‘Just follow my lead,’ Zacatlatoa said to me as we pulled up outside the gate.
We clambered out.
‘There’s been an explosion at the palace,’ Zacatlatoa told the guards in Nahuatl. ‘I was ordered to take the Princess Catherine to a place of safety. You must evacuate the building immediately There may be further devices.’
He spoke so urgently that the guards, already rattled, took him at his word. One of them raced inside, and soon half a dozen Aztecs, all in civilian clothes, emerged. They climbed into a transporter and drove away, obviously in great fear of their lives.
Now only the two guards at the gate remained. Zacatlatoa began to demand that they escort me to safety. This was too much for one of them, who insisted that they could not leave the installation unguarded. Zacatlatoa pulled his pistol from his holster and shot both men through the head.
I froze with horror. The pistol had sounded like a toy, but both guards slumped to the ground. They lay face down, their heads a mass of blood. Gore and brains had splattered Zacatlatoa’s emerald uniform.
‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘We have little time.’
He seized my wrist and hurried me up the path towards the entrance. Sickened and dazed, I had no power to resist him. One minute I had been exchanging inconsequentialities at my brother’s wedding, the next I was witnessing two peremptory killings.
The building had a semi-circular entrance like a gaping mouth. It was decorated with concrete mouldings of wind and star and serpent reliefs, pagan images from prefabricated materials. Many were traditional symbols of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of learning, others of his dark alter ego, Tezcatlipoca.
Zacatlatoa wrenched open the heavy doors. I scrambled after him up the steps, knowing he had needed me to gain access to the building but feeling that my trust had been rewarded with butchery.
Inside, it was cool and dim, recessed lights providing only a pale illumination as we hurried down a short corridor. The air felt still yet also alive. Soon I could hear a humming – the sound of power being generated.
The corridor opened out into a circular chamber, lit by a shaft of crystalline light from a window at the top of the tower. The walls were crammed with electronic equipment, power lines snaking from them to a dais at the centre of the chamber, upon which stood something unlike anything I had ever seen before.
Cautiously I climbed the steps of the dais, aware that the electric hum was growing louder with each step I took. In front of me stood a big upright concave mirror made of black glass or obsidian, surrounded by a bronzed frame embellished with more ancient motifs. Electric cables and fibre optics were embedded in its base. The atmosphere was resonantly still, and I had the strange feeling of being in a church devoted to the worship of some high technology which I could not hope to understand.
I moved closer to the mirror – or what I took to be a mirror. I could see no reflection in it but rather an absence of anything, as if it were a space, a void, rather than a surface. The nearer I drew and the harder I stared, the more it seemed that its centre, the very heart of its darkness, receded from me. I had the vertiginous feeling that if I went too close, crossed some threshold, it would suck me in, swallow me up, and I would be lost for ever. More frightened than I could say, I backed away from the mirror and stumbled down the steps.
‘What is this place?’ I asked.
Zacatlatoa had taken a miniature camera from his tunic and was busily taking photographs.
‘Motecuhzoma’s most prized and secret project,’ he replied, still clicking away with the camera, pointing it at everything in sight. ‘We want you to pass on these photographs to the Russians. I’ll explain everything later.’
It was then we heard the sound of a jetcopter.
‘Quickly!’ I cried, panic rising in me.
Already I was moving towards the corridor, eager to be out of the place. Zacatlatoa followed hesitantly, still furiously taking photographs.
‘Come on!’ I shouted.
Still he continued photographing. I fled down the corridor.
The jetcopter was directly overhead as I ran towards the gates, so low that its exhaust tore at my hair and dress. Because I was immediately underneath it, its crew did not apparently see me as I darted across the road and up the bank, scrambling for the safety of the bushes.
Crouched low, I peered through the shrubbery. Zacatlatoa was hurrying down the driveway, but the copter had turned, spotted him. He paused outside the gate and raised his hands, as if in a wave. The copter unleashed a gout of xihautl, the fireball consuming him where he stood.
I reeled back from the heat of the blast. Then, in a mad panic, I scurried away through the undergrowth, branches and brambles lacerating my dress, dirt and leaf debris smearing my hands and knees.
I kept to the shrubbery, making sure that there was plenty of foliage to hide me from the still circling jetcopter. I felt sick with horror and fright. Gradually the sound of the copter grew more distant. Then I was out of the undergrowth and teetering across a grassy space towards one of the lower rose gardens. Suddenly I was caught up in the disorderly retreat of the wedding guests from the still-blazing palace on the top of the hill.
Bevan brought a dish of beef consommé to my table in the garden. I had been ordered to rest in bed for a few days but had suffered only scratches.
I had already given Bevan a detailed account of the conical building, which I called the Quetzalcoatl structure for want of a better description. He claimed to know nothing of Zacatlatoa and to be as mystified as I about the building’s purpose.
Bevan looked unusually sombre as he set the tray down on the table.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.
‘Governor’s here to see you,’ he replied.
Extepan was already standing on the path. He approached and drew up a chair opposite me while Bevan retreated inside.
‘Forgive my unannounced visit,’ he said, taking my hand and kissing it. ‘I hope you are feeling better.’
‘Much better,’ I told him.
He appeared to have readily accepted my explanation that I had been caught up in the flight from the burning palace and thrown into the bushes. No one had apparently seen me leave the reception with Zacatlatoa, and there had been no mention of the killing of the guards and the break-in at the Quetzalcoatl structure. I could hardly believe I had been so lucky, given the grim circumstances. Three men were dead, yet I had escaped practically unscathed.
‘How is Maxixca?’ I asked.
I could not keep a certain relish out of my voice. Remarkably, no one had died in the fire at the palace, but Maxixca had been knocked down a stairway by a high-pressure hose while supervising the fire-fighting operations.
‘Recovering,’ Extepan told me. ‘I think the worst injury was to his dignity.’
I smiled at this. ‘We were all very lucky. Is the palace completely destroyed?’
‘It’s too soon to say whether reconstruction will be feasible.’
‘Have you arrested the culprits?’
He eyed me curiously, then said, ‘We have certain leads which we are following.’
‘Would you mind if I ate my soup while we talk? I so hate it when it goes cold.’
Extepan motioned for me to carry on.
He was silent for a while. I gave him another smile, as if to say I sympathized with all his problems. It is usually when we feel most smug that nemesis strikes.
‘There is something else,’ Extepan said.
‘Oh?’
‘I came to see you not only to find out how you were, but also because I have some rather grave news.’
I put my spoon down.
‘You have a family connection, so I thought it better that you heard the news directly from me.’