The Maya Codex (22 page)

‘You think they’re getting close?’

O’Connor nodded. ‘The reports we’re getting out of Iran indicate they’re constructing a new uranium enrichment plant near the old city of Qom, but it’s buried so deep into solid rock it will be almost impossible to attack, at least with ordinary bombs. The Pentagon is developing what it’s dubbed a “massive ordnance penetrator” that contains thousands of kilograms of explosives. It’ll be delivered by the stealth bomber, but even that may not be enough to deal with blast doors that are deep underground.’

‘Which probably explains the pressure we’re now under to fast-track our experiments here,’ Jackson said grimly, ‘which is madness.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘The science is untested, which is reason enough to be cautious.’

‘Try telling that to the Vice President.’

‘Exactly. Or some of the gung-ho brass in the Pentagon. Have you seen the proposals for Operation Aether?’

‘Not the detail.’

‘It’s in three phases. The first involves a burst of three billion watts to heat and raise the ionosphere, to see if we can deflect a missile off course, and the last phase aims to develop ways of controlling the weather, which the military have been trying to do since Vietnam. But as dangerous as those experiments might be, it’s the second phase that worries me most.’ Jackson loaded a thumb drive into the computer on O’Connor’s desk and fired up a PowerPoint presentation. It was headed ‘Top Secret’.

‘The second phase involves the generation of extremely low frequency, or ELF, waves directed at the earth’s core, rather like the way the mining industry uses seismic tomography to search for deposits of oil and natural gas.’

‘But the mining industry only uses power of about thirty to forty watts?’

‘Precisely. At higher power levels we know we can X-ray the ground, and that can be useful in providing imagery on tunnels and bunkers, but the Pentagon wants to know if we can generate power levels at the extreme end of the range that can actually destroy underground installations – Iran’s nuclear facilities being high on their list.’

O’Connor let out a low whistle. ‘Are we seriously thinking of bombarding the earth’s core with three billion watts?’

‘There are powerful forces in Washington who are determined to see if it will work, and I’m afraid the director is just a puppet who’ll do as he’s told. Are you familiar with the Chandler wobble?’

O’Connor nodded. In 1891 an American astronomer, Seth Carlo Chandler, discovered that the earth wobbled on its axis by up to fifteen metres.

‘Well,’ Jackson continued, ‘a highly respected Indian seismologist has pointed to data from the International Earth Rotation Service. In the three months leading up to the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis of 2004, the Chandler wobble increased significantly. Normally we might get one earthquake a year above seven on the Richter scale – what we call a “great earthquake” – but in 2004 there was a massive earthquake in the Macquarie Trench off New Zealand on 23 December, and that one measured 8.1. Just three days later, we had an even bigger earthquake … around nine if I remember correctly … triggering the tsunamis that killed hundreds of thousands on the coasts of Asia. The frequency of those great earthquakes is increasing, and the Chandler wobble is maintained by mass distribution within the molten outer core, as well as the crust and oceans.’

‘So if we start bombarding the core with billions of watts of electromagnetic energy … ’

‘We might generate an even greater wobble. It’s madness, but the admirals and the generals aren’t listening.’

‘Neither are the politicians. Is there any other data to connect the wobble with the frequency of earthquakes?’

‘In 1967 two Canadian scientists came up with the Mansinha-Smylie theory connecting the earth’s wobble with the big earthquakes, but mainstream science has largely ignored it. And it gets worse.’ Jackson turned to one of the centre’s computers, keyed in a series of commands and pulled up an extraordinary photograph taken from the Hubble telescope. The space shuttle
Discovery
had carried the eleven-tonne Hubble into orbit in 1990. Bigger than a truck, the telescope orbited the earth every ninety-seven minutes. ‘At a height of 360 kilometres, Hubble is free of any of the distortions of the earth’s atmosphere, which enables us to take very clear photographs of some of the most distant objects in the universe. That’s the galaxy NGC 1300, which in the scheme of things is actually quite close. It’s about sixty-nine million light years away from earth, and 88 000 light years in diameter.’

O’Connor stared at the stunning image of the barred spiral galaxy, a massive swirling red-and-blue catherine-wheel in the Eridanus constellation. ‘Huh. Eighty-eight thousand light years wide …
big
doesn’t seem to do it justice.’

