In his helmet and goggles and full jump suit he felt detached from the world, alone with his fears, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey with the heavy paraphernalia necessary for a successful jump and completion of the mission. He groped at the line that linked his parachute to a metal rail inside the aircraft and wondered what it would feel like to entrust his life to the sack of fabric on his back. Could he activate the reserve chute if the main one failed? Would he remember to keep his legs together and bend his knees upon reaching the ground? Would he remember not to scream like a baby?
At this last minute, with everyone lined up for the jump, he came up with a plan: he would close his eyes until it was over. The line moved towards the void. Heavily laden feet shuffled sideways, forcing him along in the same direction. His heart rate jumped. His stomach was lurching wildly. His tongue was as dry as desert sand. The shuffling was continuous now. He was in the middle of the line, about the sixth or seventh to jump, he reckoned. Ruby’s image popped into his head. Would he ever see her again? A few more seconds and –
His feet were no longer shuffling. He was freefalling, slowly tumbling, sucked towards the Earth in an invisible hurricane. With a jolt he suddenly hung upright, apparently motionless. He opened his eyes. There was nothing to see. The silence was broken only by the soft creaking of the parachute lines. Suspended in the middle of nowhere, lacking any sensation of movement up or down, left or right, he was more alone than he had ever been before. And yet he felt a connection, a human presence. The land beneath him was hostile territory, but not entirely. Somewhere down there beat a friendly heart.
The green blur in his goggles quickly took the form of trees. He looked for a gap, as he had been instructed to do, and tried to use the very limited steering ability of the parachute to aim for clear land. Whichever ropes he yanked, it didn’t seem to make any difference. He would hit the ground wherever fate decided. Bend the legs, he reminded himself, pinching his knees together. A rapid rustle of leaves and snapping branches passed his ears. He tensed for the impact, pointing his toes downwards to maximise the cushioning effect of his joints.
There was no impact. A second jolt left him swinging once again, but this time there was no air moving across his face. The wretched stillness of the jungle’s dense atmosphere bathed him in an instant sweat. He looked down. The tree had caught him just a few feet from the ground. He pulled a knife from his pocket and prepared to cut the cords above him, but when he looked down at the drop again it seemed a little too far to fall safely.
Something hit his foot from the side. A soldier was standing beneath him, attracting his attention by hitting him with the business end of an M16 machine gun.
‘Pull your reserve,’ whispered Nichols.
Matt did as he was told. A useless parachute fell to the ground, attached to him by its cords.
‘Now snag those cords around a branch, release the main and climb down the reserve.’
Seconds later Matt was standing on solid ground. Or, at least, he attempted to do so, but the bones in his legs appeared to have been replaced with jelly and refused to give him the necessary support. He pretended to sit down deliberately, making a play of checking his equipment while Nichols gathered the rest of the team around him. Amid the clicks of weapons being prepared, amid the glow of GPS screens, amid the hubbub of whispered tactics, a feeling inside Matt was growing stronger, convincing him that Ruby was almost within reach.
* * *
‘Awfully nice, er, place you have here,’ stumbled Ratty. ‘The architecture has a hint of Art Deco about it – elegant and yet potent. The angles create an overtone of dominance reminiscent of Albert Speer’s finest works, er, I’m thinking Reich Chancellery of course, with its lethal magnificence which is, er, magnificent.’
He dusted a patch of stone with his bare hands and carefully lowered himself down, stretching his tired legs and getting used to the shackles that now rudely bound them at the ankles. The forest canopy was an invisible presence all around, pricked here and there by invasive shards of light from halogen lamps rigged to keep the construction processes moving throughout the night.
‘Reminds me of my turret at Stiperstones,’ he continued. ‘Solitude, sense of history, and a jolly nice view. Always a mess, though. Did I ever tell you about the break-in grandfather discovered during the war? Burglar chap didn’t find what he was looking for. Too much muddle. Apparently he left a couple of rooms tidier than he found them and even arranged some of the books in the library alphabetically by author. Probably didn’t have time to go for the full Dewey Decimal. Scuttled off before dawn, empty-handed. Grandfather was profoundly embarrassed. Kick-started a spring clean that lasted until VE Day.’
