Splintered Icon (31 page)

I nodded. 'Just west of Ocho Rios. And a plantation would need a bookkeeper. The starting point for the search isn't the south of the island, Debbie, it's the north. You go along with that, Zola?'

'Absolutely what I've been thinking. Sevilla la Nueva, not Port Royal.'

Debbie patted moisture from her eyes with her sweater. 'You're going to give the crazies a false trail?'

'We're going to screw them up totally. We'll head off north while they head south.'

'That means we're going to escape? Do you have a plan, Harry?'

'That's your job.' I hated saying that, hated seeing the hope go out of her eyes. 'The star of the wheels of time,' I said to nobody.

'Something to do with the Nothing Days?' Zola wondered. 'The
Nemontemi?'

I said, 'It's not my field, but I don't think a star was connected with them. My guess is he's talking about the big wheel, the fifty-two-year cycle.'

'Would you people stop talking gibberish? What are these wheels of time?' Debbie demanded.

I said, 'The Mayan and Aztec civilisations were obsessed with calendars and the passage of time. It dominated their lives for centuries—'

Debbie interrupted impatiently. 'So what? I'm sorry but I keep thinking about torture starting at midnight and my brains getting blown out, and what are you doing about it? All you do is talk about Aztecs and wheels of time. Even I know the Aztecs came from Mexico, not Jamaica. And they didn't have wheels.'

Zola said, 'But the Arawak natives must have come from Central America.'

'Zola isn't getting it quite right, Debbie. The native Jamaicans were Taino, not Arawak, but who cares? Whoever jumped into canoes and paddled to Jamaica brought their culture with them, a culture which was obsessed with measuring time. It would have been irresistible for Ogilvie to use their calendars in his coded message. Calendars were what the expedition was about.'

Zola had to have the last word. 'Stop splitting hairs, Harry. The Taino family included the Aztecs. But there's a problem with what we're both thinking - the Spaniards had worked them to death by the time Ogilvie arrived.'

'There must have been a few of them around,' I said. I needed the last word, too.

'Will you two stop squabbling? Where is this getting us?' The despair in Debbie's voice was deepening.

'This could save your life, Debbie,' I said. 'The Aztecs used two calendar systems. The first was a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day cycle, divided up into eighteen months of twenty days each, with five days left over. These were the Nothing Days, the
Nemontemi.
During those five days there was no fire, no food and no sex. But they had a second calendar, a sacred one of two hundred and sixty days, made up of thirteen months with twenty days in each. So after three hundred and sixty-five days you're back to the beginning of the first calendar, and after two hundred and sixty days you're back to the beginning of the second one. And after fifty-two years you're back to the beginning of both of them together. Two big wheels with time marked on them.' I was trying to illustrate by rotating my hands like gear wheels, but without much success. 'But listen. Because the three hundred and sixty-five days isn't exactly the length of the year - it's about six hours out - it turns out that at the end of the fifty-two-year cycle the two calendars have slipped twelve days against the seasons.'

'Okay, Harry, but so what? How is this going to keep me alive?'

'Because to keep the calendar in time at the end of the fifty-two years they stopped counting for twelve days, during which they had a great ceremony, a long procession to the Hill of the Star, and the midnight sacrifice of a prisoner. He was stretched out, his heart cut out and a fire kindled in its place. And this is where it all comes together, Debbie. The ritual took place when a sacred star reached the overhead point at midnight. That's the solution to Ogilvie's second puzzle. He's referring to the sacred star, the star of the wheels of time.'

'Otherwise known as the Star of the Fire-Making,' Zola said. 'I expect this is on the Aztec Calendar Stone, described by Humboldt in l810.'

'No, that gives the world ages through time. More likely it's in de Landa's 1566 book.'

'I thought that was lost, Harry.'

'It was for three hundred years, but then it was rediscovered in Madrid. Surely you knew that.'

'Stop it!' Debbie's fists were clenched with frustration. 'This is life or death. What was this star?'

'Aldebaran. The Eye of the Bull. A bright red star in Taurus.'

Zola paced up and down for some moments. Then she blew out her cheeks. 'We could be on to something. Find something to do with a bookkeeper on the old Spanish plantation, and draw a line towards the rising point of Aldebaran.'

