The Maya Codex (38 page)

For the next hour, Aleta watched the disasters unfold in Samoa and Indonesia, until the channel crossed to the Philippines, where a deadly typhoon was coming ashore near the north-eastern tip of Luzon. Depressed by the diet of destruction, Aleta started to flick through the cable channels. A preacher in a white suit from one of America’s southern Baptist mega-churches suddenly appeared on the screen.

A pull-through announced ‘The Jerry Buffett Hour – the hour that will
change
your life! – a weekly broadcast that goes to over 300 stations around the world’. The vision cut away to the 15 000-capacity auditorium of the Buffett Evangelical Centre. It was packed to the rafters, the congregation hanging on their preacher’s every word. The cameraman had been well tutored in catching Jerry Buffett’s best side, and he slowly zoomed in, capturing the tele-evangelist’s tanned face, the square jaw and the intensity in his deep-blue eyes.

‘As God’s warnings, in the form of ever-increasing numbers of earthquakes and tsunamis, continue to exact their toll of death and destruction, the end time is closer than you think, my friends!’ Buffett thundered. ‘There are those who are sceptical of the coming Armageddon, but if the American people don’t turn from their ways, if we don’t turn back to the Lord, the prophet Isaiah is very clear!’ Buffett grasped both sides of the massive lectern and began to read from the prophecies of Isaiah 24: ‘ “Behold … the earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and it shall fall!” That, my friends, is clear warning of the coming geographical pole shift from one of the greatest prophets of the ages. Everything Isaiah has foretold has either come to pass or
will
come to pass. A geographic pole shift will be God’s way of punishing a sinful world, just as he punished the ancient Israelites when they turned from the commandments and worshipped the golden calf. It’s right here in Isaiah 13: “Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place.” Those who focus on money, those who engage in sins of the flesh, those who have turned their backs on the Almighty God … His pole shift will swallow them in an instant!’

Buffett paused to let his words take effect, amidst gasps of fear and awe from the congregation. ‘But those of you who truly fear the Lord – not Allah, or Yahweh or any other false god, but the one true God who revealed Himself as our Lord Jesus Christ – at the coming Armageddon, you will be swept up in the rapture and saved!’ Buffett left the lectern and paced the huge stage, speaking more urgently. ‘God’s warning is not only in Isaiah, my friends; it’s here in the Book of Revelation and it’s in Luke 21, where the great physician and confidant of the Apostle Paul warns us very clearly of the coming catastrophe, foretelling of the sea roaring across the land.’

He strode back towards the lectern. ‘There is a lot of nonsense being put about in the media,’ he continued, more quietly again. ‘Occasionally you will read about 2012 – about ancient savages and a missing codex – but there is only one codex we should take any notice of,’ he said, his voice rising again as he held his Bible aloft, ‘and that’s the word of the
Lord.
Be ready, my friends! We know not the day or the hour, but all the signs are with us – tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires and erupting volcanoes. Hurricane Katrina, God’s punishment of a city renowned for sex and sinfulness, was just a mere taste of the real catastrophe that awaits us, for there are limits to the patience of even Almighty God!’

Aleta clicked off the television in disgust. She had long ago abandoned the idea of a wrathful God, who would extract retribution on his people, and she had never been able to accept the Christians’ claim there was only one path. The key sounded in the lock and O’Connor entered with two big backpacks and a smaller plastic bag.

‘We leave tomorrow night on a small container ship bound for Havana. From there we’ll cross the Caribbean, go through the Panama Canal and head north for Puerto Quetzal on the Pacific coast of Guatemala.’

‘Not quite your P&O cruise,’ Aleta observed, her Spanish accent laced with humour.

‘Not quite, no. The other problem is that there’s only one cabin and we’re going as husband and wife.’

‘What?’

‘The captain’s a very strict Catholic, but don’t worry – the bedding arrangements are bunks,’ O’Connor replied with a grin. ‘In the meantime,’ he said, reaching into the plastic bag and hauling out a wad of quetzales, ‘some local currency, and L’Oréal of Paris Super Blonde pre-lightener, as well as L’Oréal’s Viking light ash blonde.’

‘I presume they’re for me.’

‘Together with a pair of sharp scissors.’

Aleta made a face.

‘Look, I know you’re probably fond of your hair, and you’ve got good reason to be. It’s gorgeous —’

‘Spare me the flattery, Mr O’Connor.’

‘But you’ve seen what these guys are like. For them, life’s cheap. You’re just a number and a pay cheque. These are old tricks, but if they buy just an hour or two, they might save your life.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but your world takes a little getting used to. What time do we leave?’

‘The ship sails on the tide tomorrow night, just before midnight. Here’s your new passport,’ O’Connor said, handing Aleta a cherry-coloured Ecuadorian passport embossed with the gold coat of arms incorporating a giant condor atop Mount Chimborazo. ‘We’ve doctored your photograph to ash blonde,’ he added with a grin.

‘Ecuadorian ?’

‘They’ll be looking for a Guatemalan. You speak Spanish, and so do the Ecuadorians.’

On the other side of the city, two police patrolmen cruised along
Greif-swalder Strasse
, near Hamburg’s main railway station, and stopped their silver-and-blue BMW patrol car alongside an old Toyota.

‘The licence plates don’t match,’ the younger of the two policemen observed.

‘
Nein
,’ the other agreed, ‘but the model and the dent in the left fender are identical. Feed the registration into the system and let’s see what we get.’

