The scrutineers mixed the ballots and then counted them to ensure there were 121. Satisfied, they extracted the ballots one by one. The first two scrutineers noted the names and the third scrutineer announced them to the college:
‘Cardinal Ferdinando Sabatani …’
‘Cardinal Salvatore Felici …’
‘Cardinal Felix Schäfer …’
‘Cardinal Felix Schäfer …’
Felici mentally tallied the results and wondered which bloc was supporting Schäfer. He considered Schäfer’s candidacy to be just as dangerous as Sabatani’s, as they were both in the same liberal mould. Schäfer was also very young. John Paul II had been only fifty-eight when he was elected in 1978, and he had led the Church for over twenty-six years. Schäfer was even younger. Some of his colleagues might need reminding that long papacies were not without risk.
Chapter 45
Save for some drifting weeds and silt, visibility was surprisingly good under the water. O’Connor swam slowly underneath the island towards the area below von Heißen’s hut, the bubbles from his and Aleta’s regulators mingling with the rotting totora reeds on the bottom of the floating island. O’Connor probed the area with his torch beam. He was about to tie off a length of nylon cord for a more detailed search when he saw it: the corner of what looked like a metal box protruding above the mud. He grabbed Aleta’s wrist and pointed with the torch beam, and they swam towards it. The metal trunk was half-buried in the silt, and O’Connor carefully scraped away the mud while Aleta focused her torch on the rusted hasps. O’Connor reached for his knife, prised the hasps apart and raised the lid, causing a flurry of silt and rotten totora reeds. Several heavy calico bags and a waterproof package were lying in the trunk. O’Connor opened one of the bags and two gold ingots glinted in the torch beam. He turned to Aleta. Even through the bubbles rising around her mask, he could see the excitement in her eyes. But the waterproof package intrigued them even more. Aleta spelled out DIARY in the silt and O’Connor nodded in agreement.
The sniper adjusted the focus on his binoculars and watched the ferry return to Puno harbour. Whatever the mission had been amongst the islands of reeds, it hadn’t taken very long, but again, there was no clear shot at his target. He would have to be patient.
O’Connor looked around the Puno railway station, but sensed nothing unusual about the other passengers; he and Aleta boarded the train for Cusco, en route to Machu Picchu. The zenith of the sun was just eight days away.
‘Do you ever slum it?’ Aleta asked, as she settled back into the comfort of a first-class seat on Peru Rail’s Andean Explorer for the ten-hour trip to the old Inca capital.
‘Not if I can avoid it … which used to give the boys and girls in accounts in Langley no end of grief. They caught me out once. I claimed some taxi fares to balance my allowances, but when they discovered I’d actually been on one of our aircraft carriers all hell broke loose.’
‘And what was your excuse? An honest oversight?’ Aleta raised one eyebrow.
‘I just sent a message to them asking them if they had any idea how big those carriers were. Prompted a rocket from my old DDO Tom McNamara, but he smoothed things over.’
Aleta shook her head and placed her hand on O’Connor’s knee underneath the table. ‘I meant what I said earlier. I’d like to come back here one day.’
‘We will.’ O’Connor squeezed her hand. ‘But there’s a little matter of two crystal skulls to uncover first,’ he said, reaching for his briefcase.
‘Not to mention the prophecy and the Lost City of Paititi. Do you think it really exists? Given how many expeditions have set out in search of it, you’d think someone would have found it by now.’
‘Not necessarily. The jungle can be impenetrable. Look how long it took to discover Machu Picchu. The Inca started building it in 1400, but Hiram Bingham didn’t uncover it until 1911. I suspect Paititi does exist, but it’ll be well hidden by the jungle.’
‘The question is, where?’ pondered Aleta.
‘Somewhere deep in the Amazonian basin, I suspect. There are still tribes out there who’ve never seen a white man. Perhaps if we uncover the second skull, which seems to be located somewhere in the area of Machu Picchu, there will be another clue.’
‘Felici would be beside himself if he knew we were getting close,’ Aleta mused.
‘That bastard’s been in cahoots with Wiley from the very beginning.’
