The Inca Prophecy (4 page)

Professor Macchiarolo’s smile vanished. ‘No, you are right to be worried. The Inca held to a spirituality that was sharply at odds with the scriptures, and if the Inca crystal skulls should come to light, the knowledge they contain will, at the very least, promote fierce debate. They may even change the way many people think. All crystal can be programmed with information – at the heart of
information storage in a modern computer, for example, is a tiny silicon crystal chip – and I have seen ancient archaeological reports that indicate three such skulls exist. If linked together, they may contain a complete message … a message that will be explosive.’ The eminent academic outlined what he suspected the Inca crystal skulls contained as the colour drained from Felici’s face.

‘Dr Rossi is on the line, Eminence,’ Sister Bridget announced, once the cardinal’s guest had departed.

‘Thank you, I’ll take it in the library.’ The cardinal briskly walked to the library phone extension and picked up. ‘
Dottore, buongiorno. Come stai?
’

‘
Bene, grazie
,
Eminenza
,’ the papal physician replied, ‘but I’m afraid His Holiness is not at all well.’ Cardinal Felici, he knew, liked to get straight to the point. ‘His Holiness has just been diagnosed with bladder cancer … a tumour on the bladder wall. We’re scheduling surgery next week.’

‘Shocking news indeed,’ said Felici, his mind racing. ‘What’s the prognosis?’

‘This particular cancer is very aggressive. It will depend on whether it has perforated the bladder walls and spread to the lymph nodes. I thought you should be the first to know.’

‘Of course, thank you. I will return to Rome at the earliest opportunity.’

Felici rang off and immediately dialled the pontiff’s private secretary, Monsignor Abati.

‘I have just spoken with Dr Rossi, Monsignor. A terrible business. I trust His Holiness is resting.’

‘I’m not sure that resting is part of His Holiness’s vernacular, Eminence, but we are doing our best to shield him from his in-tray.’

‘I understand completely, Monsignor.’ Felici had long maintained a close relationship with the fearsomely efficient monsignor, not because of any particular fondness for him, but rather as a means to increase his own power base in the Vatican. ‘It’s a difficult task, but if anyone can do it, you can. In the meantime, it is important that this information is very tightly held. I will shortly draft a media release, which I will copy to you, but I don’t think it necessary to apprise the Curia at this early stage. We will describe His Holiness’s tests as routine.’

‘Absolutely, Eminence.’

Felici put down the phone and moved to the big French windows. The sun had sunk behind the snow-capped mountains and cold shadows extended across the deep waters of the lake. It was time. On his return to Rome, Felici resolved to begin his campaign for the keys of St Peter in earnest. He already held detailed files on every possible competitor, but the one that worried him most was the Cardinal Secretary of State. Cardinal Sabatani, an eminent lawyer and one of the few Jesuits in the college, was a progressive, and Felici considered it unthinkable that a liberal might be elected pope. His thoughts turned to the crystal skull already in the Vatican’s possession.

In 1805, a crystal skull had been recovered by the Holy Alliance. The skull and two yellowed parchments – an ancient cipher along with a translation of an Inca prophecy handed down by word
of mouth – had originally come into the possession of the Spanish conquistadors. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro had captured the Inca king, Atahualpa, and slaughtered thousands of innocent Inca at Cajamarca. The Inca had been forced to convert to Catholicism, and the skull and parchments had passed into the hands of the priests and friars who had accompanied the conquistadors. Unable to crack the cipher, and fearing the power of the skull, the priests had eventually alerted the Holy Alliance, who arranged for the artefacts to be brought back to the Vatican and placed in the secret archives, where most believed they had lain ever since.