He had so far made no impression on his companion. She sat still, arms crossed, with an expression – as far as he could make out in the faint light of the stars – of matronly disapproval.
When finally she deemed it appropriate to speak, Ratty scanned her words and her tone of voice, seeking affection. He found none.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’
‘A chap called Paulo Souza brought me up here.’
‘I know, I was here. Paulo’s an arsehole. A double crossing, backstabbing, money-grabbing vandal.’
‘Seemed like a bon oeuf, actually. Said he would take care of my rental car for me. It’s due back in a few days and one hates to incur the wrath of the little people.’
‘Never mind the bloody car, Ratty. Why are you here at all? Don’t tell me you’ve gone and done something I’m going to make you regret.’
Ratty felt himself cowering at her words, pulling back his body from the tongue that whipped sharply near him. She could be so unforgiving, so judgemental. Her world view seemed black and white, right and wrong, nothing in between. She was a force of nature, as irrepressible as the jungle below him. He had missed her so much.
‘If you’re referring to the stele that was the subject of our last encounter, you need not fear. All is under control.’
‘So you didn’t sell it to that creep?’
‘Absolutely not, old radish.’
Even in the darkness, Ratty could tell that Ruby’s body language relaxed at this point. He heard the tinkling of the metal cuffs as she slid close to him and felt a salty kiss on the corner of his mouth.
‘I’m sorry I doubted you, Ratty,’ she whispered. ‘I knew you’d do the honourable thing.’
He had considered telling her that the stele had ended up in Dr Mengele’s hands after all, but her unexpected and utterly welcome outpouring of affection convinced him to do the dishonourable thing. It would be easier if she didn’t know. Instead he would play the part of the hero. He would be her Perseus, her Odysseus, her Tom Cruise.
‘Listen, old fruitcake, I found the other part of the stele. I have the complete set of glyphs. They point to the intersection between four Mayan towns: El Zotz, Topoxté, Uaxactún and Paxcamán. And that intersection has to be somewhere here in Tikal.’
Ratty felt Ruby’s bare unwashed arms around him, squeezing him in a delightful, malodourous embrace. He tried to kiss her, but without sufficient visual clues as to the position of her face he only managed to plant his eager lips in her hair, triggering an unromantic sneeze.
‘What else do you know?’
‘Er, nothing. I don’t know what I’m looking for or exactly where it is, but I did remember to bring a shovel and an awfully good ground scanner thingummy.’
Ruby sighed and lay back on the warm stone, staring at the heavens.
‘It doesn’t matter now. President Orlando is steadily ripping this place to pieces. If there’s anything here, he’ll find it. It’s over for us.’
‘Twaddle and twiddle with knobs on,’ replied Ratty. ‘We can still solve this mystery. Atop this pyramid sits the finest historical brain of our times. And you can be of some help too.’
She giggled. He laughed. Her laughter turned to tears that blurred the constellations above her. She had only just identifie
d the main components of Pleiades, and now they merged into a pale white stain in the sky.
‘Ratty, do you know Pleiades?’
‘Intimately. Keeps the old joints from seizing up.’
‘Not Pilates. The constellation Pleiades. Up there. Can you see it?’
‘Ah, the Seven Sisters. The legendary birthplace of the Maya.’
‘Do you think it looks like the layout of Tikal, Ratty?’
He looked at the pricks of light in the sky, then at the light leaking from each temple visible from their vantage point. A vague correlation might have been possible, but it wasn’t easy to tell.
‘Even if the stars are mirrored on the ground,’ said Ratty, ‘it doesn’t tell us where to stick the old shovel. Pleiades was used in the configuration of other Mayan towns, not to mention the Cydonia monuments on Mars.’
‘Don’t bring that nonsense into it.’
