blinking blue crosshair encoded with Sodano’s cell phone number. The crosshair was moving south through Budapest. Yet another provided a map of the streets of Vienna with another crosshair annotated with O’Connor’s cell phone. The track was leading away from Wahringer Strasse and Maria-Theresian Strasse towards the Donaukanal.
‘Ready to go, Sir. The chiefs of station in Vienna and Berlin are on secure video link,’ Larry Davis confirmed. Davis was only slightly taller than Wiley. Overweight, bald and out of condition, Davis wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘We have a situation,’ Wiley barked at the six officers Davis had briefed into the top-secret compartment of Operation Maya. ‘This is priority one. What’ve you got, Vienna?’
The encrypted video screen switched to the chief of station in a small operations room hidden in the bowels of the white four-storey US Embassy building in Boltzmanngasse, a quiet leafy street in Vienna.
‘We have an asset on board the Vienna-Wurzburg intercity express. He has confirmed Tutankhamen is with Nefertiti in Car 3. They’ve crossed the Austrian-German border and they’re now ten kilometres north-west of Nuremberg. The train is scheduled to arrive at Wurzburg Hauptbahnhof in fifty-two minutes.’
‘Then who has Tutankhamen’s cell phone?’
‘Not known, but it’s currently moving slowly east towards the Donaukanal.’ Wiley glanced at the screen tracking O’Connor’s cell phone, showing a location at the intersection of Schottenring and Rossauer Lande.
‘Whoever’s got it, I want them tracked down – now!’
‘We’ve got the area under surveillance.’ The Vienna chief of station, a grey-haired veteran CIA boss in his late fifties, was unperturbed by the DDO’s fiery temper.
‘And Sodano?’
‘He appears to be still on a barge that has crossed the border into Hungary and that’s now tracking south through Budapest.’
‘ Appears? I want to know!’ Wiley glowered at the screen locked onto Sodano’s cell phone. The blue crosshairs were hovering above the western channel of the Danube, abeam Margitsziget Island, just to the south of the Arpad Bridge. ‘Get Budapest to put an asset on that barge,’ Wiley barked at his chief of staff. ‘I want Sodano brought in, and fast!’
Davis nodded towards his deputy, a slim, attractive brunette in her late thirties. Ellen Rodriguez had spent the last three years as Deputy Chief of Station in Lima, and before that she had worked at the White House. In the short time she’d been back, she had already clashed with Howard Wiley twice, and she was beginning to regret accepting the position on Langley’s Latin American desk. Rodriguez logged into a spare computer in the ops room, but her attention was dragged back to the video screen almost immediately. Vienna’s chief of station had been alerted to a live Die Welt online video update.
‘Wait, we’ve got some breaking news here. The Austrian Bundespolizei and the Bundeskriminalamt are investigating the discovery of the body of a Sicilian national in a garbage truck.’ The Langley technicians switched the camera feed to a live media conference with Gruppeninspektor Hans Boehm. The square-jawed police inspector was standing outside Vienna’s state of the art waste-disposal unit near the Donaukanal. Its distinguishing landmark, a tall space-age silver tower, soared in the background. A large group of journalists were jostling for position.
‘ Die Stelle zu sein scheint, von Antonio Sodano, Sizilianer, der nun Wohnsitz -’
‘Translation!’ Wiley demanded.
‘The body appears to be that of Antonio Sodano, a Sicilian who is now resident in Rome.’ Ellen Rodriguez had not only served three years in Lima before working in the White House, she’d spent three years in Vienna and Berlin.
‘Haben Sie eine Idee von der Ursache der Tod, Inspektor?’
‘Do you have any idea of the cause of death, Inspector?’ Rodriguez translated.
‘It would appear that the deceased has been strangled, but we will not be able to confirm that until after an autopsy.’
‘Where did this take place, Inspector?’ another journalist asked.
‘That’s not clear either, although the truck in which the body was found had just completed its run through the Stephansdom Quarter in the city.’
‘O’Connor!’ Wiley muttered angrily.
‘Is there a motive, Inspector?’
Gruppeninspektor Boehm smiled patiently. ‘We do know that Mr Sodano was wanted in Rome by the Italian Guardia di Finanza for suspected drug-trafficking, so we haven’t ruled out that it might be drug-related.’
‘Fuck!’ Wiley turned to the six officers who made up Operation Maya. ‘Nefertiti represents a clear and present danger to the United States. So far, we have failed spectacularly to carry out what should be a simple elimination operation. It’s also clear that Tutankhamen has gone over to the dark side.’ Wiley turned back to the video feed. ‘Vienna, your asset on board the train has a green light. Deal with them!’
‘Both of them?’ the Vienna chief of station asked, taken aback. He had worked with O’Connor in the field.
‘Both of them!’ Wiley barked. ‘Sodano wasn’t some two-bit punk. He could handle himself. This has got O’Connor’s mark all over it.’
‘Why would someone like O’Connor go over to the dark side?’ Ellen Rodriguez asked. ‘We don’t have any evidence of that yet.’
Wiley turned, his eyes blazing. ‘I make the decisions around here, Rodriguez.’ The other officers looked uncomfortable, but no one else spoke up in O’Connor’s defence.
‘Berlin. I want assets to move at a moment’s notice,’ Wiley ordered, turning back to the video connection, ‘and get some observation on the Wurzburg Hauptbahnhof. I want timetables of every connecting train and bus. If we don’t get them on the train, I want to know where they’re headed.’ Wiley turned to Davis. ‘Get hold of Nefertiti’s movements in the last month. I want her cell phone connections, Blackberry, bank statements, credit cards, home- phone bills – anything that might give us a lead on why she’s in Germany. And,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘tell that bitch Rodriguez if she ever challenges me again, she’ll be serving coffee in the canteen.’
‘Watch your step, Rodriguez. The boss is pretty pissed,’ Davis warned, mopping his brow after Wiley had left.
‘ He’s pretty pissed? Jesus Christ, Larry. Have you thought about what we’re doing here? I’ve worked with O’Connor. He’s not the sort of guy to jump ship. And have you read the Weizman dossier? “Clear and present danger” got way overused in Iraq. Weizman’s an archaeologist, for Christ’s sake! Can someone please explain to me what threat she poses to Capitol Hill?’ Rodriguez glared at Davis, her green eyes flashing angrily. One or two of the younger male officers smirked. Larry Davis was only marginally more popular than Wiley.
‘Just get on with tasking Budapest to recover Sodano’s cell phone,’ Davis said. ‘The rest of you, get cracking on Nefertiti and Tutankhamen’s movements and phone calls. Let’s go!’
‘Asshole,’ Rodriguez muttered as she went back to her desk.
38
T hree hours into the journey, the train rocked smoothly on a superbly engineered hydraulic suspension. A vista of fields and farmhouses flashed past the windows.
‘My father escaped with just the clothes on his back and two maps,’ Aleta said, taking the first of the maps her father had managed to secrete out of Austria. ‘He always thought this one related to Tikal, but he wasn’t sure.’
O’Connor scanned the huun bark diagram. ‘A triangle in Tikal… That could mean anything.’
Aleta nodded. ‘And this one isn’t the original,’ she said, handing O’Connor the second map. ‘The original was given to my grandfather by some Maya elders and was also drawn on huun bark paper.’
‘Where’s the original now?’
