For a horrifying moment there was no movement. Maria began to shake uncontrollably. Her breath returned in short, searing gasps through her nose. She felt claustrophobic, about to suffocate. Her assailant snorted, pushed her sideways until she nearly fell, then jolted her through an open door and held her tight again from behind. She felt his breath against her ear, the nauseating smell.
“Get a hold of that.” The words were snarled into her ear, the accent indefinable. Maria blinked hard to clear her eyes. She was in O’Connor’s study. Through the blur she saw the candle on his mantelpiece, the copy of the Mappa Mundi on the wall behind. The flame was flickering on the ink of the Red Sea and seemed to be throwing a red aura over the rest of the map. Maria felt light-headed, close to blacking out. She blinked again, desperately trying to clear the red tunnel around her vision. She saw the candle on his desk, the one she had lit for him an hour before. She looked down.
There was someone on the floor. She felt her knees give way, and her assailant pulled her upright, squeezing her until she retched.
She looked down again.
Father O’Connor.
Her heart lurched in horror. The candle cast a shadow over the floor, and at first all she saw was a dark form. Then she began to make out his head. His mouth was duct-taped, his eyes wide open. She struggled to make a noise, to speak to him, but her assailant stifled her nose. Surely O’Connor must see her, must realize she was trying to communicate. He remained still, his eyes staring. He was lying on his stomach, his head under his desk, his arms and legs splayed. He was wearing his brown monk’s cassock.
Then she realised. The colour on the map. The sticky wetness on her face. The metallic taste.
It was blood.
She looked at O’Connor again. Something was horribly amiss. The darkness on his back was not his cassock at all. Then she knew, with sickening certainty.
The blood-eagle.
She looked frantically from side to side, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. There was blood everywhere. Soaking the remains of his cassock, seeping out in a pool under his body, splashed and spattered over his desk and books, flecked in livid trails over the ceiling.
She forced herself to look again. She could see the gaping hole, the shape. From shoulder to shoulder, and down the back. The wings and the tail. On either side she saw things too awful to register. Lumps of bloody flesh. Rows of severed bone, a rib cage. Bulbous piles of organs, like offal on a butcher’s bench.
Maria screamed, but no sound came out.
Her assailant jerked his hand under her chin and pressed his cheek hard against hers. She could just make out his face, could see the leering smile, the murderous, washed-out eyes, the smears of drying blood. He began to rub his cheek against hers, his stubble rasping her skin like sandpaper, pressing her again and again with the smoothness of a scar that ran from his eye socket to his jawbone, all the while panting heavily, grinning obscenely at the carnage on the floor. She could feel his arousal, smell the adrenaline. Her mind began to shut down, seeking oblivion in the face of horror.
“That was for my grandfather,” the voice whispered. “O’Connor was conscious when I cut out his lungs. He knew what was happening. The blood feud is finished. Now it is time for me to claim my prize.”
He kicked her legs from under her and dragged her back towards the door. The last thing she felt was the throbbing pain in her cheek, her own blood mingling with O’Connor’s. Then there was blackness.
Jack skillfully manoeuvred the Zodiac towards shore, allowing the boat to slide down under its own weight into each trough and then gunning the engine until it stood at the crest of the next wave. Above them the sky was flecked with high, fast-moving clouds heading south, and they were buffeted by a strong onshore wind which had been gathering strength all morning, raising a rapid swell. The air had the same pellucid quality they had seen in the Arctic, but even the wind could not disguise the burning intensity of the sun as it bore down on them, the glare blinding to their unaccustomed eyes. Behind them the breakers over the reef-girt shallows underlined the sleek form of Seaquest II, which was maintaining position over deep water a mile offshore.
