With barely concealed frustration, Otto turned off the machine.
‘Without the transplant you will not survive the night. I must proceed quickly.’
The President ignored him, turning his head once more towards the Patient.
‘I am Orlando. What is your name?’
‘My name? I have yet to acquire one. I am merely your twin.’
Orlando looked back at the Doctor.
‘Otto, what is going on? I die, and when I come back to life I have a brother with no name. What is he?’
‘It is you, Orlando.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘After you were conceived, your zygote split –’
‘I know the biological causes of twinning, Otto. He is not me; he is my brother.’
‘That is merely a sociological label which has no bearing on nature or reality. It is a clone, created by nature at the earliest stage of your development. In no genetic sense is it a separate individual. Societal norm may be to regard both bodies as brothers, but scientifically it is a clone of you. It is a hundred per cent you. It is your backup, the physical reserve that makes you virtually indestructible. It is what you misguidedly refer to as your immortality. You have been blessed with two sets of genes, one set entirely redundant.’
‘Where has he been for the past forty-five ...’ Orlando stopped himself and turned to his brother. ‘Where have you been all your life?’
‘I had a prolonged gestation,’ replied the Patient. ‘I have only just been born. Doctor Mengele built a womb beneath the ground in which he nurtured my body.’
‘Nurtured?’ asked Orlando.
‘I have kept your spare biological materials in excellent physical condition,’ cut in Otto. ‘I have taken care of them for you until such time as you need them. And that time is now. We must proceed with the surgery.’
‘Otto, you always implied that you had access to a collection of organs in vinegar or in the freezer or something. Pioneering research, you said. Tissue storage technology that could replace any part of me. Never this. Never a living being. This is a whole person. This is my brother.’
‘I repeat, it is not your brother. It is not another person. It is you. It is an entire duplication. It has served no function in life other than to provide for your medical needs.’
‘If you take his liver he will die.’
‘If I don’t, you will die. It is nobody. It does not exist in any legal sense. It has no name, no official status in the world. No one will miss it. You, on the other hand, are the President. You are not only vital to this country, but the resources you provide are essential to the resolution of the great historical mystery of mankind’s first technological age. That is the sole purpose for which you were created.’
‘Created?’ asked Orlando and the Patient, almost in unison.
Otto paced back and forth, searching desperately for soothing guidance from his inner Aristotle. But it was too late. He had said too much.
* * *
Large hands cupped under her armpits. Stale breath wafted over her neck. Ruby tensed. Arms stronger than her own lifted her down from where she hung on the lowest ledge of the pyramid. She was finally on the ground, but whoever had spotted her didn’t seem to be intent on releasing his grip. And that grip was inching towards more intimate areas on her front – areas that she generally regarded as out of bounds for Central American soldiers.
From her peripheral vision she could tell this man was acting alone. Even with their legs in shackles, she felt that she and Ratty might still have a chance to escape if she could temporarily disable her captor. She wriggled forwards to create a small gap between them and rammed her fist behind her, thumping into his balls with unforgiving force.
‘What the hell was that for?’ he yelped, releasing her and falling to the ground.
‘Matt?’ she spun round, lost her balance and fell next to him.
Ratty dropped himself down from the final ledge. He looked at the pair of them on the ground. Matt was curled up, his grimace obvious despite the lack of light.
‘I came back for you,’ panted Matt. ‘I’ve rescued you.’
‘I say, look, Mountebank, this really isn’t on,’ whispered Ratty.
‘Isn’t on what?’
‘This rescuing business. Jolly nice of you to pop by, but I have everything under control. I’ve already rescued Ruby myself. You can run along, old chap.’
The smirk on Matt’s face helped to wipe away the pain.
‘Come on, Ruby, leave him,’ whispered Matt. ‘I’ll cut those chains and we can still make it to the chopper rendezvous.’ He rummaged in his bag and produced the bolt cutters, his bulky forearms strong enough to snip easily through her metal cuffs.
