Sarah Allersby watched the other black car drive off, then latched the briefcase and set it on the floor. She couldn’t keep from smiling as her own car moved off more slowly. She wanted to laugh aloud, to get on the phone and tell a few friends how clever she had been. She had just acquired a Mayan codex, an irreplaceable and priceless artifact, for about the cost of a middle-of-the-lot American car. If she included the price of the false identification cards and badges, the plane tickets, and the bonuses, it was, at most, the cost of two cars.

Maybe when she got back to Guatemala City tonight she would get on the secure scrambled phone line to London. Her father would be amused. He didn’t much care about the art or cultures of non-European people—he referred to them as “our brown brothers,” as though he were a colonist out of Kipling—but a good deal on any commodity was what he lived for.

Chapter 14

GUATEMALA

The cannabis plants grew in rows, planted like corn, with the stalks as tall as a man. There were irrigation hoses between rows with holes in them to soak the roots.

Remi sat on the ground and put on the sneakers that Sam had placed in the waterproof bag for her. Then she took two of the pistols from the bag, handed one to Sam, and stuck the other in the waistband of her shorts and pulled her shirt down over it. She said, “I think I know who those men who attacked us were.”

“Me too,” Sam said. “They must patrol the area to be sure outsiders don’t reach the fields.”

“Let’s see if we can call home,” Remi said. She tried her phone, then Sam’s. “The batteries are dead. We’ll have to walk out of here.”

“If the drug farmers let us,” Sam said. “They’re not going to like us any better than the men at the cenote did.”

They heard the sound of an engine. It was distant at first, but it grew louder. After a moment, they could hear squeaking springs as a stake truck bounced along the dusty road between two fields of crops.

Sam and Remi ran into the forest of tall cannabis stalks and moved away from the sounds. They crouched low and watched. The truck bounced up and coasted to a stop, and a middle-aged man in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a white shirt got out of the passenger side of the cab. He walked one row into the field and selected a marijuana plant. He looked closely at a bud and tested it. He stepped out toward the truck and nodded, and a dozen men jumped from the back of the truck to the ground. They moved along the rows of plants, harvesting the ripe buds.