girl, weeping and helpless in the spring sunshine.” Tears were coursing down Maria’s cheeks, but her voice was unwavering. “A German Wehrmacht soldier found her, took pity on her. She stayed with his unit all the way back to Berlin, looked after by the Germans, men disgusted by what the SS had done. When they were all killed in action she was rescued by a British soldier. Years later she married a Spanish diplomat, had a daughter of her own. Last spring I took her back to Nikolayev, to lie once again in that lovely meadow, to be with her brothers and sisters, her beloved mama and papa. She said they had been missing her, had been desperate to find and protect her.” Maria swallowed hard, blinking away the tears but staring unflinchingly down the barrel. “That little girl was my mother.”
“Nonsense.” Reksnys jerked the boy towards him, his eyes flitting to and fro, his voice suddenly demented and high-pitched. “Don’t believe a word she says. She is a Jew.”
The room was deathly silent. Reksnys suddenly looked unnerved, began to shake, his face pale and dripping sweat. He pushed the boy away. Jack grabbed him and bundled him towards the entranceway. Reksnys staggered and then stood upright, attempting to regain his composure. “You have the boy.” He passed his shaking hands over his hair, greasing it back. He was struggling to make his voice seem normal again, to sound conciliatory. “Now is the time to end this nonsense. You have what you want. The police will never pin anything on me. We can all walk away. Where is my son?”
“On a one-way trip to hell,” Costas said.
“Where is my son?” Reksnys was uncomprehending, his eyes bloodshot and staring, panic-stricken. There was another silence, and he looked frantically from one face to another, then staggered sideways. “No.”
Maria aimed down the barrel, slowly, deliberately, all the time keeping it levelled at his head. Her voice was cold, clinical. “Kneel down. Face the wall.”
Reksnys lost all control. He fell to his knees, his lips shaking, his eyes transfixed with terror. A dark patch appeared on his trousers and spread down his legs. “No. I beg you. Not this.”
“I am a Jew.” Maria spoke quietly.
There was a deafening crack. Reksnys’ head snapped backwards and he fell on the floor, convulsing. A gush of blood arched out. For a moment he was conscious, his eyes wide open, his legs jerking horribly. Then he was still. The spatter of blood on the wall began to drip down, rivulets of crimson that picked out the faded colours of the sacrifical scene, trickling to join the blood pooling on the floor below.
Reksnys began to move again. They stared aghast. He seemed to be convulsing, jerking like a rag doll, moving towards Maria. She dropped the gun and collapsed, seemingly paralysed. Jack grabbed her, pulling her away. Suddenly the ground shook violently. Jack could barely register what was happening. Then he remembered. Chichen Itza. The earth tremor a few days before. Reksnys hadn’t come alive again. Earthquake. A crack appeared in the wall, tearing apart the painting. An ear-splitting cacophony rumbled up from the cavern below. Jack was aware of a frantic rush to the entrance, of dragging Maria outside, of seeing the waters rise in a great surge behind him and recede back into the cavernous hole that was left where the temple had been.
Later he watched as Maria opened her eyes. He saw the water dripping on her face; saw sunlight streaming in through the tangled canopy above, heard birds screeching. He breathed in deep, savouring the draught of cool, clean air that followed the rain. He thought of Maria’s mother, of O’Connor.
It was over.
21
It’s twenty-three metres from the edge of the platform to the water surface, give or take a few centimetres. We’ll need to rig a pretty elaborate gantry to get the machinery operational.”
“If they could do it in the 1950s, we can do it now. I’ll trust your ingenuity.”
“As it happens, I’ve designed just the thing.”
Costas pulled out a large blueprint from a cardboard tube and unrolled it on the hot limestone, pinning down one corner with the laser rangefinder he had been holding. Jack resigned himself to a detailed technical exposition, but then was saved by the appearance of Jeremy and Maria at the end of the processional way.
“Lunch.” Jeremy vaulted down the rock carrying a cooler, then ducked under the tarpaulin they had rigged against the sun. It had been two full days since the storm had abated, and the air still felt cleansed and fresh, but that morning the heat had returned with a vengeance and the humidity was stifling.
Jeremy opened the cooler and laid out the food and drink on the table as Jack came up. Costas was grumbling to himself but gave up at the sight of food and rolled up his blueprint. They sat down, with Maria leaning on the rock behind them.
“What have you got for me this time?” Costas said. “Some Toltec delicacy? Pickled human heart perhaps?”
Jeremy spoke between mouthfuls. “Nope. Just good old Mexican.” He turned to Jack. “Tourists back this afternoon.” He swallowed, and took a swig of water. “The tremor that hit us in the jungle barely even registered here, so they think it’s safe. Too damn hot to work here anyway.” He tore off another chunk of bread and gestured at the deep pit of the Well of Sacrifice, below the platform where Jack and Costas had been standing. “We really going to do this?”
“Later this year,” Jack said. “I’m sure there’s some fabulous stuff still down there.”
“I’ve got it all worked out.” Costas was gleaming with sweat under his panama hat, his mouth full of food. “Come over when you’ve finished and I’ll show you.”
“I’d love to see Harald’s last stand, the stuff you guys found,” Jeremy said. “Back in the other cenote.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack murmured. “The entrance is blocked by hundreds of tons of stone, and in the other direction you’d be fighting an impossible current. We’ve found Harald’s last battle, his Ragnarok, and that’s enough. Something tells me I’d be pushing my battle-luck to go back there again.”
“It’s a dark place.” Maria shivered. “You don’t want to go there.”
“It’s just a bunch of stalagmites anyway,” Costas said.
Jeremy peered dubiously at the green surface of the sinkhole in front of them. “If you’re thinking of sending me down into this one as an alternative, count me out. This place spooks me enough as it is.”
“You can at least come along on the expedition as food-bearer.”
“Maria?” Jeremy craned his neck over the table to look at her. “The Hereford library, I mean. Can I have leaves of absence in my contract?”
Maria put down her water bottle and gave a tired smile. Jack had been watching her carefully from the other side of the table. She had been asleep or resting almost the entire time since Reksnys’ death. The medical team on Seaquest II had treated the abrasion on her face, which was now covered in white gauze. There would be no scar, which would have been an appalling legacy. Psychologically was another matter. Jack knew from his own experience that the loss of O’Connor would hit her hardest when she was back on home turf, with time to reflect. And two days before, Maria had stood with a gun aimed at the head of the man who had ordered that murder and who had traumatised her long before she had met O’Connor. Jack had seen her in a new light since she had revealed the terrible truth of her family’s past. He had met her mother years ago, when he and Maria were students together, had assumed she was Sephardic like Maria’s father, had never guessed. Like many Holocaust survivors, her mother had found some way of locking the horror away in her memory, had only let it overwhelm her when she knew she was dying. It explained Maria’s strength, but also her restlessness, her reluctance to commit herself to anyone. Exposing a trauma she had internalised all her life would change her. The showdown with Reksnys had brought some measure of closure, bringing her own blood feud to an end, but it had been a shocking experience and had taken its toll on her. Fortunately the Mexican police had been all too happy to change sides when they saw who was winning, and Maria had been hailed a hero for saving the little boy’s life. Only Jack and Costas and Jeremy had witnessed the final scene.
Maria gazed at Jeremy. “The job’s got your name on it, but any more time with these IMU guys and you’ll be hooked for good.” She gave him another tired smile and then looked across at Jack. “What’s the latest on the menorah?”
“I’ve been thinking about the symmetry of history,” Jack replied.
Costas gave an alarmed look and straightened himself. “Oh no. Philosophy. Time I got back to my
