O ’Connor surveyed the busy bus terminal at Escuintla, a rural city of 70 000 people on the border of the Guatemalan highlands and the Pacific Plain. He followed Aleta aboard a chicken bus even more brightly coloured and crowded than the one from Puerta de Hierro. A half-hour later, the bus clawed its way up the narrow winding road that led into the mountains towards Panajachel. O’Connor shook his head as the driver pulled out to overtake another bus belching black smoke, the roof festooned with pots, pans, bicycles, and wicker baskets. Together they approached a blind corner and still the driver persisted, drawing level with the other bus. Suddenly a mini-van appeared around the corner. The bus driver leant on the air horns and the mini-van swerved into the foliage overhanging the road, missing the side of the bus by centimetres. A group of young boys on the bench seat at the back of the bus cheered.
‘Do you have to apply for a licence in this country, or does it come on the back of the cereal packets?’
Aleta smiled. ‘You get used to it. There are T-shirts in Panajachel with ‘I Survived’ on the front and a photo of a chicken bus on the back. I’ll get you one.’
‘We’ve got to get there first,’ O’Connor replied, leaning towards Aleta as a man with a piglet under one arm made his way past them to the front of the bus.
It was midafternoon by the time they arrived at the Panajachel terminal. Aleta and O’Connor shouldered their backpacks and made their way down the cobblestoned main street. Bright-red tuc tucs buzzed up and down, looking for fares. Woven mats and rugs juxtaposed with brightly coloured dresses and pants hung from poles beneath the corrugated-iron awnings above the stores. Power cables and phone lines were festooned around poles in spaghetti-like bundles strung above the street. Wonderful aromas of spices and freshly ground coffee beans filled the air. O’Connor maintained a constant watch on the crowd as they walked down Avenida Santander towards the shore of Lake Atitlan, past vendors sitting underneath their yellow and red umbrellas, with their offerings of mangoes and candied nuts. Aleta smiled at a little boy with big brown eyes. The boy hung on to his mother’s skirt and shyly returned the smile as his mother hoisted a huge basket of bananas onto her head.
They reached a paved-stone path that led down to the jetties, and as they rounded a large tree Lake Atitlan came into view. Across the lake to the south stood Volcan Toliman with Volcan Atitlan behind it, each soaring over 10 000 feet. Clouds streamed off both peaks, giving the impression they might erupt at any moment. Further to the west, the third of Lake Atitlan’s volcanoes, Volcan San Pedro, towered over the little town that had given the powerful mountain its name.
‘?Cuanto a San Marcos?’ O’Connor asked the old boatman.
‘ Ochenta quetzales… for you. For the beautiful lady, sesenta quetzales.’
O’Connor grinned. ‘?Como se llama usted?’
‘Fidel,’ the old mariner replied.
‘Okay, Fidel, let’s go.’ O’Connor stowed the backpacks containing the priceless cargo under the cabin awning and steadied the gunwale for Aleta. The boatman went astern, spun the ten-seater runabout on a quetzale and headed out between two rickety wooden piles.
The high-pitched hum of the Evinrude, and the occasional thwack thwack of the bow hitting the water interrupted the silent splendour of the great lake.
‘Penny, or I should say quetzale, for your thoughts? Does this bring back painful memories?’ O’Connor asked gently.
‘I try to concentrate on the good times. It will be enough if we can find the third figurine and get to Tikal before the winter solstice. My father would have done the same.’
‘Which gives us less than three days… ’
Forty minutes later, they rounded the last little promontory and the boatman eased the throttle.
‘That’s Jose on the jetty!’ Aleta said, pointing excitedly.
‘The shaman? How did he know we were coming?’ O’Connor was instantly alert.
‘Maybe it’s just coincidence?’
Arana waved and Fidel threw him the mooring rope.
‘ Muchas gracias.’ O’Connor thanked the old mariner and slipped him 200 quetzales. Fidel fumbled in his pocket for change.
O’Connor shook his head. ‘ No, para usted. For you.’
‘ Gracias, gracias! ’
‘Mi placer.’
‘Bienvenido a San Marcos!’ Jose kissed Aleta on both cheeks. ‘And you must be Curtis. Welcome.’ Jose adopted a Western gesture and shook O’Connor firmly by the hand. He turned to Fidel, and told him to wait.
‘Come, your rooms are waiting for you.’
