CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE FBI HEADQUARTERS—J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING WASHINGTON, DC

FBI HEADQUARTERS—J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING

WASHINGTON, DC

January 10

The images triggered memories Roth would rather have forgotten. The helpless fear that had consumed him when his family was trapped in that arena. When he’d watched Jacob Calakmul transform into a jaguar and then pad slowly and deliberately toward Eric Beasley. He’d tried to protect his kids from the sight and sounds of the man’s brutal death, but there’d been no escaping it for any of them, and the memories had woken him up in a cold sweat on many nights.

“I’ve seen enough,” Roth said after scanning the images briefly. He closed the laptop screen, and the carnage winked out. His stomach was sour. He felt his body processing the surge of adrenaline spiked by his fear and disgust. It was a primal fear deep in the heart of every man. In a natural struggle against a true predator, humans were the inferior species.

Director Wright pulled out a printed photograph of a man wearing nice clothes standing at the foot of the table. It was Calakmul in the Situation Room.

“This him?” the director asked.

“Yes,” Roth answered, trying to quell a shudder and failing. He was sweating profusely now. Calakmul was in DC. Not the jungles. Or at least he had been hours ago.

“Look at this one,” Wright said, pulling out another photo. “This was the last image before the power went out. We have no footage of what happened down there. Take a look.”

Roth breathed in through his nose. He felt Monica’s hand on his shoulder.

It was another photo of Calakmul. Roth knew immediately why the director was showing him.

“The glow?” Roth asked, pointing to the halo around Jacob’s hand. Around, more specifically, the ring on his finger.

“What is it?”

“I’ve already explained this to you guys. You didn’t believe me.”

“Explain it again. To me.”

“When we were at the Jaguar Temple, they called it the power of the kem ?m, the Mayan word for ‘spiderweb.’”

“And it is ... magic?” Wright prodded.

“I don’t know,” Roth said honestly. “I can’t explain the physics of it. Maybe they can’t either. A science-fiction author coined the phrase ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’” He tapped the photo. “The kem ?m can be woven into a shield and used as a barrier. It repulses force used against it, repulses it harder than the initial force. Like a baseball.”

Wright wrinkled his brow. “Say more.”

“A baseball pitcher can throw a ball around eighty-five miles per hour. A typical baseball bat speed is around seventy miles per hour. The energy of the swing combined with the energy of the pitch results in the ball traveling around a hundred miles per hour. So a bullet hitting the kem ?m comes back faster than what was shot at it. It may be uncanny, but it follows the laws of physics. We can’t explain why yet, but my daughter can control it. And maybe my wife.”

Wright cocked his head slightly and smiled, that same smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I thought you were a history professor, Mr. Roth.”

“I settled on history,” Roth said. “I’ve been interested in many different subjects. Like the fact that modern engineers can’t figure out how the pyramids of Giza were actually built, or how precisely they were measured and configured. Same with the pyramids down in the Yucatán. Same with ancient ruins built on other continents as well. The structures align to the zodiac stars, to planetary orbits, to the sun and moon, even to the jiggle in the earth’s rotation.”

“Jiggle?” the director asked.

“The technical term is ‘obliquity,’ but most people don’t know that word. The Maya measured it accurately. And they were far more accurate than they should have been able to be thousands of years ago. Sorry for the digression. I can’t help myself sometimes. Now, there was no footage of Calakmul at the Bozeman airport, was there? These are your first photographs of him?”

“Indeed. We have the NSA scanning world databases to match it, but that will take time. Time we don’t have.” He paused and looked down at the photo, then back at Roth. “Everyone in that room was an FBI agent that I personally selected for this dangerous assignment. They knew that shooting him would be ineffective. Agent Sanchez has always been clear on that. But someone fired a weapon anyway out of sheer terror. Others tried using chairs as weapons, it appears, judging by the haphazard clutter in the room. Our backup detail couldn’t get in. My agents couldn’t get out. Except for one.”

Roth felt confused. “Who?”

“Every other agent I put in there is dead. But EAD Brower is missing. After the smoke cleared and the Situation Room was secured again, although I hesitate to say it will ever be secure again, we found the remains of everyone else.”

Roth met his gaze. “Why would Calakmul show up to a room full of FBI agents when he was expecting to find the president?”

“Every agent was wearing a disguise. They were impersonating the cabinet. It was a trap.”

That was a plot twist that Roth wasn’t expecting. Senator Coudron had made the call approving this mission.

