The Codex (37 page)

Philip said, “Father hired people to do all those things for him. Father had a gardener, a cook, a lady who cleaned the house, people to fix the roof. And he had a nurse. In America you buy what you need.”

“That’s not what he means,” said Vernon. “He wants to know what we did for Father when he was sick.”

Tom felt his face flushing.

“When he sick with the cancer, what you do? You go to his house? Stay with him?”

“Borabay,” Philip said, his voice shrill, “it would have been utterly useless to impose ourselves on the old man. He wouldn’t have wanted us.”

“You let stranger take care of Father when he sick?”

“I’m not going to stand a lecture from you, or anyone, on my duties as a son,” cried Philip.

“I not lecture. I ask simple question.”

“The answer is yes. We let a stranger take care of Father. He made our lives miserable growing up, and we couldn’t wait to escape from him. That’s what happens when you’re a bad father—your sons leave you. They run, they flee. They can’t wait to get away from you!”

Borabay rose to his feet. “He your father, good or bad. He feed you, he protect you, he raise you. He make you.”

Philip stood up in a fury himself. “Is that what you call that vile eruption of bodily fluid? Making us? We were accidents, each one of us. What kind of father is it who takes children away from their mothers? What kind of father is it who raises us like we’re some kind of experiment in creating genius? Who drags us out into the jungle to die?”

Borabay took a swing at Philip, and it happened so fast that it seemed Philip just disappeared backward into the darkness. Borabay stood, five feet of painted fury, his fists clenching and unclenching. Philip sat up in the dust beyond the fire and coughed. “Ugh.” He spat. His lip was bloody and swelling rapidly.

Borabay stared at him, breathing hard.

Philip wiped his face, and then a smile spread across it. “Well, well. The eldest brother finally asserts his place in the family.”

“You no speak about Father like that.”

“I’ll speak about him any way I want, and no illiterate savage is going to make me change my mind.”

Borabay clenched his fists but did not make a further move toward Philip.

Vernon helped Philip stand up. Philip dabbed at his lip, but the look on his face was triumphant. Borabay stood with uncertainty, seeming to realize that he had made a mistake, that by striking his brother he had somehow lost the argument.

“Okay,” said Sally. “Enough talk about Maxwell Broadbent. We can’t afford to fight at a time like this, and you all know it.”

She looked at Borabay. “Looks like dinner’s burned.”

Borabay silently removed the blackened shish kebabs and began parceling them out on leaves.

Philip’s harsh phrase rang in Tom’s mind: That’s what happens when you’re a bad father—your sons leave you. And he wondered: Was that what they had done?

55

Mike Graff settled in the wing chair by the fire, folding his neat legs one across the other, an alert, pleasant expression on his face. It amazed Skiba how, in spite of everything, Graff managed to keep that crisp B-school aura of self-confidence. Graff could be paddling Charon’s own boat down the River Styx toward the very gates of hell, and he’d still be sporting that fresh-faced look, persuading his fellow passengers that heaven was just around the corner.

“What can I do for you, Mike?” Skiba asked pleasantly.

“What’s with the stock these past two days? It’s gone up ten percent.”

Skiba shook his head. The house was on fire while Graff was in the kitchen complaining about cold coffee. “Just be glad that we survived the piece in the Journal about Phloxatane.”

“All the more reason to worry why our stock is going up.

“Look, Mike—”

“Lewis, you didn’t tell Fenner last week about the Codex, did you?”

“I did.”

“Christ. You know what a scumbag that guy is. We’re in enough trouble as it is without adding insider trading to our bill of fare.”

Skiba looked at the man. He really should have gotten rid of Graff before. Graff had so compromised them both that now dismissal was out of the question. What did it matter? It was over—for Graff, for the company, and especially for him. He wanted to scream at the irrelevancy of it. A bottomless gulf had opened below him—they were in free fall—and Graff still didn’t know it.

“He was going to downgrade Lampe to a sell. I had to, Mike. Fenner’s no fool. He won’t breathe a word of it. Would he risk throwing his life away for a few hundred thousand on the side?”

“Are you kidding? He’d knock his own grandmother down to snatch a penny off the sidewalk.”

“It’s not Fenner, it’s short sellers closing out their positions.”

“That doesn’t explain more than thirty percent of it.”

“Contrarians. Odd-lotters. Widows and orphans. Mike, enough. Enough. Don’t you realize what’s happening? It’s over. We’re finished. Lampe is finished.”

Graff looked at him, astonished. “What are you talking about? We’ll weather this. Once we get the Codex, Lewis, it’ll be clear sailing.”

Skiba felt his blood run thick and cold at the mention of the Codex. “You really think the Codex will solve our problems?” He spoke quietly.

“Why not? Am I missing something here? Has something changed?”

Skiba shook his head. What did it matter? What did anything matter?

“Lewis, this defeatism is unlike you. Where’s your famous fight?”

Skiba was tired, so very tired. This argument was useless. It was over and done with. There was no more point in talking. All they could do now was wait: wait for the end. They were powerless.

“When we unveil the Codex,” Graff went on, “Lampe stock will go through the roof. Nothing succeeds like success. The shareholders will forgive us, and it’ll take all the wind out of the sails of that Dudley Do-Right chairman of the SEC. That’s why I’m concerned about insider trading. If someone said something about the Codex to someone who told his mother-in-law who phoned her nephew in Dubuque—that charge would stick. It’s like tax evasion, it’s what they nail everyone on. Look at what happened to Martha—”

“Mike?”

“What?”

“Get the fuck out.”

* * *

Skiba turned out the lights, shut down the phones, and waited for darkness to come. On his desk were only three things: the little plastic pill bottle, the sixty-year-old Macallan, and a clean shot glass. Time to take the big swim.

