Temple

SIXTH MACHINATION

Tuesday, January 5, 1910 hours

The two river craft motored slowly across the river’s surface toward the abandoned mine. One of the vessels was a long sleek speedboat, the other, a battered looking little seaplane, with only one pontoon hanging down from its right wing. The world was silent, the river calm. Leonardo Van Lewen and Doogie Kennedy peered out from their respective cockpits, stared at the deserted mine in front of them. Slowly, they both brought their vessels in toward the riverbank, ran them gently aground. They had heard the hypergolic explosion and now they saw the mine—the immense brown earthen crater—and the plume of black smoke rising from the charred box shaped shell hanging in its centre. There was no one in sight. Nothing stirred. Whatever had happened here was well and truly oven The two Green Berets jumped out of their vessels and walked cautiously over to the collection of old warehouse like buildings at the edge of the canyon, guns in hand. Then, abruptly, Renée appeared from a door in one of the buildings. She saw them instantly, came over, and the three of them stood together at the edge of the canyon, staring out at the blackened remains of the control booth.

‘What happened here?’ Van Lewen asked.

‘Ehrhardt used the idol to arm the Supernova. Then he set it to detonate,’ Renée said, her voice sad and soft. ‘Professor Race managed to stop the detonation sequence, but no sooner had he neutralised the Supernova than the whole cabin just exploded.’

Van Lewen turned to look out at the destroyed control booth, at the last place William Race had been seen alive. ‘The device was in there?’ he asked.

‘Uhhuh,’ Renée said. ‘You wouldn’t have believed it. He stopped the countdown. He was amazing.’

‘What about the idol?’

‘Destroyed in the blast, I presume, along with the Supernova and Professor Race.’

There came a rustling sound from their right. Van Lewen and Doogie spun, guns up. But when they turned, they saw nothing but trees and foliage. And then suddenly a drumlike cylindrical object—a capsule of some sort, about the size of a regular garbage bin dropped out of the upper branches of a tree and bounced softly onto the thick foliage about twenty yards away from them. Van Lewen, Renée and Doogie all frowned, went over to it. The capsule must have been inside the control booth when it blew, and been blasted all the way here by the concussion wave. The warhead capsule rolled to a halt in the foliage, and ten, oddly, it began to wobble back and forth, as if there were someone inside it wriggling around, trying to get out— Suddenly the lid of the capsule popped open and Race tumbled out of it and went sprawling butt first onto the wet, muddy ground.

Renée’s face broke out into a thousand watt grin and she and the two Green Berets rushed over to where Race was lying in the foliage. The professor lay on his back in the mud—soaking wet and exhausted beyond belief. He was still wearing his cap and his black kevlar breastplate. He looked up at his three comrades as they came over, offered them a tired half smile. Then he pulled his right hand out from behind his back and placed an object on the ground in front of him. Droplets of water glistened all over it, but there was no mistaking the shiny black and purple stone and the fierce features of the rapa’s head that had been carved into it. It was the idol. The Goose flew through the air, soaring gracefully over the Amazon rainforest. It was heading west in the early dark of night. Back toward the mountains, back toward Vilcafor. Doogie sat up front in the cockpit, flying the plane, while Van Lewen, Race, Renée and the wounded Uli sat in the back. Race pondered his escape from the control booth. In the five seconds he’d had between disarming the Supernova and the mixing of the hypergolic fuels, he had desperately searched the cabin for a way out. As it happened, his eyes fell upon one of the warhead capsules—a container capable of withstanding 10,000 pounds per square inch of pressure since its purpose was the protection of explosive nuclear warheads. With nothing else to call on, he’d dived for it—snatching the idol sitting on the workbench on the way and snapping shut the capsule’s lid just as the five second countdown expired. The fuels mixed and the control booth blew and he was launched high into the sky, inside the capsule. Thankfully, it had landed relatively softly in the trees surrounding the mine. But he was alive and that was all that mattered. Now, as he sat in his seat in the back of the seaplane, Race also held in his hands a tattered leather bound book that he had found in the boathouse after his spectacular escape. It had been sitting on a shelf inside the office overlooking the mine. It was a book that he’d insisted on searching for before they headed back to Vilcafor. It was the Santiago Manuscript. The original Santiago Manuscript—written by Alberto Santiago in the sixteenth century stolen from the San Sebastian Abbey by Heinrich Anistaze in the twentieth, and copied by Special Agent Uli Pieck of the Bundes Kriminal Amt not long after that. As he sat in the back of the little seaplane, Race gazed at the manuscript in a kind of subdued awe. He saw Alberto Santiago’s handwriting. The strokes and flourishes were familiar, but now he saw them on beautifully textured paper and written in rich blue ink, not some harsh, scratchy photocopy. He wanted to read it immediately, but no, that would have to wait. There were some other things he had to settle first.