‘Separate… what a pity,’ O’Connor said softly. Aleta dug him in the ribs.
Not very far across the lake in the larger town of San Pedro, two ex-navy SEALs, skilled in high-altitude diving and now employed by the CIA as mercenaries, checked into the Mikaso Hotel on the shores of Lake Atitlan.
Arana’s wife, Sayra, set dinner outside in the garden. The house was perched on a rise, a short distance from the lake’s shore. Sayra had prepared a topado: a rich stew of lake crabs and fish, coriander, tomatoes, coconut milk and plantains, a cousin of the banana. After dinner, Sayra retired, leaving Arana alone with O’Connor and Aleta.
‘It’s now the eighteenth of December, Jose. The solstice is less than three days away.’
Arana smiled enigmatically. ‘You have come to the right place, Aleta. As I said to you in Vienna, this is a sacred mission of profound importance. But I must remind you again that the figurine and the codex are fiercely protected, the former by Mother Nature herself, the latter by the ingenuity of my forefathers. More than one fortune seeker has paid the ultimate price. The ancients ensured that the codex would only be found by someone possessing the inner spiritual balance to understand it correctly. That person may be you, Aleta, but we will only know that if you are ultimately successful.’ Arana turned to O’Connor. ‘The Vatican now has a man in San Pedro, the Mayanist scholar, Monsignor Jennings. He’s been appointed to the Catholic church there, and he’s taken over the presbytery that used to be occupied by Father Hernandez.’
‘Aleta and I were speculating that Father Hernandez might actually be Karl von Hei?en, the German SS officer who escaped through the ratlines set up by the Vatican and the CIA at the end of World War Two.’
‘And you would be correct. Von Hei?en was aided by il Signor Felici, a gentleman to His Holiness Pope Pius XII, and father of Cardinal Salvatore Felici. Unfortunately for Cardinal Felici, von Hei?en kept very detailed diaries.’
‘ Aha. It’s all falling into place,’ O’Connor thought out loud. ‘If Cardinal Felici’s past, in this case his father’s involvement with Nazi criminals, ever surfaced, Felici’s career and his chances of becoming the next pontiff would be finished.’
‘Although that’s not the only reason the Vatican is very worried about this part of the world. The Maya Codex threatens the uniqueness of the message of Christ,’ Aleta said.
‘Upon which the Vatican depends for its very existence. I should have a look at Monsignor Jennings’ living arrangements. Is there any way I can get across to San Pedro at this time of night?’ O’Connor asked.
‘Fidel is waiting for you at the jetty. Monsignor Jennings usually drinks at the Buddha Bar. It’s on the shore of San Pedro not far from the main tourist area.’
‘Please take care,’ Aleta said.
‘Already he means something to you,’ Arana observed with a gentle smile after O’Connor had left.
‘More than I thought, even if it is like living on the run with Indiana Jones. You’re the one who said I should trust him with my life.’
‘And now you’re going to have to trust me. Do you recall me telling you about the need to replenish your inner spirit?’
Aleta nodded.
‘Tonight, we’re going to cleanse that inner spirit, which will also relieve your depression. I want you to lie over here,’ Arana said, indicating a garden bench covered with big soft cushions. ‘Have you ever been hypnotised?’
‘No. Is it safe?’
‘I did say you will have to trust me. The mind has different states, Aleta. When we’re awake, we’re in what is known as the beta state, the state in which we’re alert: we’re thinking and our brainwaves are pulsing at somewhere between fifteen and thirty cycles per second. At eight to fifteen cycles per second we fall into the more relaxed alpha state, usually when we’re drifting in and out of sleep, or even absorbed in a movie.’ He paused, allowing Aleta to make herself comfortable.
‘You’re becoming more relaxed,’ Arana said softly, passing his hand above Aleta’s eyes. ‘Close your eyes and we will move towards the theta state, when your brainwaves slow… slow… slower… to just four or five cycles per second. The state we reach when entering a deep sleep; a state that you will enter softly and quietly. At the end of this,’ the shaman continued even more softly, ‘I will count to three, and you will gently awake.’
Aleta could feel herself drifting, partly because she was deeply tired, and partly because she was back in her home village under the care of a man in whom she had complete trust. The pillows were soft and comfortable and she drifted further. Her eyelids were heavy, and she had neither the strength nor the energy to open them.
