‘Hey, Charlie, you greedy bastard,’ grumbled Matt, making no effort to mask his anger at Charlie’s attempt to strike a new deal over his escape.
‘Twenty grand? Greedy?’ protested Charlie. ‘I could spend that on doughnuts in a month.’
Matt climbed out of his hiding place and felt enormous relief when he sat on a regular seat. He hoped he wouldn’t have to go back in the stinking box until they reached border territory, but while Charlie returned to the front seat and concentrated on driving, Matt’s mood darkened. What if they were compromised here and he didn’t have time to get back in the smuggling compartment? How could he get away? Which direction would provide the best cover? He found himself thinking like the soldier in his book, the hero everyone thought he was, but they passed village after village with no difficulty. For the next half an hour until the border with Belize there would be nothing but jungle, a deep green façade either side of them behind which everything was inky black.
A bright flash of glinting metal among the foliage suddenly caught Matt’s eye. He dismissed it until a series of objects became visible, just behind the line of trees. There was the occasional blinking glass of a vehicle windscreen, and – unmistakably – long tank barrels. The camouflage netting slung over them did little to hide them from the road. Half a mile further he spotted army trucks, jeeps and armoured personnel carriers. Hundreds of them were lined up, parked out of the sun under trees.
As Charlie drove on, Matt noticed that, far from thinning out, the military presence strengthened. The Volkswagen was now only just outside the tiny border town, but all around them were soldiers, tanks and supply vehicles.
Then they were in the town and suddenly all evidence of the Guatemalan army vanished. Matt lowered himself into the hidden compartment and shut the lid, onto which Charlie scattered handfuls of odoriferous clothes.
The border post was familiarly oppressive to Charlie. He had passed through the US-Mexican border and the Mexican-Guatemalan border on the way to the dig, and the intimidating atmosphere of excessive and inexplicable Third World bureaucracy backed up with guns had pervaded all of them. Tensing inside, but putting on a brave face, he parked the van and lumbered into the run-down passport inspection office.
Inside was a large map of Guatemala on which, Charlie was interested to note, Belize appeared as a Guatemalan region, marked in the same small-size lettering as other local areas.
The Guatemalans had never given up their territorial claim.
Charlie handed his passport across a desk to a middle-aged soldier with a large moustache. The soldier glanced at Charlie, then stared inside the passport for a full minute, enjoying his moment of glory while the obese American boy shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Slowly he picked up his rubber stamp, still staring at Charlie, and flicked through the passport to find an empty page to mark the exit visa.
Next, the vehicle insecticide spray and customs inspection. On the Guatemalan side an officer slid open the door and glanced inside before waving Charlie through the gates to Belize. Easy, thought Charlie.
The next inspection, however, was thorough. Charlie watched helplessly from the Belizean passport office as uniformed men conducted a plenary search of the messy interior of his van, and felt his legs turn to jelly when the sound of excited voices announcing a discovery was accompanied by the clicking of gun safety catches being released.
* * *
Authorisation to add a man to his crew in Tikal reached Paulo via an oddly-worded e-mail from the palace. Permission appeared to be conditional upon the additional man being made available for another governmental research project immediately after the completion of the dismantling of the artefact. The nature of the subsequent work was not made clear, and something about the tone of the message made Paulo disinclined to ask questions, so he shrugged and decided not to mention it, but his mood had changed and Ruby sensed that he had become unsettled, almost fearful. This triggered a resurgence of her own disquiet, and she began seriously to question whether she had made yet another bad call in refusing to go with Matt.
Brad began helping to dismantle and rebuild sections of scaffolding as the team worked its way around the artefact’s outer skin, removing panels of gold-plated bodywork. Each panel they removed was photographed and catalogued, and placed on a wooden pallet at the edge of the hangar. A bizarre grey superstructure was emerging, tightly and efficiently packed with complex systems. Involvement in an archaeological find such as this was so far removed from sifting through soil looking for fragments of pottery that Brad couldn’t believe what he was doing now could be classed as the same subject. He dutifully did everything Paulo asked of him, but he did it with his mouth open wide in constant astonishment.
