Age of Aztec

TWENTY-TWO

3 Rain 1 Movement 1 House

(Thursday 20th December 2012)

Mal Vaughn got the call at 4am. The phone next to her hotel bed rang shrilly and insistently. In the adjacent bed, fast asleep, Aaronson moaned and swore. Mal herself had been only drowsing. She groped for the phone in the dark and pressed the receiver to her ear.

“Vaughn.”

As the voice on the other end of the line spoke, Mal slowly sat up. Then she lunged for the bedside lamp switch.

“Really? You’re absolutely certain?”

“Whassat?” said Aaronson.

She shushed him. “Hold on,” she said into the phone. “Wait just a second.” She rummaged in the bedside table drawer for a pad of hotel stationery and a pen. “Give me the name of the town again.” She jotted it down. “And your name?” She jotted that down too. “You’re the arresting officer? The duty officer. Okay. Well, if he is who you say he is, Mr Necalli, then I reckon you and your whole station are in line for some kind of citation. I’ll be there as soon as I can. How far are you from Teotihuacan? What’s that in miles, about seventy? Give me an hour and a half, then. And don’t, whatever you do, let the slippery bastard out of your sight.”

She planted the receiver back down in its cradle. There was a look of something like elation on her face.

Aaronson propped himself up on his elbows. Beneath the bedcovers he was sporting a prominent morning glory that he did little to hide. Aaronson being who and what he was, an erection on him meant nothing to Mal, just a biological function. Besides, she’d already seen every bit of him, in every conceivable state, during the fortnight he and she had been travelling together to and fro across Anahuac. He was a remarkably immodest hotel room sharer.

“Look at you, boss. The cat that got the cream.”

“Ten fucking bowls of cream, with a mouse on top.”

“Another person’s seen him?”

“Better yet, he’s only gone and got himself arrested.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“In a town called Mixquiahuala. It’s north of here. Local Jaguars have him in the nick. Picked him up yesterday. Charge of vagrancy.”

“How are they sure it’s him?”

“Armour. Smug idiot had his armour on. Came wandering out of the rainforest, dressed as the Conquistador. Even carrying his sword.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I do, so let’s get dressed and on the road.”

“What, no breakfast?”

“It’s four in the ruddy morning. Nowhere’ll be open.”

Grumbling, and now beginning to wilt, Aaronson climbed out of bed and grabbed his clothes.

As she drove the hire car out of Teotihuacan, through prosperous adobe-built suburbs slumbering beneath a pearly grey pre-dawn sky, Mal reflected on the two and a half weeks gone by and the fragile trail of clues that had brought her and her sergeant all the way from London to the Land Between The Seas.

After the unmitigated farce that was her second attempt to bring Stuart Reston to book, Mal had been certain that summary execution lay just around the corner. No way was she going to be allowed to live, not after she’d had Reston in her grasp — chained up in the back of a paddy wagon, no less — and still managed to lose him. Never mind that it hadn’t been her fault. Never mind that she had been blindsided by Reston’s Mayan cronies. She’d had the man, had him, and he’d got away. No self-respecting Jaguar could screw up on so grand a scale and not expect to pay the penalty for it.

The two days she spent in hospital recuperating from a mild concussion were, she was sure, destined to be the last two days of her life. As soon as she was discharged and she reported back in for work, she would get the word from on high. Be in the quadrangle at midday sharp. Full dress uniform not compulsory but preferable. Serve her right, too. She had masterminded what she’d thought would be a textbook takedown, and it had degenerated into a total shambles, first with Reston leaping into the Thames, then with the Mayans ramming the paddy wagon side-on with their van. Net result for all her efforts? Eight Jaguars injured, including herself, most with cuts and contusions but a couple with broken bones. One paddy wagon written off. No villain in custody.

Oh, and she’d picked up a gruesome eye infection from the river water as well, which was going to take a while to fix with antibiotics.

All in all, execution was going to come as a relief. She wouldn’t have to live with her shame for long, or for that matter her sore, pus-gummed eyes.

When she tipped up at Scotland Yard on the morning of 13 House 1 Monkey, everyone shunned her. It was predictable, only to be expected. She was a pariah. Dead woman walking. Aaronson alone met her gaze and spoke to her more or less as normal. Even with him, though, there was awkwardness. He was too cheery, making too many forced jokes and studiously sidestepping any mention of the events of the previous Sunday.

But then, as the hours passed, a curious thing happened.

And the curious thing was that nothing happened.

No execution order. No summons from her superiors. Not even a message requesting Mal to deliver a full account of the arrest and the reasons why it went awry.

She wrote a report anyway, because protocol demanded it, and she filed it with the secretary of the commissioner, and she waited for the fury and derision to rain down from above.

It didn’t that day, and it didn’t the next.

And gradually it dawned on Mal that nobody knew what to do, nobody was sure how matters stood, because there was no new chief superintendent in place yet. The chain of command had a gap in it, and communication channels between upstairs and downstairs were open but for the time being in hiatus. As in any state of interregnum, caution was the watchword. Until the position left vacant by Kellaway was filled and the status quo was restored, it was better not to make any firm decisions or put forward any radical plans of action. Better simply to coast along, keep your head down, and wait for the situation to settle.

For Mal, this was something akin to a reprieve. It was at least a stay of execution, and she resolved to make the most of it.

First thing she did was go with Aaronson to the imposing Thames-side apartment complex Reston called home, with a view to searching his penthouse flat for a suit of Conquistador armour. A rabble of reporters was camped outside the building. At the sight of two Jaguar Warriors, a flurry of questions and camera flashes began. Mal’s response was to swan past, offering no comment beyond a through-the-teeth “Fuck off.”

Ordinarily a Jaguar was obliged to bring along a locksmith to effect non-destructive ingress to a property, and of course obtaining a warrant to search private premises beforehand was considered good manners. Mal wasn’t in the mood for such procedural niceties. In her view, Reston had forfeited his citizen’s rights, such as they were, long, long ago. So she kicked down the rather smart mahogany door — strong wood, weak hinges — and got busy ransacking.

In the event, it was Aaronson who discovered the secret panel at the back of the walk-in wardrobe. He had excellent spatial awareness, and something about the layout of the master bedroom bothered him: unless the flat was a very odd shape, it should have been four or five yards longer. A full-length wardrobe ran alongside the en suite bathroom, and the wall at the rear seemed unusually thin: more a partition than a wall.

