The Maya Codex (40 page)

‘Who were they?’ Aleta asked, breathing a little easier after the two men had passed.

O’Connor shrugged. ‘Don’t know, but Merchant Marine, not customs or police. Watch your step,’ he said as they reached the gangplank.

‘You’re cutting it fine,’ the ship’s steward observed haughtily as they reached the deck. ‘We sail in twenty minutes.’

‘Sorry about that,’ O’Connor apologised.

‘The captain’s on the bridge,’ the steward sniffed. ‘I’ll show you to your cabin and then he’ll want to see your passports. Follow me,’ and he minced his way down the port companionway.

‘Opening bat for the other side,’ O’Connor whispered.

‘Stop it!’ Aleta whispered back, suppressing a fit of the giggles.

Aleta and O’Connor stood at the rail of the port wing of the bridge. Aleta watched the two tugs herding their charge away from the dock towards the middle of the Elbe. Powerful lights lit the for’ard decks of the MV
Galapagos
as the crew worked to get the heavy mooring hawsers aboard. O’Connor scanned the docks up to
Buchheisterstrasse
, searching for any signs of anyone on their trail.

‘The captain didn’t seem too interested in the paperwork,’ Aleta observed as the MV
Galapagos
moved slowly out into midstream.

‘One of the reasons I timed our arrival to just before sailing: he’s got a lot of things on his plate right now, and he won’t relax until he’s clear of the English Channel and out into the Atlantic.’

‘Slow ahead,’ the captain ordered. Below decks, a single gleaming steel shaft, driven by the massive Hitachi-Man marine diesel engine began to turn.

Howard Wiley looked into the biometric security scanner outside the door of the Operation Maya ops room. In an instant the powerful system computed the algorithms and analysed the pattern on Wiley’s iris. No two irises were the same; even identical twins had different irises. The security Wiley had installed on Operation Maya was far tighter than fingerprint recognition. The light glowed green and he stepped into the room, just as a message alert from the Berlin station pinged on Larry Davis’s computer screen:

Information just to hand indicates Tutankhamen and Nefertiti departed Hamburg by sea. MV
Galapagos
, a 15 000-tonne container ship, left Buchheisterstrasse docks nine hours ago, bound for Havana and then Puerto Quetzal on Pacific coast of Guatemala.

‘Fuck! Can we get someone on board?’

Davis shook his head. ‘She’ll be clear of the mouth of the Elbe and into the English Channel by now.’

‘Tell Rodriguez that when she gets to Guatemala City, her first task is to organise for one of the crew to fall ill in Havana and arrange a swap. Tutankhamen and Nefertiti can simply disappear over the side, and the sharks will do the rest.’

‘The ship’s steward is not such a bad guy once you get to know him. He even keeps a half-decent cellar,’ O’Connor said, extracting the cork from a bottle of Alsace riesling. They had been at sea over a week, and O’Connor had made it his business to speak to every member of the crew. He now felt reasonably confident they’d got out of Hamburg without a tag … for the moment. Initially the MV
Galapagos
had made good progress. They were now well out into the mid-North Atlantic, to the west of the Azores group, but rising seas had forced the captain to slow to ten knots. Dinner over, O’Connor and Aleta had repaired to their cabin just below the bridge, with its view over the for’ard decks through the big square portholes.

‘Cheers.’ O’Connor raised his glass. Aleta raised hers, and gripped the table as the
Galapagos
rolled to starboard and buried herself into a massive wave. White water exploded over the bow and foamed over the for’ard containers before streaming back through the scuppers.

‘They lose about 10 000 containers a year in seas like this,’ O’Connor observed idly, savouring the delicate citrus flavours of the riesling. ‘One washed up on a beach in Somalia last year full of thousands of bags of potato chips – made the kids’ day.’

Aleta smiled and turned to stare at the dark mountainous seas ahead. The wind moaned in the rigging of the ship’s cranes and tore at the foaming crests beyond. She looked back at O’Connor. ‘You know, if someone had told me that one day I’d be sitting in a cabin with an Irishman, guarding two priceless figurines and sipping riesling – which is very nice by the way – while on the run from a bunch of hitmen, I would have thought they’d lost their marbles.’

‘This is life and we’re living it, but unfortunately your life’s not going to be the same for a while, at least not until we find the codex.’ O’Connor paused, weighing up how much hurt his next question might cause. ‘What happened in San Marcos? If that’s not too painful a question.’ O’Connor was still puzzled as to why some of the most powerful men in Washington wanted Aleta dead.

Aleta sighed. ‘No, it’s not too painful, although I still want those responsible brought to justice.’ She gripped the table again as the
Galapagos
ploughed into the base of another massive wave. The whole ship shuddered, her bow disappearing from view in another explosion of white foam. ‘I was only eight at the time. My father was a lay preacher in the little Catholic church at San Marcos.’