‘You think he’s behind the leaks on Sabatani?’ They’d read about them in the newspapers.
‘Tom McNamara used to say that if you want to find out who’s behind a leak, find out who benefits. By discrediting Sabatani, Felici places himself in a strong position to be elected pope.’
‘Oh God, what a frightening thought. Although it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve had a charlatan on the throne of Peter,’ Aleta said.
O’Connor grinned. ‘They don’t like you to know about their less than holy popes. I remember reading about the Ballet of the Chestnuts once … fifty of Rome’s most beautiful courtesans crawling naked between candelabra picking up chestnuts, guests mounting them from every direction, with the Pope’s servants keeping score of ejaculatory capacity so His Holiness could give out the prizes … Must have been quite a night.’
‘Yet my father would never hear a bad word said about the Church,’ said Aleta. ‘He absolutely adored John XXIII, and often told me the story of the night he arrived in Istanbul, without anyone in the world. Archbishop Roncalli, as John XXIII was known then, drove his old Fiat down to the docks at midnight to put my father on a ship to Guatemala. Von Heißen was waiting for them in the shadows, but Roncalli and the head of the Jewish Agency bribed the ship’s captain and he took my father and other children on board.’
‘Well it’s taken a while, but justice has finally been served to von Heißen,’ O’Connor said, opening the diary they’d recovered from the waterproof bag at the bottom of Lake Titicaca.
‘I’m amazed the Israelis let you keep the original of that.’
‘There’s honour amongst thieves, and they have a copy. Anyway, they’re more interested in prosecuting von Heißen for his role at Mauthausen rather than what went on in the Vatican. But this is the smoking gun we’ve been looking for, and when we fire it again, it will reverberate around the world. We’ve now got it in writing that Felici’s father, a gentleman of the pope, no less, laundered Nazi gold and spirited von Heißen out of Europe disguised as a priest.’ O’Connor turned to von Heißen’s spidery entry for 2 June 1945:
Alberto Felici demanded 50 per cent of the gold. Outrageous, but 11th Armoured Division are close and advancing rapidly. Reluctantly agreed as Vatican Bank will effectively cover any traces. Disguise as a simple priest very effective. American soldier guarding road from Mauthausen to Venice very apologetic after describing road as a ‘fucking mess’. American Mustang fighters screaming overhead. Road littered with burnt-out tanks and armoured vehicles of a once proud Third Reich. The military have betrayed the Fatherland! As part of my deal with Felici, I must part with the exquisite pectoral cross – solid gold, with a magnificent ruby in the centre surrounded by twelve large diamonds. Felici most impressed – expressed a wish that one day his son might wear it.
‘That cross was in my family for a very long time,’ Aleta murmured softly. ‘It was taken when the Nazis rifled through my grandfather’s apartment in Vienna. It originally came from an archaeological dig on the Mount of Olives. I think Grandpa Levi traced it back to Richard the Lionheart and the Third Crusade.’
‘Must be worth an absolute fortune, which would also appeal to Felici.’
‘It’s unique,’ Aleta agreed, ‘and only someone as arrogant as Felici would continue to wear it.’
‘If the cardinals knew about this, it would be enough to stymie Felici’s election, but it’s probably too late for that now. At the very least it will throw the spotlight back on the Vatican’s involvement with Hitler and the Nazis … there are a number of court cases agai
nst the Vatican Bank, and perhaps it’s time they opened up their books.’
‘You’re going to make the diary’s information public?’
O’Connor shook his head. ‘Like Mossad, the last thing you and I need now is publicity. When this is over, I’ll leak it to Campioni at the Vatican Insider, and regardless of who is elected, the cardinals will have to clean up the mess. When the contents of Felici’s vault on Lake Como and his relationship with Wiley become public, it’ll make the paedophile priest scandal look like a sideshow. Let’s go and sit in the observation car … I’ll shout you a pisco sour.’
In the observation car, the barman, attired in black waistcoat and bowtie, mixed Peru’s national drink: pisco, sugar, lemon, the white of an egg and angostura bitters. A band was playing beside the bar, and the soft panpipe sounds of ‘El Cóndor Pasa’ floated through the train.