‘But you are acquainted with the theory, are you not? Viking mission. Summer of the drought, flared trousers and James Hunt. NASA photographed a face on Mars. Like a Sphinx looking up at the sky. A nearby cluster of hills looks queerly like a village of pyramids.’
‘I know all about that rubbish. I read a book about it.’
‘Quite, quite. Nevertheless, if those features were created by the hand of man, it’s not unreasonable to point out that the constellation of Pleiades might have influenced the layout of the Martian pyramids. Its Sphinx was out on a limb, just like one of the stars in the formation – I think the fellow’s name is Atlas.’
It took her a considerable effort to repress her academic instincts. She knew the visual data for Martian constructions was utterly inconclusive, and that any theories about structures on the red planet were the result of misguided optimism. Any serious discussion about the Cydonia anomalies could not take place without further information, and for now that depended on how much the Chinese were willing to talk about the results of their robotic sample return mission. Until such time, the subject was limited to the lunatic fringe. And yet the world was different now. History wasn’t what it used to be. Humanity was not at the zenith of its evolutionary arc; it was rediscovering its prior greatness, relearning what it once knew, bouncing back from millennia of recovery after the traumatic end of its finest hour. In this crazy new world order, Ruby had to be more open-minded than before. Academic rigour could come later.
‘I still maintain that the Mars ideas are the moronic, sensationalist peddlings of naïve and opportunistic long-haired pea-brained fools. Martian pyramidiots, in fact. On the other hand, if I were to give them the benefit of the doubt, which I don’t because it would be ridiculous to do so, I would make the following deduction: if the Cydonia region is laid out to the same plan as Tikal, which it isn’t, then there’s a problem. Which there isn’t, because it isn’t. Are you following this?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ratty, who was still staring at the stars, his mind steadily emptying of all other thoughts. ‘Were you talking to me?’
‘I’m saying that if Tikal and Cydonia are both representations on the ground of the constellation of Pleiades, then there’s a problem – other than the sheer stupidity of the idea. The star called Atlas is represented in Cydonia by the face, or the Sphinx as you call it. Which it isn’t, of course, but let’s assume it is. But at Tikal that point isn’t represented by a Sphinx, because there isn’t one here. Its relative position means it could only be represented by Temple IV.’
‘Tikal’s largest pyramid?’
Ratty and Ruby exchanged unseen glances.
* * *
‘Down,’ whispered Nichols, simultaneously signalling with his arm for the benefit of those wearing night vision goggles. The men dropped to the ground like well-trained dogs and shuffled into the undergrowth on their stomachs. Matt grumbled. Getting down was hard. Standing up again was almost impossible without help when hauling a quantity of weaponry and explosives that almost doubled his body weight. He was terrified of scraping something and generating a spark. It was the same for the others, of course, but they knew what they were doing and they had youth on their side. Matt fleetingly considered a discreet disposal of his load, knowing that it would have no detrimental effect on his fighting ability, which was zero in any case.
Nichols peeped through the ferns. A Guatemalan patrol was heading their way – four men, all in green camouflage, strolling with rifles over their shoulders. One of them paused, as if he had heard something, and the others mocked him. Ignoring their taunts, he looked around, but he was looking at head height. One more step and he would have tripped over a heavily-armed American. The man retraced his steps, lit a Lucky Strike, and continued patrolling. Soon the red glow disappeared.
Once they’d strained to their feet again, Nichols led his team closer to Tikal. Through their goggles they spotted a guard post. Its single lamp shone eerily white, illuminating a lonely Guatemalan soldier. They boxed around him, cut their way through the rusty wire fence intended to keep non-paying tourists out, and were inside the perimeter of the old Mayan city. Moments later they paused at the periphery of a pool of light. A Mayan temple stood before them, the brutal vandalism at its heart dramatically illuminated by floodlights that helped workers who were in the process of shoring up its precarious surviving walls with concrete. There was no need for Nichols to issue orders. Two of his men stayed behind, while the others moved on.
