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“
Merci
.” Borgia slips the twenty into the gloved palm as the door swings open from the inside.

“Pierre, come in.” Republican Party co-chairman Charlie Myers shakes Borgia’s hand and slaps him affectionately on the shoulder. “Late as usual. We’re already two rounds ahead of you. Bloody Mary, right?”

“Yes, fine.” The private meeting room is paneled in deep walnut like the rest of the restaurant. A half dozen white-clothed tables fill the soundproof room. Seated at the center table are two men. The older, white-haired gentleman is Joseph H. Randolph, Sr., a Texas billionaire who has been a surrogate father and friend to Borgia for more than twenty years. Borgia does not recognize the heavyset man seated across from him.

Randolph stands to embrace him. “Lucky Pierre, good to see you, son. Let’s have a look at you. You put on a few pounds?”

Borgia blushes. “Maybe a few.”

“Join the club.” The heavyset man stands, extending a thick hand. “Pete Mabus, Mabus Tech Industries.”

Borgia recognizes the defense contractor’s name. “Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine. Sit down and take a load off.”

Charlie Myers brings Borgia his drink. “Gentlemen, you’ll excuse me, I need to use the little boys’ room.”

Randolph waits until Myers has left the room. “Pierre, I saw your folks last week up in Rehobeth. All of us are real upset ‘bout you not getting the vice presidential nomination. Mailer’s doing a real disservice to the entire party.”

Borgia nods. “The president’s concerned about getting re-elected. The polls tell him Chaney will give him the support the party needs in the South.”

“Mailer ain’t thinking down the road.” Mabus points a chubby finger. “What this country needs now is strong leadership, not another dove like Chaney as second-in-command.”

“I couldn’t agree more, but I have no say in the matter.”

Randolph leans closer. “Maybe not now, son, but in four years you’ll have a big say. I’ve already spoken to some of the powers that be, and there’s a general consensus that you’ll represent the party in 2016.”

Borgia holds back a smile. “Joe, that’s great to hear, but four years is still a long time away.”

Mabus shakes his head. “You need to prepare now, son. Let me give you a for instance. My boy Lucien’s a fucking genius. I ain’t shittin’ you, kid’s only three, and he already knows how to surf the Internet. I’m raisin’ him to take over Mabus Tech by the time he’s sixteen. We play our political cards right, and he’ll be a goddam trillionaire by the time he’s your age. Point I’m trying to make is that all of us gotta be ready long before opportunity knocks, and for you, it’s already knocking. Take this upcoming Russian-Chinese military exercise. A lot of registered voters are pissed off—making it just the sort of squabble that can make or break a presidential candidate.”

“Pete’s right, Pierre. The way the public perceives your command presence during the next few months could help determine the outcome of the next election. They need to see a take-charge kinda guy, a hawk who’s not about to let the goddam Russkies or sand niggers dictate the way we run our country. Hell, we haven’t had a strong presence in the White House since Bush left office.”

Mabus is close enough now for Borgia to smell what the man had for lunch. “Pierre, this conflict gives us a great opportunity to show the public your strength of character.”

Borgia leans back. “Understood.”

“Good, good. Now, there’s one last item on our agenda, something we feel needs to be cleaned up.”

Mabus picks at a hangnail. “Sort of a skeleton in your closet.”

Randolph nods as he lights a cigarette. “It’s this Gabriel character, Pierre, the one you had committed after your accident. Once we announce your nomination, the press is gonna start digging. Won’t be long before they find out about what you did to manipulate things in Massachusetts. Could be real messy.”

Borgia’s face turns red. “See this eye, Mr. Mabus. That crazy motherfucker did this to me. Now you want me to release him?”

“Pay attention, son. Pete didn’t say nothing about you letting him go. Just tie off the goddam loose end before the campaign starts. Hell, all of us worth a shit got skeletons in the closet. All we want you to do is take ‘em out and bury ‘em—Mr. President.”

Borgia takes a calming breath, then nods. “I understand what you’re saying, gentlemen, and I appreciate your support. I think I know what has to be done.”

Mabus offers his handshake. “And we appreciate you, Mr. Secretary. We also know that when the time comes, you won’t forget who your friends are.”

Borgia shakes Mabus’s sweaty palm. “Tell me honestly, gentlemen, my family’s political presence aside—when I was chosen, how heavily did it weigh that Senator Chaney just happens to be black?”

Randolph flashes a knowing smile. “Well, son, let’s just say they don’t call it the White House for nothing.”

JOURNAL OF

JULIUS GABRIEL
.

T
he Nazca plateau in southern Peru is a barren desert, 40 miles long and six miles wide. It is a desolate, unforgiving flatland, a dead zone cradled by the Andes Mountains. It also happens to have extraordinarily unique geology in that Nazca’s underlying soil contains high levels of gypsum, a natural adhesive. Remoistened each day by the morning dew, the gypsum literally keeps the indigenous iron and silica stones that proliferate in the desert glued to its surface. These dark pebbles retain the sun’s heat, giving rise to a protective shield of warm air that virtually eliminates the effects of the wind. It also makes the plateau one of the driest places on Earth, receiving less than an inch of rain every decade.

