Adrian D'Hage - The Maya codex

O’Connor didn’t reply immediately. It had been a long time since he’d been alone with an intelligent, beautiful woman, and even longer since anyone had been able to penetrate his outer shell. ‘I’ve always been grateful for getting a new start in America,’ he said finally. ‘When I joined the CIA, I just wanted to do my bit for my adopted country, a country I was proud of – or used to be, until the last administration came along.’

Aleta listened, trying to fathom O’Connor. To her, he was still an enigma. He was confident but unassuming. Hard as nails, yet possessed of a roguish sense of humour and a soft Irish brogue. She felt her attraction for this man growing. ‘I don’t even know where you were born, other than, I presume, Ireland,’ she said, her voice gentler now. ‘You now know a little more about me, but I still know very little about you.’

O’Connor refilled the wine glasses. ‘I’ve never tried to disguise my accent. I was born in a place called Ballingarry. It’s a small village in County Tipperary, near the border of Kilkenny in the south. My father used to work in the coalmines, but he died when I was ten.’

‘I’m sorry. I know how hard that must have been.’

‘Thank you, but don’t be. I was the last of five kids by a wide margin – my father referred to me as “the accident”. I used to hide before the drunken bastard came home because if he found me, he’d beat me up.’

‘Did things get better after he died?’ she asked, shocked.

‘Not much. We moved to a tenement house in Sheriff Street in Dublin, near the docks on the Liffey, which was a pretty tough neighbourhood. My mother worked as a cleaner at night, and got her kicks screwing her way through the day. Eventually one of her men friends paid for me to go to a Catholic boarding school in Dublin run by the Christian Brothers.’

Aleta noticed his face cloud as he took her back to the slums of inner-city Dublin in the late 1970s.

‘So, O’Connor. I’m told you’re in need of a bit of discipline. What have you got to say to that, eh?’ The head brother of Saint Joseph’s, Brother Michael, was obese, his round, pudgy face the same colour as the salmon walls of his sparsely furnished office. His sandy-coloured hair was thinning at the temples; his eyes an icy grey.

Curtis winced as Brother Michael lashed him across the face with a heavy leather strap.

‘I asked you a question, you little Dublin shite! Answer, boy!’ Brother Michael said more slowly and menacingly, ‘or bejaysus I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.’

‘I’m here because my mother’s boyfriend paid for me to come here,’ Curtis responded defiantly. He fought back the tears as the strap again sliced into his cheek.

‘You sodding little gobshite!’ Brother Michael lashed Curtis again and shoved him headfirst into the wall. A silver crucifix of Jesus rattled against the plaster above Curtis’s head. ‘Get out of my sight!’ Brother Michael propelled Curtis out of his office into the corridor, where he crashed into one of the bigger boys.

‘What da fook? I’m gonna bleedin’ nut the fookin’ head of you, ya bleedin’ bollocks ya!’

‘Tell your mother to get married,’ Curtis responded, ducking deftly out of the way of the bigger boy’s swinging right arm.

Later that night, as the newest boy in the dormitory, Curtis had his first experience with Brother Brendan, the house master.

‘Lights out, you scum!’ The tall, sinister Brother Brendan walked silently down the middle aisle that separated the rows of bunks. He stopped at the bottom of Curtis’s bed. Curtis pretended to be asleep, watching through barely open eyelids. Brother Brendan silently approached the head of the bed, breathing heavily, beads of sweat appearing on his pallid face. He slid his hand under the sheets and onto Curtis’s thigh. In an instant Curtis clamped the brother’s skinny wrist with his left hand and wrenched Brother Brendan’s thumb back sharply with his right.

‘Aaggghhhh!’ Brother Brendan’s high-pitched yell reverberated off the darkened dormitory walls.

‘Touch me again, you fucking pervert, and I’ll break your fucking arm!’

Brother Brendan fled without a word.

Curtis waited nearly an hour. When he was sure everyone was asleep, he quietly retrieved his clothes from the locker beside his bed, dressed and crept out of the dormitory.

Staying in the shadows of the three-metre-high brick wall that surrounded Saint Joseph’s, Curtis made his way to a large oak tree where he paused and checked the dimly lit buildings behind him. Satisfied that none of the brothers were about, he flung the battered leather satchel containing the few things he owned over the wall and scaled the tree. Curtis glanced up and down but the laneway was deserted. He quietly grasped the top of the wall, slid down until he hung at full stretch and dropped to the ground. The traffic on nearby Thomas Road was light, but Curtis eventually hitched a ride to the docks area on a truck carrying a load of Guinness.

It was after midnight when he reached the tenement house in Sheriff Street, but the light was still on in his mother’s bedroom. Curtis pushed open the old wooden front door and climbed the stairs; but he stopped at the top of the landing. The door to his mother’s room was ajar and she was naked on the bed. A man Curtis had never seen before was astride her.

‘Give it to me! Give me that fat cock!’

Curtis crept into his old room and closed the door, numb to a world over which he had no control.

‘At least I had some very good years with my family,’ Aleta said softly. The Galapagos rolled and shuddered yet again, spume flying from the crests of the huge waves as the gale howled over the foam-covered containers. ‘What happened? Did you go back to school?’

‘I left the next morning. My aunt Shaylee lived on the other side of the city and she and her husband took me in, something for which I’ll always be grateful. Without them, I’d probably be driving a crane down at the docks.’

‘University?’

O’Connor nodded. ‘I won a scholarship to Trinity College and did my doctorate at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology. Worked for “big pharma” for a while in the States, but didn’t like their ethics, so I joined the CIA… and here we are,’ he said with a grin. ‘Prost.’

‘Prost.’ Aleta raised her glass to the man she was beginning to understand, although she knew she’d only scratched the surface. They clinked glasses, and O’Connor got up from the table and stood at the window, watching another wave explode onto the decks, tumbling over the containers before exhausting itself in the scuppers. The Galapagos shook herself free, crested the wave and charged towards the next.

Aleta joined him at the big square porthole. For a long while they stood close, watching the storm, finishing their wine.

O’Connor put his arm around Aleta’s slim waist, half expecting her to take his hand away, but she nestled into him, resting her head and her now short blonde hair on his shoulder. Her perfume was a sensual mix of jasmine and caesalpinia; foxglove and vanilla; citron and cedar. It might be aptly named, he thought wryly, having spied the elegant red bottle earlier in the day: Trouble by Boucheron. A flash of forked lightning hit the sea barely two nautical miles from the ship; 120 000 amps travelling at 60 000 metres every second turned the strike point on the ocean into a boiling inferno. The deck and containers were bathed in a powerful and eerie blue light, and O’Connor momentarily reflected on the power of the transmitter at Gakona. The thunder crackled above them and shook the Galapagos ’ superstructure. He turned towards Aleta. Their lips met, softly at first, and then more urgently. They held each other tightly, moving with the roll of the ship. O’Connor ran his hand slowly down the small of Aleta’s back and she responded, moulding herself against him.