by Rob Jones
Hawke turned to her. “The sacred chants?”
“There are sacred chants in the codex, sung to honor the various gods.”
Hawke frowned. “But you can download copies of the codex off the internet – why would they be after this original copy?”
Pavoni was silent for a moment.
“Professor?”
“What I tell you is not in the public realm – not yet anyway.”
Lea sighed. “Here we go…”
Ryan rubbed his hands together in excitement. “Here’s where things warm up.”
“Our researchers here at the Vatican recently discovered there was a little more to the Codex Borgia than we had previously thought. Using the same reflectography technique the Uffizi used recently on the Caravaggio, we were able to study the images in the Codex much more comprehensively.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me,” Hawke said, feeling more than a little out of his depth. “What’s reflectography?”
“Multispectral reflectography is a technology that allows us to see through the various layers in a painted document with infrared. As I say, it’s been used to see under the top layer of paint in works of art by Caravaggio and Da Vinci among many others.”
“You mention sacred chants,” Hawke said abruptly, moving the professor back to the point.
“Yes – when we applied the technology to some of the large paintings in the Codex we found to our shock and surprise more sacred chants hidden beneath the layers of paint.”
Lea spoke up. “And what do these sacred chants do?”
“They’re used to summon the gods and worship them.”
“Wait,” Ryan said, looking more closely at the reflectographic image of the codex. “This here looks like a depiction of Mictlan – am I right?”
Pavoni nodded. “We think so, but it’s very early days.”
“I’m sure it is,” he continued. “Why would a map of Mictlan be hidden within the pages of the Codex Borgia, and right next to these weird chants?”
“Well, it’s hard to say, but…”
“And look here,” Ryan continued. “This image of a man in a canoe – I’ve seen this before.”
Pavoni shook her head. “No, not this you haven’t. This was only recently discovered by the reflectography. You’re thinking of a similar image in another codex – the famous drawing of Aztlán in the Codex Boturini.”
“Ah, right…”
The gunshot was violent but as quiet as a ghost. Pavoni slumped to the floor with a bullet hole through her left temple, and Hawke, Lea and the others jumped back a step, crouching instinctively for cover.
But it was too late.
Silvio Mendoza stepped through the door, flanked by goons and holding a Beretta 92FS in his hands. Smoke was still drifting from the muzzle of the suppressor. A humorless smile played on his lips as he waggled his finger at Hawke and tutted. “How could you kill such a clever and accomplished woman?”
As he spoke, one of the goons moved over to Pavoni and lifted the codex and the reflectographic images from her dead hands. He handed it to Mendoza who sighed.
“And you got blood on this beautiful manuscript. Shame on you.”
Hawke bristled and took a step toward Mendoza, but the cartel boss raised his gun and Lea grabbed his elbow and pulled him back.
“Leave it, Joe!”
“You should listen to her,” Mendoza said, before turning to his men. “Now kill them all.”
Hawke didn’t stop to think, but grabbed hold of the metal drawer that had contained the codex. He flung it like a Frisbee at the man with the gun and it struck him hard in the windpipe before he had a chance to react. He dropped the gun and fell to his knees, hands desperately clutching at his smashed Adam’s apple as he strained air into his lungs.
The second man fired at Hawke but the Englishman simultaneously dodged it and piled a tight fist into the gunman’s face knocking him out instantly. Mendoza’s eyes widened with fear, and he ordered the other men into the fray. They raced forward, snatching up the gun on the tiled floor as they hurried toward them with murder in their eyes.
Hawke searched for a weapon but saw only the wooden chair Pavoni had used to reach the drawer. He snatched it up and spun it around, yelling at the others to take cover. This wasn’t exactly going to be a fair fight.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hawke lunged forward with the chair and rammed one of the legs into the man’s face with a savage degree of accuracy and force. It tore through his cheek and smashed his cheekbone. He howled in agony and staggered backwards, raising his hand to check the severity of the wound.
