The Aztec Heresy

by Paul Christopher

  ‘‘Of course.’’

  ‘‘Not a word of this can leak out and you can’t be squeamish. If it all starts to go south, get out of there, but not before you clean up after yourself. No mercy. No survivors. No mistakes like last time.’’

  ‘‘I realize that, Father.’’

  ‘‘You know the plan?’’

  It was the tenth time they’d gone over it since the Noble Dancer had left Miami. Harrison Noble sighed. Sometimes the old man was a right royal pain.

  ‘‘Yes, I know the plan.’’

  The Noble Dancer presently stood fifteen miles off the coast, three miles outside Mexican territorial waters. At high tide, in just less than an hour, the yacht would come in three miles to the exact GPS limit and launch the two GTX three-passenger Sea-Doos from the platform on the upper deck where they were presently waiting.

  The high-speed jetboats easily had at least an hour of running time at top speed, a solid fifty miles an hour. Cherka, the team leader, estimated they’d reach the beach just east of the small fishing village of El Cuyo at something under ten minutes. The Sea-Doos would then be scuttled offshore to prevent discovery.

  If the Nobles’ latest information from Max Kessler was correct, traveling on foot from the village to their destination was expected to take two full days through the tropical rain forest that lay on the edge of the Rio Lagartos National Park, at least twenty-four hours ahead of Finn Ryan and her little inland expedition. Once on-site, Harrison junior would complete his investigation of the temple and the surrounding area, hopefully killing two birds with one stone.

  With the job accomplished, one way or another the team would rendezvous at a preselected GPS coordinate outside the tiny village of San Angel, where they would be exfiltrated by a Blackhawk Security Bell JetRanger helicopter in civilian livery, probably that of a fictitious helitour company. From San Angel, their gear abandoned, they would be flown to Isla Mujeres off the coast, where they would then board the Noble Dancer, now legitimately berthed in the local marina.

  Forty minutes after the conversation, Harrison Noble, now dressed in a roomy, dark blue dry suit over his jungle fatigues, boarded one of the pair of heavy, unmarked jet-black Sea-Doos winched down into the sea beside the gently swaying yacht. Cherka, in the lead Sea-Doo, gave the signal, and the two-hundred-fifteen -horsepower Rotex engines burst into life, the jet pumps spitting out a burbling stream of water.

  Cherka, two of his heavily equipped men on the molded seats behind him, clicked the transmission into Forward, twisted the throttle hard, and headed for the invisible coast a dozen miles away. On the second watercraft, Harrison Noble, with a single passenger and more equipment loaded behind him, turned his own throttle and followed.

  William Hartley Mossberg, Special Assistant to the Assistant Deputy National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, was late. He stepped out of his broom-closet office next to the lobby in the West Wing of the White House and then walked out through the canopied side entrance to the street, a section of Executive Avenue closed off to anything but White House traffic and effectively turned into a parking lot.

  He looked at his watch. It was a fifty-dollar Indiglo with the stars and stripes on the dial, just like the one stolen from the president on his last trip to Albania. Prior to purchasing the light-’em-up Indiglo he’d worn a six-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe knockoff that was a twin to the sixty-grand original one the president of Russia wore, but the president had noticed it in passing one day and told him to get rid of it since it made him look like a ‘‘Jewish banker.’’ Thankfully there had been no one nearby to hear the ill-advised and unfortunate comment, but Mossberg got rid of the knockoff and picked up the hard-to-find commemorative Indiglo on E-bay. So far Tumbleweed, as the Secret Service code-named his imperial prezship, hadn’t noticed, but you never knew. Ambassadorships had been handed out for less. Through devious old-boy back channels Mossberg had learned that he’d been hired on the basis that his name reminded Tumbleweed of the shotgun manufacturer and not, as he’d initially presumed, because he’d gone to Yale, graduating 1,287th out of a class of 1,400.

