Remi said, “No money she couldn’t explain? No Mayan artifacts? She calls herself a collector, and we saw plenty in her house.”
The commander said, “If she has money she didn’t declare here, it’s no mystery. She has interests in many countries, and a wealthy family. If there are Mayan artifacts, she could say they were part of the estate she bought from the Guerrero family or some things her workers found recently that she would have reported. There’s nothing criminal there unless she did something definite and final — sell them or take them out of the country.”
“What would you advise us to do?” asked Remi.
“What Miss Costa undoubtedly told you to do. Go home. If you want to, you could search the online markets for codices or parts of them. Often, things are broken up and sold. If the codex turns up, we’ll file charges and confiscate it.”
“Thank you,” said Remi.
Sam shook the commander’s hand. “We appreciate your willingness to listen.”
“Thank you for your evidence. And please don’t be discouraged. Justice is sometimes slow.”
Amy Costa had the embassy car drop them off at their hotel. Once they were in the room, they called Selma and asked her to get them a flight back to the United States. While they were waiting to hear from her, they went out to an English-language bookstore to buy books to read on the long flight home.
Their itinerary included a stop in Houston, but the flying time was only seven hours and forty-one minutes. Sam slept through most of the flight to Houston while Remi read a book on the history of Guatemala. On the second flight, Remi slept while Sam read. When the plane lost altitude on its approach to the runway in San Diego, Remi’s eyes opened. She said, “I know what’s wrong. We’re missing our best ally in this.”
“Who’s that?”
“Bartolome de Las Casas.”
Chapter 16
Sam and Remi stepped out to the curb at the airport and found Selma waiting for them in the Volvo sedan. Zoltan was sitting sedately on the backseat of the car. Remi ducked into the backseat and sat beside Zoltan, who licked her face while she hugged and petted him. “Zoltan.
“What did you say?” Selma asked.
“I said I missed him. I missed you too, but you aren’t a Hungarian dog.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Selma. “Hi, Sam.”
“Hi, Selma. Thanks for coming to meet us.”
“It’s a pleasure. Zoltan and I have been moping around the house since the robbery at the university. David Caine calls every day, but I told him you’d get in touch when you were home.”
“That reminds me. We won’t be here long. We’re going to Spain,” said Sam. “But first we want to meet with you and David. We can bring one another up to date on everything and then get busy on the next step.”
“All right. When we’re home, I’ll get going on your reservations,” said Selma. “It’s a shame you’re leaving. While you were in Guatemala, the workmen completed the painting and finish work. Your house is, well, your house again.”
“No carpenters, painters, or electricians left?” said Remi.
“Not one,” Selma said. “I even had a cleaning crew in to be sure there’s not a dimple of a bullet hole, a microscopic stain from a drop of blood, or a sliver of broken glass anywhere. Everything’s new.”
“Thanks, Selma,” said Remi. “We’re grateful.”
Sam said, “We’ll try to keep it nice by not discharging firearms in the living room.”
Remi said, “Selma, I want you to spend some time with me before we meet with David Caine. I need to know everything you’ve got about Bartolome de Las Casas and about the four known Mayan codices.”
“I’ll be delighted,” said Selma. “I’ve been hoarding information on those topics since you were in Mexico.”
Six hours later, they were on the ground floor of the house, sitting around the conference table. In the center was a photocopy of the letter from Bartolome de Las Casas.
Sam said to David Caine, who had just arrived, “I think Remi would like to start.”
“I just want to say thank you to Selma for having photographed the letter before turning it over to me,” David interjected.
Remi began. “By the time the Dresden Codex’s existence became widely known, an Italian scholar had made a tracing of it. Before the Madrid Codex ever got to the Museo America de Madrid, a French abbot made a copy. The Paris Codex was copied by the same Italian scholar who traced the Dresden. Somebody at the Bibliotheque Nationale actually threw the original in a bin in a corner of a room, which damaged it, so it’s a good thing there was a copy.”
“An interesting set of coincidences,” said David Caine. “Where are you going with it?”
Remi said, “We know that this codex was at one point in the hands of Bartolome de Las Casas. This letter proves that he touched it, that he knew it was important and thought it must be saved.”
Selma said, “We know that he was a passionate defender of the native people’s rights and a believer in the value of their cultures and that he studied and spoke their languages.”
David Caine slapped his hand to his forehead. “Of course! You’re saying there’s a chance that Las Casas might have made a copy.”
“We can’t be sure,” said Remi, “but we think it’s worth checking.”
“It’s a long shot,” said Caine. “As far as I know, there’s no mention in any of his writings of his making a copy of a Mayan book. He does mention seeing the priests burning them.”
“That would be a good reason not to mention his copy,” said Selma. “Books weren’t the only things getting burned in those days.”
Remi said, “After Las Casas left the mission at Rabinal, he became bishop of Chiapas, Mexico. From there, he went back to the Spanish court, where he was a very powerful adviser on issues having to do with the Indians in the colonies. And here’s the promising part. When he died in 1566, he left a very large library to the College of San Gregorio in Valladolid.”
David Caine considered. “You know, I think your observation about human nature may be right. Everybody in Europe who saw the importance of the Mayan codices seems to have made a copy. Even I made photographic copies. It was practically the first thing I did. If only I hadn’t given them up to those fake officials.”
Selma quickly diverted the conversation back to Las Casas. “Then we’re agreed. We know Las Casas saw it and was somebody who would have wanted a copy. If he made one, then it was almost certainly kept with his own books and papers rather than, say, submitted to the Spanish court. His books and papers are in Valladolid, Spain. If the copy existed, and if it’s been in a library in Spain all this time instead of the hot, humid Guatemalan jungle, then it will probably have survived.”
David Caine said, “That’s a lot of ifs. But to bolster the argument a bit, we know he would not have left any susceptible or incriminating papers in the New World, where his enemies, the Franciscans or the
Remi said, “A lot of ifs, all right, but each one has a lot of arguments in its favor and not many against.”
“Let’s call it an educated, long-shot guess,” Selma said. “It really should be checked.”
Sam said, “Okay, Selma. Please make arrangements to get Remi and me to Valladolid. Make us a copy of the letter so we can recognize his handwriting if we see it.”
Sarah Allersby sat in the giant office of the Empresa Guerrero in the old part of Guatemala City. It had once been the business office in the capital of the powerful and wealthy Guerrero family. They had occupied the building from colonial days, until the modern civil war bled many of its businesses and made the younger generation leave for lives of leisure in Europe. The office was near the Palacio Nacional because the big ranching families, of
