The Codex (6 page)

Hauser eased a stream of blue smoke out of his mouth.

Philip added, “It doesn’t seem to me that this would be a difficult assignment. An art collection like that wouldn’t travel inconspicuously.”

“It would in the hold of Max’s Gulfstream IV.”

“I doubt he buried himself in his plane.”

“The Vikings buried themselves in their ships. Maybe Max packed his treasure in an airtight, pressure-resistant container and ditched his plane in the ocean over the mid-Pacific abyssal plain, where it sank in two miles of water.” He spread his hands and smiled.

Philip managed to say, “No.” He dabbed his brow, trying to suppress the image of the Lippi, two miles deep, wedged in the abyssal muck. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I’m not saying that’s what he did. I’m just showing you what ten seconds of thinking can turn up. Are you working with your brothers?”

“Half-brothers. No. I’ve decided to find this tomb on my own.”

“What are their plans?”

“I don’t know and frankly I don’t care. I’ll share what I find with them, of course.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Tom’s probably the one to watch out for. He’s the youngest. When we were children, he was the wild one. He’s the kid who would be the first to jump off the cliff into the water, the first to throw the rock at the wasp’s nest. Got kicked out of a couple of schools but cleaned up his act in college and has been on the straight and narrow ever since.”

“And the other one, Vernon?”

“Right now he’s in some pseudo-Buddhist cult run by an ex-philosophy professor from Berkeley. He was always the lost one. He’s tried it all: drugs, cults, gurus, encounter groups. When he was a kid he’d bring home crippled cats, doggies that had been run over by cars, little birdies that had been pushed out of the nest by their bigger siblings—that sort of thing. Everything he brought home died. In school, he was the kid the others loved to pick on. He flunked out of college and hasn’t been able to hold down a steady job. He’s a sweet kid but ... incompetent at adulthood.”

“What are they doing now?”

“Tom went home to his ranch in Utah. The last I heard he had given up on searching for the tomb. Vernon says he’s going to find the tomb on his own, doesn’t want me to be part of it.”

“Anyone else know about this besides your two brothers?”

“There were two cops in Santa Fe who saw the videotape and know the whole story.”

“Names?”

“Barnaby and Fenton.”

Hauser made a note. A light on the phone blinked once, and Hauser picked up the receiver. He listened for a long time, spoke softly and rapidly, made a call, another, and then another. Philip felt annoyed that Hauser was doing other business in front of him, wasting his time.

Hauser hung up. “Any wives or girlfriends in the picture?”

“Five ex-wives: four living, one deceased. No girlfriends to speak of.”

A faint curl stretched Hauser’s upper lip. “Max was always one with the ladies.”

Again the silence stretched on. Hauser seemed to be thinking. Then, to Philip’s annoyance, he made another call, speaking in low tones. Finally he set down the phone.

“Well now, Philip, what do you know about me?”

“Only that you were my father’s partner in exploration, that you both knocked around Central America for a couple of years. And that you two had a falling-out.”

“That’s right. We spent almost two years in Central America together, looking for Mayan tombs to excavate. This was back in the early sixties when it was more or less legal. We found a few things, but it was only after I left that Max made his big strike and became rich. I went on to Vietnam.”

“And the falling-out? Father never talked about it.”

There was a faint pause. “Max never talked about it?”

“No.”

“I can hardly remember it now. You know how it is when two people are thrown together for a long stretch of time, they get on each other’s nerves.” Hauser laid his cigar down in a cut crystal ashtray. The ashtray was as big as a dinner plate and probably weighed twenty pounds. Philip wondered if he had made a mistake coming here. Hauser seemed like a lightweight.

The phone blinked again, and Hauser picked it up. This was the last straw; Philip rose. “I’ll come back when you’re less busy,” he said curtly.

Hauser wagged a gold-ringed finger at Philip to wait, listened for a minute, and then hung up. “So tell me, Philip: What’s so special about Honduras?”

“Honduras? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Because that’s where Max went.”

Philip stared at him. “So you were in on it!”

Hauser smiled. “Not at all. That was the substance of the phone call I just received. Almost four weeks ago today his pilot flew him and a planeload of cargo to a city in Honduras called San Pedro Sula. From there he took a military helicopter to a place called Brus Lagoon. And then he vanished.”

“You found all this out just now?”

Hauser generated a new and mighty cloud of smoke. “I’m a PI.”

“And not a bad one, it seems.”

Hauser emitted another meditative cloud. “As soon as I talk to the pilot, I’ll know a lot more. Like what kind of cargo the plane was carrying and how much it weighed. Your father didn’t make any effort to cover his tracks going down to Honduras. Did you know he and I were there together? I’m not surprised that’s where he went. It’s a big country with the most inaccessible interior in the world—thick jungle, uninhabited, mountainous, cut by deep gorges, and sealed off by the Mosquito Coast. That’s where I expect he went—into the interior.”

“It’s plausible.”

Hauser added after a moment: “I’m taking the case.

Philip felt irritated. He didn’t recall having offered Hauser the job yet. But the guy had already demonstrated his competence, and since he now knew the story, he would probably do. “We haven’t talked about a fee.”

“I’ll need a retainer. I expect the expenses in this case are going to run high. Anytime you do business in a shitcan Third World country you have to pay off every Tomás, Rico, and Orlando.”

“I had in mind a fee based on contingency,” Philip said quickly. “If we recover the collection, you get, say, a small percentage. I also should mention that I plan to divide it with my brothers: That’s only fair.”

“Contingency fees are for car-crash lawyers. I need a cash retainer up front. If I succeed, there will be an additional fixed fee.”

“A retainer? Like how much?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Philip almost laughed. “What makes you think I’ve got that kind of money?”

