Lamia settled herself on the ground. She curled her legs beneath her and off to one side just like the Maya women she saw scattered about the compound, all of whom were either weaving, pounding maize, cooking, or endlessly patting tortillas into shape – and pretending not to watch the gringos, and, in particular, the gringa with the damaged cheek.
Lamia flashed a look at Sabir. There was a hunted expression on her face he had never seen there before.
‘What do you think they are going to do with us?’
Sabir squatted down beside her, his eyes fixed on the two guards standing at the edge of the clearing, their rifles at the ready. ‘Between you and me, they can do anything they want. Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody gives a damn about us. They could kill us and bury us somewhere in this endless scrubland and no one would be any the wiser. Then all they’d have to do would be to strip down the Grand Cherokee and ship it over to Guatemala. We changed our dollars into pesos on the US side of the border, Lamia, and we paid cash all the way down for everything we bought, including gas, food, and accommodation. It seemed like a heck of a good idea at the time. As a result there’s no official record of us anywhere beyond Brownsville.’
‘I don’t think they’ll do what you suggest. Acan is a nice boy. He’s not a killer.’
‘I don’t think so either.’
Lamia let out a heavy sigh. She was clearly grateful that Sabir was agreeing with her. ‘What have they done with Calque?’
‘They’ve got him over the other side of the clearing. He’s probably eating something. Or perhaps the priests are putting on his skin like a cloak and eating him? Christ, maybe I got it all wrong, and we’re next for the pot after all?’
Lamia threw a handful of dirt at him. She laughed in delight when he lost his balance trying to dodge it, and went sprawling.
Sabir stood up and made a great play out of shaking out his shirt. ‘I guess I deserved that. I never realized you were such a dangerous and impulsive woman.’ He grinned and resettled himself at the squat, pleased that he had triggered her change of mood.
‘Do you have any idea where we are?’
‘Yes, oddly enough, I do. On the way here I saw a sign that said Ek Balam. And there’s a pyramid over there. Can you see it? Just peeking through the trees. So it seems we’re at or near the site, which, if I remember correctly, is situated a few miles north of the main Cancun turnpike, just up from Valladolid. Frankly, they don’t seem too worried about us knowing where we are.’
‘That might mean that they don’t need to bother themselves with what we know because they’re going to kill us anyway. Maybe you were right in the first place?’
‘Yeah. And maybe the cup’s half empty, and never half full. No, Lamia. I think we’ve set them a problem that they’re going to have to work out for themselves. You saw how they responded to the crystal skull? And now they’ve got this man with the book to deal with too. That’s quite enough for one day. I’m convinced these guys are bona fide Maya, and that they genuinely thought we were grave robbers or something, and simply stepped in to protect their holy sites. I’m trusting that Calque can straighten them out on that angle. He’s good at that sort of thing.’
‘And my brothers and sisters?’
Sabir threw back his head as though he’d been slapped. ‘Let’s hope that they did indeed lose us back there near Jaltipan.’
‘Have you any reason to suppose that they didn’t?’
‘No. None whatsoever. But I wouldn’t like to imagine how far they’d go to get their hands on the skull and the book. The minute you bring firearms into an equation, like these Maya have, all rational judgement flies out the window. People behave like animals. I’m not so dumb that I don’t realize that if it came to a fight between these people and the Corpus, the Corpus would win hands down. That the way you read it?’
Lamia nodded. Here eyes were like dark wells within the paler framework of her face.