Hawke disarmed him and then used him as a human shield as he fired at the others, but Mendoza was gone as quick as smoke and the mag only had three rounds in it and was now empty. Hawke wanted to go after him but one of the other goons pulled a knife from his belt and padded over to him. Hawke was tall, but this man towered over him as he got closer. He raised the knife and after offering a string of Spanish profanities he brought it crashing down toward Hawke’s head, but Hawke dodged the attack and side-stepped the much slower man.
Before the man could respond, Hawke powered a heavy punch into his flank and brought his other fist up hard and fast into the bottom of his jaw. He heard the teeth smash as he drove the lower jaw upwards and the man screamed out in agony, spitting blood out of his mouth. It looked like he’d bitten off part of his tongue.
Hawke winced but took the moment to snatch the knife from the man’s hand and stuff it through the top of his belt. Now, one of the men grabbed at his arm and yanked him back away from the wall beneath the archive drawers. Hawke used his spinning momentum to drive home another fat punch, this time hitting the other man square in his face. He flew backwards, all smashed nose and wobbling jowls until he collided with another chair and fell over in a heap with his legs tangled up in the chair’s stretcher.
Free now, Hawke ran to the door and searched the other room for Mendoza but all he saw was another brawl at the end of the aisle where Lea and Maria were taking it in turns to deliver axe-kicks to one of the goons. He ran toward them, with Ryan in his wake.
Maria had known it wasn’t going to be a fair fight from the second she saw the man’s beer gut, but the FSB were not world-renowned for their mercy-giving qualities and now she was cranking things up to a terrifying degree, alternating left boot-right boot with the power of a ninja. One final smash to the jaw sent him off to sleep, and now with both men down, they sprinted along the aisle Pavoni had led them down not twenty minutes earlier. Moving forward to the far door they wrenched it open to see Mendoza and his remaining protection climbing out of a window and clambering down onto a roof.
They reached the window only to see Mendoza and his surviving men drop safely from the low roof to the ground. The cartel man spun around and blew them a kiss, and then drew his finger theatrically across his scarred throat to indicate he would kill them.
“That’s a bit rude,” Lea said, tutting.
Hawke nodded. “So let’s teach them some manners… down you go, Ryan.”
“Eh?”
“Out the window and climb down the bloody wall – they’re getting away with the codex!”
After a short and unappreciated protest, Ryan followed Hawke out of the window, followed by Lea and Maria. They made their way down the roof valley and over the gutter before dropping down to the gravel on the ground level.
“Over there!” Maria cried. “I see them!”
Hawke shielded his eyes from the bright Roman sun. Sprinting for their lives now, Silvio Mendoza and his men were making serious tracks.
But not for long, Hawke thought.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The ex-SBS man watched as Mendoza and his men sprinted into the sunshine and crossed the Belvedere Courtyard. For five hundred years the courtyard had been an impressive example of High Renaissance landscape architecture serving to connect the Vatican Library with the Palace, but now it was a car park giving Mendoza an e
scape route toward the Sistine Chapel.
Hawke saw the sun flash on Mendoza’s gun just before he slipped into the shade of the Borgia Tower. He knew the tourist situation in that part of the palace wasn't going to make for an easy escape and if they weren’t careful they could easily redefine the word ‘bloodshed’ in the next few minutes.
He tracked across the car park, powering up to full speed as his boots pounded on the courtyard’s tarmac. He was flanked by Lea and the erstwhile Agent Snowcat, and a few yards further back by the unremittingly unfit Ryan Bale whose idea of a workout was rolling his own blunt, as he liked to brag. Now, weaving through the tourists as they swarmed in the Vatican, this seemed to lose its humor.
Two men in the Swiss Guard saw Mendoza approach the courtyard entrance to the Apostolic Palace and immediately raised their halberds to stop him. The Mexican cartel man made short work of the guards, raising his pistol and firing into their chests. They fell to the ground, dead, and Mendoza was through. The group of people taking photos of the fountain now saw instead the murder of two men and screamed in response, scuttling out of the courtyard in a dozen directions.