The shores of Lake Titicaca gave way to the tufted grasses of the Andean highlands and the train reached Juliaca, where the tracks ran through the centre of town and a jumble of markets. Colourful tricycles, some with barbecues welded to the front with meats sizzling on the plates, added to the chaos of the streets. O’Connor was once again on alert, scrutinising the crowd to see whether anyone boarded the train. Children ran alongside the carriages as they moved slowly past the mud-brick buildings, just metres from the track, before the train began its climb to La Raya, a small village on the Altiplano dominated by towering snow-capped Andean peaks. The twin towers of a small church stood sentinel over the market – an oasis of colour in the desolate Altiplano, where everything from bolts of cloth to lollipops were on sale, and where native women, often with a baby sitting in a sling on their backs, came up to the windows of the train, asking for a few sol for stuffed toy llamas.
O’Connor walked casually through the carriages, hand on his Glock, making a careful check on the passengers. By the time he returned to his seat, the staff had served afternoon tea on crisp white linen and the train began to descend into the fertile valleys of the Urubamba Canyon, following the rocky beds of the Vilcanota and Huatanay rivers. Here the fields were dotted with workers and the rivers were lined with eucalypts and willow trees. Not long after, the train slowed as it approached the outskirts of Cusco. From there, it would be on to Machu Picchu.
To the north, the American embassy in Lima was a hive of activity. The New York Times had reported on the Wikileaks cables that accused the State Department of asking diplomats to spy on host nations. Over 1300 of the cables had come from Lima, and the CIA’s beleaguered chief of station, Cameron Reyes, was enduring another tirade from Wiley on the need for secrecy when deploying the sniper asset to Machu Picchu.
Chapter 46
The guard on the main entrance to the heavy-water reactor complex at Arak snapped to attention as Brigadier General Shakiba’s official car swept through. The general was expected.
‘The technical problems have been solved, General,’ Colonel Rostami informed his boss proudly as he escorted him into the lift that would take them to Arak’s underground laboratory, more than a hundred metres below the main reactor dome. They stepped into a tunnel at the bottom where the chief nuclear scientist, Dr Assad Khadem, was waiting. General Shakiba slipped into a white lab coat and overboots and followed Khadem and Rostami into the near-sterile laboratory.
‘The plutonium cylinders are loaded here,’ Khadem explained, indicating the array of computers where a technician was working at the remote controls of a robot, guiding the arm with pinpoint precision. The delicate task of loading the nuclear suitcase-bomb cylinders was being carried out in a sealed chamber with a thick glass viewing screen. Air had been evacuated from the chamber and the pressure was maintained at less than one atmosphere as a further precaution against any radioactive material escaping.
‘The cylinders each contain ten kilograms of plutonium,’ Khadem continued, ‘fashioned into a sphere. We’ve designed a tamper that will reflect any escaping neutrons back into the plutonium core, which has enabled us to reduce the size of the sphere in diameter.’
‘And the critical mass?’ Shakiba asked.
‘The tests on the implosion design have been successful, and we’re confident the plutonium sphere can be uniformly compressed into a critical mass. Once this is achieved, a fraction of a second later, fission will occur. Provided we get a uniform detonation, ten kilograms of plutonium will generate the equivalent of 200 000 tonnes of TNT.’
‘How confident are you of a uniform detonation?’ Shakiba asked.
‘That’s hard to predict, General,’ Khadem replied. ‘But even if we only achieve 50 per cent …’
Shakiba nodded, his eyes narrowing. Suitcase bombs yielding 100 000 tonnes of TNT, timed to go off in cities like New York, London and Sydney, would destroy most of Lower Manhattan, the key icons like Westminster, Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and the Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Sydney.
Major Golzar was waiting in the remote mountain location when General Shakiba’s car arrived at the training base set up as part of Operation Khumm. Fewer than fifty recruits had graduated from the Yawm al-Qiyamah Jihad elite suicide squad. The last group was scheduled to graduate in a week’s time and General Shakiba watched as Golzar put them through their paces on the obstacle course. Each carried a mock-up nuclear suitcase in a backpack.
