The Mayan Secrets

Chapter 25

Sarah Allersby walked from the pair of parked helicopters into the thick Guatemalan forest. The brush had grown over this trail a thousand years ago, so it would be difficult to demonstrate to her guests that this was a Mayan trail, although she was sure it was. She hacked her way along with a machete, watching her feet to find a spot that would be clear enough for the revelation.

She glanced back along the trail. There were fifteen journalists, all of them carrying complicated camera equipment and recorders and satellite phones. But they were all chattering away with one another about God knows what. They weren’t paying attention to the special place where she had brought them.

Sarah looked down and stopped, then called for their attention. “Look, everyone. We’re on a Mayan thoroughfare. It’s a paved foot road.” She stepped aside to let the journalists come forward to take pictures of the pavement. A few listlessly snapped the ground, with its layer of whitish cobbles, but more were inclined to take photographs of Sarah hacking through the overgrowth. That, she reflected, was all right too.

She pushed ahead, then looked back beyond the photographers at the longer line of armed men she had brought into the jungle, carrying their Belgian rifles. It was costing her a great deal of money, but this time she was going to be sure she had the manpower to keep everything under control. After the disappearance of the five men Russell had sent to clear the helicopter landing spot, she had left little to chance. She knew the ruin was only a short distance away now, so she kept moving, hacking at the vines and brush in her way. She finally burst through the bush and stepped onto the great plaza. “There,” she shouted. “There is the city, the lost city I’ve found.”

She stepped boldly forward on the plaza. Ahead of her, on both sides of the wide-open space, were huge pyramids, and to her side was the biggest one so far. And while the reporters were ignorant about the structure, she had already seen the beautiful paintings on stucco inside the temple at its top. The architecture and art revealed a society that had been rich and complicated, colorful and full of life. And the place had been abandoned before the Normans invaded England.

There were sure to be hoards of priceless artifacts hidden deep in the royal tombs of a place this size. It was spectacular. She had already found a few things and they had stimulated her appetite. But even more, she wanted these newspeople to see her doing some excavating. A couple of photographs and some actual footage that could be shown on television in Europe and the United States would further the process of her transformation. Right now, she was dismissed as just one more heiress with exotic tastes. When her discoveries were all revealed, she would be a major power in the world of archaeology. Nobody would know her discoveries had all come from her Mayan codex, so she could still stage a “discovery” of it years from now and get full credit for that too.

She was perfectly dressed in a tailored explorer’s outfit, a tan shirt with epaulets and the sleeves rolled up, tailored pants in the same fabric, and polished boots, and she strode ahead with a kind of heroic energy, moving toward the huge pyramid that dominated the end of the plaza as though it were a beast she was conquering, when she heard a sudden wave of chatter behind her. She stopped and looked over her shoulder.

The journalists had come about thirty yards into the great plaza. They all seemed to be awed by the enormous size and imposing character of the city’s buildings, all of them partially sheathed in vegetation. Unlike most of the lost cities Sarah had visited, the tallest buildings were not totally obscured by the plants and dirt. Their outlines were fairly clear.

But something was wrong. They weren’t all rushing after her, elbowing one another to get close and congratulate her, to pepper her with questions about the city. They were all standing in a tight knot, looking down at their telephones and reading text or facing away from the others with their phones held to their ears. Others were facing one another, talking rapidly in their various languages, as though they were discussing some piece of astonishing news.

The only ones not in the gaggle of chattering writers were the photographers, who stood in a loose circle, filming not the miracle of human accomplishment that towered over them but the reporters and their exclamations and questions and gestures of what seemed to be shock or outrage.

One of the journalists in particular caught Sarah’s attention. He was Justin Fraker from The Times (London), a classmate of her brother, Teddy, at Eton. He had come because Teddy had promised him something — she suspected it was an invitation to a future reception at No. 10 Downing Street.

She had high hopes that Justin would make the case for her at home. She stared at him now because he was the nearest of the English speakers and it was easiest for her to read lips in English. He seemed to be saying, “This is insane. She must be joking. She can’t be serious.” She wondered who he could be talking about. She sighed. It would be just her luck if some American actress did something so outrageous that it took their attention away from her.

