The Codex Read online

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK – NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  THE CODEX

  Copyright © 2004 by Splendide Mendax, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Preston, Douglas J.

  The codex / Douglas Preston

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN: 0-765-30700-6 (alk. paper)

  I. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 2. Pharmaceutical industry—Fiction. 3. Archaeological thefts—Fiction. 4. Manuscripts, Maya—Fiction. 5. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 6. Mission persons—Fiction. 7. Treasure-trove—Fiction. 8. Tombs—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.R3982C63 2004

  813’ 54—dc22

  2003049427

  First Edition: January 2004

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To

  Aletheia Vaune Preston

  And

  Isaac Jerome Preston

  Contents

  Contents. 4

  Acknowledgements. 6

  1. 8

  2. 10

  3. 13

  4. 18

  5. 21

  6. 23

  7. 27

  8. 29

  9. 33

  10. 36

  11. 37

  12. 39

  13. 41

  14. 43

  15. 47

  16. 49

  17. 52

  18. 54

  19. 58

  20. 59

  21. 64

  22. 66

  23. 68

  24. 70

  25. 73

  26. 74

  27. 77

  28. 81

  29. 83

  30. 85

  31. 88

  32. 90

  33. 93

  34. 96

  35. 98

  36. 102

  37. 104

  38. 106

  39. 109

  40. 110

  41. 112

  42. 114

  43. 116

  44. 118

  45. 122

  46. 125

  47. 126

  48. 130

  49. 132

  50. 134

  51. 135

  52. 137

  53. 138

  54. 139

  55. 141

  56. 142

  57. 145

  58. 146

  59. 147

  60. 150

  61. 151

  62. 152

  63. 153

  64. 155

  65. 157

  66. 158

  67. 160

  68. 161

  69. 164

  70. 165

  71. 166

  72. 167

  73. 168

  74. 170

  75. 171

  76. 172

  77. 174

  78. 175

  79. 176

  80. 177

  81. 178

  82. 179

  83. 181

  84. 184

  85. 186

  86. 188

  87. 189

  About the e-Book. 190

  Acknowledgements

  There is one person above all others who must be thanked for the existence of this novel, and that is my good friend the inestimable Forrest Fenn—collector, scholar, and publisher. I will never forget that lunch of ours, many years ago in the Dragon Room of the Pink Adobe, when you told me a curious story—and thereby gave me the idea for this novel. I hope you feel I have done the idea justice.

  Having mentioned Forrest, I feel it necessary to make one thing clear: My character Maxwell Broadbent is a complete and total fictional creation. In terms of personality, ethics, character, and family values, the two men could not be more different, a fact I wish to emphasize for anyone who fancies he sees a roman à clef in this novel.

  Many years ago a young editor received a half-finished manuscript called Relic from a pair of unknown writers; he bought the manuscript and mailed the writers a modest editorial letter, outlining how he thought the novel should be rewritten and finished—a letter that propelled those two authors on the road to bestsellerdom and a number-one box-office hit movie. That editor was Bob Gleason. I owe a great debt to him for those early days and for guiding this novel to completion. In a similar vein I would like to thank Tom Doherty for welcoming back a prodigal son.

  I wish to acknowledge here the incomparable Mr. Lincoln Child, truly the better half of our belletristic partnership, for his excellent and most insightful criticism of the manuscript.

  I owe a great debt of gratitude to Bobby Rotenberg, not only for his insightful and detailed help with the characters and story, but also for his great and enduring friendship.

  I would like to acknowledge my agents Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit in New York and Matthew Snyder in Hollywood. I want to thank Marc Rosen for helping me develop some of the ideas in this novel and Lynda Obst for her vision in seeing its possibilities in a seven-page treatment.

  I owe a great debt to Jon Couch, who read the manuscript and made many helpful suggestions, particularly in regard to weaponry and firearms. Niccolo Capponi offered some of his usual brilliant ideas regarding several tricky scenes in the book. I am also indebted to Steve Elkins, who is searching for the real White City in Honduras.

  Several books were useful to me while writing The Codex, in particular Redmond O’Hanlons In Trouble Again and Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer by Rosita Arvigo—an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone interested in the subject of Mayan medicine.

  My daughter Selene read the manuscript several times and offered top-notch criticism, for which I am immensely grateful. And I wish to thank my wife, Christine, and my other children, Aletheia and Isaac. I thank all of you for your constant love, kindness, and support, without which this book, and everything else wonderful in my life, wouldn’t exist.

  1

  Tom Broadbent turned the last corner of the winding drive and found his two brothers already waiting at the great iron gates of the Broadbent compound. Philip, irritated, was knocking the dottle out of his pipe on one of the gateposts while Vernon gave the buzzer a couple of vigorous presses. The house stood beyond them, silent and dark, rising from the top of the hill like some pasha’s palace, its clerestories, chimneys, and towers gilded in the rich afternoon light of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  “It’s not like Father to be late,” said Philip. He slipped the pipe between his white teeth and closed down on the stem with a little click. He gave the buzzer a stab of his own, checked his watch, shot his cuff. Philip looked pretty much the same, Tom thought: briar pipe, sardonic eye, cheeks well shaved and after-shaved, hair brushed straight back from a tall brow, gold watch winking at the wrist, dressed in gray worsted slacks and navy jacket. His English accent seemed to have gotten a shade plummier. Vernon, on the other hand, in his gaucho pants, sandals, long hair, and beard, looked uncannily like Jesus Christ.