  In the end, of course, William Hartley Mossberg couldn’t have cared less how he’d reached the White House; the fact was he had arrived there and he was going to do his best to stay. All he had was a lousy master of studies in law degree, but after four years in the White House it would easily be enough to get him some kind of nonlawyer schmooze job at a big firm in Fort Smith, and failing that he could run for any office he wanted in his hometown of Arkadelphia. Best of all, if he could somehow swing it he might even be able to land something here in D.C. as a junior lobbyist. Which was why it didn’t do to be late for a late-night meeting with Max Kessler.

  Mossberg reached the end of West Executive Avenue, picked up a cab outside the security booth, and gave the driver the address for Harry’s Saloon at Eleventh and Pennsylvania. He could think of other places he could be heading for at this time of night, Apex in particular, up on Dupont Circle. But that was another story, one that had gotten him into the trouble he was in and another very good reason for saying, ‘‘How high?’’ when Max Kessler said, ‘‘Jump.’’

  The cab took a turn around Lafayette Park, came back out onto Pennsylvania Avenue beyond the eastern security barrier, and headed toward Eleventh. Harry’s was located in an office building directly across from the ESPN Zone sports bar and catercorner to the Old Post Office Building, now gutted and turned into an upscale shopping mall.

  The cab let him out on Pennsylvania Avenue and he turned the corner onto Eleventh. He pushed through the door and stepped into the long, high-ceilinged room. It was still going strong even after midnight, populated mainly by tourists and people who’d just come out of the Warner Theater down the street.

  Kessler, alone as always, was seated at a table halfway down the room, fastidiously eating a dripping hamburger with a napkin tucked into his collar. He was watching the CNN roller on one of the half dozen televisions set high above the long bar. There was no sound. Even if the volume had been turned up it would have remained unheard over the steady humming din of the patrons. It was a lesson Kessler had explained to him shortly after they first met: a noisy room was a secure one. If everyone else was talking it meant that no one else was listening to you.

  ‘‘I had them put some blue cheese dressing on the hamburger. It’s quite good actually— you should try one. Fry?’’ Kessler asked, holding up a crispy length of potato.

  ‘‘No, thanks,’’ said Mossberg, cringing slightly. It occurred to him that at every meeting he’d had with the ugly little man, Max Kessler had been eating. He had an oddly obscene habit of dabbing at his lips too often with his napkin, and inevitably cleared his throat after each dab. He looked like a gigantic spider eating flies.

  A waitress appeared. Mossberg ordered a Zhujiang lager, which was about as exotic as it got for Harry’s.

  ‘‘So,’’ said Kessler after the waitress faded away, ‘‘how are we tonight?’’

  ‘‘As well as can be expected, under the circumstances. ’’

  ‘‘You still think I’m blackmailing you?’’ Kessler smiled. He used a steak knife to carve a sliver from his open-faced burger and popped it into his mouth. Kessler was the only person William Hartley Mossberg had ever seen who could smile and chew simultaneously.

  ‘‘I don’t know what else you’d call it,’’ the young man said. His beer arrived along with a pilsner glass. He poured and took a long, sharp swallow. It didn’t do any good at all.

  Kessler swallowed. Somehow, two years ago the little ferret had discovered that William Hartley was a regular at Apex and a variety of other gay clubs in Washington, including the notorious Lizard Lounge. D.C. had always been relatively tolerant of sexual predilections of virtually any stripe, but with a hard-line Republican in the Oval Office and tales of airport washroom two-steps abounding, it didn’t do to flaunt it. If William Hartley had been discreet it probably would have been overlook
ed, but his current main squeeze was a studly fellow on the second floor of the West Wing named Dan Sullivan, an intern in the Communications Office.

  Even that might have passed muster in this day and age except for the fact that Daniel was the grandnephew of the current vice president, and that would not do, no indeedy. Monica Lewinsky wasn’t related to anyone in the White House, and look at the trouble she’d caused. A sex scandal of this particular type in this particular White House would be a barn burner, with William Hartley trapped inside the barn as it went up in flames.

  Kessler stared at the young man across the table from him, dabbed his lips, and sighed.

  ‘‘I’ve explained to you before, Will. The information I have is merely a source of leverage. If I was ever to disclose it, lives would be ruined and careers overturned for no good reason. I see our relationship as potentially a mutual one. Don’t forget, I’m a supplier of information as well as a collector of it. Intelligence works both ways. There may come a time when I can help you as much as I can hurt you.’’

