The Inca Prophecy (22 page)

‘The Vatican intelligence service, now known as the Entity,’ he replied. ‘So we don’t know where the skull is now, other than that it’s somewhere in the Vatican, and probably in the secret archives?’ ventured O’Connor.

Brother Gonzáles smiled. ‘The secret archives are, I’m told, very secure, but if you’re meant to find the skull and the parchments, you will.’

Monsignor Jennings waited a good half-hour until he was sure that all three of his surveillance targets had left the basilica. He sent a text to Cardinal Felici, quietly made his way out of the catacombs and the basilica, and slipped away into the night.

Chapter 26

President McGovern reached for the remote as Walter Crowley brought CNN’s coverage of the Senate inquiry to a close. ‘Sensational claims at the Senate Select Committee hearing. That was Susan Murkowski reporting from Capitol Hill. And now to other news making headlines this afternoon …’

An uneasy silence descended on the trio in the Oval Office. ‘Have CNN got it right?’ the President asked finally. Buchanan and Crawford exchanged a glance.

‘I can’t be absolutely positive, Mr President,’ Crawford responded, adjusting her elegant red glasses on her tanned, freckled nose, ‘but my sources agree with CNN. O’Connor reached his own conclusions as to what Wiley was up to, and instead of assassinating Weizman, he decided to protect her, and that’s when Wiley is alleged to have put out contracts on both of them.’

‘So where do we go from here?’

‘Two things, Mr President,’ Crawford advised. ‘Firstly, we have to let the committee conduct their hearing, and see what comes of it. And because of the sensitive nature of our covert operations, some of that may have to be in camera.’

‘I disagree, Mr President. We have to be seen to be transparent,’ Buchanan argued, ‘and you should stand Wiley down immediately.’

‘I agree with Chuck. We need to get to the bottom of this whole stinking business,’ the President said angrily.

‘I would suggest not, Mr President,’ Crawford responded, standing her ground. ‘The American image has had a pretty severe battering in the international press lately, and if you get involved in this in an election year, it will be a huge distraction from the messages you want to get out to the American people. As much as I detest Wiley, I think we have to wait until Ellen Rodriguez testifies. We don’t have any concrete proof of Wiley’s involvement, and my sources aren’t prepared to go on the record,’ Crawford added pointedly.

‘So what’s your second point?’ the President demanded.

‘Rodriguez, perhaps understandably, is unlikely to return to the CIA, at least in the short term, and they’ll need a replacement on the Latin American desk. Normally that sort of appointment is way below your pay grade, but I wanted to run an idea past you. We need someone we can trust to keep us in the loop on all of this.’

‘Do you have someone in mind?’ the President asked.

Crawford nodded. ‘Megan Becker.’

‘The environmental scientist?’ Buchanan snorted. ‘How the hell do we sell an environmental scientist to that rat’s nest down at Langley?’

‘We don’t have to, Mr President,’ Crawford replied, ignoring the chief of staff’s outburst. ‘She’s already there. Summa cum laude from Stanford, then went on to study international relations at Oxford before being accepted by the CIA a couple of years ago. I’m told she’s very highly regarded … at least in most circles.’

‘Most?’

‘Privately, she’s been critical of our involvement with the Gaddafi regime and the process of rendition and secret prisons, and she’s no fan of Wiley, although I doubt he’s aware she exists.’

‘Well, she gets my vote on torture and secret prisons, and Gaddafi was a thug,’ the President grumbled.

‘Becker’s served in Mexico City and Kabul, and she’s not long returned from Islamabad,’ Crawford added.

‘Those are pretty tough neighbourhoods … maybe she should come and work over here,’ the President remarked dryly. ‘Any languages?’

‘Spanish and French and a little Arabic,’ Crawford confirmed. ‘Given the gravitas of the Wiley issue, I think we can brief her to keep us up to speed. She’s pretty level-headed.’

‘I’ll give the DCI a call immediately,’ the President said.

‘With respect, Mr President, as far as the public’s concerned, you need to be at arm’s length,’ Crawford insisted. ‘Chuck should handle this.’ She gave the chief of staff one of her infamous stares. ‘That way, if it comes unstuck, we can claim you’ve never spoken with anyone at Langley.’