The same happened at the next three temples they encountered. Matt felt his heart rate increasing steadily as they penetrated deeper into the complex. With every step he took, and with every pair of Americans that peeled away to fulfil their part of the mission, he felt his chances of getting out of there in one piece diminish. He couldn’t shake the sense of enemy soldiers encircling him, any one of whom might return him to his outstanding sentence of death.
He had an M16 machine gun in his hand and a small pistol in the grab bag – two tools of dispassionate steel, which he barely knew which way to point, to defend himself against thousands of armed Guatemalans. It was beyond hopeless. And yet, as he considered the futility of his situation, lying on his stomach below moist fern leaves waiting for another patrol to pass, he saw something glowing in the remote recesses of his imagination. It was a distant possibility, utterly unconnected to the official aims of this mission. It was a chance for personal glory.
At Nichols’s instruction, Matt scrambled to his feet again only for Nichols and the others to dive for cover in response to a sound that might have been a branch snapping. They spun around in a fluid motion with weapons aimed, then started firing at invisible assailants. On instinct, Matt ran behind the nearest tree and slipped out of his rucksack, standing immobile, terrified. The professionals were following some kind of well-rehearsed procedure for this eventuality. So was he – he was getting the hell out of there, taking only the grab bag with him. It contained a cut-down selection of items designed to get him out of trouble: spare ammo clips for the machine gun, M9 pistol loaded with fifteen rounds, utility knife, bolt cutters, torch, some survival items and a hand-held enemy radar and infra-red detector. As he sprinted into the night he thought he heard Nichols shout something in a voice strained with physical pain, but the rustle of leaves as he crashed through them blurred any such noises into a background hum.
At the edge of the Great Plaza he paused to catch his breath and take stock of his situation. The men were split up. Nichols was possibly hurt, and the other guys had already peeled silently away in pairs, leaving Matt alone. Leaving him without their protection. An untrained novice no longer embedded with the Special Forces upon whom he had depended.
It was exactly what he wanted.
* * *
The medical laboratory behind the Great Plaza was as austere and functional as the conditions under which the father of its new occupant had once worked. Constructed from steel shipping containers clamped together, the blue corrugated walls and ceilings and unpainted plywood floor created a space more suited to the transportation of boxes than t
o medical research. Two iron beds sat starkly in one section, lit from above by bright construction lamps tethered to the ceiling, powered from an extension lead that snaked across the floor. A fan running at full speed in one corner kept the temperature close to bearable. There was a sink of sorts – a small unit powered by an electric pump, fed by a plastic barrel of water beneath it. Empty modular plastic shelves, of the type normally found in domestic garages, provided storage. Two long picnic tables sufficed, Otto presumed, as desk and workbench. A month ago it would have been depressing; today it delighted him.
The Patient co-operated passively as Otto made him lie down on one of the beds, chaining each limb to the ironwork in links that were aligned in perfect symmetry with the metal framework. There had been not the slightest hint of protest since his hours of freedom had been curtailed. A weak flame of suspicion flickered within Otto, but he paid it no attention as he straightened the untidy extension lead on the floor. The Patient was going nowhere and his face was covered; there was no cause for concern.
Despite the lateness of the hour, doctors from the adjacent clinic – another structure flung quickly together from shipping containers – had offered to assist in unloading the equipment from Otto’s truck, but he had refused their generosity. He turned instead to the help of low-ranking soldiers who would not question his possession of certain items of medical equipment – a collection of specialist machines and surgical tools that would have raised curious eyebrows among more knowledgeable men.
Otto placed a cloth over the Patient and injected a sedative as soldiers unloaded the first items into his laboratory. There would be no awkward questions to answer and no rumours started, so long as the Patient went unnoticed. When the final item was delivered and the last soldier had left, Otto closed the heavy metal door and slid the bolt to secure it, ensuring that the handle was tucked down flush at precisely ninety degrees. He was now alone with his most important things, and for the first time since the loss of his villa he had power, water and enough space to work. More importantly, he would be able to establish a routine. The improvised normality would return a sense of peace to his soul and shield him from the turbulence outside the metal walls.
The Sphinx Scrolls Page 28