Felici crossed to the bookcase at the far end of the library. He reached behind a volume of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ and pressed a small black button. The library shelf revolved noiselessly, revealing a wooden staircase. Felici descended the stairs until he reached the stone steps of a narrow passage excavated through the rock of the promontory, its walls dank and covered in moss. The secret passage had been constructed in 1850, by order of Cardinal Dorino, who had need of an escape route during the reign of Pope Pius IX when the north of Italy and the Papal Army were under siege from the Austrians. The passage led to rooms on the lower floors of the villa, and from there to the boat landing, but Felici had made one important addition to the passage – a private vault chiselled out of the rock, just above the waters of the boathouse. It was this vault that now housed the priceless crystal skull and the ancient parchments.

A small bulb, protected by a rusted cage, probed the shadows around the vault’s heavy steel door. It was fitted with dual locks, and Felici dialled in both combinations. The door moved easily on its massive hinges and Felici took an involuntary step back at the sight
of the skull. Something about the exquisitely carved crystal masterpiece unnerved him deeply. A curious blue light emanated from it, and Felici’s approach caused orange and red flashes of light to spark around the eye sockets. It was as if the skull was somehow communicating.

In the past, Felici had contemplated smashing the skull, but he was now determined to decipher the information within it. But how? Suddenly an image appeared in the left eye socket, followed by another in the right. A strange mist enveloped the inside of the skull and Felici steadied himself against the rock wall of the vault. Deep in the crystal, images of some of the world’s most precious sites were being blown apart with horrific force. Felici watched, mesmerised as the images slowly faded from view. He waited until his breathing returned to normal before moving to the small safe that was anchored in the rock wall. It was designed to withstand intense heat, but more importantly, high humidity. Felici dialled the combination and extracted two crimson folders embossed with his gold coat of arms.

The first document had been translated from the Quechua dialect, and although it was easy to read, its meaning was obscure:

Advertencia – a warning
When the Eagle of the North and the Condor of the South fly together, the Earth will awaken.
Twelve thousand years ago, the last remnants of the ancient civilisations of Atlantis and Lemuria were destroyed. Their scientists had ignored the warnings from the Masters against experiments that upset the planet’s delicate balance. The Masters assembled the most precious of their sacred documents for safekeeping.
The Atlantean Golden Sun Disc, along with the most important documents, were secured in the Temple of the Sun in the Inca capital, Cusco. But when the Spaniards came, the Sun Disc and the documents were removed and taken to the Lost City of Paititi.

Felici had read Plato, and he knew that the revered Greek mathematician and philosopher had mentioned the existence of Atlantis in 360 BC. In the past, Felici had dismissed the lost continent as a figment of Plato’s imagination, but now he wasn’t so sure. Felici had recently learned that in the third century BC, another Greek philosopher, Crantor, had also written of Atlantis. Crantor had visited Egypt, and, after conversations with priests in the ancient capital of Alexandria, he had been shown hieroglyphs the priests kept hidden from view. The hieroglyphs not only confirmed the existence of the Atlantean civilisation, but indicated the Atlanteans were highly advanced, particularly in science and mathematics. Felici turned to the second page of the yellowed Inca prophecy:

The Lost City of Paititi lies deep in the Amazonian jungle. The Sun Disc is now hidden in a subterranean temple, in the Monastery of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. It will remain there until human-kind is ready to receive it, and able to use its extraordinary power for the greater good.
Those who are called the Conquistadors have not found the hidden monastery, nor have they found the citadel of Machu Picchu, for they are focused on gold and greed.
There will come a time when Planet Earth, like the continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, will face destruction, but disaster can be averted. The Source energy enters the planet in two locations. The masculine ray enters in the Himalayas, and the balancing feminine ray enters at Lake Titicaca, the earth’s highest lake. From these two points, a magnetic grid radiates, on which all the ancient sites of power are located. To avoid the destruction that beset Atlantis, you must unite the three crystal skulls, when the sun is at its zenith. But those who seek Paititi must first find the outer sanctuary in the Hidden Valley.
The Great Cipher provides the key. Both the ancient map and the Golden Puma are critical.