She turned and walked back toward the crowd of newspeople. Michelle Fauret, a stringer for Paris Match, had agreed to come because of Sarah Allersby’s reputation as a partygoer in Europe. She hurried toward Sarah, calling out, “Sarah! Sarah!” She was holding a small video camera.

Sarah Allersby was reassured. The idea that she was about to become an even bigger celebrity was titillating. She had always liked being the very rich girl, with mysterious holdings in Central America, who would sometimes appear at parties in southern France or the islands of the Mediterranean. She sensed that she was about to go from “interesting” to “fascinating.” She smiled, and said, “What is it, Michelle?”

“They’re saying that you’re a fraud. They say this site is already registered with all the archaeological organizations — that you didn’t find it. Someone else did.”

Sarah was not pleased that while Michelle was saying all this, the red light in the front of her video camera was on. She feigned an amused smile. “That’s silly,” she said. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Look at this,” said Emil Bausch, the German columnist. He held up an iPad tablet with a photograph of the large pyramid that dominated the plaza. “This is a picture that’s on the website of the Society for American Archaeology. This whole site has already been photographed and charted.”

Jim Hargrove, an American from National Geographic, said, “How could this happen? Don’t you consult any of the organizations in the field?”

“Of course I do.” Sarah hadn’t done it lately. She had been so busy.

“Apparently, not often enough. This set of ruins is on the lists of existing finds.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Sarah Allersby. “Is this some kind of joke? I invited very few reporters here to share in an extremely rare experience. Are you now accusing me of faking something?” She waved her arm in the direction of the ancient buildings around them. “Did I build all this to fool you? These buildings are masterpieces, and the last people here left a thousand years ago.”

“The people here left three weeks ago,” said Justin Fraker. “It’s listed in the British catalogs of discovery too.” He pointed at the image on his satellite phone. “They’ve got a complete description. The map coordinates are identical. And they marked it with a pipe with a red flag that pokes out of the ground below the stairs.”

“Who are these people who supposedly left three weeks ago?” said Sarah Allersby.

“The names listed are Samuel and Remi—”

“Fargo!” she interrupted. “They’re criminals, people who have no qualifications or academic intent whatever. They’re treasure hunters. This is a trick.”

“The find is listed as a joint project with the University of California,” said Van Muckerjee, the New York Times correspondent. “The University of California would seem to have academic qualifications and academic intent.”

“I have no more to say about these people,” she said. “I’ll be leaving here in a half hour. I would advise you all to make your way to the helicopter landing area as soon as possible. The pilots will not be flying anyone out after dark.” She turned and began to walk along the path.

Sarah held her shining blond head high and walked in silence. The chosen group of journalists trotted after her, the photographers racing ahead so they could get a picture of her face with a snarl or a tear. Both sold a lot of papers.

The next afternoon, Sarah Allersby sat in her bedroom and looked at her computer. Posted on YouTube was a video of Sarah Allersby. She looked beautiful and triumphant as she hacked her way through the brush and stepped onto the great plaza of the old city. Then, almost immediately, things changed. The newspeople were already preparing to surround her, saying in several languages that she was a fraud. It didn’t matter whether the viewer could speak all of those languages because the reporters yelling in his language would tell him the simple version of it: “This site has already been discovered by someone else.” “This city is known.” “It’s already registered with the international organizations.” “You’re trying to fool everyone.”

As the accusations were repeated and amplified, Sarah walked quietly away from the mob of angry reporters. The reporters ran after her, then ahead of her, taking her picture and accusing her of worse and worse impostures. It went on and on. As Sarah watched on her computer, it made her want to cry for the poor, tormented woman in the video. Then the video faded out, and she saw the title: “British heiress caught in fraud.” Views: 330,129. As she sat motionless, staring at the picture that was as motionless as she was, the number changed to 339,727. She clicked on the X at the corner of the screen to banish the sight, then stood up and walked away from the computer.

