The Aztec Prophecy

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On the flight to Rome, Joe Hawke was struggling to focus on the issue at hand. He thought maybe it was just too long since he’d been a full-time soldier, but no matter how up in his face the Wade business was, he couldn’t stop thinking about Liz, and the grisly trail that had led all the way to Matheson. Avenging her death hadn’t felt anywhere near as good as he’d thought it might, and there was still Lazaro to consider.

Alfredo Lazaro, known to his victims as the Spider, was the Cuban hit-man who had pulled the trigger and killed his wife. He was acting on the orders of various middlemen stretching back like puddles of slime to James Matheson, and he too would pay the price for the part he played.

Now, Hawke cast a tired eye through the tiny window of Eden’s private jet and winced at the pain from the wound in his shoulder as he watched the speeding aircraft descend through the broken cloud. Below he could see glances of the famous olive-covered hills of Tuscany and beyond them rose up the Appennini Mountains of Umbria and Abruzzo. This was somewhere he could lose himself when all this madness was over, but would that be with Lea Donovan?

Before he could think about that future, visions of James Matheson rose again in his mind like a rotten corpse punching its way out of a shallow grave. He was right to kill him. There was no doubt of that. Matheson had ordered Operation Swallowtail against his wife. No matter what truths she had kept from him, he knew she had loved him once… and that was why Matheson had to pay the final price. But with Matheson gone, the thought of why Swallowtail was ordered began to gnaw at him.

What the old man had said about how he was just following orders was nagging at him, pulling on his mind like a claw. What was that name again — the Oracle? Hawke shook his head. Who could be so powerful that he secretly directed the policies of entire governments? As for the claim that this Oracle was tied up with the murder of Lea’s father — Hawke didn’t know what to think. At first he thought he had to tell Lea straight away, but then he decided against it. If that old bastard Matheson had been lying it would only stir up painful memories for Lea with no benefit at all.

But if he was telling the truth, then whoever the Oracle was had a lot to answer for — not only ordering Matheson to execute Liz, but now some sort of involvement in the murder of Harry Donovan. The thoughts swirled in his mind but he decided to keep Matheson’s final ramblings to himself, at least for now. He was lost deep in thoughts of tracking down the Spider when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see not Lea, whom he had expected, but Maria Kurikova.

“Lost in the woods?” she asked with a fresh smile. Before he could reply, she sat down opposite him and handed him a coffee. “I know the feeling. I get lost in my thoughts all the time.”

“Can we talk?” he said, taking a short sip of the coffee. He glanced up and saw Lea and Ryan were sleeping at the back of the plane and decided to take the moment to speak with her.

“Sure.” She flashed that smile of hers.

“I wanted to thank you, Maria.”

“What for?”

“You read the news today?”

“Only Pravda. I don’t trust the Western press.”

He gave her a look. “Any stories stand out?”

“Matheson,” she said with a knowing look. “I presume ‘dying peacefully in his sleep’ isn’t exactly how it went?”

“I got to him in the end, Maria, and I could never have done it without you. What you told me about Liz being a Russian double agent on the flight to Luxor that day was painful, but I had to know and it was brave of you to tell me. Without what you told me about Matheson being behind Operation Swallowtail I would never have been able to avenge Liz, so thanks, Maria.” Before she could reply, he leaned forward over the desk and kissed her on the cheek. “I mean it. With me I’m either your best-friend or your worst-enemy, and we’re friends.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but seemed to think better of it when Ryan yawned and opened his eyes. She took a drink of the coffee instead.

“What are you two up to then?” Ryan asked, stepping over to them.

“We’re just talking about running away together,” Maria said, winking at Hawke.

“What?”

Lea woke and joined them at the small table. “Why does Ryan look like he needs a nappy change?”

“Maria and Hawke have been talking about running away together.”

“Close your mouth, mate,” Hawke said. “She’s joking. Now pretend like I’m a total idiot and give me all you’ve got on the Aztecs.”

“That one’s just too easy,” the younger man said. “So I’ll let it go and move straight on to you being an idiot.”

“Funny, especially coming from a human encyclopaedia.”

“I prefer Walking Wiki,” he said with a grin.

“Just get on with it and stop being a dork,” Lea said.

“Hey, leave my little Teddy Bear alone!” Maria said, running a protective hand up Ryan’s arm.

As Ryan blushed the color of a beetroot, Hawke and Lea exchanged a glance and then burst into spontaneous laughter. After a few seconds Hawke finally managed to draw breath. “Teddy Bear?”

“I thought we said that was private, Masha?” Ryan said, giving Maria a look halfway between desperation and anger.

“I’m sorry! It just came out. It’s a good Russian name for someone you love… medvezhonok. I don’t see the problem.”

“Look at their faces,” Ryan said. “Especially his face, and tell me that you don’t see the problem.”

“Yeah, leave her alone, Teddy Bear,” Lea said.

