The two assets moved silently along the jungle track towards the village where Arana and the elders, along with O’Connor and Aleta, were deep in conversation around the central fire. All listened carefully as Aleta outlined Levi Weizman’s notes on the confluence of the sun’s winter solstice rays with the crystals embedded in the gold-rimmed obsidian at the top of each figurine.
‘The second map was given to my grandfather by your predecessors,’ she said, laying the ancient huun bark document out on the ground. ‘It’s a precise triangle that corresponds to the angles between Pyramids I, IV and V.’
Arana nodded quietly in approval.
‘My grandfather found the male figurine, the one with the male jaguar at its base, in Pyramid I, so I’m surmising that at the solstice tomorrow, the male figurine should be positioned on top of the Pyramid I roof comb. Each figurine has a hole in the base in the shape of the Greek letter?, and they’re each in a different position on the base, so it’s possible that may assist with the positioning.’
Again, Arana nodded in agreement.
‘If my theory is correct,’ Aleta continued, ‘the female figurine with the jaguar and her cubs needs to be positioned on top of Temple IV, where it came from originally. The final neutral figurine needs to be positioned on top of Temple V, where my grandfather discovered it, and where it can capture the deflected rays from both the male and female figurines.’
‘You have done well, Aleta, but what then?’ Arana prompted.
‘It’s hypothesis, but I’m hoping my grandfather was right when he theorised that the final beam deflection will indicate the location of the codex.’
‘The problem is, Jose,’ O’Connor interjected, ‘we’ll need help to safeguard the figurines once they’ve been positioned -’
A blood-curdling scream, followed closely by another, pierced the jungle foliage.
‘Two of your enemies have been foolish enough to approach the village on the main track,’ said Arana. ‘If they were skilled in moving through the jungle at night, they might have been more difficult to detect, but there are more than twenty warriors protecting the village.’ He turned towards the village elders and consulted with them in the ancient language of the Maya. The village chief occasionally glanced at Aleta with a questioning look. Was this the one who had been sent to unlock the secrets of the Maya Codex?
‘The elders are in agreement,’ Arana said finally. You have both done remarkably well to get this far, and perhaps the time is upon us; but we can’t help you position the figurines. Our forefathers were very clear that the codex would be found only by the one who was destined to do so. Our warriors can guard the figurines once you have placed them; but once again I must warn you, the codex itself is fiercely protected.’ Arana looked gravely at Aleta. ‘Even more so than the figurine you discovered in Lake Atitlan, although the principle of balance remains the same.’
It was well past midnight by the time the warriors from the cordon around the village had silently assembled, their war paint gleaming in the flickering firelight.
‘It’s time we moved,’ Arana said to Aleta and O’Connor. ‘Sunrise is at 6.49 a.m., which is a little over three hours from now.’ He nodded to the warriors and four of them immediately set off along the old jungle track that led back towards the bridge and the ancient Mayan ruins.
‘Aren’t we going with them?’ Aleta asked.
‘That’s the scout party,’ O’Connor said. ‘If any of Wiley’s guerrillas are lying in wait, they’ll give us early warning.’
Aleta shivered. ‘Probably with their lives,’ she replied bitterly.
‘They’ll do that willingly,’ Arana told her. ‘Sacrifice for the greater good is part of Mayan culture.’
A spine-tingling roar carried through the mists of the jungle. One of Tikal’s few remaining jaguars was on the prowl.
‘It’s an omen,’ Arana observed, nodding to another warrior carrying a long fiery torch. They moved off in single file, ten warriors leading the way with their torches, followed by O’Connor and Aleta with the figurines. Arana and the elders completed the main body, followed by another ten warriors protecting the rear of the column.
Thirty minutes later they reached the scout party, which had propped on the outskirts of the ruins. Arana gave orders for the torches to be extinguished, and once again the scout party moved forward, more cautiously now. When they reached the edge of the Great Plaza, the lead scout suddenly stopped and the rest of the party melted off the track. O’Connor and Arana moved forward to join them, and the lead scout pointed towards the comb on top of Pyramid I. The temple was bathed in eerie moonlight and O’Connor picked it immediately. He pulled his night sight from its pouch and adjusted the focus. A man was sitting against one side of the comb, cradling an automatic rifle.