‘No, Matt. There’s something I need to do.’
‘Yes,’ chipped in Ratty. ‘She’s coming with me. Frankly, I think she’s fallen in love with me, so why don’t you tootle off?’
‘I’m not in love with you, Ratty,’ said Ruby with a flat sigh.
Ratty hopped away from her in shock, falling on to his backside. When he spoke, it sounded as if he were struggling to hold back tears.
‘But I didn’t sell the little stone chap. I made my own way to Tikal, and then I rescued you.’
‘You found a way off the temple, and that was helpful. Yes, I suppose you rescued me, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to swoon and fall for you, Ratty. It’s not that simple.’
‘Tell me about it,’ grumbled Matt, handing the bolt cutters to Ratty and expecting him to make a fool of himself by being too weak to cut through his own chains. When the tool did its job quickly and cleanly, with no apparent struggle on the part of its operator, Matt was disappointed. How could this effete clown consider himself a rival for Ruby’s affections? He just didn’t get the English. ‘I even read about goddamn Mayan archaeology for you, Ruby. I know about their calendar. It has chunks of twenty days, called a urinal.’
‘Uinal,’ corrected Ruby. ‘And is that blood?’ She pointed at Matt’s stomach and started to study him in the pale light of a distant lamp. ‘Yuck. Are you hurt? And why are you dressed like a soldier? And is that a real gun? Put it away before you hurt someone.’
He looked down at the inky stain on his front, a patch of the President’s blood, the mark of an apparent crime for which no mercy would be shown. He felt suddenly cold. The adrenaline rush that had seen him through the struggle and had powered his nimble escape had subsided. His mind went blank. The preceding events became a blur. He felt his strength sapping. The hero’s plinth that he had briefly usurped was no longer his. The plain New York writer, creator of stories, spinner of fantasies, dropped to his knees.
‘Ratty, he’s hurt. Help me get his jacket off.’
The last thing Ratty felt like doing was assisting in the undressing of his love rival. He let Ruby do the deed while he stood by, mumbling a succession of abusive epithets in ancient Greek. Ruby soon found that the blood had not originated from within Matt. She covered him up and stared pityingly at the non-functioning lump of a man plonked at her feet. He was in shock, reduced to total incapacity, a completely useless man.
Nothing new there, then, she told herself.
Ratty picked up Matt’s gun and bag with one hand, and helped Ruby pull him to his feet with the other. Between them they began to drag the American from the scene.
There was something Matt had to tell them. Something important. He fought to recall the information swimming hard against the receding tide of his memories, floundering. He had found Ruby, but that wasn’t enough. There was some kind of danger, but what was it? He needed to explain to them about – no, it was gone.
* * *
It was a story Otto had never wanted to tell, and it gave Orlando no pleasure to hear it told, but he insisted on the full details. Brazil had been a long time ago, Otto explained, and the world had been a different place back then. The shadow of World War II dulled the brightness of that country, its population steadily pollute
d by an influx of former Nazis seeking a new life, anonymity and – most elusive of all – sympathy. But for one notorious SS officer the motive had been different. The experiments he had carried out on thousands of sets of twins in Auschwitz had been regarded as sadistic and vicious. Otto tried to explain the mass murders in the context of the larger historical picture. He tried to justify them, which was something he felt uniquely placed to do. No one else had ever been privy to the reasoning behind that loathsome episode. The prevailing historical opinion was that Josef Mengele was insane, a psychopath given unprecedented opportunity for evil. Otto knew differently.
‘The knowledge acquired by Josef Mengele could have been achieved in other ways, but it would have taken decades,’ Otto continued. ‘In just two short years he was able to develop his science ready to move to the next stage. After the war he was forced to emigrate to South America, taking with him nothing but his medical research notes, the only surviving copy of an ancient Greek philosophical text and the Mayan stele he had inherited. It was in the small, remote Brazilian town of Linha São Pedro that he was able to merge into an ex-pat German community and further his research.
