“Where was she headed?” asked Sam.

“The flight plan was for Guatemala City.”

“So she’s here?” Remi said. “She brought the codex here?”

“It would seem so,” said Selma. “That’s an advantage of a private plane. You don’t have to hide what you steal in your luggage.”

Chapter 15

For over two hundred years, Sarah Allersby’s mansion in Guatemala City had been the home of the wealthy Guerrero family. It was a Spanish palace, built with a massive set of stone steps, a carved facade, and high double doors in front. The wings of the two-story house continued all the way around to enclose a large courtyard.

When Sam and Remi knocked, a tall, muscular man in his mid-thirties with the face and build of a boxer, and who might have been the butler but was probably the chief of security, opened the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Fargo?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

“You’re expected. Please come in.” He stepped back to let them pass and then looked up and down the street as he shut the door. “Miss Allersby will see you in the library.” Dominating the foyer were a pair of eight-foot-high stone slabs with carvings of particularly fierce-looking Mayan deities that seemed to be guarding the house. He led the Fargos past them to a doorway off the foyer that had a high, ornately carved stone lintel that Remi judged was from a Mayan building. Inside was the sort of library that could be found in English country houses, if they were old enough and the owners were rich enough. The man waited until Sam and Remi were seated on a large, old-fashioned leather couch and went out.

The room was designed to convey long tenure and social standing. There was an antique globe, about four feet in diameter, on a stand. Antique lecterns along the side of the room held large, open books — one an old Spanish dictionary and the other a hand-tinted, seventeenth-century atlas. The walls were lined with tall bookshelves that held thousands of leather-bound books. Hung along the inner wall, above the bookcases of nineteenth-century works, were portraits of Spanish ladies, with mantillas over their hair and in lace gowns, and Spanish gentlemen in black coats. It occurred to Remi that this room was not Sarah Allersby’s doing. She had simply got the Guerrero house and occupied it. Remi verified the impression by looking at the nearest shelf of books, which had Spanish titles embossed on their spines in gold.

At the far end of the room, a glass case displayed beaten gold and carved jade ornaments from the costume of a classic period Mayan dignitary, a selection of fanciful Mayan clay pots shaped like frogs, dogs, and birds, and eight figurines of cast gold.

They heard the pock-pock of high heels striking the polished stone floor as Sarah Allersby crossed the foyer. She entered the room at a fast walk, smiling. “Why, it really is Sam and Remi Fargo. I think I can honestly say that I never expected to see either of you again, and certainly not in Guatemala.” She wore a black skirt from a suit but without the jacket, black shoes, and a white silk blouse with a ruffle at the neck, an outfit that conveyed the impression that she had been occupied with business in another part of the house. She looked at her watch as though starting a timer and then back at them.

Sam and Remi stood. “Hello, Miss Allersby.”

Sarah Allersby stood where she was, making no attempt to shake hands.

“Enjoying your stay in our country?”

“Since we met you in San Diego, we’ve been exploring in Alta Verapaz,” said Remi. “I suppose the codex raised our consciousness of Mayan country and we decided to take a closer look.”

“How adventurous of you. It must be wonderful to be able to drop everything and go off to satisfy your curiosity on a whim. I envy you.”

“It comes with retirement,” said Sam. “You should take more time away from acquiring things.”

“Not just yet,” said Sarah. “I’m still in the building phase. So you came down here and the first one you decided to visit was me. I’m flattered.”

“Yes,” said Sam. “The reason we’re here is that our trek took us close to an estate that you own — the Estancia Guerrero.”

“How interesting.” Her expression was guarded, alert but emotionless.

“The reason we had to pass that way was that a contingent of heavily armed men were chasing us. They opened fire as soon as they saw us, so we had to run and we took a shortcut through your property. What we saw when we crossed your land was a very large marijuana plantation with about a hundred workers, harvesting the crop, drying, packing, and shipping.”

“What a wild day you had,” she said. “How, pray tell, did you escape from all these armed men?”

“Don’t you think what you should be asking is what are all these criminals doing on my ranch?” said Remi.

Sarah Allersby smiled indulgently. “Think about the Everglades National Park in your country. It’s about one-point-five million acres. The Estancia Guerrero is more than twice that size. It’s just one of several tracts that I own in different regions of Guatemala. There’s no way to keep everyone off that land. Parts of it are unreachable except on foot. The peasant people have been in and out of there for thousands of years, no doubt plenty of them up to no good. I do employ a few men in the district to prevent commercial logging of rare woods, poaching of endangered species, the looting of archaeological sites. But armed combat with drug gangs is the government’s job, not mine.”

Sam said, “We thought we’d let you know about the illegal activity going on inside your property.”

Sarah Allersby leaned forward, an unconscious posture that made her look like a cat about to spring. “You sound as though you have doubts.”

Remi shrugged. “All I can be sure of is that you’re informed now.” She offered her hand to Sarah, who took it. “Thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time.” They stepped through the door to the foyer, and Sarah emerged behind them.

“It’s not likely to happen again,” she said. As she walked across the old tiles in the other direction, she added, “I just assumed you were here to say something amusing about my Mayan codex.”

Remi stopped and turned. “Your Mayan codex?”

Sarah Allersby laughed. “Did I say that? How silly of me.” She kept walking. As she disappeared through another doorway, the front door opened behind the Fargos. The servant who had let them in appeared. Now he was accompanied by two other men in suits. They held the heavy door open so the Fargos’ exit would not be delayed.

As soon as they were outside, Remi said, “Well, that wasn’t very satisfying.”

“Let’s try another way to get some action,” Sam said.

Sam and Remi walked down the steps and out to the street. They turned to the right and walked another hundred yards, and then Sam stopped and waved down a taxi. “Avenida Reforma. The embassy of the United States.”

At the embassy, the receptionist behind the desk asked them to wait while she tried to get a member of the staff to speak with them. Five minutes later, a woman appeared from a door beyond the desk and walked up to them. “I’m Amy Costa, State Department. Come to my office.” When they were inside, she said, “How can I help you today?”

Sam and Remi told her the story of what had happened on and near the Estancia Guerrero. They told her about the men who had tracked and attacked them, the vast plantation of marijuana plants and coca trees, the truck convoys. They described the doctor and the priest who had asked them to submit their pleas to Sarah Allersby and her response. And, finally, Sam told her about the Mayan codex.

“If the codex is in her possession, or is found to have ever been in her possession, then she got it by having men impersonate federal officials at the University of California in San Diego and steal it.”