The Inca Prophecy (18 page)

‘Golzar.’

‘It’s Captain Kashani, sir. I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I thought you ought to know a taxi driver’s been reported missing. He was due to finish his shift at six p.m., but he hasn’t shown up. His wife said it’s very out of character, so I’ve had the police here do
a thorough search around Qom, but so far without results.’

‘You were right to call me, Kashani. Have a description of the driver and the registration number of the taxi sent to all the border crossings and all police stations. Call me immediately if you have something,’ Golzar said, his mind racing as he put down the phone. Was the missing taxi driver just a coincidence, or was he connected with the disappearance of Jafari and the Irish professor?

It was just past five-thirty a.m. when the taxi reached the outskirts of Qasr-e Shirin. The sky behind the high mountains that shadowed the city was tinged with pink and purple, and the driver slowed for a herd of sheep blocking the road. The shepherd shouted in Kurdish, and a mangy sheepdog started to herd the animals to the side of the highway, past a rusty water trailer and on towards some large, dirty tents where chickens were scratching for food around the base of a banana plant. O’Connor was reluctant to go through the centre of the city, but the remarkably modern dual-carriage highway, lined with eucalypts and palm trees, was the only route to the turn-off. The traffic was light, save for the odd truck belching black diesel smoke headed in the opposite direction.

As they came over the top of a rise, O’Connor’s worst fears were realised. A police roadblock had been set up, although at this hour of the day, Route 48 to the border with Iraq was deserted.

‘Fuck it,’ O’Connor muttered. ‘There’s always some bastard who’s going to spoil my day.’

‘What do we do?’ Jafari asked, a tremor in his voice.

‘Stay calm, for starters. There’s only one police car, so that evens things up … a bit. Pull up a few metres short of the roadblock,’ O’Connor instructed the driver.

They rolled to a halt and O’Connor watched the older of the two police officers, his face lined, his white beard neatly trimmed, immediately reaching for his radio. The younger officer, excitedly brandishing a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, screamed, ‘Get out of the car! Get out of the car!’ O’Connor judged he wasn’t much more than nineteen.

‘Do as he says, now,’ O’Connor ordered. The taxi driver opened the car door, which temporarily distracted the young officer. O’Connor leapt out and fired, hitting the policeman in the shoulder. The man dropped his machine gun and O’Connor kicked it towards Jafari on the other side of the taxi. The older officer reached for his SIG Sauer P220 pistol but O’Connor fired instinctively again, hitting him in the arm. The policeman staggered but didn’t lose his gun.

‘Drop it!’ the CIA agent yelled in Farsi. The older officer hesitated and O’Connor fired again, hitting him in the wrist. The old Iranian’s pistol gently arced towards the ground as the man clutched his wrist with his good hand, his face twisted in agony.

‘Face down in the ditch, both of you!’ O’Connor ordered, jerking his head towards the ditch on the side of the highway. The younger policeman hesitated and O’Connor put a round alongside his boot. ‘Face down in the ditch, or the next round will be through your head,’ he growled. ‘Cover them, Jafari.’ He turned to the taxi driver. ‘Have you got any rope in your trunk?’

The old driver nodded numbly, his eyes filled with fear.

‘Get it!’ O’Connor worked swiftly, taking the older police-
man’s keys and handcuffing both officers’ hands behind their backs, by which time the taxi driver had returned with some oily old rope.

‘Get in the ditch with them,’ O’Connor said, winking at the old man so he would know he meant him no harm. The old man willingly joined his two countrymen. O’Connor lashed the taxi driver’s hands behind his back, leapt out of the ditch and retrieved the P220 and the police radio. He ran to the cab, shoved it into gear and parked it on the side of the road, shielding the ditch from view. O’Connor then grabbed his backpack and yelled at Jafari, who was holding the submachine gun as if it were about to go off. ‘Come on! We’ll take the police car, it’s in better nick.’

‘But won’t they …’

‘Jesus Christ, Jafari. Yes, they will, now get in!’

‘Alcatraz One, this is Cyrus,’ O’Connor called on his phone, one hand on the steering wheel as he accelerated towards the dirt turn-off into the mountains. ‘Alcatraz One, this is Cyrus, this is Cyrus, come in Alcatraz, over.’

His call was answered with nothing but distorted transmission, but then suddenly a voice came through clearly. ‘Cyrus, this is Alcatraz One, Alcatraz One, over.’

‘This is Cyrus, activate Asman, hot extraction, grid 547824, over.’

‘Alcatraz One, grid 547824, airborne in three minutes, over.’

‘Cyrus, thanks, out.’

O’Connor smiled inwardly. Seal Team Five would have spent an uncomfortable night on the ground in the Black Hawks, but the Navy Seals knew well that every second could mean the difference between success and failure. Remaining on three minutes’ notice to move through the night was world-class.

The police radio suddenly burst into transmission, border command wanting a progress report.

‘We have the taxi and the driver,’ O’Connor confirmed in Farsi, ‘and we’ve arrested Major Jafari and a Professor McLoughlin who was travelling with him. We’re bringing them back to Qasr-e Shirin, estimated time of arrival fifteen minutes, over.’

‘General Shakiba will be informed immediately. You have done well, Zardooz, out.’