‘Some years after his arrival, I was born to German parents who had also escaped the European post-war mania for retribution and come to South America to seek a new beginning. But they were hunted like wolves, forced to keep moving, never settling. My mother couldn’t take the isolation, but my father had no choice but to continue seeking ever more remote abodes. In the early fifties they separated, and left me at the door of Doctor Mengele. He adopted me. He began training me to continue his medical research even while I was still a child.
‘During the next fifteen years he perfected in vitro fertilisation techniques, building on the knowledge he had gained during the war. He was at least ten years ahead of the rest of the world in this respect. Many women of Linha São Pedro gave birth to twins whilst under his care. Finally, in 1967, a young, fertile virgin girl came to Josef for medical attention. Without her full understanding, he hyper-stimulated her ovaries with human chorionic gonadotropin. Her eggs were removed and fertilised in a petri dish with sperm from a healthy young male. When this virgin girl found herself pregnant with twins she was eager to give up her babies and avoid a life of shame. Josef and I promised to take care of them and not to reveal her secret. That is how you were created.’
‘How,’ said Orlando, trying to remain composed, ‘but not why.’
‘Both of you were taken immediately to Guatemala. That is where your destiny was to be fulfilled. That destiny is playing out right now, and I must proceed with the operation.’
‘Tell me more about the young male who donated the sperm,’ whispered the Patient.
‘There is no more to tell,’ deflected Otto, looking once again at the anaesthetic machine. ‘Be silent.’
Orlando and the Patient turned to face each other. The look in their eyes confirmed that each was thinking the same thing. Their first moment of fraternal bonding had taken place. It was instinctive, as if they could read each other’s thoughts. Together they had made a profound discovery. One of the major unanswered questions of their lives had been resolved.
‘You still have not told us why we were created,’ stated Orlando. He paused in order for the Patient to continue on their behalf.
‘I have done my research over the years,’ said the Patient. ‘I learned a great deal from books, studying alone in secrecy every night, so I have my theories, but I would appreciate an explanation. I think we both deserve to hear it from our own father.’
Wisdom is knowledge, the Doctor reminded himself. His patients demanded knowledge of the primary cause of their birth, the explanation for their very existence, and in Aristotelian terms that was something to applaud. The reason why something happened, he generally believed, should always be reducible to a formula, a basic principle. But contrary to his philosophical leanings, the reason for the creation of these twins was not a small idea or concept, just as it was not a random event in the manner that most births are. The Mengele destiny ran deeper, stretched further, than anyone imagined. The Nazi association was a mere episode, a transient opportunity taken to extreme. The propagation of the Aryan race was of no interest to any Mengele. There was no profound loyalty to Hitler or his vile ideologies. Otto certainly had no interest in that subject. He had dropped the Gerhard pseudonym and resumed the use of the Mengele name of his adoptive father when, in 1979, he had learned that Josef had suffered a stroke while swimming off Bertioga in Brazil during a brief visit to some old friends. Once Josef’s body had been mummified and sealed in his casket there was nothing to hide any more. Otto was indifferent to a war that had ended before he was even born. Mossad had nothing against him. There was no reason for him not to bear the true name of his adoptive father.
Impatiently he recounted the story of the stelae, of the noble adventures of Karl Mengele, skipping over the details which he was confident the two men already knew, which was most of them. He was trying to expound the why. The why was in his soul. He had grown up with it. Indoctrinated. Brainwashed. It was his life. It was the motive for every action he ever took. And yet, when he tried to elucidate it, he faltered. It was too obvious to explain. Too fundamental to be put into words.