For the artist wishing to express himself on the grandest of scales, the Nazca plateau becomes the perfect canvas, for what is drawn upon this plateau tends to stay there. Yet it was not until a pilot flew overhead in 1947 that modern man first discovered the mysterious drawings and geometric lines carved upon this Peruvian landscape thousands of years ago.

Then and more than 13,000 lines crossing the Nazca desert. A few of these markings extend for distances exceeding five miles, stretching over rough terrain while miraculously remaining perfectly straight. Although some would like to believe the lines represent prehistoric runways for ancient astronauts, we now know them to be astronomically aligned, marking the positions of the winter solstice, the equinox, the constellation of Orion, and perhaps other heavenly bodies as yet unbeknownst to us.

More bizarre are the hundreds of icons illustrating animals. At ground level, these colossal zoomorphs appear only as random indentations made by the scraping away of tons of black volcanic pebbles to expose the yellow gypsum below. But when viewed from high in the air, the Nazca drawings come alive, representing a unified artistic vision and engineering achievement that has survived unscathed for thousands of years.

The artwork of the Nazca plateau was completed at two very distinct time intervals. Although it seems contrary to our notion of evolution, it is the earlier drawings that are by far the superior. These include the monkey, the spider, the pyramid, and the serpent. Not only are the likenesses incredibly accurate, but the figures themselves, most larger than a football field, were each drawn using one continuous, unbroken line.

Who were the mysterious artists who created these desert images? How were they able to accomplish such a magnificent feat on such a grand scale? More importantly—what was their motivation for carving the figures into the plateau in the first place?

It was in the summer of 1972 that Maria, Pierre, and I first arrived in this wretched South American desert. At the time we weren’t at all interested in the drawings, our intent being simply to determine the relationship between the elongated skulls of Mesoamerica and those found in Nazca. I can still recall my first week working on the plateau—swearing at the vile Peruvian sun which tortured me on a daily basis, blistering my face and arms. If you had told me then that I would eventually return to this purgatory of sand and rock to live out the rest of my days, I’d have thought you insane.

Insane.

I struggle to even write the cursed word. By now, many of you may question whether you are reading the accounts of a scientist or madman. I must confess, not a day goes by that I don’t debate the very issue myself. If I have lost my mind, then it was Nazca that did the deed, her incessant heat causing my brain to swell, her unforgiving surface pounding the arthritis into my bones for decades. Any chance of attaining inner peace fled the day I condemned my family to that desert. I pray Michael forgives me for raising him in that hellhole, and for the other childhood unjustness I brought to bear upon his tortured soul.

From the summer of ‘72 to the winter of ‘74, our little trio toiled in Nazca, unearthing hundreds of deformed skulls found in ceremonial burial grounds heated close to the Andes Mountains. A thorough examination of each skull revealed that the defamations had been caused by the strapping of wooden boards across the child’s head at an early age.

It was in January of ‘74 that we discovered a royal burial ground, situated dose to the Andes Mountains. The walls of this incredible tomb were made of enormous columns of rock, each weighing between 10 and 20 tons. Within the subterranean chamber were male mummies, each possessing an elongated skull. Our excitement reached new levels after extensive X-rays and other tests revealed that the deceased, like the La Venta skull Maria had found, had achieved the shape of their skull purely as a result of genetics!

Discovering a new race of men proved to be as controversial as startling. Upon hearing of our find, Peru’s president ordered all of our artifacts placed in a basement vault of the Archaeological Museum in Ica, away from public viewing. (To this day, the skulls can only be seen by special invitation.)

Who was this mysterious race? What caused them to be born with skulls twice that of normal size?

We know the first people to arrive in the Andean region were hunters and fishermen who settled along the Peruvian coastline sometime around 10,000 BC. Then, around 400 BC, another group arrived on the Nazca plateau. We know little about these mysterious people, other than they referred to their leaders as the Viracochas, demigods who were said to have migrated to South America just after the Great Flood. The Viracochas were described as pale-skinned wise men with deep, ocean blue eyes and flowing white beards and hair. These ancient rulers apparently possessed superior intelligence and larger than normal craniums, their bizarre appearance no doubt influencing their followers to practice the art of skull deformation in an attempt to emulate their royal leaders.

The physical resemblance between the Viracochas and the great Mayan teacher, Kukulcan, is too incredible to ignore. The fact that a tall, bearded Caucasian also appears in the legends of numerous other ancient Andean cultures provides further clues of a link between Mesoamerican Indians and those of South America.

The most dominant Indian civilization to rise out of the mountainous jungles of South America were the Inca. Like the Maya, they too worshiped a great teacher, a wise man who advanced his people through the teachings of science, agriculture, and architecture. Although we now know that most feats credited to Inca ingenuity actually originated from earlier ethnic groups, written accounts tell us it was this bearded Caucasian who inspired the creation of the great Inca roadways as well as the famous agricultural terraces built along steep mountain slopes. The bearded one is also believed to have been the artist who created the older, more sophisticated drawings of Nazca. Although he is known by different names among various Andean cultures, the Inca worshiped him simply as Viracocha, meaning “foam from the sea.”