The Kukulkan Manuscript (26 page)

Porter swayed as if he didn’t understand the words. His eyes glanced at the door on the other side of the desk.

“Unless you have a metal plate in your head, I doubt you would stand a single blow of this blunt weapon, Mr. Porter, now put my papers down!”

Porter dropped all of it carefully onto the desk and backed away as Peterson examined the attempted theft. Everything was present, though a little crushed and out of place in this organized room.

The fire spit sparks.

“They said you would arrive, but I didn’t expect you so soon,” Peterson said with life in his voice, as if he were addressing one of his students and not a thief.

“I know why the others were killed,” said Porter. “I know the truth, and I’m not turning my head.”

“There is nothing for you to see,” Peterson said with eyebrows raised, flipping the cane under his right arm. He took up the codex and inspected a new tear with his fingers.

“You know there’s more than ten years of investigation on that desk and you say—”

“That’s all behind us now,” Peterson said.

Porter stood breathless. “What?”

“Do you play chess, Mr. Porter?” said the professor hanging his cane on his arm. He took up the maps.

Porter didn’t say anything.

“Sometimes…you have to sacrifice a piece,” said Peterson.

“They’re pushing you, professor. I know about it. I can vouch—”

“You don’t have a clue as to what I’m saying,” said the professor. Dr. Peterson smiled, his skin tight as if he’d had a facelift or two. “Sometimes it’s…best to play a game that way. Keeping the end in mind, of course.”

The professor looked back at the fireplace.

His hand shot away from his body.

The codex dropped.

Starving, the fire attacked like golden hyenas over a sick wildebeest. The bark pages arched in pain, but the fire kept coming, biting, chewing. The ancient characters on the cover disappeared in mists of darkness. The book melted and began flying through the chimney to heaven in chunks of floating ash as Porter and the professor watched.

“Stay where you are,” Peterson said, lifting his cane as Porter took a step.

Porter stopped, his mouth loose, his eyes sagging out of his skull, his fingers trembling.

The maps went next, burning entirely and then soaring away in pieces.

“You’re…a…scholar,” Porter said in disbelief, his eyes still on the fire. “
Who
could make you do
this
?!?”

Peterson smiled, but Porter sensed pain behind his eyes as the professor took up his journals and set them neatly inside the overheated hearth. “Oh, my dear Mr. Porter. We probably would have been friends one day, you and I, under different circumstances. For you to come
all this way
…
so quickly
….”

“Who is making you do this!” Porter said, keeping his voice down so as not to draw any more attention.

But the door had already opened again, and the young lady stood looking at the professor. “Everything all right in here?”

Peterson gazed at her with his eyes unfocused, the typed pages in his murdering hands now screaming to the world’s subconscious for help. “All is well, Cerina. Please give us some time together.”

She closed the door as Peterson tossed the pages of his manuscript into the raging torrent of heat.

“
They
have no name,” the professor said.

“That can’t be true. I want to know who’s behind all this. It’s illegal!” Porter smelled the smoke of the sour bark.

Peterson grinned, his face flickering with yellow and orange firelight. “It’s all been against the law, Porter, you
have
to know that.”

“Is it the FBI?” Porter said. “Why would they be involved?!”

“They aren’t, to my knowledge.” He chewed his molars together. “You would do well to forget about them, young man.”

“I never will,” said Porter, his cheeks trembling.

“If
they
had a name, it would be a metonymic displacement for professional obfuscation,” said Dr. Peterson. “You will never find them, for they do not exist. Erase your name from their blackboard, Mr. Porter….You’ll live longer.”

Porter stared at the professor. “You’re letting me go?”

“At your age,” said the professor with a look upward as he thought, “I may have worn your shoes and matched your footsteps. I have nothing against you. But if you do not look away,
they
will ponder what reason you
should
remain on the planet….Get out.”

“I—”

“The conversation is over, Porter, I have been cordial enough.” Peterson pulled on the handle off his cane revealing a long blade of thin metal no longer hidden in the wood.

He pointed the short sword at the student.

