Aleta fastened one end around the neck of the jaguar lever and they retreated to the ten-metre extent of the cord. Aleta pulled at the lever, but it didn’t budge and O’Connor swung on to the cord with her. Together they dug their boots into the soil and the lever slowly moved towards them. Suddenly the side of the temple shook, and four massive steps disappeared, revealing a shaft at the base of the pyramid, immediately below where Aleta and O’Connor had been. Ancient dust drifted up from the tonnes of rubble that had fallen six metres to the bottom. O’Connor anchored the rope to a nearby tree and dropped it into the shaft. Using his boots as a brake, he slowly lowered himself down the rope towards the fallen steps. Once he reached the bottom, Aleta followed.
‘Look! More steps and a tunnel leading further into the pyramid!’ Aleta exclaimed, pointing past the rubble. O’Connor threw a large limestone rock down the stone steps, wary that another yawning chasm might open in front of them. The sound of the falling rock echoed down a passageway that had been sealed for over 1200 years. Aleta followed him down the steps and into the tunnel. Protected from the weather, the limestone walls were painted a bright salmon pink, and the ceiling was high, coming together in a typical Mayan pointed arch.
‘The original colour of all the pyramids,’ Aleta observed. ‘Red cinnabar, the colour of the east … the colour of life.’
‘And the hieroglyphics?’ Every few paces, the ancients had embedded a jade tablet into the walls.
‘I can’t decipher them all immediately, but this one is very clear,’ Aleta replied, a shiver running down her spine. ‘ “Death will come swiftly to he who, without authority, disturbs the resting place of the codex.” Curtis! It’s here!’
Above them, the Flores police car roared up the jungle track to the Mendez Causeway and screeched to a halt just short of the Great Plaza, the siren dying. Howard Wiley emerged from his hiding place in the Central Acropolis. He skirted the Great Plaza and moved down the track towards the Pyramid of the Lost World. Ellen Rodriguez followed Wiley at a distance, taking up a position amongst the three small pyramids to the east of the Lost World Pyramid; each aligned with the equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices. Wiley approached the exposed shaft on the Lost World Pyramid and Rodriguez watched as he scanned the surrounding area. Wiley checked his pistol and climbed down the rope into the shaft.
58
O’Connor used his powerful torch to probe the red-cinnabar walls of the stone passage and its high arched ceilings. The gradient grew steeper as he and Aleta descended deeper and deeper into Mundo Perdido. Nearly sixty metres further on they were confronted with steps leading down to what appeared to be a stone wall with a huge jade calendar-wheel embedded in the centre. Beside it a smaller jade wheel with an even smaller inner wheel meshed with the larger one like gears in a gear box. At either side of the top of the steps, two polished wooden poles were fixed to the walls, each topped with an ancient oil lamp. O’Connor took one of the poles off the wall and began to probe the steps. Aleta removed the other one and did likewise, wary that the steps might open and swallow them both, but the steps held firm.
‘It’s the Haab, the Mayan long-count calendar, and the sacred Tzolk’in, the short-count calendar,’ Aleta observed excitedly when they reached the wall. She ran her hand over the exquisitely carved wheels, each embedded with hieroglyphs and the Mayan numbering system of dots and dashes denoting the days and dates. ‘The long-count is based on the cycles of the earth and the smaller short-count is based on the cycles of the Pleiades star cluster in the Taurus constellation,’ she explained. ‘Together, they not only give the day and date in any one year, but the precise date in three other cycles: a 52-year cycle, the longer sun cycle of 5125 years, and the great cycle of 25 625 years. We’re now in the end times. The fifth great cycle of the sun will end on 21 December 2012 – a rare meshing of the calendar gears.’
O’Connor probed the stone masonry with his torch beam. ‘Trouble is, we seem to be at a dead end.’
Aleta shone her own torch on the hieroglyphs on the wheels. She grabbed O’Connor’s elbow. ‘I don’t think so. The calendars are meshed on 4 Ahau, 8 Cumku – today’s date! There’s a mechanism behind these wheels that’s been keeping perfect time for over 1200 years. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
O’Connor nodded. ‘Perhaps there is a setting that might open the wall?’
