From the backseat of the waiting car came a woman’s voice with an educated British accent. “I assume it all went swimmingly?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Special Agent Vanderman. He got out of his car, carrying a large briefcase, got into the backseat of the other car, and sat beside Sarah Allersby. He placed the case on the seat between them, opened it, and showed her the codex, wrapped in clear plastic.
“Did you get everything? All of his photographs, his notes, and so on?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “The administrators fell all over themselves to cooperate, and so when we all trooped in, Caine looked like he’d been poleaxed. He gave us everything without much of an argument. I guess he assumed his bosses had already verified who we were.”
“They may have,” said Sarah. “The names on your identification cards were the names of real officials.” She looked more closely at the briefcase. “Is this everything?”
“No.” He got out and reached into the backseat of the other car, then handed her a computer. “Here’s his laptop. That’s everything.”
“Then it’s time for you four to get moving. Here are your itineraries.” She handed him four printed airline itineraries. “Destroy your fake identification before you reach the airport. You’ll each find a rather pleasing bonus in your special bank accounts tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to ask how much?”
“No, ma’am. You said we’d be pleased. I have no reason to doubt that, and, if I’m wrong, haggling won’t help.”
She smiled, displaying perfectly straight, professionally whitened teeth. “You’re very wise. Stick with our company and you’ll also be rich.”
“I intend to,” he said. He turned and got into the backseat of the other car and nodded to the driver. The car began to move immediately.
Sarah Allersby watched the other black car drive off, then latched the briefcase and set it on the floor. She couldn’t keep from smiling as her own car moved off more slowly. She wanted to laugh aloud, to get on the phone and tell a few friends how clever she had been. She had just acquired a Mayan codex, an irreplaceable and priceless artifact, for about the cost of a middle-of-the-lot American car. If she included the price of the false identification cards and badges, the plane tickets, and the bonuses, it was, at most, the cost of two cars.
Maybe when she got back to Guatemala City tonight she would get on the secure scrambled phone line to London. Her father would be amused. He didn’t much care about the art or cultures of non-European people — he referred to them as “our brown brothers,” as though he were a colonist out of Kipling — but a good deal on any commodity was what he lived for.
Chapter 14
The cannabis plants grew in rows, planted like corn, with the stalks as tall as a man. There were irrigation hoses between rows with holes in them to soak the roots.
Remi sat on the ground and put on the sneakers that Sam had placed in the waterproof bag for her. Then she took two of the pistols from the bag, handed one to Sam, and stuck the other in the waistband of her shorts and pulled her shirt down over it. She said, “I think I know who those men who attacked us were.”
“Me too,” Sam said. “They must patrol the area to be sure outsiders don’t reach the fields.”
“Let’s see if we can call home,” Remi said. She tried her phone, then Sam’s. “The batteries are dead. We’ll have to walk out of here.”
“If the drug farmers let us,” Sam said. “They’re not going to like us any better than the men at the cenote did.”
They heard the sound of an engine. It was distant at first, but it grew louder. After a moment, they could hear squeaking springs as a stake truck bounced along the dusty road between two fields of crops.
Sam and Remi ran into the forest of tall cannabis stalks and moved away from the sounds. They crouched low and watched. The truck bounced up and coasted to a stop, and a middle-aged man in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a white shirt got out of the passenger side of the cab. He walked one row into the field and selected a marijuana plant. He looked closely at a bud and tested it. He stepped out toward the truck and nodded, and a dozen men jumped from the back of the truck to the ground. They moved along the rows of plants, harvesting the ripe buds.
The harvest proceeded quickly. Sam and Remi had to stay out of sight. When they were sure it was clear, they ran across a gap to the next field. After they had slipped into that field, they heard another engine sound approaching. This time, it was a tractor towing a wagon containing more men, who jumped down and began to harvest the second field.
For hours, Sam and Remi moved from one field of the huge plantation to another, avoiding the harvesters, their trucks and tractors.
The trucks began to pass them again, moving in the other direction. Sam and Remi made their way down a long row of plants in the middle of the field, walking parallel to the roads and maintaining their distance. They came to a forest of bushes, all seven to ten feet tall. “Interesting,” Remi whispered. “They look a lot like a blackthorn, don’t they?”
“Could be,” said Sam. “All I know about the blackthorn is that it’s what the Irish use to make a shillelagh. Also that it looks like a coca tree. And this is a coca tree.” He picked a leaf. “See? You look for two parallel lines on each side of the rib.”
“How do you know about that?”
Sam shrugged and gave Remi a sly smile.
When they reached the end of the coca grove, they could see a single-file line of about twenty trucks and tractors waiting to pull up to barnlike buildings. Sam and Remi kept to the fields as they moved to the side and around the buildings.
Sam pointed at the trucks and whispered, “I think that’s our way out.”
Remi said, “Maybe, but look at all the guards.” Walking the perimeter of the tie-down area were men who carried rifles that looked like AK-47 assault weapons on slings. Sam and Remi could see the curved, thirty-round magazines.
“Interesting,” said Sam. “They’re all facing inward, watching the guys covering the loads of marijuana. They’re not protecting the operation, they’re making sure the farmhands don’t steal any of the product. It’s inventory control.”
Remi said, “Maybe we could just sneak to the road and walk out of here.”
Sam shrugged. “Would the men who tried to kill us in the forest neglect a road?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I guess it’s got to be a truck.”
“Let’s pick one that’s already been loaded, covered, and parked.”
Sam and Remi made a wide circle around the compound, staying among the tall plants and watching the activities in the center. They avoided the spots where a turning truck might sweep its headlights across them, and they stayed far from the buildings where men were hanging, bailing, and loading marijuana.
Sam and Remi stayed under their cover until they were beyond the parked trucks. It looked hopeless. There was a guard standing by the front bumper of the first truck in line, which was fully loaded and tied down. From his tired slouch, he seemed bored. The sling that held his rifle went from his left shoulder across his chest to his right hip, so he would need an extra second or two to bring it around and fire.
Sam and Remi put their heads close, whispered for a few seconds, and then separated and left the woods at the same moment about ten feet apart. They walked silently, but quickly, and converged on the guard from both sides at once with their pistols drawn. The guard turned in Remi’s direction, saw her, and began to tug at his sling to lift it over his head to free his rifle, but Sam was beside the man too quickly and pressed his gun to the man’s head. Remi stepped closer, grasped the sling, and took the rifle away from him. Without warning, Sam hooked his left arm around the man’s neck from behind in a choke hold and held it until he lost consciousness. Sam and Remi each took an ankle and dragged the man into the nearby woods. Sam took the man’s pants and put them on, then put on the man’s straw hat. Remi held the rifle and watched the trucks while Sam took the man’s shirt, tore it, and used it to tie and gag him, then bind him to a tree.