‘Van Lewen,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about Frank Nash.”

‘What?’

‘I said, tell me about Frank Nash.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Have you worked with him before?’

‘No. This is my first time. My unit was pulled out of Bragg to come on this mission.’

‘Are you aware that Nash is a colonel in the Army’s Special Projects Unit?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘So you knew it was a lie when Nash came to my office yesterday morning with a DARPA ID and a story saying that he was a retired Army colonel now working with the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency?’

‘I didn’t know he said that.’

‘You didn’t know?’ Van Lewen looked at Race honestly.

‘Professor Race, I’m just a grunt, okay. I was told that this was to be a protective assignment. I was told to protect you. So that’s what I’m doing. If Colonel Nash lied to you, I’m sorry but I didn’t know.’

Race clenched his teeth. He was pissed as hell. He was furious at having been tricked into coming along on the mission. In addition to being angry, however, he was also determined to know everything, for if Nash wasn’t really with DARPA then it raised a whole lot of other questions. For instance, what about Lauren and Copeland? Were they with Army Special Projects, too? Even closer to home were the questions regarding how Race himself had come to be a part of the mission. After all, Nash had claimed to have been put onto him by his brother Marty. But Race hadn’t even seen his brother in almost ten years. Strangely, Race found himself thinking about Marty. They’d been close as kids. Although Marty had been a good three years older than him, they had always played together— football, baseball, just plain running around. But Will had always been better at sports, despite the age difference. Marty, on the other hand, was easily the cleverer of the two boys. He’d excelled at school and been ostracised for it. He wasn’t handsome, and even as a nine year old he was the image of his father, all hunched shoulders and thick dark eyebrows, with a permanently severe expression that was reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Conversely, Race had his mother’s easy good looks— sandy brown hair and sky blue eyes. As teenagers, while Will would go out on the town with his friends, Marty would just stay at home with his computers and his prized collection of Elvis Presley records. By age nineteen, Marty hadn’t even had a girlfriend. Indeed, the only girl he’d ever liked—a pretty young cheerleader named Jennifer Michaels—had turned out to have a crush on Will. It had devastated Marty. College came and while his schoolyard tormentors went off to become bank tellers and real estate agents, Marty had headed straight for the computer labs at MIT—fully paid for by his father, a computer engineer. Race on the other hand—intelligent for sure but always the lesser academically—would go to USE on a half sports scholarship. There he would meet, court and lose Lauren O’Connor and, in between all that, study languages. Then came their parents’ divorce. It happened so suddenly. One day, Race’s father came home from the office and told his mother that he was leaving her. It turned out he’d been having an affair with his secretary for almost eleven months. The family split in two. Marty, then twenty five, still saw their father regularly— after all, he had always been his old man’s son both in looks and manner. But Race never forgave his father. When he died of a heart attack in 1992, Race didn’t even go to the funeral. It was the classic American nuclear family—nuked from within. Race snapped out of it, returned to the present, to a sea plane flying over the jungles of Peru.

‘What about Lauren and Copeland?’ he asked Van Lewen. “Are they with Army Special Projects too?”

‘Yes,’ Van Lewen said solemnly.

Son of a bitch.

‘All right then,’ Race said, changing tack. ‘What do you know about the Supernova project?’

‘I swear I don’t know anything about it,’ Van Lewen said.

Race frowned, bit his lip. He turned to Renée.

‘What do you know about the American Supernova project?’

‘A little.’

Race raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Renée sighed. ‘Project approved by the Congressional Armaments Committee in closed session: January 1992. Budget of $1.8 billion approved by Senate Appropriations Committee, again in closed session: March 1992. Project was intended to be a co operative joint venture between the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency and the United States Navy. Project leader’s name is—’

‘Wait a second,’ Race said, cutting her off. ‘The Super nova is a Navy project?’

“That’s right.’

So Frank Nash had told more than one lie to get him to come along on the mission. The Supernova wasn’t even an Army project at all. It was a Navy project. And then, suddenly, Race found himself recalling something he had heard the previous night, when he had been imprisoned inside the Humvee, before the cats had attacked the BKA team. He recalled hearing a woman’s voice Renée’s maybe saying something in German over the radio, a sentence that he had found quite incongruous at the time, a sentence which he hadn’t translated for Nash and the others. Was ist mit dem anderen amerikanischen Team? We sind die jetzt?

‘What about the other American team? Where are they now?’

The other American team…

‘I’m sorry, Renée,’ he said, ‘who did you say was the Supernova’s project leader?’

“His name is Romano. Doctor Julius Michael Romano.’

And there it was. The mysterious Romano, revealed at last. Romano’s team was the other American team. A Navy team. Christ…

‘So let me just get this straight,’ Race said. ‘The Supernova is a Navy project led by a guy named Julius Romano, right?’

