THE MAYA CODEX

by Adrian D'hagé

  Paydirt! But as O’Connor began to thumb through the pages, he heard the sound of a key turning in the front door.

  Aleta was sweating profusely; twitching nervously on the pillows. The shaman knew it was time to bring her out.

  ‘You’re coming out of this room now, Aleta,’ he intoned gently. ‘You’re moving back towards the door through which you entered … moving back to the stone passageway … closing the door behind you. You’re calmer now … calmer.’ Aleta stopped twitching and almost immediately her breathing began to slow.

  ‘One … two … three,’ José intoned softly.

  ‘Was I dreaming?’ Aleta asked.

  José smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s quite a common reaction; but no, you weren’t dreaming. That was just one of your past lives, although undoubtedly one of the more significant, and there are several reasons you’ve relived it just now.’ Arana paused, allowing Aleta to readjust to her surroundings. A cool breeze was coming in off the lake and the night was clear. Without the glow of city lights, the stars seemed far brighter and more numerous – just as they had to the Maya, centuries before.

  ‘Did you learn anything?’ Arana continued.

  ‘The laser beams … the three statues were placed on top of Pyramid I, Pyramid IV and Pyramid V … but I didn’t see where the final deflection fell.’

  ‘Now that you know which pyramids are in the matrix, it will be enough for you to discover the final figurine; and provided you can position all three by the winter solstice, you will still have a chance to recover the codex.’

  ‘With only three days left, that’s looking increasingly unlikely,’ Aleta said.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘It’s as if a great load has been lifted.’

  The Mayan elder smiled. ‘Then the cleansing has been a success.’

  ‘I’m not sure what the golden conch shell with the keyhole outline in the middle meant, though.’ Aleta mused.

  ‘The significance of that, like the significance of balance, will become apparent very soon,’ José replied enigmatically.

  Monsignor Jennings quickly checked behind him before ushering the young boy inside.

  Have a seat, Eduardo. Make yourself comfortable,’ Jennings said, indicating the sofa against the staircase. He headed for the tiny kitchenette and poured himself a generous Chivas Regal, and a double shot of Johnny Walker Red Label and Coke for Eduardo. Jennings brought the Coke back and sat down beside Eduardo, recalling the wonderful words of Oscar Wilde: The great affection of an elder for a younger man… that is as pure as it is perfect … so much misunderstood that it may be described as the ‘Love that dare not speak its name’. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. Jennings knew the words by heart. He sat and admired Eduardo’s slim, taut brown form and placed his hand on Eduardo’s thigh.

  ‘Cien quetzales,’ Eduardo intoned woodenly.

  ‘Más tarde. Later,’ Jennings said, placing Eduardo’s hand on his own growing erection.

  Eduardo withdrew his hand. ‘Cien quetzales … o no contrato.’ Eduardo might have been only fourteen, but he was already street smart.

  ‘¿Cuánto para toda la noche. How much for all night?’ Jennings asked throatily, feeling for his wallet.

  ‘Quinientos quetzales.’ This amount would feed Eduardo’s brothers and sisters for a fortnight.

  ‘Cien quetzales. The rest later,’ Jennings said, handing over a grimy cherry-coloured note. Rivulets of sweat ran down his pudgy cheeks and he shifted lengthways on the couch. Breathing heavily, Jennings unzipped his own fly and ran his hand up the inside of Eduardo’s thigh, fondling the boy into an erection before pulling Eduardo’s head down onto his own enlarged member.

  O’Connor quietly photographed the pair from the mezzanine bedroom above. He wondered if, even when faced with the photographs, the Catholic Church would act, but he promised himself the fat priest would rot in gaol one way or another. For now, time was running out. Confident that Jennings was totally absorbed, O’Connor crept down the stairs.

  ‘Suck me, boy … suck me,’ Jennings wheezed. ‘Oh yes. That is so good.’

  O’Connor controlled his anger and quietly slipped out the front door. He headed back down towards the docks, where Fidel was waiting, two of von Heißen’s diaries and the map safely in his hand.

