The Maya Codex (50 page)

‘How are we going to distract Jennings?’ Aleta asked. ‘Mass will be finished in half an hour.’

‘How do you feel about confession?’

‘What?’

‘I saw a notice on the porch of the church. Jennings conducts confessions after Mass, and if you hold him up in the confessional, I’ll have time to get the trunks out of the ceiling and down to the launch.’

‘And what if he recognises me?’

‘He won’t. Not if your face is covered by a niqab.’

‘A Muslim full-face veil? He can’t give confession to a Muslim!’

‘Pretend you’re going through a crisis of faith, and that you’re going to convert. That should give me long enough!’

‘I’ll be there for a week. Besides, I’ll stand out like a sore thumb.’

‘Not really,’ Arana said. ‘There are quite a few Muslims in the Lake Atitlán community, and we all coexist without any problems. Besides, every picture you have ever seen of the Virgin Mary depicts her in a veil. That’s just a Christian version of the hijab.’

55

SAN PEDRO, GUATEMALA

A
leta waited on the main steps outside the church until the last of the congregation had shaken their priest by the hand, while O’Connor took up a position in the gardens. Even at a distance, Jennings’ surprise and irritation at Aleta’s request for him to hear a Muslim renounce her faith in a Catholic confessional was clearly audible, and O’Connor watched as the two disappeared back inside the church. Confident that Aleta would tie Jennings up in knots, he headed for the presbytery.

Monsignor Jennings slammed the door of the little wooden confessional shut and switched on the red light above the door. Aleta closed the curtain on her side, knelt on the tattered cushion and waited until Jennings slid open the worn cedar partition. Through the holes, Aleta could make out Jennings’ shadowy figure. He was breathing heavily. It had been many years since Aleta had been in a confessional, but she remembered the tortuous procedure of a teenager’s imagined sins as if it were yesterday. She remembered, too, the lives the hypocrite on the other side of the screen had destroyed.

‘My friends tell me that unless I renounce Islam and become a Catholic I will burn in hell,’ Aleta whispered.

‘And your friends are correct. You must renounce your current beliefs and embrace the one true faith.’

‘But we both worship the one God?’

Jennings snorted. ‘God has revealed much more of Himself to Catholics than to any other faith. He is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Those who do not take Jesus as their Saviour, or who do, but embrace other denominations of Christianity, are gravely deluded …’

Aleta listened, willing the minutes by as Jennings launched into full stride, delivering a verbal broadside against other faiths. ‘Unless you accept the Catholic faith in all of its beauty and majesty, you are doomed, my girl.’

Aleta glanced at her watch. O’Connor had estimated he’d need fifteen minutes to recover the trunks from the ceiling and get them back to the jetty. She needed to keep Jennings going for a while longer.

‘I have another problem, Father.’

‘And what’s that?’ Jennings asked irritably.

‘I masturbate … a lot. Is that a sin, Father?’ Aleta could feel the fat priest’s piggy little stare boring through the holes in the partition, and she fought to quell a fit of the giggles.

‘It is a very serious sin! Matthew makes it very clear that when your right hand causes you to sin, it should be cut off. The Catholic God is a very jealous God, and if you abuse your body for an act of self-gratification, that is sexual idolatry, a mortal sin for which you will surely burn in hell. If you don’t turn away from this false faith, and if you don’t reject sex for pure pleasure, I can’t help you.’

‘Thank you, Father. Can I ask how you manage to do without sex?’

‘How dare you? How
dare
you? You will leave this church now!’

Aleta slipped out of the confessional, leaving Jennings fuming on the other side of the partition.

Security around the Vandenberg Air Force Base was tighter than usual. A heavy swell was coming in across a dark Pacific Ocean, and a searchlight probed the white caps as additional guards patrolled the Point Sal beach. The specially modified thirty-tonne LGM-30 Minuteman missile was in the last stages of being readied in test-launch silo Lima Foxtrot-26. A short distance away, the technicians were carrying out a series of final checks on the equipment on board
Looking Glass
. The crew of the E6-Mercury command and control aircraft were already strapped in their seats. They would vector the missile into a precise position for the massive ELF attack on the Iranian tunnel systems, an attack that would penetrate as far as the earth’s core. Nearly 4000 kilometres to the north, the command and control centre at Gakona was at full strength, where the scientists and technicians were testing HAARP’s elaborate circuitry. Tyler Jackson shifted nervously in his swivel chair, weighing up his options. The countdown to H-hour had begun.

