The Aztec Heresy (22 page)

‘‘He’s been out of contact for the last few days.’’

‘‘He’s in the jungle?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘With your friends?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘I’m worried,’’ said the cardinal.

‘‘There’s no reason for you to worry about anything.’’

‘‘There’s always a reason to worry about everything, ’’ answered the cardinal. ‘‘I’ve been at the Vatican for the better part of half a century. I’ve seen everything from murders to miracles. Worry accompanies both and everything in between. Control is everything.’’

‘‘I’ve got it under control,’’ Noble said. His relationship with the Italian was a continuing source of irritation. How could you expect a man who believed in virgin births to know anything about business?

‘‘No, you don’t,’’ said the cardinal flatly. ‘‘You’ve involved the Church with a Mexican drug lord and a Cuban dictator.’’

‘‘Not the Church,’’ argued Noble. ‘‘One of the banks owned by the Church.’’

‘‘Don’t be an idiot. The relationship leads right back to the Vatican.’’

‘‘You mean to the Twelve,’’ said Noble.

‘‘Don’t try to threaten me with what you think you know, Mr. Noble. Last year your company did twelve billion dollars in business. Of that twelve billion roughly half was invested on your behalf by friends of mine. Powerful friends.’’

‘‘Now who’s doing the threatening?’’ Noble snorted.

‘‘I never threaten, Mr. Noble. I merely inform.’’

‘‘What are you saying?’’

‘‘If Noble Pharmaceuticals doesn’t get celatropamine to the marketplace within the next eighteen months your losses are going to be immense. If there is any chance of that happening, Banco Venizia will withdraw its support immediately.’’

‘‘Why? Drugs take time to introduce. It’s not as though we need FDA approval. Celatropamine is an additive, not a drug in its own right.’’

They reached the spot on the fairway that held the cardinal’s ball. He chose a smaller Callaway wood, barely hesitated, and knocked the ball easily up onto the green.

‘‘I am a prudent man, Mr. Noble. I research things. Celatropamine is listed as a nutrient additive with the Federal Drug Administration in the United States. When the FDA discovers that celatropamine enhances the addictive potential of anything it is combined with from toothpaste to baby formula, there is going to be an immediate attempt by your government to have the drug restricted if not banned outright. Celatropamine added to cigarettes, for instance. Good God, man!’’

‘‘I thought that was your interest in the first place,’’ said Noble as they tromped toward the patch of brighter green in the middle distance.

‘‘Which brings us back to the question of control. Too many people are becoming involved. A leak would be disastrous.’’

‘‘There won’t be any leak,’’ Noble said. ‘‘My son has been given strict instructions.’’

‘‘Regarding Guzman?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘The Cubans?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘You have the assets necessary to deal with the situation?’’

‘‘The best.’’

‘‘When will you know?’’

‘‘Tomorrow night. That’s when the extraction is to take place.’’

‘‘He’ll have the necessary sample?’’

‘‘If he doesn’t I’ll kill him,’’ said Noble.

Rossi reached his ball and took a lovely new Ping putter out of the bag. He knelt with the putter and lined up the shot. It was twenty-five feet uphill with a slight break to the right. He tossed a grass clipping into the air. Barely any breeze. The cardinal stood, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He turned to Noble, his expression blank.

‘‘If he doesn’t, I’ll kill you,’’ he said. He turned back to the ball and made the putt.

Max Kessler stood in the middle of Boulder Bridge in Rock Creek Park, his hands clasped together as he stared over the edge at the shallow waters of the little stream that ran beneath the old single span built back before the twenties. Except for the faint burbling of the water below and the sighing of the breeze in the trees all around, there was only silence. There hadn’t been a vehicle on the road behind him for the better part of half an hour now. It was a nice evening, the last light of a summer day in Washington, D.C., fading gracefully away into night. The trees were heavy enough to prevent the use of line-of-sight optical lasers to record voices and the tumbling waters directly below the bridge would make any wiring of his companion useless if he was being set up for some sort of sting operation. Kessler also had a vibrating pocket detector in his suit jacket that would pick up virtually any RF signal from a transmitter, just in case.