She picked up the telephone and dialed a number she had called only a few times. This time, she was nervous.

“Hello?” It was the voice of a young woman, probably one of the women who kept appearing on Diego San Martin’s arm at parties and charity events, and then being replaced by another, and another.

“Hello.” Sarah’s voice was honeyed, and her Spanish was sure and fluid. “This is Sarah Allersby. Is Señor San Martin available?”

“I’ll see,” the woman said carelessly. She dropped the phone on a hard surface.

Sarah imagined her from her voice. His women were always models or actresses or beauty contest winners from Mexico or various South American countries. It was astounding how many of them there seemed to be, passing through a capital like Guatemala City — an endless supply.

“Sarah.” San Martin’s voice was gruff but friendly.

“Good afternoon, Diego. I wondered if you and I could have a talk tomorrow.”

“Do you want to come here?”

“If you don’t mind coming to my house, I would consider it a favor. Just now I’ve been having some bad publicity. I don’t know who might be waiting to follow me around. I’m keeping myself out of sight for now.”

“All right.”

“Come for lunch at twelve.”

The next day, by eleven-thirty, she was prepared. The table that had been set in Sarah Allersby’s garden was superb. She’d had the servants lay out thick white linen, crystal glasses, and the heaviest antique silver, all part of the Guerrero house furnishings. The china was a subdued Wedgwood, cream white, with a pattern of lavender leaves and a gold rim. It was an eighteenth-century pattern she’d learned was in a warehouse in Mumbai that belonged to her family. She had been fond of rescuing things of that sort when she was a teenager — old china and pottery from shipments passing through India that an ancestor had picked up, old paintings and books from English and French houses the family had bought during times of economic disaster. Many of these things had been moved to company warehouses on the London docks, others left in place while the company leased the homes out for various purposes or converted them to hotels.

The flowers in the vases were from beds not a hundred feet from the table. The old, Spanish-style Guerrero house was the perfect place for private conversations, a two-story brick structure with a courtyard in the center. The tree-shaded court was protected on all sides. No remote sensing device or telephoto lens would be of much use here.

Sarah looked at everything critically and with a cold eye. The food, the setting, the location of the table, even the likely path of the sun, had to be right. Men like Diego San Martin had little tolerance for inconvenience.

At exactly noon, her front-door man, Victor, ushered San Martin through the foyer and the French doors into the courtyard, where Sarah awaited him. He was about fifty-five, but he was vain about his appearance and kept himself in fighting condition. He carried a panama hat with a black band and wore a beige linen suit with a pale yellow shirt and blue tie. He looked cool and sweet, Sarah thought, like an Italian ice. He was followed in by two bodyguards.

She admired the easy, casual way San Martin traveled about with bodyguards. He was never hampered or hemmed in by their presence. When he arrived at a building, one of them would step in first, look around, and open the door for him. When San Martin entered a room, one man stayed at the door to keep it securely under his control and the other stationed himself at a second strategic spot — beside a window or by a staircase — away from the civilians. San Martin always behaved as though the two ice-eyed killers were invisible.

He took Sarah’s hand and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “It’s wonderful to see a beautiful and noble lady at any time, but to be invited to her home for lunch is a great privilege. And the light here is made for you.”

Sarah Allersby would never say it, but it had been made for her. She’d had the long table removed today and replaced with a round one because she didn’t want to set off any thoughts of precedence. A man like San Martin would expect to sit at the head of any table, but letting him do it here would be dangerous. He instinctively took charge of things, and she could not let him begin to think of her as an underling in his empire or of her house as territory.

“Please sit here,” she said, and pulled a chair out. She moved to the chair beside that one, knowing that it would make the place she’d chosen for him desirable.

Once they were comfortably seated side by side, she nodded, and the waiter poured some wine for both of them. She tasted it, then said, “Leave us. I’ll ring.” The waiter moved off toward the kitchen. She said, “I’ve invited a trusted associate, who’s waiting in the library. His name is Mr. Russell. May I bring him in?”