His probing fingers triggered the hidden spring catch more by accident than design. When the panel slid open, he was so startled he squealed.

“Not the most manly sound I’ve ever heard,” Mal called out from the kitchen.

“Boss,” Aaronson said, in as gruff a voice as he could manage, “you should take a look at this.”

Mal went straight to the commissioner with her findings. She all but barged into his office, oblivious to the protestations of his secretary. She had come to settle things once and for all. The cloud of execution hung over her, shadowing her every step, and she was fed up. She wanted it gone. Failing that, she wanted it confirmed. She needed to know her fate either way.

Commissioner Brockenhurst was a distinguished-looking man with white hair, grey eyes, and a way of talking that some found kindly and others patronising. He had been a friend of His Very Holiness Seldon Whitaker since boyhood, pursuing parallel paths from Eton and Harrow to Oxford and Cambridge and from there into the priesthood and policing. They maintained a close working relationship and often weekended at each other’s country retreat with their families. To be in the same room as Brockenhurst was to be a heartbeat away from the very highest power in the land.

Brockenhurst, though irritated by Mal’s intrusion, heard her out. He told her he was impressed by her discovery of the armour and weapons cache at Reston’s, and also by her persistence. Most officers, having let a prominent felon slip through their fingers not once but twice, would retreat to a dark corner and await the inevitable disciplining. Her pluck and grit were to be commended.

However…

And it was a deep-breath, long-drawn-out, sighing “however.”

“His Very Holiness,” Brockenhurst said, “has asked for a line to be drawn under the whole Conquistador affair.”

“I’m sorry, sir, what did you just say?”

“You heard, chief inspector. The case goes on the back burner, with a lid on.”

Mal was stunned. “May I ask why?”

“I’m under no compunction to explain to you if I don’t want to, but I think you deserve it. The Conquistador has fled, who knows where to. I very much doubt he’ll be coming back. How can he? His identity has been compromised. His face is all over the newspapers and TV. As Stuart Reston, he can’t go anywhere, be seen anywhere, for fear of being recognised. He can never show himself in public again. His life as a British citizen is over. Therefore the danger from him as a masked vigilante is also over, at least to us. If he’s abroad, then he’s someone else’s problem.”

“But… but…” Mal stammered. “With all due respect, sir, how do we know that? How do we know he and his Mayan friends aren’t planning some new atrocity even as we speak, here, on British soil? While Reston is at large he remains a threat. You can’t expect him to give up this crusade of his. He’s an obsessive. He has an axe to grind with the Empire, and he won’t rest until it’s ground completely, or whatever it is people are supposed to do with axes.”

“Are you trying to be funny, Vaughn?”

“No, sir. I’m flabbergasted, that’s all. You’re telling me we’re just going to forget about the whole thing? All those priests and Jaguars dead, civilians too, and we’re going to carry on as if nothing happened?”

“The High Priest believes it would be easiest that way, and I’m minded to agree with him. If we keep harping on about Reston, keep worrying at the man and his actions, we run the risk of perpetuating what he did. His deeds will dominate the headlines long after they ought to. Whereas if we quietly let the matter drop, the Conquistador will soon be history. All anyone will remember about him is his ignominious, cowardly departure. His final act wasn’t to go down in a blaze of glory but to skulk away like a whipped dog, helped by others. We feed his reputation, and diminish ours, if we make a big show of continuing to chase him. This way the Conquistador slips quickly and quietly from the limelight, and life can carry on as before.”

“I’m having real trouble with this,” Mal said. “What about the Jaguar oath? ‘Never back down, never pull out.’ That means nothing?”

“I’d advise you not to take that tone with me, chief inspector. Your life already hangs by a very thin thread. What you must consider here, above all, is your own position, precarious as it is. The only reason you’re still breathing at this moment is because you were right about Reston. You fingered him as the Conquistador’s alter ego and you acted on your suspicions and you were damned unfortunate he got away from you. In the event, you achieved the next best result after catching him, and that’s scaring him off and making it impossible for him to return. Which is a win in my book. Don’t now jeopardise it all by pushing any further. Accept what you’re being handed, which amounts to a complete, unconditional pardon and the opportunity to start over with a clean slate. Few get a chance like this, especially after making such a godawful hash of things.”

“In other words, shut up and be grateful.”

“I wouldn’t put it so crudely myself, but yes. Perhaps you should also bear in mind that a senior position lies vacant and in dire need of being filled. The appointment of a new chief superintendent is entirely in my gift, and I would look favourably on a candidate who not only excels as a Jaguar but understands, too, how there are certain unavoidable compromises that must be made on the road to promotion.”

It was quite clear what the commissioner was offering, and just as clear that he was confident his words would mollify and appease.

Instead, Mal’s festering indignation simply grew. She knew she should keep it in check, but she just couldn’t. In a way she’d have preferred punishment — a good, honest death — to the prize that was being dangled in front of her, with its faint polluting whiff of bribery.

“So this has nothing to do with the fact that Reston’s one of your own?” she said in a steely hiss.

Brockenhurst’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon? Just what are you implying?”

“Posh boy. Society type. Right background. But for a twist of fate, could have been you, or even the High Priest.”

“Vaughn, I would strongly suggest you stop right there.”

“I bet you ran into him from time to time. At those fancy functions your lot go to. Maybe had a nice polite chat about the weather or the stock market while knocking back the champagne and canapes.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve never met Stuart Reston socially even once.”

“Still, he’s like you. Top of the heap. Cream of the crop. One of the cosy, gilded elite. Only, he went wrong, didn’t he? Snapped. Flipped out. And it scares you how easily he did. It makes you fear for your own loyalty to the Empire. His Very Holiness’s too.”

“Another word and I’ll have you on report.”

She should have heeded the warning, but she couldn’t, just couldn’t. Brockenhurst had asked her to do the one thing she was unable to: be less than the perfect Jaguar Warrior. It had cost her so much, in personal terms, to buy into the Jaguar ethos. The life of her own brother, indeed. If she doubted even for one second that the price had not been worth paying, then everything was lost. Ix’s death had been in vain.

“So let’s just sweep it under the carpet. Pretend it doesn’t matter. So what if Reston’s a mass murderer? If he’d been part of the hoi polloi, like me, then we’d stop at nothing to exterminate him like the scum he is. But because he’s establishment, he deserves special treatment.”