‘Exactly. The Mayan system of cyclical meshing calendars could predict dates four, forty or 40 000 years in advance, so I’m wondering if the setting we’re looking for is 21 December 2012?’ Aleta pocketed her torch and placed her hands either side of the Haab wheel. She applied pressure and the great wheel began to rotate of its own accord – slowly at first, then moving more quickly. Aleta stepped back as the jade hieroglyphs and dots and dashes meshed in perfect synchronicity, the days, weeks and months speeding by. The wheels began to slow until the Ik and Kank’in teeth on the great Haab and the sacred Tzolk’in, together with the dots and dashes on the inner wheel, meshed in a flash of energy. Aleta gasped. ‘21 December 2012!’ A mechanism deep within the pyramid began to rumble and the stone wall with the embedded sacred calendars slid slowly into a stone recess.
‘Duck!’ O’Connor picked up the vicious swinging ball in his torch beam and he tackled Aleta to the ground. From high in the ceiling of the tomb, a huge bronze ball embedded with razor-sharp spikes whistled over the prostrate forms of Aleta and O’Connor and smashed into the stone steps beyond. Aleta’s face was white as she got shakily to her feet. ‘Thank you. Once again, you saved my life,’ she said in a whisper.
‘One good turn deserves another,’ O’Connor replied, but he knew it had been close. Together they played their torches into the gloom of the vast rectangular cavern beyond. Aleta put her hand to her mouth at the sight of the inestimable riches. The cavern was filled with hundreds of priceless jade artefacts. Lidded tripod vessels, engraved with images of the rain god, the sun god and cormorants and turtles, lined the walls. In the centre of the cavern stood a large raised stone tomb, covered by a massive red-cinnabar capstone engraved with the Haab and Tzolk’in calendars. The tomb was surrounded by necklace beads, anklets and bracelets made from different shades and hues of jade.
O’Connor and Aleta approached cautiously and Aleta stifled another gasp.
‘What’s wrong?’ In the reflected torchlight, O’Connor could see the colour had drained from Aleta’s face.
‘The body inside that tomb is that of Princess Akhushtal,’ Aleta replied, focusing her torch beam on a set of hieroglyphics engraved below an exquisite jade mortuary mask at the top of the capstone. ‘She was the daughter of King Yax Ain II, and the calendars on top of the tomb are set at Friday 21 December 2012.’
‘Vandenberg control, Looking Glass, ready.’
‘Looking Glass, you are cleared for immediate departure on Runway 30; contact departures when airborne.’
‘Looking Glass, thank you and good day.’
Air Force Colonel Bill Glassic lined up the Boeing 707 E6-Mercury command and control aircraft on the centre line, applied the brakes and advanced the throttles to sixty per cent, allowing the engines to spool up. Satisfied, he released the brakes and slowly pushed all four throttles forward.
‘EPR set, eighty knots,’ the first officer called. ‘Vee-one.’ Glassic removed his right hand from the throttle levers and concentrated on the runway ahead. Looking Glass had passed the point where the flight could be aborted.
‘Rotate … Vee-two …’
Glassic eased the 707’s nosewheel off the runway and waited until a positive climb was indicated on the pressure altimeter. The landing gear retracted with a thump and Looking Glass began the climb to the missile-launch control altitude of 29 000 feet.
O’Connor ran his torch along the walls of the tomb. More jade tablets were embedded in the stone, each engraved with hieroglyphs. A series of colourful murals in brilliant reds, emerald greens, turquoise blues and iridescent yellows depicted the presentation of jagu
ar skins to past Mayan kings. Lamp poles were fastened to the walls at regular intervals. They had been made from tinto, a logwood from the swamps, a wood that was highly durable and resistant to deterioration. O’Connor removed one and felt the wick at the top. It was perfectly preserved and he retrieved a box of matches from his backpack and lit it. The wick burned feebly at first, but as the oil was drawn from the ceramic container, the lamp shed an eerie, flickering light amongst the priceless artefacts. O’Connor used the lamp to light four more of the closest poles.
‘Curtis! Look!’ Aleta shone her torch at the centre of the far wall. The recess was painted in brilliant reds, blues and greens. The firelight was reflected in a pedestal made of polished black obsidian. On top stood a magnificent half-metre-high urn made from a mosaic of rich, smoky jade. The lid handles were exquisitely carved into the forms of two jaguars: one male, the other female. O’Connor started to move slowly towards it, but he was stopped in his tracks.
