THE MAYA CODEX

by Adrian D'hagé

  ‘Papieren!’

  Levi handed over his Austrian passport to the officious young border guards.

  ‘Zweck der Ihr Besuch? Purpose of your visit?’

  ‘I’m returning to Vienna,’ Levi replied, as calmly as he could, feeling like a stranger in his own country.

  ‘Beruf? Occupation?’

  ‘Professor at Universität Wien.’

  One of the border guards looked at the photograph in Levi’s passport, scrutinised Levi’s face, looked back at the photograph and handed it back without a word.

  Levi heaved an inward sigh of relief. Roberto had been right. Neither the Italians nor the Germans were yet completely organised. Benito Mussolini was busy supporting his ally, General Franco, in the Spanish Civil War, and the bustling port of Naples had been relatively free of scrutiny. Here, on the border, the arrogant but inexperienced young guard had asked his questions by rote. Four rows behind, and unseen by Levi, a large man in a grey trench coat flashed his SS identification to the border guards and they quickly moved on. The SS agent went back to his copy of Corriere della Sera.

  Levi pulled his fedora down over his forehead as he alighted from the old tram on Franz-Josefs-Kai near the Donaukanal, not far from the steps that led up to Judengasse. Vienna was crowded with Nazi soldiers and Brownshirts: on the trains, the trams, the buses, the street corners and in the bars and cafés. He scanned the steps, instinctively clutching at the satchel hidden beneath the overcoat he’d purchased in Naples. He reached the top of the stairs and crossed into the shadows of the Saint Ruprecht steeple. At the far end of Judengasse, a group of Nazi soldiers were leaving a bar and their drunken singing echoed down the cobbled streets. The light was on in his apartment. Levi’s heartbeat raced at the prospect of seeing Ramona and the children again. The Nazis disappeared towards the Hofburg Quarter, and Levi walked quietly to the back stairs which led up to his apartment.

  ‘Wer ist es?’ Ramona called from the other side when Levi knocked. Her voice was strong, but Levi sensed her fear.

  ‘Levi, meine Liebling … I’m back.’

  Ramona wrenched open the door but it banged against the security chain. ‘Levi! Levi! How … ?’ Ramona tore at the security chain, opened the door and threw her arms around Levi’s neck. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home? I’ve been so frightened, Levi!’ Tears of relief flowed down Ramona’s cheeks as she clung to her husband.

  ‘Papa! Papa!’ Rebekkah and Ariel came running down the hall. Rebekkah launched herself at Levi and fastened her little arms around his neck in a vice-like grip. Levi kissed his daughter and put his free arm around Ariel. ‘We’ve missed you, Papa!’ Rebekkah said, hanging on to her father for dear life.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if the Nazis were tapping our phone line, so I couldn’t ring,’ Levi said, after kissing the children goodnight. He took a seat at their kitchen table. ‘I hardly recognised Vienna for the soldiers,’ Levi added, after he’d explained his escape from Tikal.

  ‘It’s been terrible, Levi.’ Ramona sipped her tea. ‘Rebekkah and Ariel are too afraid to go out, and so am I. We can’t even walk in the park. There are signs everywhere: Juden Verboten.’ The Brownshirts have been here twice already this week, demanding that I close my boutique. Not that I have any customers any more,’ she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

  Levi reached across the kitchen table and held Ramona’s hand. ‘We still have each other and the children, Liebling, and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘I’m frightened, Levi. Won’t Himmler and this von Heißen be looking for you?’

  Levi cursed himself for leaving his family unprotected. ‘I should never have gone; not that I had much choice,’ he added ruefully. ‘Although I don’t think von Heißen will have admitted to Himmler that he had the figurine in his possession, much less the reason it disappeared. But you’re right, we’ll have to leave, and quickly. I’ve made contact with Ze’ev Jabotinsky down at the Jewish Agency. They’re setting up escape routes through Istanbul. If we can get to the United States or England, Albert Einstein or Erwin Schrödinger might be able to put in a good word for me at Princeton or Oxford. I can carry on my Mayan research,’ he said, ‘and you can start another boutique.’

  ‘And what about the apartment? Even if we could sell, in this market we won’t get anything.’

  ‘My brother has German citizenship. He can look after it until things improve.’

  ‘He’s a Nazi sympathiser, Levi!’