  ‘Santa Cruz. La tienda de buceo, por favor, Fidel.’ The dive shop would be closed, but O’Connor was sure money would overcome that inconvenience.

  ‘Sí,’ Fidel nodded with a smile and eased the little launch away from the wooden jetty.

  A short distance away one of the ex-navy SEALs was standing on the balcony of the Mikaso, scanning the shores of the lake. Hank Sanders trained his high-resolution night-vision binoculars on the little boat as it gathered speed, and he watched it head for the village of Santa Cruz on the northern side of the lake.

  ‘Hey, Mitch, come and have a look at this. See the guy sitting in the back of the boat? Looks like our man?’ he said, handing over the binoculars.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Mitch Crawford said, ‘but if it is, I wonder where he’s headed at this time of night.’

  Twenty minutes later, they had their answer. Sanders and Crawford watched the launch pull into Santa Cruz’s jetty, the nearby dive shop clearly visible.

  Crawford kept his night-vision binoculars trained on Fidel’s small lancha as the boatman eased it into the jetty at San Marcos. He watched as Fidel and O’Connor carried the diving gear up to where Aleta was still in deep conversation with José.

  ‘Looks as if the boatman’s staying the night as well. It’s dive on, I reckon.’

  ‘Probably not tonight,’ Crawford replied, sharpening his diving knife, ‘otherwise they would have left the gear on the jetty. My guess is early tomorrow morning. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The gear and the boat’s ready.’ The burly tattooed ex-Marine diver spat over the balcony. ‘They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’

  O’Connor sat on the end of Aleta’s garden lounge. ‘Your grandfather’s original huun bark map,’ he announced quietly. ‘I found it in a diary at Jennings’ presbytery, along with some scuba-diving gear, so I’m assuming that von Heißen left it behind.’

  ‘He must have left in one hell of a hurry,’ said Aleta.

  ‘Mossad tends to have that effect on some people.’

  ‘Do you think they got him?’

  O’Connor shook his head. ‘Adolf Eichmann worked for Mercedes Benz in Buenos Aires for years, but when the Israeli team of Mossad and Shabak agents finally captured him in 1960, it made world headlines. Von Heißen is now the most wanted Nazi known to be still alive – we would have heard if they’d been successful. There are three trunks of diaries still in the roof of Jennings’ presbytery, but we’ll go back for those.’ O’Connor opened the huun bark map. ‘Look at this.’

  ‘The backbearings!’ Aleta whispered.

  ‘Exactly, and they intersect just off that point.’ O’Connor indicated a small rocky promontory jutting out into the lake about a kilometre away. ‘Someone, I presume your grandfather, has embossed the bottom of the map with the Greek letter phi, and there’s a mark under the dot point, see? A short line.’

  ‘Von Heißen may already have the figurine … assuming it was in the lake in the first place.’

  ‘The scuba gear suggests he investigated the lake, although whether he was aware of the third figurine is a moot point. But there’s only one way to find out.’

  They both looked at Arana. ‘If it’s meant to be, it will be,’ he said calmly. ‘When will you dive?’

  O’Connor looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly 11 p.m. now, and we’ve had a very long day. F
rom a safety point of view, we’ll be more alert after a few hours’ sleep, not to mention a little more acclimatised to the altitude.’

  52

  LAKE ATITLÁN, GUATEMALA

  Fidel was waiting as O’Connor and Aleta, already in their wetsuits, walked down the dirt path to the jetty. The lake was like glass, the faint pink of dawn caressing the lake’s three sentinel volcanoes.

  Across the lake, Sanders put down his night-vision binoculars and went inside to wake his partner. It was time to move.

  O’Connor and Aleta made a slow and deliberate final check of the gear: cylinders, both stages of the regulators, tank-pressure gauges, depth gauges, compasses, BCDs – the buoyancy compensation devices – safety reels, weights, wrist dive computers, torches and dive lights. O’Connor checked the fastenings on the dive knife above Aleta’s booties and made a final check of his own.

  Fidel eased the lancha away from the jetty and under O’Connor’s instruction, motored out to a point about fifty metres off the small promontory that jutted out into the lake. O’Connor took bearings on each of the three volcanoes and mentally calculated the backbearings.

