‘Quinientos quetzales.’ This amount would feed Eduardo’s brothers and sisters for a fortnight.
‘ Cien quetzales. The rest later,’ Jennings said, handing over a grimy cherry-coloured note. Rivulets of sweat ran down his pudgy cheeks and he shifted lengthways on the couch. Breathing heavily, Jennings unzipped his own fly and ran his hand up the inside of Eduardo’s thigh, fondling the boy into an erection before pulling Eduardo’s head down onto his own enlarged member.
O’Connor quietly photographed the pair from the mezzanine bedroom above. He wondered if, even when faced with the photographs, the Catholic Church would act, but he promised himself the fat priest would rot in gaol one way or another. For now, time was running out. Confident that Jennings was totally absorbed, O’Connor crept down the stairs.
‘Suck me, boy… suck me,’ Jennings wheezed. ‘Oh yes. That is so good.’
O’Connor controlled his anger and quietly slipped out the front door. He headed back down towards the docks, where Fidel was waiting, two of von Hei?en’s diaries and the map safely in his hand.
‘Santa Cruz. La tienda de buceo, por favor, Fidel.’ The dive shop would be closed, but O’Connor was sure money would overcome that inconvenience.
‘ Si,’ Fidel nodded with a smile and eased the little launch away from the wooden jetty.
A short distance away one of the ex-navy SEALs was standing on the balcony of the Mikaso, scanning the shores of the lake. Hank Sanders trained his high-resolution night-vision binoculars on the little boat as it gathered speed, and he watched it head for the village of Santa Cruz on the northern side of the lake.
‘Hey, Mitch, come and have a look at this. See the guy sitting in the back of the boat? Looks like our man?’ he said, handing over the binoculars.
‘Hard to say,’ Mitch Crawford said, ‘but if it is, I wonder where he’s headed at this time of night.’
Twenty minutes later, they had their answer. Sanders and Crawford watched the launch pull into Santa Cruz’s jetty, the nearby dive shop clearly visible.
Crawford kept his night-vision binoculars trained on Fidel’s small lancha as the boatman eased it into the jetty at San Marcos. He watched as Fidel and O’Connor carried the diving gear up to where Aleta was still in deep conversation with Jose.
‘Looks as if the boatman’s staying the night as well. It’s dive on, I reckon.’
‘Probably not tonight,’ Crawford replied, sharpening his diving knife, ‘otherwise they would have left the gear on the jetty. My guess is early tomorrow morning. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The gear and the boat’s ready.’ The burly tattooed ex-Marine diver spat over the balcony. ‘They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’
O’Connor sat on the end of Aleta’s garden lounge. ‘Your grandfather’s original huun bark map,’ he announced quietly. ‘I found it in a diary at Jennings’ presbytery, along with some scuba-diving gear, so I’m assuming that von Hei?en left it behind.’
‘He must have left in one hell of a hurry,’ said Aleta.
‘Mossad tends to have that effect on some people.’
‘Do you think they got him?’
O’Connor shook his head. ‘Adolf Eichmann worked for Mercedes Benz in Buenos Aires for years, but when the Israeli team of Mossad and Shabak agents finally captured him in 1960, it made world headlines. Von Hei?en is now the most wanted Nazi known to be still alive – we would have heard if they’d been successful. There are three trunks of diaries still in the roof of Jennings’ presbytery, but we’ll go back for those.’ O’Connor opened the huun bark map. ‘Look at this.’
‘The backbearings!’ Aleta whispered.
‘Exactly, and they intersect just off that point.’ O’Connor indicated a small rocky promontory jutting out into the lake about a kilometre away. ‘Someone, I presume your grandfather, has embossed the bottom of the map with the Greek letter phi, and there’s a mark under the dot point, see? A short line.’
‘Von Hei?en may already have the figurine… assuming it was in the lake in the first place.’
‘The scuba gear suggests he investigated the lake, although whether he was aware of the third figurine is a moot point. But there’s only one way to find out.’
