‘When the family was arrested, it was confiscated, but my father made a copy from memory. Unfortunately he couldn’t remember all the figures and it’s very rough. He always thought the shape was similar to Lake Atitlan.’
O’Connor took the map and examined it carefully, a puzzled look on his face.
‘You don’t think so?’ Aleta asked.
‘It may well be Lake Atitlan, although I’ve never been there. The problem is that only one of the three lines on the map has what looks like a compass bearing on it,’ he said, pointing to the lines drawn across the yellow patch, ‘and if it is a bearing, it doesn’t match up with the north point on the map. Unless… unless… of course!’ O’Connor exclaimed. ‘It’s a backbearing!’
‘Backbearing?’
‘It’s an old military technique. We used it before GPS satellites took all the fun out of getting lost in the jungle. If you weren’t sure of your position, you found a high point and took bearings to three points, like the top of a mountain or the mouth of a river, which were marked on the map, and therefore accurately known. By reversing the bearings, you can produce a small triangle where they intersect, and you should be inside the triangle. The smaller the triangle the more accurate the resection. Are there any prominent landmarks around Lake Atitlan?’
‘The volcanoes! There are three of them, the largest of which is Volcan Atitlan.’ Aleta pointed to the southernmost point on the map. ‘Just to the north of Atitlan is Volcan Toliman, and to the east is Volcan San Pedro, which has a small village at its base. They’re all over 9000 feet, so you can see them from anywhere on the lake. Two of them are close together, and so are the lines on this map. They fit perfectly.’
‘Although it’s still not much help. There’s only one accurate backbearing, and the triangle of intersection is pretty big.’
‘‘That’s as best as my father could remember, and there’s not much around where the lines intersect,’ Aleta said. ‘The nearest village aside from San Pedro is San Marcos, where I was brought up, further to the east around this inlet. It’s mainly coffee and corn plantations. The people grow their own vegetables, chilli verde, tomatoes, onions, avocadoes, cucumbers, strawberries, pitahaya fruit… Life was simple until the death squads came.’
O’Connor nodded sympathetically. ‘So what would be here?’ he asked, pointing again to the triangle.
‘A big rocky volcanic outcrop that drops into the lake. The whole area is volcanic. Without the other two bearings, it would be needle in a haystack stuff.’
‘Are the volcanoes still active?’
‘Volcan Atitlan is; it last erupted in 1853. Toliman might be, although not recently. The lake itself was formed from a volcanic eruption. It used to have lots of fish species, until the Americans came in. Pan American Airlines thought it would be a really good idea to introduce non-native bass for American tourists to catch, but the bass ended up destroying all the native fish as well as causing the extinction of the giant grebe bird.’ Aleta raised her eyebrows at O’Connor.
O’Connor winced. ‘Are there many villages around the lake?’ he asked, staying away from America’s foreign policy record.
‘Not many. Panajachel is the largest town on the north shore… about 14 000 people. Then you have the little villages like San Pedro, San Lucas, San Marcos and San Juan. You can see the Spanish Catholic influence, but Mayan spirituality is still very strong.’
‘Even allowing for there being only one bearing, all three lines are drawn across the lake. Perhaps we’re looking for something underneath the water?’
‘Lake Atitlan’s very deep, well over 400 metres, and there are caves.’ Aleta fell silent as they both pondered the possibility. ‘There’s a diving school at Santa Cruz, but I don’t think they dive this far south.’
‘Diving at high altitude has its own risks.’ O’Connor wondered whether Aleta would disclose her qualifications. ‘Anything more than 400 metres above sea level and you need special training.’ Both knew that diving at high altitude meant increased risks of decompression sickness.
‘Lake Atitlan’s well above that, around 1500 metres above sea level. Is diving amongst your skills?’
O’Connor nodded. ‘I trained with the US Navy SEALS… ’ His voice trailed off as he glanced through the compartment window. He was instantly on guard as a man in a beret and dark overcoat walked past their compartment.