“It’s an antique,” said the professor. “Handy. Its forgotten existence in this modern world makes it priceless for someone like me. Do you like it?”

“I won’t stick around for it,” said Porter, his face cold limestone. He felt numb in the warm room.

“Bad joke, Mr. Porter.”

“Not much left to do,” he said, leaving the room. “Everyone’s made sure of that.”

“On the contrary,” came the British accent behind him. “If you’re
that obsessed
…I’d start looking for Dr. Ulman. He sent me an unfriendly e-mail last week.”

Porter turned slowly. “Ulman’s…alive?”

“Unsigned, of course, but I know the fool too well.”

Porter stared at the professor who glanced at the fire with aching eyes.

“Question is,” said the Englishman quietly, “can you find him…before
they
do?”

April 30
9:40 a.m. PST

Click-click-click-click-click.

*  *  *

Alred shoved her way through the glass door into Bruno’s cafe. Whether or not Porter wanted to see her, Alred would tell it all, even if she had to slap him to get his attention.

There wasn’t anymore time.

She didn’t understand the reason why, but her intuition, her female sixth-sense that something hung out of balance, raised her blood-pressure.

Tapping the old man in the thin T-shirt, she said, “Bruno, I need some help.”

*  *  *

Click-click-click-click.

*  *  *

Rubbing the ends of a mustache reaching for his beardless chin, the boxer turned and said, “My pies are the answer to everything!”

“I need to find John Porter.”

“Hasn’t been in today,” said the owner of the cafe, cleaning the table again. “Why should I be doing this stuff?!? Where’s that girl!” he said to the kitchen.

“Someone has tried twice to kill him,” said Alred. “He’s hiding out, and he’ll want to speak with me.” A little exaggeration. She meant Porter would be glad by the end of their conversation. Well, she hoped Porter would feel that way. But it was too complicated to tell Bruno.

The old man laughed a gritty chuckle, but his eyes jolted when she insinuated attempted murder.

Someone shouted, “Brussels sprouts,
Brassica oleracea
!”

“You’ll eat what I give ya and like it!” Bruno said to the student with the friends and about two-thousand flashcards.

They laughed.

He looked at his task of wiping down the next table. “Running from you, eh,” Bruno said to Alred. “Don’t sound like he’s
that
interested!”

“Do you know his whereabouts? Porter said you had the up-to-date facts on everybody who frequented your place.”

“I’ve the stomach of an elephant,” he said, taking up a black tray of filthy dishes and turning to the kitchen, “not the memory of one.”

*  *  *

Click-click-click-click. Click.

*  *  *

Outside of Bruno’s, Alred sucked in the salty air of morning. She stared for some time at a wooden telephone pole papered with cheap advertisements and pictures of lost dogs, cats, and kids. The storm had not subsided, but allowed the presence of a silent marine layer of high fog from the coast. Stratford wasn’t that close to the water, but few hills stood to block the recent chaotic winds.

She looked at the brown portfolio in her right hand.

*  *  *

Click-click.

*  *  *

Where would Alred be if she were a crazed Mormon who’d just lost all chance of graduating after seven years of worthy work?

She
had
to talk to Porter.

*  *  *

As Alred got into her faded gold Celica, which by appearance seemed to have more years than mileage, Bruno looked with sharp eyes through the glass.

“What’ve I gotta do to get some service ‘round here?!?” said a customer. A rumble of laughter from friends followed.

Without taking his eyes off the graduate student, Bruno said, “You wan’ me to stick someth’n down your throat?! You wait right there!” He popped the knuckles in both hands and the chortles continued.

The man across the street sitting in the dark blue Volvo put the camera with the telephoto lens on the passenger seat. Bruno watched him hit the ignition as Alred pulled into traffic. The spook stayed three cars behind her until both vehicles drove out of Bruno’s sight.

A drinking glass shattered in the kitchen.

Everyone laughed.

Except Bruno.

*  *  *

11:37 a.m. PST

Dr. Christopher Ulman kept his back to the bench in the covered bus stop while he peeked at the Volvo sedan with the cameraman inside.