“Brilliant,” Roth murmured. “You saved the president’s life.”

“Yet we continue to suffer enormous casualties every time we face even one of these people. The sniper unit in the helicopter. My section chief from Salt Lake and his team. The agents who went to your house, Mr. Roth. Agent Garcia will reveal nothing about how the kem ?m works. I’m tempted to send him to Guantanamo for some unorthodox interrogation methods. I will admit to you that I’ve been very skeptical up until now. The bodies of the agents killed in the hangar at Bozeman ... I thought it possible that a sufficiently twisted killer could make a body seem to be eviscerated by an animal. But there was no time to arrange for such a thing in the Situation Room. And from your account, added to what we’ve seen, I have to suspend my disbelief and assume everything you’ve told us is true. I lost my friend today, as well as a team of highly trained special agents, all experts in hand-to-hand combat and situational creativity. How can we take these people down if we cannot touch them?”

Roth was pleased the director wasn’t doubting anymore. Getting past a person’s natural cynicism was always the hardest part in pushing new ideas.

“As I said, my daughter can get past it,” Roth advised.

“How?” Wright asked, leaning forward intently. The smile was gone.

“When we escaped Calakmul’s resort that first day, we were lost in the jungle for a while. We stumbled onto a pyramid temple, the kind the Maya built, and when we went inside, we found crates of gold. The crates were the big black plastic ones, the kind you can get from Walmart. But they were full of treasures. My daughter grabbed a bracelet because she’d seen it glowing. I couldn’t see it. There’s a genetic component to all this, I believe. My wife’s family was originally from the Yucatán Peninsula.”

The director looked at Monica. “Where’s Suki right now?”

“We don’t know, Director. Steve Lund went to get her.”

A frown. That was the immediate reaction on hearing Lund’s name. There was more bad blood here. Personal enmity could derail any hope of cooperation.

“I hired Lund to be my—”

“I know,” Wright said, cutting him off. “So you’re telling me a seventeen-year-old girl and your wife are our biggest hope of stopping a terrorist who wants to destroy Western civilization?”

“Calakmul was impressed by her ability to use the magic,” Roth said. “So yes, that’s pretty accurate.” His insides twisted with worry, but he felt he had to mention something else. “My boys also have some sensitivity to it.”

“Oh?”

“Just yesterday, when we left the Dirksen building after meeting Senator Coudron, they saw a glyph on the exterior wall. I couldn’t see it. But they could.”

“Tell me what they saw.”

“The Maya didn’t draw letters. They drew pictures or symbols that meant certain things when combined. For example, the glyph utchi is made of three symbols: ut, ch, and i. It means ‘It happened’ or ‘It came to pass,’ which is a phrase found over six hundred times in ancient texts like the Bible. Don’t get me started on the similarities between the Maya creation myth and the Book of Genesis. The glyph for utchi looks like the profile of a smiling man with pointed teeth.”

“Pointed teeth?”

“The Maya were big on cosmetic dentistry. It would blow your mind what they knew about tooth anatomy. So yeah, a glyph with a guy with pointed teeth wouldn’t be weird to them at all.”

“Are you saying Calakmul bit the people in the Situation Room with his teeth?”

Roth shook his head. “No. I told you. He can literally transform into a jaguar. That’s probably his favorite form, which is a huge symbol of power to the Maya. But from my readings, a Maya sorcerer can transform into almost any animal. Birds, fish, crocodiles.”

“Really?” The question was asked innocuously but with an undertone of disbelief.

“I know this sounds like the X-Files. I get that. But historians for centuries have found evidence of shape-shifting in almost every culture. Werewolves in medieval France. The skinwalkers of the Navajo. Dracula. It’s there. I don’t know how it happens. I can’t explain it. But yesterday, my boys saw a glyph on the wall, and then a jaguar priest started chasing us. He ran faster than our Uber. On all fours.”

Director Wright leaned forward, resting his head on his thumb and forefinger. “You saw this happen?”

“We hit him and put a dent in the car.”

“Sir, if I may?” Monica spoke up.

He looked at her and nodded curtly.

“There’s a weakness that happens when these people transform,” she explained.

“I read your report, Agent Sanchez.”

“Do you believe it now? Jordan Scott was able to kill the jaguar priest at the cabin because he was just starting to transform. Calakmul would have been vulnerable in the Situation Room if he transformed into a jaguar.”

“The power went out,” Wright said thoughtfully. “It was totally dark.”