‘Please permit me to check my e-mails, Ruby.’
She looked up. Dr Berger stood at her side.
‘Again? That’s the fifth time today. My work is starting to pile up thanks to all these interruptions,’ she protested as she saved her file and vacated her seat. She stood around, tutting, while he inserted the Wi-Fi dongle and checked for the specific e-mail that had so far failed to materialise. On this fifth attempt, however, something arrived that elicited an expression on his face which was not entirely unlike a smile.
‘Carbon dating is extremely accurate with human tissue,’ he explained to Ruby, as if she didn’t know. ‘I have just received results which suggest that we can be very confident these people died twelve thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven years ago.’
He stood up and offered the warm seat back to Ruby. She sat down to resume work on her lengthy report document, trying not to get distracted by the carbon dating results. The precise date was roughly in line with her visual analysis and educated guess, but to have it confirmed like that was an event of fundamental importance. She stared at the words in her document, but they didn’t sink in. The certainty of the antiquity of this flying machine, coupled with the uncertainty of her future, made concentration impossible.
She sat back and noticed that Dr Berger had forgotten something. The dongle was still in the laptop. She was still connected to the Internet. She glanced at the others – all were engrossed in their activities and paid her no attention. Here was a chance to tell the world of her incarceration, she realised, immediately opening a browser window and logging into her Hotmail account. She opened a new message and selected a few key contacts as recipients, and began typing a passionate cry for help.
She stopped writing and looked blankly at the wall.
The reckless side of her nature led her finger to the delete key. She had to take some chances in life, the devil in her head was whispering. She had to go with the flow of this situation, stay in control of her wits and come out of it a winner.
She deleted what she had written and shut down the program, then whipped out the dongle, went over to Dr Berger and handed it innocently back to him.
Ruby returned to her computer. The Word document now exceeded twenty thousand words, but there was at least as much again waiting to be entered. She still couldn’t focus on the broader task, so she decided to glance at some of Lorenzo’s saved e-mails. There was an ongoing correspondence with a government official in Paris, containing discussions of the ways in which the French could work with General Orlando if he were to become the Guatemalan President and how they were supporting his cause. Another French contact had written that two men died in an explosion during the testing of a reactor. It was followed by a note confirming the names of the team members who would be working on Project B, and their date of arrival. It was the same day that Ruby’s team had begun work, but the names were different.
‘Michel, can I borrow you for a minute?’ she called.
He came and stood by her, his hand resting casually on her shoulder.
‘Are there other projects at Tikal besides us?’
‘Of course. There are only a few weeks available for the world to prepare, so obviously we have multiple teams working on this stuff.’
‘What are you talkin
g about?’
‘Oh, I probably shouldn’t say. But I can tell you we’re Project D. The scientists from Project B are staying at our hotel.’
‘So what is Project B?’
‘They’re not allowed to talk about it, and we’re not allowed to discuss our work with them. All I know is that they are based somewhere here at Tikal too.’
‘Do you know if there’s a Project A or a Project C?’
‘Oh yes. There are dozens of others.’
‘Where’s it all going, Michel?’
Michel seemed about to speak when Philipe, who had been edging closer, glared at him. Michel acknowledged the silent reprimand. He shrugged at Ruby.
Sunday 25th November 2012
‘You have a lot of paperwork building up, my dear.’
A mound of scraps sat on the desk in front of her, secured from being blown away by any breezes in the hangar by the weight of a grubby coffee mug. The workload was obvious. Ruby didn’t need Paulo to tell her she was slipping behind.
‘It’s under control,’ she hissed, thinking it would be even more so if he left her alone to get on with it. ‘These French guys are scribbling notes and reports throughout the day. They’re generating a vast amount of technical information, their handwriting is appalling, and I’m doing my bloody best, all right?’
