Neither Selena nor Acosta could think of a single reason to disagree.
3
The large flagstone tiles were harder to lift than they had thought, so after another short debate about the ethics of desecrating a four hundred year-old church, Dr Felipe Acosta eventually got his way and the decision was made to break and lift one of the tiles. Both he and Atticus Moore knew it was the easiest way of accessing the crypt below the cellar, but they had disagreed about the best way forward.
“Okay, then let’s do it,” said Acosta. A few moments passed while a pickaxe was sourced and then Riley went to work. Half a dozen swings later, the Australian was pulling the broken flagstone segments away from the floor to reveal a flat, dusty wooden trapdoor.
Acosta gasped. “This is the door Montesino described in his memoirs!”
Atticus looked like was falling in love all over again. “Then we found it. We finally found where he left his possessions behind. Somewhere in here we should find the Montesino Codex, including untold information about undiscovered archaeological sites all over the region. This truly would be the greatest find of all!
“Think of the implications!” Acosta said. “This is a very special moment, my friends.”
They opened the trapdoor to reveal a small chamber, no larger than a modern elevator. Inside was dumped a hessian sack. Riley sat down and swung his feet over the edge, then lowered himself down and reached for the sack. Holding it at arms’ length, Decker took hold of it and placed it on the ground.
“Professor?” he said, looking at Selena. “I believe the pleasure is yours.”
Selena opened it up and gasped when she looked inside. Pulling out a large, leather-bound book, her hands began to tremble with excitement.
Acosta swallowed hard and a bemused smile crossed his lips. “My God, this really is the Montesino Codex!”
Atticus hadn’t heard the Mexican professor’s words; he was too mesmerized by the dusty leather-bound book in his daughter’s trembling hands. “We actually found it.”
Selena looked at him, the look on her face told the world she was as excited about the discovery as her father. “We found it, Dad.”
“May I?” he asked.
She handed him the book and he ran his fingers over the old, worn leather binding. “And what superb condition, as well! It’s hard to believe this is almost five hundred years old.” He began to chuckle.
“What is it, Dad?”
Slowly, Atticus started to do a little ad-libbed dance of joy on the spot. “I beat Danvers! I actually beat Danvers to the Montesino Codex.”
“Who the hell is Danvers?” Decker asked.
“Nathaniel Danvers,” Selena said. “He’s a top-flight Canadian archaeologist working at Harvard University. Also, very rich thanks to a massive inheritance he received a few years ago and some very canny private investments. He’s been looking for the Montesino Codex for ten years.”
“And I beat him to it!” To everyone’s relief, the dance had now ended, leaving a red-faced Atticus Moore clutching the old book to his chest as if it were a newborn baby.
“I guess he’s not going to be too happy about it, am I right?” Decker said.
“Not too happy?” Atticus laughed again. “He's going to be absolutely livid! The silly sod’s been searching in the wrong places all these years. First in the cathedral in Tlaxcala and then in Spain, thousands of miles away!”
“Why?” Charlie asked. “That doesn’t sound top-flight to me.”
“His earlier research led him to believe that after his time spent in Tlaxcala, Alfonso Montesino returned with the Codex and the rest of his belongings to his hometown of Terrassa in Catalonia. Poor old Danvers spent years trawling through the archives in the cathedral vaults in Tlaxcala until he found evidence suggesting Alfonso had indeed returned to Spain and taken the Codex with him.”
“Then he arranged an extended sabbatical with Harvard to go and work in Terrassa to continue his search,” Acosta said.
“And the stupid bugger is still there to this day,” Atticus said, still glowing.
Acosta was more sympathetic. “His determination to find the Codex is legendary in the academic community. He is completely convinced Montesino witnessed some kind of supernatural act somewhere in Mexico and left clues about it in his memoirs. He claims the friar wanted to tell the world about what he had seen but was so terrified by it, he created some sort of cipher which he included in this Codex. Our discovery of this today will upset him a great deal.”
“Danvers has a large and vivid imagination,” Atticus said. “The truth is the real value of the Codex is that it should reveal a great cache of Maya relics and treasures which Montesino also referred to in his memoirs when safely back in Spain.”
“Either way, our discovery of this today will upset him an awful lot!” Acosta said.
“Upset him?” Atticus said, setting the Codex down on top of the bag. “It’ll break him! Lena dear, would you please take a picture of me holding it and then send it to him on that little phone of yours?”
“No.”
“Pretty please?”
“No.”
“Mitch?”
“Leave me out of it.”
“Anyone?”
“Maybe later,” Riley finally said. “But I think right now we have more important things to worry about than you breaking poor old Danvers.”
“Riley’s right,” Decker said. “It’s costing money to park the Avalon at Francisco Mujica Airport. You do realize that, right?”
Selena said, “I thought you said they waived the fees if we were refuelling there?”
“I did. We’re not refuelling there.”
“Ah.”
“We refuelled in Barbados. Remember?”
“How could I ever forget Barbados,” she said dreamily. “That night on the beach was…”
Atticus clamped his hands over his ears. “All right, keep it down – Father Alert.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Yeah, and ex-boyfriend alert too,” Riley said. “Keep that stuff