‘Yet he started out life as Jewish?’

Aleta nodded. ‘Papa was Jewish through and through, but as I mentioned to you at Mauthausen, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII, helped my father escape the Nazis. Roncalli used to sit up until three in the morning forging Catholic baptism certificates for Jewish children.’ Aleta’s eyes were moist. ‘Papa said that Roncalli was everything a priest should be. My aunt Rebekkah drowned during their escape, but Papa never forgot Roncalli’s kindness. My grandparents were both Jewish, and they had great faith, but I think Papa practised his own faith as a Catholic out of respect for Roncalli. Papa was occasionally asked to preach at the bigger Catholic church in San Pedros, fifteen minutes by boat from San Marcos.’ Aleta took O’Connor back to 1982 and the north-west shores of the beautiful lake.

Ariel Weizman gripped the rails of the pulpit of the cavernous white-washed church that stood over San Pedro and the lake. His dark curly hair had long turned grey and his face was gently lined with the wisdom and heartache of the years. Some of the villagers shifted nervously in the big wooden pews, their dark eyes fearful and alert.

‘As we celebrate mass here in San Pedro today, we remember in our prayers Archbishop Óscar Romero,’ Ariel began. ‘It’s two years to the day since Archbishop Romero was brutally gunned down while celebrating the Holy Mass, just across the border in El Salvador. Archbishop Romero’s “crime” was to demand an end to the torture, rape and murder of his people. The leader of San Salvador’s death squads, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, has never been brought to justice. “Blowtorch Bob” was a nickname D’Aubuisson earned from his favourite form of torture, and he was also known for throwing babies into the air and shooting them for target practice. Yet D’Aubuisson is an honoured guest whenever he visits Washington.’ Ariel glanced at his family sitting in the front pew. The twin boys were restless, but little Aleta was looking at him, her big brown eyes as inquisitive as ever, her dark shiny hair tied back in a ponytail. Misha, Ariel’s wife of fifteen years, scolded the twins softly, a tender smile on her face.

‘In Central and South America, the United States is supporting brutal regimes that are systematically murdering the local populations. The Sixth Commandment is very clear,’ he continued, ‘and in Exodus, and in Deuteronomy, God has spoken, yet in Chile, the United States has supported the overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende, and replaced him with Augusto Pinochet, a murderous thug. With the support of the CIA, Pinochet’s men are torturing and murdering tens of thousands of Chileans opposed to his brutal regime. The United States of America is fond of preaching democracy, but only if it gets the results it wants.’ Ariel paused. The
campesinos
, the simple folk of San Pedro who eked out a subsistence living amongst the coffee plantations and maize farms, were nervous; but Ariel knew that unless someone spoke out on their behalf, the killing would continue.

On the other side of the town square Howard Wiley was standing next to a dilapidated store –
Cristo viene!
Christ is coming! painted in red on the wooden walls. Wiley scanned the courtyard of the San Pedro church. Appointed as the CIA’s chief of station at the US Embassy in Guatemala City two years previously, at thirty-one he was one of the Agency’s youngest field commanders. Wiley turned to Major Ramales, the Guatemalan Army officer commanding the death squads assigned to put down the growing insurrection around Lake Atitlán.

‘Everything is ready, Comandante?’

Ramales fingered his trimmed black moustache. ‘
Sí
. You only have to give the word.’

Wiley adjusted his earpiece. Ariel Weizman’s homily was coming through loud and clear.

‘Here in Guatemala, President Reagan is supporting General Montt, another ruthless thug trained by the Americans at their School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia. This is not the first time the United States has put a government of its choosing in power in Guatemala,’ Ariel reminded his congregation. ‘Many of you will recall that the Eisenhower administration and the CIA toppled the democratically elected President Arbenz and replaced him with another of their puppets, Colonel Armas. I appeal today to General Montt: send your soldiers back to their barracks, where they will no longer be able to rape and murder our women and children —’

Ariel’s sermon was interrupted by soldiers in camouflage uniforms shouldering open the heavy doors of the church, crashing them back against the white-washed stone masonry. More soldiers stormed into the church and immediately opened up with machine guns and automatic rifles in a deafening burst of fire. Bullets ricocheted off the stone walls and shattered the ornate glass windows. The old stone church was rent by the screams of the congregation, many dying where they sat. Ariel clutched his chest, the bloodstain on his shirt spreading as he slumped forward onto the pulpit railing. Aleta screamed as her mother’s lifeless form toppled into the aisle. Blood spurted below Misha’s neck from a ruptured aorta. The twins, who had been standing on the pew seat, were cut down together as the soldiers repeatedly raked the villagers with bursts of fire. Tears running down her cheeks, Aleta crawled between the pews and out through a side door of the church.