The Sphinx Scrolls Read online

  ‘Quite, quite. Anyway, he only found the one part of it. When he showed the stone to the natives they covered their faces and chucked him out of their village. A bit inconvenient, actually, as he’d just married one of the ladies and hadn’t got round to the interesting bit.’

  Her eyes rolled. He sensed her frustration. He had been wittering on in his characteristic style, side-stepping the need to cause offence and send her home. He longed to give her something to make her journey worthwhile; Stiperstones Manor was over a hundred miles from London, and he couldn’t bear to be on the receiving end of the acerbic tongue that would inevitably lash in his direction when she realised he had behaved in a fashion unbefitting their long friendship. And yet he was powerless. She could not be permitted to take the stele. He would have to insult her and take the forthcoming verbal abuse on his diminutive chin.

  ‘Bilbo wore many quills down to their stumps in recounting the legends of the indigenous – no, that’s the offensive one, isn’t it – savages,’ he continued, attempting to focus her attention on the diary, still incapable of unleashing any perceptible malevolence. ‘The Mayan long count predicts the date the world will end, or be reborn, or wotnot, but it doesn’t say how or why or whether you need to hide in the cupboard under the stairs to survive. Bilbo writes about the legends of the stelae, and their power to counteract the doomsday stuff.’

  ‘You don’t look very comfy on that sofa.’

  Had she said that with a hint of suspicion? He couldn’t tell.

  ‘You have no idea,’ he replied, wondering if the cold stone beneath him would give him the type of complaint about which he preferred not to complain. ‘Listen, old wombat, let’s retire to the library for a glass of something civilised. Take the diary to the museum instead.’

  ‘Ratty, I came for the stele, not the diary. Why invite me to take it if you don’t know where it is?’

  ‘To be fair, it wasn’t a formal solicitation.’ A knot tied itself in his stomach.

  ‘Can’t a girl surprise an old friend?’ She sounded hurt. His ungallant attack was working, although it pained him more than she.

  ‘Like the way you surprised me by running off when we went on that date at uni?’ he asked her.

  The coldness with which he was compelled to treat her was tearing at his soul, more wounding to him than the limestone protrusion beneath his posterior. Ruby was the only person in the world capable of putting a smile on his gaunt face just by showing up in his life. She did not deserve this.

  ‘Tell me about the inscriptions on the stele,’ she said after a pause in the officious tone she normally reserved for addressing unruly students at a dig. ‘Are they Mayan glyphs?’

  ‘Yes. Such a limited canon,’ said Ratty, permitting himself a few moments of amiability. ‘One can’t develop much of a library when every syllable needs to be engraved laboriously in obsidian.’

  ‘Was the other part of the stele ever found?’

  ‘Goodness, look at the time,’ he spluttered, looking at the part of his arm where his watch would be had he not been forced by his new-found poverty to trade it for a hamper of food. Ruby’s stern expression made him fidget. ‘How is that charming American gentleman caller of yours?’ he squeaked. ‘Had an apostle’s name, as I recall. Luke? No, Matthew. Matthew Mountebank. Yes, it was Matthew, wasn’t it? Not exactly Saint Matthew, as far as one can tell from his broadcasts. Pity your soldier boy couldn’t stop those brigands from pilfering those Sphinx scrolls.’

  ‘His name’s Matt. And never mind him. You’re hiding something, Ratty. I know you too well.’

  ‘Fiddle-faddle and twaddle,’ he replied, vainly hoping such a robust rebuttal would be the end of the matter. ‘Let’s go downstairs. You first. And do take Bilbo’s diary.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ She thrust the diary at his face like an apoplectic lover who had just discovered an affair described within the pages. Then her tone softened, to Ratty’s enormous relief, to one of raw disappointment. ‘I was really shaken up by what happened in Egypt, Ratty, and I was looking forward to seeing you. I was thinking about how your eyes have shone so brightly whenever I’ve surprised you over the years. I expected your face to light up as you opened the door, but you’re treating me like a stranger. You’ve wasted my time. I just hope you’re not planning to do anything with that stele that I might make you regret.’