  ‘Yes, but that can work to our advantage. At least the apartment will stay in the family until all this is over.’

  Ramona’s sobs diminished, calmed by her own inner strength and conviction, which was in turn underpinned by an unshakeable faith. Suddenly shouting and the sounds of shattering glass carried through the cold night air. Levi got up and went to the front window. Further down Judengasse he could see torches.

  ‘Turn off all the lights, quickly!’

  The sounds of shouting and the smashing of glass intensified. A menacing group of young thugs – members of the Austrian Hitler Youth and Brownshirts – had entered Judengasse.

  ‘Judenfrei! Judenfrei!’ The yelling echoed off Judengasse’s buildings. ‘Jew-free! Jew-free!’ Just as Nebuchadnezzar and Titus had destroyed the First and Second temples in Jerusalem, Hitler and Himmler were determined to destroy the Jews of Vienna. Bricks were being hurled through the plate-glass windows of every shop daubed with the Star of David.

  ‘Get the children and lock them in the bathroom,’ Levi whispered. In the shadows, he could feel Ramona’s fear. Levi quickly picked up the precious Mayan figurine that had remained in Vienna, wrapped it in red velvet, lifted the carpet in front of the fireplace and hid the figurine alongside the other one in the long tin trunk he’d placed under the floorboard. He’d thought about putting them in the big safe in his study, but he knew that would be the first place the Nazis would look. Satisfied the figurines were as secure as he could make them at short notice, Levi hid his notes on the Fibonacci sequence and the pyramids in Tikal inside one of his friend Erwin Schrödinger’s books, Science and the Human Temperament. He slid the book back on the shelf and turned to secure the apartment. He and Ramona moved a heavy dresser over the big trapdoor that concealed the stairs leading to Ramona’s boutique below.

  ‘Go and join the children now,’ Levi said, and he moved towards the front window. The mob was getting closer; the sound of glass smashing was sickening. Levi drew back as a group of about twenty young thugs stopped outside Ramona’s boutique.

  ‘Juden verrecke! Death to the Jews!’ one of them yelled, hurling brick after brick through the window. The mob, armed with iron bars, stormed in and began systematically smashing glass shelving, counters, cases, anything that would break. They splashed yellow paint over the designer dresses and hats. One thug climbed the stairs and began to batter the door with the butt of his rifle, but the rest of the mob was moving on, and he gave up. ‘We’ll be back, Jew bastards!’ he yelled as he ran down the stairs to catch up.

  ‘How long do you think we’ve got?’ Ramona asked, her arms around Rebekkah and Ariel. Rebekkah sobbed and Ariel fought back the tears, both of them terrified. The sounds of smashing glass receded, replaced by sirens as flames began to pour from the Synagogue, just a block away from Judengasse.

  ‘We’ll have to pack tonight,’ Levi replied, his eyes moist.

  13

  ISTANBUL

  The sun bade farewell in a fiery salute, streaking the sky to the west of Istanbul with fierce red and orange. In stark contrast to Cardinal Pacelli, who when papal nuncio in Munich had travelled in a black limousine adorned with the Vatican coat of arms, the papal delegate to Turkey and Greece and future Pope John XXIII, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, elected to leave his old battered Fiat in the garage. Dressed in comfortable civilian attire, Roncalli hailed a ramshackle taxi in the narrow road outside the Papal Embassy in Ölçek Sokak. In years to come, long after he had died, a grateful Turkish people would rename Ölçek
Sokak ‘Pope Roncalli Street’.

  ‘Hotel Pera Palas, please.’

  ‘Evet, Pera Palas!’ The old driver engaged the gears with a frightening crunch and pulled out into the chaos that was Istanbul’s traffic, waving his hand placatingly at those yelling abuse that was nothing more than ritual amidst the cacophony of screeching brakes and blaring horns.

  ‘Senin bir ailen var? You have a family?’ Roncalli asked the wizened driver.

  ‘Evet.’ The taxi driver’s dark face creased with a smile at Roncalli’s use of his native tongue, his smile punctuated by three missing teeth. ‘Two boys and a girl,’ he answered proudly. ‘And you?’

  Roncalli smiled and shook his head. ‘Hayir. Just me.’

