The Inca Prophecy (25 page)

‘Who needs a sommelier when they’re dining with you?’

‘Well, this place is a bit rustic, but the locals seem to like it, and that’s always a good sign.’

‘What do you think will be the outcome in Washington?’ Aleta asked, suddenly serious. Earlier, they had watched the same CNN broadcast the President and his advisors had viewed in the White House.

‘We won’t be able to breathe easily until Wiley’s behind bars, and even then, we’ll have to be careful. You – we – have seriously pissed off a lot of people, especially in the Republican Party, and they’re good haters. And until Rodriguez testifies, Wiley will have a lot of people supporting him.’

‘Thank God for Ellen Rodriguez. Another one of your conquests?’ Aleta raised a teasing eyebrow.

‘Perhaps,’ O’Connor responded evasively, his trademark lopsided grin in evidence.

‘Has there ever been a woman you’ve worked alongside that you didn’t finish up in bed with?’

‘You weren’t too keen when we first met.’

‘Firstly, I wasn’t working with you, and secondly, that might have had something to do with the fact you’d been sent to Vienna to kill me!’ Aleta’s eyes clouded at the memory, but there was no malice in her voice. ‘I’m just so grateful that you saved me from Wiley’s assassins,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t arrived, I wouldn’t even be here. I guess I had no idea how ruthless the Wileys of this world can be.’

‘The world is full of assholes, and Washington’s got more than its fair share.’

‘And I thought academic politics were tough. Will you go back to the CIA if you’re cleared?’ Aleta asked, her emotions mixed at
the thought. She had come to trust O’Connor, but when it came to surrendering her heart, warning lights flashed.

‘That would depend on who was DDO. If Tom McNamara came out of retirement, I’d be there in an instant.’

‘And where would that leave me?’ Aleta asked, immediately regretting the question.

‘One day at a time,’ O’Connor said, his mischievous blue eyes softening.

They ate in silence for a few moments before Aleta broached the topic that was always in the back of her mind. ‘The Mayans only gave us part of the prophecy. We know the next part lies with the Inca. But where to from here? Do we try to find those documents Brother Gonzáles told us about?’

‘Questions I don’t yet have answers to,’ said O’Connor, his brow furrowing. ‘And I’ve been reflecting on José Arana’s advice just before we left Guatemala.’ The Mayan shaman had predicted the world’s media would soon lose interest in the codex, and he’d urged them to remember the Inca. ‘But we’ve precious little to go on, other than what Brother Gonzáles has told us, and that encounter of yours with the Mitchell-Hedges skull, which I have to admit, I’m dubious about.’

‘Didn’t the CIA have a top-secret paranormal program where psychics were used for intelligence on the USSR?’ Aleta challenged, her full lips parting in a smile. ‘I seem to remember reading something about a psychic who could communicate with the mind of someone in the Kremlin and tell the CIA what was going on?’

O’Connor looked sheepish. ‘Project Stargate. It started in one of the electronics and bioengineering laboratories at the Stanford
Research Institute, although we didn’t get into extrasensory perception until we discovered the Chinese and the Russians had their own programs.’

‘Yet if I remember correctly, once the program was declassified, you had a panel of sceptical scientists examine it, including two Nobel laureates no less, and they all concluded that the research stacked up. Apparently it’s quite possible to communicate with someone else’s mind thousands of miles away. So why so doubtful about the crystal skull?’

‘Just keeping an open mind,’ O’Connor responded defensively.

‘Well, keep that mind of yours open to the possibility Einstein might have been on to something when he was searching for a theory that would unite gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces,’ Aleta remonstrated gently.

‘The elusive theory of everything,’ O’Connor agreed.

‘A polymath like you would know there’ve been a lot of experiments that point to there being an energy grid – a unifying force that explains all the major theories in physics. It could be what Brother Gonzáles was on about when he spoke about the source field.’

‘I don’t discount it,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘The Russians have been leading the way on source-field studies since the 1950s, and until recently, most of their research was classified. I’ve seen some of the papers, and it’s fascinating stuff. We may finally answer the question of where we come from and where we’re going … But you think the crystal skulls are linked to this source field?’

‘From what the Mitchell-Hedges skull had to say, I think that’s entirely possible. The skull also told us that to decipher the Inca prophecy we need all three crystal skulls, and the road to finding
them sounded pretty dire. Remember the warning? One skull is already in the possession of one of our enemies, and we’ll find the clues to its whereabouts near an ancient fountain, beneath a large bronze pigna.’

‘One skull is already in the hands of our enemies – that could well be the skull that Brother Gonzáles believes is in Rome. The bronze pigna …’ O’Connor’s voice dropped off as he thought. ‘It means the bronze pine cone. Wait – the bronze pine cone! I knew there was something about that,’ he said, his eyes alight. ‘The Belvedere courtyard in Rome connects the Vatican Palace with the Villa Belvedere. In Roman times, there used to be a fountain there, but in the seventeenth century they shut off the water and moved a huge bronze pine cone from the Roman Pantheon to the top of the fountain, and the courtyard has been known since as the Cortile della Pigna … the courtyard of the pine cone.’

‘It fits, doesn’t it?’ said Aleta, grabbing O’Connor’s arm in excitement. ‘And no pun intended, but for a lapsed Catholic you’re a font of knowledge, aren’t you?’ Aleta grinned. ‘So this could be where one of the skulls is?’

‘I suspect what lies beneath it might be the key. The Vatican’s secret archives lie directly below the pine cone. If we’re meant to find the skulls and the parchments, we will. This evening, I’ve got a meeting at the Israeli embassy, and then we’ll need to find a way to get to Rome without Wiley and his assassins tumbling to our movements.’