“We can’t afford to rest on our old assumptions,” Monica insisted. “I didn’t know about the plan to impersonate the president.”

“You weren’t supposed to know,” Carter said icily.

Wright held up his hand. “That was my decision.”

Carter looked smug.

“And it was wrong,” Wright finished. Roth bit off the chuckle before it escaped his mouth. He rubbed his lips, trying not to laugh.

“That’s why you’re here, Mr. Roth. Agent Sanchez. What is Calakmul’s next move? He did not abduct or kill the president. Clearly, he realized they were all imposters, so why take Brower instead of killing him like the others?”

Roth thought about it. “If they were all in disguise, who was Brower playing?”

“President Parker. He has a similar build, and he was determined to take the highest risk himself.”

“That’s why Calakmul took him,” Roth said.

“But he knew he was an imposter?”

“That wouldn’t matter to Calakmul,” Roth said, leaning forward. He pointed to the picture of Jacob on the table. “If he only looked like the president, it would be enough. He’s going to bring him to the Jaguar Temple in the Yucatán and sacrifice him on an altar. He’ll do it in front of everyone who has gathered down there, including Senator Coudron’s ‘friend.’ The one who went to Cancún for the holidays.”

Wright rubbed his temples. “So you’re telling me that my friend is about to be murdered in a gruesome and horrific way?”

“I’m sorry, yes. I’m guessing Calakmul will continue his plan as though nothing happened. He’s going to attack at the Mexican border using cartels and paramilitary types. And he’ll let his plague wreak havoc on us until we start a civil war against each other because some will be so desperate to survive that they’ll do anything to join him. Calakmul wants revenge against Europe too, because ... you know ... the Spanish.”

“Europe?” Wright exclaimed.

“Because of how many Aztec and Maya were decimated as a result of war and disease. And plundered. Much of the gold that was stolen from them was shipped to Spain and then, to put it bluntly, money-laundered across the European powers. But the jaguar priests kept the majority of it. So why did you flinch when I mentioned Europe?”

“London. Berlin. Madrid. Ground zero of the global pandemic that’s underway,” Agent Carter said emphatically.

“These people,” Roth said, tapping the table, “the Order of the Jaguar, are part of the Kowinem. That’s a Maya secret society, a group that propped up and undermined the royalty. They were the kingmakers. They’re going to hit us financially, politically, medically, and even ... to quote the Disney movie, ecumenically.”

Wright looked confused again. “Your thoughts jump from one thing to another so fast, Mr. Roth.”

“Ecumenically ... from Pirates of the Caribbean? Anyway, it means going against Christianity in general, as a whole religion, not a particular denomination. The Spanish forced the Indigenous people of Mesoamerica to convert to Catholicism. We’re going to see a reverse of that. Maybe a mark, or a glyph, that will separate the believers from infidels.”

Director Wright frowned with anger. “If I understand you, Mr. Roth, other world leaders could also be targets. They’ll attack the financial markets, which no longer operate on a gold standard—because they have more gold than we think—they’ll use bioweapons and kem ?m to make us sick and scared, and then they’ll come through the border cities and use the gangs like MS-13 to cause chaos and confusion and overwhelm our law enforcement agencies. Does that sound about right?”

“And it’s already started,” Roth said. “Because they believed they were fulfilling a five-hundred-year-old prophecy made by Kukulkán, the Maya god.”

“How did they get inside the White House, though?” Wright demanded. “The security cameras show nothing. Even the ones unaffected by the power outage. There was no sign of him entering the Situation Room. He just appeared out of nowhere like a magician.”

“He was probably invisible,” Roth said. “The Maya talk about that in their legends. Was anyone allowed in during the meeting? He could also have been in disguise himself.”

Wright turned to one of the agents seated by him. “Do you remember, Alex?”

“A staffer from Secretary Owens came to deliver a file,” replied the agent. “But she didn’t enter the room.”

“Have you found her yet?” Roth asked.

Alex shook his head. “The White House has been evacuated. They’re looking for her, but she’s probably traveling back to her home.”

Roth shook his head. “No. She’s probably with Jacob Calakmul.”

“How did he escape? Or do you think he’s still at the White House ... invisible?”

“He could be,” Roth said. “Or he had another escape path.”

Director Wright grabbed his cell phone and made a call. “Buck, this is Bill. The White House is not secure. Keep the president away.” He went pale. “What? When did you ... just now? I agree. Get him back in the air right now.”

He ended the call. Everyone was silent.

“The prime minister of Great Britain has vanished.”