  The roadside was thick with traders, and the driver threaded his way past them with a practised ease. Tarpaulins were spread edge to edge with eclectic offerings of fish and chickens, leather and brass, shoes and shirts, and occasionally uds and cümbüs, Turkish lutes and mandolins. They reached Refik Saydam Caddesi and began the descent towards the Bosphorus, the long narrow stretch of water that connects the Black Sea to the Marmara. On the other side of the road, an old brown horse, ribs showing through his pitifully thin coat, nostrils flared and breath clouding in the cold, laboured to pull an impossible load up the steeply sloping hill. The rubber tyres on the rickety wooden cart had worn through to the canvas, and the hessian sacks of rice, spice and coffee, piled three metres high, defied gravity. Old men struggled past under the weight of big wicker baskets full of oranges, bananas and bread. Legless beggars sitting on small wheeled boards pushed their way between smaller carts, some supporting brass urns full of strong Turkish coffee, others containing braziers on which chestnuts and kebabs were roasting. Myriad smells of spices and meats wafted through the open window of the taxi.

  ‘Thank you, my friend,’ Roncalli said as they reached the Hotel Pera Palas. ‘A little extra for the children,’ he added, pressing more lire into the taxi driver’s hand.

  Roncalli paused and took in the view of the Golden Horn. Across the harbour, the minarets of the great mosques of Istanbul rose like stone fingers towards the evening sky. Roncalli turned and headed towards the Pera Palas, an opulent rococo-style building on Mesrutiyet Caddesi. A young bellboy with dark curly hair, dressed in black trousers and a deep-purple military jacket topped with gold epaulettes, smiled broadly and sprang to open the brass-plated double doors.

  Behind the dark polished wooden counter of reception, pigeon holes held the heavy brass room-keys. On one side of the desk stood a telephone with a black bell-shaped mouthpiece and a heavy Bakelite earpiece. To the right of reception, a wide, sweeping marble staircase carpeted in red wound its way around the steel pillars and wire mesh enclosing the lift well, where another young bellboy stood ready to open the heavy wooden doors.

  Archbishop Roncalli made his way into the big chandeliered vestibule, the magnificent handmade Persian carpet soft beneath his shoes. At intervals down the centre of the room, tall pots were filled with flowers. Heavy carved wooden sideboards, gilt-framed mirrors and elegant Egyptian-styled vases lined the walls, but the Pera Palas was not all it seemed. Istanbul was on the Silk Road straddling Europe and Asia, and the city was ideally positioned midway between Eastern Europe and Palestine. As the world teetered on the precipice of war, the Turkish government was determined to remain neutral. But they had allowed the Jewish Agency, an organisation set up after the Great War to support the international Jewish community, to open an office in the hotel.

  Mordecai Herschel was already waiting for Roncalli at one of the antique tables in the vestibule.

  ‘Angelo, thank you for coming.’ Herschel rose from his chair and extended his hand. Now in his fifties, but still lean and fit, he had been a major in the Haganah, the military wing of David Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency in Palestine, where he’d been wounded in a clash with the British. His face still bore the scar on his right cheek. Herschel had been selected to set up an agency in Istanbul as part of the Zionists’ desperate attempts to save their countrymen from the Nazis. In physical contrast to Herschel, Roncalli was a big bear of a man, not naturally inclined to exercise. He had thinning hair and a long oval face that was dominated by a large roman nose. They made an interesting pair, the fit-looking former freedom fighter and the rotund archbishop. Both were deep thinkers, bonded by a common devotion to justice and humanity.

  ‘Any news from the Vatican?’ Herschel asked.

  ‘They’re sending a papal envoy, although that could be a delaying tactic. I’m afraid Rome can be somewhat removed from the problems of the real world.’ Cardinal Pacelli’s silence in response to Roncalli’s pleas for help for the Jews had been deafening.

  Herschel nodded. ‘I understand. Closer to home, one of our biggest problems is communications, Angelo. Finding native speakers with all the qualities we need has not been easy, but I’ve now got an agent in Romania and one in Hungary, and another two will leave next week for Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. I’ve also managed to infiltrate the Austrian concentration camp at Mauthausen.’

  ‘If you need secure transmission of messages, I have some people I can trust in our embassies and we can use the black bag.’

  ‘Won’t the Vatican object?’

  ‘Only if they find out.’ Roncalli smiled broadly, immensely pleased with himself. ‘God won’t object, and he holds a lot of the votes.’

