Max found a hole-in-the-wall cafe. Barely large enough for a couple of tables, it offered milk shakes and sandwiches the size of a brick.
He checked his phone-a single text message: two letters.
MW
That was Sayid’s signal. Max had told him not to phone but to leave a message on the networking site DTYP-Don’t Tell Your Parents-and drop the information that Max needed into that. If anyone was going to start digging through Max’s computer, which he was sure the authorities would already be examining, then they wouldn’t find much. Except, of course, the information he had downloaded on Lionel Blacker, PhD, senior lecturer in South American studies at the University of Oxford: the man who had visited Dartmoor High and given the lecture on khipus.
It was only a matter of time before a trail to the Oxford lecturer would be picked up. How long did Max have? The man he wanted to speak to was a block away. It was dark now, and he needed somewhere to sleep, but he couldn’t afford anywhere in the city. If everything went according to plan over the next few hours, he would get to the airport and sleep on a bench.
“Is there an Internet cafe anywhere around here?” he asked the woman from behind the counter who was fastidiously cleaning his table.
“Two streets left, scruffy place, on the corner.”
Skunk Alley was the name of the Internet cafe. There were ten computers sitting on grubby Formica tops, and it cost a couple of pounds to access his webmail. The girl at the till had a glaze across her eyes that told Max she might have been inhaling more than the city’s car fumes.
MW. Magician’s Web. That was what held the information. He clicked on the exploding star logo, settled the headphones on his ears and saw Sayid’s face appear.
His friend was agitated. The connection wasn’t great-Sayid’s features flickered and the audio faltered-but it gave Max everything he needed to know.
“Tickets are booked just like you asked. There are two file attachments I’ve put with this vid. An MI-Five agent came and questioned us. She was horrible. Her name’s Charlie Morgan. She’s young, short black hair, purple and red tufts, stud in her nose, Goth jewelry. Looks like she could go undercover in a zombie film. Scary. She threatened me and Mum.”
Max said a silent apology to his friend. Sayid and his mother had suffered enough at the hands of extremists. He hated the thought that a British agent would stoop to that kind of questioning, but that was the real world, not some kind of fantasy computer game. That was what grown-ups did-came on so heavy you couldn’t fight them.
“So I gave them your laptop. Everything else just as you planned. The man you wanted to see is expecting you tonight. I phoned him. He’s cool. Seems a nice bloke. I did those letters you wanted-they were on your laptop when they took it.” Sayid gazed at the webcam. Max could almost feel his concern as his friend pushed his face closer, as if whispering. “Max, Mr. Jackson is really upset. He thinks he’s let you down by not keeping you here. I haven’t said anything-I can’t, can I? Because if I do, Morgan will blackmail me, yeah? I told him I knew nothing about you cracking the safe. I’ll play dumb. Don’t worry.” Sayid fell silent for a moment. “Max, I don’t know if any of this is gonna work. They could be waiting for you.” He nodded, gave a brave smile and a thumbs-up. Then he reached out and switched off the webcam.
Now all Max had to do was get to the man who was expecting him and who, he hoped, could decipher the khipu.
Max felt a surge of hope and excitement. He was sure he would learn more about Danny Maguire and how the dead boy could have known about his mum.
Charlie Morgan broke every speed limit to get to Oxford. A few well-placed phone calls had cleared her path down the motorways. Frustrated traffic cops watched her blitz by but grudgingly acknowledged they didn’t have a car fast enough to catch her. Traffic cameras would pick up her plate, and the courts could decide whether anyone was above the law or not. It had to be something important, though, for such a high-level clearance.
She parked the bike and made her way toward the pillars, flashing her warrant card at the security guard on the main door.
The boy was obviously after answers. Professor Blacker had visited Dartmoor High and given them a lecture on khipus. She would wait in the library. Blacker didn’t have to know anything more than that they were looking for a runaway boy. And when Max Gordon turned up, she would be there. She wasn’t going to risk losing him-it appeared he was a tough little rat.
Max angled his way through the narrow lanes. He had checked the city street map earlier, but the crisscrossing alleyways still caught him out. He needed a quick fix on his direction. He looked up to the rooftops. Television satellite dishes in the UK point south. He was on track. Moments later he found the small Museum Street, and at the end of it was the imposing building he was searching for. The huge pillars proclaimed the building’s status-a seat of civilization and knowledge.
