‘Why are they doing that?’ asked Valero, entranced.
‘They react to the earth’s magnetic field,’ said Nina, simplifying for convenience. ‘And they also point towards each other. That’s part of what led us here.’
Eddie, meanwhile, had checked his compass. ‘Southwest,’ he reported.
‘Huh. That’s why we didn’t realise it had been split into two parts – they’re both on the same bearing from Glastonbury, so we only saw one glow.’
‘Why isn’t it as bright as at Glastonbury?’ Macy asked.
‘The earth energy mustn’t be as strong here. Or maybe it was once, but the confluence point moved.’
‘Earth energy?’ demanded Osterhagen. ‘What confluence point? What is going on?’
‘It’s why the IHA’s involved, I’m afraid. But it means the other piece of the statue is somewhere southwest of here.’
‘Have to look for it later,’ said Eddie. ‘Time’s up, and we need to get the fuck out of here.’
‘Another minute, please,’ said Osterhagen, turning his attention to the alcove’s walls. He switched on a torch of his own, sweeping it across the murals. Becker and Macy followed suit, while Loretta brought out a camera and began taking photos. ‘These paintings . . . I think they are the story of how the Incas came to this place. Look.’ He indicated one section on the left-hand wall: a large building. ‘That is the Intiwasa at Cuzco, the Sun Temple – the Spanish destroyed the upper levels to build the church of Santa Domingo on it, but the base is exactly the same.’
Nina carefully put down the statues, then retrieved her light and examined the mural. Though simplistic, almost cartoony in the way everything was broken down into blocks of solid colour, there was clearly a story being told. ‘These figures outside the temple, the ones in different clothes – are they the Spaniards?’
Osterhagen nodded. ‘Pizarro’s messengers. Giving Atahualpa’s orders for his people to gather their gold and silver.’
‘And hide it from the Spanish . . .’ Nina moved her light across the walls. Opposite the representation of Cuzco was one of what she assumed was Paititi, a walled town surrounded by trees, above which was an image of the sun disc in the nearby temple – as well as a small shape that was almost certainly meant to be the half of the third statue.
Murals of other locations were spread out between the start and the end of the Inca exodus. A painted path connected them, marked along its meandering length with symbols: vertical lines broken up by dots. ‘These symbols,’ she said. ‘An account of the route they followed, maybe?’
‘I thought the Incas never developed writing?’ said Macy.
‘They didn’t,’ said Osterhagen. ‘Most of their history was oral. They had ways of storing numerical records such as censuses and taxes, though.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Tax records were of not the slightest interest to the young woman. She examined another part of the wall.
Nina was still concentrating on the markings. ‘I’ve seen this kind of thing before. My guess is that these give you distances and directions to follow. It’s a record of their journey to Paititi.’
‘And other places,’ said Macy with growing excitement, illuminating another painted scene above the recess. ‘Look at this!’
Even Eddie was impressed enough to delay yelling another, more forceful reminder of the time. ‘Thought you said El Dorado was just a myth?’
Mountain peaks rose above a city, buildings stacked seemingly on top of each other as they rose to a palace at their summit – above which was another sun disc, but more elaborate than the one above the painting of Paititi, and even its real-life counterpart in the Temple of the Sun. Both city and god-image were coloured in yellow . . . or gold. ‘Is that the Punchaco?’ Nina asked. ‘The real one?’
Osterhagen’s nose almost rubbed the faded paint. ‘Yes! Yes, it must be! Look at all the jewels – look how big it is!’ Even taking the Incas’ primitive understanding of perspective into account, it was clear the ornate disc was meant to be larger than the figures kneeling below it. ‘It must have been huge!’
Nina gently blew away dirt and cobwebs to reveal more detail. Running down one side of the city were streaks of pale blue that ended in a stippled cloud, which in turn led into a winding blue line that could only be a representation of a river. ‘A waterfall?’
‘It could be, yes . . . ’ The German gazed open-mouthed at the scene. ‘Oh! And look at these jaguars. They must be symbols of the gods, protecting the city from invaders.’ He pointed out a little vignette between the lowest tier of buildings and the river. At one side, a pair of elegantly stylised cats, yellow bodies mottled with black spots, sat and watched with aloof disdain as two figures were swept away by another waterfall; to their right, a crouching jaguar observed a man climbing a steep set of steps.
Nina was no longer looking at the painting, however. With more light on it, the niche was revealed to be not as empty as she had thought. There was something beneath the accumulated dirt behind where the figurine had stood. She brushed it experimentally with a fingertip, finding a braided cord beneath and slowly lifting it. More muck fell away as other lengths of coloured string were revealed, small knots woven into them.
Loretta took a picture. ‘It’s a khipu!’ she gasped.
‘Be careful,’ Osterhagen urged Nina. ‘They are very rare, only a few hundred in the world. The Spanish destroyed any they found.’ She carefully lowered the cords back into their resting place.
‘What’s a khipu?’ Macy asked.
Even through broken teeth, Cuff’s condescension was clear. ‘Khipus are how the Incas kept their records – the word actually means “talking knots”. They had a very advanced mathematical system using different kinds of knots in strings to store numbers. I thought everybody knew that, but apparently
not
.’ He laughed a little at his own pun.
