.

“Only by reputation.”

Sam said, “She’s apparently been fed information by at least one of the colleagues you spoke with. She offered us seven million dollars for the codex. She knew what was in it.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I only spoke with people I thought I could trust. I never took into account the sort of temptation a person like that can offer.”