“How dare you — ”

“He deserves leniency, like all prodigals.”

“Out!” Brockenhurst roared. “Get out!”

“Don’t worry, I’m going,” Mal said.

“You are suspended,” the commissioner said, bent across his desk, finger jabbing as though he was trying to poke a hole in the fabric of space. “Effective immediately. And that is me being lenient on you, chief inspector. Very lenient. By every right, a subordinate who spoke to me like you just have ought at least to be sacked, if not worse. Go home, stay there, and come back only when I say so. Your pay will be suspended, of course. And the chief superintendent’s job? I think we can safely say you’ve kissed that goodbye.”

Downstairs, Aaronson enquired how the meeting had gone.

“Better than anticipated,” Mal replied, and what was odd was that she meant it. She felt an incredible sense of release. Brockenhurst had cut her loose. She was at liberty to do as she wished.

And what she wished, more than anything, was to hunt Reston down.

Aaronson consented to act as her man on the inside at the Yard, and it was he who informed her, two days later, that the Mayans’ van had been located in Woolwich, near the docks. The vehicle had been rolled into a side alley and abandoned. Scavengers had relieved it of everything of resale value, tyres and engine parts mostly, but it was still unmistakably the van used in the Reston rescue. The radiator grille was stove in and the front bumper bore scrapings of paint that matched paint from a paddy wagon.

So Reston had been smuggled out of the country by boat. That was the only conclusion Mal could draw. And where would he go? France was the logical answer. Not only was it closest to hand but it had a longstanding tradition of resistance and subversion. The Louisiens would have clasped someone like the Conquistador to their bosom. He was one of them, as overt in his actions as they were covert in theirs, but no less opposed to Imperial rule.

Mal had neither the jurisdiction nor the resources to go haring round all of France looking for Reston. But she didn’t believe she needed to. He wouldn’t be there for long. It was the Mayans. The Mayans were key to all this. She had Aaronson do some digging, and made a few transatlantic calls herself, and soon she knew everything there was to know about a group of Mayan nationalists who painted skulls on their faces and whose preferred weapons were blowpipes and bolases.

Reston was in Anahuac. Had to be. In the company of the separatist guerrilla faction known as Xibalba.

Aaronson claimed he had a backlog of paid leave due which he would lose if he didn’t use, and he’d always had a hankering to visit the birthplace of the Empire. Call it a pilgrimage, if you will. Mal pointed out that she was currently persona non grata at work. It might hurt Aaronson’s career prospects if he continued to be associated with her, not least when she was busy doing that which Commissioner Brockenhurst had expressly forbidden.

In answer, all Aaronson said was, “What can I tell you, boss? I’m your bitch, and I always have been.”

Mal owned a few gilt-edged Empire bonds, a nest egg for her retirement, which she cashed in. That, along with money in a savings account amounted to just enough to secure two return flights to the Land Between The Seas and cover two or three weeks’ worth of travel and accommodation expenses.

They flew to Teotihuacan and made that city their base of operations. Then next few days all followed the same pattern. They drove out in their hire car to some other city or major town and introduced themselves at the Jaguar Warrior HQ there. They showed pictures of Reston, both in and out of armour, and explained who he was and what he’d done. A few of the Anahuac Jaguars had heard of the Conquistador’s exploits. The majority hadn’t. As far as they were concerned it had been a domestic matter in a small, far-flung outpost of the Empire, no business of theirs. However, they promised to keep an eye out for Reston, in the event that he really was over here and consorting with local rebels.

Mal could tell she wasn’t being taken seriously; she was being patronised. It peeved her but she didn’t let it get to her. She stayed polite. They’d take her even less seriously if she lost her cool. She had to be the consummate professional. Were she to give them the slightest reason to doubt or distrust her they might be seized by the desire to check up on her back home.

Evening after evening, she and Aaronson returned to their hotel in the centre of Teotihuacan. Mal would be despondent, Aaronson would do his best to keep her spirits up. Then she would find some bar and would drown her sorrows in pulque while her sergeant cruised the neighbourhood, looking for some action. There wasn’t a thriving gay scene in Teotihuacan, but through instinct and a little bit of luck Aaronson could usually find someone to hook up with. Mal herself got propositioned a few times and was often drunk enough to be tempted but not so drunk as to succumb. It didn’t help that almost every adult male in Anahuac was shorter than her, sometimes by as much as a head. She had a problem with smaller men. Try as she might, she could never bring herself to fancy one. They made her feel gangly and uncomfortable. She preferred a lover she could literally look up to. Someone around Stuart Reston’s height, a shade over six feet, was just right. Although not Reston himself, obviously. Sleep with him? Hideous thought. She’d rather stick a macuahitl up her snatch.

Two weeks in, just as Mal’s funds were beginning to run out, came some good news. Good-ish. There’d been a sighting of a man matching Reston’s description in the general vicinity of Lake Texcoco. A few days earlier a Jaguar patrol, visiting rainforest villages on a routine stop-and-search expedition, had come across a Caucasian male in a canoe. He was a botanist apparently, hailing from France. Name of Rene Jolicoeur. He’d shown a valid passport, and there had been someone with him, an Anahuac national acting as his guide, who had vouched for him.

The patrol leader had thought nothing of it at the time. Later, however, having learned that a British Jaguar was over here trying to track down an absconded criminal, he decided to consult the Jaguars in France about Monsieur le Professeur. It didn’t take him long to establish that the person he’d met was an impostor. The impostor and Rene Jolicoeur were roughly the same age, but there the similarities ended. The real Rene Jolicoeur had a receding hairline, wore thick bifocals to counteract profound myopia, and was about thirty pounds overweight. In addition, he suffered from chronic-progressive multiple sclerosis, which was not disabling but which discouraged him from overseas travel and fieldwork, and meant he was largely restricted to the laboratory and the library. In short, the fine physical specimen of a man who’d pitched up in that canoe that day was not — emphatically not — Rene Jolicoeur.

The sighting of Reston was too old to be of any immediate practical use to Mal. He wouldn’t be anywhere near that river now, not if he had any sense. The trail there would be stone cold.