‘You are walking into a deep tunnel now. You are descending stone steps that lead deeper and deeper into this tunnel. Deeper… and deeper… and deeper. The steps keep going down… and down… and down. You’ve reached a dimly lit stone corridor. It smells dank and musty down here.’ Arana waved a wild orchid in front of Aleta’s face but she wrinkled her nose distastefully. It was a test that his patient had entered a deep trance. Aleta was now open to the power of suggestion. To cleanse her spirit Arana would have to take her back in time. It was a technique the ancients had been using for centuries, a technique that modern psychiatry and hypnotherapy had only recently explained, coining the phrase ‘past-life regression’ therapy. Though each individual was different, the shaman knew every human being had lived through past lives; it was just that the memories were inaccessible in the present life. Arana also knew well that hypnosis could remove those barriers.
‘As you walk along this tunnel, you will see doors to your left and right, Aleta,’ he continued, still speaking in soft, even tones. ‘I want you to choose a door and open it.’
‘There is a brightly coloured door on my left… I’m opening it now.’
Aleta began to sway to the rhythm of the drums.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in Tikal. My name is Princess Akhushtal.’ Aleta had gone back to 790 AD, to the great city-state of Tikal, one of several very powerful cities in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula. Calakmul and Naranjo, controlled by a warrior queen, Lady Six Sky, lay further to the north. The peace between the cities was fragile.
‘What do you see?’
‘Tikal is very busy today,’ Princess Akhushtal said excitedly. ‘It’s the winter solstice tomorrow, and at dawn the High Priest will be conducting a ceremony with the jade statues to determine the resting place for the Maya Codex. But the High Priest is very worried.’
From the viewing platform where she was sitting with her father, King Yax Ain II, Princess Akhushtal surveyed the great ball court below. The muscled warriors wore thick rolls of padding to protect their ribs from a massive black leather ball over a metre in diameter as they jostled for position. The rules of the ball game prevented them kicking the ball or touching it with their hands; instead they used their heavily padded forearms and occasionally their foreheads. Headdresses of horns and quetzal and macaw feathers identified the different sides.
Princess Akhushtal’s gaze shifted from the ball court to the towering salmon-coloured pyramids at either end of the main plaza – the Temple of the Great Jaguar and the Temple of the Mask. The soaring monuments had been built fifty years before and contained the tombs of royal members of the Great Jaguar clan: King Hasaw Chan K’awil and his queen, Lady Twelve Macaw. Further to the east of the plaza, the Tikal markets were bustling with traders. The stores were shaded with sackcloth awnings. Racks of exquisitely woven cloth were suspended beneath. Rugs, pottery and baskets of spices, nuts and fruits spilled on to the main thoroughfares. The women, dressed in multicoloured blouses, balanced their purchases in wicker baskets on their heads. Noblemen in feathered headdresses reclined on wicker lounges that were carried aloft amongst the crowds by their servants. Beyond the marketplace, Akhushtal could see the sentries on top of Temple IV and Temple V, the ‘skyscraper pyramids’, the tallest structures in the Meso-American world. Below them, the gates on the causeways that connected the great city with the jungle were heavily guarded by the King’s warriors.
‘The drums are beating louder now and the game is coming to an end. My father is getting to his feet and the ball players have all turned and bowed in our direction.’
Aleta shifted restlessly on her pillows but Arana remained silent and waited.
‘My father is meeting with the High Priest now. The High Priest is warning of a great catastrophe for the Maya if we don’t change course.’
‘You must find a way to make peace with Calakmul and Naranjo,’ the High Priest informed the King in grave tones. The respected Mayan elder was tall and dressed in a white sackcloth robe and hood, his brown weathered face etched with lines of wisdom. He maintained a commanding presence, even in the company of King Yax Ain II. ‘If these wars continue, not only will there be more casualties on both sides, but the entire Mayan civilisation will come under threat. The wars are destroying the environment on which your people depend for their very existence.’
‘The people of Calakmul and Naranjo are very stubborn,’ the King complained. ‘I have a duty to maintain our way of life. We are the pre-eminent city, and they must conform to our customs and traditions. If necessary, we will force them to adopt our way of living.’ The muscled, well-built warrior King was seated on a low stool, resplendent in a headdress of red, blue and green feathers from the prized quetzal bird, his protective leather battle-dress fastened at the belt by a huge jade emblem.