  The smile with which he attempted to contradict her accusation was unconvincing, merely serving to display his very aristocratic teeth – uneven and slightly yellow. She pocketed the diary and headed for the door with body language that made no secret of her foul mood.

  Finally able to relieve himself of the discomfort of sitting on the stele, Ratty stood up and self-consciously peeked inside his blazer wherein sat the letter from Guatemala that was simultaneously the solution to his problems and their inception.

  Monday 19thNovember 2012

  The airport terminal felt like a refuge from the fighting and destruction in the city – which had sometimes skirted close enough to Ruby’s hotel for staccato gunfire to be audible from her room. The consequences of the battle were visible everywhere today: closed shops, cabs not running, empty streets.

  She collected the ticket left for her at the airline desk by her new UNESCO boss – a curiously annoying and frequently absent man called Paulo Souza, who in Ruby’s opinion had so far displayed remarkably little competence for his role heading up the protection of Guatemala’s heritage. The agent at the ticket desk informed her that her flight was delayed by three hours. She slumped onto a steel bench, pulled out a map of her destination and spread it over her knees, noting the positions of many unexcavated Mayan pyramids that could be at risk of looting if the country’s political instability deepened. With the meagre resources of her department – Paulo Souza hadn’t yet allocated her an office and none of the vital scanning equipment had so far arrived – the treasures of the Mayan world faced a desperate future. She bowed her head in frustration.

  It was then that a shadow fell over the map. She looked up.

  He was a slender man of indeterminate age: thinning white hair, safari jacket, beige slacks. He held a panama hat while mopping his brow. His pale, colourless eyes looked at her shrewdly.

  ‘The map looks old,’ he remarked.

  ‘Um, er, hello,’ said Ruby, thinking how odd it was that a stranger should engage her in her own language. ‘Do I look so English, or have we met before?’

  ‘You have a slight look of Marks and Spencer’s about you,’ her new companion murmured. ‘But perhaps the superior Marble Arch branch, not some provincial outlet.’ He spoke perfect English, but with a very slight foreign inflection that owed little, or nothing, to Central America. For the moment, Ruby couldn’t place it.

  Don’t speak to strangers, Ruby told herself. Especially strange men. And yet there was something about him that had already won her confidence. Perhaps it stemmed from the simple context of a friendly approach against the background of a locked-down city at war with itself.

  She stood up.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘My name is Otto,’ he stated. ‘Doctor Otto.’ He straightened his jacket, then pulled out his sleeves, and then straightened his jacket again.

  ‘I’m Ruby. Ruby Towers,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Doctor Ruby Towers.’ She added, ‘Of archaeology, that is. Nothing useful like medicine.’ She waited for him to shake her hand, but his was not forthcoming. She retracted hers. Dr Otto laughed briefly, a tiny, rusty sound as if it was a rare occurrence.

  ‘You would be surprised how useful archaeology can be, right now, even here,’ he said. ‘Doctor Towers –’

  ‘Ruby, please. I always think it’s best to be informal when one’s been dodging bullets all morning.’

  ‘Quite. Ruby, then. Actually, I have been waiting for you. I hope you will not be offended if I comment that you are younger than I expected.’

  ‘Younger? I’m the wrong side of, ahem, thirty. How did yo
u know I was here?’

  ‘Señor Souza told me you would be here this morning.’

  ‘Paulo Souza? From the UN?’

  Otto appeared thrown by the second part of her question. He adjusted his sleeves again.

  ‘Er, yes, Paulo Souza.’

  ‘Are you with the UN too?’

  ‘I have an, er, affiliation. Listen, your flight is delayed considerably. Perhaps that is to our mutual advantage as there is someone I wish you to meet concerning Mayan antiquities. Would you mind coming with me for an hour?’

  She didn’t need to think about it. If she could make one small contribution towards the conservation of Mayan relics rather than sitting uselessly in an airport, she had to do it.

  He held out his hand, but when he recoiled as she moved hers towards him, she realised that he was only pointing the way. He seemed asexual, a dry academic, perhaps more comfortable with a book than with a companion. Without wasting breath on more words, he led her at a brisk trot out of the airport entrance directly to the parking lot.