It was, all the same, encouraging. It confirmed that Reston was in Anahuac and also that he had, as she suspected, come there via France — hence the passport, furnished by Louisiens no doubt. It suggested, too, that he was up to something. Why else would he be hiding under an alias and venturing along the rivers?

That the river in question fed into Lake Texcoco was also suggestive. After all, what lay at the middle of said lake but Tenochtitlan itself?

Could that be Reston’s objective? Could he really have something so audacious in mind? An attempt on the life of the Great Speaker himself?

It beggared belief. Mal knew the man was arrogant but this took arrogance to a whole new level. This was hubris in the extreme. Almost a kind of insanity.

She didn’t share her suspicions with the local Jaguars, but then she didn’t need to. They were quite capable of drawing the same inferences themselves. Rogue British terrorist spotted at large in Anahuac, not a million miles from the capital? It was cause for concern, at least. So the search for Reston was escalated to a higher priority status. His picture was more widely circulated among the various regional HQs. His name was added to the national Most Wanted list. The word went out. A small reward was being offered for information leading to the capture of this known fugitive from justice. By the same token, anyone found to have been harbouring Stuart Reston or giving him succour or assistance of any kind would be subject to the harshest of penalties. Apprehending him became a matter of relative urgency.

For the first time since arriving in Anahuac, Mal felt able to relax a little. Underlying tension remained. Reston was not in the bag yet, far from it. But her judgement had been proved right. She had taken a terrific gamble and it looked as though it might pay off.

As a reward, she treated herself and Aaronson to courtside seats at a tlachtli game. It was a Teotihuacan derby between the Quails and the Wild Boars. Each team had its mob of fanatical supporters, many of whom came dressed in appropriate animal garb. Each team was also solely and exclusively made up of, in the case of the Quails, men with Olmec ancestry and, in the case of the Wild Boars, men with Zapotec ancestry. Tlachtli was one of the last bastions of tribalism in Anahuac. In no other walk of life was ethnic derivation allowed to be a distinguishing factor. Officially every inhabitant of the Land Between The Seas was an Aztec, end of story. But an exception was made for the ball game. Here, origins mattered. A player’s bloodline had to be traced and verified before he could join his chosen side. If nothing else, this made for a better contest, especially when rival ethnicities clashed. Those matches were grudge matches, bloodier and more brutal than any other fixture. The animosities were ancient and bone-marrow deep, and the ball court was the only place where parading and venting them was tolerated. Severe injuries were guaranteed, fatalities not unheard of.

Mal and Aaronson, being foreigners and unaligned, opted to root for the Quails. The choice was made on no other grounds than that Aaronson took a shine to one of the Quails’ hoop defenders, a beautiful slender creature whose kilt, as he and his teammates went through their warm-up exercises before the start of the match, rode up to expose a pair of buttocks to die for. “Unless you can think of a better reason, boss,” Aaronson said, and Mal could not.

The game was tooth-and-nail almost from the outset. For the first few minutes both teams did genuinely seem to be vying to win by notching up a greater number of points than the opposition, and there were displays of considerable tlachtli artistry. Players bounced the solid rubber ball off their bodies using every part of themselves except heads, hands and feet. With expert precision they passed it amongst their own teams and nudged it up along the angled side wall towards the hoop. Goals were scored. The crowd roared.

Gradually, though, the fouling crept in, and then worsened. Leather hip pads and shoulder guards stopped became more offensive weapons than protection. Elbows jabbed. Heads butted. Fists flew. Several times, play degenerated into out-and-out brawling. The referee stepped in and dispensed stern cautions, and for a while good sportsmanship would resume, but never for long. Eventually there was open combat on the court, with no pretence of chasing the ball, and the referee gave up trying to umpire the proceedings and devoted himself to preventing any of the players coming to serious harm. He wasn’t very successful in that endeavour, as on several occasions a stray blow landed on him and he pitched into the fray himself.

The crowd lapped it up. They bayed for blood. They could hardly contain their glee as fistfight followed fistfight. By the time the final whistle blew, the scoreboard showed 9–4 to the Quails, a convincing victory. In every other respect, however, the team got trounced. The Wild Boars left five of them in need of medical attention, compared with the Quails’ own tally of just two opponents hospitalised.

Among the Quail injured was Aaronson’s beloved hoop defender, who’d gone down with a gouged-out eye. All the way back to the hotel Aaronson lamented the fact that a potential love affair had been so cruelly nipped in the bud, over before it could even begin. He also bemoaned the ruination of such sublime physical beauty.

“I think he could really have been The One,” he said.

“With you they’re always The One,” Mal replied, “right up until they turn out to be The One Night Only. Besides, you didn’t even talk to him. You didn’t even meet him. He’s just someone you leered at from a distance.”

“It was true love.”

“True lust, more like.”

“You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, do you, boss? You wouldn’t know love if it came up and slapped you in the face. No. Correction. With you, love is a slap in the face.”

“Easy there, sergeant,” Mal warned.

“I’m just saying, from what I’ve seen you don’t have relationships — you have mutual abuse. You go for men you either feel nothing for or who feel nothing for you, and the more sordid and seamy your trysts are, the better. You know what? I think you don’t like yourself very much. You punish yourself all the time. You don’t believe you’re worthy of love or of anything good. It’s like you’re doing penance, who knows for what.”

“Here’s the mark, Aaronson.” Mal held out a hand in front of her, like a meat cleaver. She moved it a couple of feet to the right. “Here’s how far you’re overstepping it.”

“Look, let’s forget we’re DCI and sergeant for a moment,” Aaronson said. “Let’s just be what we are, which is friends. Good friends, I like to think. That means I can be frank with you if I want, and I do want. You’re a good-looking woman, Malinalli. If I was straight, I’d take a crack at you, definitely. You’re a success in a tough, unforgiving profession. You’re intimidatingly smart and sharp. You’ve got it all. But you’re also a fool to yourself. You’re never happy. Whatever it is that drives you inside so hard, it won’t let you rest, it won’t let you find contentment, it leads you to sabotage everything you achieve. Why can’t you tell that voice inside your head just to shut up every once in a while? I don’t mean deaden it with drink or drugs so you can’t hear it. I mean get it to pipe down and stop nagging so you can actually enjoy life for a change.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. When I need a lecture in self-restraint and sobriety from the world’s greatest hedonist…”

“At least I know how to kick back and have fun.”

“I have fun!” Mal said indignantly.