The very tall bald-headed man standing beside him was Dr. Simon Andrew Grunnard. Grunnard wore heavy horn-rim spectacles and orthopedic shoes. He was a senior research scientist for Noble Pharmaceuticals and director of their ethno-botanical research division. He had come to Max Kessler through a long and careful chain of connections that originated in Las Vegas and meandered across the nation to the Noble Research Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

‘‘Perhaps we should begin,’’ murmured Kessler.

‘‘I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing,’’ answered Grunnard.

‘‘I’m not your conscience, Doctor. I am here to facilitate your interests and further my own. I am not here to discuss right and wrong with you.’’

‘‘This is hard for me.’’

‘‘That’s too bad,’’ said Kessler. ‘‘And frankly, sir, I don’t really care. What do you know about celatropamine?’’

‘‘Noble Pharmaceuticals is about to release a form of the drug trade-named Celedawn.’’

‘‘A weight-loss remedy.’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘In what form?’’

‘‘An over-the-counter nutrient bar.’’

‘‘A meal replacement?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘When?’’

‘‘Eight months. We’re waiting for a sample of the base nutrient to be delivered.’’

‘‘What is a base nutrient?’’

‘‘A plant extract from which the drug can be synthesized.’’

‘‘The drug can’t be synthesized without it?’’

‘‘Eventually, but it’s much easier to clone molecules from the original plant source. It’s why they send ethno-botanist plant hunters to the Amazon.’’

‘‘You discovered celatropamine?’’

‘‘The original plant base, yes. In the Yucatán.’’

‘‘As I understand it the drug comes from some sort of mutated plant.’’

‘‘Yes, a small concentration of radically altered
Allamanda cathartica
. I’ve never seen it anywhere else.’’

‘‘You brought some back to Chapel Hill?’’

‘‘Yes. Enough for small-scale studies.’’

‘‘But not for synthesis.’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘The drug is apparently highly addictive, yes?’’

‘‘Not the drug itself. It makes whatever it’s added to addictive to an incredible degree.’’

‘‘So people will become addicted to these Celedawn bars then.’’

‘‘Yes. The bars are already a laxative. Someone on a diet of nothing but the bars will lose weight very swiftly. The long-term effects could be quite dangerous, however. Dehydration, for one.’’

‘‘Celatropamine can be added to other products?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘With the same result?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘And if news of the drug was released prematurely?’’

‘‘It would probably be banned almost immediately. ’’

‘‘Causing great losses to Noble Pharmaceuticals. ’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘Or great wealth if you knew beforehand the drug was going to be banned before it ever reached the market. You could sell the stocks short.’’

‘‘I don’t know anything about stock trading, but as I understand it, yes.’’

‘‘And you have stock options?’’

‘‘I’ve worked at Noble for twenty-five years. Right from the start.’’

‘‘And now you wish to retire a wealthy man.’’

‘‘I suppose that’s a blunt way of putting it,’’ said Grunnard.

‘‘I am a blunt man, Doctor.’’

‘‘Can you help me?’’ asked the ethno-botanist.

‘‘We can help each other.’’ Max Kessler smiled. He put his hand under the taller man’s elbow and guided him across the bridge. ‘‘Let’s walk a little and discuss details.’’

24

They smelled the camp before they saw it.

The rank odor of a hundred or so men living in close quarters and rarely bathing. Body odor, human waste, and the sweet-sour smell of food cooking over charcoal fires. By the time they reached the edge of the large clearing it was almost sunset, the guard towers standing out in stark silhouette against the dying sun.

‘‘How do we get in?’’ Eli Santoro asked in a whisper. Beside him, prone in the last of the foliage at the jungle’s edge, Garza peered through his binoculars. The camp was a huge rectangle with a wall of bulldozed dirt topped by a palisade of bamboo stakes. There were two guards in each of the towers manning .50-caliber machine guns. There was a large front gate made of bamboo and barbed wire with four more guards. Over the top of the bamboo palisade they could see the crumbled ruins of an old temple at the far end of the camp. There was a surprising amount of noise—shouting voices, laughter, and a general growling undertone of sound.

‘‘Noisy,’’ commented Guido, who was carrying Garza’s pack across his broad shoulders. He passed one hand over his big bald head in a nervous gesture.

‘‘Careless,’’ answered Garza. ‘‘They don’t care who hears them.’’

‘‘They’re in the middle of the jungle, why should they care?’’ scoffed Eli.

‘‘Because of people like us,’’ said Garza grimly.