There were still people about, even though it was getting late. He took his time, found a darkened area behind one of the huge pillars and looked around. Security guards lingered at the main entrance, a few tourists huddled in small groups and academic-looking types flitted across the main yard toward the east end of the building. That was where the offices were. Was the man he’d come to see in there?
He unfolded the city tourist map. There were more than thirteen acres of buildings, and the place he wanted was not shown. He did not have time to search for it. They would be closing the doors to the public in less than half an hour. Max approached a security guard.
“I’m looking for the Anthropology Library,” he said.
The man, used to questions all day, simply nodded, pointing through the huge main doors. “Across the central hall, through room twenty-four, down the north stairs. It’s there. And it’s about to close,” he warned.
Max was already moving. A massive Roman lion built of stone, standing meters high, guarded the entrance. Maybe it once stood at the gates of the Colosseum, watching bloody fights to the death. He moved into the building’s central hall. It was vast, the size of Wembley Stadium. Max hoped there were no modern-day gladiators waiting to attack him.
The skeleton framework forty meters above his head supported the glass ceiling, but the opaque glass now stopped any semblance of city lights coming through. A honeycomb roof, trapping everyone below. Max felt like a worker bee desperately trying to complete his task. Huge wooden doors stood open before him. Other side rooms were being closed by the security staff, heavy chains and padlocks rattling through handles, securing interleading glass doors. Max lengthened his stride. He dared not miss this meeting. He ran through the gallery, past the exhibition cases. The room was labeled LIVING AND DYING. He hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.
Max found the north stairs. The last few tourist stragglers were making their way out of the building’s rear entrance. Another security guard stood ready to lock up. Max had left it too late. The glass doors to the library were on his left and they were locked. Max rattled them. A keypad was the only way in. There were still lights on inside, but no sign of anyone.
“Hey!” the security guard called. “It’s closed.”
“I have to see someone. I have an appointment. He’s expecting me.”
“Not at this time of night, son. C’mon. Think you’d better be off.”
Desperation triggered a surge of energy. Max rattled the glass doors, pushed his face against the slim join between them and shouted into the book-filled room. “Please! It’s Max Gordon! I must speak to you!”
“All right! That’s enough.” The security guard moved quickly toward him. A shadow appeared behind Max. An older man, wispy hair unkempt, wearing a rather dilapidated jacket over a faded cardigan, unlocked the door.
“Evening, Freddie,” he said to the guard. “My fault. Entirely my fault. I was expecting this young man.” He waved the guard away in gentle dismissal. As he ushered Max into the library, Max noticed there were crumbs clinging to his front; some lay captured by the spectacles hanging from a cord round his neck.
“I was just having an Eccles cake and a cup of tea while perusing an extremely boring unpublished manuscript on the elongated shape of Mayan heads. The writer thought such deformed heads indicated they were originally extraterrestrials. Any fool knows they bound their children’s heads to misshape them.” He brushed a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “I was expecting you, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, sir. My name is Max Gordon, and I wanted to talk about Danny Maguire.”
The old man straightened up. Any guise of dreamy forgetfulness suddenly cleared from his eyes.
“And you have brought the khipu with you?” he asked eagerly.
Charlie Morgan watched Professor Blacker stack manuscripts and files into the crook of his arm. He switched off the library lights and made his way to the door where she waited.
“I think you may have wasted your time, Officer,” Blacker told her as he clicked the door closed. “I doubt this boy you’re looking for is coming here. Certainly not tonight.”
“And he has made no contact with you?” Morgan said.
“None. Bit of a wild-goose chase by the sound of it. Well, I’d better be off. Papers to mark before tomorrow. Good night.”
Morgan gnawed her lip. Max Gordon would have been here by now.
“He’s fooled us,” she muttered to herself. “He’s laid a false trail. Where is he?” She called after Blacker, “Professor, is there another academic who might know about khipus?”
London groaned and coughed with the millions of people who lived, worked and visited. Dozens of languages whispered in the back alleys, called to friends, shouted in argument or promised undying love to another.
But where Max sat in the Anthropology Library of the British Museum, all was quiet. The museum had closed; the lights had flickered down, leaving shadows of giant statues watching blindly over the great halls.
Sayid had done his homework, just as Max had asked. He’d hacked into the school’s mainframe computer and found the man who had sponsored Danny Maguire’s request to spend a couple of years in South America: Dr. Raymond Miller, curator of South American ethnography at the British Museum.
