The bloody Fargos might have discerned the one way to confound her. Of course, just the fact that they had beaten her to an idea didn’t mean the idea was worth anything. The whole idea depended on something that might not have happened at all. Had Las Casas learned any secrets from the Mayans? Probably. Had he written them down and left them in his library of hymnals and catechisms and tracts? Who knew?
She had to get going now, to choose her destination and begin assembling the components of her first expedition. The idea of being beaten to a major discovery by a pair of inquisitive, jealous, and resentful upstarts was maddening.
Sarah picked up her telephone and called the vice president in charge of the financial arm of her company.
“Yes, Miss Allersby?” he said. The Spanish-speaking employees of her companies had been instructed never to address her as Señorita because it sounded disrespectful to her English-trained ears.
“Ricardo, I need a favor.”
“Certainly, Miss Allersby,” he said. “If you ask me, it’s not a favor. It’s my job.”
“I would like you to run credit checks on an American couple. The names are Samuel and Remi Fargo. They live on Goldfish Point in La Jolla, California, which is a section of San Diego. I want to know exactly what charges they’re making on their credit cards and where.”
“Do you have any identifiers? Social Security numbers, dates of birth? Anything like that?”
“No. But you can buy them from their banks, can’t you?”
“Of course, Miss Allersby, or from middlemen.”
“Then go ahead. They were here in Guatemala a couple of weeks ago. Their hotel will probably have made copies of their passports and will certainly have their credit card numbers.”
“Yes, Miss Allersby,” he said. “I’ll find out where they are and what they’re doing and call you.”
“Good. Wait a few hours after that and run their credit again once each day so we can pick up any changes.”
“Certainly, Miss Allersby.”
She hung up and turned her attention to planning her expedition. She made long lists of things that needed to be done and, under them, the people she would order to do them. After about two hours, her cell phone rang again.
“Hello.”
“Miss Allersby, it’s Ricardo Escorial. Samuel and Remi Fargo charged some airline tickets a few hours ago. They flew from Madrid to New York. In the afternoon, they’ll arrive and take a flight from New York to San Diego.”
“Are you sure they got on the flight at Madrid?”
“Quite sure,” he said. “Otherwise, by now there would be a refund or an additional charge for a change in reservations.”
“All right. Call me with an update tomorrow.” She hung up, then dialed another number.
“Hello?” It was Russell’s voice again. He sounded as though he had been asleep.
“Hello, Russell. It’s me. After the Fargos painted you blue, they took a plane to New York. They’re booked on a second flight to San Diego in the late afternoon. So don’t waste your time searching the tapas bars, looking for revenge. Go home and take care of this problem.”
Chapter 19
It was early morning, and Remi and Sam sat at an outdoor table overlooking the Pacific at the Valencia Hotel, only a few hundred yards from their house, where they often ate breakfast with Zoltán, their German shepherd. They’d already finished a morning run along the beach and now they were having cups of espresso and a breakfast of smoked salmon on bagels with capers and onions. Zoltán had eaten his breakfast at home before they’d gone out and was content at this hour with a bowl of water and a few of the biscuits that Remi carried in her pocket for treats. When Sam and Remi had finished, they paid their bill and started walking across the vast green lawn and on toward their house.
Zoltán, always alert, stopped and stared in the direction of the beach, then moved forward again to lead the way home. Remi said, “What is it, Zoltán? Did you see somebody that Sam painted blue? The one I wish you’d paint blue is Sarah Allersby,” she added. She looked at her watch, then at the stretch of lawn ahead. “We’d better move a little faster. David Caine will be there in a few minutes.”
“Selma will let him in,” he said. “Before he gets here, we should talk about what we’re willing to do on this project and what we’re not willing to do.”
“Have we given adequate consideration to painting Sarah Allersby blue? I, for one, don’t think so,” she said.
“The idea is growing on me. But, seriously, we’re reaching the point where we may decide something is the next logical move but not want to do it. If a person takes enough risks, the time could come when he loses.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my husband?”
Sam smiled. “I know I’m usually the one who wants to do something rash. But I can’t forget what it felt like that day when our only way out was to dive into an underground river.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “By the way, that was pretty romantic when you tried to give me your air tank. I don’t know if I’ve ever given you adequate credit for that. Who knew that the way to a girl’s heart is through her lungs?”
“Let’s talk things over with David, hear what he thinks but make a decision about what we do only after we’ve taken some time to think it through.”
“Okay.” She looked up at Sam as they walked, then suddenly stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
“What was that for?”
“You know.”
They let Zoltán lead them home and arrived just as David Caine’s car pulled up in front of their house. He got out carrying a big, string-tied accordion envelope under his arm. He shook Sam’s hand, hugged Remi, and patted Zoltán.
When they were inside, he said, “What you’ve done — deducing that a copy might have existed and then going to find it — was brilliant. And I’ve always been an admirer of Bartolomé de Las Casas, but even he has risen in my estimation. The copy he made seems to me to be nearly perfect. Tracing and copying a hundred thirty-six pages of pictures and symbols that he couldn’t have understood must have taken months. But as far as I can tell, he missed nothing.”
They went to a long table in the first-floor office area, and Caine laid out a series of digital images from Sam and Remi’s library transmission. He had enlarged the images so it was possible to see each pen stroke and every mark on the vellum, including pores on the outer side of the hide.
Sam and Remi recognized the four-page map of the Mayan sites, with its text of Mayan glyphs and its stylized pictures.
Remi pointed at the first spot they had explored. “There’s our swimming pool, the cenote, where we had the shootout.”
Next, Caine laid out a series of enlarged satellite photographs of the same territory, placing each one under its Mayan representation. “Here’s the way these places look from above.”
Then he set out one more. “And here’s what I’m excited about — excited and worried.”
“What is it?” asked Remi.
“You remember I said at the beginning that it looked like there were a few major sets of buildings on these maps?”