“I never think anything, Mr. Broadbent. I know. Sell the Klee.”

Philip felt his heart stop for a moment. “What?”

“Sell the large Paul Klee watercolor you own, Blau Kirk. It’s a beaut. I should be able to get you four hundred for it.”

Philip exploded. “Sell it? Never. My father gave me that painting.”

Hauser shrugged.

“And how did you know about that painting anyway?”

Hauser smiled and opened the soft white palms of his hand, like two calla lilies. “You do want to hire the best, don’t you, Mr. Broadbent?”

“Yes, but this is blackmail.”

“Let me explain how I work.” Hauser leaned forward. “My first loyalty is to the case, not the client. When I take a case, I solve it, regardless of the consequences to the client. I keep the retainer. If I succeed, I get an additional fee.”

“This discussion is irrelevant. I’m not selling the Klee.”

“Sometimes the client loses his nerve and wants to back out. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. I kiss the babies and attend the funerals and keep going until the case is solved.”

“You can’t expect me to sell that painting, Mr. Hauser. It’s the only thing I have of any value from my father. I love that painting.”

Philip found Hauser gazing at him in a way that made him feel odd. The man’s eyes were vacant, his face calm, emotionless. “Think of it this way: The painting is the sacrifice you need to make to recover your inheritance.”

Philip hesitated. “You think we’ll succeed?”

“I do.”

Philip gazed at him. He could always buy the painting back. “All right, I’ll sell the Klee.”

Hauser’s eyes narrowed further. He took another careful puff. Then he removed the cigar from his mouth and spoke.

“If successful, my fee will be one million dollars.” Then he added, “We don’t have much time, Mr. Broadbent. I’ve already booked us tickets to San Pedro Sula, leaving first thing next week.”

7

When Vernon Broadbent finished chanting, he took a few moments to sit quietly in the cool, dark room with his eyes closed, allowing his mind to resurface after its long meditation. As consciousness returned, he began to hear the distant boom of the Pacific and smell the salt air just penetrating the myrrh-fragrant confines of the vihara. The glow of candles on his eyelids filled his internal vision with a reddish, flickering glow.

Then he opened his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and rose, still cradling the fragile feeling of peace and serenity that the hour of meditation had given him. He went to the door and paused, looking out over the hills of Big Sur, dotted with live oaks and manzanita, to the wide blue Pacific beyond. The wind off the ocean caught his robes and filled them with cool air.

He had been living at the Ashram for more than a year, and now, in his thirty-fifth year, he finally believed he had found the place he wanted to be. It had been a long journey, from those two years in India through Transcendental Meditation, Theosophy; EST, Lifespring, and even a brush with Christianity. He had rejected the materialism of his childhood and had tried to find some deeper truth to his life. What to others—especially his brothers—seemed a wasted life, had been to him a life of richness and striving. What else was the point of life, if not to find out why?

Now he had the chance, with this inheritance, to do some real good. Not just for himself this time but for others. It was his chance to do something for the world. But how? Should he try to find the tomb on his own? Should he call Tom? Philip was an asshole, but maybe Tom would want to join forces with him. He had to make a decision, and quickly.

He tucked up his linen robes and started down the path to the Teacher’s hut—a sprawling redwood structure set in a gentle vale, nestled among a stand of tall oaks, with a view of the Pacific. On the way he passed Chao, the cheerful Asian boy who ran the Teacher’s errands, bouncing up the trail carrying a bundle of mail. It was the life he sought: peaceful and uncomplicated. Too bad it was so expensive.

As he rounded the side of the hill, the Hut came into view. He paused—he was a little intimidated by the Teacher—but then resolutely carried on. He knocked on the door. After a moment, a low, resonant voice called out from the depths of the compound, “Come in, you are most welcome.”

He removed his sandals on the veranda and stepped inside. The house was Japanese in style, simple and ascetic, with sliding screens of rice paper, floors covered with beige mats, and expanses of polished wood planking. The interior smelled of beeswax and incense. There was the gentle sound of water. Through a series of openings Vernon could see down the length of the house to a Japanese garden beyond, with mossy rocks standing among raked pebbles, and a pool with blooming lotus flowers. He could not see the Teacher.

He turned and peered down another hallway to his left, through successive doorways, which disclosed a teenage girl in bare feet and robes, with a long blond French braid down her back entwined with wilting flowers. She was chopping vegetables in the Teacher’s kitchen.

“Are you there, Teacher?” he called.

The girl went on chopping.

“This way,” came the low voice.

Vernon went toward the sound and found the Teacher sitting in his meditation room, cross-legged on a mat, his eyes closed. He opened them but did not rise. Vernon stood, waiting respectfully. The Teacher’s fit, handsome figure was draped in a simple robe of undyed linen. A fringe of long gray hair, combed straight down, fell from a small bald spot, giving him a Leonardo da Vinci look. Astute blue eyes crinkled under strongly arched orbital ridges carved out of the broad dome of his forehead. A trimmed salt-and-pepper beard completed the face. When he spoke his voice was soft and resonant, underlain by a pleasing bed of gravel, with a faint Brooklyn accent that stamped him as a man of humble origins. He was about sixty—no one knew his exact age. Formerly a professor of philosophy at Berkeley named Art Brewer, he had renounced tenure to retreat into a life of the spirit. Here, at the Ashram, he had founded a community devoted to prayer, meditation, and spiritual growth. It was pleasantly nondenominational, loosely based on Buddhism, but without the excessive discipline, intellectualism, celibacy, and fatalism that tended to mar that particular religious tradition. Rather, the Ashram was a beautiful retreat in a lovely location, where under the gentle guidance of the Teacher each worshiped in his own way, at a cost of seven hundred dollars per week, room and board included.

“Sit down,” the Teacher said.