‘The
hide
of that hypocritical bastard,’ Aleta swore, as they powered back across the lake towards San Marcos, the three trunks of diaries weighing down the stern.

‘Did he say it was okay to masturbate with your
left
hand?’

She gave O’Connor a playful cuff over the ear. ‘Do you think we’ll make it?’ she asked, suddenly more serious.

‘It’ll be touch and go. The solstice dawn’s the day after tomorrow and Tikal’s over 300 kilometres away. When Wiley discovers what’s happened to ‘Lloyd Bridges’ and ‘Buster Crabb’ out there, he’ll be incandescent. But José’s organised a four-wheel drive so we can take the back road out of here – just in case Wiley’s lined up any more guerrillas to block our path.’

Howard Wiley’s anger rose as Ellen Rodriguez brought him up to date via the secure video link from the US Embassy in Guatemala City. Wiley’s face was once again the colour of his hair, and he clenched and unclenched his right fist.

‘The body was found floating on Lake Atitlán, not far from the shore near San Marcos. The authorities have not identified it, but it’s almost certainly one of ours … found in a full diving suit with a knife wound to the throat.’

‘How can you be sure it’s one of ours?’ Wiley rasped.

‘My contact tells me the body has a US Navy SEAL emblem tattooed on his left arm.’

‘Shit! And the other one?’

‘Missing … presumed dead.’

‘That’s one hell of an assumption, Rodriguez!’

‘They were after O’Connor,’ Rodriguez replied calmly, ‘and he was seen in San Pedro
after
the first body was found.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘My guess is that both he and Weizman are headed for Tikal.’

‘We briefed five more assets yesterday. Are they there yet?’

‘As yet, they’ve not reported in.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Rodriguez! What sort of a nickel-and-dime show are you running down there?’

Rodriguez kept her counsel.

‘Get your ass up to Tikal and take charge of this bullshit. I want roadblocks, round-the-clock surveillance, and I want Tutankhamen and Nefertiti dead as soon as they show their faces … and I want that codex!’ With that, the screen went blank.

Rodriguez shook her head in frustration. Whatever the Wileys of this world thought of Guatemala, it was a sovereign country, and roadblocks might be a bit tricky.

O’Connor kept to the speed limit, not wanting to attract any unwarranted attention, and as the hours slipped by, the stunted lowland bushes of Petén gradually gave way to the deep rainforests of Tikal. The site of the ancient Mayan city was now a national park, and O’Connor slowed to a stop at the gates.

The park attendant waited until the old four-wheel drive was out of sight before he called the number he’d been given. He had no idea who the man and woman in the battered Toyota were, nor did he much care. They matched the description he’d been given, and the American woman had paid him handsomely.

‘So what’s the plan? Or are you just making it up as we go along?’ Aleta asked.

‘Pretty much,’ O’Connor replied with his disarming grin. The four-wheel drive bounced alarmingly out of a large pothole. ‘There’s a pretty reasonable lodge where we could stay the night, only a few hundred metres from the pyramids.’

‘Won’t they be looking there?’

‘They will, which is why we’ll avoid it … A pity really.’

‘So where does that leave us? If you can get that mind of yours above your navel.’ Aleta was smiling.

‘Before we left San Marcos, José told me he’d be in contact with one of the elders in a village across the river. José’s taken a more direct route, so he’s probably there already. It’s the same village your grandfather visited. According to José, there’s a track about a kilometre ahead that branches off the main road.’

The track, not much used except by the villagers, was barely wide enough for the Toyota to pass. O’Connor drove slowly through the overhanging undergrowth. Vines and ferns grew abundantly between the huge mahogany and ceiba trees. Forty minutes later they came to the river, and the same bridge Levi had crossed seventy years before.

‘Aren’t you going to hide the vehicle?’ Aleta asked, as she hoisted her backpack with one of the figurines.