The president paused and then added, “By any means necessary.”
CHAPTER 50
Ivan Saravich sat at the end of the poorly lit bar. A tepid shot of bad vodka sat in front of him.
He looked at the man beside him, the head of the FSB unit he now commanded.
Commanded. The word was a figment of someone’s imagination. Not his.
These men of his were as much his guards as his subordinates. They answered to him, yes, but only in regard to the quest. Their real masters resided in Moscow, with Ropa and the FSB.
“Let me get you a glass,” Ivan said.
“I don’t drink,” the man said.
Ivan shrugged. “Perhaps you should. You look upset.”
“We should not have left Gregor,” he said.
“It could not be helped,” Ivan said.
“We should have continued the pursuit,” the man said insistently.
Ivan downed his shot and poured another one.
“Along the crowded beach, with your weapons held high?” he scoffed. “How long do you think before the Mexican police arrived? How long before a helicopter and waves of cars made it impossible to escape? What would happen to our quest then?”
The man backed off a bit, but he still seemed angry and there was a sense of arrogance that would not fade. Finally he spoke. “I wonder if you really want to find the boy.”
Ivan smiled to himself, disgusted.
The man stood up. “We leave in the morning. You should know, I will not let you act that way next time.”
The man walked away. He was half Ivan’s age, thirty pounds heavier, and strong. Ivan guessed there was little beyond disdain in his heart for the old warrior.
How things change. He had once been a hero of the Soviet Union, and since its disintegration he had become a successful capitalist. He marveled at the differences. For him communism had meant honor without wealth, and capitalism wealth without honor. And now he was a disgrace, his only hope for redemption to assassinate a child.
Not a satisfactory end to either part of his life. The capitalist in him saw no profit in it and the communist saw no honor.
He downed another shot of vodka to quell that thought. The vodka was beginning to grow on him.
The truth was, if he didn’t succeed or do as ordered, these men would kill him. And if he did succeed … they would probably kill him anyway.
CHAPTER 51
Professor McCarter held the church pew with his right hand for balance. He suddenly felt light-headed, as if he was swaying—or the ground was.
“Could you say that again?” he asked the priest.
Father Domingo stepped toward McCarter. He put a hand on McCarter’s shoulder. “The prophecy of Kukulcan,” he said. “The writings of Chilam Balam: December 21, 2012, the day in which darkness will pour from the sky. There are tourists everywhere in Central America because of it. But I sense you are different.”
“How can you tell?” Hawker said sarcastically.
“For one thing, you carry weapons. For another, none of you have cameras.”
He turned to Danielle. “And then there’s the object you brought with you. Something we have been waiting to see. You wish to deliver it to the Temple of the Jaguar, but you’re afraid of what will happen if you do.”
McCarter did not know how this man knew what he knew. But in McCarter’s weakened state it seemed ominous to him. “Or if we don’t,” he replied.
Father Domingo nodded in response to his statement. “Fear is the domain of the evil one,” he said. “Jesus told the mourners who believed their daughter had died to fear not and believe only. And she was healed. If you act out of fear, you will always make the wrong decision. You must act out of faith, whichever way you decide to go.”
“Easy for you to say,” Danielle replied. McCarter would have seconded that.
Father Domingo nodded. “Perhaps it is. And perhaps I can show you something that might make it easier for you. Come.”
He led them past the altar to a small door. Using a key on the modern padlock he released the cast-iron latch. The door creaked open. A long, wooden stairway beckoned.
With Hawker and Danielle’s help, McCarter followed Father Domingo down stairs made of old, lacquered pine. They arrived at a large wine cellar. Brick walls faced them on two sides and five huge oak barrels sat recessed within the earthen wall.
“San Ignacio was originally a fort and then a mission,” Father Domingo explained. “And after the conquest of Mexico it was turned into a monastery. The soldiers began to grow grapes here and when the monks took over they improved the vineyards and had these casks built. We still make wine and much of it will be served tonight as part of the novena, our celebration of the nine days before Christmas.”
Father Domingo walked slowly as he spoke, stopping finally at the last of the heavy casks. He slid a flathead screwdriver between two planks on the face of the barrel. Using a small hammer, he tapped it in farther. Taking great care not to bruise or split the wood, he levered the plank outward.
“Nice hiding place,” Hawker said.
“It even works,” he said grinning. “This one is the best wine of the bunch.”
He reached inside and pulled out a thin, flat box, like those used for long-stemmed roses.
McCarter hobbled forward as Father Domingo placed the box on the wine presser’s table. An inscription on the lid read: EN EL ANO DE DIOS MDCXCVIII.
“In the year of our Lord,” McCarter read aloud. “Sixteen ninety-eight.”
“Must be a rare vintage,” Danielle said.
Father Domingo looked up. “Very rare,” he said. “There is no other like it that I know of.”
Father Domingo opened the box. Inside, wrapped in a towel and then a layer of fireproof Nomex fabric was a sealed plastic bag. Within that was a cracking folded parchment wrapped partially in silk.
Father Domingo laid the parchment down, unfolding it with the greatest of care. On the top half of the yellowing paper they saw Spanish writing in faded blue ink. The bottom half was covered with symbols: Mayan hieroglyphs.
“What is this?” McCarter asked.
Father Domingo smiled. “The history of the church is not one of honor at times. Certainly not in this part of the world. When the conquistadors came, the church followed, and what wasn’t stolen by the men of Cortez was burned and broken by the church. Soon almost everything that had once been here was swept away. Lives taken, traditions banned, books and parchments thrown into the bonfire by the thousands, until there was little left but a pile of useless ash. If they could have, they would have swept the stone monuments into the sea.”
McCarter nodded sadly and turned to Hawker and Danielle. “Only four parchment books of Mayan writing are known to still exist. We call them codices—the Madrid codex, the Paris codex, the Dresden codex, after the cities they’re stored in. There is a fourth called the Grolier fragment. Four out of thousands. A few short pages of astrological studies are all that remain from hundreds of generations of Mayan civilization.”
“And the church was the chief destroyer,” Father Domingo said sadly. “A sin we shall bear until the day of judgment.”
“But this book,” McCarter noted, seeing there were several folded pages. “How did it survive?”
“Much of what God has done, he does through the fallen and the weak,” Father Domingo said. “In this case, in the darkest parts of the church’s shame there were those who spoke out. A missionary named DeVaca was one. One of the men whom his testimony reached was among the first to come here to San Ignacio. His name was Philippe Don Pedro. He had come from the Basque region of Spain, where he had owned a vineyard, only to see it burn once, and then after he rebuilt it, to see a pestilence destroy his vines.