They both looked at Arana. ‘If it’s meant to be, it will be,’ he said calmly. ‘When will you dive?’
O’Connor looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly 11 p.m. now, and we’ve had a very long day. From a safety point of view, we’ll be more alert after a few hours’ sleep, not to mention a little more acclimatised to the altitude.’
52
F idel was waiting as O’Connor and Aleta, already in their wetsuits, walked down the dirt path to the jetty. The lake was like glass, the faint pink of dawn caressing the lake’s three sentinel volcanoes.
Across the lake, Sanders put down his night-vision binoculars and went inside to wake his partner. It was time to move.
O’Connor and Aleta made a slow and deliberate final check of the gear: cylinders, both stages of the regulators, tank-pressure gauges, depth gauges, compasses, BCDs – the buoyancy compensation devices – safety reels, weights, wrist dive computers, torches and dive lights. O’Connor checked the fastenings on the dive knife above Aleta’s booties and made a final check of his own.
Fidel eased the lancha away from the jetty and under O’Connor’s instruction, motored out to a point about fifty metres off the small promontory that jutted out into the lake. O’Connor took bearings on each of the three volcanoes and mentally calculated the backbearings.
‘Another ten metres, Fidel,’ he directed, pointing north-west. It took nearly ten minutes of manoeuvring and adjustment until O’Connor felt they were over the spot indicated on the map.
‘Keep the volcanoes on these two lines,’ O’Connor said, indicating directions to two prominent buildings on the far shores of the lake. He turned to Aleta. ‘Ready?’
Aleta nodded.
They sat on the gunwale and adjusted the straps on their big yellow fins. Aleta returned O’Connor’s ‘O’, her thumb and forefinger together, the rest of her fingers pointed upwards: the diver’s universal ‘I’m okay/are you okay?’ O’Connor put his regulator in his mouth, kept one hand over his mask, clamped the trailing hoses to his chest with the other, and rolled backwards into the lake. Out of habit, Aleta checked that the lake was clear behind her then followed O’Connor into the cold dark water. They both surfaced, and O’Connor gave the thumbs down signal to descend. Aleta raised her BCD hose, pressed the deflation button and followed O’Connor into the depths. Three metres below the surface, O’Connor stopped for a ‘bubble check’. He looked for any signs of leaks on Aleta’s gear and Aleta returned the favour.
O’Connor probed the depths with his powerful torch beam, looking for signs of the promontory. Lake Atitlan was close to 5000 feet above sea level and more than 300 metres deep. He had ensured the necessary altitude and freshwater adjustments were programed into both their wrist dive computers, but a high-altitude dive meant the atmospheric pressure was lower than at sea level: there would be a greater reduction in pressure when they surfaced. The distance to the nearest decompression chamber didn’t bear thinking about.
The water was very clear and O’Connor continued to search with his torch as they descended. The promontory had dropped away sharply, forming an underwater cliff-face, but at a gauge reading of fifteen metres, O’Connor was relieved to see that it had levelled out into a plateau. He and Aleta touched bottom and a large black crab scuttled away, leaving puffs of grey volcanic dust in its wake. O’Connor unhooked a long white nylon rope from his weight belt and, holding one end, gave the rest of it to Aleta to anchor on the floor of the lake. She gave him the ‘O’, and he swam out until Aleta held it fast at the five-metre mark. O’Connor began to swim in a circle in the classic ‘rope search’. The beams of their torches pierced the darkness, producing an eerie underwater kaleidoscope, and illuminating a grey stony bottom. Clear patches gave way to underwater plants and gossamer-like seaweed. Occasionally a large bass would be caught in the light.
The first 360-degree traverse revealed nothing of interest, and O’Connor tugged on the rope for Aleta to let it out another five metres. He swam another circle, and another. On the lake side, the promontory dropped away further, and on the next pass O’Connor’s gauge was showing twenty metres; but he kept swimming, slowly