‘That’s right,’ Renée said.

‘And Romano and his team are in Peru right now, searching for the thyrium idol?’

‘That’s right.’

“But Frank Nash has an Army team down here as well, also going after the idol.’

‘That’s correct,’ Renée said.

‘So why? Why is a team led by a colonel from the U.S. Army’s Special Projects Division trying to beat a team of U.S. Navy people to an idol that is the key to a weapon that the Navy owns?’

Renée said, ‘The answer to that question is a little more complex than it would at first appear, Professor Race.’

‘Try me.”

‘All right,’ Renée said, taking a deep breath. ‘For the last six years, German intelligence has been looking on silently as the three branches of the United States armed forces— the Army, the Navy and the Air Force have engaged in a very bitter but very secret power struggle. ‘What they fight for is survival. They fight to be the pre eminent armed service in the United States, so that when the U.S. Congress finally removes one of them—as it intends to do in the year 2010—it will not be their branch that takes the bullet. They fight to make themselves indispensable.’

‘Congress intends to remove one of the armed services by 2010?’ Race said.

‘By a secret Department of Defence minute dated 6 September 1993 and signed by both the Secretary of Defence and the President himself, the Department of Defence recommended to the President that by the year 2010, one branch of the United States military be made redundant.’

‘Okay…’ Race said, doubtfully. ‘And how is it that you know all this?’

Renée offered him a crooked smile. ‘Come on, Professor. The U.S. Navy isn’t the only navy in the world which secretly taps into other countries’ undersea communications cables.’

‘Oh,’ Race said.

‘The basis of the Department’s decision was that war has changed. The old land sea air division of a country’s armed forces no longer applies to the modem world. It’s an anachronism from two world wars and a thousand years of hand to hand combat. The decision then becomes which service goes? ‘Ever since that time,’ Renée went on, ‘each branch of the armed services has attempted to prove its worth, at the expense of the other two.’

‘For example?’ Race said sceptically.

‘For example, the Air Force claims it has the Stealth Bomber and a unique expertise in air superiority fighting. But the Navy counters by saying that it has Carrier Battle Groups. On top of that, it claims that not only are its regular fighters and bombers as stealthy as the B3 anyway, but also that they have the added advantage of a transportable land ing strip. With a dozen Carrier Battle Groups, the Navy says, who needs an Air Force? ‘The Army, on the other hand, claims it has specialised ground troops and mechanised infantry forces. But both the Navy and the Air Force counter this by saying that modem warfare takes place in the skies and on the world’s oceans, not on land. They say to look at the Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict—battles that were fought from the sky, not the ground. ‘Add to that the Navy’s close affiliation with the United States Marine Corps. Since the Marines Corps’ existence is guaranteed by the American Constitution, they cannot be eliminated. And they have both ground and mechanised infantry capabilities, thus putting even more pressure on the Army to justify its existence. ‘Hell, look at ICBMs. All three armed services maintain missile launch facilities: the Navy has submarine launched systems; the Air Force air and land launched systems; and the Army land and mobile systems. Does a nation seriously need three separate nuclear missile systems when really only two—or even one—would do?’

‘So who looks like being the loser?’ Race asked, cutting to the chase.

‘The Army,’ Renée said simply. ‘Without a doubt. Especially when the Constitutional guarantee for the Marine Corps is taken into account. In every analysis I’ve seen so far, the Army has always come in third place.“

‘So they need to prove their worth,’ Race said.

‘They desperately need to prove their worth. Or diminish one of the other service’s worth.’

‘What do you mean, “diminish one of the other service’s worth”?’

‘Professor,“ Renée said, ‘did you know that late last year there was a breakin at Vandenberg Air Force base?’

‘No.’

‘Some top secret plans for the newW88 nuclear war head were stolen. The W88 is a miniaturised warhead, state of the art. Six security staff were killed during the theft. The official investigative report into the breakin—and the sub sequent media coverage of it claimed that it was the work of Chinese agents. The unofficial report into the breakin, however, says that upon examination of the kill and entry techniques used, only one unit could have executed the crime. An Army SpecialForces unit. Green Berets.’

Race shot a look at Van Lewen. The Green Beret sergeant just shrugged helplessly back at him. This was news to him. ‘The Army broke into an Air Force base?’ Race said in disbelief.

Renée said, ‘You see, Professor, the Army are working on a new miniaturised warhead of their own. The successful completion of the W88 would have seriously undermined their own project—and provided one less reason to keep them around in 2010.’

Race frowned. ‘So how do we apply this to the Supernova project?’

