Adrian D'Hage - The Maya codex

Aleta rose and wandered over to one of the old heavy bookcases that held a framed photograph of her grandparents. Levi and his tall attractive wife, Ramona, together with Aleta’s father, Ariel, as a boy of ten, and his younger sister Rebekkah. It had been taken in 1937, when the Nazi juggernaut was already massing, but back then they were a smiling and happy family, standing on the deck of a riverboat cruising through a steeply rising gorge on the Danube. Behind them, the vineyards of the famous Wachau wine-growing region rose in rocky slate terraces above the church steeple of the village of Joching. Her father’s smile was mischievous, just as she remembered it.

Aleta wiped away a tear as the memories came flooding back: sitting on his shoulders as he jogged down to the shores of Lake Atitlan. Together they would paddle the family canoe over to a secret fishing spot. She knew now that it wasn’t secret, and she suspected some of the fish she’d pulled in on her line had been put there by her father when she wasn’t looking, but he had always been able to infuse her life with a sense of mystery and magic. Now, like her grandfather, he was gone. Weary and flat, she headed for the bathroom and shook a purple-pink capsule from the jar labelled Sarafem. The pills and a good night’s sleep would allow her to function, but she knew they would do nothing to help her lack of energy and the pervasive sense of hopelessness that was her constant companion.

Three floors below, Antonio Sodano quietly entered the courtyard to Aleta’s apartment block. Using a lock pick remarkably similar to O’Connor’s, he dealt with the steel security door at the bottom of the stairs. Sodano pulled a balaclava over his pockmarked, rugged face and soundlessly ascended to the landing outside Aleta’s door.

C ardinal Felici examined the latest file on Monsignor Jennings, forwarded from the papal nuncio in Guatemala City. A series of photos showed him emerging from a seedy bar in La Linea, a crime-infested, prostitute-ridden, gang-controlled ghetto on the outskirts of the city. The two boys either side of him looked to be no more than twelve. Another photo showed Jennings with the boys, booking into an even seedier ‘motel’, the rooms of which were made out of metal scrounged from shipping containers. Felici closed the file and pondered. So far, the Vatican Bank funding that financed Jennings’ archaeological expeditions to Central America had ensured Jennings’ loyalty, but it might not be enough. He also knew that an appeal to the Jesuit’s faith would be problematic. Felici had known of Jennings’ sexual proclivities for a long time, but this was the first concrete evidence he’d obtained. The papal nuncio had done well.

The Cardinal’s private secretary knocked on the double doors of the office.

‘Monsignor Jennings is here, Eminence.’

‘Show him in.’ Felici glanced at his rolled gold Rolex. ‘And order my car for 11 p.m.’

‘Certainly, Eminence.’ Father Cordona stood aside for Monsignor Jennings and then closed the door. If he questioned why the Cardinal regularly ordered his car late at night, or why Cardinal Felici maintained an apartment in the fashionable but eclectic Via del Governo Vecchio on the north side of the Tiber, he never allowed it to show.

‘ Benvenuto a Roma.’ The Cardinal extended his fine, bony hand.

‘ Grazie, Eminence.’

‘I trust it was a pleasant flight?’

‘As much as flying can be after 9/11.’

‘Of course. Well. I won’t keep you long, but something has come up. Have you come across a Dr Aleta Weizman?’ the Cardinal asked, adjusting his soutane as he sat on one of the deep-blue velvet couches in his office.

‘Unfortunately, yes. She was making a nuisance of herself during my address to the conference in Vienna.’

‘Did she mention a missing codex?’

‘She didn’t, but a journalist did,’ Jennings replied, glancing pointedly towards the cardinal’s cocktail cabinet. ‘A young bimbo from a women’s magazine. I’m not sure why she was there. Like the rest of her colleagues, she showed no interest in my latest research.’

‘Do you think Weizman suspects it exists?’ Felici asked, ignoring the Jesuit’s glances towards the whisky.

‘While I was in Guatemala City, Eminence, I discovered Weizman had recently visited the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia. There’s nothing unusual in that per se; she is, after all, an archaeologist. But my contact tells me she seemed particularly excited after spending some time in one of the storage areas.’

‘And do we know what might have caused her excitement?’

Monsignor Jennings shook his head. ‘The next time I’m in there, I’ll make some enquiries.’

Agitated, Felici fingered his pectoral cross. ‘The closer we get to 2012, the greater focus there will be on the ancient Maya and Guatemala… and the greater focus there will be on the Maya Codex.’

‘There’s not a lot we can do about that. I continue to play down 2012, as per your instructions.’

‘Your funding from the Vatican Bank depends on you doing just that,’ Felici reminded him.

Jennings shrugged. ‘The media love a mystery.’

‘Which means we must redouble our efforts to recover the codex before somebody else does.’

‘That’s easier said than done. The number of remaining Maya who might know the whereabouts of this codex could be counted on one hand, and all of them would be elders.’

‘Which is a closed shop.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Money talks in Guatemala, you say? How much will it take?’

‘There are still some people in this world who can’t be bought, Eminence.’

Felici masked his irritation. ‘Do you have any idea who these elders might be?’

Jennings shook his head. ‘Not really. Although the most revered elder in the highlands region is a shaman, a Dr Jose Arana, who incidentally was also at the Mayan conference.’

Felici got up and walked over to the windows affording a view towards Bernini’s columns surrounding the Piazza San Pietro. He stared out across the now-deserted piazza, hands clasped behind his soutane. The traffic past Vatican City on the Via di Porta Cavalleggeri was still heavy. The sounds of the Italians’ love affair with the horn and motor scooters filled the evening air.

‘For the good of the Holy Church,’ Felici said finally, ‘we must recover the Maya Codex for storage in the secret archives.’

‘But what if we find it and it does contain a dire warning? The scientific evidence is mounting that the ancient Maya might be right. Should we not alert the world? People might have to move to higher ground.’

‘My concern, as yours should be,’ Felici responded icily, ‘is that it may contain material that threatens the one true faith. Our responsibility, Monsignor, is to protect the Holy Church.’

Jennings shrugged. The Holy Church was the last of his concerns. Nor was he particularly concerned over the warning. Unbeknown to the wider public, scientists had already done some calculations, and Jennings had studied the maps that predicted the catastrophic consequences of a geographic pole shift. Based on that information, he’d purchased a property in one of the very few areas of the world that would provide safety in December 2012. But the possibility of discovering the codex itself had fired Jennings’ interest, and for some time he had been far more focused on doing so than even Felici realised.

‘The discovery of the Maya Codex would be an archaeological sensation, Eminence,’ Jennings said. ‘On a par with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Rosetta Stone, the Terracotta Army and the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Whoever discovers this prophecy will be immortalised in the annals of history.’