  ‘Another ten metres, Fidel,’ he directed, pointing north-west. It took nearly ten minutes of manoeuvring and adjustment until O’Connor felt they were over the spot indicated on the map.

  ‘Keep the volcanoes on these two lines,’ O’Connor said, indicating directions to two prominent buildings on the far shores of the lake. He turned to Aleta. ‘Ready?’

  Aleta nodded.

  They sat on the gunwale and adjusted the straps on their big yellow fins. Aleta returned O’Connor’s ‘O’, her thumb and forefinger together, the rest of her fingers pointed upwards: the diver’s universal ‘I’m okay/are you okay?’ O’Connor put his regulator in his mouth, kept one hand over his mask, clamped the trailing hoses to his chest with the other, and rolled backwards into the lake. Out of habit, Aleta checked that the lake was clear behind her then followed O’Connor into the cold dark water. They both surfaced, and O’Connor gave the thumbs down signal to descend. Aleta raised her BCD hose, pressed the deflation button and followed O’Connor into the depths. Three metres below the surface, O’Connor stopped for a ‘bubble check’. He looked for any signs of leaks on Aleta’s gear and Aleta returned the favour.

  O’Connor probed the depths with his powerful torch beam, looking for signs of the promontory. Lake Atitlán was close to 5000 feet above sea level and more than 300 metres deep. He had ensured the necessary altitude and freshwater adjustments were programed into both their wrist dive computers, but a high-altitude dive meant the atmospheric pressure was lower than at sea level: there would be a greater reduction in pressure when they surfaced. The distance to the nearest decompression chamber didn’t bear thinking about.

  The water was very clear and O’Connor continued to search with his torch as they descended. The promontory had dropped away sharply, forming an underwater cliff-face, but at a gauge reading of fifteen metres, O’Connor was relieved to see that it had levelled out into a plateau. He and Aleta touched bottom and a large black crab scuttled away, leaving puffs of grey volcanic dust in its wake. O’Connor unhooked a long white nylon rope from his weight belt and, holding one end, gave the rest of it to Aleta to anchor on the floor of the lake. She gave him the ‘O’, and he swam out until Aleta held it fast at the five-metre mark. O’Connor began to swim in a circle in the classic ‘rope search’. The beams of their torches pierced the darkness, producing an eerie underwater kaleidoscope, and illuminating a grey stony bottom. Clear patches gave way to underwater plants and gossamer-like seaweed. Occasionally a large bass would be caught in the light.

  The first 360-degree traverse revealed nothing of interest, and O’Connor tugged on the rope for Aleta to let it out another five metres. He swam another circle, and another. On the lake side, the promontory dropped away further, and on the next pass O’Connor’s gauge was showing twenty metres; but he kept swimming, slowly searching the bottom with his powerful torch. As he came back towards the promontory, the bottom began to slope up again to eighteen metres, and then sixteen metres, when suddenly he saw it. The entrance to the underwater cave was a small but unmistakeable ‘squeeze’. O’Connor inspected the broken plants at the entrance. It was hard to tell just how long ago, but the entrance had definitely been disturbed.

  At the jetty at San Pedro, the CIA mercenaries were checking their gear.

  O’Connor gave three short tugs on the rope, signalling Aleta to join him. He pointed to the entrance, recoiled the rope and hooked it to his belt. Once they had negotiated the squeeze, it opened into a wide cavernous passageway. Aleta looked around her in amazement. The grey stony bottom had given way to stalagmites, some of which had joined stalactites to form underwater columns. It was as if they had entered an underwater city. A little further on, a volcanic shelf appeared, and O’Connor gave the thumbs up to surface. At the six-metre mark, he called a halt and they waited for a three-minute safety stop before rising to the top.