For Jack it was exhilarating to feel the spray of the sea again, after five days cooped up during the long voyage south from Newfoundland along the eastern seaboard of the United States and into the Caribbean. It was the same wherever he was, in the Arctic, on the Golden Horn, by the shore of Iona or Great Sacred Isle, an uplifting in his soul he felt every time he tasted the sea. He stood up, his left hand holding the throttle and his right hand holding the painter line from the bow, and motioned for the other two to slide forward and get ready. Just before entering the surf he killed the outboard and swung it up on its pinions. Costas and Jeremy leapt into the water on either side, holding the Zodiac against the surge and return of the breakers until it was pushed into an eddy beside a sandbar. They swung it round until the bow pointed into the waves and waited while Jack threw out the anchor. Once they saw he had things under control, they waded ashore, their black IMU wetsuits dripping with the warm seawater and their hair matted with spray.
They were on a low, narrow beach backed by a continuous line of thorny jungle, the twisted trunks and strewn fragments of dead coral and driftwood testament to the severe hurricane damage of the year before.
“Xerophytic scrub,” Jeremy panted. “Welcome to the Yucatan. Not really rain forest up here at all, but jungle in the true sense of the word.”
“Wasteland, you mean.” Costas ventured a few feet into the tangled undergrowth, then backed out quickly, irritably brushing a spider’s web and midges from his face. “Give me the Caribbean over Greenland any day, but how a civilisation could have developed here is beyond me.”
“The key to the whole Maya thing was fresh water.” Jeremy led Costas along the beach until they came to the source of the sandbar, a channel of extraordinarily clear water about three metres wide that cut through the jungle and flowed into the sea. “The place is riddled with it. Some of these rivers come underground through amazing cave systems that originate far inland. I should be able to show you later on today.”
“You’ve spent time here?”
“Student field trips. Sweating in the jungle, measuring overgrown ruins, getting eaten alive.”
“You should learn to dive,” Costas said drily.
“That’s what Jack’s been telling me. He says you’re an advanced technical diving instructor, one of the best. Maybe when this is all over.”
“A pleasure. Just don’t get any ideas about diving inside icebergs.”
“I’ll leave the thrill-seeking to you guys.” Jeremy grinned. “I’d be in it purely for the archaeology.”
“What was that place again, the Maya name on the runestone with my friend under the cairn?” Costas wiped away the sweat that was beginning to trickle down his face.
“Uukil-Abnal,” Jeremy replied. “The name in the eleventh century for Chichen Itza, the most famous archaeological site in the Yucatan. A fantastic overgrown city sticking out of the jungle. Pyramids and all that. I think that’s our next stop.”
Jack came up after having anchored the Zodiac in the surf, and they began stripping their wetsuits to their waists.
“Nice beach,” Costas commented. “But a little desolate.”
“Cortes came here in 1519,” Jack replied. “But the conquistadors took one look and bypassed this place completely. They didn’t conquer the interior of the Yucatan until years later.”
“I can see why.” Costas struggled out of the top of his wetsuit, then flinched as a gust of wind blasted sand against him. “So you think Harald Hardrada was here?”
“Lanowski did a best-fit calculation for where the longship might have made landfall after being swept across by a summer north-westerly from the Florida Keys,” Jack said. “We chose this particular spot because of the river. The Vikings would have been desperate for fresh water, and they would have been able to draw up their longship in the creek. A
lso the edge of the river’s a likely place for a Maya track into the interior.”
“This may even have been a Maya beach landing, a harbour,” Jeremy added. “Most of the major Maya sites are well away from the sea, but they were pretty competent seafarers. I’ve seen paintings showing large war canoes, easily the size of a Norse longship.”
“Not exactly what Harald and his men were hoping for,” Costas said.
“If they were apprehensive about the Scraelings, these guys down here would have had them shaking in their breeches, fearless Viking warriors or not,” Jeremy replied. “The Vikings may have dreamt about that final showdown at Ragnarok, but once they saw the reality of what they were up against, they might have had second thoughts.”
