Adrian D'Hage - The Maya codex

E llen Rodriguez brushed her dark hair away from her tanned, freckled face and took the call on one of the operations room’s secure lines. Brandon Gray, the CIA’s young, ambitious chief of station in Berlin, sounded grim.

‘The police in Frankfurt have just given a news conference. I’m sending it through now. Our asset on the Vienna train has been killed.’

‘Tutankhamen…?’

‘Wiley will want to know.’

Thirty minutes later, Wiley and Larry Davis arrived together.

‘Roll the video,’ Wiley demanded.

Rodriguez nodded to the duty officer and the online edition of Die Welt appeared on screen, headlining the discovery of a body at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. The footage cut to the media conference conducted by Frankfurt’s Erster Polizeihauptkommissar, Franz Reinhardt.

‘In answer to your question, we can’t be sure exactly where the murder took place.’ Ellen Rodriguez stepped in again as translator.

‘An estimate, Hauptkommissar?’ The questions came from a young blonde reporter, who had elbowed her way to the front of the pack.

Reinhardt shook his head patiently. After nearly forty years in the Hessen State Kriminalpolizei, most of them as a detective, he was not about to be fazed by a pushy young journalist. ‘The train originated in Vienna and departed at 10.40. It didn’t arrive in Frankfurt until 17.36, nearly seven hours later. The murder could have been carried out virtually anywhere along that route.’

‘What about the autopsy?’ the young woman persisted. ‘Surely the state of the body, rigor mortis, temperature… an examination will enable you to be more accurate?’

‘A preliminary examination of the body has revealed that the victim was shot twice in the heart, at reasonably close range. I expect the results of the autopsy to be available some time later today, but I would caution you not to put too much emphasis on an autopsy. Determining the time of death is never an exact science,’ Reinhardt said bluntly, looking directly at the journalist. ‘In the first place, the temperature of death to which you refer, algor mortis, is only indicative. Under ideal conditions, a body will cool by one degree every hour; but that timespan can vary by up to six hours, which covers a lot of distance by train. Rigor mortis is just as problematic. That can vary from fifteen minutes to fifteen hours.’ Some of the older journalists were smiling.

‘Have you identified the body?’

‘We have a passport, and we are trying to trace the deceased’s family. Until we do, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further.’

‘We’ve heard that the toilet cubicle was locked, Hauptkommissar. How do you account for that?’ another journalist asked.

‘Time will tell. For the moment, there is no apparent motive and no signs of a struggle, but we will be seeking to interview everyone who has travelled on this particular train, and we’re asking anyone who has seen or heard anything suspicious to come forward immediately.’

Reinhardt retreated into his headquarters and the video was replaced by a live feed from the depths of the new and inelegant US$130 million US Embassy abutting the side of Tiergarten Park at the prestigious 2 Pariser Platz Square. Security considerations during the building’s construction had forced the German authorities to move an entire street. One of the major newspapers, Suddeutsche Zeitung, had dubbed it ‘Fort Knox at the Brandenburg Gate’.

‘Have we got anything more concrete than the party line from PC Plod?’ Wiley demanded of the Berlin chief of station.

‘The last contact we had with our asset was thirty minutes out of Wurzburg. It appears that Tutankhamen took our man’s cell phone, which might be his first big mistake. We’ve been tracking it and we know that Tutankhamen, and probably Nefertiti as well, terminated at Gottingen Hauptbahnhof. They’re still in that vicinity and I’ve mobilised two assets to close on them.’

Ellen Rodriguez watched the exchange with interest. She had met Brandon Gray only once, during a conference when they’d had a heated argument over the place of women in the Agency. Along with many other Agency insiders, she had been surprised when Wiley had appointed Gray to one of the most senior posts in Europe. Brash, ambitious and every bit as arrogant as Wiley, the tall, wiry crew-cut Gray was often wrong, but never in doubt. She looked at the screen showing the progress of the blue crosshairs annotated with the cell phone and shook her head. It would be most unlike O’Connor to make such a basic error.

‘That’s assuming Tutankhamen’s kept the cell phone on him,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ Gray demanded, his anger bursting from the video screen.

‘I mean that we recovered Sodano’s cell phone on a barge, presumably dropped there by Tutankhamen to throw us off the scent. Why would he keep your asset’s cell phone and allow you to track him?’

‘To monitor messages, for starters!’ Wiley exploded.

‘Precisely, sir,’ Gray responded. ‘And perhaps Officer Rodriguez can explain how the cell phone might have got off the train at Gottingen of its own accord?’

Rodriguez remained silent, torn between her loyalty to the Agency and her respect for O’Connor.

‘Sir, might it be time to bring the German and Austrian police into the loop? Without their full cooperation, it’s proving hard to track passport movements,’ Gray suggested.

‘No,’ Wiley barked, ‘that will compromise our own operations. Track the passports through the back door.’ He turned away from the screen and glared at Rodriguez. ‘What’ve we got on Nefertiti?’

‘We’ve just received her cell phone bills for the last twelve months,’ Rodriguez replied evenly, ‘so we’re still sifting through them. In the last two weeks Nefertiti’s cell phone traffic has been light – calls to her travel agent in Guatemala City, calls to the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia and the Museo Popol Vuh, also in Guatemala City. The only call that might be of interest, and it’s the last one she made from her cell phone,’ Rodriguez added pointedly, ‘was three days ago from Vienna to the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, a spa town in northern Germany. I doubt Tutankhamen and Nefertiti are in Gottingen – they’re more likely headed for Bad Arolsen.’

Wiley turned back to the Berlin feed. ‘Concentrate on Gottingen and give your assets there a green light, but get someone out to Bad Arolsen, just in case. Either way, we take them out!’

With an ease that came from nearly ten years driving twenty-tonne waste-collection vehicles, Bernhard Baecker guided the hydraulic forks into the slots on the industrial bin at the back of a large cinema centre. With the push of a button, the heavy bin was effortlessly hoisted into the air. The big Mercedes truck rocked on its suspension as the bin’s contents tumbled noisily into the back, and its hydraulics whined as the compression rams came into play. Towards the front of the previously crushed payload, a Nokia cell phone, cushioned by a large amount of paper towel and tissue, continued to emit a signal. Baecker set the big bin back on its wheels, withdrew the hydraulic forks and put the truck into gear. ‘That’s the last one for the day, Kristian,’ he said with a smile as he eased the big truck out of the complex and on to Godehardstrasse to the west of the medieval centre of Gottingen. ‘I’m looking forward to a beer!’

‘Just the one today, Bernhard,’ Kristian Dieter, the younger man sitting beside him, replied. ‘It’s Sophie’s fifth birthday tomorrow, and if I don’t put the trampoline together tonight I’ll be in big trouble!’