The Mayan Codex

2

Lamia arrived at Madrid Airport in good time for her connecting flight to Paris. She ignored the transit lounge, however, and after purchasing some clothes, a carry-on bag, and a few essential items at the airport shop, she descended to the taxi rank and told her driver to take her to Madrid’s Atocha railway station.

Whilst on the plane she had used Iberia’s in-flight internet service to book herself a Gran Clas private cabin on the Elipsos Francisco de Goya ‘Talgo Night’ Trenhotel, leaving from Madrid at 6.15, and due to arrive in Paris’s Austerlitz train station at 8.27 the following morning. She was the only one of her brothers and sisters who knew the location and identity of the Second Coming, and she was certain that if she could only evade both them and the French border police – in the unlikely event that Calque had managed to milk some of his old connections for a favour – then she would be home clear. Explanations would come later.

She knew that the ‘Talgo Night’ train made a short stop at Blois, in the Loire Valley, before reaching its final destination in Paris, so she had decided to alight there and bribe a taxi driver to take her straight to Samois. What was it? A hundred kilometres door-to-door? She’d be at the camp in time for breakfast.

She had flirted briefly with the idea of using a public telephone box to call her mother and tell her that everything was still on track, but she had just as quickly discarded the idea. The logic behind all her past actions had been that only Milouins, Madame Mastigou, and Madame, her mother, would ever be privy to her hidden agenda. There were numerous other outside-the-loop servants scattered throughout the Domaine de Seyeme household capable of listening in to a conversation, and who was to say that the French police, given their notoriously cavalier attitude towards personal privacy, weren’t still bugging the house in unconscious mimicry of Joris Calque?

No, blanket secrecy and telephone silence were the only way in which Abi, Vau, and the others could ever have been tricked into keeping all their concentration on Sabir and Calque – and for this they truly needed to believe in Lamia’s role as a fellow traveller in the enemy camp.

Sabir and Calque had had to be won over in the same way. The pair had been justifiably suspicious of Lamia from the very start. Only via the most rigorous self-discipline had it been possible for Lamia to manoeuvre herself into a strong enough position to build up a sufficient reservoir of knowledge about Sabir to be certain of getting the information she wanted – and when she got it, of being able to use it with impunity.

Lamia allowed herself to relax in the comfort of her ‘Talgo Night’ stateroom. It was nice being able to pamper herself again. She’d order an early supper to be brought directly to her suite, and then she’d take two sleeping pills and attempt to sleep a clear eight hours without ever once thinking about Sabir. She could count on the steward to wake her up well before Blois with her breakfast.

She had never killed anyone before in her life – far less a pregnant woman and her unborn child. That prospect, although a necessary one, still caused her some distress. But she was confident that she’d get over it.