“Probably no choice by this stage,” Jack said. “Their ship would have been a wreck after the voyage, and they would have been starving. They were committed to ending it all here. My guess is they would have set off into the jungle.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Costas said. “That character Pieter Reksnys. The Nazi’s son, Loki’s father. Didn’t he end up in Mexico too?”
“Apparently when O’Connor was a Jesuit missionary in Central America in the 1960s, he knew all about Reksnys’ whereabouts.” Jack raised his hand to his eyes, shielding them from the glare of the sun. “But O’Connor was keeping a low profile, so he avoided an encounter. There was a price on his head in the felag even then. Apparently, when Andrius Reksnys and his son sold their opal mine in Australia they moved first to Costa Rica. It was a haven for Nazis on the run. Then when the Nazi hunt began to die down in the late 1960s, Reksnys senior moved back to Europe, to the remote castle in the Obersaltzburg where he was gunned down five years ago.”
“The dead old man in the newspaper photo, with the swastika armband.”
“Right.”
“O’Connor say anything more about that?”
“Not when I spoke to him,” Jack said. “He won’t reveal who they used, and we don’t need to know. Maybe he’ll change his mind. But he said no regrets. I think he felt it was his duty as a former member of the felag to make amends and see that justice caught up with Reksnys.”
“Fair enough.”
“The younger Reksnys, Pieter, the one who’d helped his father Andrius with those SS executions, had more than enough money to retire and devote himself to providing his own son with the same twisted view of the world. But like a lot of these characters he couldn’t keep his fingers out of organised crime, especially in this neck of the woods, where virtually anything goes.”
“Drugs? Guns?” Costas said.
“He dabbled in them, but he came to focus more and more on the antiquities’ black market, eventually to the exclusion of everything else. It became his obsession, and was immensely lucrative. From the 1960s there was huge demand in America and Europe for Mesoamerican antiquities, for decorated pottery, gold, jade, stone carvings. According to O’Connor, Reksnys had his eye on the Yucatan even before it began to open up to foreign investors.”
“He’s here?” Costas said, looking out into the jungle. “Right under our very noses?”
“This place was like an untapped gold mine. Even now the Mexican authorities have huge problems policing the area, especially in the tracts of jungle owned by foreigners like Reksnys. And just like the mafia who run the tourist industry, guys like Reksnys have plenty of connections among the politicos and the police. It’s as corrupt as hell down here. There are literally hundreds of uncharted Maya sites dotting the jungle, to be picked over at leisure if the few honest police and the archaeologists can be kept at bay.”
“Any idea where Reksnys operates?”
“He’s very elusive, lives barricaded away. But we know he owns a large area of jungle in the north Yucatan, between the coast where we are now and the inland site of Chichen Itza.”
Costas whistled. “Seems an incredible coincidence.”
“There’s no way the felag could have made the connection with the Yucatan, except by pure guesswork. The only clue to this place we have is that jade pendant from L’Anse aux Meadows, and there’s no evidence anyone found it before us. But if there is something here, if Harald and his men truly got here, then Reksnys may have come across it by pure chance. He’s probably got more people working for him than there are archaeologists in the whole of the Yucatan. My hope is that if we do come up with anything, it’s in one of the policed archaeological zones and not out here in the wilderness.”
“So the menorah would be right up his street,” Costas murmured. “Not just as a sacred artefact for the felag, but from a professional point of view. He’d know exactly how to market it to the highest bidder.”
“That’s the one thing that really scares O’Connor. And remember we’re not just talking private collectors. Once again the world would have to contend with a Nazi influencing the course of Jewish history.”
“How’s Maria getting along?”
Jack lightened up for a moment. “Kicking herself for missing the L’Anse aux Meadows excitement, but planning to join us here unless we draw a blank. I’d be very pleased to see her away from Iona.”
“And back with us.”
“Too many males around here.”
“You know she’s close to Father O’Connor.”
“I know.”
“I mean very close.”
“I know.” Jack paused. “I think it began after that conference in Oxford, before they showed us the Mappa Mundi.”
