Serpent nf-1 Page 42

  Crew members covered the slab with a quilted protective material, then wrapped it in a plastic tarp. A small forklift transported the slab to a storage space at deck level. It didn't seem fragile, having weathered nearly half a century in a submerged armored truck and a ride to the surface, but he didn't want to take the chance that it would break into a thousand brittle pieces.

  With sad eyes, Donatelli watched the stone being taken away. "So that's what all those men died for."

  "The killing still hasn't stopped," Austin answered grimly as he squinted at the fog, which now encased the salvage ship in a yellowgray tomb that muffled sound and light. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. He shivered as he remembered Angelo's description of a similar fog bank that hid the Andrea Doria from eyes on the Stockholm.

  "Let's check in with the captain," he suggested, and they climbed to the bridge.

  Inside the wheelhouse McGinty motioned for them to come over to the radar screen and pointed to a white, blip against the green backdrop. Austin blinked. Maybe he'd been underwater too long. The blip's rapid progress across the screen was more like that of an aircraft than a boat.

  "Is that vessel moving as fast as I think it is?" Zavala said.

  "Goin' like a banshee," McGinty growled.

  Austin tapped the screen with his finger. "Could be our bad boys."

  McGinty's eyes sparkled. "When I was growing up in Southie the cops would swing the cruiser through the housing project and you'd see guys running in every direction. Cops

  always found someone wanted for something. If you had a guilty conscience all you had to do was see that blue bubble atop the cruiser to get your legs moving. Same thing here, I'll bet."

  "The guilty flee when none pursueth," Austin said. The blip passed other craft moving in the same direction as if they were stationary. "My guess is that those folks fleeth at about fifty knots."

  McGinty let out a low whistle. "This looks like a big ship to me. I don't know of any vessels of size that can move like that."

  "I do. It's called a Fast Ship. It's a new design. Company called Thornycroft and Giles makes them. They use a semiplaning monohull with water jets that eliminate propeller cavitation. Even a Fast Ship container vessel can cruise at fortyfive knots. The newer versions might even be faster. Cap, did you see any big boats around the wreck just before the attack?"

  "This is a busy place." McGinty pushed his cap, back on his forehead as if it would help his memory "Lots of boats, fishermen mostly, coming or going. Did we actually see this ship? Maybe. There was a good-sized craft hunkering a mile or so away, but we lost it in the fog bank. I was busy with dive operations."

  "My guess is that if we could cut through the corporate red tape, we'd find it was owned by Halcon Industries."

  "Can we get air surveillance?" McGinty asked.

  "Impossible in this fog. But what if we do find it? We'd need a warrant to go aboard."

  Zavala had been listening silently, his mouth in an uncharacteristic frown. "Something's been bothering me," he said. "Those guys knew where we were and what we were doing. How did they know? We just decided to go after this thing a few days ago. We didn't exactly advertise our plans."

  Austin and McGinty exchanged glances. "This operation involved a lot of people. Any one of them could have dropped enough of a hint to let the cat out of the bag." It was an explanation Austin didn't believe himself. His attackers were too well prepared.

  Before long the wind shifted, blowing away the fog, Donatelli bid goodbye to the NUMA men and the Monkfish captain, and he and Antonio set off in the yacht. Austin promised to update the Doria survivor on NUMA's every move.

  The Monkfish plowed through the fog and rounded Cape Cod, and before long they could see the lights of planes taking off and landing at Logan Airport. They steamed past the Boston Harbor Islands and tied up at a dock near the aquarium. Austin called an excited Dr. Orville and asked him to arrange for a truck to pick up the stone. Austin and Zavala followed the truck to Harvard and saw it safely under lock and key. Orville said he would work through the night to decipher the inscriptions if he had to and invited them to stay. Austin declined the invitation. He and Zavala were exhausted from the day's events and wanted to catch an early flight to Washington. After a light dinner they had a nightcap of Irish whiskey with McGinty, then crawled into their bunks and fell asleep almost immediately.