‘We are working to a tight deadline,’ added Paulo. ‘There is much at stake here. Maybe you could keep working while we take our coffee break?’
‘Maybe you could go take a running jump,’ she replied, standing up and joining the others at the little canteen table.
‘I brought a local newspaper in from our hotel, Ruby,’ offered Michel. ‘I thought you might like to read it, since you have been so isolated these past few days.’
He handed it to her. It was mostly about the new President, with articles – seemingly written at gunpoint, thought Ruby – about how his policies would increase the prosperity of all Guatemalans. Suddenly she laughed out loud.
‘The paper says Guatemala is on course to become a world power!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who on earth believes this kind of rubbish?’
With the exception of Brad, the assembled faces showed surprise and a detectable degree of offence at her remark. Michel held out his hand for the return of the newspaper, whispering, ‘You really do not know, do you, Ruby?’
‘What?’
Once again, Michel was silenced by a look from Philipe. This was really starting to get on Ruby’s nerves.
‘What is it with you, Philipe? You’re always stopping people from telling me anything. Arsehole.’
Philipe replied in the kind of French that she hadn’t been taught at school and returned to his work. ‘You will know what you need to know, Ruby,’ he called from across the hangar, ‘but only when you need to know it.’
‘Is there anything we can all talk about?’ she asked the remaining coffee drinkers at the table.
‘The past,’ suggested Michel.
This was her kind of territory. She relaxed.
‘The past. OK. So from what we know,’ she said, ‘there’s a gap of about eight thousand years between the people who made this aircraft and the Sumerians with their emerging pre-Egyptian civilisation, during which we’ve found nothing to indicate any sign of sophistication at all.’
‘That is true, Ruby,’ Michel replied.
‘In that case, this technology the ancients developed, it didn’t go anywhere. It just died away.’
‘It is not the fact of the disappearing technology that interests us as scientists. The fact is obvious and indisputable. It is the speed at which it declined and the reasons for that decline. If we can solve those mysteries, our society will be much enriched.’
‘Do you have any theories, Michel?’
‘I have many. We have documentary evidence of more recent societies rising and falling. They seem to slide back into mediocrity. Their civilisation becomes primitive, and they lose their collective memory of their former greatness. Often this happens due to war, natural disaster, unscientific belief systems, accident or a gradual neglect, but whatever happens, they leave an imprint on our planet, even if it is hard to see.’
‘Such as the buried foundations of their buildings?’
‘More than that,’ said Michel. ‘I mean the positions of their buildings. The alignment of their structures. Anyone can place bricks next to each other. It takes mathematical and astronomical knowledge to align those bricks with magnetic north and to portray an accurate scale model of a star constellation on Earth.’
‘That’s not proven,’ she replied with an unfamiliar lack of conviction.
‘Remember that the Mayans believed they came from the constellation of Pleiades, Ruby. Why would they not attempt to represent those stars in the alignment of their temples? Tikal has been shown to mirror the stars of Pleiades.’
‘Not objectively or scientifically,’ Ruby said. ‘Someone just took a map of all the temple mounds around here and joined the dots to suit the theory. There are so many dots you could do anything with them.’
‘Are you equally sceptical about the pyramids at Giza? There are only three dots to align there to get a match for Orion’s belt. Plus, the Sphinx, of course, and its relationship to the constellation of Leo.’
‘Surely that depends on whether you think the Sphinx was contemporaneous with the pyramids, or whether it was built much earlier,’ Ruby announced, realising that she was digging herself into a hole from which she could only escape by adopting an unproven theory about the age of the monument. If only she could find out what message the stolen scrolls contained, all such speculation could be ended permanently.
‘Why?’ asked Michel.