“When? When was the last time? Recently? This year? Last year?”

Mal was all set to answer, but she stalled. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t recall a single occasion, as an adult, when she’d done something for the sheer pleasure of it. Sex with strangers didn’t qualify. There was physical satisfaction to be had, but that was about all. Beyond that, the encounters were brief and meaningless and usually conducted through an alcoholic haze.

“Tonight,” she said at last. “The game. That was fun, wasn’t it?”

“It was a bloodbath.”

“Still, I heard you cheering.”

“Granted, but did you? Cheer, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Mal. “I think so. Didn’t I?”

“Not so’s anyone would notice. You sat there stony-faced throughout.”

“Inside, I was cheering.”

“Doesn’t count.”

They’d reached the hotel. After checking at the reception desk for messages, they crossed the lobby and rode the rickety lift to the sixth floor.

“Fun’s overrated, anyway,” Mal said as she unlocked the door to their room. “Fun’s for idiots.”

“Which is unquestionably the most idiotic thing you’ve ever said,” Aaronson replied.

They got ready for bed in frigid silence, like an old married couple after a tiff.

It was in the small hours of that night that the call came about Reston’s arrest.

The town of Mixquiahuala sat perched on a ridge of high ground above a plain. At its feet, chinampas fields stretched as far as the eye could see. Behind it, dark green rainforested slopes glowered.

The main approach road ran along a causeway, raised between deep irrigation canals in the chinampas. Farmhands were already out amid the maize crop, wrenching out weeds and relieving the vermin traps of their overnight haul of cavy and capybara corpses.

Past the fields the road snaked upslope to the town and, once inside its environs, branched off a dozen different ways. Mal pulled up alongside a pastry seller who was setting out his wares in front of his shop. He gave her directions to the town’s Jaguar HQ, and she purchased a couple of meringue-topped sponge cakes from him to placate Aaronson, who’d not stopped whingeing about how hungry he was the entire journey.

Necalli, the duty officer at the Jaguar HQ, had an amazing shovel-shaped nose, so large that it left little room on his face for his other features. After a few preliminaries he escorted the two British Jaguars downstairs to the holding cells. He told them that the prisoner had been in a disorientated state when he was brought in yesterday evening. He appeared underfed and showed all the signs of someone who’d been in the rainforest for several days: covered in bites, stings and scratches, not properly bathed, hair and clothing unkempt.

“Also, he’s been babbling, on and off. In English. No one round here speaks it, so we haven’t been able to make head or tail of what he’s saying. We haven’t even been able to process him properly. We’re hoping you’ll be able to help with that, now you’re here.”

“You took his armour off him, I suppose.”

Necalli gave her a look: This is Anahuac. You breeze in from a piddling little island colony like Britain and speak to us like we don’t know how to do our jobs?

“Just asking,” she said.

“As it happened, he surrendered the armour quietly. The arresting officers thought he was going to put up a fight, but he just handed everything over when invited to — sword, gun, the works — and went with them meek as a lamb. The funny thing was, he was wearing only a few items of armour, not a whole set. Like he’d dressed in a hurry and not been able to finish. All in all, he’s a queer fish. If it hadn’t been for you distributing round that intel about him, we’d have had a hell of a time figuring out who and what he was. We’d probably have assumed he was some kind of mental case and handed him over to a psychiatric care unit. I doubt any of us would have identified him as a terrorist. More likely a victim of bewilderness.”

“Bewilderness?” said Aaronson.

“You know. Civilian heads off for a jaunt into the forest, underprepared, thinks it’ll be just like a meander through the woods, a nice daytrip. He gets hopelessly lost, walks in circles for days or even weeks, and finally finds his way out, but by that time he’s been driven half mad by thirst, hunger and fever. Bewilderness. It happens more often than you’d think. And it’s almost always white foreigners. Some urge they have to conquer nature, challenge themselves, find themselves, maybe have a kind of ascetic spiritual experience, like religious hermits in the olden days. Anahuac natives are far too sensible for that. We know how fucking dangerous the rainforest is. We prefer our towns, most of us, with our air-conditioned buildings and our clean running water.”

“But the armour,” said Mal. “Wouldn’t that have been a big clue that he was something out of the ordinary?”

Necalli shrugged. “I’ve seen stranger. This one guy, a few years back, he turned up on the outskirts of Mixquiahuala naked apart from an anaconda skin. He’d killed the snake and cut the skin off and draped it around himself like a sort of cloak. There was plenty of it, too, so the snake itself must have been a monster. He was under the delusion that by wearing it he had become an anaconda himself. He died in custody.”

“Oh, one of those. Resisting arrest.”

“No, a genuine accident. There was a rat in his cell — crawled in via the toilet. He caught it and tried to swallow it whole. Choked to death.” Necalli chuckled ghoulishly at the memory. It seemed there wasn’t a Jaguar in the world who didn’t have a streak of gallows humour. It went with the territory. “The forest can do things to a man’s mind. Make him lose it completely, sometimes. I think that’s what may have happened to your Mr Reston.”

“He’s not ‘my’ Mr Reston,” Mal said, but in a way he was. She felt about him much as a lioness must feel about the carcass of her prey — proprietorial, covetous.

“Visitors, Reston,” Necalli called out, peering through the spy hole in one of the cell doors. “Up and at ’em.” To Mal and Aaronson he said, “He’s not very lively. All he’s done since he got here is wallow on the bunk. I doubt he’ll give us any trouble, but let’s keep our macuahitl s at the ready just in case.”

He patted his sword and nodded at Mal’s. She was reminded that she hadn’t yet got round to upgrading to a DCI’s macuahitl yet, the version with the crystal snowflake patterns embedded in its obsidian. She’d been, to say the least, preoccupied.

The cell reeked of unwashed body. Reston lay on his back on the narrow, mattress-less bunk. He stirred as they entered, blinking groggily and rolling onto his side. His hair was lank and matted and several days’ growth of stubble coarsened his chin. Scabs and swellings stippled his forearms and neck, constellations of infection, and he’d shed several pounds. His clothes were torn and caked in dirt. All in all, he was a far cry from the sleek, groomed businessman Mal had met at Reston Rhyolitic or for that matter the fit, muscular jogger she had run alongside the Thames with. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked fragile. No, cracked, that was the word. Like a dropped cup.

