He had barely begun to straighten the boxes stacked haphazardly by his military assistants when that turbulence encroached upon his world. His bubble of steel was insufficient to isolate him from the crackle of machine gun fire. He winced. This laboratory was close to the Great Plaza, at the hub of Orlando’s activities. Guatemala’s blend of military and archaeological power was starting to exasperate the rest of the world. When the walls strained loudly against explosive forces, Otto felt no surprise.
* * *
The pulse of compressed air knocked the breath out of Matt. The vacuum that followed it made him gasp until oxygen filled the void and replenished his lungs. Behind him, an orange glow climbed high above the trees, illuminating the surrounding forest in a fiery wash. Then came dull thuds from a lethal drizzle of bricks blown out from the temple they had once formed. Some turned to dust on impact with other stone structures; most landed harmlessly, indented into soft soil. The sinister pounding seemed interminable to Matt as he sheltered in the night shadows, close to Temple I. The operation, he realised, was still on. The first target had been taken out and the mission clock was ticking.
A cavalcade of lights bounced through the trees, headlights blended with torchlights, all coming to a halt within the Great Plaza. Vehicle doors opened and slammed in anxious haste. Feet skidded and padded in different directions. Matt squinted through his night vision goggles as the processor tried to compensate for the excessive brightness that bleached the image. At the side of the smeary picture a figure caught his attention. The man moved slowly amid manic soldiers, walking with unique dignity. Matt wasn’t certain, but something about the man seemed familiar. Others ducked and cowered, cautious of an unseen enemy among them. This man, though, appeared to be devoid of fear. He walked upright, confidently approaching Temple I. Two officers saluted him as he stepped effortlessly up the steep steps to the new entrance carved in the pyramid’s face.
Matt took his chance. The plaza was chaotic. One more headless chicken was not going to attract any attention. He ripped off his goggles and walked purposefully in the direction of the pyramid, head down. He didn’t even want to think how far he was from his comfort zone. Two Guatemalans stood between him and the entrance to the temple. Matt gripped his weapon hard, knowing that even if he had the nerve to use it against them, it would be suicide to do so – the noise would bring others running.
As he drew closer, an explosion from behind the trees solved his problem. The two men charged towards the blast, shouting orders. Matt silently ran up the steps and was inside the pyramid in seconds.
A man rose from a leather sofa.
‘Ah, a familiar face. To what do I owe the honour? Or should I say, dishonour?’ asked President Orlando. Matt spun round, checking for the presence of anyone else. ‘It’s perfectly safe. There’s no one else here. Of course, I have ten thousand men in Tikal who will descend upon you in a short space of time and tear you limb from limb, but for the moment we appear to be alone. Juice?’
Matt levelled his machine gun at Orlando.
‘Where’s Ruby?’
Orlando ignored him and poured himself a glass of fresh green vegetable juice. Attempting to take aim with trembling arms drained of strength, Matt gripped the gun tightly and squeezed a single shot at the glass in Orlando’s hand. The recoil pushed him back a step and the bullet missed the President’s beverage by a couple of inches, smashing into the glass display cabinet and shredding some of the priceless Sphinx scrolls. It however was close enough to force an instinctive retraction from Orlando that flicked green juice humiliatingly all over his cream double-breasted jacket and over what remained of the scrolls.
‘You have five seconds to tell me where Ruby is before I shoot your goddamn legs off, asshole.’
If it were possible to be possessed by another spirit, Matt thought, it would probably feel like this. Those words could not possibly have come from him. Threatening the President of a nation in the midst of his own army was madness. He was having an out-of-body experience, fighting to regain control of himself. The shakes started to spread.
The President wiped slimy juice off his clothes, unable to hide his horror as chlorophyll molecules clung immovably to the fine strands of fabric. The close brush of a speeding bullet was of no consequence in comparison to the permanent staining of what was to him no less than a work of art in silver mink and ultrafine Merino. Neither did the destruction of a set of documents from twelve thousand years ago affect him – it ensured that no one besides himself and Otto would ever know what they said.