  “He’s playing another one of his games with us,” said Vernon, giving the buzzer a few more jabs. The wind whispered through the piñon trees, bringing with it a smell of warm resin and dust. The great house was silent.

  The smell of Phili
p’s expensive tobacco drifted on the air. He turned to Tom. “And how are things, Tom, out there among the Indians?”

  “Fine.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “And with you?”

  “Terrific. Couldn’t be better.”

  “Vernon?” Tom asked.

  “Everything’s fine. Just great.”

  The conversation faltered, and they looked around at each other, and then away, embarrassed. Tom never had much to say to his brothers. A crow passed overhead, croaking. An uneasy silence settled on the group gathered at the gate. After a long moment Philip gave the buzzer a fresh series of jabs and scowled through the wrought iron, grasping the bars. “His car’s still in the garage. The buzzer must be broken.” He drew in air. “Halloo! Father! Halloo! Your devoted sons are here!”

  There was a creaking sound as the gate opened slightly under his weight.

  “The gate’s unlocked,” Philip said in surprise. “He never leaves the gate unlocked.”

  “He’s inside, waiting for us,” said Vernon. “That’s all.”

  They put their shoulders to the heavy gate and swung it open on protesting hinges. Vernon and Philip went back to get their cars and park them inside, while Tom walked in. He came face-to-face with the house—his childhood home. How many years since his last visit? Three? It filled him with odd and conflicting sensations, the adult coming back to the scene of his childhood. It was a Santa Fe compound in the grandest sense. The graveled driveway swept in a semicircle past a massive pair of seventeenth-century zaguan doors, spiked together from slabs of hand-hewn mesquite. The house itself was a low-slung adobe structure with curving walls, sculpted buttresses, vigas, latillas, nichos, portals, real chimney pots—a work of sculptural art in itself. It was surrounded by cottonwood trees and an emerald lawn. Situated at the top of a hill, it had sweeping views of the mountains and high desert, the lights of town, and the summer thunderheads rearing over the Jemez Mountains. The house hadn’t changed, but it felt different. Tom reflected that maybe it was he who was different.

  One of the garage doors was open, and Tom saw his father’s green Mercedes Gelaendewagen parked in the bay. The other two bays were shut. He heard his brother’s cars come crunching around the driveway, stopping by the portal. The doors slammed, and they joined Tom in front of the house.

  That was when a troubled feeling began to gather in the pit of Tom’s stomach.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Philip, mounting the portal and striding up to the zaguan doors, giving the doorbell a firm series of depresses. Vernon and Tom followed.

  There was nothing but silence.

  Philip, always impatient, gave the bell a final stab. Tom could hear the deep chimes going off inside the house. It sounded like the first few bars of “Mame,” which, he thought, would be typical of Father’s ironic sense of humor.

  “Halloo!” Philip called through cupped hands.

  Still nothing.

  “Do you think he’s all right?” Tom asked. The uneasy feeling was getting stronger.

  “Of course he’s all right,” said Philip crossly. “This is just another one of his games.” He pounded on the great Mexican door with a closed fist, booming and rattling it.

  As Tom looked about, he saw that the yard had an unkempt look, the grass unmowed, new weeds sprouting in the tulip beds.

  “I’m going to take a look in a window,” Tom said.

  He forced his way through a hedge of trimmed chamisa, tiptoed through a flower bed, and peered in the living room window. Something was very wrong, but it took him a moment to realize just what. The room seemed normal: same leather sofas and wing chairs, same stone fireplace, same coffee table. But above the fireplace there had been a big painting—he couldn’t remember which one—and now it was gone. He racked his brains. Was it the Braque or the Monet? Then he noticed that the Roman bronze statue of a boy that held court to the left of the fireplace was also gone. The bookshelves revealed holes where books had been taken out. The room had a disorderly look. Beyond the doorway to the hall he could see trash lying on the floor, some crumpled paper, a strip of bubble wrap, and a discarded roll of packing tape.

  “What’s up, Doc?” Philip’s voice came floating around the corner.

  “You better have a look.”

  Philip picked his way through the bushes with his Ferragamo wingtips, a look of annoyance screwed into his face. Vernon followed.

  Philip peeked through the window, and he gasped. “The Lippi,” he said. “Over the sofa. The Lippi’s gone! And the Braque over the fireplace! He’s taken it all away! He’s sold it!”

  Vernon spoke. “Philip, don’t get excited. He probably just packed the stuff up. Maybe he’s moving. You’ve been telling him for years this house was too big and isolated.”

  Philip’s face relaxed abruptly. “Yes. Of course.”

