THE MAYA CODEX

by Adrian D'hagé

  ‘Frau Weizman, welcome to Bad Arolsen. We’ve been expecting you. The documents you’ve requested have been extracted from the archives. If you will just sign the register and follow me please.’ The efficiency of the reception staff matched that with which the Nazis had recorded every detail of their savagery, although the purpose of the International Tracing Service could not have been more different.

  Aleta’s face was almost as pale as the gloves that had been provided for them to handle the files containing the pink Gestapo arrest warrants, the records of incarceration, die Kontrolle Karten recording in obsessive detail everything down to the number and size of any head lice on the prisoners, and the sinister Totenbuchen – the Death Books.

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay with this?’ O’Connor asked.

  ‘I have to know what happened to them,’ Aleta said. She opened the first file and began the awful task of scanning the names. They worked side by side in silence for nearly an hour, until O’Connor suddenly paused.

  ‘There’s an arrest warrant here confirming your grandparents and your father and his sister were taken to Mauthausen. The date is April 1938.’

  Aleta scanned the four warrants: Levi Ehud Weizman. Ramona Miriam Weizman. Ariel Levi Weizman. Rebekkah Miriam Weizman. The place of arrest was Judengasse, Vienna.

  ‘The commandant of Mauthausen was a young SS officer, Karl von Heißen. One of Himmler’s favourites. Levi worked with him in Guatemala,’ Aleta said.

  ‘Your grandfather worked with the Nazis?’

  ‘He didn’t have a choice. It was before the war. Himmler was convinced the Aryan master race had established some of the great civilisations of the world, including the Maya, and my grandfather was one of the few people who had been to Tikal and worked on the Mayan hieroglyphics. Himmler ordered him to join a Nazi expedition to the jungle highlands as the consulting archaeologist, and von Heißen was personally selected by Himmler to lead the expedition. My grandfather was very careful about committing anything to paper, though there are cryptic clues in the back of the notebook I showed you. But something happened between my grandfather and von Heißen on that expedition, and I have a hunch von Heißen had my grandfather marked out for special treatment when he arrived at Mauthausen.’

  ‘Being on the Nazi payroll didn’t count for much,’ O’Connor observed. ‘Von Heißen would have been quite young to be a concentration camp commandant.’

  ‘Young, sadistic and brutal – just some of the qualities that no doubt impressed Himmler. I suspect Levi would have been less than cooperative on the expedition, and if he found anything of value, I think he would have made every effort to conceal it from the Nazis, as he did with the figurines. I know my grandfather tried to get the family out of Vienna when he returned from Guatemala, but by then it was too late.’

  ‘Did your father talk about it much?’ O’Connor asked gently, conscious of Aleta’s enormous loss, a loss that was compounded immeasurably by the murder of her father at the hands of the Guatemalan government and the CIA.

  ‘Only once. We were fishing on Lake Atitlán in the little native canoe we had. My father didn’t say too much. It’s hard to imagine what they went through … and even harder to work out why.’ Aleta shook her head and wiped away a tear. ‘It’s still one of the great unanswered questions, isn’t it? The Nazis finished up with enormous power, but how was it that so many ordinary Germans got into the sewers with them and behaved like animals? My father always suffered from terrible nightmares, but he was one of the few to escape from a concentration camp. He was one of those children saved by Archbishop Roncalli when he was papal nuncio in Istanbul.’

  Aha, O’Connor thought. ‘Forged Catholic baptism certificates?’

  Aleta nodded. ‘The Vatican has had its fair share of corrupt and power-hungry cardinals, but every so often they elect someone like Roncalli to the papacy.’

  ‘Pope John XXIII,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘One of the truly great Popes. Was that the reason your father converted to Catholicism?’

  ‘He never forgot Monsignor Roncalli’s kindness when he reached Istanbul, and it was his way of repaying him.’

  They turned their attention back to the Death Books. The books had been prepared with one name to every line, the columns recording prisoner numbers, names, the precise time and date and place of the murders and the method of killing. Aleta opened a book that was inscribed meticulously in black copperplate Totenbuch – Mauthausen 1.1.37 – 31.12.38.

  ‘Bastards,’ Aleta swore, as half an hour later, she came across a long and significant list of names.

  O’Connor came around to her side of the table. ‘Each of them murdered on the same day … but two minutes apart,’ he said, noticing the regularity of the executions.

  ‘There was a reason for that.’ Aleta struggled to control her bitterness. ‘It was Hitler’s birthday, and as a present to the Führer, von Heißen gave orders that for an hour and a half, a Jew would be shot every two minutes.’

  The Nazis obviously didn’t believe in cakes, O’Connor thought darkly.

