L ow cloud hugged the highland volcanic ranges, drifting down into the valleys, as the pilot lined up the aircraft for the final approach into Aeropuerto La Aurora, Guatemala’s international airport. Monsignor Jennings stared out the window from his business-class seat. Below, high-rise buildings competed for space with the slums of a teeming, vibrant city of over two million people, many of whom lived in abject poverty. Guatemala City was the country’s third capital. The first, Ciudad Vieja, located just to the east, had been destroyed by floods and volcanic eruptions in 1541. The second, Antigua, also close by, had been destroyed by a violent earthquake 200 years later.
Jennings had intended to catch a ‘chicken’ bus to Panajachel on the northern shore of Lake Atitlan, but through the low cloud he caught sight of the city’s Olympic stadium, with its distinctive blue seating that could hold 30 000 of the soccer-mad country’s fans. Just to the north of the stadium was the city’s Zone 1 and the red-light district. The old feeling stirred in his loins, and he resolved to spend the night in the city. The parish of San Pedro could wait another day. And in any case, it would give him a chance to talk to his contact at the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia. What had given cause for Weizman’s excitement?
Clear of customs, Jennings waddled out of Guatemala’s new terminal pulling his trolley bag behind him. He wore civilian clothes – jeans and a yellow sports shirt. The humidity and the heat were oppressive and already sweat was streaming down his florid face.
‘Zona Uno?cuanto?’ Jennings demanded of the driver of a battered yellow taxi outside the arrivals hall.
‘Cien quetzales,’ the dark, wizened Mayan driver replied.
‘A hundred quetzales! Daylight robbery! Setenta. Seventy,’ Jennings insisted, holding up seven fingers for emphasis. ‘ No mas! ’
The old taxi driver shrugged, and Jennings stepped inside. The city streets were choked with buses belching clouds of black diesel smoke, battered lorries with suspensions that had seen better days, brightly coloured chicken buses and the ubiquitous Toyota utes in various states of disrepair.
‘Hotel Rio, Avenida 6a,’ Jennings directed further.
Once they reached the hotel, Jennings paid the cab driver and hauled his luggage across the cracked tiles of the grimy reception foyer. The staff knew him well, and for a few quetzales would turn a blind eye to him bringing back a street boy or two.
‘ Quiere chica senor? Muy limpio. Muy buen polvo. You want girl, mister? Very clean. Very good fuck.’ Monsignor Jennings waved the young tout away with an irritable flick of his wrist.
‘Maricon! Vete a la mierda! Fuck off, you queer!’ the young tout shouted.
Jennings ignored him and turned into a dimly lit lane behind the bus station in one of the sleaziest parts of Zona 1, and headed for his favourite pick-up joint, el Senor Chico Club. The entrance was unmarked. Jennings paid the ten quetzales cover charge to the security guard, tipping him another twenty. The moustachioed thickset security guard, his stomach bulging behind a grimy dark-blue shirt, smiled slyly and pocketed the money.
‘Bienvenidos de nuevo, Senor Jennings. It’s good to see you again. Reynaldo is not in yet, but he’ll be here shortly.’
Reynaldo was only twelve, but he was like no other boy Jennings had ever known. A hot flush of anticipation flooded the dark depths of the monsignor’s soul. Reynaldo, like the other rent-boys in el Senor Chico, operated from small dingy rooms upstairs. They were paid the equivalent of US$10 for thirty minutes, half of which went to the establishment; but for regulars like Senor Jennings, and for a price, Reynaldo would be allowed off the premises. Jennings pushed through the dirty curtain that shielded the club from the street and worked his way through sweating, steaming patrons gyrating to the Weather Girls’ ‘It’s Raining Men’. The room reeked of the heavy, sweet, skunk-sage smell of pot, and strobe lights flickered through the smoke, momentarily illuminating the peeling blue paint on the flimsy walls. Young men danced with older men, mainly Europeans and Americans, their eyes glazed with a cocktail of ice, ecstasy and tequila. At the far side of the corrugated-iron bar, two young men were locked in a passionate embrace, each groping down the front of the other’s jeans.
‘Ron Zacapa por favor… con cubitos de hielo.’
‘Certainly, Senor Jennings. One Zacapa on the rocks coming up.’ The shirtless young barman flipped a heavy lowball tumbler into the air, caught it and scooped up some ice of questionable origin. He poured a shot of rum and slid the glass down the bar, his oiled torso gleaming in the reflected lights of the mirror ball.
‘On the tab, senor?’
Jennings nodded and threw back the rum, immediately ordering another. Unlike Bacardi or any of the other better known rums, Ron Zacapa Centenario did not come from the Caribbean or Jamaica, nor was it made from molasses. One of the world’s finest rums, it came from the first pressings of sugar-cane juice from Guatemalan farms. Distilled high in the mountains surrounding Quetzaltenango and aged in used American bourbon and whiskey barrels, the rich dark liqueur was made to be savoured, but Jennings needed a hit. He surveyed the room. At one end a worn wooden staircase led to the upstairs rooms that could be rented for 800 quetzales for four hours. The ‘take out’ price for Reynaldo would, he knew, be double that, but Jennings was prepared to pay. He felt a surge of anticipation as he spotted the young boy coming in through the back entrance.
