Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove Page A

me are the hieratic caste and anyone who supports them.”
    With that, he bounded over the footlights and off the front of the stage, making for the priests’ platform. Panicking audience members leapt from their seats and ran shrieking. Their Holinesses themselves seemed rooted to the spot, paralysed by fear. They exchanged looks, as if to ask how this could have happened, how it could be that so many of them at once were about to become the Conquistador’s next victims.
    The Conquistador sprang up onto the platform.
    “Should’ve thought this through a bit better, shouldn’t you?” he crowed. “You arrogant bastards. Not one Jaguar Warrior bodyguard? Talk about sitting ducks.”
    “Actually,” said one of the priests, the tallest of them, “I think you’ll find you’re the sitting duck.”
    The Conquistador cocked his head. “Oh, yes? And how do you work that out?”
    “Well...” The priest reached beneath his chair and snatched out the macuahitl concealed there.
    All the others did exactly the same thing.
    Behind his mask, the Conquistador’s face fell. His eyes gave it away. A moment of pure, uncomprehending shock.
    The priests, as one, rose.
    “No Jaguar Warriors, mate?” sneered the tall one. “Try twenty of them!”
     
     
    I N HER SEAT, five rows back from the platform, Chief Inspector Mal Vaughn watched with satisfaction as her trap was sprung.
    Really, it was a surprise the Conquistador had fallen for it. Mal had had her doubts he would. Surely he’d be too smart. Surely he’d think that it was just too blatant. Twenty priests unexpectedly attending a show at an open-air theatre in the middle of a park? A venue where watertight security was virtually impossible? It must have been screaming STAY AWAY! to him.
    But no, he hadn’t stayed away. He’d come charging in, unable to resist the bait.
    That fitted with the psychological impression Mal had built up of him. He was a narcissist. He enjoyed the big gesture, the grandstanding performance. He liked to make an impact.
    All the same, she was vaguely disappointed. Somehow she’d felt he was cannier than this.
    The bogus priests moved in on the Conquistador, swords aloft. He backed away a couple of steps.
    Mal’s masterstroke was that there was no way the Conquistador could have suspected the priests were not what they appeared to be. To impersonate a priest – hieratic fraud – was one of the most heinous offences on the statute books. The punishment was a litany of hideous tortures. You would have skewers driven through your most sensitive parts. You would be flayed alive. Your skinned body would be roasted over hot coals. You would then, if not already dead, be disembowelled and, for good measure, beheaded. And the same treatment would be visited on every single member of your immediate family. Even your cousins, even your pets, would not be immune. It was something only a lunatic would consider doing.
    Chief Superintendent Kellaway had laughed at Mal when she’d suggested disguising a squad of Jaguars as priests. Then he’d realised she was deadly serious, and he’d laughed again, this time scornfully. It would never happen, he’d said. The High Priest would never allow it.
    But he might, Mal had insisted. He might make a special dispensation, in this one instance, if he could be convinced that it was the best, the only way of drawing out the Conquistador and catching him unawares. Could the chief super just try? Ask him? Plead?
    In the event, the High Priest had gone for the idea and granted permission. Twenty Jaguar Warriors had had their heads shaved and their skin adorned with non-permanent tattoo designs, the customary assortment of iguanas and quetzals and hieroglyphs. They had spent hours practising how to sit, stand and behave in a priestly manner. Few of them had been able to resist the temptation to walk with a mincing gait and make lisping demands for peeled grapes and depilated virgins, and Mal had let them have their fun,