‘The dominant society and culture must take the lead, but that does not mean we should not accept other cultures,’ the High Priest persisted. ‘It’s not a weakness to sit down and reach agreement. It’s a strength.’
‘It will be perceived as a weakness, especially by the council of advisors,’ the King grumbled.
‘We are coming to the end of the tenth baktun. It will be a time of great upheaval and loss,’ the High Priest warned, reminding King Yax Ain II that the current baktun, a cycle of 394 years, was coming to its conclusion. ‘The destruction we experienced at the end of the last baktun will repeat itself.’
The King looked thoughtful.
‘The signs will keep repeating until we take notice of the warnings – or sow the seeds of our own destruction, and eventually the destruction of the entire planet.’
‘The entire planet?’
‘The destruction at the end of this baktun will be widespread, particularly amongst your own people, but the destruction of the entire planet is not scheduled to occur until the end of the thirteenth baktun: in the year 2012.’
‘And what happens in 2012?’ the King asked, a sceptical edge to his voice.
‘The thirteenth baktun and December 2012 will signify the end of the grand cycle: the end of the Age of the Fifth Sun. For the people of 2012, they will ignore the damage they do to the environment. They won’t be able to reach agreement. And their wars will be based on competing religions. The adherents of those religions will each claim that only they possess the one true path, but unless they learn to accept that there are many paths and many cultures, the clash between religions will destroy them all.’
‘The year 2012 is many baktuns away,’ the King responded dismissively.
‘Nevertheless, we have a duty to warn future civilisations of the difficulties we face, and what may await them.’
‘And how do we do that?’
‘The warnings have been transcribed into a codex. At the ceremony of the solstice tomorrow, the Keepers of the Temples, the jade figurines, will be placed on top of Pyramids I, IV and V. At sunrise, the sun’s rays will be captured by the crystals and deflected. The final diffraction will signify the resting place for the Maya Codex, which will remain hidden until long after you and I have gone. One who is amongst us now will return to unlock the secret, but if they are to be successful, they will need to find the sequence of numbers that is at the base of the universe itself. That sequence contains a common number from which a subtraction of one will give its reciprocal, and to which the addition of one will give its square.’
Aleta shifted on her pillows again, frowning as she wrestled with the mathematical predictions of the High Priest, but then relaxing, as if the equation were solved.
‘What is happening now?’ Arana prompted.
‘The sky is streaked with pinks and soft purples… the dawn is approaching. The howler monkeys are swinging through the trees above us. I’m accompanying my father towards the Great Plaza, where his subjects are already gathered in their thousands. Together, we are ascending the steps of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. The High Priest is waiting for us at the summit. Up… up… up we are climbing. The drums are beating, louder now, and fires of incense are burning at the base of the temple, where the warriors are drawn up in their legions. We are reaching the top… the High Priest is bowing… my father is taking his seat on his throne, and now I am able to be seated as well. The priests are hovering around the jade figurines. They have positioned one on the roof comb above us and another to the west on top of Temple IV, and yet a third has been positioned to the south on top of Temple V. The High Priest has lifted a golden conch shell to his lips. It has a keyhole in the middle, and the sound is reverberating through the jungle.’
The shaman watched his patient carefully, aware of what was coming. Aleta was moving from side to side on her pillows, moving to the rising crescendo of the drums.
‘The sky is getting lighter above the jungle, which spreads like a dark-green canopy out to the east. The High Priest is looking towards the point where the sky is the brightest, where the sun will rise on the shortest day of the year – now! The first rays of the sun have struck the crystal in the jade figurine on top of Temple I.’ A narrow, searing beam of deep-green laser-like light energised the crystal on the top of Temple I, only to be immediately deflected on a precise angle to strike the crystal on the jade figurine on top of Temple IV to the west, from where it energised the crystal on top of Temple V. Aleta turned her head suddenly. ‘The light beam! It’s been deflected towards… wait… I can’t see it… oh, no!’
The screams were coming from the direction of the city gates at the bottom of the causeway that led up to the markets. One after another, the thatched-roofed huts on either side were going up in flames. Thousands of bloodthirsty warriors from the rival city of Calakmul fought with the guards at the gates, beheading them and ripping their still-beating hearts out of their chests. Now they were streaming on towards the plaza. Fierce battles broke out as Tikal’s warriors raced to meet them to defend their King.