“All right.” San Martin turned toward his two bodyguards to be sure they’d heard. They said nothing but headed into the house and across the foyer. After about a minute, they returned with Russell and resumed their posts.

Sarah said, “This is Mr. Russell, and this is Mr. San Martin. Diego, Mr. Russell has helped me and members of my family a number of times and his discretion is absolute. I wouldn’t invite him today if I didn’t trust him with my life.”

Diego San Martin took the wine bottle out of the ice bucket and looked hard at Russell. Sarah looked hard at Russell too, imagining what San Martin was thinking. Was she imagining just a faint tinge of blue remained on his face?

Russell picked up his wineglass and held it out so San Martin could fill it. Both men’s faces were empty and serious, each staring into the other’s eyes. Neither man’s hand shook. “Thank you,” said Russell.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Sarah. “While we’re having a chilled drink together, let me bring up my problem, and then I’ll ring to have the food served.”

“Excellent idea,” said San Martin. “Right to the point.”

“A few weeks ago, an American couple named Sam and Remi Fargo began to spy on me. They went into the country around the Estancia Guerrero and then onto the Estancia itself. They were the ones your security people saw near the sacred cenote in the ruins of the ceremonial center. I believe they wounded or killed about a dozen of your employees.”

“Yes,” San Martin said. “Their visit was an expensive one for me.”

“They also visited the Estancia itself and saw your marijuana crop and the coca trees. They came to this house to complain about them to me.”

“Interesting.”

“They have also gone to some trouble to get me arrested on the charge of stealing a Mayan codex from them and for attempting to have them killed by Mr. Russell. I had the charges dropped, but only after days of humiliation and a public court appearance.”

San Martin sipped his wine. “That must have been unpleasant.”

“Yes. They’re a potential threat to me, so I’m afraid to let them go on this way. But they’re even more of a threat to you. They’ve already found your operation on the Estancia. I know you feel people should solve their own problems instead of bringing them to you, but I think these people are a problem we share.”

He laughed. “You’ve learned to know me so well,” he said. “You’re a perceptive woman. You may actually be the perfect woman.”

She laughed too. “Of course I am. Being a woman is all I do.” She refilled the glasses.

“All right. Tell me how I can be a good friend to you. And then we’ll have lunch. I promise to give you my answer when we’ve finished.”

“Mr. Russell? Can you help me explain?”

Russell was filled with appreciation of her cunning. She knew that San Martin would be most comfortable with her as the ultra-feminine woman who appeared not to know the violent details. He also knew that San Martin had no interest in knowing him, so he had to be brief. “Miss Allersby has a list of Mayan sites that she planned to visit. At one of these sites we had a group of five men clear and guard a helicopter landing area so Miss Allersby could bring journalists with her to see the ruins. The men were heavily armed. Yet they had disappeared by the time Miss Allersby arrived. And we now know that the Fargos visted the site before she did.”

“Thank you,” said San Martin. He turned to Sarah. “And now let’s do justice to your beautiful table and have the lunch you’ve planned.”

Sarah rang the little silver bell by her, and the lunch was served. There was poached salmon with a caper sauce and asparagus. The wine that was poured with it was a 1998 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame. There was sorbet to cleanse the palate before the salad was served, in the French manner, after the entrée, and then small, delicate pastries with strong espresso.

As Señor San Martin finished his coffee, he sat back in his chair. Sarah Allersby looked at the servants, gave a little flip of her hand, and they dissolved into the doorways along the side of the house that led to the kitchen and pantry. Then she poured another cup of espresso for San Martin.

San Martin looked at Russell with eyes so cold and devoid of feeling that they looked dead. “I’ll try to find out what happened to your five men. The forest is a dangerous place, and not everybody with a gun works for me. If the Fargos are responsible, the five might be in jail somewhere.” He handed Russell his calling card. “Here, Mr. Russell. Come and see me tomorrow afternoon. I’ll supply you with a small army of professionals who won’t be troubled by a couple of American tourists.”