Hawke and the others leaped over the dead Swiss Guards and burst into the Raphael Rooms. These were originally designed as reception rooms and were now one of the few public parts of the papal apartments. Lined from floor to ceiling with frescoes painted by Raphael, they were second only to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel as examples of the greatest renaissance frescoes on the planet.
“You see ’em?” Lea said, gun raised.
“I’ll say,” Ryan mumbled. “These are incredible frescoes!”
“Not the paintings, you dope.”
Hawke scanned the chamber, staring through the confused, frightened tourists. “Not yet…” Then he heard a scream and a gunshot in the southwest of the chamber and saw a female museum assistant fall back in a doorway. She slumped to the floor, clutching at her stomach. “Bastard’s over there.”
“Jesus, they just shot that woman down!” Ryan said.
Maria, hardened by her years in the FSB didn’t share Ryan’s shock. “Let’s go.”
They sprinted through the enormous chamber with only Ryan glancing up at the dazzling frescoes on display all around them. They reached the door with the murdered woman, and stepped out into the less impressive cortile delle sentinelle, a dank courtyard separating the Raphael Rooms from the Sistine Chapel. A moment later they followed Mendoza into the chapel itself.
Maria gasped when they burst into the famous room, staring up at the vaulted ceiling in wonder as she saw Michelangelo’s artwork for the first time.
“There!” Lea said, pointing behind the marble transenna which divided the chapel into two sections. Originally designed to keep the members of the Papal Chapel and the commoners separate while in prayer, it was now giving the fleeing Mexican gangsters some much-needed cover.
Now at the far end of the chapel and followed closely by his two goons, Mendoza turned and fired blindly at Hawke and the shots rang out in the solemnly quiet space. The tourists who had been looking at the frescoes in respectful silence now bolted for their lives, and began falling over each other in their bid to reach the closest exit.
Hawke raised his gun and fired over their heads at the Mexicans, striking one of the goons in the back and downing him like a wounded moose. The man’s screams grew quieter as he lost consciousness from the drop in blood pressure, but Joe Hawke had already moved on to the next target. He fired a second shot. More screams, but another success. The bullet ripped into the second goon’s leg as he tried to slip out of the chapel ahead of Mendoza, spinning him around like a ballerina. Hawke fired again and hit the man in the chest, killing him in an instant.
Mendoza ducked down behind the altar and fired his gun at Hawke and the others. Hawke ducked to avoid the hot lead which traced over his head and drilled into the far wall, blasting chunks of Michelangelo’s frescoes all over the floor. What had been one of the greatest works of art for centuries was now no more than painted plaster dust, but this didn’t concern Silvio Mendoza, who fired a second time, raking a second volley of bullets up the wall and puncturing more frescoes on the vaulted ceiling.
Hawke returned fire, missing the Mexican who had ducked behind the altar once again for cover as he reloaded. Then the cartel man dashed out of the chapel, pausing only to throw something at the ECHO team.
“Grenade!” Hawke screamed, diving for cover.
The grenade exploded with savage velocity in the deceptively small chamber, its force knocking massive chunks off the transenna and blasting the glass in the arched windows into a lethal shower. Thousands of glass shards and splinters now rained down on the courtyards outside.
“He’s getting away!” Lea yelled.
Hawke thought for a second. “Ryan – what’s that door he just used?”
“Definitely an original High Renaissance.”
“Ryan!”
“Oh, sorry – I think it leads to the eastern part of the Basilica and St Peter’s Square.”
Hawke, Lea, Maria and Ryan sprinted to the door and emerged into a well-lit corridor leading to the east. They followed it until they reached daylight and the crushing sight of Silvio Mendoza climbing into a long, black limousine.
Lea threw her hands up in frustration as Maria spat out a string of Russian curses. Behind them, a wheezing Ryan Bale was trying to get his breath back, doubled over with his hands on his knees for support.