The High Priest was strangely calm; for him the surprise dawn attack had been inevitable. He shook his head sadly. The city-states, he knew, would continue fighting until they destroyed themselves and, ultimately, the Mayan civilisation. He quietly signalled to the priests who were preparing to entomb the Maya Codex. Through the chaos and smoke of the raging battle, the laser-like beam held steady on the mechanism that controlled a secret entrance to a complex across from Temple V. The priests held the precious codex aloft to indicate they had seen their High Priest’s signal, and one of them descended a shaft and entered the passageway to the chamber. The sun climbed higher and the beam faded from view. The High Priest signalled to the priests on each temple that the jade figurines were to be sealed in the secret chambers that had been prepared on top of each pyramid.
‘No! No! The Calakmul warriors have reached the base of our pyramid. My father’s warriors are being overwhelmed… speared… beheaded. They are fighting hard but the other side is gaining. Oh, no! They’re swarming up the steps towards us… No! No!’
O’Connor found the Buddha Bar not far from the shores of the lake. and he mentally filed his escape routes. A Tibetan flag flew over the main entrance. Statues and images of the Buddha added an Asian ambience to the ochre Spanish-style building, which contained a huge wooden Buddha that had been used on the set of Apocalypse Now. O’Connor scanned the crowd in the dimly lit ground-floor bar. It was full, but O’Connor quickly determined they were mainly backpackers playing pool and smoking weed, a pastime that was de rigueur in San Pedro. He checked to see if he was being followed, and climbed the stairs to the second-floor restaurant.
The big casual horseshoe booths were crowded with tourists and locals, save for one at the far end. O’Connor recognised Jennings immediately. He was sitting next to a boy whom O’Connor judged to be not more than fifteen. Jennings was sipping a whisky and the boy a Coke, prompting O’Connor to wonder what might be in the boy’s glass.
O’Connor took the next flight of stairs to survey the rooftop bar, which had a 360-degree view of the darkened lake. It, too, was crowded with backpackers. The sweet, pungent smell of weed hung heavily around the balcony where the two ex-navy SEALs were standing with their backs to O’Connor. One of them had a neatly trimmed beard, but the short military-style haircuts were a dead giveaway. O’Connor retreated downstairs, where Jennings was returning from the bar with another whisky and another ‘Coke’ for the boy. A shiver ran down O’Connor’s spine as Jennings placed his hand on the boy’s thigh. O’Connor had to fight a powerful urge to blow his cover and free the boy from the fat priest’s grasp. Instead, he headed back out towards the main street, and threaded his way through the late-night shoppers and the tuc tucs buzzing across the cobblestones, past the brightly coloured buildings, one of which was painted with a huge sign, declaring Jesus as Lord of San Pedro La Laguna.
O’Connor reached the top of the steep road, hardly having raised his heartbeat. He paused beside a shop, long enough to scan the occupants of the dimly lit square and analyse the layout of the big white-washed church standing opposite at the summit of the hill. The presbytery would be the little building to one side, he concluded. He headed around the perimeter of the square and approached through the cover of the palm trees and church gardens.
The lock was elementary and O’Connor closed the oak door quietly behind him. He flicked on his pocket torch and began a systematic search of Jennings’ small apartment. The kitchen table, which appeared to double as a desk, revealed nothing of interest. Nor did the kitchenette or the small bathroom, but when he searched the cupboard under the stairs, he found the scuba gear, just as Jennings had. O’Connor climbed the narrow stairs to the mezzanine bedroom above. In the bottom of the wardrobe O’Connor found a small trunk. He picked the lock and inside he found a stack of NAMBLA Bulletins, the official magazine of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. On the topmost magazine Jennings had scrawled ‘very cute’ across the photo of the boy on the cover.
