Glassic eased the 707’s nosewheel off the runway and waited until a positive climb was indicated on the pressure altimeter. The landing gear retracted with a thump and Looking Glass began the climb to the missile- launch control altitude of 29 000 feet.
O’Connor ran his torch along the walls of the tomb. More jade tablets were embedded in the stone, each engraved with hieroglyphs. A series of colourful murals in brilliant reds, emerald greens, turquoise blues and iridescent yellows depicted the presentation of jaguar skins to past Mayan kings. Lamp poles were fastened to the walls at regular intervals. They had been made from tinto, a logwood from the swamps, a wood that was highly durable and resistant to deterioration. O’Connor removed one and felt the wick at the top. It was perfectly preserved and he retrieved a box of matches from his backpack and lit it. The wick burned feebly at first, but as the oil was drawn from the ceramic container, the lamp shed an eerie, flickering light amongst the priceless artefacts. O’Connor used the lamp to light four more of the closest poles.
‘Curtis! Look!’ Aleta shone her torch at the centre of the far wall. The recess was painted in brilliant reds, blues and greens. The firelight was reflected in a pedestal made of polished black obsidian. On top stood a magnificent half-metre-high urn made from a mosaic of rich, smoky jade. The lid handles were exquisitely carved into the forms of two jaguars: one male, the other female. O’Connor started to move slowly towards it, but he was stopped in his tracks.
‘Put your hands above your heads. Both of you!’ Wiley snarled. The DDO stepped out of the gloom of the passageway, the gunmetal of his pistol glinting in the flickering tomb light. Wiley kept his pistol pointed towards Aleta and O’Connor while he collected the two rifles from where they lay on the floor, and he slid them back towards the passageway. ‘Your pistol, O’Connor. Slide it over. One false move and the bitch gets it in the head.’
O’Connor slid his pistol across the stone floor and Wiley kicked it towards the rifles. ‘So, what do you suppose that urn might contain, hmm?’ Wiley asked, waving his pistol at Aleta. She didn’t answer.
In the confined space of the tomb Wiley’s pistol shot was deafening. Aleta jumped as the bullet passed between her legs and ricocheted off the stone floor. ‘I asked you a question, bitch!’
She hadn’t seen him in over thirty years, but the face of the man behind the murders of her father and mother, her two brothers, and thousands of Guatemalan descendants of the great Maya was seared indelibly on her brain.
‘It would appear that the honour of uncovering one of the greatest archaeological finds since the tomb of Tutankhamen has fallen to you, Mr Wiley,’ she replied, struggling to keep her voice even.
Wiley could picture the headlines. ‘Stand back!’ he ordered, waving his pistol and motioning O’Connor and Aleta back towards the side wall. Wiley kept his pistol aimed in their direction and moved sideways towards the recess. When he reached the urn, he lifted it from where it had rested for over a thousand years.
‘Aaggghhhh!’ The pressure plate beneath the urn activated another mechanism and six spears, each tipped with the deadly poison of the fer-de-lance, fired from hidden slots in the recess walls. Two of the spears pierced Wiley’s thighs and his pistol clattered onto the ancient stones. The urn settled back onto the pressure plate just as Ellen Rodriguez, pistol drawn, appeared from the passageway.
‘Rodriguez – keep them covered,’ Wiley ordered, reaching to remove the two spears; but the barbs were deep. The poison took effect immediately and he slumped to the floor.
‘Not this time, Mr Wiley.’ Rodriguez calmly picked up Wiley’s pistol and pocketed it.
‘You double-crossing bitch. You’ll burn in San Quentin for this.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Wiley. When the administration finds out what you’ve been up to, it’s you who will find yourself on the inside.’
‘You stupid cow,’ Wiley responded, gasping for breath, ‘this operation has been approved at the highest levels.’
‘Something I’m sure the Senate Committee on Intelligence will find very interesting.’ Rodriguez turned to Aleta. ‘Do you think it’s safe to recover the urn?’