It was drizzling again in front of what was informally called the Stratford Science Square. The center had really been named after Krishnamoorthy Ramanujam, which most students refused to pronounce.

Ulman would see his wife tomorrow.

If he guessed right, they didn’t care about her anymore.

But first he
had
to tell Alred not to—

The bus pulled quickly to a stop. Ulman bowed his head in the high collar of his new hunter-green raincoat. The door folded open.

John Porter stepped off the bus.

Ulman glanced up, and his skin suddenly chilled like a snake’s in winter. He pushed his eyes down the sidewalk.

As expected, Alred finally appeared through the tall, spired gate made of dark metal.

The professor had set himself between the public parking lot and the science buildings, waiting for his prized student to stride by when her business was complete.

He hadn’t expected the cameraman, who worked as feverishly with the black contraption in the cab of his car as he had when Alred entered the quad by foot.

The long lens focused solely on Alred. The spy turned his body slowly as Alred pressed toward the bus stop. A car driving by hit a puddle, which splashed the concrete in front of her. She gave the pilot a dirty smirk, then reformed her face to faraway thought.

The camera would catch Ulman in a moment if he stayed put.

“Are you getting on?” said the bus driver behind Porter, Alred’s graduate-student friend standing close enough to kick.

Ulman stood, his chin down. He didn’t know if Porter would recognize him, but he couldn’t chance it.

Porter saw Alred before she saw him. Ulman heard him growl as Porter turned and started off in the opposite direction.

“Buddy!” said the driver, his hand on the door lever, itching to pull it. “Let’s go!”

Ulman eyed the bus driver, then watched the camera in the Volvo twist in his direction the closer Alred came. Her eyes concentrated on the sidewalk hard enough to crack the cement with the pressure.

Ulman
couldn’t
get caught by the camera.

“Yo!!!” said the driver.

“All right!” Ulman said, his hands trembling as he reached for the railing. He looked at Porter not ten feet away, at Alred not twenty, at the camera in the blue four-door. Almost on him.

Ulman moved one foot onto the lowest step in the entrance to the bus.

Ulman’s pinching eyes zoomed in on Alred as his throat grew tight.

He cleared it with a bark.

Alred looked up.

The camera focused.

Ulman grit his teeth and slipped into the bus, which instantly rolled from the curb.

He would have to wait…until it was safe.

*  *  *

As the county transit vehicle slipped its long body by her, Alred frowned, wondering….

Then she saw, “Porter!”

He didn’t turn around.

Alred shuffled up behind him.

“We’ve already decided against correspondence,” Porter said for them both.

“You’ll want to listen to this,” she said.

Porter whipped his flushed face into hers. “In all my—”

“Be quiet, Porter!” she said, her words a fast flurry of machine gunfire. “I’ve had enough of your Junior High, tough-boy pouting. Your life’s going down the rat holes as long as you choose defeat.”

“Easy for my Nemesis to say.”

“If you’d open your eyes and take a second to breathe you’d see I’ve done what’s best, considering where we fall at present!” Her pupils spat fire. She stood with shoulders squared, her feet staggered, her left hand swelling red around the handle of her leather bag.

Thick exhaust passed around them from the road.

“We have nothing to talk about,” said Porter, keeping his ground.

She cocked her head. “Guess I’ll just take
KM-3
to someone who really wants it!”

Silence smacked them both like a cold wind. The sound of cars driving on the wet road came from every direction, echoing inside her head, her heart humming like an overheating engine.

She’d gotten through.

He was listening.

“I tried to tell you after I turned in KM-2,” she said, running a hand through her breeze-blown hair. “No one at all knows about this manuscript. I had a scrap of it carbon dated.”

He said nothing.

“I just received the results,” she said, glancing back at the science square, then quickly into his eyes.

Porter’s empty mouth gaped powerlessly.

“450 years Before…Christ.”

His brow turned to putty.

“None of the words are Mayan, as far as I can distinguish. It’s all written in your ‘Reformed Egyptian Script,’ I believe. There are Mesoamerican characteristics all over…of a sort. Pictoglyphs. But I haven’t had much time to study them.”