‘Bienvenido a Ciudad de Guatemala, Senor Jennings.’
‘You’re free tonight, Reynaldo?’ Jennings’ voice was thick. His eyes roved lustfully over the boy’s slender form.
Reynaldo nodded, a glazed look on his handsome young face. It was a face devoid of humour; the joy of living once evident, extinguished. The authorities had tried hard to stamp out the child-sex trade, but as in any of the world’s large cities it still flourished, if you knew where to look.
Once they were in the back of the taxi, Jennings’ pudgy, sweaty hand wandered across Reynaldo’s taut brown thigh.
The morning heat was already oppressive and Jennings gratefully entered the cooler surrounds of the pink low-set 1930s building that housed the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia. Jennings waddled past the softly lit glass cases, his dirty runners squeaking on the highly polished tile floor. The first cases held rare blades, knives and spearpoints the ancients had carved from obsidian, the hard black glass formed when volcanic lava cooled without crystallisation, enabling it to be ground to molecular thinness, many times sharper than a modern surgical scalpel. Priceless milky-green jade masks, eyes inlaid with mother of pearl and obsidian, stared lifelessly from the next cabinet, secured amongst red-and-blue statues and pottery that had been recovered from the royal tombs in the pyramids of Tikal and Palenque, but Jennings didn’t spare them a glance. He was intent on finding his contact. At that moment a guard signalled Jennings towards a corner of the exhibition hall devoid of exhibits, a corner that both men knew was blind to the CCTV cameras. Carlos was stocky, with jet-black hair and a square brown face. His dark eyes shifted nervously around the room.
‘Doctor Weizman. You said she was here two months ago?’ Jennings inquired, wiping the sweat from his pink forehead.
‘ Si. She had permission to visit the storerooms. She was quite excited, senor.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘I think it was one of the stelae, a smaller one that has always been stored in one of the back rooms.’
‘I need to see it.’
Carlos shrugged apologetically. ‘That would be difficult, Senor… without permission.’
Jennings thrust a dirty hundred-quetzale note into the guard’s hand.
Carlos smiled. ‘Follow me, senor, but stay close to the wall.’
Not long after, Jennings examined the small limestone stela with excitement. ‘This is from Tikal. How long has the museum had this?’
‘I think it dates from the Nazi expedition to Tikal in the 1930s. The Nazis are not popular here, senor, so it has never been on display.’
‘And the museum records?’
Carlos shrugged again. ‘Copying records is strictly against the rules, senor.’
‘I need the records quickly, Carlos, understand? Prontamente! ?Entienden?’ Jennings demanded irritably as he pressed another dirty note into Carlos’ hand.
Monsignor Jennings reached Lake Atitlan in the late afternoon and by the time he reached the northern town of Panajachel, the last ferry had departed for the southern shore and San Pedro.
Jennings was tired and irritable and was in no mood to pay the hundred quetzales the old boatman was asking.
‘Fuel is very expensive, senor. You have to pay for my return trip.’
‘Cuarenta quetzales,’ Jennings insisted, gesturing rudely with four fingers. The old man shrugged, took the key out of the ignition of his small fibreglass runabout and walked towards the shore, leaving Jennings fuming beside the boat.
‘ Sesenta quetzales. Sixty. That’s my final offer,’ Jennings shouted.
The boatman shrugged and kept walking. Jennings looked around but the lake shore was deserted, empty boats rocking gently against the other jetties. ‘Ochenta!’ he yelled.
The boatman paused, turned and walked back along the shaky jetty. Eighty quetzales might only be a little more than US$10, but even after the cost of fuel, it would put food on the table for his grandchildren.
The boat rocked alarmingly as Jennings obeyed the boatman’s instructions to move to the bow. The old but meticulously maintained forty-horsepower Evinrude started first time. The boatman cast off and the little launch gathered speed across the cold smooth waters. The sun was sinking behind the mountains above San Marcos, bathing the coffee plantations on the three soaring volcanoes of Atitlan, Toliman and San Pedro with an orange glow, but Jennings was oblivious to the scenery. He sat just back from the bow, absorbed in the single page of acquisition notes from the Museo Nacional.
The stela had indeed been acquired as a result of the expedition Himmler had ordered to the jungles of Tikal in 1938, although the details of the transaction seemed shrouded in mystery. Of greater importance to Jennings was the appearance of the Greek letter?. It was the first time the Mayanist scholar had seen the letter inscribed on a stela. Was there a link between the Maya and the Greeks? And what did the numbers on the stela mean? Jennings understood well the ancients’ use of bars and dots in a vigesimal or numeral system that was based on 20 rather than the decimal system based on 10, but the bars and dots on the small stela had been hard to make out.
Three hundred and twenty kilometres to the north-east, the last of the sun’s rays struck the top of Temple III above the jungle canopy in Tikal. The rays almost lined up with Temple IV. The winter solstice was drawing closer.