  The tubular green-glassed tower of NUMA headquarters was like the welcome beacon of a lighthouse as the taxi navigated the unpredictable seas of Washington traffic. Austin and Zavala had caught the water shuttle to Logan Airport and were back in Washington by late morning. McGinty bid him adieu with a lung-shaking slap on the back and the highest of praise. Austin, he proclaimed, was a chip off his old man's block.

  "Wonder what the Trouts are up to." Zavala's musings cut into his thoughts.

  Austin had called their team colleagues from the salvage ship the night before to tell them about the fight in the Doria and the retrieval of the stone. Gamay said she and Paul had new information they'd share with them the next day. Austin was too tired to ask what it was. The Trouts were waiting with Hiram Yaeger in the private conference room where they held their first meeting. Rudi Gunn showed up a minute later and said Sandecker was having brunch at the White House. The vice president the admiral would have blown off, but not the president.

  Gamay opened the meeting. "You've all been briefed so I won't go into the details of my Yucatan jungle adventure with Dr. Chi. As you know we discovered a stash of stolen Mayan artifacts awaiting shipment out of the country. The storage was centrally located with respect to roads and water routes. We found hundreds of objects taken from a number of important sites, known and unknown to legitimate excavators. When Dr. Chi inventoried the goods, in addition to ceramics he found a number of stone carvings, apparently removed from Mayan buildings with a diamond-edged saw. The unusual boat motif on them must have caught the eye of the chicleros. His guess was that the carvings were taken from temple observatories similar to a structure he showed me at the Mayan site called MIT There was only one problem: the carvings were not identified as to location."

  She paused as Trout passed the pile of folders he'd been guarding to the others at the table. Gamay waited until the rustling of papers died down, then continued.

  "The paper you see on top has eight sketches drawn by Dr. Chi. These profiles are glyphs that represent the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl, who also went by the name Kukulcan. At first glance the drawings appear identical, but if you look closer you'll see subtle differences."

  Yaeger brought his quick eye for detail to the task. "Jaw's a little more prominent on this one," he said. "This one's got a thicker eyebrow"

  Gunn squinted at the sketches. "This guy's nose looks as if it ran into a right cross."

  Gamay smiled like a proud schoolmarm. "You catch on fast, gentlemen. These facial differences indicate a particular place. Each city or urban center interpreted the god in a way that was peculiar to it." '

  "Like the owl was the symbol of ancient Athens?" Austin ventured.

  "Correct. In this case the god also represents the planet Venus."

  Austin stirred impatiently in his seat, his eyes glazing over.

  He was expecting to hear information with a direct bearing on the case, not a lecture on Mayan theology.

  "Gamay, this is all very interesting," he said, making no effort to hide his impatience, "but I'm not sure where you're going with it."

  She flashed her disarming tomboy grin. "These glyphs were all incorporated into carvings of the boat motif."

  Austin's interest was piqued. He leaned forward. "The Phoenician boat?"

  "We don't know yet for sure whether it was Phoenician or not. But, yes, the inscriptions apparently marked the event we saw, strange boats and strange people being received by Mayans."

  Paul Trout chipped in. "Dr. Chi had already guessed that the carvings came from temple observatories. Dr. Chi used the city glyphs to pinp
oint the location of the observatories. Mayan observatories are scattered all over Central America. But only eight, as far as he knew, have that particular boat theme."

  Austin said, "You've got eight identical observatories at separate locations, dedicated to Venus, keyed into its cycles, and all having something to do with a mysterious fleet of boats."

  "That's right," Gamay said, resuming her explanation. And the number eight goes to the heart of the matter." Noting .the blank expressions, she said, "Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan were incarnations of the Maya's most important god, Venus. The Maya plotted the planet's course with incredible accuracy. They knew there were eight days in the Venus cycle when the planet disappeared. The Mayans believed Venus went to the underworld during that time. They used architectural features to keep track of Venus and other celestial objects. Doorways, sculptures, pillars. The placement of streets. Professor Chi thinks these observatories were part of a greater plan. A map. Chart. Even a crude computer meant to solve a problem."