‘It’s stood here for centuries, to be discovered by one who will be able to warn the world of its contents.’ Jose appeared from the passage, his wizened face a coppery bronze in the flickering light of the oil lamps. He was accompanied by four warriors and he nodded to one carrying a small ceramic jar containing the antidote to the poison, indicating he should administer it to the now-unconscious Wiley.
‘It is safe,’ Jose said to Aleta.
Aleta gingerly lifted the priceless urn and removed it from the pedestal, setting it down beside the tomb of Princess Akhushtal. Her heart racing, she tried to lift the lid, but it was sealed with pitch.
The four ballistic gas actuators fired simultaneously, and the exhausts trails of vapour streamed into the pre-dawn air. The massive reinforced-concrete cover on launch silo Lima Foxtrot-26 slid silently to one side, revealing the eighteen-metre modified Minuteman 3 missile. In the Vandenberg control centre Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dan Williams ran his eye over the myriad consoles and screens that would track the mission to Iran. All systems were showing green.
O’Connor proffered a knife and Aleta ran the blade beneath the rim of the jade. She gently prised the lid open and stepped back as foul air that had been trapped within the urn for hundreds of years escaped. At the bottom of the urn was a large leather-covered package. Aleta’s hands trembled as she unwrapped the outer covering.
‘The Maya Codex!’ she whispered in awe, cradling the priceless artefact. A tear ran down her cheek as she remembered her grandfather. Had it not been for the Nazis, he might have revealed its contents to the world. She placed the codex on the floor of the tomb and carefully opened it, page by huun page.
Rodriguez’ cell phone buzzed quietly in the background, and she moved back up the passage to get a better signal.
‘Any word from the White House?’ Jackson asked. ‘They’re scheduled to launch in less than an hour.’
‘I tried, Tyler, but Reed’s not buying it. They’re more concerned about stopping the Iranians than the Chandler wobble – which I doubt they understand.’
Tyler Jackson shook his head as he hung up the phone. It was absolute madness, but like the Castle Bravo experiment, no one was listening.
Rodriguez returned to the tomb to find Aleta, O’Connor and Jose huddled over the codex.
‘Can you decipher it?’ Jose asked. He had left even the task of deciphering the warning to the one whom the ancients had intended to issue it.
Aleta nodded. ‘It will take time to unravel it in detail, but the warning is clearly there. Although…’ Aleta paused, a puzzled tone to her voice, ‘it appears to be in two parts. There’s a short path that finishes before December 2012, and a longer path, though both of them lead to the destruction of the human race.’
‘What’s the short path?’ O’Connor asked.
‘It deals with the earth and its axis,’ Aleta said, reading the hieroglyphs by torchlight. ‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘There’s a tilting, and a geographic pole shift, followed by an annihilation of cities near the coast. And there’s a shooting star… no, wait… it’s coming from the earth, not to it – it’s some kind of rocket.’
It was Rodriguez’ turn to gasp in amazement. She grabbed O’Connor by the arm and explained the calls she’d had from Tyler Jackson.
‘Tyler’s one of the best scientists I’ve ever worked with, Ellen, and if he’s concerned, the White House should be too.’
‘The Chandler wobble?’
‘The Chandler wobble’s very real, and we saw the effect of the Chile earthquake. That involved a shard of the earth’s crust sliding under the South American plate, which redistributed a whole chunk of the earth’s mass. Three billion watts of radiated power might push the planet past the point of balance. But the President can’t assess that risk if he’s not been briefed on it.’
Rodriguez speed-dialled Andrew Reed’s number.
‘For Christ’s sake, Ellen, we had this fucking conversation at three o’clock this morning. The answer’s no – what part of that don’t you understand?’
‘Then we’ll announce what you’re doing to the media.’
‘And you’ll not only be fired, you’ll finish up behind bars.’
‘You guys have got no idea what the CIA is up to down here, so shut the fuck up and listen.’ Rodriguez briefed her old boss, taking a risk over the open line. When she’d finished, there was silence on the other end. ‘Did you get that, Andrew?’