“Stuart Reston,” Mal said. “Fancy meeting you here. You should have realised you could never get away. Long arm of the law and all that.”

At the sound of his native tongue, Reston become more animated. He propped himself up into a sitting position. He peered up at the faces of his three visitors, his gaze alighting last on Mal’s.

“Fuck me, it’s you,” he croaked. “My supercop nemesis.” He forced a smile. “Well, welcome to my new abode, Inspector Vaughn. Slightly more humble than I’m accustomed to, but make yourself at home anyway. I’d offer you and your friends seats, except…”

There was barely floorspace in the cell for the three Jaguars to stand.

“You’ve been having a hell of a time of it, by the looks of you,” Mal said. “Hard, isn’t it, living rough and on the run? And ending up in this grotty little cell — it must make you regret all the choices you’ve made.”

“I never had you pegged as the gloating type, but you’re just loving this, aren’t you?”

“I am feeling a warm rosy glow inside, I can’t deny. You’ve put me through several tons of shit, Reston. It would take a better person than I am to not get some satisfaction out of seeing you in the state you’re in now. The phrase ‘how are the mighty fallen’ springs to mind. That and ‘serves you bloody well right.’”

“So what now? I’m getting dragged back to England, presumably.”

“That’s the general idea. A few arrangements have to be made first, but basically you’re coming back with us to face the music.”

“Any chance we can use Nahuatl?” Necalli interjected. “I don’t like being excluded from a conversation in my own station.”

“Fine by me,” said Mal, in Nahuatl.

“If we must,” said Reston, likewise.

“Ah, bilingual after all,” said Necalli. “I was starting to wonder.”

“I wasn’t in the frame of mind to co-operate before. Wasn’t in the frame of mind to do much at all, as a matter of fact. But now that the delightful Inspector Vaughn has appeared…”

Reston accompanied the remark with a gesture in Mal’s direction. Instantly, all three Jaguars’ hands flashed to their sword hilts.

“Hey,” Reston said. “Easy does it. I’d be crazy to try and take on three of law enforcement’s finest. Especially at such close quarters. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“But you are crazy,” Mal said, “that’s just it. Haven’t you realised? Nutty as squirrel shit.”

“In your opinion. Although I must say, there are things I’ve seen recently that have made even me begin to doubt my own sanity.” Reston’s voice trailed off. He became lost in some deep inner musing, grappling with bafflement and despair. “Men as gods,” he said, mostly to himself. “Gods as men. Demigods? Who knows? Where do you draw the line? How do you distinguish?”

“Nahuatl,” Necalli growled. Reston had reverted to English. “If you please.”

Mal shook her head in an exaggerated show of pity. “Maybe you aren’t mad, Reston. Maybe for the first time in a long while you’re lucid and the consequences of your actions are hitting home. The guilt’s catching up. In which case, now is the time to ask if you’ve given any thought to what’s going to become of your company now that its CEO has been unmasked as an anti-Imperial seditionary? Did you even think that far ahead? All those people on your payroll — however many hundreds it is — suddenly their jobs are up in the air, their livelihoods on the line, thanks to you and your psychopathic dog-and-pony show. Do you have any idea how far Reston Rhyolitic stock has fallen since word got out who the Conquistador really is?”

“I imagine the shares hit rock bottom but bounced back. Some other company has launched a takeover bid and now owns a controlling stake. Am I right?”

“Well, yes actually, but — ”

“Who is it? CCMM in Italy? One of the Indian consortiums?”

“I have no idea, and I care even less. I only know that someone has.”

“No surprise. Reston Rhyolitic’s too good and too successful that anyone would ever let it fall by the wayside. I made provision, you see. If something untoward were to happen to me — and being arrested and having to flee the country definitely qualifies as that — I arranged things so that the company would immediately be put out to tender, lock, stock and barrel. That way it wouldn’t be broken down and sold off piecemeal but kept as a whole entity, a going concern. My people’s jobs are safe. There may be some restructuring, a handful of compulsory redundancies perhaps, the odd boardroom resignation, but the vast majority of the workforce will still be clocking on as usual, for the same salaries and pensions as before. I’m not a complete idiot, inspector. I’d always assumed the Conquistador would get his comeuppance sooner or later. His lifespan was finite. It was a good run while it lasted. Only now…” His eyes took on that faraway, despairing look again. “Now I really don’t know that it matters. That anything matters.”

“What happened to you out there?” Mal waved to indicate the world beyond the cell’s humidity-blotched walls — the land, the rainforest.

“I’m touched by the concern,” Reston said, coming back to himself. “I didn’t think I mattered to you so much.”

“I’m curious, that’s all. Necalli here says there’s this phenomenon called bewilderness, a delirium people can lapse into in the forest, a kind of fugue state. Is that it? Is that why you’ve come over all weird and spacey?”

“No. I couldn’t really explain it if I wanted to.”

“Why not try?”

Reston deliberated. “I think,” he said eventually, “that the world is a lot stranger and more complex than any of us suspects. I think there are truths we’ve forgotten or been forbidden from remembering. I think you and I, inspector, locked in our own little struggle, our own little battle of wits and wills, just have no conception of the bigger picture around us. We’re fleas. No, ants. We’re ants. Tiny, insignificant, anonymous, scurrying about on our missions and errands, oblivious to the fact that there are giants among us. They can control us, stamp on us, manipulate us, squash us without even trying. We’re nothing to them except objects of curiosity and sometimes distant affection. Am I making any sense?”

“None whatsoever,” said Mal.

“But keep going with the deep philosophical stuff,” said Aaronson archly. “It’s really enlightening. I can feel my brain expanding. Wow.”

“I’m wasting my breath,” Reston said. “You can’t know unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. Seen them in action.”

“Them?” said Mal. “Who’s them? Your Xibalba chums?”

“Oh no, not them.” Reston looked pained. “No, they learned the same lesson I’ve learned but, sadly, the hard way.”

There was only one inference Mal could draw. “They’re dead?”

“All of them. Wiped out, like crumbs off a tablecloth. It’s not even like they had a chance. They might as well have not been there.”

Necalli leapt in. “You’re saying a whole band of separatists has been eliminated? Well, that’s marvellous. I need details. Is there some kind of proof? Where are the bodies?”