‘If the Sphinx really is as old as its weathering patterns suggest, then it could be the same age as this aircraft, and the same age as the dying civilisation. This aircraft proves that there was a society far older than Pharaonic Egypt. The Sphinx might have been built as a marker of that ancient time, and maybe records of that time were stored inside it in the clay tubes I found.’
‘Ah yes. The quest for the Hall of Records, I believe the New Agers call it. The Holy Grail of archaeology. Edgar Cayce and his drug-induced ramblings.’
‘There’s no need to be cynical. Not now that we know all this. We know they’re probably right.’
‘Don’t be so sure, Ruby. It’s just a hunk of rock. We don’t know when it was carved, and without those scrolls we never will. Experts will argue about its age, but we have to accept it might have nothing to do with our work.’
‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘We’ll see.’
Monday 26th November 2012
After twenty-four hours in solitary, Matt was intrigued when two Belizean police officers took him to an interview room where an attorney was waiting.
‘The name’s Roland Baxter. Sorry I couldn’t come sooner.’
They shook hands. Baxter’s grip was limp and sweaty. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, Buddy Holly style – only without the style. Despite this, the cultured English voice sounded confident, which was reassuring to Matt. He needed a strong ally to fight his corner for him.
‘I’ve been given a brief outline of your case, and I must say it’s fascinating. Quite a drama.’
‘Can we get rid of these apes?’
Baxter spoke to the policemen, and they agreed to leave the two men alone for fifteen minutes.
‘Fire away,’ said Baxter.
‘Can I trust you?’ asked Matt.
‘Of course. I’m a lawyer.’
Matt gave him a cynical stare. His question had not really been resolved to his satisfaction.
‘Whatever you tell me is just between the two of us, unless we both decide otherwise,’ Baxter continued.
‘You know I’m Matt Mountebank, right?’ Matt paused for effect, folding his arms and tilting his chin. ‘Go on,’ he continued, ‘tell me you’ve read my book. Eye of the Desert Storm.’
Baxter looked at Matt blankly.
‘
Sorry, your name doesn’t ring a bell. I tend to read legal journals mostly.’
Matt recounted the series of events that had occurred since his arrival in Guatemala. Baxter nodded a couple of times when Matt had finished, and then calmly read through his notes to remind himself of the salient points. The fact that the whole of human history would be changed by Matt’s revelations obviously hadn’t registered with him.
Baxter cleared his throat, sounding as if he had a small bird trapped in his windpipe. Then he looked steadily at Matt as if about to ask what he fancied for his condemned man’s breakfast.
‘It’s hard to know where to start. It looks like you’re in a bit of bother.’
‘You have to get Ruby out of Tikal.’
‘And how would you suggest I do that, Mister Mountebank?’
‘Ruby will be able to give evidence in my defence. Figure something out. We just need proof of the ancient airplane she found and everything that was triggered by that discovery.’
‘Ancient aircraft, yes. Yes, you mentioned that.’ Baxter sighed slightly and fiddled with his pen.
‘You don’t believe me, do you? What’s the goddamn point of me telling you all this if you don’t believe me?’
‘No, Mister Mountebank, you misunderstand. It is totally irrelevant what I believe. I will work for you and put your case to those to whom you wish me to put it. I don’t need to believe you; I only need to act on your instructions. Now, there is the matter of my fees. The State of Belize will pay for me to defend you on the illegal immigration charges, and I can offer a certain amount of legal advice with regard to the ambassadorial murder charge if the Americans decide to attempt to extradite you, and of course I can assist you if the Guatemalans request you to be returned to them, but you will have to pay me to work for you with regard to any additional projects. How am I to be paid for this? I assume you have no money and no prospect of obtaining any.’
‘I am a bestselling author, remember? I made a fortune after the first Gulf War. It’s all in my account in New York. I can give you the codes to access the account yourself and take your payments that way. I know they’ll be able to trace me here, but I want the authorities to know about all this. It’s the only way to get me off the hook.’
The Sphinx Scrolls Page 18