Jackson grinned. ‘No, and that’s especially so when you think about the size of the universe. There are somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Multiply that by another 200 billion galaxies in the cosmos, and size is difficult to picture. With trillions of planets out there, it’s absurd to think that earth is the only one with life on it, but I’ve chosen a photograph of the NGC 1300 galaxy because it’s similar to our own and its centre is clearly visible.’ Jackson pointed to the swirling image on the screen. ‘The centre is a black hole of unimaginable gravitational and electromagnetic energy.’

‘It looks flat – almost like a disc.’

‘Precisely. As you and I both know, black holes are so powerful they flatten everything around them. Nothing, not even light, can escape, hence the term ‘black’, and it’s that power that keeps a galaxy’s stars and solar systems in orbit. However, once every 26000 years, our solar system travels through the same plane as the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way. In effect, if you imagine that black hole being in the middle of a dinner plate, our solar system rises to be level with the edge of the plate.’ Jackson paused, weighing the impact of what he was about to say. ‘That 26 000-year marker comes up again in 2012,’ he said finally, ‘at which time we’ll be exactly opposite the black hole.’

‘And that may explain some of the wild weather patterns?’

‘Yes. And we’re messing with the balance of the earth when its orbit is at its most unstable. On top of which, the earth’s magnetic field is now at its lowest level in recorded history. The poles are skipping across the wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic at over thirty kilometres a year. If you couple that with the latest NASA data on sunspots, which are at an unprecedented power level, the planet faces an uncertain future, to put it mildly.’

‘I’ve seen the magnetometer printouts,’ O’Connor agreed, his mind racing at the size of the abyss the experiments out of Gakona might generate.

‘And the sunspot power is still rising dramatically,’ Jackson added, pulling up an image of massive explosions on the surface of the sun. ‘NASA estimates sunspot power will also peak in 2012, at levels we’ve never seen before. Could be the Hopi Indians and the Maya were on to something.’

‘You think there’s something in all that mystic mumbo jumbo?’

‘Perhaps. As a civilisation we
think
we’re fairly advanced, but back in 850 AD, the Maya predicted that at 11.11 a.m. on Friday 21 December 2012 our planet would line up precisely with the Milky Way’s black hole. Astronomers have now confirmed the Maya were right, down to the last second. If the Maya could make a prediction that accurate, 800 years before Galileo picked up the first telescope, maybe we should be sitting up and taking a lot more notice of their warning.’

23

WASHINGTON

V
ice President Walter Montgomery was due to host some senior CIA officers at an evening function on the lawns of his official home, a stately white nineteenth-century mansion overlooking Massachusetts Avenue. He’d asked DDO Wiley to come early for a meeting in the first-floor library.

The vice presidential library was finished in white timber with light-beige wallpaper and matching lounge chairs. It had a certain New England charm about it, in the midst of which both men seemed distinctly out of place.

‘I trust that asshole O’Connor’s enjoying the delights of Gakona,’ the Vice President said, indicating Wiley should take a seat.

‘It’s about as close to Siberia as I could send him, Mr Vice President. He’ll stay there until I work out something more permanent.’

‘Good. Now, have you seen the latest claims by that Weizman bitch?’ Vice President Montgomery flung a copy of the latest edition of
The Mayan Archaeologist
onto the elegant white coffee table. The cover was dominated by a striking photograph of Dr Aleta Weizman, standing beside the Pyramid of the Lost World in the jungles of Tikal, Guatemala. The headline read:

Weizman Claims CIA Involvement in Guatemalan Genocide

Allegations made against the School of the Americas

Wiley knew the reality behind that headline lay deep in the Guatemalan jungle, and his reasons for ensuring that the truth didn’t surface were far more pressing than those of the Vice President. Should he brief Montgomery on the diaries the CIA’s man in San Pedro, the ex-Nazi commandant of Mauthausen, had kept? Diaries that were now missing —

‘I need hardly remind you, Howard, that we go to the polls shortly,’ Montgomery thundered on, ‘and right now we’re up to our bootstraps in hog shit in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing the President or I need is the media spotlight back on Intelligence or secret prisons and water-boarding. Or the fucking Guatemalans, for that matter. Or the Mexicans, Venezuelans or anyone else from that garbage dump down south. Nixon got it right about Central America. Nobody gives a fuck about the place.’