“No bodies.” Reston gave a hollow laugh. “Only dust. Proof? I suppose you could go looking for a dirty great hole that’s been blasted somewhere in the forest. I couldn’t begin to tell you where, but get an aircraft up there, go scouting around, you’re sure to find it.”

“And what was responsible for this ‘dirty great hole’?”

“A disc. Blown to smithereens. I watched it go up. I was there, right in the middle of it. Right in the middle of the explosion, and I just stood, wasn’t touched, safe as houses.”

“Yeah, right,” said Aaronson.

“Hmm,” said Necalli, thinking. “Now that might account for it.”

“For what?” said Mal.

“We got multiple reports yesterday — some sort of loud bang to the north of here, early in the morning. Like a single clap of thunder, only there were no storms in the region yesterday. People heard it in locations as much as fifty miles apart. We just assumed it was coincidence. Hunters in the forest, perhaps. A distant gunshot here, another one there, each fired at approximately the same time. Separate instances giving the false impression of being the same one. But if Reston’s telling the truth, it seems it could have been a single major event after all. A disc, you say? Whose disc?”

“Theirs,” said Reston. “Xibalba’s.”

“And why were they in possession of an aerodisc? What were they proposing to do with it?”

Before Reston could reply, there was a commotion in the corridor outside. Marching feet tramped briskly. Leather creaked and weaponry clattered. Then a brusque voice rang out.

“I’m looking for Stuart Reston. Which cell is he in?”

Next moment, a Serpent Warrior appeared in the doorway. He glanced in officiously. Two more Serpents came to a halt behind him.

“That him?” said the first, nodding at Reston. “Certainly looks like an Englishman to me.”

“Who are you?” Necalli challenged.

“Who does it fucking look like I am?” came the sharp retort. “I’m a Serpent Warrior, I’m personally answerable to the Great Speaker, and whoever you are and whatever post you hold in this pissant little police station of yours, I outrank you by at least one thousand. So shut up and answer my question.”

Mal could see Aaronson bracing himself to ask how someone was supposed to shut up and answer a question. A swift kick to the shin silenced him before he could speak. Now was not the moment for smart-arsery. There were few people who genuinely looked as if they shouldn’t be messed with, and this Serpent was one.

“I meant,” said Necalli, with tremendous self-restraint, “please identify yourself.” He added, “Sir,” almost having to cough the word out.

The Serpent Warrior entered the cell, ducking his snake-head helmet under the door lintel. “Not that I’m under any obligation to tell you, but my name is Colonel Tlanextic. The salient part of that sentence is ‘Colonel.’ As in, ‘Fuck you, I’m a fucking colonel.’”

He thrust his face close to Necalli’s, who, to his credit, didn’t bat an eyelid and didn’t back away.

“You need to justify why you’ve come barging in like this, Colonel Tlanextic,” Necalli said. “What are you after?”

“Again, it’s not your place to ask.”

“It is. This is my station and I’m the duty officer.”

“No,” said Tlanextic, “what you are is a nobody in a nowhere town who’s talking to someone to whom you’re about as important as a smear of dog shit on the sole of his boot. Your lips are moving, but all I can hear coming out is a sound like a fart, and not even a loud one, just one of those hissy, squeaky ones that you sneak out between your arse cheeks on the bus and the passenger sitting beside you doesn’t even notice because it’s one of those farts that doesn’t even have the decency to stink, it’s not a manly fart, it’s an effeminate fart, a five-year-old girl’s fart. I can stand here and you can tell me whatever the hell you like about yourself and I won’t pay a blind bit of attention because, have I mentioned this already? I. Am. A. Fucking. Serpent. Warrior. Colonel.”

“All right,” Necalli said, “you’ve made your point.”

Tlanextic turned to his two colleagues. “Lieutenants? Either of you hear anything?” They shrugged, their faces deadpan but their eyes smirking. “Because I know I didn’t. Nope, definitely didn’t hear a thing. Perhaps a cockroach just scuttled past, I’m not sure.”

Necalli sighed. “Just tell me what you want.”

Tlanextic feigned a look of apology. “No, sorry, still getting nothing. Could be I’m going deaf. However, in the event that someone of the lowly stature of an earthworm’s sphincter is talking to me, what I want is that Englishman over there, and I’m taking him. Where, why, or what fucking for, is none of your business. All you have to do is hand him over, say, ‘You’re welcome,’ and then say, ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Colonel Tlanextic?’ At which point I’ll say, ‘No,’ and then I’ll say, ‘Oh wait. There is one thing. You can shove your head right up your own rectum.’ And you’ll reply, ‘Of course, sir, and how far up would you like it to go? Colon? Ileum? Duodenum?’ And I’ll say, ‘I honestly don’t mind, as long as you’re wearing that stupid pointy-eared pussycat helmet while you’re doing it.’”

Necalli seemed to be visibly swelling up, as though outrage was a physical force inside him, an increase in air pressure. Mal watched him struggle to contain it. Necalli understood, as she did, that men like Tlanextic could not be argued with or resisted. They could only be endured.

“Have him, then,” he said, with a pathetic, hapless gesture in Reston’s direction.

“Yes, your permission wasn’t required,” said Tlanextic. “It wasn’t even being sought. Boys?”

The two Serpent lieutenants elbowed their way into the cell, forcing Mal, Aaronson and Necalli to huddle up against the far wall. One of them unclipped a stun gun from his belt. He flipped a switch, the stun gun whined, and before Reston could move or resist he placed it against his neck and depressed the trigger. There was a sharp crackle of electricity, and Reston’s entire body went slack. The two lieutenants hoisted his limp form between them and dragged him out into the corridor by the armpits.

“You’re too kind,” Tlanextic said to Necalli, then saluted him with sneering condescension and followed his men out.

It was seeing Reston actually being removed from her sight that spurred Mal to action. Up until then she’d understood what was going on, but been unable to process it. All at once she grasped that her quarry was being taken from her. Once again. For a third fucking time.

That was an insult that could not be borne. An affront too far. Nobody deserved to have Stuart Reston except her. Not even a high-and-mighty Serpent. Reston belonged to her by every moral right there was. Her future, her career, her self-respect, everything hinged on her carting the Conquistador back to London and depositing him at the commissioner’s feet. Colonel Tlanextic, overbearing megabastard though he was, was not depriving her of what was probably her one and only shot at redemption.