“Oh God,” Ryan said, throwing his hands in the air.

“Lea,” Hawke fixed his eyes on the Irishwoman and held her shoulders. “That’s not nice, all right?”

Ryan sighed with relief. “Thanks, Joe.”

Hawke turned to Ryan, deadpan. “No problem, Snookums.”

“Why do these things always happen to me?” Ryan asked, exasperated.

“Yeah, you’ve got it tough all right,” Lea said. “Three of our people are dead, Professor Barton’s in a morgue getting a burrito peeled off his face, and you just got called Snookums. So unfair.”

“Look at it this way, mate,” Hawke said, clapping a heavy arm on Ryan’s shoulder. “You’ve got a beautiful Russian secret agent who calls you her Teddy Bear… need I say more?”

Ryan nodded sagely. “Right… well let that be a lesson to you. So, moving on — Huitzilopochtli for idiots,” he said looking at Hawke. “It goes like this. The Aztecs were a Nahuatl-speaking people whose empire reached its primacy from the 1300s to the 1500s, much more recent than many today realize.”

“Any more coffee?” Lea said with a yawn and a wink at Hawke.

Ryan ignored her. “I was going to say that what we have to focus on is the issue of the codices and Huitzilopochtli himself…”

“But..?” Maria said.

“But… I’ve been researching the sunstone they took from the British Museum, and what I’m finding isn’t making me happy. The fragment in London was discovered by a British archaeologist in the late nineteenth century, but he never found the other half. Now we know Morton Wade and his thugs have it.”

“And what’s making you unhappy, Twinkle-toes?” Lea asked.

Ryan threw his hands into the air once again. “I give up!”

“Come on, Ry. I’m just messin’ wit’ ya.”

“I thought we’d left that behind?”

“We have — I promise.”

“You promised to love me once, so not sure how seriously to take that.”

“Let’s get back to it, shall we?” Hawke said, moving away from the subject of Lea and Ryan’s former marriage.

“What’s making me unhappy is that while the official archaeological story is that the fragment is a calendar or sunstone, there’s an unofficial narrative.”

“Are you talking about your weird conspiracy theory friends again?” Lea said.

“I mean sources of alternative research,” he said without humor.

“And what do these nutt… I mean alternative researchers have to say about it?”

“They say it is in fact part of an ancient keystone that when combined with the missing half can be used to open Mictlan, the Aztec Underworld.”

“Oh that’s a relief,” Hawke said. “For a minute there I thought it was something serious. Now we know it’s nothing more than a deranged cult leader finding the key to hell.”

They shared a look, and then Maria spoke. “So what’s this got to do with Barton’s last words?” she said, turning to Ryan. “You said Huitzil… whatever-his-name-is was the god of the sun as well as other things. Was he also the god of the dead?”

Ryan shook his head. “Nope. That delightful job belonged to Mictlantecuhtli and his worship required human cannibalism. The Underworld is named after him — Mictlan.”

“Thanks, Pookie,” Hawke said with a wink and grin combo. “But I think we have an in-coming call from Elysium.”

Ryan shook his head in despair as Lea fired up the plasma screen on the cabin partition. Moments later they were face to face with Sir Richard Eden, who gave them as full a briefing as he was able on the subject of Morton Wade and his extra-curricular activities south of the Rio Grande. Hawke listened with disgust and disbelief as Eden talked more about Wade’s missing employees and the recent discovery of the coffee plantation.

“Do we know where this plantation is?” Lea asked.

“Yes. Thanks to Scarlet, Lexi, Vincent Reno and the Americans we now know its location — it’s a cool one hundred acres of prime coffee country down in Guerrero with a large, white hacienda planted in the heart of it. Used to be a monastery. As you know, we’ve been tracking him on and off for some time now because I don’t believe his interest in Aztec archaeology is on the level. Now, there’s been local talk of disappearances and things could start to get nasty.”

“Any more info on these disappearances?” Hawke asked.

On the screen at the front of the jet, Hawke watched as Eden scratched his jaw and tipped back in his seat. “Locals talked about drug cartels or even UFO abductions, but both the Mexican authorities and I beg to differ on that score.”

“The Mexican authorities are involved?” Lea asked.

Eden nodded. “I’ve been liaising on the subject with Enrique Valles, the Attorney General. We share the view that the disappearances have something to do with Wade, but proving it’s something else. Of more concern is this WMD that’s somewhere on the horizon, and as you know, I’m also getting Jack Brooke and the Americans involved. No one knows the Mexican underworld like they do and he’s already got BDS and CIA assets on the job over there. I want a full team to raid the place. How fast can you be in Mexico?”

“We’re meeting a Professor Pavoni in the Vatican, so as long as it takes to speak with her and make sure the Codex Borgia is safe,” Hawke said. “Then we’re straight on the plane.”

“Fine, don’t dawdle.”

“Thanks, Rich,” said Lea as he cut the call.