Adrian D'Hage - The Maya codex

Once they were in the back of the taxi, Jennings’ pudgy, sweaty hand wandered across Reynaldo’s taut brown thigh.

The morning heat was already oppressive and Jennings gratefully entered the cooler surrounds of the pink low-set 1930s building that housed the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia. Jennings waddled past the softly lit glass cases, his dirty runners squeaking on the highly polished tile floor. The first cases held rare blades, knives and spearpoints the ancients had carved from obsidian, the hard black glass formed when volcanic lava cooled without crystallisation, enabling it to be ground to molecular thinness, many times sharper than a modern surgical scalpel. Priceless milky-green jade masks, eyes inlaid with mother of pearl and obsidian, stared lifelessly from the next cabinet, secured amongst red-and-blue statues and pottery that had been recovered from the royal tombs in the pyramids of Tikal and Palenque, but Jennings didn’t spare them a glance. He was intent on finding his contact. At that moment a guard signalled Jennings towards a corner of the exhibition hall devoid of exhibits, a corner that both men knew was blind to the CCTV cameras. Carlos was stocky, with jet-black hair and a square brown face. His dark eyes shifted nervously around the room.

‘Doctor Weizman. You said she was here two months ago?’ Jennings inquired, wiping the sweat from his pink forehead.

‘ Si. She had permission to visit the storerooms. She was quite excited, senor.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘I think it was one of the stelae, a smaller one that has always been stored in one of the back rooms.’

‘I need to see it.’

Carlos shrugged apologetically. ‘That would be difficult, Senor… without permission.’

Jennings thrust a dirty hundred-quetzale note into the guard’s hand.

Carlos smiled. ‘Follow me, senor, but stay close to the wall.’

Not long after, Jennings examined the small limestone stela with excitement. ‘This is from Tikal. How long has the museum had this?’

‘I think it dates from the Nazi expedition to Tikal in the 1930s. The Nazis are not popular here, senor, so it has never been on display.’

‘And the museum records?’

Carlos shrugged again. ‘Copying records is strictly against the rules, senor.’

‘I need the records quickly, Carlos, understand? Prontamente! ?Entienden?’ Jennings demanded irritably as he pressed another dirty note into Carlos’ hand.

Monsignor Jennings reached Lake Atitlan in the late afternoon and by the time he reached the northern town of Panajachel, the last ferry had departed for the southern shore and San Pedro.

Jennings was tired and irritable and was in no mood to pay the hundred quetzales the old boatman was asking.

‘Fuel is very expensive, senor. You have to pay for my return trip.’

‘Cuarenta quetzales,’ Jennings insisted, gesturing rudely with four fingers. The old man shrugged, took the key out of the ignition of his small fibreglass runabout and walked towards the shore, leaving Jennings fuming beside the boat.

‘ Sesenta quetzales. Sixty. That’s my final offer,’ Jennings shouted.

The boatman shrugged and kept walking. Jennings looked around but the lake shore was deserted, empty boats rocking gently against the other jetties. ‘Ochenta!’ he yelled.

The boatman paused, turned and walked back along the shaky jetty. Eighty quetzales might only be a little more than US$10, but even after the cost of fuel, it would put food on the table for his grandchildren.

The boat rocked alarmingly as Jennings obeyed the boatman’s instructions to move to the bow. The old but meticulously maintained forty-horsepower Evinrude started first time. The boatman cast off and the little launch gathered speed across the cold smooth waters. The sun was sinking behind the mountains above San Marcos, bathing the coffee plantations on the three soaring volcanoes of Atitlan, Toliman and San Pedro with an orange glow, but Jennings was oblivious to the scenery. He sat just back from the bow, absorbed in the single page of acquisition notes from the Museo Nacional.

The stela had indeed been acquired as a result of the expedition Himmler had ordered to the jungles of Tikal in 1938, although the details of the transaction seemed shrouded in mystery. Of greater importance to Jennings was the appearance of the Greek letter?. It was the first time the Mayanist scholar had seen the letter inscribed on a stela. Was there a link between the Maya and the Greeks? And what did the numbers on the stela mean? Jennings understood well the ancients’ use of bars and dots in a vigesimal or numeral system that was based on 20 rather than the decimal system based on 10, but the bars and dots on the small stela had been hard to make out.

Three hundred and twenty kilometres to the north-east, the last of the sun’s rays struck the top of Temple III above the jungle canopy in Tikal. The rays almost lined up with Temple IV. The winter solstice was drawing closer.

W iley took the call in his office. ‘They’re being held in the city watch-house.’ The encrypted telephone connection to the US Embassy in Berlin was unusually clear, as was the message from the chief of station, Brandon Gray. ‘The heat from the media is red-hot -’

‘Not least because, like me, the media are mystified as to why two men in balaclavas would attack a fucking garbage truck!’

‘Their instructions were to follow the cell phone and assassinate Tutankhamen and Nefertiti,’ Gray said defensively. ‘There’s little doubt the cell phone was on board the truck, but there was no sign of either of the targets.’

‘Has anyone tumbled to anything that might link us? What about the cell phone?’

‘No, sir. The fire was intense, and the cell phone would have been destroyed. I’m worried about the assets, though. Germany abolished the death penalty in 1949, but the feeling here is overwhelmingly in favour of its reinstatement for cases like this. Either of them might talk.’

‘That can’t be allowed to happen! Terminate them both.’

‘Even if we can find someone who’s prepared to do it and able to get access,’ Gray replied, hesitating, ‘it’ll be very expensive… ’

‘I don’t give a fuck what it costs. Find someone on the inside!’ Wiley slammed the receiver back onto its encryption cradle, got up from his desk and paced his office. The German Chancellor was already describing the crash as a massacre and she was demanding answers. He contemplated briefing the new director but immediately dismissed the notion. The old regime would have simply denied any involvement, but if the CIA connection surfaced on this new President’s watch, Wiley knew he’d be finished. Four floors below, a heated argument between Larry Davis and Ellen Rodriguez was in full swing.

‘Jesus Christ, Larry. I don’t know what O’Connor or Weizman have done to get so far up the administration’s nostril, but this is way out of control!’ Rodriguez’ green eyes were blazing. ‘Ten people are dead, including two babies, because we’ve got a bunch of thugs out there. Amateurs firing at anything that moves!’

‘If you’re not up to this, Rodriguez… ’ Wiley strode into the room. ‘What’ve we got, apart from this clusterfuck in Gottingen?’

Davis mopped his bald pate. ‘It appears the targets were not in Gottingen, but Bad Arolsen,’ he said, glancing at Rodriguez. ‘We got a look at the visitors’ book and Nefertiti used her own name to sign in.’

‘Why would she use her own name?’

Davis shrugged and Rodriguez stepped in. ‘Probably because you have to book to search documents well in advance, and at the time Weizman made the phone call to the International Tracing Service, she wouldn’t have been aware we had her in our crosshairs.’