Not well enough, O’Connor thought wryly. He slowed as the dirt track wound into a wadi and then accelerated up the other side. By O’Connor’s calculations, the landing zone, or LZ, was about four kilometres from here. It was still in Iran, about a kilometre from the border, and Seal Team Five would have to violate Iranian airspace, but O’Connor’s choice had been deliberate. The main highway led to the fortified border crossing to the south, but here, the track just continued across the border into the Iraqi desert. But O’Connor had figured that the Iranians wouldn’t leave it entirely undefended. His guess was correct.

The commander of Seal Team Five nodded to the captain of the first Black Hawk. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, buckling up his gear. ‘Cyrus is in trouble.’ The pilots fastened their seatbelts, the co-pilot radioed the other three aircraft and they immediately began their start-up procedures. The back-up team were in a second Black Hawk, with two Apache attack helicopters as escorts, armed with 30 mm automatic cannon, 70 mm rockets and Hellfire anti-tank missiles.

Chapter 22

Aleta collected her baggage at Chicago’s bustling O’Hare Airport, one of the world’s busiest, and picked up her hire car. She thought she might feel some regret, or at least a tinge of sadness in leaving Ryan, but an overwhelming sense of freedom enveloped her. In keeping with her mood, she upgraded to a red Mustang convertible. A cold wind blew across the snow patches on a frozen Lake Michigan, and it caught her long dark hair as she headed down Route 90 for Chesterton, just across the Indiana border. Aleta smiled to herself. Ryan would never have spent money on a convertible, much less have the hood down with the heater running full bore.

Anna Mitchell-Hedges led Aleta into her cosy living room, where the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull sat on a black velvet cushion
on a small coffee table.

‘It’s stunning … simply beautiful,’ Aleta gasped, captivated. The skull was the size of a child’s head and totally transparent. Accurate to the last millimetre, with a moveable jaw, the skull had been flawlessly carved. The crystal captured the light from a nearby lamp and seemed to play with the beams before reflecting the light back through its clear, silky-smooth surface. Aleta could feel an indefinable energy emanating from the object.

She realised she had been staring at the skull without speaking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘you must think I’m very rude.’

Anna smiled. ‘Not at all. He has that effect on people. You can pick him up if you like.’

Aleta grasped the chillingly cold crystal, and carefully lifted the skull to face level. The eye sockets were finely chiselled and a light danced deep within them.

‘This came from the jungles of Belize, Ms Mitchell-Hedges?’ Aleta asked, eager to hear the story from the woman herself.

‘Yes, but please call me Anna. It was 1924, and for months rumours had been circulating about a lost city in the jungles. My adopted father, Frederick, who used to say that a life lived without zest and adventure was not life at all, set sail from Liverpool for what was then British Honduras – now Belize.’

‘And he took you with him?’

The old lady smiled. ‘I was just sixteen, but Frederick thought it would be good for my education. He was convinced that civilisation had begun not in the Middle East, but in the ancient city of Atlantis, and his studies led him to believe that the remnants of Atlantean culture were to be found in Central and South America.
We paddled down the Rio Grande, which was infested with crocodiles, and when we were miles into the jungles of Belize we discovered a collection of moss-encrusted stone ruins, which turned out to be an ancient city.’

‘Maya?’

Anna nodded. ‘Undoubtedly. Pyramids, palaces, walls, subterranean chambers … all taken over by the jungle, along with a vast amphitheatre capable of holding 10 000 people. My father had forbidden me to climb on any of the pyramids, but one afternoon, the heat in my tent was stifling … I can still feel it now. My father and the excavation team were taking a siesta, so I snuck down one of the jungle tracks.’ The old lady’s eyes sparkled at the memory of it. ‘Howler monkeys were chattering up in the fig trees as I climbed to the top of the tallest pyramid. The view across the top of the jungle canopy was stunning, but something kept reflecting sunlight in my eyes, and I realised it was coming from deep inside the pyramid.’

‘Did you tell your father?’

‘I had to. I couldn’t get inside on my own. He gave me the most frightful ticking off, but when he mellowed, his curiosity got the better of him and he redirected the workforce on to the temple. It took weeks before we could get inside, and there were snakes and scorpions to worry about, but they lowered me down … and there he is,’ she said, her eyes misty.

‘What an amazing experience, Anna,’ Aleta said, reluctantly returning the skull to its velvet cushion.

Further conversation was interrupted by the sudden pealing of the doorbell. Anna excused herself, returning moments later with a thin, elegantly dressed woman whom Aleta judged to be in her late forties.

‘Aleta, this is Lena Begich,’ Anna said. ‘Lena has worked with the skull for some years now. We found out very early that Lena was able to interpret the messages embedded within the crystal.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Lena,’ Aleta said, feeling sceptical. The prospect of someone decoding messages from a crystal skull seemed like the stuff of science fiction. ‘How do you interpret the messages?’ she asked.

‘It’s known as channelling. Many people are very doubtful at first,’ Lena replied, as if reading Aleta’s mind, ‘but some of us have an ability to translate information from objects. We discovered my skill quite by accident. The first time I was introduced to the skull, I was in the company of some of Anna’s guests, and I drifted off … it was only when I woke up that everyone told me what incredible information I’d been able to retrieve from the crystal.’