boat. Fidel’s boat was drifting but Fidel was nowhere to be seen.
Acting on an impulse, O’Connor dived back to the bottom of the lake and retrieved the nylon rope from its anchor point. O’Connor resurfaced, and the rope, freed of its anchoring point, floated on top of the lake. O’Connor quickly laid it out to form a mesh on the surface and positioned himself in the middle. The second diver started the outboard and gunned it to full throttle, aiming his boat straight at him. O’Connor waited until the last moment and then dived. The propeller sliced the first lengths of the rope, but the next length fouled it and the shear pin snapped. The propeller came loose, spinning to the bottom of the lake in a shower of foaming bubbles. Free of the propeller, the Evinrude outboard screamed in protest.
O’Connor followed the slowing boat above him, holding his breath, knowing his adversary would be looking for the tell-tale signs of exhalation bubbles on the surface. He came up underneath the bow and drew his knife. He cautiously swam to one side and as he’d expected, the second diver was scanning the waters behind the boat. O’Connor eased his way down the side of the boat, supporting himself on the gunwale, but his attacker suddenly turned. With unerring accuracy born of hours of practice, O’Connor let fly with his knife. It flashed through the air, piercing the startled diver’s neck.
‘Aaggghhhh!’ His opponent grasped his neck and tumbled backwards over the stern. O’Connor dived and swam through the clouding bloody water, gripping his opponent in a final choke hold. The diver’s struggles gradually weakened until they ceased altogether and O’Connor let go, watching the lifeless body sink to the floor of the lake. He clambered over the stern of the boat and retrieved the nylon bag containing the figurine. Fidel’s boat was drifting some 200 metres to the north. O’Connor sat on the gunwale, clasped the figurine to his chest and rolled back into the water in a backwards somersault.
When O’Connor surfaced, Aleta was still sitting on the ledge, trying to cut and refit her slashed breathing hose.
‘Are you okay?’
Aleta nodded. ‘Are they still out there?’
‘They’re both dead, but I think they got to Fidel.’
‘Bastards! These people don’t fucking give up, do they?’
‘No, and it’s not over yet. But if we can get to Tikal before the solstice, we might still have a chance.’ He placed the figurine on the ledge and dived back to the floor of the cave to retrieve Aleta’s face mask and the bag containing the ingots. ‘Your regulator’s stuffed,’ he said when he returned to the ledge, ‘so we’ll buddy breathe.’
‘Thank you, Curtis. You saved my life, again.’
He grinned. ‘All part of the service.’ Together, they stepped back into the now-clear, emerald waters of the cave. With the figurine and the gold safely back in their grasp, they swam slowly towards the entrance, sharing O’Connor’s regulator every three breaths. Outside the cave and about fifteen metres above them, the hulls of the two lanchas were clearly visible. O’Connor gave Aleta the thumbs up towards the one that still had a propeller.
Fidel was lying unconscious on the bottom of the boat, his shirt stained with blood. O’Connor grabbed a towel to stem the flow. ‘San Pedro will have the best medical facilities – or Panajachel?’
‘There’s a doctor at San Marcos,’ Aleta replied, gunning the motor. Jose Arana was waiting for them at the little jetty and together he and O’Connor carried Fidel to the doctor’s house, where Arana remained to wait for news.
When Jose returned, Aleta was sitting with O’Connor in the garden, explaining what she’d learned during her regression therapy.
‘The doctor said he’ll be okay,’ Arana said, ‘but if you hadn’t got to him when you did, Fidel would no longer be with us.’ He picked up the carved jade figurine, admiring the ancient craftsmanship. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said.
‘Did you know that one of us might have lost an arm?’ Aleta asked, an edge to her voice.
‘I warned you that both the last figurine and the codex itself would be fiercely protected,’ Arana replied simply, ‘but more importantly you have less than three days until the solstice.’
‘We have a little task to complete in San Pedro before we leave,’ O’Connor said. ‘Von Hei?en’s diaries contain compelling evidence of the atrocities the Nazis committed at Mauthausen… and they also contain evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the Guatemalan death squads. Jennings obviously doesn’t know they’re there, but we need to recover them to a safe place.’
‘How are we going to distract Jennings?’ Aleta asked. ‘Mass will be finished in half an hour.’
‘How do you feel about confession?’
‘What?’
‘I saw a notice on the porch of the church. Jennings conducts confessions after Mass, and if you hold him up in the confessional, I’ll have time to get the trunks out of the ceiling and down to the launch.’
‘And what if he recognises me?’
‘He won’t. Not if your face is covered by a niqab.’
‘A Muslim full-face veil? He can’t give confession to a Muslim!’
‘Pretend you’re going through a crisis of faith, and that you’re going to convert. That should give me long enough!’
‘I’ll be there for a week. Besides, I’ll stand out like a sore thumb.’
‘Not really,’ Arana said. ‘There are quite a few Muslims in the Lake Atitlan community, and we all coexist without any problems. Besides, every picture you have ever seen of the Virgin Mary depicts her in a veil. That’s just a Christian version of the hijab.’
55
A leta waited on the main steps outside the church until the last of the congregation had shaken their priest by the hand, while O’Connor took up a position in the gardens. Even at a distance, Jennings’ surprise and irritation at Aleta’s request for him to hear a Muslim renounce her faith in a Catholic confessional was clearly audible, and O’Connor watched as the two disappeared back inside the church. Confident that Aleta would tie Jennings up in knots, he headed for the presbytery.
Monsignor Jennings slammed the door of the little wooden confessional shut and switched on the red light above the door. Aleta closed the curtain on her side, knelt on the tattered cushion and waited until Jennings slid open the worn cedar partition. Through the holes, Aleta could make out Jennings’ shadowy figure. He was breathing heavily. It had been many years since Aleta had been in a confessional, but she remembered the tortuous procedure of a teenager’s imagined sins as if it were yesterday. She remembered, too, the lives the hypocrite on the other side of the screen had destroyed.
‘My friends tell me that unless I renounce Islam and become a Catholic I will burn in hell,’ Aleta whispered.
‘And your friends are correct. You must renounce your current beliefs and embrace the one true faith.’
‘But we both worship the one God?’
Jennings snorted. ‘God has revealed much more of Himself to Catholics than to any other faith. He is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Those who do not take Jesus as their Saviour, or who do, but embrace other denominations of Christianity, are gravely deluded…’
Aleta listened, willing the minutes by as Jennings launched into full stride, delivering a verbal broadside against other faiths. ‘Unless you accept the Catholic faith in all of its beauty and majesty, you are doomed, my girl.’
Aleta glanced at her watch. O’Connor had estimated he’d need fifteen minutes to recover the trunks from the ceiling and get them back to the jetty. She needed to keep Jennings going for a while longer.
‘I have another problem, Father.’
‘And what’s that?’ Jennings asked irritably.
‘I masturbate… a lot. Is that a sin, Father?’ Aleta could feel the fat priest’s piggy little stare boring through