  The grey S-class Mercedes was too wide for the faded markings that defined its parking space, and the proximity of the adjacent cars made impossible the kind of elegant ingress that such a vehicle deserved. Ruby hugged the door as she squeezed clumsily around it to get in. As she did so she noticed that the window glass was at least an inch thick.

  ‘It is the S Guard model,’ explained Otto as he slid himself into the driving seat. ‘Bullet-proof glass, armoured body panels. I have no reason to fear guns, grenades or bombs.’

  ‘Any other day I’d have said you’re paranoid. Today it makes perfect sense.’

  She closed the door and felt secure, cocooned from the turbulent city. From within the protective shell of this car, the towers of smoke that indicated ongoing skirmishes between the army and the guerrilla fighters seemed unreal. With little traffic on the streets Otto reached his destination in minutes. He stopped the car, pulling backwards and forwards several times until it was parked perfectly parallel to the kerb. He climbed out and walked round to open Ruby’s door. As she stood up he held out his hand once again, but she knew by now that it was not for her to hold.

  ‘Follow me.’ He tipped his head towards the grand entrance of a detached colonial building. Two short, bulky men in black suits leaned against the pillars on either side of the door, one fiddling with his headset like a bouncer outside a nightclub, the other impatiently looking at his watch. Ruby was not disturbed by the presence of these men, but she was terrified by what was adjacent to the house. Or, rather, what was no longer adjacent. The almost perfectly circular sinkhole was eerily tubular with vertical sides. The neighbouring colonial villa had simply vanished, sucked deep into the earth, but miraculously most of Otto’s property was unaffected. A section of his garden wall protruded over the edge, suspended on air. A length of concrete sidewalk also appeared to have nothing supporting it. Severed cables dangled downwards, and water dribbled from a snapped pipe. There was no sign of the bottom of this pit; the sun’s angle was not yet high enough to illuminate its nadir.

  ‘Sorry, Otto,’ she said, clinging to the car. ‘I don’t think it’s safe to go near a sinkhole.’

  The air above them whistled, ripped apart by a high velocity round. The two men in black winced, and then tried to pretend they hadn’t. A window on a distant office building disintegrated, glass tinkling to the street.

  ‘Please, Ruby, it is perfectly safe,’ explained Otto, staring at her with unblinking eyes. ‘This city is built upon soft volcanic soils. Sometimes underground rivers create chambers that collapse and cause sinkholes. This one appeared yesterday. No one was hurt.’ He put his hand over his mouth as he continued, ‘A structural engineer has already surveyed my home. There is nothing to worry about.’ He returned his hand to his side and led the way into the tenebrous cool of the building, nodding respectfully to the two men as they opened the door for him.

  There was a jug of iced water. There were cakes. There was an electric fan whirring above them. Hardback volumes lined three of the walls from floor to ceiling, extensive collections arranged by genre: History, Cultural Arts, Modern and Ancient Languages, Medicine, Science and – most significantly – an entire wall dedicated to the writings of humanity’s greatest philosophers. Here, Aristotle and Plato dominated the shelf space over lesser thinkers. There were also deep luxurious cushions, tapestries, and ornate but clearly tasteful furniture. And there, in the middle of this room, was a man, sitting rather melodramatically in deep shadow behind a weighty Victorian desk on which an object the size of a small bicycle wheel sat beneath a loose shroud.

  Otto poured a glass of water and handed it to Ruby, then straightened the jug so that its handle lined up with the edge of the table. While she downed the water in one great grateful gulp, the man in the olive green leather captain’s chair on the other side of the desk wriggled out of the shadows into the light, an expression of utter terror upon his face.

  ‘Ruby? What on earth are you doing here, old fruit bat?’

  ‘I’d ask the same, but something tells me I already know the answer, Ratty.’