  ‘‘So you’ve told me on a number of occasions, ’’ grumbled Mossberg.

  ‘‘And meant it each and every time.’’ Kessler paused, surgically attacked his hamburger, and ate another bite. He dabbed his lips again. ‘‘Tell me something,’’ he murmured.

  ‘‘If I can.’’

  ‘‘How many satellites are there over Mexico?’’

  ‘‘Ours?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  Mossberg thought about it for a while, sipping his beer. Kessler ate, dabbed, ate and dabbed again. Mossberg finally answered.

  ‘‘A bunch. A couple of Geos birds, SeaSat, a NASA orbiter for telemetry. The DEA has at least two in conjunction with its AWACS program. There’s a Joint Intelligence Lacrosse Onyx put up by the National Reconnaissance Office that swings over Mexico when it’s tasked for it.’’

  ‘‘What can it do?’’

  ‘‘Anything. It uses something called Synthetic Aperture Radar. Sees through cloud cover. Press the right buttons and it can see under the ground. They call it the Bunker Hunter.’’

  ‘‘What would it take to task it for southern Mexico?’’

  ‘‘An intelligence directive.’’

  ‘‘How difficult is that for you?’’

  ‘‘As long as it’s not some kind of National Security thing, it wouldn’t be too difficult. A couple of forms to fill out, a phone call or two. It’s optimally in a polar orbit so it can see just about anything, anywhere, anytime.’’

  ‘‘I need a very close look at a very small piece of jungle. Could you manage that? Pictures?’’

  ‘‘I guess. If I had the right coordinates.’’

  Kessler answered promptly and exactly, referring to no notes.

  ‘‘Twenty-one degrees twenty-three minutes nineteen-point-three seconds North by eighty-seven degrees forty minutes thirty-four seconds West.’’

  ‘‘Why there?’’

  Kessler smiled blandly. ‘‘That, young man, would be telling."

  17

  Francis Xavier Spears had found William Huggins the ambulance driver in his apartment over the hardware store, drunk as a skunk and passed out in his narrow unmade bed just two hours after he completed his shift at midnight. According to Sears’s initial research, Huggins often drank while on the job, and there were a dozen empty cans of Budweiser and an empty bottle of cheap Pavlova vodka on the man’s battered old dining room table to give evidence to his continued binge.

  Whether Huggins’s drinking habits came about as a result of his long-ago abuse by the bishop or for some other reason was irrelevant to Sears; what counted was the man’s comatose condition. Not only would Huggins be unaware of and untroubled by Sears’s intrusion, but the effect of the insulin would be increased dramatically. Sears checked the time. A quarter to two. Perfect.

  The bedroom was a shabby place. There was a cheap chest of drawers, an open stainless steel clothing rack holding several uniforms and some shirts, an upturned plastic milk crate for a bedside table, and an IKEA Arstid-style table lamp with a broken pull chain replaced by a dangling piece of string. There was nothing hanging on the walls, which were painted a sullen pale tobacco color. There was a blackout curtain over the window that looked out onto the street. The IKEA light was on. The other things on the table included a package of discount Monte Carlo cigarettes, a matchbook from Shooters Bar and Grill on Main Street a block away, and an empty forty of orange-flavored St. Ides malt liquor.

  Sears was already wearing surgical gloves. He reached into the pocket of his Windbreaker and removed a loaded NovoLog FlexPen. He unscrewed the cap and, using his left hand, gently eased Huggins’s jaw to one side. The man groaned, broke wind, and shuffled his legs but didn’t awaken. Sears was pleased to see that Huggins hadn’t shaved. The insertion site would be invisible among the heavy beard, the large pores, and the old razor burn. The man had the complexion of a pizza.

  Sears dialed the head of the pen up to a maximum sixty-unit dose, gently pinched the skin under Huggins’s jaw to find the artery, then inserted the ultrafine needle. Huggins didn’t even flinch. Sears kept the needle firmly lodged in the artery for a full six seconds, making sure that all the insulin had been delivered. Finally he withdrew the now-empty pen, screwed on the cap again, and simply stood there, looking down at the innocent victim.