‘What’s the matter?’ Aleta asked.
‘We’ve got company. The guy in the beret; he just walked past.’
‘So maybe he’s going to Wurzburg or some place beyond?’ Aleta suggested, more out of hope than conviction.
‘I don’t think so. Put the map and the notebook in your briefcase and pretend to be asleep. If he comes back, don’t move. Breathe slowly and leave things to me.’
Aleta leaned back and closed her eyes, trust in her mysterious companion growing.
O’Connor pulled his Glock 21 from his leather jacket and screwed on the specially fitted silencer. He left his jacket covering the pistol, leaned back in his seat, half closed his eyes and waited.
Ten minutes out from Wurzburg, the man with the beret returned. After observing O’Connor and Aleta sleeping, he quietly opened the compartment door. He took the seat next to Aleta and in one practised movement withdrew a razor-sharp KA-BAR Hawk-bill Tanto knife from his coat pocket.
O’Connor fired twice and the. 45 calibre bullets slammed into the assailant’s heart, hurling him back into the leather seat. The phut phut of the silencer seemed very loud and Aleta jumped as the knife clattered to the compartment floor.
‘ Mierda! ’ Aleta swore.
O’Connor motioned her to be quiet. He put on his leather gloves and returned the knife to his assailant’s pocket. He searched the other pockets, keeping the hitman’s cell phone. His mind racing, O’Connor checked the corridor outside and the toilet a few steps away at the end of the carriage. Empty. If the bathroom wasn’t cleaned until the train terminated in Frankfurt, it might be possible to at least confuse the Bundespolizei for a while. A bright-red bloodstain was spreading over the man’s white shirt. O’Connor buttoned up the black overcoat, hooked one of the dead man’s arms around his neck, and dragged him down the still-empty corridor to the toilet, then sat him on it. He closed the door and locked it from the outside with the screwdriver blade on his pocketknife.
Aleta was white and shaken.
‘You okay?’
She nodded. ‘Does this happen often?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice.
‘Comes with the territory. Lord Acton got it right with his “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Wiley and Cardinal Felici fit the description, and unfortunately we’re at the top of their hit list.’
The train began to slow on its approach into Wurzburg.
‘They may have the station under observation,’ O’Connor said, lifting Aleta’s bag from the rack above her seat, but they’ll be looking for a couple, so we walk off separately. Look down, so the CCTV cameras don’t get a clear picture of your face. The connecting train leaves from Platform 5 in fifteen minutes. I’ll be watching your back.’
‘Do I board?’
O’Connor nodded as he checked the corridor outside. ‘They won’t know our final destination – yet – and in a big station like Wurzburg, they can’t watch every platform. See you there.’ He flashed Aleta what he hoped was a reassuring smile and headed for the carriage behind.
We’re in luck, he thought as he followed Aleta at a discreet distance. Four trains had arrived within minutes of each other and the railroad hub for the Bavarian agricultural and industrial city was even busier than usual. O’Connor detoured onto another platform, boarded a train scheduled for Gottingen and dropped the assailant’s cell phone into a bin in a carriage toilet. He was pushing his luck with another cell phone decoy, but Wiley would be tracking it, and he wouldn’t be able to ignore the location feedback. O’Connor retraced his steps to Platform 5. When he reached their business-class compartment, Aleta was already sitting by the window; he took the other window seat. The two remaining seats were occupied by an elderly couple, and O’Connor breathed a little easier. Even if the boys in Berlin had tracked them and managed to get one of their assets on the train, Wiley would be wary of attempting anything in front of witnesses, and even more wary of disposing of an elderly couple in broad daylight, but only because of the heat that would follow the publicity.
The train pulled out, on time to the second, and O’Connor smiled to himself as he reflected on the energy Wiley would have expended tracking his small cell phone as it wended its way through the sewers of Vienna. For