‘It is no surprise to me that a man of your breeding has no respect for exquisite tailoring,’ Orlando stated with flat disdain, exuding superiority and control despite standing at the wrong end of a gun. ‘And it appears that you have destroyed the scrolls that you failed to prevent my people taking from the Sphinx. We made no copies, you know. Nice work.’
The unpredictable forces inside Matt instigated an action that allowed his nerves to settle: he put his gun on the floor and raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. Why the hell had he done that? His instincts were still running amok. He stepped back from the gun and breathed deeply, slowly. Orlando displayed no interest in his actions; with or without a weapon pointing his way, the President was ice cool. Matt wiped the sweat from his face, relieved to note that the palpitations of his muscles had ceased.
‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘It’s real important to me. I won’t hurt you. Just let me have my girl.’
‘You blew up one of my pyramids,’ said Orlando.
‘No, not me. That was, like, other guys. I’m not really, you know, with them.’
‘Tell me what else they are planning and I will consider discussing Ruby’s situation.’
‘You gotta tell me where she is. Those guys, they’re here to slow you guys up until the US can work out what your game is.’
‘I see. An inconvenience, but they will not succeed. Neither will you, because Doctor Towers is secured on top of one of the pyramids.’
A complex series of muscle contractions pulsed through Matt. A passenger in his own body, he felt his hands scoop the gun off the floor while his legs propelled him towards Orlando’s throat. The barrel of the weapon now pressed horizontally against the President’s larynx. Matt could not sense the floor beneath his feet. Rivulets of sweat dripped from his nose onto his lips, but he tasted nothing. A primal force was carrying him to new heights of lunacy.
‘If your friends intend to destroy other temples,’ choked Orlando, his warm throat wrapping itself around cool metal as the words tried to form, ‘you will have Ruby’s death on your own hands.’
The destruction of the other temples was precisely Nichols’s intention. The explosive charges would be set in place wherever a pyramid was found to be housing a research facility. Timers would be started, documents and technological samples grabbed. They would be shooting their way out of that jungle city before the main firework display.
Matt felt a panic pulsing through him. Twenty minutes. Ruby’s life. Ruby’s existence. Everything he cared for. Soon to be erased. One piece of information could, however, delay her entry to the great history book in the sky.
‘Which pyramid?’ he growled. The President started to wriggle away from the gun. Matt recoiled at the sudden movement and whipped the weapon up to his shoulder. ‘Which pyramid, asshole?’
Orlando looked at the door, still open to the night, facing the pyramid across the plaza. Matt followed his gaze, expecting to see soldiers, but there was no one. Before he could turn his head back, he felt strong hands seizing his gun. He didn’t pull the trigger; it was pulled from him. Orlando dropped in an instant, the green stains on his suit now drowning in deep shades of red.
* * *
‘I hate to mention a topic unsuitable for mixed company, and I apologise for my Boeotian leanings, but I fear I can suppress no longer the need to spend a quetzal,’ frothed Ratty.
‘Get it over with. I don’t like what’s happening dow
n there. We should be ready.’
Ratty shuffled to the furthest point from Ruby at the top of the temple and relieved himself over the edge, surveying with fascination the remote animations of distressed soldiers. He craned his neck to follow a bundle of partially illuminated figures carrying a limp body from a chamber within the closest pyramid. They were shouting and screaming and heading for a cluster of metal rooms nearby. As they went almost out of sight he stretched his body a little further, trying to correct his balance by adjusting his feet, but he had forgotten the shackles. His right ankle moved, but only an inch. The momentum lifted the left foot from the ground, and his centre of gravity moved beyond the spot where his limbs could control it.
‘Goodness me!’ he yelped, tumbling into the void.