  As far as murder was concerned, Sears had learned many years ago that patience was a virtue, a key one if the murder was to remain undetected. The majority of murderers were eventually caught because they rushed the job and left something behind or something undone.

  The fact that the death of William Huggins would go unnoticed for a minimum of twelve hours, allowing the scene to decay, was immaterial; care had to be taken, even though his victim’s passing would be unremarkable and unremarked on. Even the death of a nobody was important, at least to Sears. So he waited.

  NovoLog was a fast-acting insulin, and within ten minutes the first signs of distress became visible as the insulin in his brain put him into hypoglycemic shock as his blood sugar plummeted. A cold sweat broke out on the man’s forehead, followed by mild shaking or light convulsions of his arms and legs. Sears reached out and put his finger on the man’s carotid. The pulse was frantic as Huggins descended into tachycardia.

  He groaned then, his torso convulsing as he began to vomit, choking on it. His eyes flew open then rolled back, showing only the whites. He began to convulse heavily and then, suddenly, everything subsided. Huggins’s sphincter loosened and the stink of human waste rose out of the bedclothes. From dead drunk to just plain dead in eleven and a half minutes.

  Sears gazed around the room, looking for problems, finding none. He checked himself. None of the man’s fluids had reached him. He was already wearing disposable surgical booties and a paper cap. There would be no trace. No suspicion.

  He turned away from the fresh corpse and left the room. He walked back through the apartment, touching nothing. The windows here closed, and either Huggins had been too drunk to turn on the air conditioner in the dining room or it didn’t work. Either way the apartment would be a furnace by noon. The blowflies would be hard at work by then, the first maggots appearing within six hours.

  If nobody checked on the man’s whereabouts for a day or two the smell coming down into the hardware store might be the first clue, and by then the corpse would be a terrible mess. Sears gave the room a last once-over and checked his wristwatch. Two a.m. The bars would be emptying out. There’d be lots of people on the street, a crowd to vanish into with the police cruisers probably concentrating on places like Shooters a few blocks to the south beyond Courthouse Square. He’d be an insomniac tourist on the way back to his bed-and-breakfast, a traveling salesman for a medical supply company just like his business card and other ID proclaimed.

  He reached the back door, carefully removed the strip of tape he’d used to keep it unlocked, and stepped out onto the wooden stairs that led down to the courtyard loading zone be
hind the hardware store. He took care not to wipe the existing prints off the doorknob. Wiped areas were dangerous. A smudge or two wouldn’t bother anyone, if they even decided to dust for prints at all.

  He waited for a moment at the bottom of the steps, peeled off his surgical gloves and the paper booties he’d worn, and put them into his jacket pocket. He walked slowly across the small courtyard and went down a narrow alley, exiting onto Isaac Street. Seeing no one but hearing the echo of some shouts and honking horns from the bar a few blocks away, he went down Isaac Street to Sixth and turned onto Sixth Avenue.

  Mrs. Rothwell’s bed-and-breakfast was located across from a hulking old redbrick middle school. It was a big old mansard-roof mansion like something out of the Magnificent Ambersons. A dozen bedrooms, wood-paneled walls, and worn old carpets on yellow varnished hardwood floors. The furniture was antique or at least trying to be, and there was a rear brick patio and flower beds everywhere. Three of the guest rooms had private baths and Sears had taken one of them. It was on the main floor at the rear, with French doors leading out to the patio, which suited him perfectly.

  Sears went to the long narrow parking lot at the side of the building and unlocked the trunk of his Hertz rental. He took out a medium-sized plastic bag, locked the trunk, and went to the far end of the parking lot then followed the property line of the bed-and-breakfast to the rear alley.

  He turned right down the dark alley, counting the garages until he reached the old chain-link fence that marked the alley end of the property belonging to the bishop’s mother. He stopped then, opened the bag, and took out a can of WD-40 with its wand already attached. He sprayed the hinges of the gate and the slip latch, put the can back into the bag, and stepped into the bishop’s backyard. A dog barked a few doors down and he could still hear the distant sounds of car horns, but other than that there was nothing. He checked his watch. Ten past two.