David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

“Good work,” he said quietly. “I could never have interpreted this stuff. I didn’t do Mesoamerican archaeology like you.”

“I’ve made one really interesting discovery.” Jeremy passed Jack a sheet of paper. “You remember the ancient Aztec prophecy about the return of the god-king Quetzalcoatl? When the Spanish arrived in Tenochtitlan in central Mexico in 1519, the emperor Moctezuma thought Cortes was Quetzalcoatl. It’s one reason the Spanish conquest happened so quickly.”

“Go on.”

“Well, Quetzalcoatl was a Toltec, a semi-legendary king. According to Aztec legend at the time of Moctezuma, he’d been exiled from their kingdom five centuries before, and promised to return from the land of the rising sun.”

“Five centuries before,” Jack mused. “That puts it in the eleventh century, smack in our period.”

“Right. The land of the rising sun, due east from the Aztec heartland in the vale of Mexico, was almost certainly the Yucatan peninsula. There’s some historical corroboration for this, because that’s about the time the Toltecs invaded Chichen Itza.”

Jack looked hard at Jeremy, began to speak, then decided to let him carry on.

“It gets really intriguing when you look at the Maya sources,” Jeremy said. “What we know of the final years of the Maya comes mainly from the Books of Chilam Balam, the Jaguar Prophet, mostly written down by local scribes in the Latin alphabet after the Spanish conquest. The books were hidden away and jealously guarded. Each one relates to a different community in the north Yucatan, a bit like the Norse sagas in Iceland. One of the most extraordinary prophecies concerns the arrival of bearded men from the east.”

“Bearded men?”

“You follow me? A lot of scholars have dismissed this as a later embellishment. Some of the books weren’t written down until the eighteenth or even nineteenth century. But another book’s just come to light, in the Vatican archives in Rome, of all places. It looks like the earliest of them all, partly written in Maya script, apparently confiscated by the first Jesuit missionaries in the Yucatan in the sixteenth century. It contains the legends and prophecies of the Maya community north of Chichen Itza. There’s the same story of bearded men, but with a twist. In this one they have a king, and he fights a great battle with the oppressors of the Maya, presumably the Toltecs. Then he disappears into the underworld, and the Maya await his return. It may be the origin of the Quezalcoatl prophecy of the Aztecs, except in the Maya story he’s called Wukub Kaqix, the monstrous bird-diety, the eagle-god.”

Jack glanced at a picture of the jade pendant pinned beside the monitor. “Pretty standard image around here.”

“But also the name of Harald Hardrada’s ship, the Eagle. In the Norse sagas there are some hints that when the Vikings burnt their boats, went to war with no intention of returning, they sometimes cut off the stems of the ships and carried them forward like battle standards. It was a signal that they would fight to the death, that they were on a one-way trip to Valhalla. It was a way of striking fear into the hearts of their enemies. Maybe that’s what happened here, and the local Maya saw it.”

“Fantastic. This is fantastic, Jeremy. This is just what we’re looking for.” Jack suddenly leaned forward and put his head in his hands, all pretence at bonhomie gone. He could keep it from Jeremy no longer. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you. We’ve had news from Iona.”

“I know.” Jeremy spoke softly, and put down the book he had been holding. Jack gazed up at him. He looked a world older than the ebullient graduate student he had first met the week before. “I knew from the moment I heard O’Connor had been murdered. He spoke of it, prepared me for it. I know what happened in Iona.” Jeremy paused, tried to speak, then the words came out as a hoarse whisper. “The blood-eagle.”

I T WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT, PROBABLY PUSHING ONE in the morning. It had already been dark when Jack and Costas had slipped away from Seaquest II and driven the Zodiac ashore, reaching the beach rendezvous point well before the appointed time. All Jack could hear now was the incessant drumming of the rain, the sound rising in a crescendo and falling again as each downpour swept over them. The humidity was stifling. He knew he was in a small vehicle, a four-wheel drive by the sound of it, hunched in the backseat beside Costas. For what seemed an eternity but was probably only half an hour they had been jostling and bouncing along a rough track, heading somewhere into the jungle from the beach. The injury to Jack’s thigh was throbbing. They had followed their instructions scrupulously and waited blindfolded beside the Zodiac with their diving equipment. Their captor had come without a word, bustling them into the vehicle without revealing anything about himself, about where they were going. It was unnerving, but Jack felt reassured having Costas bumping along beside him cursing every rut and pothole.

Ever since receiving the email ultimatum Jack had known they would be on their own, that they would have to follow the word of Maria’s captors and trust to luck. Whatever was in store for them, it seemed a fair certainty that it involved diving. And with the route they were now taking, somewhere inland seemed likely. Cenotes, underground rivers. The rain was beginning to prey on Jack’s mind. With a storm like this, the floodwaters could be dangerously high, filling underground caverns with water. And this close to the sea, the freshwater currents that honeycombed the Yucatan could be treacherously strong, sucking the rainwater through the labyrinth of limestone channels and out to sea.

The vehicle ground to a halt and Jack snapped back to reality. He was pulled out of the door and led across uneven ground, slipping and sliding on wet vegetation. The rain was torrential, pounding his senses. Then he was inside some kind of shelter, out of the rain but steaming hot. Costas bumped up behind him, and he heard their gear being offloaded. Then he was pushed forward again. His blindfold was ripped off, leaving him blinking and reeling. Duct tape was crudely slapped round his wrists. He was somewhere gloomy, candlelit. He saw Costas a few feet to his left, and a man in front of them. Jack immediately knew who it was. Pieter Reksnys was the spitting image of his father Andrius, the man Jack had seen in the photo of the SS Ahnenerbe team in Greenland, the picture Kangia had given Macleod.

Kangia. The icefjord. It all seemed a million miles away, back beyond some boundary they had crossed to come here, to a place where hell and its demons suddenly seemed far more than just a medieval nightmare.

Jack looked around. They were in a room, a stone chamber, maybe an old church. It was hot as a boiler-house, and Jack was dripping sweat. The ceiling was high, corbelled. There was a circular hole in the floor. The wall beside him was painted, vivid flickers of colour revealed in the candlelight.

Then he saw Maria.

He had tried to prepare himself, gazed at the emailed photograph before they left Seaquest II, but the reality was still shocking. She was sitting against the wall opposite the mural, groggy, swaying slightly, her legs drawn up and her wrists taped together. Her mouth was duct-taped. Her face was streaked and swollen, and her cheek had a raw welt across it. Their eyes met.

Jack tried to control his anger. “Did he do that to you?”

Maria looked at him imploringly, then shook her head, motioning to somewhere behind Jack. He turned round and saw the only other person in the room, the man who had picked them up from the beach. It had to be Loki. The same slicked-back hair, the spare, mean features, the washed-out eyes. Like father, like son. Loki grinned as he saw Jack looking at him, turned to the light, drew one finger hard down his cheek. Then Jack remembered O’Connor’s description. The scar.