‘Put your hands above your heads. Both of you!’ Wiley snarled. The DDO stepped out of the gloom of the passageway, the gunmetal of his pistol glinting in the flickering tomb light. Wiley kept his pistol pointed towards Aleta and O’Connor while he collected the two rifles from where they lay on the floor, and he slid them back towards the passageway. ‘Your pistol, O’Connor. Slide it over. One false move and the bitch gets it in the head.’
O’Connor slid his pistol across the stone floor and Wiley kicked it towards the rifles. ‘So, what do you suppose that urn might contain, hmm ?’ Wiley asked, waving his pistol at Aleta. She didn’t answer.
In the confined space of the tomb Wiley’s pistol shot was deafening. Aleta jumped as the bullet passed between her legs and ricocheted off the stone floor. ‘I asked you a question, bitch!’
She hadn’t seen him in over thirty years, but the face of the man behind the murders of her father and mother, her two brothers, and thousands of Guatemalan descendants of the great Maya was seared indelibly on her brain.
‘It would appear that the honour of uncovering one of the greatest archaeological finds since the tomb of Tutankhamen has fallen to you, Mr Wiley,’ she replied, struggling to keep her voice even.
Wiley could picture the headlines. ‘Stand back!’ he ordered, waving his pistol and motioning O’Connor and Aleta back towards the side wall. Wiley kept his pistol aimed in their direction and moved sideways towards the recess. When he reached the urn, he lifted it from where it had rested for over a thousand years.
‘Aaggghhhh!’ The pressure plate beneath the urn activated another mechanism and six spears, each tipped with the deadly poison of the fer-de-lance, fired from hidden slots in the recess walls. Two of the spears pierced Wiley’s thighs and his pistol clattered onto the ancient stones. The urn settled back onto the pressure plate just as Ellen Rodriguez, pistol drawn, appeared from the passageway.
‘Rodriguez – keep them covered,’ Wiley ordered, reaching to remove the two spears; but the barbs were deep. The poison took effect immediately and he slumped to the floor.
‘Not this time, Mr Wiley.’ Rodriguez calmly picked up Wiley’s pistol and pocketed it.
‘You double-crossing bitch. You’ll burn in San Quentin for this.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Wiley. When the administration finds out what you’ve been up to, it’s you who will find yourself on the inside.’
‘You stupid cow,’ Wiley responded, gasping for breath, ‘this operation has been approved at the highest levels.’
‘Something I’m sure the Senate Committee on Intelligence will find very interesting.’ Rodriguez turned to Aleta. ‘Do you think it’s safe to recover the urn?’
‘It’s stood here for centuries, to be discovered by one who will be able to warn the world of its contents.’ José appeared from the passage, his wizened face a coppery bronze in the flickering light of the oil lamps. He was accompanied by four warriors and he nodded to one carrying a small ceramic jar containing the antidote to the poison, indicating he should administer it to the now-unconscious Wiley.
‘It is safe,’ José said to Aleta.
Aleta gingerly lifted the priceless urn and removed it from the pedestal, setting it down beside the tomb of Princess Akhushtal. Her heart racing, she tried to lift the lid, but it was sealed with pitch.
The four ballistic gas actuators fired simultaneously, and the exhausts trails of vapour streamed into the pre-dawn air. The massive reinforced-concrete cover on launch silo Lima Foxtrot-26 slid silently to one side, revealing the eighteen-metre modified Minuteman 3 missile. In the Vandenberg control centre Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dan Williams ran his eye over the myriad consoles and screens that would track the mission to Iran. All systems were showing green.
O’Connor proffered a knife and Aleta ran the blade beneath the rim of the jade. She gently prised the lid open and stepped back as foul air that had been trapped within the urn for hundreds of years escaped. At the bottom of the urn was a large leather-covered package. Aleta’s hands trembled as she unwrapped the outer covering.
‘The Maya Codex!’ she whispered in awe, cradling the priceless artefact. A tear ran down her cheek as she remembered her grandfather. Had it not been for the Nazis, he might have revealed its contents to the world. She placed the codex on the floor of the tomb and carefully opened it, page by huun page.