‘The stele was just the beginning,’ Otto continued. ‘The location that it leads to is very close to this place, and we will soon find it. And when we do, we will control all the knowledge that matters. But how we deal with the information we learned from the stelae and the scrolls, that is the why. How we direct our planet to cope with the future, that is the why. And how we prepare ourselves for the threat that will come from the past, that is also the why. Mengele created a human system, designed to span several generations, designed to prepare humanity for the significance of the end of the Mayan calendar. I am part of that system. You, Orlando, are part of that system, as is your collection of back-up cells and tissues.’
There was little in that speech that was news to Orlando, and even the Patient had surmised much of it from his extensive learning and his observations of Otto.
‘This project is not something that can be resolved by an individual,’ continued the Doctor. ‘The resources of an entire nation are needed. That is why you were put in power, Orlando.’
‘I was not put in power, Otto. I led my people. We fought hard, we fought well, and I took power.’
‘And where do you suppose the funding came from? Who paid for the wages of your fighting men for all those years? Who bought the weaponry you needed?’
‘You directed the funding requirements from the beginning, Otto. You told me it was from our supporters in the French government.’
‘Wrong. A Swiss bank account, stuffed with the bounty of war. Jewish gold. Stolen money. A fortune set aside in the nineteen forties by a man intent on funding a revolution that he knew he would never live to see. When our reserves ran low there was a requirement for some additional support from the French in return for a promise of shared technological research, but essentially it was Mengele who paid for everything. It was the stolen wealth of the German and Polish Jews that was used to fund your work. They could never know it, but their sacrifice was not in vain. They each played a small part in our scheme, and in doing so they will one day be credited, by historians looking back on this period of history, as contributing to the saving of the planet. But, Orlando, that will all be thrown away if you don’t receive a new liver. I will not permit the operation to be delayed any longer.’
* * *
Temple IV was just a few hundred yards along the Tozzer Causeway from the Great Plaza. Most of the commotion was happening in the other direction, particularly around the North Acropolis and Temple I. Gunshots and shouts still penetrated the night, and as Ruby and Ratty half-dragged Matt through the black shadows past Mundo Perdido, the Lost World Plaza, they were aware of a scuffle taking place to their left. An American voice stood out among the disorder. He sounded frightened as he pleaded for mercy.
The voice connected with Matt. The thousand-yard stare in his eyes dissipated. His blood pressure increased, efficiently flooding his limbs with strength. The memories came back. His limp hands abruptly turned to rock and gripped his companions hard.
‘We have to get outta here,’ he growled. ‘I came in with a Special Forces team.’
Ruby jolted out of his grip, her annoyance easily sensed by the two men.
‘Matt, this is no time for more of your bullshit stories. Listen, Orlando told me the scrolls are here. We have to find them.’
‘They’re going to blow this place to bits,’ Matt protested. ‘We have to get to the RV point before it’s too late.’
‘Stop it, Matt. You’ve been living this fantasy for years. I’ve humoured you because I respect you as a writer, and because, I suppose, I felt something for you, but I’ve come to realise that your book had to be a work of fiction. I know you too well. You were never a soldier, and certainly never part of any elite Special Forces. When you say stuff like that, you just come across as a delusional loser, a sad fantasist. It’s time to grow up. You are who you are. You’re a writer, a nice guy, and you came back for me. That’s enough. You don’t need to invent stories to impress me. Come on. Help me look for the scrolls.’
‘Those scrolls? The ones you found in the Sphinx? I think you should forget them. The pyramids are gonna blow.’
‘No one’s going to blow up these pyramids. Not even the Americans would do that.’
‘But it’s true – I’m part of a Special Forces op.’
‘These lies are going to get you in trouble one of these days, Matt. Dressing up as a soldier is not the same as –’
‘Will you just shut up for a second?’ he whispered indignantly, wishing he could scream at her. ‘I’ve just shot the goddamn President. I couldn’t be in more trouble if I tried.’
The voice of Nichols rose high in the night air. It had a tone of desperation, every decibel produced with great effort, laced with pain. Matt stood up straight.
The Sphinx Scrolls Page 30