‘Another one of Wiley’s thugs,’ O’Connor muttered, turning to Arana. ‘I’ll take him from the rear side of the pyramid,’ he said, screwing a red filter onto the end of his torch. ‘When you see my signal, tell the scouts I want them to create a diversion.’
O’Connor skirted the main plaza and the side of Pyramid I that was furthest from the gunman. He quietly began to climb the weathered limestone steps, keeping his eyes on the decorative limestone comb at the top. O’Connor froze as the gunman rose to his feet. He was young, and his movements were jumpy. Never a good sign. The young gunman waved his rifle towards Pyramid IV, as if seeking reassurance, before sitting back down again, his back to the comb.
Clearly there was another thug on Pyramid IV. O’Connor resumed his stealthy climb towards the top, planning to garrotte his quarry from behind. That tactic would avoid a noisy gun battle, although the nearest police station was fifty kilometres away in Flores. O’Connor paused, took his torch from his pocket and flashed it three times towards the warriors hidden in the jungle below, the red filter ensuring the light could only be seen from a direct line. The warriors pulled on long creeper vines and the jungle began to shake. The gunman leapt to his feet, nervously traversing the base of the pyramid with his rifle. O’Connor quietly covered the last few metres. At the last moment, the young gunman turned but it was too late. In one swift movement O’Connor whipped the garrotte around his quarry’s neck. The rifle clattered onto the top limestone step as the hired mercenary flailed helplessly. He was strong, and he dragged O’Connor past the edge of the comb before he collapsed. O’Connor held the choke until he was certain the gunman was dead.
Ellen Rodriguez groped for the cell phone, thinking it was the alarm, only to find Tyler Jackson on the line.
‘Ellen, you need to listen carefully. We don’t have much time.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘We’re about to launch a missile from Vandenberg which will be vectored into a position above Iran. It will act as a lens, focusing a tomography beam to destroy the nuclear facilities at Fordo.’
‘I’m with you, Tyler, but I’m not sure I can do much to stop that.’
‘You used to work at the White House – what about the Chief of Staff, Andrew Reed?’
‘Yes, but we’re going to need some powerful arguments to stop this. The Iranians are getting close to having the bomb, and the President will have given this attack the green light.’
‘No doubt snowed by the Israeli Lobby and the hawks at the Pentagon, but he won’t have all the facts. No one has any idea what might happen as our solar system moves towards the centre of the galaxy. There’s a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and we’re about to punch three billion watts of energy into the core of the planet when it’s in its most unstable orbit in 26 000 years. Are you on email?’
‘Yes, but I’ll have to fire up the laptop.’
‘By the time you’ve done that, the email will be there.’ Jackson attached an image of the earth’s structure and a map to the email and pressed the ‘send’ button.
‘Hang on… it’s just coming through now.’
‘If you open the first attachment, you should be able to see an image of the earth’s layers?’
‘Yes – the core, the mantle and the outer crust.’
‘Good. You’ll see from the diagram that the core has a diameter of 7000 kilometres, which consists of solid iron surrounded by molten metals. You will also see that the middle layer, or mantle, is 2800 kilometres thick and is made up of hot silicates… around 3000 degrees Celsius, but it’s the earth’s crust I’m worried about most.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘The crust runs from the top of Everest at a height of around eight kilometres down to the Mariana Trench in the deepest part of the ocean off Japan, eleven kilometres under the surface; but overall, the crust is only seventy kilometres thick. In some areas under the oceans it’s only five kilometres thick, and it’s flexible. We don’t notice it, but the earth spins at over 1600 kilometres an hour. If you’re a child playing on a merry-go-round in the park, the centrifugal force will spin you to the outside, and even throw you off, if it’s going fast enough. But in the case of the planet, that same force means the crust bulges significantly at the equator.’
‘I’m still not sure how this is an argument to stop the rocket firing?’
‘It’s the bulge at the equator that determines the position of the oceans. If a powerful enough force changes the earth’s axis, making it spin at a different slant, the position of the oceans will change. That’s what makes this Aether experiment so dangerous. If a top is spinning on a table and you give it a shove, it’ll wobble and crash… but the earth isn’t constrained by a table or anything else: if something like three billion watts of energy stirs up the molten outer core, the Chandler wobble will increase. There’ll be a series of earthquakes even more powerful than Haiti or Chile, after which the earth will stabilise – still spinning at the same speed, but on a different slant or axis.’