When the efficient and threatening Ms. Morgan had swept quickly through Max’s files at Dartmoor High, she had seen no mention of the curator’s name. It had been tucked away in a cyber-vault by a fourteen-year-old boy who felt a warm glow at getting his own back.
“Khipus are devilishly difficult to decipher,” Dr. Miller said as he fingered the knotted cords. “Some of them are the size of grass skirts. Huge things. The main cords can often be five or six meters long. Specialists have spent years and years getting to grips with the messages they hold. But this one …” His fine-boned fingers teased the cords apart. “This is quite simple. It is, I should say, not genuine, but made, I am sure, by our young friend Danny Maguire.”
“Then he was trying to tell me something,” Max said.
“It is crude and amateurish, but that is not a criticism. It is a fact. One could expect little else, but it was a clever thing to do. Young Maguire must have known there were people wanting this information-why, we cannot say-so he did his best. Bless him. I liked that boy.”
Max could barely restrain his impatience. The academic was taking so long to tell him anything, but he did not want to rush the elderly man, desperately hoping his knowledge would be the key.
Dr. Miller rambled on about how a khipu’s main cord was always thicker than the pendants tied on to it. How the different knots meant different things, how the colors dyed into the knots were significant. Come on! Tell me! Max shouted in his head, but sat on his hands in case his irritation began to show.
Fancy loops and dangles, entwined knots and subsidiary cords all made up a fascinating and confusing intricacy from an ancient people who were thought to be illiterate. Not so, Dr. Miller assured him. Finally he gave a sigh and a grunt of understanding at what lay between his fingers. He pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. He looked at Max and saw the boy’s controlled agitation.
“Forgive me. I’ve been going on, haven’t I? I’m sure you don’t want an anthropological explanation of khipus’ origins. This is important to you; I can see that. Look here, these knots are stained red. Traditionally that means ‘soldiers’ or ‘armed men.’ The arithmetic is simple. Each knot means ten; joined knots like these three mean thirty. Thirty armed men-here.” He fingered another knot. “A temple. These other knots denote men and women. These mean clusters of children. Or so it would seem. One can never be certain. Khipus guard their knowledge like sacred secrets.”
Max tried to picture the message in his head. Armed men near a temple where there were women and children. Though it seemed the children were separate. What did this have to do with his mum?
“Danny was trying to tell me something about my mother. But she was nowhere near Peru, where Danny was studying. She was in Central America.”
“Is this about your mother?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s dead.”
Dr. Miller grunted. “Oh, I see.”
Max pulled out the photos taken of his mother in the rain forest. “These are the only clues I have.”
The professor settled his glasses and quickly thumbed through the pictures, then handed them back to Max. “Right, come on. I’ll show you something.”
He ushered Max back into the corridor, up the stairs that led out onto Montague Street and through the room Max had crossed to get to the library. It was dark now, except for the exhibits’ distorted shadows looming grotesquely up the walls.
The interleading doors to each of the galleries left Max’s head spinning. He was losing all sense of direction. Even though he followed Dr. Miller’s rapid footsteps, it felt as though he was being led into a labyrinth. A moment of regret tugged at him. He wished he’d picked up a museum map from the visitors’ desk. Don’t go blindly into a place of danger. Wherever possible, know your ground-Dad’s words as he once pointed out a difficult route on a map. That’s what maps are for. Max’s thoughts swirled. His dad hadn’t needed a map when he ran away and left his wife to die!
Dr. Miller stopped. Breathless, he tapped his chest. “Indigestion. Too many cakes,” he said, then fumbled a small bunch of keys. The doors to the next room were bolted by a heavy-duty chain and padlock. Max heard a movement behind him as the clanking chains rattled through the door handle. A shaft of light caught them both like animals blinded on a country road.
“Hey!” a voice commanded. “What the hell are you doing?” The torchlight barely wavered as the figure moved quickly toward them. Dr. Miller turned. Waved and rattled his keys.
“It’s Dr. Miller. I need to get into room twenty-seven for a few moments. Sorry to disturb you.”
The night security guard was right next to them but refused to take his torch from Miller’s face until he was certain of the curator’s identity. Finally he lowered the beam.
“You should tell us when you’re working late, Dr. Miller,” the man said officiously. “I’ll have to make a note of this in the log.”
