The Maya Codex (33 page)

‘
Mierda!
’ Aleta swore.

O’Connor motioned her to be quiet. He put on his leather gloves and returned the knife to his assailant’s pocket. He searched the other pockets, keeping the hitman’s cell phone. His mind racing, O’Connor checked the corridor outside and the toilet a few steps away at the end of the carriage. Empty. If the bathroom wasn’t cleaned until the train terminated in Frankfurt, it might be possible to at least confuse the Bundespolizei for a while. A bright-red bloodstain was spreading over the man’s white shirt. O’Connor buttoned up the black overcoat, hooked one of the dead man’s arms around his neck, and dragged him down the still-empty corridor to the toilet, then sat him on it. He closed the door and locked it from the outside with the screwdriver blade on his pocketknife.

Aleta was white and shaken.

‘You okay?’

She nodded. ‘Does this happen often?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice.

‘Comes with the territory. Lord Acton got it right with his “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Wiley and Cardinal Felici fit the description, and unfortunately we’re at the top of their hit list.’

The train began to slow on its approach into Würzburg.

‘They may have the station under observation,’ O’Connor said, lifting Aleta’s bag from the rack above her seat, but they’ll be looking for a couple, so we walk off separately. Look down, so the CCTV cameras don’t get a clear picture of your face. The connecting train leaves from Platform 5 in fifteen minutes. I’ll be watching your back.’

‘Do I board?’

O’Connor nodded as he checked the corridor outside. ‘They won’t know our final destination – yet – and in a big station like Würzburg, they can’t watch every platform. See you there.’ He flashed Aleta what he hoped was a reassuring smile and headed for the carriage behind.

We’re in luck, he thought as he followed Aleta at a discreet distance. Four trains had arrived within minutes of each other and the railroad hub for the Bavarian agricultural and industrial city was even busier than usual. O’Connor detoured onto another platform, boarded a train scheduled for Göttingen and dropped the assailant’s cell phone into a bin in a carriage toilet. He was pushing his luck with another cell phone decoy, but Wiley would be tracking it, and he wouldn’t be able to ignore the location feedback. O’Connor retraced his steps to Platform 5. When he reached their business-class compartment, Aleta was already sitting by the window; he took the other window seat. The two remaining seats were occupied by an elderly couple, and O’Connor breathed a little easier. Even if the boys in Berlin had tracked them and managed to get one of their assets on the train, Wiley would be wary of attempting anything in front of witnesses, and even more wary of disposing of an elderly couple in broad daylight, but only because of the heat that would follow the publicity.

The train pulled out, on time to the second, and O’Connor smiled to himself as he reflected on the energy Wiley would have expended tracking his small cell phone as it wended its way through the sewers of Vienna. For now, they were probably safe, but not for long. Incandescent with rage, Wiley would probably now be mobilising the CIA’s considerable forces: command and control centres in US embassies around the world; trained killers of questionable background fluent in German, accommodated in boarding houses and motel rooms and kept on the payroll for just this type of emergency; international intelligence agencies; as well as foreign police forces and security agencies.

O’Connor resolved to get off at Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and hire a car.

O’Connor scanned the surrounding fields with his binoculars. He had found a quiet farmstay on the outskirts of Bad Arolsen. There was only light traffic on Route 252, which connected Bad Arolsen with Mengeringhausen to the south, and the dirt tracks around the farm were deserted. The trip into town took them no more than ten minutes and O’Connor found a car park on the leafy Grand Avenue. The World War Two Waffen-SS barracks housing the twenty-six kilometres of Holocaust files had been renovated and a new headquarters constructed. The more friendly livery of the International Red Cross and the International Tracing Service fluttered in the garden outside the reception area.

‘Frau Weizman, welcome to Bad Arolsen. We’ve been expecting you. The documents you’ve requested have been extracted from the archives. If you will just sign the register and follow me please.’ The efficiency of the reception staff matched that with which the Nazis had recorded every detail of their savagery, although the purpose of the International Tracing Service could not have been more different.

Aleta’s face was almost as pale as the gloves that had been provided for them to handle the files containing the pink Gestapo arrest warrants, the records of incarceration,
die Kontrolle Karten
recording in obsessive detail everything down to the number and size of any head lice on the prisoners, and the sinister
Totenbuchen
– the Death Books.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay with this?’ O’Connor asked.

‘
I have
to know what happened to them,’ Aleta said. She opened the first file and began the awful task of scanning the names. They worked side by side in silence for nearly an hour, until O’Connor suddenly paused.

‘There’s an arrest warrant here confirming your grandparents and your father and his sister were taken to Mauthausen. The date is April 1938.’

Aleta scanned the four warrants: Levi Ehud Weizman. Ramona Miriam Weizman. Ariel Levi Weizman. Rebekkah Miriam Weizman. The place of arrest was
Judengasse
, Vienna.

‘The commandant of Mauthausen was a young SS officer, Karl von Heißen. One of Himmler’s favourites. Levi worked with him in Guatemala,’ Aleta said.

‘Your grandfather worked with the Nazis?’

‘He didn’t have a choice. It was before the war. Himmler was convinced the Aryan master race had established some of the great civilisations of the world, including the Maya, and my grandfather was one of the few people who had been to Tikal and worked on the Mayan hieroglyphics. Himmler ordered him to join a Nazi expedition to the jungle highlands as the consulting archaeologist, and von Heißen was personally selected by Himmler to lead the expedition. My grandfather was very careful about committing anything to paper, though there are cryptic clues in the back of the notebook I showed you. But something happened between my grandfather and von Heißen on that expedition, and I have a hunch von Heißen had my grandfather marked out for special treatment when he arrived at Mauthausen.’