Rodriguez shivered at the enormity of what Tyler Jackson was saying. ‘And we will have changed the position of the equator.’
‘The position of the poles will change as well,’ Jackson argued. ‘With a magnetic pole shift, the north and south poles just flip, and that’s bad enough – that destroys navigation systems, kills migratory birds and a whole host of other things. But with a geographic pole shift, the bulging of the equator would change both the position and the depth of the oceans. London, Washington, New York, Tokyo, Sydney – they’ll all be under water. In the US sixty per cent of the population live on, or near the coast. In Japan and Australia it’s eighty per cent. It doesn’t matter where you go, most people live on or near the coast. If you open the second attachment, it contains a map that shows how the world will look after a geographic pole shift.’
Rodriguez stared in disbelief. Vast tracts of the United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Russia and South America had disappeared from view, while new land masses around Cuba and Florida and between Australia and Papua New Guinea had suddenly appeared.
‘Has this ever happened before?’ she asked.
‘People dismiss cities like Atlantis as science fiction, but it’s not that Atlantis sank… As you can see from the map, when a geographic pole shift occurs, the position of the oceans change and whole continents disappear. They are covered in water while new land masses appear.’
‘Is there any evidence?’
‘Not in the history books, because we’ve only been recording our history for about 6000 years, but the evidence is there – and it’s right under our noses. The work we’re doing on ice cores from the Arctic and the Antarctic is going to surprise a lot of scientists. Drilling on the bottom of the Ross Sea clearly indicates that 6000 years ago, the Antarctic was ice-free, and deep ice cores are revealing fossilised forests.’
‘So the poles haven’t always been where they are today?’
‘No. And we’re now finding increasing evidence of lost cities on the bottom of the ocean: further signs of a past geographic pole shift. At the bottom of the map you will see side-scan sonar images of what look like ancient roads and pyramids. A team of highly respected marine archaeologists has found evidence of what might turn out to be a Mayan city off the coast of Cuba. And as recently as two years ago marble and stone formations were found in shallow waters off the Bimini islands in the Bahamas.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘A few hours – no more.’
‘I’ll do what I can, Tyler. If I can swing it, are you prepared to brief the President by video link?’
‘Absolutely.’
Rodriguez hung up and put a call through to Andrew Reed’s private cell phone.
‘Jesus Christ, Ellen. Are you guys smoking something illegal down there?’ Reed, none too happy at being woken in the small hours of the morning, or at the discussion being carried out over an open line, was less than sympathetic; but the conversation was interrupted by the sound of gunfire coming from the ancient city.
The bullets missed O’Connor by centimetres, ricocheting off the comb masonry. O’Connor grabbed the gunman’s rifle and took cover. The limestone masonry disintegrated further as the second mercenary switched to automatic and sprayed the top of the pyramid. O’Connor descended a dozen or so large steps and then worked his way round the other side of the pyramid to where he could get a clear view. Pyramid IV was bathed in moonlight and he detected a small movement behind the right-hand side of the comb. He adjusted the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, lined up the crosshairs on the telescopic sight and waited. Suddenly his target leapt out from behind the comb and opened fire on O’Connor. The bullets whined over O’Connor’s head but he ignored them, calmly adjusting the sight. He took the first pressure on the trigger and then squeezed off a single shot. The gunman arched back, still firing bullets into the early-morning sky, a small bloody hole in the centre of his forehead. O’Connor watched as he tumbled down more than a hundred steps and into the jungle below.
O’Connor signalled with his torch and Aleta, backpack on her shoulders and accompanied by four warriors, appeared from the fringe of the jungle and began the ascent. To the east, across the top of the dark jungle canopy that stretched as far as O’Connor could see, the velvet night was beginning to soften. He looked at his watch. The dawn of the winter solstice was barely thirty minutes away. Howard Wiley, awakened by the gunfire, was quietly heading for the ruins.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Aleta said, breathing hard as she reached the top of Pyramid I.
O’Connor levered himself onto the top of the comb and switched on his filtered torch. The limestone was old and weathered, but at the very centre of the comb the faint etching was unmistakeable.
‘Phi!’ Aleta whispered excitedly, pointing to the? that had been carved in the limestone.