“Of course you will. Quite right too. Don’t worry, we won’t be long. Good night to you.”
There was no mistaking Dr. Miller’s dismissal. The man turned away, switched off his torch and faded back into the shadows.
“They get a little jumpy at night. Imagination is what does it mostly. Things tend to take on a life of their own. I don’t blame them, of course. I’ve worked late here myself and definitely seen statues shift position.”
“You’re not serious?” Max asked.
“That depends on one’s imagination.”
There was sufficient light to see the old man’s face crinkle into a smile. He pushed open the doors and led the way into a room full of Central American artifacts.
Max gazed into the emerald-green eyes of a black beast. Misshapen, but unmistakably a big cat, it glared back as if Max had just come face to face with the black jaguar in the dense undergrowth of the rain forest.
It was an ancient carving hewn from black volcanic rock. The ragged edges gave the beast a sense of movement, as if its fur was being brushed by the breeze or a low-lying branch. The open jaws displayed white bone teeth, carved to match the shape of incisors and canines. It was powerful and ferocious. It loomed, ready to strike, ears flattened, fixing its glare on him.
The dim light in the room seemed to fade even more. Max smelled the musky cat fur and the carnivore’s stale breath, and heard the resonant growl from somewhere deep within the predator’s chest. It was frightening. Frightening and glorious. Max felt the sigh escape from his lips as he reached forward and touched the beast’s flanks.
A part of Max ran free. Claws dug into the bole of a tree, and a canopy of stars beckoned above the treetops.
“Max?”
Dr. Miller’s voice returned the statue to its role as lifeless guardian of the room’s treasures.
The showcases around three of the four walls were lit, while on the fourth, stone fresco slabs, intricately carved with figures, were frozen in a silent, macabre dance of bloodletting.
“Those are Mayan kings and queens, making sacrifices to their gods.”
He stepped farther into the room. Max faltered, his hand drawn to touch the rough stonework, as if willing the storyboard to unfold through his fingertips. A loud buzzing alarm startled him. Yanking his hand away, the sound stopped immediately.
“Electronic beams scan those lintels,” Dr. Miller said. “They’re ancient, so we can’t have every child on a school tour rubbing their hands over them, can we? But never mind those for a moment. Now, where are we … yes, here.”
In the exhibit’s half-light, he pointed out the history of the Mexican and Central American people. Different colors stained the map as Miller walked around the room, following history. He stopped. “The Maya-250 BC to AD 1000.”
Max gazed past his reflection in the glass and pressed his hand against it. It felt like a contact between him and his mother. She was there, still there, among all those marks and symbols on the ancient map.
Dr. Miller spread out the khipu on an exhibit’s plinth.
Max heard movement somewhere deep in the silence. “I heard something, back there,” he whispered.
Dr. Miller took his attention away from the knotted cords. A questioning look.
“A flat, dull sound. I don’t know what it was,” Max said, unable to identify the muffled movement he had heard.
They listened for a moment longer, but it was silent. Dr. Miller turned back to the map. “It will be one of the night security people. Now, see here,” he said, ignoring the fact that Max stayed focused on the channels of darkness reaching into the endless halls. His instincts prickled. The sounds were a whispering movement. Not the almost-silent tread of a bored man on night duty whose long hours stretched out before him. These were like rushes of air across the cold, hard surface of the museum’s floor, like rats’ whispers.
Instinct warned him to stay alert, but he knew it could also be his imagination-he hoped. He forced himself to concentrate on what Dr. Miller was looking at on the map. The narrow strip of land between South America and Mexico was pockmarked with symbols.
Dr. Miller carried on without further hesitation. “Here. This is where Danny Maguire passed through on his way to Mexico. He contacted me several months ago, said he had reached the ancient ruins of Lord Shield Jaguar, who is the king shown on that stone lintel you touched.”
“Then Danny went into Central America? He wasn’t just in Peru?”
“Absolutely. I was quite concerned at the time. That isthmus is a well-worn path for drug smugglers from Colombia into Mexico and the United States. Danny was traveling off the beaten track, deep into the mountains and rain forest.”
Max felt something squeeze the air out of his chest. It was a swell of hope. “My mother died somewhere in the rain forest. Does that khipu tell us anything else? Like where exactly Danny might have traveled in the jungle?”
Miller winced. Perhaps his own enthusiasm to help Max would exceed the boy’s expectations. He hesitated, then shrugged. “I did say this was a crude example. A khipu is an information-storage device.”