O’Connor relocked the trunk and turned his attention to the manhole cover in the ceiling. He dragged across the only chair in the room, hoisted himself into the ceiling and played the torchlight over the piles of rat droppings scattered amongst the old beams. The light picked out three small dusty trunks at the far end of the confined roof space, and O’Connor eased himself along the central joist. The dust was an indicator that the trunks almost certainly did not to belong to Jennings. Again, he picked the locks and opened the first trunk. Diaries. Dozens of them. O’Connor thumbed through the uppermost one and found the last entry had been made twelve months before von Hei?en had fled. Was there one diary missing? O’Connor wondered as he opened the second, and then the third trunk, which contained the diaries covering von Hei?en’s time at Mauthausen. They were in chronological order, and, curious, O’Connor located the diary for 1938. Five minutes later he let out a soft whistle as he found von Hei?en’s meticulous entry for Heinrich Himmler’s visit to Mauthausen. Reichsfuhrer Himmler sehr zufrieden mit Geburtstag… Reichsfuhrer Himmler very pleased with celebrations for the Fuhrer’s birthday. Forty-eight Jewish scum executed – one for each year of the Fuhrer’s glorious life. Himmler personally congratulated me on the smooth functioning of Konzentrationslager Mauthausen, giving strong intimation that promotion to Standartenfuhrer is being considered! Herr Doktor Richtoff’s preparation for high-altitude medical experiments well in hand. Himmler agreed to execution of Weizman scum. Weizman dealt with on the stairs. His bitch and brats will be Herr Doktor Richtoff’s first ‘patients’.
If Mossad had been hard on von Hei?en’s heels, how could they have missed these? There was only one explanation that made any sense to O’Connor. Mossad were so close, they would have kept pursuing him. O’Connor kept the diary with the incriminating evidence of the shootings and dropped back into Jennings’ bedroom, where he searched the bedside table. In the drawer he found the last of von Hei?en’s diaries, and nestled inside the front cover, he discovered the original huun map containing the backbearings from the volcanoes – the same one confiscated from Ariel Weizman more than seventy years ago.
Paydirt! But as O’Connor began to thumb through the pages, he heard the sound of a key turning in the front door.
Aleta was sweating profusely; twitching nervously on the pillows. The shaman knew it was time to bring her out.
‘You’re coming out of this room now, Aleta,’ he intoned gently. ‘You’re moving back towards the door through which you entered… moving back to the stone passageway… closing the door behind you. You’re calmer now… calmer.’ Aleta stopped twitching and almost immediately her breathing began to slow.
‘One… two… three,’ Jose intoned softly.
‘Was I dreaming?’ Aleta asked.
Jose smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s quite a common reaction; but no, you weren’t dreaming. That was just one of your past lives, although undoubtedly one of the more significant, and there are several reasons you’ve relived it just now.’ Arana paused, allowing Aleta to readjust to her surroundings. A cool breeze was coming in off the lake and the night was clear. Without the glow of city lights, the stars seemed far brighter and more numerous – just as they had to the Maya, centuries before.
‘Did you learn anything?’ Arana continued.
‘The laser beams… the three statues were placed on top of Pyramid I, Pyramid IV and Pyramid V… but I didn’t see where the final deflection fell.’
‘Now that you know which pyramids are in the matrix, it will be enough for you to discover the final figurine; and provided you can position all three by the winter solstice, you will still have a chance to recover the codex.’
‘With only three days left, that’s looking increasingly unlikely,’ Aleta said.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘It’s as if a great load has been lifted.’
The Mayan elder smiled. ‘Then the cleansing has been a success.’
‘I’m not sure what the golden conch shell with the keyhole outline in the middle meant, though.’ Aleta mused.
‘The significance of that, like the significance of balance, will become apparent very soon,’ Jose replied enigmatically.
Monsignor Jennings quickly checked behind him before ushering the young boy inside.
Have a seat, Eduardo. Make yourself comfortable,’ Jennings said, indicating the sofa against the staircase. He headed for the tiny kitchenette and poured himself a generous Chivas Regal, and a double shot of Johnny Walker Red Label and Coke for Eduardo. Jennings brought the Coke back and sat down beside Eduardo, recalling the wonderful words of Oscar Wilde: The great affection of an elder for a younger man… that is as pure as it is perfect… so much misunderstood that it may be described as the ‘Love that dare not speak its name’. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. Jennings knew the words by heart. He sat and admired Eduardo’s slim, taut brown form and placed his hand on Eduardo’s thigh.
‘Cien quetzales,’ Eduardo intoned woodenly.
‘Mas tarde. Later,’ Jennings said, placing Eduardo’s hand on his own growing erection.
Eduardo withdrew his hand. ‘Cien quetzales… o no contrato.’ Eduardo might have been only fourteen, but he was already street smart.
