IT WAS STILL EARLY IN THE EVENING when Anna Basurko arrived at the hotel, Spaniards ate very late. She remembered the Englishman for his eccentric appearance, he looked like Graham Greene’s vacuum cleaner salesman, or was it John Le Carré’s tailor, a caricature, as though he had just stepped out of the screen adaption of the former’s novel.
Simmo hadn’t been mistaken, she was very attractive. They’d briefly met the previous year, at a reception onboard Sir Patrick’s yacht, Las Indias, in Belize.
It was a fine evening and Scott invited them to the Mata Hari suit for privacy and drinks. He always booked the seventh floor suite during the Feria de Arte y Antiguedades art salon week. It was called El Septimo Cielo for its magnificent suites with their broad private terraces overlooking La Concha and across the bay to Santa Clara Island.
Scott had outlined to Anna the reason for their meeting, but had avoided going into the details of the ‘work’ to avoid attracting unwanted attention, one could never be too careful with the Salon at the Kursaal in full swing, where millions were at stake, and eavesdropping was not unknown.
After the small talk and briefing he saw Anna was impatient to see the ‘work’. They went inside to the reception room of his suite where the blinds were drawn offering shade from the bright sunlight.
Simmo placed his brief case on the low table and carefully took out the manuscript now protected in a hotel laundry bag, unwrapped it and placed it before Anna's expert eye.
Somehow it was not what she had expected. After a few moments of hesitation, puzzlement, she cautiously inspected the cover, passing her fine manicured fingers over the worn leather, almost as if she was communicating with the ancient book, she then opened it with the greatest of care, turning the first few pages, pausing at the illustrations.
‘Extraordinary,’ she whispered, her voice dry. ‘Bernardino de Sahagun, impossible.’
She sat back on the sofa with a look of disbelief on her face.
Anna was an archaeologist, her field was underwater research, specialised in the period of Spain’s New World Empire, where since the conquest more than one thousand vessels had been lost along the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific coasts, galleons, treasure ships and merchant ships of all descriptions.
Her work involved research in Spain’s vast historical archives, stored in Madrid and Seville, where millions of documents meticulously recorded the history of the vast colonial empire that had stretched westwards across the Atlantic to New Spain and beyond the Pacific to the Philippines.
Anna’s research had regularly brought her to Seville, to the Archivo General de Indias—the largest collection of historical documents relating to the Spanish Empire. The 16th century building housed 80 million pages of documents and maps, nine kilometres of shelves, dating from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, an incredibly complete history of the New World under Spanish rule.
Spanish merchants in the Consulado de cargadores, in Seville, had the monopoly of trade with the colonies, and merchants, acting on behalf of foreign traders, exported their goods on the Flota de Indias to the New World. Seville, on the rio Guadalquivir, in Andalusia, was the exclusive point of departure and return for the fleets of galleons, urcas and caravels that carried all trade with the New World.
In addition more remarkably meticulous records were kept in the Archivo Historico Nacional and the Naval Museum in Madrid as well as in other archives in Seville and Valladolid, detailing the movements of all vessels, their cargoes, crews and passengers. The records were an extraordinary source of information, though many things were dissimulated by those who sought to escape taxes on smuggled treasure or prevent secrets from falling into their enemies hands.
Thanks to these archives, Anna had studied the history of more than 1,000 galleons and merchant ships lost along the coast of New Granada, a vast territory from New Spain south to what is today’s Colombia, Venezuela and Panama.
She was an expert, she had spent more hours than she cared to remember pouring over countless documents, letters, manuscripts and printed books, from the earliest voyages of Columbus, of Magellan, and the Conquistadors—Cortes and Pizarro, and finally to the last throes of empire which ended in the Spanish-American War when the curtain fell on four centuries of exploration, conquest, glory, riches, Christianisation, war, slavery, torture and death.
The question that had always troubled Anna was the story of the peoples who fell under the Conquistador’s swords, how little of their history had survived, there was of course the impressive stone vestiges in the form of pyramids, temples, palaces, ball courts, plazas and stelae, but of the libraries that told the story of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas and their beliefs, their history, culture and science, almost nothing was left.
Simmo spoke Spanish fluently, but was not familiar with the flowery handwriting, the literary style and terms of the 16th century text. Anna on the other hand understood the manuscript perfectly which at first glance appeared to principally concern medicinal herbs and plants and their utilisation.
‘Firstly, subject to laboratory tests, the manuscript appears to be authentic,’ she announced. ‘Secondly it’s a herbal apothecary, probably Aztec, compiled by Franciscan monks, possibly Bernardino de Sahagun and his assistants. As you can see it's written in three parallel texts, Spanish, romanised Nahuatl and traditional Aztec glyphs, that said the illustrations of the various plants seem to be typical of the style used during that period in Europe.’