She propelled herself out of the cell, barging Necalli and Aaronson aside. In the corridor she grabbed hold of Tlanextic just below the armlet that bore the five-circles symbol denoting his rank. He stopped in his tracks but didn’t deign to turn.

“Whoever’s hand that is, they’d better remove it by the count of three,” he said, “or be prepared to lose it. One. Two.”

“Give him back.”

“Three.”

He swung round. Mal let go. “Colonel, please. I’ve come five and a half thousand miles for that man. I know this isn’t my jurisdiction, but he’s a British citizen, a British criminal, and I’m a British Jaguar. He’s mine.”

Slowly, patiently, Tlanextic said, “Listen, dear. That was a very brave thing you just did, grabbing me. Well done. You should be proud of yourself. Not many would have had the nerve. But let’s leave it there, eh? You do not want to take this any further. Quit while you’re ahead.”

“No,” Mal said, terrified by her own boldness. “Give him back. He’s not yours to take.”

A flicker of amusement passed across Tlanextic’s face. Then his eyes hardened, his mouth twisted, and next thing Mal knew, something struck her with sledgehammer force and she was down on the floor, her ears ringing, pain lancing down her jaw and up through her skull.

Tlanextic shook out his fist. “By all the Four, that girl’s got a hard head.” He peered down at Mal as she squirmed and groaned. Then he about-turned and motioned to his lieutenants to carry on. They resumed dragging Reston towards the staircase.

“Wait,” said a thick, unsteady voice behind them.

Tlanextic looked back to see Mal rising to her feet. She was using the wall for support. Her legs seemed barely able to function.

“What?” he said, exasperated. “You want me to deck you again?”

“By the power vested in me by His Very Holiness the High Priest of Great Britain,” she said, “I demand that you hand Stuart Reston over.”

“Hold on, men,” Tlanextic said to his lieutenants. “This won’t take a second. Listen, Miss British Jaguar.” He crossed back over to Mal. “Maybe your Nahuatl isn’t what it ought to be, so I’ll keep this as simple as I can. Me Serpent Warrior, you not. Get it? Me very big man round these parts, you silly little white policewoman with funny accent. Me told what to do by Great Speaker himself. In pecking order, me up here.” He raised a hand level with his eyes. “You down here.” He lowered the hand to his crotch. “In more ways than one.”

“With all due respect, colonel,” said Mal, “go screw yourself.”

There was a gasp from behind her — Aaronson. At the same moment, Tlanextic punched her again, this time in the solar plexus. It was a mighty wallop, carrying all his weight behind it, and Mal collapsed to her knees, winded and in agony. She fought for breath. The world wavered darkly around her. As if from a great distance, his voice booming and echoing, she heard Tlanextic say, “All right. You’ve made your point. Enough’s enough. Next time, it’ll be my macuahitl rather than my fist. This is over.”

She fought the tide of blackness that was threatening to engulf her. Do not pass out, do not pass out. She clutched the wall, hauling herself upright inch by trembling inch. Bile burned in the back of her throat and she felt close to throwing up. Aaronson was desperately urging her, “No, boss, don’t. It’s not worth it. Stay down.” Even Necalli, who hardly knew her, was offering the same advice.

“Is that…” she said hoarsely to Tlanextic. “Is that… all you’ve got… you big pussy?”

Aaronson clawed his face in anguish.

Tlanextic’s expression turned to one of pure spite and fury. He snatched the stun gun off the belt of his junior officer and sprang at Mal with the device humming in his hand. He touched it to her chest — her left breast, to be exact — and pain like she’d never known before coursed through her. Her whole body seemed all of a sudden not to belong to her. It was a convulsing, juddering bag of meat that she just happened to be connected with. She felt her bladder let go and warm wetness spreading between her legs. She heard sounds coming out of her throat that she didn’t think any human being could make. Tlanextic kept the stun gun pressed to her, his thumb hard on the trigger. His eyes were alive with sadistic pleasure.

Eventually the stun gun’s charge ran out. The pain subsided, but Mal’s body still kept twitching spastically. Had she not been leaning against the wall, she would be sprawled in a heap on the floor by now. She tasted blood from where her teeth had clamped down involuntarily on her tongue. She could smell singed cotton and skin, and her own urine.

The effort it took to lift her head was almost superhuman. Harder still was finding the muscular control necessary to peel back her lips in a grin.

“I’ve used… vibrators… with more power… than that,” she gasped.

Colonel Tlanextic stared at her in open disbelief. What does it take to put this woman down? How can anyone be so obstinate, so insanely stubborn?

“Please, colonel,” Aaronson implored. “Don’t do anything more. She’s had enough. She didn’t mean to be disrespectful. She’s passionate about her job, that’s all. Takes it very seriously indeed. That’s no crime, eh? I mean, we’re all basically on the same side, aren’t we?”

Tlanextic raised a hand: shut up. He peered closely and quizzically at Mal — her wan face, her striving-to-focus eyes — as though she were some kind of zoo animal he’d never seen before. He was trying with all his might to fathom her. Both Aaronson and Necalli fully expected that within the next few seconds he would draw his macuahitl and run her through.

Instead, he laughed. It was a laugh that was utterly devoid of warmth, but it came from the belly and it went on and on.

Tlanextic found her amusing.

More than that, he grudgingly admired her. The laughter was congratulation.

“Fuck me rigid,” he said. “You’ve got a serious hard-on for this man, haven’t you? What’s your name anyway?”

“Vaughn,” Mal said feebly. “Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard.”

“Well, Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard, I’ll tell you what. I like you, and you might even come in useful as a translator if Reston gets uncooperative and insists on using your own gibberish language again. You’ve just earned yourself the right to accompany us to Tenochtitlan. How about that?”

Accompany them to Tenochtitlan? It wasn’t what Mal wanted. Not at all. But it was the best she was going to get, she knew, and it would keep Reston within her sight. The alternative? She didn’t think she had one.

“Sounds… fine,” she said.

“Good,” said Tlanextic. “You know, I could do with a dozen like you under my command. Men? Take note. You think you’re tough?” He wagged a finger at Mal. “This bitch — this is tough.”

“My sergeant comes too,” Mal added, gesturing vaguely in Aaronson’s direction.

“Whatever. No skin off my nose. Long as you both keep up. Time’s wasting.” Tlanextic set off along the corridor at a firm and forthright pace.

Mal, with Aaronson propping her up, followed.