‘Sometimes I feel like a goddamn figurehead. Anything else?’

‘There’s one further complication, Mr President. There’s apparently a link between Wiley and the Vatican – Cardinal Felici, the
Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also has an interest in Weizman.’

‘Jesus Christ. Why would the Vatican be interested in a Guatemalan archaeologist?’ the President griped.

Crawford was about to reply that it was probably not because of Weizman’s stunning good looks, but she thought better of it. This morning, the President’s usual good humour was clearly missing in action. ‘The Vatican’s interest lies not so much in Weizman but in ancient civilisations; specifically, the series of warnings left by the Maya, the Inca and the Egyptians,’ she said. ‘The artefact Weizman and O’Connor found in the Guatemalan jungles threatens the Catholic view of the world, and that’s enough to send people like Felici into orbit.’

The President grunted. ‘As Galileo found to his cost when he suggested the earth revolved around the sun. Didn’t one of the popes throw him into prison for that?’

‘Pope Urban the 8th,’ Crawford confirmed, although she avoided mentioning the latest research on her desk that revealed a frightening number of Americans were on the side of Pope Urban. One in five US adults still believed the sun revolved around the earth. ‘But for the moment, it’s best the Vatican’s interest be kept under wraps.’

‘Goddamn it, Mr President, we can’t be party to a cover-up, just because there’s a link between the CIA and the Vatican,’ Buchanan argued. ‘That link’s been there ever since the beginnings of the CIA.’

Crawford was immovable. ‘Mr President, we won’t be party to a cover-up. The Senate committee will find the truth, and in the meantime, you have an election to win. There are over seventy
million Catholics in this country, and we lost the mid-term elections, at least in part, because a sizeable number of them voted Republican. Holding an open inquiry and dragging the Vatican and the CIA onto Fox News and the front pages of the
New York Times
won’t help. If you need an open inquiry, hold it after you win the election, because unless the economy picks up, it’s gonna be tight. And while we’re on voting trends, Mr President …’

President McGovern sighed. ‘The Israelis?’

Crawford nodded. ‘I know you feel strongly about the Israeli– Palestinian question, Mr President, but we need to tone down our rhetoric in the lead-up to the election.’

‘Goddamn it, Lauren! That’s exactly what the Israelis and the Likud party are banking on.’ The President got up from the couch and walked across to the bay windows behind his desk. He stared out across the White House lawns. ‘This conflict in the Middle East is into its eighth decade,’ he said finally, ‘and we’re no closer to a solution than when Truman sat in this office.’

‘And as long as you stay in this office, Mr President, you’ll have four more years to do something about that.’ Crawford reached into her briefing notes for the ‘swing state’ map, which was annotated with a dizzying array of statistics on each of the crucial battleground states.

‘In terms of the Jewish vote,’ Crawford said, spreading the annotated map out over the coffee table, ‘it’s the swing states that will count … Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and even California. As things stand, you can count on anywhere between 55 to 60 per cent of the Jewish vote. The Republicans are only guaranteed between 10 and 15 per cent. Which leaves roughly
30 per cent who might swing either way, and with these guys, the swing factor isn’t abortion or gay rights … it’s Israel.’

‘I’m not convinced,’ the President said irritably, ‘but I’ll think about it.’

‘If you come down hard on Israel, Mr President, you’ll be history,’ Crawford insisted bluntly. ‘Carter did it in 1980. He was a shoe-in to beat Ted Kennedy in the New York primaries, but when Carter’s ambassador McHenry voted for Resolution 465 against Israel’s settlements, Kennedy whipped Carter’s ass. That decision in the UN not only cost Carter the New York primary against Kennedy, but ultimately, the election.’ Crawford was not about to take a backward step. ‘Get tough on the Israelis, Mr President, but do it after the election.’

‘So what else is likely to come up in the security briefing tomorrow?’ the President groused.

