There was a short, portly man standing in the far corner with his back to the doorway. He wore a neat tropical suit and appeared to be admiring Stuart’s bookshelves, which were laden with first editions of pre-Empire British fiction. His hands were laced together behind him as he keenly ran his gaze over the books’ spines, the cloth and leather bindings, the gold stencilled lettering.
Stuart crept towards him using all the stealthcraft at his disposal. His bare feet made not a sound on the floor tiles. His breathing was slow and measured, drifting silently in through the nostrils, out through the mouth. He skirted the sofa. He was almost within striking distance.
“H.G. Wells,” said the man abruptly, without turning round.
Stuart halted mid-step.
The man gestured at a blue-bound volume. “He foresaw the eventual fall of Britain to the Empire. What are the Martians in The War Of The Worlds if not a thinly disguised allegorical warning of an Aztec invasion? Whereas Kipling” — he pointed to a green book on the shelf above, a Collected Poetical Works adorned with beautiful blind-tooled patterns — “insisted your country would remain independent, an empire unto itself, for all time. Two authors, contemporaries, both equally brilliant, yet one got it so right and the other so wrong. Funny, that.”
Now, finally, he turned. He was round-faced, twinkly-eyed, with an impish cast to his features.
“Kindly put the knife down, Mr Reston. Were you to attack me, I would be forced to disarm you, possibly hurt you. Neither of us would want that.”
Stuart did not do as asked. Looking at the man, he doubted he could make good on the threat. Soft and chubby. Slow reflexes. Then again, he’d somehow been aware Stuart was sneaking up on him. There could be more to him than met the eye.
“Who are you?” Stuart demanded in English. The intruder had addressed him in Nahuatl, which Stuart refused to use if he didn’t have to.
“I’m sorry, my knowledge of your native tongue extends to basic reading, that’s all. What did you say?”
Stuart switched to the other language, reluctantly. “I asked who you are.”
“You don’t remember me from last night? No surprise, I suppose. Like you, I am in my civvies.” A grin doubled the number of plump folds in the man’s face. “My name is Ah Balam Chel, and I helped save your life at the theatre. Ringing any bells yet?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stuart replied. He brandished the knife. “You have five seconds to get out of here, or else.”
Ah Balam Chel gently pushed the blade aside. “No need to keep waving that thing around. I mean you no harm. I am not your enemy. Believe me, if I wanted you dead, you would be. I had ample opportunity to kill you last night. That I did not must tell you something. The fact is, I want you alive. Very much so.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because you are the Conquistador.”
“Oh, come on!” Stuart scoffed.
Chel just smiled knowingly. “When I removed your mask and armour in the back of the getaway van last night, it surprised me to see such a well-known face beneath. I’d had the Conquistador pegged as a nobody, some disgruntled member of the lower orders — not an obsidian magnate whose fortune is based on a product so beloved of the Empire. Far from being an outsider or a social outcast, you’re part of the establishment. You’re the last person I’d ever think would go running around London playing the radical revolutionary.”
“Seriously, you’re mistaken,” Stuart insisted. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“Who helped you back into this building, when you were so dazed you could barely walk? Who cleaned you up and put you to bed? Me. And all the while, I couldn’t quite get my head round the fact that this pillar of the community is also the man who would tear down the Empire. The final confirmation came when I inspected the premises while you slept, and found the stash of equipment and spare suits of armour at the back of your wardrobe.”
“All right,” Stuart said, relenting. There was no point trying to brazen it out any more. Chel knew what he knew. “I am the Conquistador. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. Why would I? You think I’m going to turn you over to the Jaguar Warriors?”
“There’s a substantial reward on offer.”
“But I’m an outlaw too,” said Chel. “Remember at the theatre? When you were surrounded by those priests who weren’t priests?”
Stuart recalled the men with the death’s head faces. From the moment a Jaguar Warrior clobbered him on the head, events had taken on a hazy, surreal glow. The death’s heads had dragged him out of the theatre. There’d been a mad dash through the jungle of Regent’s Park, and then…? Chel had mentioned a getaway van, and Stuart had a dim recollection of a tumbling, swerving journey and the tang of diesel fumes. By that point he’d become half convinced the death’s heads were supernatural beings, the souls of the dead come to escort him to Mictlan. It seemed absurd now, especially as he didn’t believe in Mictlan, or Tamoanchan, or any form of afterlife. At the time, though, he’d felt it was a distinct possibility — at the very least, part of a dying man’s fever dream.
And yes, yes. Ah Balam Chel had been one of the death’s heads. Not just one of them, their leader. He’d been barking out orders from the passenger seat, even as he busily scrubbed his makeup off.
“Now, I imagine you’re hungry after your ordeal,” Chel said. “Why not put on some clothes, eat some breakfast? And then we shall talk, you and I. I have things I’d like to tell you, and a proposal to put.”
Stuart studied Chel’s face. He saw neither deceit nor fear there. Stuart trusted no one, but he didn’t sense any danger coming from this man.
Almost without meaning to, he lowered the knife. “All right.”
“How long’s this going to take?” Stuart had just wolfed down a bowl of porridge and two rounds of hot buttered toast. He’d also drunk a pot of proper tea, not coca infusion, which like most of the Empire’s cultural impositions he spurned. He was starting to feel himself again.
“Why, do you have somewhere you’d rather be?” replied Chel amiably. “A holding cell at Scotland Yard, perhaps?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Merely a joke. Perhaps not a funny one.”
“As it happens, I have a business meeting at nine o’clock sharp.”
“Ah yes, your other life. The man you are when you’re not in your Conquistador costume.”
“It’s not a costume,” Stuart said. “It’s a pretence, a necessary disguise. I wouldn’t have been getting away with doing what I’ve been doing for half as long as I have, if I did it as plain old me. Plus, it gives me protection.”
“The image the armour projects, though, that’s important.”
“I don’t deny there’s some theatrics involved. I want the Conquistador’s deeds to stick in people’s minds. I want to be memorable — unignorable. I want TV coverage and newspaper headlines. I’d get none of that if I was just some bloke running about in street clothes and a balaclava.” Stuart pointed an accusing finger at Chel. “All this is pretty rich coming from you. You and your friends with the death’s head faces, the ethnic weaponry. And that jewellery you were wearing. The jade frogs and carved circle pendants. Mayan, right?”
Chel nodded.
“Which explains why you speak Nahuatl without an accent, and you look Anahuac. So why are you over here?”
“To meet you, of course.”
“No, really.”
“Really. Well, it is a little more complicated than that. Have you got time?”
Stuart glanced at his wristwatch. “The meeting’s in half an hour, and it’s twenty minutes from here to Reston Rhyolitic if the traffic’s good.”
“Then we should perhaps do this on some other occasion, when you’re not so busy.” Chel stood up as if to leave. “Mustn’t interfere with the wheels of industry, must we?”
“Or,” said Stuart, “I could phone my PA and have her postpone the meeting. It’s not urgent urgent. Just going over the half-yearly figures with the accounts team.”