My wounded arm was pulsing. 'As far as the nearest polygon, whatever that turns out to be. And there, at the polygon or maybe buried under it, you'll find the icon.' I turned to Debbie. 'I think we've done it.'

Debbie said, 'Well that's just terrific, that's really wow. Okay, now you two giant brains have solved that one, finding a way out of here should be easy.'

CHAPTER 36

I did a few more orbits of the villa, my head bowed as if I was deep in thought, while looking around casually from time to time. The sun was a big pink oval touching the horizon, going down in a glory of crimsons and yellows and streaks of black. I was finding it hard to take in that this could be my last sunset.

The pattern was clear: a man at the jetty, a man at the back gate - Kojak, as it happened - and two upstairs. All young, Greek-looking men, all with instructions to leave us alone. Not an inch of boundary fence out of their sight. And yet they had to eat and they had to relieve themselves and they had to drink: in this heat, they had to drink a lot.

It wasn't long before the sun began to disappear and the insects in the hills around us began their imitation of squeaky fans. As the sky darkened, Cassandra and Hondros appeared, elegantly dressed as if for an evening out. Cassandra had a long, slim pink dress, a cocktail handbag and a clutter of gold jewellery. Hondros was dressed in black trousers and a black silk shirt, with the swastika cross around his neck and his thinning hair sleeked back. Hondros ignored me, Cassandra gave me a sultry sideways glance. They climbed into the four-wheel Chrysler, stopped at the gate. Kojak opened it and I watched the red lights disappear up the hill. One or two stars were beginning to come out, and I reckoned it was about five hours to midnight.

There was a faint clunk from an outhouse, and the grounds, the swimming pool, the jacuzzi, the fence and the villa were suddenly flooded with light, like a car park in a shopping mall.

I still couldn't see a way out of this, and my perambulation was exhausting me.

On my next orbit the kitchen light was switched on and I saw Debbie busy at the sink. After a while the smell of cooking began to drift out. Zola appeared. 'Harry, do you want to eat?'

I didn't, but there was something in her voice. I made my way round the side of the house to the French windows.

'What about you?' she asked curtly, looking at Kojak.

The man took his gun out of the waistband of his jeans and waved Zola and me towards the house with a sweep of his arm. He shouted something to his colleague on the balcony.

On a long kitchen table, places had been set for seven, presumably the three of us and our four guardian gorillas. Candles had been lit, which I thought was overdoing the hospitality to people who would shortly be firing bullets into our bodies. The two hoodlums had come down from upstairs; the man at the jetty had not yet appeared.

The kitchen was sweatily hot. Debbie was peeling potatoes in a basin of water at the kitchen sink. Zola slid a heavy frying pan on to an electric cooker. She glanced at me over her shoulder and said, 'Just like my Greenwich flat, Harry.' It was a second before I connected her comment with the frying pan.

'Debbie and you are cooking something special,' I said. My heart was starting to hammer in my chest.

'Right on.'
Something special.

'I think we're close to solving the problem,' Debbie said to the young man standing behind her.

'Ya,' he said, showing no interest whatever. He was standing back from her, running his eyes openly up and down her body.

That was the problem. None of them were within arm's length, and all of them had guns in their hands. I couldn't see how the ladies were going to solve that one.

Zola agreed. 'Yes, I think we've got it worked out. Harry, do you want to cut some bread? We need to make Melba toast.'

There was a bread box on a kitchen unit and I went over to it, exaggerating my weary state. Kojak stepped back; he was eyeing me carefully. I looked around for a breadknife, found one in a drawer. 'Are you sure you're up to this, Harry?' Zola asked, and at last I began to see what she meant.

'Definitely.' Army conditioning was kicking in.

'There's too much going on here,' Debbie said. She was coating fillets of fish with batter and piling them up on a plate. Zola bustled over and took the plate over to the

cooker, brushing aside one of the gorillas.

*    *    *

And at last I see the whole pattern. Zola with frying pan; me with breadknife; Debbie, I'm convinced, about to ask for help. Sure enough, she turns to the man behind her, manages a honeyed smile. 'Peel the potatoes. I'm saving my nails.' He puts his gun into his waistband. Debbie moves towards me, takes a couple of slices of bread. Our eyes meet, the barest glance.

I'm cutting more and more bread. My knuckles are white with the strength of my grip on the knife, and my wounded arm is aching with the tension. It has to happen in the next few seconds or I'll have no more bread and no more excuse to hold the knife.