  "Like the problem of the Phoenician, excuse me, the as-yet-unidentified boats?" Austin said.

  "Exactly" Paul replied. "Page two in your folder is a map showing the locations."

  Another rustle of papers.

  Gamay said, "We tried connecting the temples, drawing parallel lines from them. Nothing made sense. While we were tearing our hair out we got a call from Dc Chi. He had come in from the field for supplies and heard we were trying to get in touch. We told him we were groping in the dark for something we were sure was there and needed his help."

  Paul announced, "Page three in your folder, gentlemen. Dc Chi had this faxed from the national museum. The Spanish destroyed all but a few of the Mayan books. Thus is one of the few that survived. The Dresden Codex. It has detailed observation tables for Venus. The data were collected from observatories."

  "What bearing does it have on our mystery?" Gunn inquired.

  "Mainly as an example of the type of information that was so important to the Maya," Gamay replied. "Try to imagine the Mayan priests night after night gazing at the stars. They collect the information on the movement of the stars, then, using architectural features built into these same temples; forecast what the stars and planets would do." .

  "I've got it," blurted Yaeger. "Sometimes it helps to be a nerd. You're saying that these eight temples and the carvings are the hardware. The Codex would be the software that tells the hardware what to do." Yaeger blinked rapidly behind his wirerimmed glasses. "Carrying the analogy forward, the physical form of software can be soft; like the floppy disk that contains the program, or hard, like the hard drive."

  "Or for our purposes, hard as stone," " Austin said.

  "Bingo!" Gamay said. "What geniuses we have at NUMA."

  Galvanized now, Austin ticked the points off on his fingertips. "One. We have eight temples dedicated to the temple Venus. Two. The temples are set up in a way, that will help us solve a puzzle having to do with those mysterious boats and their cargo. Three The talking stone tells us how to operate it."

  "I wasn't positive until Dr. Orville called this morning He found the same eight glyphs on the stone. There's a fax of the tablet in your folder. The inscription is composed of three main elements. The glyphs and a condensed rendition of the boat landings are the first and second elements."

  Any idea why the ship is about to be eaten by the big snake?" Zavala asked, looking at the fax.

  "That's element number three," Gamay explained. "The feathered serpent is the earthly embodiment of Quetzalcoatl Kuloulcan."

  "Ali," Zavala said. "That certainly clears things up."

  "Look at it this way" Gamay said. "The glyphs tell you where. The boat inscription tells you what. The serpent tells you how. Look at the Kukulcan. Tell me what you see."

  "Feathers mostly" Gunn said after a moment.

  "No," Yeager said. "There's something else. The feathers are confusing. Look at the jaws. It's some sort of grid."

  "Bravo." Gamay dapped, dearly delighted. "Our computer guru goes to the head of the class."

  "I don't know why" Yaeger said with a shrug. "Damned if I know what I'm talking about."

  "Check out the next picture in your folder. This shows one of those eight temples. Pretty typical. Cylindrical, balcony around the top, frieze on the bottom part. Take a close look at those two vertical slit windows. We assumed they were used for some sort of astronomical calculation. We made an educated guess that the windows lined up with Venus at the extremes of its position in the sky. It still didn't make sense until Paul had the idea of looking down on the temples, as if we were in an airplane."

  Picking up the explanation, Paul held up the last sheet in the folder. "We extended the lines from each window and found that they intersected."

  "I'll be damned," Yaeger said. "It's the same grid as in the feathered serpent."

  Gamay nodded. "I started thinking about it when I noticed the grid reminded me of an amulet I once borrowed from Dr. Chi. The jaws of Kukulcan."

  Gunn said, "Weren't we talking about Columbus depending on some kind of grid?"

  "That's right," Paul said. "Orville's theory is that Columbus tried to use this stone but was at a disadvantage to start with. He knew there was treasure but couldn't decipher the glyphs. He had drawings made from the stone to take on the Nina, probably hoping to find someone who would translate for him."