  ‘Thank you, Angelo. I’m very grateful. The Turkish Post Office has been helpful, and we’ll continue to use them for contact with ordinary citizens, but it’s good to know there’s a more secure line.’

  Roncalli leaned closer. ‘And,’ he said quietly, ‘I was thinking, too, of the children. If we were to produce Certificates of Conversion to Catholicism with the appropriate stamps of approval, would that help?’ It was not the first time the elegant Pera Palas hotel had been host to a conspiratorial plot. The Mata Hari had drunk in the Orient Express Bar, as had Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Hemingway; and after Agatha Christie’s crashed car had been found abandoned, amidst false rumours she had drowned, Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in room 411.

  ‘That would be an enormous help, Angelo. We’re going to try to funnel as many of our countrymen as we can through here and on to Palestine, although the double-dealing British are preventing us from landing the refugee boats, so we’re having to do it on the beaches at night.’ Herschel raised his eyebrows ruefully.

  ‘Will other countries take them?’

  ‘We’re looking at Central and South America.’

  ‘At least that gives us more options.’

  ‘Although for some, time is running out. Have you ever heard of Professor Levi Weizman?’

  ‘The distinguished archaeologist?’

  Herschel nodded. ‘We’ve received some intelligence from one of our agents inside the SS: Weizman and his family are in grave danger.’

  14

  VIENNA

  Adolf Eichmann stood at the podium of the ballroom of the recently commandeered Rothschild palace on the Plosslgasse, bringing to a close an address to SS officers, Gauleiter and Kreisleiter, the district and county political leaders who had bubbled to the top of the Nazi party in Austria like scum to the top of a drain. Obersturmbannführer von Heißen, now promoted to lieutenant colonel and newly appointed commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp, was sitting in the front row.

  Eichmann gripped the sides of the lectern, his SS cap at a rakish angle. ‘The Jew, gentlemen, is a rank parasite. Apart from making money, his only other aim in life centres on the destruction of the German people and the Reich. But we Germans are a compassionate people and this filth will be encouraged to leave of their own accord.’

  ‘And if they don’t want to leave?’ The buttonholes on the brown uniform of the Kreisleiter of Vienna’s Third District were scalloped, straining against their fastenings. Kreisleiter Schweitzer was as ruthless as he was obese.

  Eichmann smiled thinly. ‘As of now, all Jewish businesse
s are to be boycotted. Any Viennese who patronises a Jewish store will be guilty of a crime against the State. Their names and addresses will be published on the streets of Vienna. In fact, no Austrian is to speak with a Jew unless it is absolutely essential.’ Eichmann paused for thought and then decided against any further disclosure. His program to recruit young female clerks to work in Jewish stores and compile lists of the names of their customers would remain on a need-to-know basis.

  ‘It will not be long,’ Eichmann continued, ‘before their wretched blood-sucking money-making ventures are on the market at rock-bottom prices, so that decent Austrians can buy into those businesses and run them fairly and honestly. In addition, by order of the Führer, all civil servants who are not of Aryan descent are to be sacked. That includes university staff. Universities are to be closed to anyone of Jewish blood. This is to apply to schools as well. Jewish lawyers and doctors are to be struck off. In the case of physicians, they are to be reclassified as “Jewish Healers”, and they are to restrict their foul practices to their own kind.’

  ‘Herr Obersturmführer, how can we be sure to identify every one of them?’ Kreisleiter Schweitzer asked.

  ‘With the help of their leaders, you are to compile a list of Jews for each district, and they will all be required to wear the yellow star,’ Eichmann replied. ‘The Law of Jewish Assets has now been passed, and Jews are to surrender all gold, platinum and silver objects as well as any precious stones, pearls and jewellery.’ Von Heißen nodded in approval. ‘Political prisoners, as well as those deemed to have information valuable to the Reich, are to be interned in a camp we have constructed at Mauthausen.’ Eichmann nodded towards von Heißen in acknowledgement of his position as commandant.

  Back in his office, once one of the Rothschild living rooms, Adolf Eichmann stood at the window overlooking the Plosslgasse with his hands clasped behind his back. He knew the measures he’d announced this evening would not be enough. A final solution would be necessary, and with that would come the opportunity to carry out some much needed medical research to improve the quality of life for members of the Reich. His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.