“Something else that malignant force in the Vatican could hold against him.”
“O’Connor’s been walking a tightrope in more ways than one. But Maria was always very discreet.” Jack paused again and looked down. “Anyway, she’s one of my oldest friends. I knew her even before I had the dubious honour of meeting you.”
“It was destiny,” Costas said. “Where would you be without my technical backup? I’ve never come across anyone more hopeless with computers. And I’d be stuck inside some windowless prison in Silicon Valley, earning tons of money but having no fun.” He swatted a mosquito from his neck, then ducked his head as the wind blew up a swirl of sand that hit them like a blast from a furnace. “No icebergs, no beach holidays.”
“And no murderous psychopath on your trail,” Jack replied. “I just hope to God O’Connor gets to Interpol before Loki gets to him.”
“What’s your fallback if everything goes belly-up?”
Jack gave Costas a harrowed look as they and Jeremy began to push the Zodiac back into the surf. “I don’t have one.”
Three hours later, after a jolting ride along a jungle track, they came to the entrance to Chichen Itza, some sixty kilometres inland from the beach. The ruins of the ancient city covered a vast area, though only the central precinct had been cleared of jungle and restored. Grey limestone structures reared above the tree canopy ahead, but Jack knew that all round them lay ruins submerged in the undergrowth that had entombed the city in the centuries since its abandonment. Some of the images seemed startlingly familiar, pyramids and colonnaded temples, but others were not: sacrificial platforms, terrifying hybrid animal and human sculptures, images that seemed from another planet. It was eerie, as if something were not quite right, as if they were entering a film set of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia where some attempt had been made at historical accuracy, but much had been left to the imagination of a designer rooted in some particularly lurid science fiction.
Jack was in the front seat of the four-wheel drive provided for them by the Mexican archaeological authorities, and as he opened the door he was greeted by an official who ushered them into the site. A few days earlier an earth tremor had caused concern about the stability of the ancient structures, and the site had been closed off to tourists while an evaluation was carried out. Jack thanked the official and found a shady place to unfold his map. He was joined by Costas. They were wearing shorts, T-shirts and jungle boots, but the summer heat was overwhelming and Costas was already dripping with sweat.
“No way.” Costas puffed himself up, but looked doleful and hot under his panama hat. “Remember, I’m Greek? Heat’s in the blood.”
“Right.”
Jeremy walked over to them after talking in Spanish with the official, and pointed out a route on the map. “I was forced to spend a summer here as an undergraduate on a field training project, before I saw the light,” he said ruefully. “I’ll try to give a balanced account, but I have to tell you this place gave me nightmares. The Vikings were therapy after this.”
“What kind of time period are we looking at?” Costas asked.
“The Maya were one of the great early civilisations, as you know,” Jeremy said. “They flourished here around AD 300 to 900, that’s from about the end of the Roman Empire to the Viking age. But by the mid-eleventh century this place was ruled by the Toltecs, a warrior caste from the north. The Maya were still here, but they became the underclass, enslaved and brutalized. The Toltecs swept into the Yucatan around the time Harald was doing his stint in the Varangian Guard. A lot of what you see here isn’t Maya but dates from the Toltec period.”
They trudged along the path under the canopy of the jungle, passing the occasional iguana and a band of ring-tailed monkeys, their chattering competing with the raucous shrieks of toucans and evil-looking blackbirds. The heat was staggering, far more humid than Jack had experienced at archaeological sites in the Mediterranean, and he struggled to imagine people living normal lives in a place so far from the ameliorating effects of the sea. After a few minutes they came out into a wide grassy precinct surrounded by colossal stone buildings. It was an extraordinary sight, the quintessential image of ancient Mesoamerican civilization, dominated by an imposing temple that rose in stepped tiers like a pyramid.
“Don’t try to tell me these people weren’t influenced by the Egyptians,” Costas said, wiping the sweat from his face.
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