‘And it’s surrounded by a groove, which will hold the base of the figurine,’ O’Connor said, feeling the slight indentation in the stone. Aleta scrambled off the comb and retrieved the male figurine from her backpack. She handed it up to O’Connor and climbed back to the top. With the aid of his torch, O’Connor lined up the? on the base of the figurine with the? on the top of the comb and slotted the figurine into position. The crystal glinted in the early-morning light.
O’Connor scanned the eastern horizon. The sky was getting lighter still. He turned to signal the warriors to guard the figurine, but four of them had already taken up their positions, one on each corner of the pyramid summit. O’Connor grabbed Aleta’s empty backpack and together they descended the steep steps to the jungle below. O’Connor took the female figurine and put it into Aleta’s backpack, leaving the neutral in his own. He shouldered the pack and he and Aleta, accompanied by four more warriors, made their way down the jungle track which led to Pyramid IV. They raced up the big limestone steps. Breathing hard, O’Connor scrambled to the top of the comb. It was fainter than the one on Pyramid I, but both the? and the groove were unmistakeable. Aleta handed up the ancient female figurine, and O’Connor aligned the two?s and positioned it into the groove.
‘What are you like with a rifle?’ he asked, retrieving the second gunman’s weapon.
‘I used to belong to a pistol club, but I can do rifle.’
Leaving four warriors to guard Pyramid IV, O’Connor and Aleta doubled down the hundred or so steps to where Arana and the rest of the warriors were waiting.
‘We’ve got less than ten minutes and Pyramid V’s 500 metres away,’ O’Connor said, shouldering the final neutral figurine.
‘The elders and I will remain in the Great Plaza,’ Arana announced. ‘May the gods of the Maya be with you.’
O’Connor and Aleta set off down the jungle track behind the remaining warriors, their Mayan war paint shining in the misty half-light. A troop of howler monkeys swung noisily through the branches of the strangler figs above, their squat black faces staring down as their predecessors had for centuries. But the group had only gone 300 metres when a burst of machine-pistol fire shattered the mists of the jungle. Two warriors died instantly, and O’Connor winced as a bullet struck his rifle from his grasp.
Instinctively Aleta took cover amongst the buttresses of a strangler fig and dropped to one knee. The fiery red flashes from the gunman’s machine pistol as he raked the track with bullets gave away his position near the base of Pyramid V. Aleta calmly adjusted the crosshairs and squeezed off three rounds.
‘ Aaggghhhh!! ’ The firing stopped and the gunman tumbled onto the track barely fifty metres away.
‘You’re not just a pretty face, are you?’ O’Connor said admiringly, as he retrieved his rifle and emerged back on the track.
‘You’re bleeding! Are you okay?’
‘It’s a flesh wound.’ O’Connor signalled the remaining warriors to move on.
They reached Pyramid V and O’Connor and Aleta bounded up the steps.
‘Two minutes,’ O’Connor announced, and he scrambled to the top of the comb. ‘It’s here!’ The? and the groove were just visible. Aleta handed up the neutral figurine, and O’Connor slotted the artefact into the limestone. ‘Lie flat, just in case,’ he said. Together they looked towards the east. The jungle canopy spread like a verdant green carpet as far as the eye could see. Here and there, the distinctive top of a giant ceiba tree soared above its chicle, balsa and buttressed fig neighbours. Howler monkeys swung amongst the vines below, their harsh calls mingling with the squawks of the macaws, the chirps of the hummingbirds and the kyowh-kyowh of the orange-breasted falcon. The horizon glowed in a mixture of orange and yellow; the point of the coming winter-solstice sun glowing more fiercely than the rest.
‘Twenty seconds,’ O’Connor whispered. ‘Ten…’
Aleta’s heart began to race. It was as if she were sitting on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
‘Now!’ Rays of light that had travelled at 300 000 kilometres a second, from a sun that was 150 million kilometres away, pierced the mists above the jungle. O’Connor focused his binoculars on the crystal on top of Pyramid I. The male figurine had already energised, and at a precise angle of 287 degrees a powerful laser-like beam of bright-green light deflected towards the top of Pyramid IV, energising the crystal on the female figurine, sending another searing beam of green light to power up the crystal beside them. It crackled and sizzled like a lightning conductor, deflecting yet again. Aleta and O’Connor followed the beam to a point in the ruins just 300 metres away.