Debbie puts the bread into the toaster, a big, hideous yellow thing near the kitchen sink. The man is next to her, up to his wrists in water.

Zola suddenly gripping the heavy frying pan with two hands.

Debbie picking up the toaster.

Zola's frying pan swinging through the air, a vicious two-handed swipe, oil and slices of fish spiralling out, and my breadknife thrusting towards Kojak's bladder with as much force as I can give it, Dominie Dinwoodie's voice inside my head: 'There is no defence against a thrust upwards, like so.'

All this in slow motion.

Debbie swipes the toaster into the sink. There is a buzz like an angry bee; the lights flicker and dim. My man is buckling towards the floor, his mouth opening wide with the sudden pain and fear. Zola's frying pan is making hard, fast contact with her man's face. Debbie's man is arching backwards, his eyes threatening to shoot out of their sockets and his short, black hair standing on end. And then the lights fail completely and I see the reason for the candles on the dinner table.

Debbie leaps over the quivering body of her man. I start to run after her but Zola is shouting, 'No, not that way. Round the back!' Pointing to a door behind me. I run through a short, dark pantry, its shelves stacked with tins and sacks. Zola is behind me and then we are out, into the hot night air and the noisy insects and the star-filled sky.

The man on the jetty is shouting. He is out of sight. He shouts again, closer this time. Debbie appears between Zola and me, breathing hard. I hear the slight jangling of keys in her hand, hope the sound hasn't travelled.

The Toyota is at the end of the house in full view of the jetty man. Zola peers round the corner and raises a hand in the near-dark to stop us. We wait in agony. The sound of Kojak moaning comes from the back door. It must be Kojak: the other two are unconscious or dead.

Then Zola is frantically flapping her arm, waving us forwards. Bent double - I don't know why - we sprint towards the car. Debbie takes the wheel, turns the ignition and slams it into gear while Zola and I are still jumping in. 'Where's the bloody headlight switch?' she shouts.

'Keep them off! The gates are open,' I shout back. We can just make out the tall gate pillars in the dim light and Debbie aims the car between them, engine and tyres screaming. The track is a ribbon of light dust.

'He's out!' Zola shouts from the back seat.

I look back: yellow flashes are coming from the side of the white villa, but we are already far up on the hill, the car hammering into potholes every few seconds. Beyond the Lego house there is a cruise liner far out at sea, lit up as if it was Christmas. And then we are over the top of the hill, the track broadens, Debbie has found the headlight switch and she is swerving the car like a stunt driver, trying to avoid the black potholes. Then in a few hundred yards the track is passing through trees and there is a tarmac road, and Debbie turns right and puts her foot down, and Zola is laughing like a thing demented, and my gunshot wound is giving me hell, and I think about electrocution and stabbing and braining, and a line from a Jane Austen book jumps into my head, something about ladies being delicate plants indeed.

CHAPTER 37

'Stop!'

Debbie pulled over at a row of stalls on the edge of Orocabessa and Zola ran into Harvey's Hardware Bazaar. The owner ambled round from the side of the hut. Zola emerged some minutes later with three torches, an armful of spades, a pickaxe and, bizarrely, a calculator. The road didn't need much navigating as it skirted the sea nearly all the way. Once I suggested we turn off to avoid a long peninsula and we ended up lost, following a lorry without lights for twenty minutes while Debbie fumed and Zola fired off a lot of sarcasm about a map dealer who couldn't read maps.

But at last we were back on the coast road and Debbie took the car up to an alarming speed, weaving around potholes and using the horn on stray cattle and goats.

Zola said, 'I need someone to hold the torch.' I clambered into the back seat and lit up her page. She was drawing little spheres with triangles on them, and writing out an equation. I recognised sines and cosines from my schooldays. 'Spherical triangles,' she said. 'Essential to celestial navigators. You recognise the cosine formula, don't you, Harry? I thought not. Let's hope my calculations are better than your navigation.' She drew another celestial sphere and wrote down some numbers. The bumpy ride made them look as if they had been written by a drunk. 'The sun's in Taurus at the end of May.' Then she started jabbing at the calculator. 'Good. Which puts Aldebaran between fifteen and twenty degrees north. Say, declination eighteen degrees. I don't suppose you know the latitude of Jamaica?'