The Mayan Codex

PART THREE
1

Lamia de Bale was feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. It was as if the futility of everyone else’s life was accruing to – and therefore being encapsulated by – her own. In deciding to leave Sabir without speaking to him, and without any attempt at an explanation, she was aware that she had closed an opened door. Now, three miles above the Atlantic Ocean, she felt the loss of its possibilities without fully understanding why.

She waited until half an hour into the Iberia flight before getting out of her first-class seat. She had chosen the premium seat to ensure that she both entered and exited the plane after all the other passengers had cleared the terminal – airlines, she knew, made exceptions for their first-class passengers, and catered to their whims. It also gave her access to business class and economy class, without giving either of those two areas access to her.

She had lied back in France when she had told Calque that Madame, her mother, had confiscated her money and her credit cards, and that only at the last minute had she had the providential foresight to conceal her passport inside her underwear. In point of fact she had hidden her passport, credit cards, and cash money in a traveller’s pouch looped onto the back of her belt and neatly flipped over to lie flush along the inside edge of her slacks – a loose blouse had completed the picture, and had served to protect her from the customary stares men give to young women’s bottoms. Even young women with catastrophic birthmarks.

She had then, at the first possible opportunity, cached the credit cards beneath the base of her powder compact, and rolled her folding money inside a number of Kotex Super Plus tampon tubes, which she had then re-wrapped and re-glued so that they looked fresh from the shop. If either Sabir or Calque had gone through her things, they certainly hadn’t found either one of her secret stashes. Men had an in-built reluctance to sniff around women’s private knick-knacks – it was as if they didn’t want to know what artifices and grimy little realities lay behind the surface appearance they valued so much.

And Lamia, of course, knew all about surface appearances. She had spent her life trying to avoid acknowledging the effect of hers on others. It was hard being a woman with a damaged face. People responded to you in one of two ways. They either showed their repulsion by avoiding you – or they overcompensated for something they were relieved not to be suffering from themselves, and sickened you with their pity.

Madame, her mother, had tried to sweeten the pill a little – financial security counted for a lot when you felt vulnerable in other areas. And Lamia was physically better off, when push came to shove, than all three of her sisters, and at least four of her brothers. So she was in the upper quadrant of the population as regards financial security, and the middle quadrant as regards disabilities. But until she had met Calque, and then, later, Sabir, she had found it impossible to respond to men without suspecting them of hypocrisy – they pretended to want the whole of you, when in reality they only wanted the hormonally charged areas they were hardwired to seek out.

The truth of the matter was that Lamia had secretly craved being sought after and pursued – just like any normal, unmarked, woman – but her face and attitude had either put men off or obviated their interest in her altogether. Lamia shrugged at herself in the powder-room vanity mirror – well you couldn’t have it both ways.

Joris Calque had genuinely seemed to see beyond the surface of her face, however, and Adam Sabir had astonished her with his capacity for blinkered sensuality. She was convinced that Sabir truly believed he loved her, and a part of her sincerely loved him. But she was her mother’s daughter, and she had entered into the arrangement to leave all sides in ignorance of where she truly stood – and by that she meant both Laurel and Hardy (aka Sabir and Calque) and the Corpus – with her eyes wide open. The fact that she felt sympathy, affection, and even love for the two men she had always intended to betray, was beside the point. She had a duty to perform, and perform it she would.

She eased herself through into the business-class section and began a steady perusal of all the passengers. Whenever she reached one of the lavatories she waited until it was vacated before continuing with her search of the plane. It took her a full thirty minutes to convince herself that none of her brothers and sisters were anywhere on board – if they had been, she would have escaped back to the first-class section and relied on the stewards to do the rest.

She had been made aware, of course, by Madame, her mother, that the Grand Cherokee might at some point be seeded with a tracker, and so she was labouring under no delusions as regards Abi’s eventual ability to pinpoint her whereabouts at the airport. Her only advantage over both him and Sabir had lain in the speed with which she had made her decision to depart from the touj. Madame, her mother, wanted her to remain a free agent, and a free agent she would remain.

She returned to her seat and adjusted it to the flattest possible position. She needed to sleep. The past ten days had taken their toll on her, and she felt physically as well as mentally wrung out. She closed her eyes.

She was immediately met by the image of Sabir pushing her gently down onto the bed back at the Ticul motel. Of the feel of his hands on her body. Of the gently invasive pressure as he had first made love to her. Of her response to his lovemaking, at first tentatively, and then willingly, enthusiastically, ecstatically.

She shook her head in a violent effort to clear it of the unwanted images, but still they remained, like the fragments of another life.