Adrian DHage - The Maya Codex

THE
MAYA
CODEX

Adrian dHag was educated at North Sydney Boys High School and the Royal Military College Duntroon (Applied Science). He served as a platoon commander in Vietnam where he was awarded the Military Cross. His military service included command of an infantry battalion, Director of Joint Operations and Head of Defence Public Relations. In 1994 Adrian was made a Member of the Order of Australia. As a brigadier, he headed defence planning for counter-terrorism security for the Sydney Olympics, including security against chemical, biological and nuclear threats.

Adrian also holds an honours degree in theology, entering as a committed Christian but graduating with no fixed religion. In 2009 he completed a Bachelor of Applied Science (Deans Award) in oenology or wine chemistry at Charles Sturt University, and he has successfully sat the Austrian Government exams for ski instructor, Schilehrer Anwrter. Adrian is presently a research scholar and tutor at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (Middle East and Central Asia) at ANU. His doctorate is entitled The Influence of Religion on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East.

ALSO BY ADRIAN DHAG

The Omega Scroll

The Beijing Conspiracy

ADRIAN dHAG

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

To Tammy and Catherine

VIENNA, 2008

A leta Weizman stared at the falling snow from the window of her apartment, contemplating the future with a deep sense of foreboding. Winter had come early this year and a biting wind from across the Danube whipped the snow into flurries above the old cobblestones in the Stephansdom Quarter; but it was more than the chill winds worrying the brilliant Guatemalan archaeologist. Her studies of the ancient civilisation of the Maya had led her to believe theyd left behind a terrifying warning, one her grandfather had devoted much of his life trying to unearth. Now she had discovered another piece of the puzzle. In Vienna for an international conference on the Maya, Aleta had been browsing her grandfathers books when shed come across a signed copy of Erwin Schrdingers Science and the Human Temperament. Curious about her dear grandfathers old friend, shed flicked through the book and a page of yellowed notes and a small photograph of a pectoral cross had fallen out.

The notes, written in Levi Weizmans meticulous handwriting, captivated her.

• The Fibonacci sequence is prominent in the construction of all Mayan pyramids and temples.
• Greek letter if you are to find the Maya Codex, look for and the centre of the golden mean Pacal.

Look for , and the centre of the golden mean Pacal. Who was Pacal? It was unlike her grandfather to write in code, so presumably he had not solved the puzzle but simply written it down word for word as hed received it. And why were the notes hidden in a book? Had he suddenly been disturbed? What information was needed? Aleta turned over the photograph of the pectoral cross but there was no inscription on the back. Her father had mentioned the cross to her once, when theyd been fishing together on Lake Atitln, telling her how the priceless family heirloom had been taken by the Nazis when he was a boy. She sighed, her dark-brown eyes troubled. The loss of her father still haunted her.

Curtis OConnor adjusted his binoculars and focused on the woman standing near the window of the upper-floor apartment. Whatever else she might be, OConnor thought, Dr Weizman was tall, young and very attractive. Her long black hair tumbled onto her shoulders, partly covering the fine features and tanned olive skin of her oval face. She seemed deep in thought as her dark eyes probed the night.

OConnor remained hidden and kept his target under surveillance. At six feet tall, the CIA agent was fit and solidly built. Originally from Ireland, he had trained as a microbiologist. His face was tanned and his blue eyes were mischievous, but deceptive. His thick dark hair fell roughly into place. Very much his own man, OConnor had one of the sharpest minds in the CIA, and his mission to assassinate Dr Weizman had troubled him from the outset. Why, he wondered, did his superiors on the seventh floor of headquarters back in Langley, Virginia, want this beautiful woman eliminated?

Aleta stared across Judengasse towards Saint Ruprechts, Viennas oldest church, failing to see the man in the shadows of the ivy-covered stone belltower. What must it have been like to live here under the brutality of the Nazis? Aleta knew that the narrow lanes of the old city once housed Viennas Jewish community; now they were home to designer-clothing shops and an eclectic collection of bars and discos, dubbed the Bermuda Triangle by backpackers from around the world. Bar patrons had been known to disappear from Judengasse, or Jews Lane, in the small hours of the morning. Usually they reappeared a day or two later, a little the worse for wear but otherwise unharmed. In the more sinister Bermuda Triangle of the Atlantic, a small area to the north-east of the ancient Mayan lands of Guatemala and the Yucatn Peninsula, whole ships and aircraft sometimes disappeared without trace. Had Aleta known that her every move was being observed, she would have realised that, for her, Viennas Bermuda Triangle was every bit as dangerous as its Atlantic counterpart.

She gazed past the old square tower of Saint Ruprechts, past the trams running on Franz-Josefs-Kai, towards the Donaukanal, one of the many canals the resourceful Viennese had built in the late 1800s to control the persistent flooding of the Danube. Aleta maintained an open mind towards the ancient Mayas warning of impending disaster, but she found it hard to dismiss the concrete scientific evidence that seemed to support it. Many of the events the Maya had declared as precursors to the coming disaster had already occurred. She reflected on the ancient stela, the stone monument inscribed with Mayan hieroglyphics shed discovered in the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia in Guatemala City. The Museum of Archaeology had many stelae on permanent display, but it was the small stela in one of the storage rooms that had excited Aletas interest. It was the only stela she had ever seen inscribed with . And now shed found the same reference in her grandfathers notes.

Aleta closed the heavy velvet drapes. She thought about exploring the streets of the elegant Austrian capital but decided against it, though not out of any concerns for her safety at night. The city where Mozart had spent his most successful and creative years was one of the safest in Europe. It was more that she wanted to be fresh for the opening day of the conference, which included several presentations by academics working to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics. The eminent Mayanist Monsignor Matthias Jennings would also be speaking tomorrow on The Myth of the Maya. She strongly disagreed with the pompous Jesuit priests views of the Maya as bloodthirsty, warmongering savages, but he was always controversial, which inevitably attracted the media and she relished the opportunity to publicly challenge his theories.

Aleta retrieved her glass of wine from the marble mantel above the fireplace, turned and felt a floorboard move under her weight. The natural curiosity of an archaeologist might normally have prompted her to investigate, but she was weary from the long flight from Guatemala City and retreated to her bedroom. The tin box that her grandfather had hidden there in 1938 remained undisturbed, just as it had when Hitlers Brownshirts stormed the apartment over seventy years before.

OConnor left the shadows of the Saint Ruprechts steeple, descended the short flight of icy steps to the