‘The director of national intelligence will brief you on the latest on Iran,’ Buchanan replied, ‘although the CIA will take the lead. And as you requested, the Nuclear Weapons Council is sending an expert along too, a Professor Hunter Lapinski from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His bio’s in your briefing folder, but he worked on the development of our earth-penetrating mini-nukes in the nineties so he’s well qualified. As you’re aware, Mr President, there’s no doubt the Iranians are getting closer to producing weapons-grade plutonium, and the CIA is attempting to monitor the second centrifuge plant.’

‘The one that O’Connor and Jafari discovered buried beneath a mountain,’ Crawford reminded them both.

The President nodded. ‘Is Wiley going to be at this briefing?’

‘He’s obviously required at the Senate inquiry, but they’ve agreed to release him for a couple of hours,’ said Buchanan.

‘Hasn’t he got a deputy?’

‘Yes, Larry Davis – although to be honest, in the few dealings I’ve had with Davis, I’ve found him less than impressive,’ Crawford interjected. ‘I know you’d prefer to avoid Wiley, but you have to continue with him as normal,’ she insisted. ‘Both Wiley and Davis have a lot of support amongst the Republicans on the committee, Mr President, particularly from Senator Crosier, and if the press gets a whiff of any distancing on your part, all hell will break loose.’

‘We’ll see about that. Do we know where O’Connor and Weizman are now?’

Crawford shook her head. ‘We still don’t know, but we’re getting closer. The Maya Codex provided only some of the answers regarding 2012, but we’ve learned there’s a more detailed warning in the form of a yet-to-be-uncovered Inca prophecy. My guess is that O’Connor and Weizman will be on the Inca case – Peru.’

A presidential smile broke the tension. ‘You’ve been watching too many Indiana Jones movies, Lauren. Do you really believe all this stuff?’

‘I have an open mind, Mr President.’ It wasn’t the time or the place to be raising the ancient Inca, she thought, or the untapped power of crystal, but Crawford had been briefed on what was in the Maya Codex. She had an uneasy feeling there was a link between the warnings from the Maya and the fabled prophecy from their counterparts in the Andes.

Chapter 27

Howard Wiley headed towards the operations centre of Task Force Inca, the team charged with hunting down O’Connor and Weizman. Known throughout the intelligence community as ‘the Weasel’, the second most powerful man in the CIA had a square face, a long, thin nose and a high forehead. His reddish, spiky hair was brushed back without a part. He had thin red eyebrows, steely green eyes and a narrow mouth that rarely carried a smile.

Barely five feet four in his socks, Wiley waited for the biometric security scanner outside the door of the Inca operations room to turn green. No two irises were the same, and Langley’s powerful systems analysed Wiley’s eye in an instant. The light glowed green and he stepped into the room where his deputy, Larry Davis, was waiting for him.

Overweight and out of condition, Davis was only slightly taller than Wiley. He nervously wiped the sweat from his bald pate.
He figured the Senate inquiry would have put his boss in a fouler mood than usual, and he was right.

‘Update me,’ Wiley demanded, positioning himself in front of the bank of computer and video screens that connected Task Force Inca with every CIA station in the field. ‘Any sign of Tutankhamun or Nefertiti?’ The codenames Wiley had assigned to O’Connor and Weizman had given the DDO a perverse satisfaction. Tutankhamun and Nefertiti had both died young, and their deaths had never been explained. Wiley had every intention that history would repeat itself.

Davis shook his head. ‘We’re monitoring their cell phone networks, emails, and checking bank statements, but so far there’s no sign of them.’

‘What’ve we got on Peru?’ Wiley demanded.

‘We’ve got it covered, sir.’ The voice belonged to Megan Becker. In her mid-thirties, the CIA agent had curly red hair, pale, porcelain-like skin and smoky blue eyes; at five foot ten, she towered over both Wiley and Davis.

Wiley glared at Becker. ‘And who the hell are you?’

‘Agent Megan Becker, sir,’ Becker replied evenly, holding eye contact with her angry boss. She’d been well briefed on the irascible DDO. ‘I spoke with the chief of station in Lima on the secure link yesterday. He’s deployed assets to the port at Callao, to the Jorge Chávez International Airport and to the major bus terminals. But if O’Con— Tutankhamun and Nefertiti were headed for Peru, they may already be there,’ she added.