Free The Maya Codex by Adrian D'Hagé Page B

stirring words echoed around the Heldenplatz. Young women wept as they chanted and a rising hysteria gripped the crowd.
    ‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’
    The beat never lessened and Hitler stood motionless, triumphant over the city where, a quarter of a century before, he’d wandered the streets unshaven, his hair matted, a filthy black overcoat his only protection against the biting snows of winter, selling his postcard paintings on the street for a few paltry pfennigs, begging at the soup kitchen on the banks of the Danube while the patrons of the Burgtheater sipped champagne and delighted in the works of Mozart and Haydn and the waltzes of Johann Strauss. Vienna. It was the jewel in the crown of Austria. It was here Hitler had studied the Jews, and the more he’d studied, the more he’d come to detest the vile race. They were like maggots in a rotting body. There wasn’t any form of filth, prostitution or white-slave traffic they weren’t involved in. Innocent Christian girls were seduced by repulsive, crooked-legged Jew bastards. The Jews were the evil spirits leading his people astray. They must be destroyed, he mused. And they would be. Soon Adolf Eichmann would arrive in Vienna to implement his instructions.

    Trembling, Ramona Weizman wiped away a tear and turned off the radio. She closed her boutique and went upstairs to the apartment to retrieve her prayer shawl.

8
    TIKAL, GUATEMALA
    L evi Weizman moved back onto the track, away from the balsa tree he’d used for cover. He froze immediately. A two-metre fer-de-lance, one of the largest and deadliest snakes of Central America, slithered towards him, the black diamonds on its dark chocolate-and-grey back clearly visible in the moonlight. Levi backed slowly into the jungle. The pit-viper could detect a change in temperature to one thousandth of a degree, enabling it to strike its prey with lethal accuracy. The dose of venom fatal to humans was just fifty milligrams, and Levi knew that a fer-de-lance could deliver up to 300 milligrams in a single strike. The huge snake slithered past and headed towards the river in search of frogs and rats. Levi could hear the troop of howler monkeys further up the river, but the track behind him was clear. Perhaps he’d been imagining things, he thought, and he turned towards the rickety rope bridge that spanned the swirling river separating the Mayan village from the ruins of Tikal.
    ‘It’s been a long time, Professor Weizman.’ The jungle to the right of the bridge parted and Roberto Arana appeared, wearing his customary red bandana atop his weathered face. Roberto was smiling and he stretched out his hand.
    ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d received my messages,’ Levi said as he followed the shaman across the bridge, holding on to the swaying ropes and carefully choosing his footholds across the gaps between the worn wooden planks. ‘Was that you following me?’
    Roberto shook his head. ‘A jaguar.’ The jungle suddenly reverberated with a spine-tingling roar, confirming the jaguar’s presence. ‘But don’t worry, warriors from the village will escort you back. As to your messages … that which you seek has remained hidden for centuries, Professor. The codex and the remaining figurines will be revealed when the timing is right, but already, the elders sense that timing is near. They have some information for you.’
    Levi’s pulse quickened. ‘On the figurines, or the codex?’
    ‘If you decipher that which they disclose, you will find what the ancients want you to find,’ the shaman answered enigmatically.
    The jungle track on the far bank of the river was narrow and Levi followed in Roberto’s footsteps. A short while later they reached a big clearing by the river bank, around which ten thatched huts were grouped. Smoke from the cooking fires drifted towards the fast-flowing river. The women of the village had soaked maize kernels in lime the night before, to soften them, and during the day