‘I think Tikal’s under attack, Ratty. It could be our chance to get down from here without being seen. What do you think? Maybe we should chance it. Perhaps we can wear away the cuffs on the corner of the stone if we rub them really hard for a few hours. Maybe we can take the steeper route at the sides one step at a time with a safety line between us. The drop looks dangerous, but at least they’re not guarding the sides. Ratty? Hello? Am I talking to myself?’
Ruby stood up and looked around, unable to see much with pupils contracted from watching the fires and flashes below. ‘If you’re looking for the washbasin and the scented hand-towel you might be disappointed. Ratty?’ Hands outstretched, she hopped towards where she thought he would be. Other than a strong odour of warm urine – which she could have sworn reminded her of gin toddy – there was nothing to indicate his presence. The platform just ended. Ratty was gone.
She dropped to her knees, walking her fingers to the edge of the slab, wincing as her skin informed her of the presence of something damp.
‘Ratty? You OK?’ With the commotion at ground level, she was unsure whether she had heard a reply. ‘Ratty? Where are you?’
She thought she could hear something – a faint wisp of breath, a gossamer rasp floating above the jagged resonance of ground-level conflict. It didn’t sound healthy. The drop down to the next ledge was more than her body height. She recalled it being something like eight feet. Half way around the platform there were intermediate steps leading down, but getting about in her chains was slow and there was no time to lose if Ratty needed help. Besides, those intermediate steps were in full view of the soldiers down on the Plaza. Eight feet was hardly Beachy Head. She could shimmy down, even though in the night shadows it looked bottomless. Gripping the moist stone, she swivelled her legs over the edge and let herself hang against the ancient wall by her fingertips. Climbing back up was not an option. The only move available to her was to let herself fall. An act of faith, trusting her life to her memory of the pyramid’s structure. Her instincts warned her of an impending descent into infinity. Too late now. The fingers started to lose their grip.
She bent her legs and stretched out her toes to cushion the impact, but when it came the landing was unexpectedly soft. The subtle sounds she had picked up from the higher level now grew into a discernible moan, and then morphed into curious words.
‘I am Bellerophontes, cast down from heaven, toppled from my fine Pegasus. I am Theseus, flung from the peaks of ignoble Skyros by Lycomedes. I am –’
‘Stop wibbling,’ said Ruby. ‘You fell over while taking a piss. And, er, thanks for breaking my fall. Can you get up?’
‘Bit of a bang on the bonce, I fear, but nothing a stiff G and T couldn’t fix.’
‘We’ve found a way to get down without being seen, anyhow. You’ve proved we can survive these drops, even with the ankle cuffs.’
‘I did?’ Ratty sat up, rubbing a sore cranium.
‘Come on,’ Ruby whispered. ‘There’s something I want to look for.’
‘Of course. The stelae point to Temple IV. We’re going to find the greatest of all the Mayan treasures.’
‘No, not that. The stolen Sphinx scrolls. They’re here somewhere. I’m going to find them.’
‘Can we discuss the poetry of Larkin, first?’
‘Not now, Ratty. Get up. Help me down to the next ledge.’
* * *
The dream was more intense this time. Orlando had been slain by an invisible foe, skewered on an unseen scimitar, just as in earlier nightmares. But when he fell from lush green lands into a foggy, colourless chasm, he carried with him an endless interlinked chain of despairing, wailing souls. He felt as if he had experienced the moment of death of every one of his ancestors, the combined hurt of every person and creature that had ever carried his DNA. He had dreamed with a pain that was real – a focused, intense agony that he felt to his core.
The cacophony of screams ended suddenly, the pain receded and silence engulfed him. He was alone, speeding through a tunnel like a speck of dust in a vacuum hose, his attention fixed upon a distant, warm, welcoming glow.
The light intensified. He relaxed. The worst was over. He was at peace.
But something arrested his motion towards the light, cancelling his momentum. Every muscle in his body resisted the backwards pull, tearing him between two mighty gravitational fields, a rope in a cosmic tug-of-war. He felt the strain of the transition as he moved from one world to the other, wrenched from a deep coma to an unwelcome reality.