The two men nodded and eagerly waiting for her to continue.
‘It’s an incredibly rare document which will excite a lot of attention and...,’ she searched for a word, ‘covetousness, you know ownership claims. By the way Barry, are you the owner?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘I’m sorry to say this, but have you documentary proof?’
‘Yes,’ he lied, a little too quickly.
‘What do you plan to do with it?’
‘Find a buyer.’
She looked at the manuscript pensively, to her mind it was part of Spanish history, it would certainly be claimed by Mexico, but like other codices it could end up in Florence, Berlin or wherever, bought by the highest bidder.
That it belonged to Simmonds, Anna wasn’t convinced, but that was not her problem, at least for the moment.
It would require a considerable amount of work to authenticate the codex, date it, translate it, settle legal claims, and find a home for it. First it would require an agreement with Simmonds and no doubt a financial arrangement. Perhaps with Pat Kennedy or his friends the Clancys.
But the most important would be confidentiality, secrecy, any leak to the media would create an avalanche of interest with a flurry of claims and counter claims, the usual controversies from academia and the international political world, not forgetting Interpol, Europol and national cultural authorities with accusations related to the trafficking of archaeological works, not forgetting controversial questions from the world of art and culture on the import and export of treasures and historical artefacts.
Most pressing was the need to convince Simmonds of the urgency of putting the codex into safe keeping, both from the material and security points of view.
‘There’ll be no problem finding a buyer, but you’ll have to be very careful with such a valuable work of art.’
‘How much do you think it’s worth?’
‘I’m not an expert,’ she said looking at Scott, ‘but it could be millions, many millions.’
Simmo frowned. ‘What about Sir Patrick?’
‘I’ll speak to him tomorrow,’ she promptly replied. ‘If I’m not mistaken he should be in London at the moment, but there’s the problem of the quarantine,’ she added with a smile. ‘What are your plans Barry?’
He shrugged, for the millions they were talking about he would make the time to meet Kennedy. ‘Perhaps you could fix a meeting with Sir Patrick, I do believe he’s a collector.’
She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll call him tonight and we can meet first thing tomorrow morning if you like. First, I’d like to involve our security firm, an object that’s worth perhaps tens of millions shouldn't be lying around in a hotel room.’
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then to her relief, he nodded in agreement.
‘We can manage everything, if you agree Barry,’ said Scott, ‘but perhaps you as a lawyer should draw up an agreement.’
Simmo didn’t need convincing, he realised with Anna, Fitznorman and their friends there would be less risk than dealing with people he’d never met and knew nothing of. In his business he knew there were many more crooks around than honest people would ever believe.
‘I have a very good wall safe here in the suite, in my business we need that kind of a facility, it would be better here than in your room, like that you won’t have to take it into the shower with you,’ Scott said with a convincing smile. ‘I’ll show it to you.’
He led Simmonds into the suite's work space which was equipped with a computer, printer and xerox machine and showed him the large safe hidden behind a wall panel.
‘Good, I’ll draft an agreement,’ said Simmonds.
Scott indicated an elegant late 19th century writing desk where a hotel folder containing a writing pad lay.
Twenty minutes later the three of them signed a brief hand written agreement couched in concise legal terms as to their arrangement, which all three signed. Scott ran two copies off on the xerox, handed Simmo the original, then locked the codex in the safe.
Anna excused herself promising to be back at eight thirty for breakfast in the suite with news from Sir Patrick or Liam Clancy.
Scott then invited Barry to join him on the terrace where they could admire the spectacular sunset across the bay and ordered a light evening meal, a plate of jamon iberico and a mixed salade with a bottle of Txakoli, a sparkling dry white wine from the vineyards to the west of Getaria, a small town a few kilometres from San Sebastian.
It was eleven when Barry returned to his room slightly light headed after the wine, but above all the exhilaration at the promise of wealth, the kind that years of work in Belize had escaped him. Perhaps now he could enjoy the kind of life that certain of those he had seen stashing their wealth in the Caribbean enjoyed.
Anna hurried back to her apartment in the Area Romantica, on the corner of Elcano and Peñaflorida, overlooking Gipuzkoa Gardens, a fifteen minute walk from the Hotel de Londres. There she called Pat Kennedy, who was in London, and briefed him on the codex. He immediately agreed to fly down to San Sebastian Airport near to Irun as soon as he finished his appointment in London the following morning, accompanied by George Pyke and one of his men to take care of the security question.