  “That must be what this mysterious meeting’s all about,” Vernon said.

  Philip nodded and mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. “I must be tired from the flight. Vernon, you’re right. Of course they’ve been packing. But what a mess they’ve made of it. When Father sees this he’s going to have a fit.”

  There was a silence as all three sons stood in the shrubbery looking at each other. Tom’s own sense of unease had reached a high pitch. If their father was moving, it was a strange way to go about it.

  Philip took the pipe out of his mouth. “What say, do you think this is another one of his little challenges to us? Some little puzzle?”

  “I’m going to break in,” Tom said.

  “The alarm.”

  “The hell with the alarm.”

  Tom went around to the back of the house, his brothers following. He climbed over a wall into a small enclosed garden with a fountain. There was a bedroom window at eye level. Tom wrestled a rock out of the raised flower-bed wall. He brought it to the window, positioned himself, and hefted it to his shoulder.

  “Are you really going to smash the window?” said Philip. “How sporting.”

  Tom heaved the rock, and it went crashing through the window. As the tinkling of glass subsided they all waited, listening.

  Silence.

  “No alarm,” said Philip.

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

  Philip stared through the broken window, and Tom could see a sudden thought blooming on his face. Philip cursed and in a flash had vaulted through the broken windowframe—wingtips, pipe, and all.

  Vernon looked at Tom. “What’s with him?”

  Without answering, Tom climbed through the window. Vernon followed.

  The bedroom was like the rest of the house—stripped of all art. It was a mess: dirty footprints on the carpet, trash, strips of packing tape, bubble wrap, and packing popcorn, along with nails and the sawed butt ends of lumber. Tom went to the hall. The view disclosed more bare walls where he remembered a Picasso, another Braque, and a pair of Mayan stelae. Gone, all gone.

  With a rising feeling of panic he ventured down the hall, stopping at the archway to the living room. Philip was there, standing in the middle of the room, looking about, his face absolutely white. “I told him again and again this would happen. He was so bloody careless, keeping all this stuff here. So damn bloody careless.”

  “What?” Vernon cried, alarmed. “What is it, Philip? What’s happened?”

  Philip said, his agonized voice barely above a whisper, “We’ve been robbed!”

  2

  Detective Lieutenant Hutch Barnaby of the Santa Fe Police Department placed a hand on his bony chest and kicked back in his chair. He raised a fresh cup of Starbucks to his lips, the tenth one of the day. The aroma of the bitter roast filled his hooked nose as he looked out the window to the lone cottonwood tree. A beautiful spring day in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America, he thought, as he folded his long limbs deeper into the chair. April 15. The Ides of April. Tax Return Day. Everyone was home counting their money, sobered up by thoughts of mortality a
nd penury. Even the criminals took the day off.

  He sipped the coffee with a huge feeling of contentment. Except for the faint ringing of a phone in the outer office, life was good.

  He heard, at the edges of consciousness, the competent voice of Doreen answering the phone. Her crisp vowels floated in through the open door: “Hold on, excuse me, could you speak a little slower? I’ll get you the sergeant—”

  Barnaby drowned out the conversation with a noisy sip of coffee and extended his foot to his office door, giving it a little nudge shut. Blessed silence returned. He waited. And then it came: the knock.

  Damn that phone call.

  Barnaby placed his coffee on the desk and rose slightly from his slouched position. “Yes?”

  Sergeant Harry Fenton opened the door, a keen look on his face. Fenton was never one to like a slow day. The look was enough to tell Barnaby that something big had just come down.

  “Hutch?”

  “Hmmm?”

  Fenton went on, breathlessly. “The Broadbent place was robbed. I got one of the sons on the phone now.”

  Hutch Barnaby didn’t move a muscle. “Robbed of what?”

  “Everything.” Fenton’s black eyes glittered with relish.

  Barnaby sipped his coffee, sipped again, and then lowered his chair to the floor with a small clunk. Damn.

  As Barnaby and Fenton drove out the Old Santa Fe Trail, Fenton talked about the robbery. The collection, he’d heard, was worth half a billion. If the truth were anything close to that, Fenton said, it would be front-page-New-York-Times. He, Fenton, on the front page of the Times. Can you imagine that?

  Barnaby could not imagine it. But he said nothing. He was used to Fenton’s enthusiasms. He stopped at the end of the winding driveway that led up to the Broadbent aerie. Fenton climbed out the other side, his face shining with anticipation, his head forward, his huge hatchet nose leading the way. As they walked up the road, Hutch scanned the ground. He could see the blurred tracks of a semi, coming and going. They had come in bold as brass. So either Broadbent was away or they had killed him—more likely the latter. They’d probably find Broadbent’s stiff in the house.

  The road went around a corner and leveled out, and a pair of open gates came into view, guarding a sprawling adobe mansion set among a vast lawn dotted with cottonwoods. He paused to examine the gate. It was a mechanical gate with two motors. It didn’t show any signs of having been forced, but the electrical box was open, and inside he could see a key. He knelt and examined it. The key was in a lock, which had been turned to deactivate the gate.