‘Simple,’ Renée said. ‘The Supernova is the ultimate weapon. Whichever armed service controls its use will ensure its survival in 2010. Quite obviously, although the Supernova is officially a Navy project, the Army has taken it upon itself to build its own device in all likelihood using information that they have managed to obtain from a source inside the Navy project.’

‘But none has any thyrium yet,’ Race said.

‘Which is why everybody’s down here looking for that idol.’

‘Okay, so let me get this straight,’ Race said. ‘Even though the Supernova is officially a Navy project, the Army has been secretly constructing its own device. Then, when it discovers that there might be a source of thyrium out there, it gives Frank Nash and the Special Projects Unit the task of finding that thyrium before the Navy does.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Goddamn,’ Race breathed. ‘How far up does a thing like this go?’

He was thinking about yesterday’s motorcade out of New York. For someone to make that happen required some serious rank.

‘All the way up,’ Renée said in a low voice. ‘All the way to the highest ranking officers in the U.S. Army hierarchy. And that’s what really scares me. I’ve never seen the Army so desperate. I mean, God, look at this mission. This is it. This is the home run. If the Army gets that stone’—she nodded at the idol on the empty seat next to Race ‘they guarantee their future existence. And that means that Frank Nash will do anything to get it. Anything at all.’

Race picked up the idol. It glistened in his hands, the rapa’s head snarling with menace. He just stared at it sadly, looked at the newly hollowed out section in its base. ‘Then I guess there’s really only one problem, then, isn’t there?’ he said.

‘What’s that?” Renée said.

“This idol.’

“What about it?’

‘You see, that’s the thing,’ Race said. ‘This idol isn’t made of thyrium. This idol is a fake.’

‘It’s a what?’ Renée gasped.

‘It’s a fake?’ Van Lewen echoed.

‘It’s a fake,’ Race confirmed. “Here, take a look.’ He tossed the gleaming black idol to Van Lewen. ‘What do you see?’

The big sergeant shrugged. ‘I see the Incan idol that we came here to get.’

‘Do you?’ Race leaned forward, grabbing a water canteen that hung off Van Lewen’s belt. ‘Can I borrow this?’ He quickly unscrewed the lid and tipped the contents of the canteen onto the idol. Water splashed all over the rapa’s head, ran down its face, dribbled down onto the floor of the plane.

‘Okay, so… ?’ Van Lewen said.

‘According to the manuscript,’ Race said, ‘when the idol gets wet, it’s supposed to emit a low humming noise. This one isn’t making a sound.’

“So?”

‘So it’s not made of thyrium. If it were made of thyrium, the oxygen in the water would make it resonate. This isn’t the real idol. It’s a fake.’

‘But when did you know?’ Renée asked. Race said, “When I took this idol off the workbench a couple of seconds before the cabin blew, the sprinkler system inside the control booth was dousing the whole room with water. It splashed all over the idol, but ever since that time it hasn’t hummed at all.’

‘So the Nazis’ Supernova wouldn’t have destroyed the world?’ Van Lewen said.

‘Nope,’ Race said. ‘Just us, and maybe a few hundred hectares of rainforest with the thermonuclear blast. But not the world.’

‘If it isn’t made of thyrium,’ Van Lewen said, ‘what is it made of?’

‘I don’t know,’ Race said. ‘Some kind of volcanic rock, I guess.’

‘If it’s a fake,’ Renée said, taking the idol from Van Lewen, ‘then who made it? Who could have made it? It was found inside a temple that no one’s been inside for over four hundred years.’

‘I think I know who made it,’ Race said.

‘You do?’

He nodded.

‘Who?’ Renée and Van Lewen asked at the same time.

Race held up the leather bound manuscript in his hand— the original Santiago Manuscript—the same manuscript that Alberto Santiago himself had once laboured over a long, long time ago. ‘The answer to that question,’ he said, ‘lies in the pages of this book.” Race retired to the rear section of the little seaplane. They would arrive back at Vilcafor soon. But before they did, he wanted to read the manuscript—to read it right to the end. There were so many questions he wanted answered. Like when Renco had substituted a fake idol for the real one, or how he had got the rapas back into the temple. But most of all more importantly than anything else— he wanted to know one thing. Where the real idol lay. Race settled into his seat at the back of the plane. Just as he was about to open the manuscript, however, he saw the emerald pendant hanging from his neck—Renco’s pendant—and took it in his hand. He ran his fingers over the stone’s glistening green edges. As he did so, he thought about the skeleton from which he had taken the leather neckpiece earlier that day the filthy battered skeleton that he had found just inside the temple. Renco … Race blinked out of it, tried not to think about it. He released the emerald and collected his thoughts. Then he found the spot in the manuscript where he had last left the story: Alberto Santiago had just saved Renco’s sister, Lena, from the rapas, after which Lena had told Renco that the Spaniards would be arriving at Vilcafor by daybreak…