  ‘Can you believe this?’ Aleta exclaimed. Her voice echoed in the huge underwater chamber. O’Connor looked around. Over millions of years, well before the chamber had flooded, fresh water had cascaded and dripped from the cavities above. The water held vast quantities of dissolved limestone and volcanic dust, and the calcite had gradually precipitated into brilliantly coloured geological formations in deep reds, purples, blues, ochres and yellows. Above them, glow-worms had attached themselves to the roof. Hundreds of sticky beaded strands, which the glow-worms manufactured from their mouth glands, formed a shimmering but deadly curtain for any insect attracted by the light show. Once an insect became enmeshed in the deathtrap, the glow-worm simply pulled in the long silvery-blue line and ate its prey alive.

  O’Connor hauled himself onto the limestone shelf and helped Aleta out of the water. They divested themselves of their tanks and fins and began to explore. The shelf stretched for a hundred metres before sloping down again into the crystal-clear waters of the cave.

  ‘I wonder how far this goes?’

  O’Connor shrugged. ‘Some of these caves go a long way; there’s one across the border in Mexico that’s over 150 kilometres long.’

  ‘Gives a lot of scope for hiding things. Does the line on the map make any sense?’

  O’Connor steadied his wrist compass and searched the walls with his torch. Suddenly he stopped.

  ‘Look! Up there!’ he exclaimed, flashing his torch two metres above Aleta’s head. ‘Without the map, you’d never know it, but there’s another ledge.’ He gained a foothold on the limestone wall and levered himself up to the smaller ledge, at the end of which was an entrance to a much smaller cave. O’Connor eased his way through the narrow opening to discover another colony of glow-worms, their lethal curtain glimmering at the far end of the cave. He played his torch over the rough limestone floor. On one side of the cave four metal ingots, each indented with the eagle and swastika of the Third Reich, glinted in the light beam.

  Aleta squeezed into the cave beside him and gasped.

  ‘Some of von Heißen’s ill-gotten gains,’ O’Connor said grimly, knowing the probable origin would have been the gold fillings of thousands of Jews.

  ‘Why would he have left them here? Maybe there wasn’t enough time to get them out.’

  ‘That’d be my guess, along with there not being enough space in his truck for the trunks in the ceiling. As for the gold, each of these ingots weighs around 400 ounces, which on today’s market is worth over US$400 000. We’re looking at about one and half million dollars worth here, so God knows how much he’s got away with.’ O’Connor shone his torch around the rest of the cave. ‘No sign of the figurine.’

  ‘Do you think he might have found it down here?’

  ‘I suspect not. Von Heißen was a meticulous diary keeper. The last entry in the final diary was dated the day before he left, and there’s no mention of it.’ O’Connor ran his torch back and forth over the limestone, but after ten
minutes’ searching there was still no clue as to where the figurine might be hidden. Finally he aimed his torch beam at the far corner, towards the ‘curtain of death’.

  ‘There, on the floor, just in front of the glow-worms!’ Aleta tugged at O’Connor’s wetsuit. ‘There’s a faint outline of a nautilus conch shell! Do you remember my grandfather’s notes?’

  ‘The Fibonacci sequence … look for Φ.’

  ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed, realising that the outline in the limestone was not only sacred to many civilisations and religions, but that the spiral of the shell grew in accordance with the Fibonacci sequence.

  The High Priest’s words resonated with the icon on the cave floor. One who is amongst us now will return to unlock the secret, but if they are to be successful, they will need to find the sequence of numbers that is at the base of the universe itself. That sequence contains a common number from which a subtraction of one will give its reciprocal, and to which the addition of one will give its square. Phi and the Fibonacci sequence represented the golden mean, which was at the base of the universe. Aleta knew well that if you divided any number in the sequence by its predecessor, the result was always 1.618. If you subtracted one, you got 0.618, which was the reciprocal, or 1/1.618; and if you added one, then the resultant 2.618 was the square of 1.618.

  ‘We haven’t got time to go in to it now,’ she said, kneeling and using her knife to carefully scrape away the limestone that had accumulated over the sacred icon, ‘but while you were crawling around Jennings’ ceiling, José subjected me to some regression therapy. For the Maya, the conch shell opened a portal to their ancestors.’ Her pulse began to race as O’Connor joined her, and their scraping revealed a rectangle that formed a border around the shell.