56

The following day they left the abandoned Tara settlement and entered the foothills of the Sierra Azul. The trail began to ascend by fits and starts through forests and meadows, passing some fallow fields overgrown with weeds. Here and there, hidden in the rainforest, Tom caught a glimpse of an abandoned thatched hut, sinking into ruin.

They entered a deep, cool forest. Borabay suddenly insisted on going ahead and, unlike his usual silent pace, proceeded noisily, singing, whacking unnecessarily at vegetation and stopping frequently to “rest,” which looked to Tom more like reconnoitering. Something was making him nervous.

When they came to a small clearing, Borabay halted. “Lunch!” he cried and began to sing loudly while unpacking bundles of palm leaves.

“We had lunch two hours ago,” said Vernon.

“We have lunch again!” The Indian unshouldered his bow and arrows, and Tom noticed that he laid them down at some distance from himself.

Sally sat down next to Tom. “Something’s about to happen.”

Borabay helped the others out of their backpacks and put them with the bow and arrows, on the far side of the clearing. Then he came over to Sally and put an arm around her, drawing her close. “Give me gun, Sally,” he said in a low voice.

She unshouldered her gun. Borabay then took away all their machetes.

“What’s going on?” Vernon asked.

“Nothing, nothing, we rest here.” He began passing around some dried plantains. “You hungry, brothers? Very good banana!”

“I don’t like this,” said Philip.

Vernon, oblivious to the undercurrent of tension, tucked into the dried plantains. “Delicious,” he said, his mouth full. “We should eat two lunches every day.”

“Very good! Two lunches! Good idea!” said Borabay, laughing uproariously.

And then it happened. Without any noise or apparent movement, Tom suddenly realized they were surrounded by men on all sides, with bows drawn to the limit, a hundred stone-tipped arrows pointing at them. It was as if the jungle had imperceptibly withdrawn, leaving the men exposed like rocks at low tide.

Vernon let out a scream and fell to the ground and was instantly surrounded by bristling, tense men, with fifty arrows drawn and poised inches from his throat and chest.

“No move!” Borabay cried. He turned and spoke rapidly to the men. Slowly, the bows began to relax and the men stepped back. He continued talking, less rapidly and at a lower pitch, but just as urgently. Finally the men took another step back and lowered their arrows completely.

“You move now,” said Borabay. “Stand up. No smile. No shake hand. Look everyone in eye. No smile.”

They did as they were told, rising.

“Go get packs and weapons and knifes. Do not show you afraid. Make angry face but say nothing. Smile and you die.”

They followed Borabay’s orders. There was a brief flurry of raised bows as Tom picked up his machete, but when he sheathed it in his belt the bows went back down. Tom, following Borabay’s instructions, raked the warriors near them with a baleful stare, and they stared back so ferociously that he felt weak in the knees.

Borabay was now talking in a lower voice, but he sounded angry. He was directing his comments to one man, taller than the others, with a brilliant set of feathers bristling from rings on his muscled upper arms. He wore a string around his neck, on which dangled as jewelry the detritus of Western technology, a CD-ROM offering six free months of AOL, a calculator with a hole drilled through it, a dial from an old telephone.

The man looked at Tom and stepped forward. Halted.

“Brother, take step toward man, tell him in angry voice he must apologize.”

Tom, hoping that Borabay understood the psychology of the situation, scowled and stepped toward the warrior, “How dare you draw your bows at us?” he demanded.

Borabay translated. The man answered angrily, gesturing with a spear close to Tom’s face.

Borabay spoke. “He say, ‘Who are you? Why you come into Tara land without invitation?’ You tell him in angry voice you come to save your father. Shout at him.”

Tom obeyed, raising his voice, taking a step toward the warrior and shouting at him inches from his face. The man answered in an even angrier voice, shaking his spear in front of Tom’s nose. At this, many of the warriors put up their bows again.

“He say Father cause big trouble for Tara and he very angry. Brother, you must be very angry now. You tell them to put down bows. Say you no talk unless they put arrows away. Make big insult.”

Tom, sweating now, tried to push aside the terror he felt and feign anger. “How dare you threaten us?” he cried. “We have come into your land in peace, and you offer us war! Is this how the Tara treat their guests? Are you animals or people?”

Tom caught a flash of approval from Borabay as he translated—no doubt adding his own nuances.

The bows came down, and this time the men unnocked their arrows and put them back into their quivers.

“Now you smile. Short smile, not big smile.”

Tom flashed a smile, then let his face settle back into sternness.

Borabay spoke at length, then turned to Tom. “You must hug and kiss that warrior in Tara way.”

Tom gave the man an awkward hug and a pair of kisses on the neck, just as Borabay had done to him so many times. He ended up with red and yellow paint on his face and lips. The warrior returned the courtesy, smearing more paint on him.

“Good,” said Borabay, almost giddy with relief. “Everything fine now! We go to Tara village.

The village consisted of an open plaza of packed dirt, surrounded by two irregular rings of thatched huts of the kind they had slept in a few nights before. The huts had no windows, just a hole in the peak. Cooking fires were burning in front of many of the huts, tended by women who, Tom noticed, were cooking with the French cooking pots, copper braising pans, and Meissen stainless steel cutlery that Maxwell Broadbent had brought them. As he followed the group of warriors into the center of the plaza, thatched doors popped open and various people came out to stand and gape at them. The small children were completely naked; the older ones wore dirty shorts or breechclouts. The women wore a piece of cloth tied around their waists and were naked above, with their breasts and chests smeared with red. Many had disks in their lips and ears. Only the men wore feathers.

There was no formal greeting ceremony. The warriors who had brought them in wandered off, going about their business with complete indifference, while the women and children of the village gaped.