‘Being on the Nazi payroll didn’t count for much,’ O’Connor observed. ‘Von Heißen would have been quite young to be a concentration camp commandant.’

‘Young, sadistic and brutal – just some of the qualities that no doubt impressed Himmler. I suspect Levi would have been less than cooperative on the expedition, and if he found anything of value, I think he would have made every effort to conceal it from the Nazis, as he did with the figurines. I know my grandfather tried to get the family out of Vienna when he returned from Guatemala, but by then it was too late.’

‘Did your father talk about it much?’ O’Connor asked gently, conscious of Aleta’s enormous loss, a loss that was compounded immeasurably by the murder of her father at the hands of the Guatemalan government and the CIA.

‘Only once. We were fishing on Lake Atitlán in the little native canoe we had. My father didn’t say too much. It’s hard to imagine what they went through … and even harder to work out why.’ Aleta shook her head and wiped away a tear. ‘It’s still one of the great unanswered questions, isn’t it? The Nazis finished up with enormous power, but how was it that so many ordinary Germans got into the sewers with them and behaved like animals? My father always suffered from terrible nightmares, but he was one of the few to escape from a concentration camp. He was one of those children saved by Archbishop Roncalli when he was papal nuncio in Istanbul.’

Aha
, O’Connor thought. ‘Forged Catholic baptism certificates?’

Aleta nodded. ‘The Vatican has had its fair share of corrupt and power-hungry cardinals, but every so often they elect someone like Roncalli to the papacy.’

‘Pope John XXIII,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘One of the truly great Popes. Was that the reason your father converted to Catholicism?’

‘He never forgot Monsignor Roncalli’s kindness when he reached Istanbul, and it was his way of repaying him.’

They turned their attention back to the Death Books. The books had been prepared with one name to every line, the columns recording prisoner numbers, names, the precise time and date and place of the murders and the method of killing. Aleta opened a book that was inscribed meticulously in black copperplate
Totenbuch – Mauthausen 1.1.37 – 31.12.38
.

‘Bastards,’ Aleta swore, as half an hour later, she came across a long and significant list of names.

O’Connor came around to her side of the table. ‘Each of them murdered on the same day … but two minutes apart,’ he said, noticing the regularity of the executions.

‘There was a reason for that.’ Aleta struggled to control her bitterness. ‘It was Hitler’s birthday, and as a present to the Führer, von Heißen gave orders that for an hour and a half, a Jew would be shot every two minutes.’

The Nazis obviously didn’t believe in cakes, O’Connor thought darkly.

Aleta turned the page and gasped, her hand trembling over her mouth. O’Connor stood behind her. At the top of the page, were two names inscribed in copperplate:

‘I’m deeply sorry, Aleta,’ O’Connor said, resting his hand on her shoulder.

‘Thank you. At least I know. It’s closure, in a way.’

O’Connor’s mind went back to the CIA archives and Father Hernandez, the CIA’s asset in San Pedro. ‘Was von Heißen ever brought to trial, do you know?’ he asked finally.

Aleta shook her head. ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

‘At the end of the war, the Vatican and the CIA worked together to arrange the escape of Nazi war criminals who were in a position to assist the fight against the rise of Communism. Some of them were disguised as priests and many were smuggled down the “Vatican Ratlines”, including Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.’

‘Yes. I wonder what Christ would have said about
that
?’ Aleta pondered again the hypocrisy of some of the church’s leaders.

O’Connor nodded, reflecting on his own bitter experiences at the hands of the Church. ‘I think if Christ had been around, he would’ve done a lot more than just upturn the money tables in the Vatican Bank. The thing is, von Heißen was very close to Himmler. The CIA and the Vatican might have considered him a valuable asset.’

‘You think he might have been one of those who escaped?’

‘It’s possible. And a lot of them were smuggled out to Central and South America, including Guatemala. It’s only a hunch, but before I came to Vienna, I spent some time going through the CIA archives. The CIA smuggling operation was known as Operation Paperclip. The CIA had an asset on the shores of Lake Atitlán … a Father Hernandez.’

‘I remember him! He was a nasty piece of work. And now that you mention it, his Spanish was very good, but he had a thick European accent, which could easily have been German. You think … ?’

O’Connor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve seen no concrete evidence that von Heißen and Hernandez are one and the same person. But from what you’ve told me, von Heißen spent quite a bit of time in Guatemala before the war. If he was given a choice of countries in Central or South America, it would make sense to go back to a place he was familiar with.’

‘And if he did escape to Central America, he may have taken the original
huun
bark map with him. Which would have the precise bearings to the location at Lake Atitlán,’ Aleta mused.

‘Something to keep in the backs of our minds, anyway. Tomorrow we leave before dawn and head for Mauthausen, and we’ll take the car. They’ll be watching the trains.’

39

CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

E
llen Rodriguez brushed her dark hair away from her tanned, freckled face and took the call on one of the operations room’s secure lines. Brandon Gray, the CIA’s young, ambitious chief of station in Berlin, sounded grim.

‘The police in Frankfurt have just given a news conference. I’m sending it through now. Our asset on the Vienna train has been killed.’

‘Tutankhamen … ?’