‘Well done, Shahadi. Good effort!’ Golzar enthused as Ahmed Shahadi led his closest rival by a good twenty metres going over the two-metre wall. Judging his run, Shahadi leapt onto the rope hanging over the ‘bear pit’, a six-metre pit of water with snow and ice floating on the top. With perfect timing he released the rope, allowing his momentum to carry him to the other side. Without breaking stride, he dived forward and leopard-crawled under the razor wire to the finish of the gruelling kilometre-long course.
‘The Lebanese recruit Shahadi is by far the best student we’ve had on the entire course, General,’ Golzar confided when they retired to his office for coffee.
Shakiba nodded. ‘Hezbollah also gave him very high marks.’
‘He’s asked to be given the toughest assignment … says he owes it to his family. He keeps a photograph of them in his room.’
‘And he will get his wish.’ Shakiba had a very special assignment for the promising young suicide bomber. ‘Where are we at with the rest of the deployments?’
Golzar extracted a laser pointer from his top pocket and flicked on a large computer screen on the far wall. ‘Team Salahuddin is undercover in New York,’ he said. ‘Team Khalil is in position in London, Team Tamerlane in Paris, Team Mehmed in Sydney and Team Selim in Chicago. Six other teams are in the process of getting established,’ he said, indicating six more large Western cities. ‘All of them have been briefed to do nothing to draw attention to themselves. That includes attending the local mosque. For the duration of Operation Khumm, they’ve been given an exemption from Friday prayers,’ Golzar said.
‘Excellent. And the suitcases?’
‘They are being shipped as exports from a neutral third country, mainly in shipping containers of saffron, pistachios, dates and barberries. I received word yesterday that Salahuddin and Mehmed have successfully retrieved their consignments, and the others are close at hand. The infidel’s surveillance of his seaports is almost nonexistent,’ Golzar added, his eyes glinting.
‘You’ve done well, Golzar. And I have good news,’ General Shakiba said, extracting a set of insignia from his briefcase. ‘Congratulations. You are now a colonel in the Quds Force,’ he said, shaking Golzar’s hand.
The new colonel’s face cracked into a smile. ‘Thank you, General, I will wear them with pride,’ Golzar said, clicking his heels.
‘Now before I leave, I’d like a word with young Shahadi.’
Chapter 47
The scrutineers read out the results of another round of balloting. At the end of the count, the scrutineers tallied the results and the third scrutineer announced them to the college:
‘Cardinal Salv
atore Felici, 37 votes …’
‘Cardinal Ferdinando Sabatani, 32 votes …’
‘Cardinal Felix Schäfer, 26 votes …’
The remaining votes were more or less evenly distributed amongst the other candidates, none of whom Felici rated highly. As the bus collected the cardinals for the short trip back to their accommodation, Felici was deep in thought. It had turned into a three-horse race, and he turned his mind to how he might approach those blocs he had not brought on board.
One of the scrutineers fed the traditional fumo nero candles into the antiquated stove and black smoke wisped from the makeshift chimney above the Sistine Chapel, indicating balloting was over for the day. A collective sigh of disappointment issued from the crowded Piazza San Pietro. There was no new pope just yet.
Over a simple buffet lunch provided by the nuns, Cardinal Schäfer was engaged in conversation with the leader of the African bloc. Cardinals were forbidden from permitting external influences to affect their vote, but they were only human; the notion that ‘the Holy Spirit decided the next pope’ was tenuous at best.
‘I’m flattered by the support I’ve been given, Victor, but I think it’s time to get behind the one candidate,’ Schäfer urged Cardinal Abasi, the Archbishop of Nairobi.
‘Sabatani? What about the media reports on the discussion papers? Contraception is one thing, but a greater role for women? What sort of a role does he have in mind, Felix?’
‘We shouldn’t take too much notice of articles that appear in the media, especially ones that appear just before a conclave. Cardinal Sabatani is one of the finest theologians I know. He’s not about to do anything rash, but unless we change the outlook in Rome, we’re going to be in trouble. Have you seen the latest figures for the seminaries?’
The Inca Prophecy Page 26
