The Mayan Secrets

Chapter 35

Sarah Allersby was bored in London. In Guatemala City, she had been the center of attention. In parts of Europe, she had been invited to everything — Rome, Athens, Berlin, Prague. Even in Paris she had been to the best places with sought-after young people.

But now because of the ridiculous court order, she was not permitted to leave rainy, cold, damp London. Worse, the social climate in London had not been warm. She’d had such bad press for the past couple of months, with the accusations that she’d looted Mayan tombs, claimed to discover sites that had already been registered, and used a Mayan codex she wasn’t supposed to have.

Beginning a day ago, rumors about her had begun to circulate, and she was being associated with some huge drug bust in Central America. People had already canceled their RSVPs, so the welcome-home dinner party she was throwing for herself was dissolving. She could hear the fear in their voices. They had been scared their precious reputations would be tarnished if they shared hors d’oeuvres with mad, bad Sarah Allersby. A year ago, any of them would have come to her party even if they’d had to crawl to her house on their knees.

She stood in front of the big mirror by the door and inspected herself as she buttoned her navy blue coat. The buttons were gold, and the coat looked like a piece of an eighteenth-century naval officer’s uniform. She half turned to present her profile to the mirror, stepped to the door, and opened it. The .308 caliber bullet pierced her forehead and passed through the back of her skull, destroying her brain so fast that she never heard the report of the rifle, if there was one.

Through the rifle scope, Russell could see that she had fallen backward, and the heavy front door had begun to swing closed. It had been stopped by one of her feet, so it looked as though it had been partially opened by someone about to leave who had gone back in to get something.

Russell put down the rifle while Ruiz closed and locked the window and then drew the curtain. Russell quickly dismantled the rifle and placed it in his suitcase. He and Ruiz hurried down the back staircase, then into the kitchen and out the back door to the garden. It was midmorning, so there were cars and people on nearby streets, but nobody seemed to have noticed anything.

The house they had been in was for sale. It was only one number down and across the street from Sarah’s and it was the same kind of place. Four million pounds was what they’d been asking. Russell and Ruiz had spent only about an hour in the house and had worn rubber gloves.

As Russell rushed through the back garden — such a British thing in itself — he felt satisfied. Sarah had broken her promise and let him and Ruiz go to a Guatemalan jail. So now she had received her payment. Russell got into the car that they’d left waiting at the curb, and Ruiz drove. Ruiz seemed to be better at driving on the wrong side of the road. He stopped the car on the way so Russell could drop the pieces of the rifle in a series of trash cans.

At Waterloo station, they stopped in a men’s room to change clothes and wash their hands. They took the big yellow-and-white Eurostar train to Paris. It would take them three hours to get there, but they had premium first-class tickets, and the ride promised to be restful. And anything was better than the prison they’d escaped from in Guatemala.

The train chugged slowly through London and its inner suburbs and then gained speed. After about an hour, it entered the tunnel under the English Channel, and the windows went dark.

Santiago Obregón looked from the passageway of the train at the two Americans in their premium seats. They appeared to be sleeping. It was astounding to Obregón that these two imagined that Diego San Martin would let them waste nearly a hundred of his men and go off to Europe in safety. He was grateful to them for killing Sarah Allersby because otherwise he’d have had to do it.

Obregón sat across from the Americans in their compartment as though he belonged there. He reached into his briefcase and took out his tool, a CZ P-07 Duty pistol with a factory-threaded muzzle and special high sights to provide a view over the sound suppressor. He shot the two Americans in the chest quickly to preclude resistance.

He stood and shot the first American in the head to be sure he died and then aimed the gun at the head of the second. The man addressed him in Spanish. “Who are you? Why kill us?”

“Why do you kill?” said Obregón. “For money.” He pulled the trigger. He pressed his pistol into the right hand of the dead man. Then he went out and moved to another car. Before too long, they would be arriving in the Gare du Nord.