  Austin had been staring at the diagram. "Back when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, navigators had maps with straight lines called rhumbs on them. Someone sailing from Spain to Hispanola chose the line giving him the most direct route and set a compass course. You'd end up where you were supposed to be, as long as you weren't messed up by current and winds. Columbus may have wrongly thought these lines were rhumbs. The Maya were a lot more sophisticated than he knew. Were you able to work this out on a map?"

  "It didn't make sense at first," Paul said. "Venus would have been in a different position in the sky a couple of thousand years ago. We had to do some recomputing. Our guess is that the V-shaped intersection of the jaws, here where you see the boat, is where something is located."

  Austin had another question. "How long do you think it will take Halcon to figure this out?"

  The Trouts exchanged glances. Paul said, "There have been. reports of Columbus papers and Mayan documents being stolen from various museums. I suspect Mr. Halcon has been trying to piece things together, but we've got the stone, and now we know how to use it."

  "We'd better get moving on this in case Halcon's smarter than we think," Austin said.

  Gunn cleared his throat and squared the edges of his papers. "With all due respect, Kurt, maybe before we go jumping into the jaws of Kukulcan we had better figure out what all this is about. Starting with Halcon and why he is causing so much trouble."

  "I see your point. Okay I'll start the ball rolling. Here's my theory. Like Columbus, Halcon is after the Phoenician treasure that was removed from Carthage. The key to finding the stuff lies in pre-Columbian evidence. He doesn't want anyone else to step on his turf so he destroys the evidence and those who have found it."

  "I've considered that theory and think it's on the mark," Gunn said, "but it's only part of the picture. I asked Yaeger to compile a detailed dossier on Halcon. Tell us about his finances, Hiram."

  Yaeger glanced at a computer printout in front of him. "Between his family fortune and widespread holdings, he's worth billions, and that's a conservative guess."

  "Thanks, Hiram. That's what bothers me, Kurt. Why would Halcon go through all this trouble of killing people, attacking you on the Andrea Doria and trying to steal the so-called talking stone, just so he can find a treasure, however fabulous? He has more money than any normal person could ever want."

  "You may have answered your own question," Austin countered. "You said a normal person. From what Zavala told us about the ball court executions, Halcon sounds like a madman."

  "I've considered that possibility, too. But I think Senor Halcon is a lot more com
plicated than a bored rich eccentric who takes up treasure hunting for a hobby. Hiram, would you run through the other material you picked up on the gentleman?"

  Adjusting his granny glasses, Yaeger said, "Francisco Halcon was born in Spain of a family that goes back centuries. Halcon, which means 'falcon,' was apparently not the real family name, which I was unable to determine. He went to expensive private schools in Switzerland and attended college in England. Oxford man, Yaeger said with a smirk. "He became a bullfighter known as El Halcon and didn't do too badly but left the toro business under a cloud of scandal. He was said to have put poison on the tip of his killing sword, so even if he didn't hit the bull's vitals it would die."

  "Hardly seems sporting for an Oxford man," Austin said in a stage British accent.

  "Cambridge maybe, but not Oxford," Zavala said.

  Yaeger shrugged. "From the bullring he went into one of the family businesses. The Halcons were very thick with the dictator Franco and the Spanish military before and during the war and made a lot of money on armaments. After Franco died and the king returned and restored democracy. Halcon's business activities came under suspicion. Interpol says he was suspected of being tied to a Spanish Murder Inc. He left the country and came to Mexico where a branch of his family that goes back to the Spanish conquest owned a number of businesses. Halcon took over the U.S. operations, used his money and influence to cultivate political connections, and in short time became an American citizen."

  "He's done pretty well from what I saw of the companies under his aegis in San Antonio," Zavala said.

  "The American dream personified," Gunn added, not attempting to conceal his sarcasm.

  "In more ways than one," said Yaeger. "His legitimate businesses were just a cover for shady operations on both sides of the border. He's suspected of largescale drug and immigrant smuggling from Mexico."