‘‘You still haven’t answered my question,’’ said Eli. ‘‘How do we get past the guards and the towers?’’

‘‘The ruins,’’ answered Garza. ‘‘It’s the only blind spot from the towers.’’

Like most ancient Mayan temples, the one that formed part of the eastern wall of the camp had been built in stages over a number of centuries, each dynasty adding on to the one that had gone before. This particular one, never discovered, excavated, or looted, was at least twenty-five hundred years old and at one time must have loomed at least a hundred feet above the jungle floor. Now it stood barely twenty feet above the ground and was covered with vines, trees, and dense foliage, barely recognizable as man-made.

It took Garza, Eli, and Guido the better part of half an hour to move around to the far end of the clearing, and by then the shadows had deepened even further. Garza was right; where the temple wall rose over the wall of bermed earth there was no palisade and the wall itself was angled slightly, just enough to make it impossible to see from either of the corner guard towers. The trio waited another fifteen minutes until full dusk and then simply walked into the clearing and quickly clambered up through the maze of vines and foliage that covered the slightly sloping pyramid wall.

‘‘Now what?’’ Eli said as they settled down behind the decayed remains of what had once been a huge stone statue of a jaguar set at the corner of the wall. The long rectangular compound was spread out below them. There was a large main building with a tin roof and set on stilts to the north, a number of smaller barracks buildings against the south wall by the main gate, and a large, World War II-style Quonset hut at the opposite end of the compound. In front of the Quonset hut an open-fly tent had been set up on metal poles. Beneath the open canvas several bright arc lights had been set up, thick rubber cables running back to the hut. They could hear the muffled sound of a thumping generator coming from inside the Quonset hut. The two bombs had been set out on heavy wooden trestles that looked as though they had been specially constructed for the job. There were four men under the canvas cover, three of them apparently disassembling the devices, the fourth man supervising. All four men were dressed in military uniform, unlike the pattern of the camouflage worn by the guards and other personnel they could see within the compound. All four were wearing surgical masks and all four were Chinese.

‘‘
Oosters?’’
Guido queried.

‘‘What the hell are the Chinese doing here?’’ Eli said.

There was the distinctive sound of an automatic pistol being cocked.

‘‘Perhaps I could ask you the same question, ’’ said an accented voice out of the darkness, and then Arkady Tomas Cruz stepped into the dying light.

‘‘This bloody tunnel goes on forever,’’ muttered Billy Pilgrim, hacking away at the undergrowth crowding the narrow passageway that led deep into the observatory-temple. It had taken Finn less than ten minutes to find the site of the entranceway, but so far it had taken them almost an hour to cut their way through the tunnel, one holding the flashlight while the other chopped with the machete and the other tools Garza had left behind for them.

‘‘Don’t be such a sourpuss,’’ answered Finn, holding the light. ‘‘This is important. This site has never been broken into. It’s pristine. There’s no telling what we’ll find.’’

‘‘Bugs,’’ answered Billy. ‘‘There’ll be bugs, and if it’s not bugs it’ll be snakes. Maybe both.’’

‘‘Look,’’ whispered Finn. She shone the big flashlight onto the walls. Long ago, perhaps four or five hundred years before, there had been a thick layer of mortar laid down over the heavy stones. The mortar, while still wet, had been used as the ground for a series of murals that ran along the walls at eye level. ‘‘It’s the same as the Codex we found aboard the ship,’’ said Finn. There were a number of glyphs that were clearly of Spanish soldiers and one of a man in a steel helmet but wearing a Mayan feather cloak. ‘‘Cortéz himself,’’ murmured Finn. ‘‘It has to be.’’

‘‘Can you read any more of it?’’

‘‘Not really, except that this was some sort of place used by royalty even before Cortéz arrived. That’s what the glyph of the guy in the big headdress represents.’’

‘‘A royal observatory?’’

‘‘Could be’’—Finn nodded—‘‘but this painting is from much later than that.’’

‘‘Remind me again why we’re doing this in the middle of the night in the middle of a revolution in the middle of the jungle?’’ Billy asked, stopping for a rest, hands on his knees, panting from the effort of cutting through the roots and undergrowth within the tunnel.

‘‘Garza needs a place for the plutonium cores,’’ answered Finn. ‘‘Which means we need to find a cenote under this temple.’’