“Like a computer,” Max said, remembering Sayid’s words.
“Yes. But if someone keys the wrong letters into a computer, then it will not make any sense. So these knots might be the same. Who knows what might have urged Danny to make up this message.”
“Dr. Miller. Please. Don’t you see? He was responding to my call for help for any information about my mum. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble if it wasn’t really important. I think Danny was killed because of something he witnessed or because of information he was given. But that bit of knotted string must have more information on it. He was there. Right there. Where Mum died.”
Max had raised his voice. He quieted, seeing the look of concern on the old man’s face. He lowered his voice. “I’m convinced Danny died trying to get this to me. I’ve already been attacked. Is there anything, anything else at all?”
Dr. Miller fingered the knots like Sayid fingered his misbaha, the prayer or worry beads inherited from his father.
“I can only speculate,” Miller finally said. “In truth, Max, I do not think this khipu has anything to do with your mother. There is nothing to suggest it. It has more to do with a state of affairs that is dangerous and involves children.”
He took Max’s hands and laid them on the khipu. “Close your eyes and feel the knots,” he said gently.
Max did as he was told. The man’s smooth palms brushed across the back of his hands and then lifted away. In his mind’s eye, Max saw the knots through his fingertips. In that moment of stillness, his mind caressed every fiber. Since he had received the khipu, he had been so focused on finding answers that he had not stopped and held the dead boy’s legacy.
There was a rhythm to the strands of cord. The looped and curled knots felt different from each other. The spaces between the knots and the lengths of each pendulum string felt like a pause in speech. It was deliberate. It carried meaning and inflection. But the mystery remained exactly that. He could have no hope of understanding.
Miller’s voice guided him like helping someone stumbling through a pitch-dark room. “That gap you feel there is, I think, a vast open tract of land. The curls and loops in the knots indicate disruption. Damage of some kind. Devastation. Perhaps now, perhaps then. I think it is near a volcano. Possibly the temple is near a volcano where the armed men are. I think there is also great fear.”
Max opened his eyes. The old man was gazing at the map, his finger hovering near the center of the land mass. “And your mother’s photographs could well have been taken in this area. There are pyramid temples hidden in the jungle there, and borders between the countries in the Yucatan Peninsula are imprecise. Those valleys and mountains in Belize and Guatemala, many of them are impenetrable. They’re dangerous areas where superstition and ancient beliefs can still hold sway.”
Miller turned to gaze at the stone lintel that depicted Lord Shield Jaguar pushing what looked like a needle through his tongue.
Body piercing was one thing; this was something else.
Miller sensed for the first time the seriousness of Max’s quest. “Blood sacrifice,” he whispered.
“Move!” Max yelled.
He pulled the startled Miller out of the grasp of the shadow that lunged from the darkness. A man dressed in black, eyes glaring, face covered by a balaclava, jumped at them.
Max realized too late that here was the source of the noises he’d heard earlier: the whispered rush of a search.
Dr. Miller fell. Max rolled across him to stop the harsh boot kick aimed at his head. The blow caught Max’s backpack. Hands snatched at him. He twisted and slid across the floor like a break-dancer.
“Help us!” he yelled. “In here! Help us!” He was already on his feet, desperate to find any weapon, but there was nothing. The shadow was coming for him. Max sidestepped, dug his shoulder into the man’s midriff and heard him grunt, but he knew from the hard muscle he’d made contact with that he’d barely caused the man any pain. It merely bought him a few seconds.
His attacker stumbled into the corner of a plinth. The man lost his balance, went down on the floor, rolled and came up ready to fight. But Max saw that the impact had injured his leg, and the man’s ragged breath told him he was hurting.
Max dived for one of the stone lintels, striking it with his fist. The alarm buzzed. Someone out there must hear that! He struck it again.
“In here!”
The man swung out at him. His fist connected with the backpack’s shoulder pad, but the shock wave tore into Max’s ligaments. Pain seared through his arm. He was lame. And defenseless. He went down, pushing himself backward across the floor as quickly as he could, trying to escape the onslaught.
His shoulders and neck hit the wall. Max felt the wave of agony suck him down into a whirlpool of blackness.
The last thing he saw was a jade-encrusted skull, cut-stone eyes gleaming madly, broken teeth leering at him.
Welcome to hell.