Adrian D'Hage - The Maya codex

‘Precisely. As you and I both know, black holes are so powerful they flatten everything around them. Nothing, not even light, can escape, hence the term ‘black’, and it’s that power that keeps a galaxy’s stars and solar systems in orbit. However, once every 26000 years, our solar system travels through the same plane as the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way. In effect, if you imagine that black hole being in the middle of a dinner plate, our solar system rises to be level with the edge of the plate.’ Jackson paused, weighing the impact of what he was about to say. ‘That 26 000-year marker comes up again in 2012,’ he said finally, ‘at which time we’ll be exactly opposite the black hole.’

‘And that may explain some of the wild weather patterns?’

‘Yes. And we’re messing with the balance of the earth when its orbit is at its most unstable. On top of which, the earth’s magnetic field is now at its lowest level in recorded history. The poles are skipping across the wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic at over thirty kilometres a year. If you couple that with the latest NASA data on sunspots, which are at an unprecedented power level, the planet faces an uncertain future, to put it mildly.’

‘I’ve seen the magnetometer printouts,’ O’Connor agreed, his mind racing at the size of the abyss the experiments out of Gakona might generate.

‘And the sunspot power is still rising dramatically,’ Jackson added, pulling up an image of massive explosions on the surface of the sun. ‘NASA estimates sunspot power will also peak in 2012, at levels we’ve never seen before. Could be the Hopi Indians and the Maya were on to something.’

‘You think there’s something in all that mystic mumbo jumbo?’

‘Perhaps. As a civilisation we think we’re fairly advanced, but back in 850 AD, the Maya predicted that at 11.11 a.m. on Friday 21 December 2012 our planet would line up precisely with the Milky Way’s black hole. Astronomers have now confirmed the Maya were right, down to the last second. If the Maya could make a prediction that accurate, 800 years before Galileo picked up the first telescope, maybe we should be sitting up and taking a lot more notice of their warning.’

V ice President Walter Montgomery was due to host some senior CIA officers at an evening function on the lawns of his official home, a stately white nineteenth-century mansion overlooking Massachusetts Avenue. He’d asked DDO Wiley to come early for a meeting in the first-floor library.

The vice presidential library was finished in white timber with light-beige wallpaper and matching lounge chairs. It had a certain New England charm about it, in the midst of which both men seemed distinctly out of place.

‘I trust that asshole O’Connor’s enjoying the delights of Gakona,’ the Vice President said, indicating Wiley should take a seat.

‘It’s about as close to Siberia as I could send him, Mr Vice President. He’ll stay there until I work out something more permanent.’

‘Good. Now, have you seen the latest claims by that Weizman bitch?’ Vice President Montgomery flung a copy of the latest edition of The Mayan Archaeologist onto the elegant white coffee table. The cover was dominated by a striking photograph of Dr Aleta Weizman, standing beside the Pyramid of the Lost World in the jungles of Tikal, Guatemala. The headline read: Weizman Claims CIA Involvement in Guatemalan Genocide Allegations made against the School of the Americas

Wiley knew the reality behind that headline lay deep in the Guatemalan jungle, and his reasons for ensuring that the truth didn’t surface were far more pressing than those of the Vice President. Should he brief Montgomery on the diaries the CIA’s man in San Pedro, the ex-Nazi commandant of Mauthausen, had kept? Diaries that were now missing -

‘I need hardly remind you, Howard, that we go to the polls shortly,’ Montgomery thundered on, ‘and right now we’re up to our bootstraps in hog shit in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing the President or I need is the media spotlight back on Intelligence or secret prisons and water-boarding. Or the fucking Guatemalans, for that matter. Or the Mexicans, Venezuelans or anyone else from that garbage dump down south. Nixon got it right about Central America. Nobody gives a fuck about the place.’

‘I agree, Mr Vice President. It’s a shit box.’

‘I don’t care how you do it, but put some heat on this Weizman woman. Find out who controls archaeologists’ licences and send them a donation from a grateful nation with the proviso she gets blacklisted. Anyone who thinks that someone other than Columbus discovered America doesn’t deserve to have a licence. And put her under surveillance. If she even looks like exposing our operations in Guatemala, Paraguay or anywhere else, get rid of her. Meantime, keep the CIA out of the fucking media.’

‘Leave it to me, Mr Vice President. By the time I’ve finished with Weizman, and O’Connor for that matter, the AP numbers will look even better.’ Wiley and Montgomery had both been greatly encouraged by an Associated Press poll that had claimed twelve per cent of Americans had either never heard of the CIA or couldn’t rate it.

As the DDO left the vice presidential residence later in the evening, a move was already taking shape on Wiley’s sinister chessboard. It was a move that would require the recall of O’Connor from Gakona, but it would eliminate Weizman permanently.

U nlike his predecessor, Howard Wiley always kept his office door closed. O’Connor, ignoring the protestations of Wiley’s secretary, knocked firmly and walked in. The first thing O’Connor noticed was the modern furniture. His previous assignment had involved a Muslim terrorist threat against the Beijing Olympics. Back then the DDO, Tom McNamara, had been an understanding ally, pressing for negotiation with the Iranians and the Syrians, rather than committing the United States to another bloody war they couldn’t win in the Middle East. The cracked and torn brown leather couches McNamara insisted on keeping had been almost welcoming; but they had gone, along with his old boss’s familiar greeting of ‘Come in, buddy. Have a seat.’

‘You took your time getting here, O’Connor. Sit down,’ Wiley ordered without looking up, gesturing to a small straight-backed chair as he continued to read from a crimson dossier that lay open on his polished desk.

O’Connor smiled to himself. Offering someone a small chair and then ignoring their presence was the classic authoritarian bully tactic, designed to make people nervous, and was often employed by individuals who were highly insecure themselves. O’Connor glanced around the refurnished room. The office was lit by a number of tasteful table lamps, and the panelled walls were decorated with oils of the Civil War. Myriad photographs of Wiley with various visiting dignitaries were scattered around the office. Amongst the most prominent was that of Wiley shaking hands with George W. Bush, and one with the Vice President at the School of the Americas, but it was the framed photographs on a side table that caught O’Connor’s eye. The first was a photograph of Wiley and Pope John Paul II, together with an archbishop he couldn’t identify. In time he would come to know Salvatore Felici very well.

Unlike the archbishop, the man with Wiley in the second photograph was instantly recognisable. A very young Wiley was standing outside Washington’s Mayflower Hotel with a smiling J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI. The DDO continued to ignore him, and O’Connor wondered about Wiley’s early relationship with Hoover. Howard Wiley, O’Connor knew, had never married. He’d started his career in the FBI, and his stellar rise had attracted widespread comment in an old-fashioned media not renowned for their criticism of a public hero like Hoover. Within six months, a young, wet-behind-the-ears Wiley, with virtually no field experience, had been appointed to Hoover’s personal staff at FBI headquarters.