Rodriguez’ cell phone buzzed quietly in the background, and she moved back up the passage to get a better signal.
‘Any word from the White House?’ Jackson asked. ‘They’re scheduled to launch in less than an hour.’
‘I tried, Tyler, but Reed’s not buying it. They’re more concerned about stopping the Iranians than the Chandler wobble – which I doubt they understand.’
Tyler Jackson shook his head as he hung up the phone. It was absolute madness, but like the Castle Bravo experiment, no one was listening.
Rodriguez returned to the tomb to find Aleta, O’Connor and José huddled over the codex.
‘Can you decipher it?’ José asked. He had left even the task of deciphering the warning to the one whom the ancients had intended to issue it.
Aleta nodded. ‘It will take time to unravel it in detail, but the warning is clearly there. Although …’ Aleta paused, a puzzled tone to her voice, ‘it appears to be in two parts. There’s a short path that finishes before December 2012, and a longer path, though both of them lead to the destruction of the human race.’
‘What’s the short path?’ O’Connor asked.
‘It deals with the earth and its axis,’ Aleta said, reading the hieroglyphs by torchlight. ‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘There’s a tilting, and a geographic pole shift, followed by an annihilation of cities near the coast. And there’s a shooting star … no, wait … it’s coming from the earth, not to it – it’s some kind of rocket.’
It was Rodriguez’ turn to gasp in amazement. She grabbed O’Connor by the arm and explained the calls she’d had from Tyler Jackson.
‘Tyler’s one of the best scientists I’ve ever worked with, Ellen, and if he’s concerned, the White House should be too.’
‘The Chandler wobble?’
‘The Chandler wobble’s very real, and we saw the effect of the Chile earthquake. That involved a shard of the earth’s crust sliding under the South American plate, which redistributed a whole chunk of the earth’s mass. Three billion watts of radiated power might push the planet past the point of balance. But the President can’t assess that risk if he’s not been briefed on it.’
Rodriguez speed-dialled Andrew Reed’s number.
‘For Christ’s sake, Ellen, we had this fucking conversation at three o’clock this morning. The answer’s no – what part of that don’t you understand?’
‘Then we’ll announce what you’re doing to the media.’
‘And you’ll not only be fired, you’ll finish up behind bars.’
‘You guys have got no idea what the CIA is up to down here, so shut the fuck up and listen.’ Rodriguez briefed her old boss, taking a
risk over the open line. When she’d finished, there was silence on the other end. ‘Did you get that, Andrew?’
‘There’s a cabinet meeting shortly, but I’ll delay it. Is this Jackson available?’
‘Waiting for someone to call him in Gakona.’
59
TIKAL, GUATEMALA
It was the world’s greatest archaeological announcement since the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. The hotel conference room, even though it seated over a hundred people, was way too small. The media conference had, perforce, been moved to the Great Plaza of Tikal, flanked by the massive Pyramid I and II: the Temple of the Great Jaguar and the Temple of the Mask.
José performed an ancient Mayan blessing and introduced Aleta as one of the finest archaeologists of the age. She stepped confidently to the microphone, which had been positioned on the steps of the North Terrace on the northern side of the plaza. Cameras flashed incessantly and television cameramen and women vied for the best shots. The broadcast beamed live to over 150 countries. Aleta had wanted to begin by thanking O’Connor, but he’d firmly dissuaded her. The game in Washington wasn’t over yet, he’d warned – not by a long shot. Just before Aleta took the microphone, Rodriguez handed her a note. It read: ‘Test-firing of Minuteman cancelled’.
‘The warnings are stark,’ Aleta emphasised, after she’d given the assembled media a short introduction to the Maya and the codex. ‘And the major warnings for our civilisation concern religion and the environment,’ she said, avoiding any reference to the shorter warning on the rocket launch. ‘The Maya built one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever seen; but the last recorded inscription on any stelae in Tikal is dated 13 August 869 AD, and by then the city was in deep trouble. By 950 AD, the entire Mayan civilisation had collapsed. The magnificent city-states, with their countless pyramids and temples, lay totally deserted. There has been much debate in academic circles as to the reasons, and until now the real cause has not been determined.’
THE MAYA CODEX Page 36