Shapes turned slowly before him, forms without form; analogue noise unhurriedly tuned from the chaotic blizzard of oblivion to a clear frequency. The President’s face flexed, meaningless expressions flickering on and off, reacting involuntarily to the coalescing visual stimuli.
The transition was over – he was in a metal room, jaundiced eyes wide open – but the sense of pain he had experienced while unconscious was still there. A shadow passed over his face, blocking the glare from one of the construction lamps. His eyes adjusted some more. There were cables and tubes sticking into his body, connected to a rack of machines. Then came an intense beam of white light, shining directly into one yellow eyeball and then the other, leaving him unable to see clearly.
‘Welcome back,’ said Otto, still busying himself as he spoke. ‘You lost a great deal of blood. It took a saline drip and two litres of your reserve plasma stock to get you back.’ He tweaked the settings on a monitor and took notes of the blood pressure and pulse readings.
Orlando’s face distorted again, trying to form words, but lacking the breath to project recognisable sounds.
‘Don’t speak. There is nothing to fear. I have everything I need for the operation,’ said his doctor in a tone that was at once reassuring and chilling.
‘My immortality,’ wheezed Orlando.
‘No, we don’t call it that. I have explained before. You are merely difficult to kill.’
‘I died already. You brought me back.’
‘There was a drop in blood pressure which led to the heart ceasing to function for a certain time, but it took me just a few minutes to restart it.’
‘How did I die?’
‘Gunshot wound to the liver, causing blood loss and some internal bleeding. Not enough of your liver remains for regeneration. I will transplant a new liver, otherwise you will die again.’
On the adjacent bed a figure connected to a drip and no longer hooded twitched, reanimating quickly now that the sedative had worn off and in spite of having had a considerable quantity of blood removed. Orlando caught the movement in his peripheral vision and turned his stiff neck. The Patient did likewise.
Identical twins stared at each other for the first time, confused, fascinated, scared. Brothers, helpless and vulnerable, just as they had been during the brief hours they had spent in each other’s company forty-five years previously. On the day they had entered this world they had been equal, indistinguishable, and yet their fates could not have been more divergent.
Otto was too busy preparing his surgical equipment to notice the Patient’s movement. When he heard him speak, he dropped an arterial clamp in surprise.
‘I am happy,’ whispered the Patient, ‘that our separation i
s over. It seems that you have some of my blood inside of you. We are, in so many ways, part of each other.’
‘What is this freak show, Otto? Get him out of my medical centre. I have no need for a body double.’
‘Body double?’ replied the Patient before Otto could think of a response. ‘That is right. I am a double of your body. And you are a double of mine.’
Otto finished preparing the surgical tools, replacing the clamp that had fallen on the floor with a clean one. He selected a syringe and the bottle of sedative.
‘You were not supposed to communicate with it,’ grumbled the Doctor. ‘We must not allow fraternal emotions to interfere with the great medical triumph that is about to take place. I will sedate it for a second time.’ Otto approached the Patient, then stopped and put the syringe back on a shelf. ‘No, in fact there is no need. I will proceed immediately with the general anaesthetic. Don’t worry – it will not be able to disturb you again.’
The blue and white anaesthetic machine rolled over towards him like an obedient robot as he tugged at its power lead. Otto straightened it relative to the walls of the room then flicked a switch and held the mouthpiece to his ear, listening for the flow of gases: nitrous oxide, oxygen and sevoflurane. The sound was reassuring, and the sweet smell of the sevoflurane convinced him all was well.
‘Stop.’
Otto turned his head to the Patient, preparing to overcome the inevitable resistance to an operation from which he would not wake up. But it wasn’t the Patient who had spoken. The President repeated his instruction.
‘Stop. Switch that off, Otto. This is going too fast.’
The Sphinx Scrolls Page 29