Across the Atlantic, at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, it was not yet 6 a.m., but Howard Wiley had already arrived, frustrated and angry at the lack of progress.

He strode into the ops room. ‘What’ve we got?’ he demanded of his chief of staff.

‘The Austrian police have found our asset’s body in a burnt-out car in a creek bed. Our contact advised me a short while ago that a hire car fitting the description of the one Tutankhamen and Nefertiti were travelling in has been found in a forest near Freistadt,’ Larry Davis replied, pointing to the small northern Austrian town on one of the electronic maps.

‘What the hell are they doing up there?’

‘We’re still checking,’ Davis replied.

‘They’ll probably use the Czech Republic to try and throw us off the scent,’ Ellen Rodriguez offered. She had deep black shadows under her eyes. With the exception of Davis, who had only just beaten his boss into the room, Operation Maya had been working through the night.

‘And what do you base that on,
Officer
Rodriguez?’ Wiley sneered.

‘Call it a hunch if you like, but we’ve been watching the big airports and train stations and O’Connor would expect that. We’re going to need more than inside contacts for these two. If we’re going to have any hope of tracking which border crossings they’re using, we need to bring the Austrian, German and Czech police and customs agencies into the loop.’

‘And the next thing we’ll be up to our armpits in alligators, trying to explain to Congress and the White House why we blew up a garbage truck in a foreign country!’ Wiley turned back to his chief of staff. ‘What information do we have on their destination?’

Davis looked uncomfortable and raised his eyebrows at Rodriguez.

‘My guess is they’ll try for Guatemala, probably Tikal, as soon as they can, since that’s where the Maya Codex is rumoured to be,’ she said. As per your instructions, I’ve alerted the Guatemala station. They’ve got the airports and major border checkpoints covered and they’re working on possible locations for the codex.’

‘Trains?’ Wiley demanded.

Rodriguez took a deep breath. ‘Guatemalan railways were shut down in 2007.’

Wiley glared at her. ‘Be that as it may, I want these two found and eliminated before they cause any more problems for us in Germany or the Czech Republic or wherever the fuck they are at the moment. In the meantime, I want every border crossing into Guatemala covered, and that includes Mexico, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador, as well as the ports. And I want that codex!’ Wiley motioned Davis into the little room known as the ‘cone of silence’ to one side of the operations room.

‘Rodriguez is becoming a pain in the ass, and she’s far too cosy with the White House for my liking. There’s a briefing on HAARP in Alaska the day after tomorrow. Fuck her off up there as the CIA representative until I can arrange to get her out of here – permanently.’

45

GAKONA, ALASKA

T
he fresh snow drifts outside HAARP’s operations room sparkled under the cold early-December sun. The Director of Gakona, Dr Nathaniel B. Hershey, was very solidly built. In his younger days, the nuclear physicist had played quarterback for the Washington Redskins, and he still worked out every day, but not today. Today he was providing a personal briefing on the capabilities of HAARP to the vice chiefs of the navy, army and air force, as well as the assistant commandant of the Marines, the CIA and a brace of high-powered civilians from the Pentagon.

‘Here at HAARP, we’re at the cutting edge of science,’ Dr Hershey began. ‘Within a few short years we’ve got to the stage where we can generate 3.6 million watts on the ground, and because we have very large phased-array antennae that cover nearly fifteen hectares, we can direct that energy into a narrow beam wherever we want to aim it, blasting the ionosphere with over three gigawatts, or three billion watts, of electromagnetic power.’

Ellen Rodriguez’ eyes widened. Rodriguez was not only fluent in Spanish and German; as a teenager, she had graduated
summa cum laude
from a little-known college in the Bronx and won a scholarship to Columbia University, where she’d majored in environmental physics. She had done as much research on HAARP as she could in the short time before she left Langley, and she had already reached the conclusion that messing with the earth’s delicate balance was madness.

Dr Hershey flashed up a display of the ionosphere, the upper part of the atmosphere that stretched from eighty to 1000 kilometres above the earth and consisted of electrons and charged particles or ions. ‘As most of you are aware, the ionosphere plays an important part in communications, acting as a mirror for radio waves, enabling us to communicate over long distances. What is not so well understood is the effect that it might have on intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from Russia, China, or, in the future, from rogue states like North Korea or Iran.’

‘Can it be used to deflect them?’ asked the nuggetty little four-star commandant from the Marine Corps.

‘That’s one of the things we’re aiming to find out, General,’ Dr Hershey replied, flashing up another PowerPoint slide. ‘By aiming three billion watts at a single point in the ionosphere, we believe we can actually lift it by up to eighty kilometres at a particular point, and it’s quite possible that could be used to deflect any incoming missiles off course.’

‘If you blast the ionosphere with three billion watts, Dr Hershey, and hold a piece of it eighty kilometres out to space, all that energy has to go somewhere, and that somewhere will be into the particles that make up the ionosphere itself, am I right?’ Rodriguez was up the back of the small briefing room, but her voice held an authority that turned the heads of those far more senior in the front row.

‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this,’ Hershey countered, his blue-grey eyes suddenly steely. He had answered questions like this on open days, but he hadn’t expected one in the middle of a top-secret briefing.

‘If I’m right, three billion watts of energy will throw huge amounts of heat into the ionosphere, way past the normal balance. Isn’t there a chance that all of that energy might discharge back? Much the same way as a lightning bolt discharges energy, only in this case, hundreds of times more powerful?’