Hawke heaved a low sigh of disappointment as he realized he’d failed again, and his feeling of failure was compounded when Silvio Mendoza appeared through the rear sunroof of the limo. He gave him a mock salute and waved the codex at him before disappearing back inside the car.
Filmed by literally hundreds of tourists, the limousine accelerated away and skidded across St. Peter’s Square before hanging a left and slipping out of sight into the maze of Roman backstreets.
And with that, the codex was gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Acapulco International Airport was situated ten miles south of the city. The drive was short and uneventful and soon they were cruising through the southern suburbs of the world-famous location. According to the driver of their taxi, this was once the playground of the rich and famous, a utopia… but not any more. He explained in grim detail about the rise in murders and violence… gangland decapitations, assassins on jet skis. It was becoming, he said sadly, a very dangerous place.
Hawke said nothing, but instead pushed back into his seat, taking the moment to close his eyes and finish the sleep he’d started on the plane. This proved harder than he had anticipated as their driver’s monologue meandered from corruption in the government to the value of plebiscites via chemtrails, the Apollo moon landing hoax and the phantom time hypothesis.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Ryan piped up. “Oh my God, there it is!” he said, pointing out the window to the left.
“There what is?” Maria asked.
“That property down there was where they filmed the Villa Arabesque in Licence to Kill!”
“What?” Lea asked.
“It was the Sanchez villa in the Bond film.”
“I thought Sanchez Villa was a footballer,” Lea said, casting a sideways glance at Ryan in the mirror.
“Heathens.”
After a short silence Lea sighed. “You’re not James Bond, Ry.”
“I know that.”
“You could be Oddjob though,” she said with a contemplative look at her ex-husband.
“Drole.”
Hawke wasn’t paying attention to the chitchat. His mind was stuck on the sight of Silvio Mendoza mocking him back at St Peter’s Square, and his own failure to secure the codex for the ECHO team.
When they got to the hotel room, he was surprised to see Sir Richard Eden and Alex Reeve alongside Scarlet, Lexi and Reaper, not to mention a team of Americans working for Jack Brooke, the US Secretary of Defense. The Americans were headed by a man who introduced himself as
Jack Camacho. He shook hands like a professional wrestler.
“SAS, huh?” Camacho said with respect.
Hawke sighed and turned to Scarlet. “Who briefed this man?”
“Oh – I’m sorry,” Scarlet said. “I did – I thought I’d talk you up a bit.”
“Very drole, Cairo.”
Camacho was confused. “What’s going on?”
“Forget it,” Lea said.
They passed round some cold beers and settled down to the briefing but the mood was sour – both sides had lost good people to Wade’s murderous gang. Worse still, information was hard to come by. Wade was running a pretty tight ship and anyone connected to him seemed happier to die than give up anything that might lead to his capture and the end of his activities.
“That’s the problem when you’re dealing with a suicide cult,” Camacho said drily.
They knew that Wade had successfully looted both the British Museum of what they were now sure was not a sun-worshipping object or calendar stone but part of the Key of Mictlan, a mysterious artefact once believed to open the doors to the Aztec underworld. Worse, from the looks of the footage Ben filmed before his death, it was obvious the fragment Mendoza had taken from the British Museum would fit perfectly with the artefact Wade pulled out of the jungle the day before. If it was a key, then Morton Wade now had all of it.
They also knew Wade had relieved the Vatican of the Codex Borgia, but despite the best efforts of Alex and Ryan exactly why he needed it was still a mystery. Their speculation that Wade had somehow stumbled upon the Aztec Underworld seemed too grim to contemplate, but the map found under the codex’s painted illustrations pointed that way. As for the sacred chants, they shuddered to think what Wade was trying to summon.
Ryan pushed back in his chair and took a long gulp of the beer before turning to Hawke and the others. “Something’s been bothering me for a while.”