‘Your old friend from Mossad. Why does he want to see you?’

‘I suspect he’s still after von Heißen. He’ll want to grill me on what I know.’

Aleta’s face clouded. ‘They better get to that bastard before I do.’
She’d seen photographs of the Nazi commandant of Mauthausen, and his face was indelibly seared in to her memory bank.

Curtis placed his hand on Aleta’s. ‘It might have taken them fifteen years, but the Israelis tracked down Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. If von Heißen’s still alive, they’ll get him too.’

Aleta nodded, wiping away a sudden tear and folding her napkin on the table. O’Connor called for the bill and he and Aleta stood to leave.

‘I can’t believe we had all of that for less than twenty dollars,’ Curtis said, leaving fifty nuevo sol in a saucer on the table. Once they reached the foyer of their hotel, O’Connor gently touched Aleta’s hand. ‘Stay in the hotel room, and don’t answer the door. I may be a couple of hours,’ he said, and he turned and walked outside, where he hailed a cab.

‘Embajada de Israel, por favor. Natalia Sánchez Numero 125, gracias.’

‘Curtis! How good to see you again.’ The welcome from Mossad’s chief of station in Lima, Eli Shaked, was warm and genuine. ‘Have a seat,’ he said, offering a comfortable chair in his small but functional office. Shaked had the same muscular build as O’Connor, although his thinning hair was now grey.

‘Great to see you too.’ O’Connor shook hands with his old colleague. The pair had worked together in Berlin at the end of the Cold War and, as sometimes happened in situations of adversity, they had forged a strong friendship. That was not to say they shared
all their intelligence, but there was enough collaboration to make the professional relationship more than worthwhile to both.

‘You’ve sure stirred up a storm with the Weasel,’ Shaked observed. ‘How are you travelling?’

‘One step ahead of him – and we’ll be fine, provided it stays that way until the hearing in Washington’s finished.’

‘Yes.’ Shaked’s smile held a touch of envy. ‘You haven’t lost any of your charm with the ladies. Weizman’s quite a stunner. How are things going there?’

‘None of your business. And give my best to Zivah.’ O’Connor grinned as he dropped the name of Shaked’s wife and accepted a cup of black coffee. ‘So who did you upset to earn a posting to Lima?’

‘Oh, the usual. The President, the Prime Minister, the head rabbi … None of them are talking to me, although there’s another reason I accepted this post,’ Shaked said, more serious now. ‘How much do you know about the whereabouts of von Heißen?’

‘Not a lot. Although you’d better get to him before Dr Weizman does.’

Shaked nodded. ‘I read up on her grandparents. You can assure her we’re doing everything we can to bring von Heißen to justice.’

‘I already have.’ O’Connor took Shaked through his discovery of von Heißen’s diaries. He’d found the former Nazi commandant’s diaries in an old trunk a few years before, in the home of Monsignor Jennings – the priest of a church on the shores of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Mossad had been briefed at the time but O’Connor had not spoken to Shaked about it. ‘I’ll make the diaries available to you when you bring him to book, but we don’t have the smoking gun, the one that charts his course out of
Mauthausen, along with a substantial amount of gold.’

‘Any chance of getting hold of what you’ve got?’ Shaked smiled as O’Connor shook his head regretfully. ‘It was worth a shot. In the meantime, if you turn up anything else on von Heißen, this is my private number,’ he said, handing O’Connor a card.

‘I’m trying to get out of the country for a while, but when I get back I’ll keep my ear to the ground,’ O’Connor replied.

‘We have a Lear jet going to Tel Aviv tomorrow, if that would help?’ his old friend offered. ‘It will have to make a couple of stops for refuelling, but the price is right.’

‘Two seats?’

‘I shall look forward to meeting Dr Weizman in person.’

O’Connor’s taxi turned into Calle Manuel Bonilla just in time for him to see two men bundling Aleta into a black BMW four-wheel drive outside the hotel.

Chapter 30

The minority leader of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Austin Crosier, strode up the floodlit steps of the Capitol, determined to confront the crush of journalists and television cameras. The Senate hearing into the CIA’s possible involvement in the disappearance of Agent O’Connor and Dr Aleta Weizman was huge news.

‘Senator, do you have any comment on the allegations that the CIA tried to assassinate Curtis O’Connor and the Guatemalan archaeologist, Dr Weizman?’ CNN’s Susan Murkowski asked, leading the pack of journalists surging forward and surrounding the bull-faced senator from Massachusetts.

Crosier assumed a thoughtful look for the cameras. ‘I have no comment to make on those allegations before the committee has had time to thoroughly investigate them, but I will say this,’ he challenged, his eyes narrowing, ‘it’s not the first time America has been threatened by
a rogue agent in the CIA, and if O’Connor or Weizman has disclosed information that is harmful to the security of this great nation, then we will hunt them down, just as we hunted down Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.’ Crosier’s square chin protruded and he glared at the pack, daring them to ask another question.

‘So you’re supporting Howard Wiley’s version of events?’

‘The Deputy Director of Operations has yet to give evidence, but Howard Wiley has served this country with distinction. The CIA is committed to keeping ordinary Americans safe, and Howard Wiley serves in the tradition of the honourable men who have gone before him.’

‘And the women?’ a female reporter asked, but the senator ignored the question.

‘Given Dr Weizman was married to your son, Senator, shouldn’t you disqualify yourself from this hearing?’ Murkowski asked.

‘I find that question offensive.’ Austin Crosier’s bull neck reddened and his chin protruded further.