Felici returned the parchment to the safe and opened the second folder. As he’d done many times before, Felici pondered the single yellowed document containing a series of mysterious numbers:

The Cipher

299 4 164 177 3 228 45 287 36 224 84 200 83 232 50 145 194 219 101 10 125 127 9 166 216 113 241 38 158 1 3 61 306 187 199 272 217 206 6 183 152 67 145 200 106 306 253 310 231 218 12 108 156 23 126 111 78 219 279 281 260 145 287 166 106 304 7 6 225 66 270 246 204 223 126 218 171 108 140 273 170 281 50 272 243 145 307 270 6 27 250 295 314 107 146 48 207 189 108 304 53 204 180 126 158 210 78 279 68 3 9 105 124 108 6 253 172 280 125 256 78 71 206 225 7 6 70 206 279 225 126 218 9 108 125 212 182 101 291 106 147 219 61 218 152 190 38 24 150 243 189 145 217 55 125 35 234 152 71 158 38 156 6 123 101 219 96 187 125 69 217 117 169 223 270 250 3 225 252 158 68 240 182 104 38 158 196 6 107 124 218 125 79 112 232 114 78 241 55 111 247 170 227 137 145 162 38 192 253 33 96 206 125 69 293 52 287 78 69 147 70 125 78 168 17 152 33 239 52 219 140 3 254 158 309 207 242 75

The cipher had made no sense to Felici, so he’d given a photocopy of the numbers to Monsignor Lorenzo de Luca, the head of the Holy Alliance, and directed him to solve it. The priests in the cipher section had gone to work, using the most sophisticated computer programs available, but so far, without success. Felici had also provided them with a photocopy of the first page of the Inca prophecy. Once the cipher was cracked, he surmised that it would provide a series of compass bearings, but the critical information on the Andes and Lake Titicaca he had kept to himself. Felici was convinced that if the cipher could be decoded, he’d have a way to find Paititi.

To his annoyance, further evidence for this had surfaced in the public domain. A few years before, another document had been discovered in the Jesuit archives in Rome that described an ancient Inca city in the Peruvian jungle, which the natives called Paititi, reportedly rich in gold and precious jewels. Various archaeological expeditions had ensued, which Felici had followed closely, but to date they had all been unsuccessful. He returned the cipher to the safe and locked it, resolving to check on progress when he returned to Rome.

‘You look worried, Eminence,’ Sister Bridget observed as she served an asparagus and mushroom frittata from the green marble top of the elegant Louis XVI sideboard.

‘The Pope’s health,’ Felici replied, not altogether truthfully. ‘He’s just been diagnosed with bladder cancer.’ Bridget was one of the few Vatican insiders Felici trusted.

‘Oh, no …’ Even though her loyalties lay firmly with her own cardinal, the news came as a shock. ‘When will you want to go back?’

Felici reached across the table for Bridget’s hand. ‘We are all entitled to a break, my dear. I’ve already approved a media release for both Vatican and wider public consumption. Dr Rossi and His Holiness’s private secretary are aware of the Pope’s condition, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and that includes the curial cardinals, His Holiness is merely undergoing a routine check-up. You and I will get an early night, and tomorrow, we’ll take a drive in the mountains. We will return to Rome soon enough.’

Bridget smiled and squeezed his hand in return.

Chapter 4

O’Connor alighted from the train and scanned the small redbrick platform that served Auvers-sur-Oise. Apart from a group of tourists, the platform was clear. He made his way through the station exit, towards the headquarters of the self-styled Iranian government-in-exile in Rue des Gords, less than two kilometres from the station. Auvers-sur-Oise was an interesting location for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, he thought.

Auvers on the Oise River, a peaceful little commune set amongst rolling fields on the fringes of the north-west suburbs of Paris, was better known for the great artists who had once painted there than for governments-in-exile. Daubigny, Pissarro, Cézanne, Henri Rousseau, Freundlich and Van Gogh had all lived and painted in the idyllic village. O’Connor glanced at his watch. Just after midday. He’d arranged to meet his contact from the NCRI in the
Commerce de Vins, a small restaurant on the ground floor of the Ravoux Inn, not far from the station.