‘I agree, Mr Vice President. It’s a shit box.’

‘I don’t care how you do it, but put some heat on this Weizman woman. Find out who controls archaeologists’ licences and send them a donation from a grateful nation with the proviso she gets blacklisted. Anyone who thinks that someone other than Columbus discovered America doesn’t deserve to have a licence. And put her under surveillance. If she even looks like exposing our operations in Guatemala, Paraguay or anywhere else, get rid of her. Meantime, keep the CIA out of the fucking media.’

‘Leave it to me, Mr Vice President. By the time I’ve finished with Weizman, and O’Connor for that matter, the AP numbers will look even better.’ Wiley and Montgomery had both been greatly encouraged by an Associated Press poll that had claimed twelve per cent of Americans had either never heard of the CIA or couldn’t rate it.

As the DDO left the vice presidential residence later in the evening, a move was already taking shape on Wiley’s sinister chessboard. It was a move that would require the recall of O’Connor from Gakona, but it would eliminate Weizman permanently.

24

CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

U
nlike his predecessor, Howard Wiley always kept his office door closed. O’Connor, ignoring the protestations of Wiley’s secretary, knocked firmly and walked in. The first thing O’Connor noticed was the modern furniture. His previous assignment had involved a Muslim terrorist threat against the Beijing Olympics. Back then the DDO, Tom McNamara, had been an understanding ally, pressing for negotiation with the Iranians and the Syrians, rather than committing the United States to another bloody war they couldn’t win in the Middle East. The cracked and torn brown leather couches McNamara insisted on keeping had been almost welcoming; but they had gone, along with his old boss’s familiar greeting of ‘Come in, buddy. Have a seat.’

‘You took your time getting here, O’Connor. Sit down,’ Wiley ordered without looking up, gesturing to a small straight-backed chair as he continued to read from a crimson dossier that lay open on his polished desk.

O’Connor smiled to himself. Offering someone a small chair and then ignoring their presence was the classic authoritarian bully tactic, designed to make people nervous, and was often employed by individuals who were highly insecure themselves. O’Connor glanced around the refurnished room. The office was lit by a number of tasteful table lamps, and the panelled walls were decorated with oils of the Civil War. Myriad photographs of Wiley with various visiting dignitaries were scattered around the office. Amongst the most prominent was that of Wiley shaking hands with George W. Bush, and one with the Vice President at the School of the Americas, but it was the framed photographs on a side table that caught O’Connor’s eye. The first was a photograph of Wiley and Pope John Paul II, together with an archbishop he couldn’t identify. In time he would come to know Salvatore Felici very well.

Unlike the archbishop, the man with Wiley in the second photograph was instantly recognisable. A very young Wiley was standing outside Washington’s Mayflower Hotel with a smiling J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI. The DDO continued to ignore him, and O’Connor wondered about Wiley’s early relationship with Hoover. Howard Wiley, O’Connor knew, had never married. He’d started his career in the FBI, and his stellar rise had attracted widespread comment in an old-fashioned media not renowned for their criticism of a public hero like Hoover. Within six months, a young, wet-behind-the-ears Wiley, with virtually no field experience, had been appointed to Hoover’s personal staff at FBI headquarters.

‘I’ve got a new assignment for you, O’Connor,’ Wiley said finally.

‘And I was just getting used to Alaska.’

The DDO glared at O’Connor. Howard Wiley was known throughout the intelligence community as ‘the Weasel’. He had a square face, a long thin nose and a high forehead. His reddish, spiky hair was brushed back without a part. Barely five-foot four, Wiley was vertically challenged, and O’Connor wondered whether Wiley’s ruthless arrogance was a product of Napoleon Syndrome, an early close association with J. Edgar Hoover, or just a case of having the DNA of an asshole. Probably a combination of all three, O’Connor thought wryly. ‘Our file on Dr Aleta Weizman,’ Wiley said, pushing the slim file across the desk. ‘She’s an archaeologist working for that tin-pot Guatemalan government we silenced a decade ago. Archaeologists should stick to digging up old bones. This one’s got a very big mouth.’