  Otto raised an exceptionally pale eyebrow. Ratty, indeed. These Brits were sometimes unfathomable. He dragged a chair over for her, aligning it carefully with the desk. Ruby sat down, unconsciously nudging the chair away from its perpendicular alignment. Otto grimaced as if hearing fingernails on a blackboard. He slid the cakes into neat rows as if to compensate for the chair. Ruby was momentarily distracted by his little habits, but her mind swiftly returned to this unexpected encounter with an old friend.

  ‘It seems you’re making a habit of visiting me unannounced,’ declared Ratty with a voice from which all confidence had been stripped.

  ‘Don’t you start that,’ she countered firmly. ‘I had no idea you’d be here. Doctor Otto invited me on an archaeological matter.’

  ‘You said you’d bring your government’s top scientific expert chappy to carry out the verification, Otto,’ whispered Ratty, even though the Doctor was further away than Ruby. ‘You never mentioned it was a chap-ess.’

  ‘Verification?’ she echoed.

  Ratty slowly pulled the shroud away from the object it had been covering on the desk, watching her eyes as he did so for any warning signs of an imminent explosive outburst.

  ‘I believe you were hoping to see this spiffing little how’s-your-father before, Ruby.’

  ‘Doctor Towers, I have brought you here today to verify that this stele is of genuine Mayan antiquity,’ declared Otto, stepping forward and picking up a bundle of papers from the desk. ‘I wish to purchase it from Lord Ballashiels on behalf of my client. Please take a close look at it. In order to release the funds, and for insurance purposes, I need your verification of these importation documents to prove that it is not a fake.’

  She said nothing during the full minute that she glared at Ratty. Otto cleared his throat in frustration at Ruby’s uncharacteristic silence.

  ‘Don’t you have anything to say, old wingding?’ Ratty asked. Ruby was staring intently into Ratty’s eyes, her expression fixed in unyielding disapproval. He squirmed uncomfortably – only slightly more than he squirmed when he was comfortable. ‘Jolly good. Well, no hurry.’

  ‘What do you already know about it?’ Ruby eventually asked, turning to Otto.

  Otto appeared affronted at this question. The mild contortion of his facial muscles suggested that whatever he knew about the stele was not her concern.

  ‘I have considerable knowledge,’ he whispered.

  ‘Such as?’ she pushed.

  ‘It is one of a pair of stelae.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Their glyphs must be read together.’

  ‘What happened to the other part?’

  Otto’s patience was stretched further with every impertinent question.

  ‘The other was discovered by a German archaeologist in eighteen eighty-nine.’

  ‘Do you have it?’

  ‘It is
in the possession of my client, yes. He would like to reunite the pair.’

  ‘And your client is?’

  ‘My client is anonymous.’

  ‘And rich?’

  ‘He is a man of means.’

  ‘So this is nothing to do with the UN?’

  He stepped towards her, holding out the documents.

  ‘Enough. I asked you a simple question, Doctor Towers. Is this stele a genuine Mayan artefact? If so, please sign this certification form.’

  Ignoring him, Ruby threw a vicious stare at Ratty. This was precisely the scenario she feared. Countless Mayan sites and relics had already been devastated by looting. With thousands of unexcavated temples still lost in the rainforests of Central America there was no way to stop the ongoing desecration, but the thought of losing something of potentially global significance to a faceless black market collector made her livid.

  ‘Could Ratty and I have a minute in private, please, Otto?’ she asked, secretly almost enjoying the dread creeping across Ratty’s face at the prospect of being left to face her wrath alone.

  Otto bowed his head in frustrated subservience and exited the room.

  ‘It takes a lot to keep a home like mine from falling down,’ confessed Ratty in a voice that seemed to beg for mercy. ‘One does what one can with the resources one has, but there isn’t much lolly left in the old coffers. The casinos have not been kind to my forebears.’

  ‘I know times are hard, but you told me you were selling some antiques. And I offered to help you sell the stele to the British Museum. I never thought you’d sink this low.’

  ‘You said the museum couldn’t pay much. And then the bank started repossession thingies. They said if I don’t repay my debts by the end of the month I’ll lose the manor. And then Doctor Otto came forward with an offer that was too good to resist. Actually he rather made it clear that resistance was not an option, in any case. He appears to have friends in low places.’