‘The Pyramid of the Lost World!’ O’Connor exclaimed, focusing his binoculars. ‘Take a bearing,’ he said, handing Aleta his compass. Aleta ducked under the beam and aligned the compass sight from behind the sizzling, crackling crystal.
‘Two hundred and sixty-nine degrees!’
‘It’s hitting one of the limestone steps of the pyramid a metre or so above the ground.’ As O’Connor mentally marked the spot, the sun rose higher above the jungle and the power in the crystals and the laser beams began to fade. A police siren could be heard faintly in the distance. Close by in his hiding place in the ancient Central Acropolis, Howard Wiley focused his own binoculars and watched Tutankhamen and Nefertiti scramble down Pyramid V towards the warriors waiting at the base of the steps.
Rifles in hand, O’Connor and Aleta moved down the jungle track leading to Mundo Perdido, the Pyramid of the Lost World. Early archaeologists were struck by the great pyramid soaring above jungle teeming with dangerous and exotic wildlife, the sight evoking a comparison with Conan Doyle’s primitive world of the same name. Cautiously, O’Connor and Aleta approached the lower steps of the pyramid. O’Connor signalled for the warriors to post sentries and keep watch. The police siren was getting louder.
‘There’s a burn mark on the limestone, see? Above the first step.’ Aleta pointed to a spot still glowing softly on the weathered stone.
‘A hidden chamber?’ O’Connor wondered aloud.
‘The ancients were superb engineers. There may be a mechanism embedded in the step.’ Aleta took an archaeologist’s chisel and hammer from her knapsack. She chiselled around the still softly glowing green spot and suddenly she hit metal. ‘It’s a lever!’ she exclaimed, as she deftly removed the surrounding masonry. O’Connor extended his hand towards the bronze lever, which was in the shape of a jaguar.
‘No!’ Aleta commanded, grabbing his wrist. Arana’s words rang in her ears: The codex itself is fiercely protected… even more so than the figurine that you discovered in Lake Atitlan. ‘We need your rope.’
Aleta fastened one end around the neck of the jaguar lever and they retreated to the ten-metre extent of the cord. Aleta pulled at the lever, but it didn’t budge and O’Connor swung on to the cord with her. Together they dug their boots into the soil and the lever slowly moved towards them. Suddenly the side of the temple shook, and four massive steps disappeared, revealing a shaft at the base of the pyramid, immediately below where Aleta and O’Connor had been. Ancient dust drifted up from the tonnes of rubble that had fallen six metres to the bottom. O’Connor anchored the rope to a nearby tree and dropped it into the shaft. Using his boots as a brake, he slowly lowered himself down the rope towards the fallen steps. Once he reached the bottom, Aleta followed.
‘Look! More steps and a tunnel leading further into the pyramid!’ Aleta exclaimed, pointing past the rubble. O’Connor threw a large limestone rock down the stone steps, wary that another yawning chasm might open in front of them. The sound of the falling rock echoed down a passageway that had been sealed for over 1200 years. Aleta followed him down the steps and into the tunnel. Protected from the weather, the limestone walls were painted a bright salmon pink, and the ceiling was high, coming together in a typical Mayan pointed arch.
‘The original colour of all the pyramids,’ Aleta observed. ‘Red cinnabar, the colour of the east… the colour of life.’
‘And the hieroglyphics?’ Every few paces, the ancients had embedded a jade tablet into the walls.
‘I can’t decipher them all immediately, but this one is very clear,’ Aleta replied, a shiver running down her spine. ‘ “Death will come swiftly to he who, without authority, disturbs the resting place of the codex.” Curtis! It’s here!’
Above them, the Flores police car roared up the jungle track to the Mendez Causeway and screeched to a halt just short of the Great Plaza, the siren dying. Howard Wiley emerged from his hiding place in the Central Acropolis. He skirted the Great Plaza and moved down the track towards the Pyramid of the Lost World. Ellen Rodriguez followed Wiley at a distance, taking up a position amongst the three small pyramids to the east of the Lost World Pyramid; each aligned with the equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices. Wiley approached the exposed shaft on the Lost World Pyramid and Rodriguez watched as he scanned the surrounding area. Wiley checked his pistol and climbed down the rope into the shaft.