  Aleta turned the page and gasped, her hand trembling over her mouth. O’Connor stood behind her. At the top of the page, were two names inscribed in copperplate:

  LEVI EHUD WEIZMAN

  20.4.38

  1402hrs

  Executed

  RAMONA MIRIAM WEIZMAN

  21.4.38

  1131hrs

  Died – medical experiment

  ‘I’m deeply sorry, Aleta,’ O’Connor said, resting his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Thank you. At least I know. It’s closure, in a way.’

  O’Connor’s mind went back to the CIA archives and Father Hernandez, the CIA’s asset in San Pedro. ‘Was von Heißen ever brought to trial, do you know?’ he asked finally.

  Aleta shook her head. ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘At the end of the war, the Vatican and the CIA worked together to arrange the escape of Nazi war criminals who were in a position to assist the fight against the rise of Communism. Some of them were disguised as priests and many were smuggled down the “Vatican Ratlines”, including Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder what Christ would have said about that?’ Aleta pondered again the hypocrisy of some of the church’s leaders.

  O’Connor nodded, reflecting on his own bitter experiences at the hands of the Church. ‘I think if Christ had been around, he would’ve done a lot more than just upturn the money tables in the Vatican Bank. The thing is, von Heißen was very close to Himmler. The CIA and the Vatican might have considered him a valuable asset.’

  ‘You think he might have been one of those who escaped?’

  ‘It’s possible. And a lot of them were smuggled out to Central and South America, including Guatemala. It’s only a hunch, but before I came to Vienna, I spent some time going through the CIA archives. The CIA smuggling operation was known as Operation Paperclip. The CIA had an asset on the shores of Lake Atitlán … a Father Hernandez.’

  ‘I remember him! He was a nasty piece of work. And now that you mention it, his Spanish was very good, but he had a thick European accent, which could easily have been German. You think … ?’

  O’Connor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve seen no concrete evidence that von Heißen and Hernandez are one and the same person. But from what you’ve told me, von Heißen spent quite a bit of time in Guatemala before the war. If he was given a choice of countries in Central or South America, it would make sense to go back to a place he was familiar with.’

  ‘And if he did escape to Central America, he may have taken the original huun bark map with him. Which would have the precise bearings to the location at Lake Atitlán,’ Aleta mused.

  ‘Something to keep in the backs of our minds, anyway. Tomorrow we leave before dawn and head for Mauthausen, and we’ll take the car. They’ll be watching the trains.’

  39

  CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Ellen Ro
driguez 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, Süddeutsche 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 Würzburg. 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 Göttingen 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 Göttingen 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 Göttingen – they’re more likely headed for Bad Arolsen.’

  Wiley turned back to the Berlin feed. ‘Concentrate on Göttingen 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 Göttingen. ‘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!’

  ‘You married guys. One day you’ll wise up.’ Baecker swung into the nearby busy Industriestrasse and picked up speed. ‘Was in Gottes Namen!’ He slammed on the brakes and the deep klaxon of the truck’s powerful air horns rent the air. The Audi overtaking them had inexplicably moved into the inside lane, slowed and then stopped, in an attempt to box them in. Two men in balaclavas, brandishing machine pistols leapt from the car and raced towards them.

  ‘They’ve got guns, Bernhard!’ Dieter yelled. Baecker selected reverse and began to back up, the two balaclava-clad men in hot pursuit.

&
nbsp; ‘Halten Sie der Lastwagen!’

  Baecker hit the brakes again, selected first gear and drove towards them. ‘Get down!’ he yelled at Dieter, but it was too late. One of the young thugs hired by the CIA to assassinate O’Connor and Aleta panicked. He unleashed a burst of fire which shattered the windscreen. Both men inside died instantly in a hail of bullets. Baecker slumped over the wheel and the twenty-tonne vehicle slewed off the road and mounted the footpath, ploughing into the front of a small café. The dozen or so patrons sitting at the outside tables, including two young mothers with their children in strollers, didn’t stand a chance.

  The two gunmen raced back to their car. The team leader floored the Audi and took off, leaving a trail of smoking rubber behind the squealing tyres. A blue-and-silver police car passing in the opposite direction negotiated a savage U-turn and took off in pursuit, siren blaring and blue roof-lights flashing. A gas bottle in the back of the café exploded and the fire quickly took hold. Thick black smoke belched from the shattered ruins. Survivors screamed. Some ran, their clothes in flames, others crawled out in agony as more sirens sounded in the distance.

  40

  GUATEMALA CITY

  Low cloud hugged the highland volcanic ranges, drifting down into the valleys, as the pilot lined up the aircraft for the final approach into Aeropuerto La Aurora, Guatemala’s international airport. Monsignor Jennings stared out the window from his business-class seat. Below, high-rise buildings competed for space with the slums of a teeming, vibrant city of over two million people, many of whom lived in abject poverty. Guatemala City was the country’s third capital. The first, Ciudad Vieja, located just to the east, had been destroyed by floods and volcanic eruptions in 1541. The second, Antigua, also close by, had been destroyed by a violent earthquake 200 years later.