‘?Cuanto para toda la noche. How much for all night?’ Jennings asked throatily, feeling for his wallet.
‘Quinientos quetzales.’ This amount would feed Eduardo’s brothers and sisters for a fortnight.
‘ Cien quetzales. The rest later,’ Jennings said, handing over a grimy cherry-coloured note. Rivulets of sweat ran down his pudgy cheeks and he shifted lengthways on the couch. Breathing heavily, Jennings unzipped his own fly and ran his hand up the inside of Eduardo’s thigh, fondling the boy into an erection before pulling Eduardo’s head down onto his own enlarged member.
O’Connor quietly photographed the pair from the mezzanine bedroom above. He wondered if, even when faced with the photographs, the Catholic Church would act, but he promised himself the fat priest would rot in gaol one way or another. For now, time was running out. Confident that Jennings was totally absorbed, O’Connor crept down the stairs.
‘Suck me, boy… suck me,’ Jennings wheezed. ‘Oh yes. That is so good.’
O’Connor controlled his anger and quietly slipped out the front door. He headed back down towards the docks, where Fidel was waiting, two of von Hei?en’s diaries and the map safely in his hand.
‘Santa Cruz. La tienda de buceo, por favor, Fidel.’ The dive shop would be closed, but O’Connor was sure money would overcome that inconvenience.
‘ Si,’ Fidel nodded with a smile and eased the little launch away from the wooden jetty.
A short distance away one of the ex-navy SEALs was standing on the balcony of the Mikaso, scanning the shores of the lake. Hank Sanders trained his high-resolution night-vision binoculars on the little boat as it gathered speed, and he watched it head for the village of Santa Cruz on the northern side of the lake.
‘Hey, Mitch, come and have a look at this. See the guy sitting in the back of the boat? Looks like our man?’ he said, handing over the binoculars.
‘Hard to say,’ Mitch Crawford said, ‘but if it is, I wonder where he’s headed at this time of night.’
Twenty minutes later, they had their answer. Sanders and Crawford watched the launch pull into Santa Cruz’s jetty, the nearby dive shop clearly visible.
Crawford kept his night-vision binoculars trained on Fidel’s small lancha as the boatman eased it into the jetty at San Marcos. He watched as Fidel and O’Connor carried the diving gear up to where Aleta was still in deep conversation with Jose.
‘Looks as if the boatman’s staying the night as well. It’s dive on, I reckon.’
‘Probably not tonight,’ Crawford replied, sharpening his diving knife, ‘otherwise they would have left the gear on the jetty. My guess is early tomorrow morning. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The gear and the boat’s ready.’ The burly tattooed ex-Marine diver spat over the balcony. ‘They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’
O’Connor sat on the end of Aleta’s garden lounge. ‘Your grandfather’s original huun bark map,’ he announced quietly. ‘I found it in a diary at Jennings’ presbytery, along with some scuba-diving gear, so I’m assuming that von Hei?en left it behind.’
‘He must have left in one hell of a hurry,’ said Aleta.
‘Mossad tends to have that effect on some people.’
‘Do you think they got him?’
O’Connor shook his head. ‘Adolf Eichmann worked for Mercedes Benz in Buenos Aires for years, but when the Israeli team of Mossad and Shabak agents finally captured him in 1960, it made world headlines. Von Hei?en is now the most wanted Nazi known to be still alive – we would have heard if they’d been successful. There are three trunks of diaries still in the roof of Jennings’ presbytery, but we’ll go back for those.’ O’Connor opened the huun bark map. ‘Look at this.’
‘The backbearings!’ Aleta whispered.
‘Exactly, and they intersect just off that point.’ O’Connor indicated a small rocky promontory jutting out into the lake about a kilometre away. ‘Someone, I presume your grandfather, has embossed the bottom of the map with the Greek letter phi, and there’s a mark under the dot point, see? A short line.’
‘Von Hei?en may already have the figurine… assuming it was in the lake in the first place.’
‘The scuba gear suggests he investigated the lake, although whether he was aware of the third figurine is a moot point. But there’s only one way to find out.’
They both looked at Arana. ‘If it’s meant to be, it will be,’ he said calmly. ‘When will you dive?’
O’Connor looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly 11 p.m. now, and we’ve had a very long day. From a safety point of view, we’ll be more alert after a few hours’ sleep, not to mention a little more acclimatised to the altitude.’