Macy gave him a scathing look. ‘Bite me. Oh wait, you can’t.’
But Nina was now fixated on something else. In the heart of the palace atop the painted city was a small oval space . . . and in it was a mirror image of something she had already seen. ‘The third statue – that’s its other half,’ she said. ‘It’s in this city – wherever that is.’
‘Southwest of here?’ Osterhagen mused. ‘In mountains – that would be the Andes in northern Peru. The eastern mountains and the edges of the Amazon basin in that region were among the last conquests of the Incas before the Spanish invasion, the farthest reaches of the empire. A good hiding place.’
‘Not good enough,’ said Nina. ‘They must have thought the Conquistadors were going to find it, so they moved again, all the way through the jungle to here. Somewhere they could finally be sure it was safe.’
‘Until now,’ Eddie cut in impatiently. ‘If we don’t get moving right now, half the Venezuelan army is going to roll up and catch us.’
Osterhagen began to protest. ‘But we have to—’
‘No, we’re going. No more arguments.’ He unshouldered his AK-103 for emphasis. ‘Nina, I’ll give you a hand packing up those statues. Kit, Oscar, get everyone else back to the Jeeps – we’ll catch up.’
Kit had also readied his rifle. ‘Don’t take too long,’ he said, ushering the others out.
‘We won’t, don’t worry.’ Eddie crouched beside Nina to help return the statues to their case.
‘Another five minutes wouldn’t have killed us,’ she objected.
‘Those two arseholes tied up outside would have if they’d had the chance,’ he countered. ‘I don’t think their mates’ll be any different. Especially not with millions of dollars at stake.’
‘Oscar said we’ll be miles away before they get here.’
‘Yeah, and Oscar said he was going to order those soldiers to surrender, and look how that turned out.’ The two IHA statues were back in their foam beds. ‘What about the one you just found?’
Nina hesitated, aware of the hypocrisy of what she was about to say; she had been on the verge of castigating Macy for the same thing not ten minutes earlier. But she justified it – at least, to herself – as a case when the IHA’s global security mandate trumped normal considerations. ‘We take it,’ she said, taking out a penknife and cutting away part of the foam to make a space for the third piece. ‘I don’t know what it’s going to lead to, but I think it’s important.’ A glance back at the recess. ‘And that khipu might be too – it was with the statue, so there could be a connection. I don’t want to risk these soldiers getting it.’
‘If they wanted it, they’d have swiped it already,’ Eddie pointed out.
‘But they don’t know what we know about the statues.’ She swept the dirt from the niche, exposing the rest of the khipu. It was longer than she had first thought, folded over itself several times. ‘There should be some Ziploc bags in my backpack. Can you get one for me?’
He did so, and she gently slipped the khipu into the plastic bag, squeezing out the air before sealing it shut. ‘Okay,’ she said, placing the bag in the case and closing it, then putting the case in her pack, ‘I’m ready.’
‘About time. Come on.’
They hurried back into the open, passing the temple and descending the steps into the plaza. The soldiers were still tied to the tree, the other expedition members heading for the main gate.
Not as quickly as Eddie wanted. ‘What is this, a fucking afternoon stroll?’ he growled. ‘Oi! You lot! Shift your arses!’
His shout spurred them on, but not by much; Nina and Eddie caught up while they were still short of the gate. ‘Some of us are injured, you know,’ Cuff whined.
‘You don’t run on your lips, do you?’ said Eddie, devoid of sympathy. ‘Oscar, how’re you managing?’
The Venezuelan’s face was tight with ill-concealed pain; unlike the American, he had suffered blows that were affecting his movement, his torso badly bruised by the soldiers’ kicks. ‘I’m okay,’ he grunted. ‘When we—’ He broke off, looking round at a noise.
Eddie heard it too – or more accurately
felt
it, a subsonic thumping inside his chest cavity.
He instantly knew what it was. ‘Shit! It’s a chopper!’
The pounding grew louder, rising to a clattering whump of rotors as a helicopter swept overhead. Eddie glimpsed it through the jungle canopy: a Russian-built Mil Mi-17.
With the yellow, blue and red stripes of the Venezuelan flag standing out from the muted green camouflage paint on its tail boom. A military aircraft.
The soldiers’ backup had arrived.
12
‘
G
et through the gate!’ Eddie yelled. The group was still short of Paititi’s thick outer walls. As everyone ran, he glared at Nina. ‘This is why we had to go five minutes ago!’
‘Don’t you try to put this on me!’ she shouted back. ‘You said they were coming by road, not helicopter!’
‘Well, I’m not a fucking oracle, am I?’ They reached the gate, the narrow opening forcing them into single file to pass through.
The helicopter slowed, preparing to hover. The tree cover was far too dense for it to land, even inside the settlement. ‘It’s going to drop troops,’ Eddie warned as everyone scrambled across the remains of a defensive trench. ‘They’ll be able to shoot you from about two hundred metres away through this much jungle, so keep as many trees behind you as you can. Oscar, get everyone to the Jeeps. Kit, you and me are going to cover the rear.’
‘I don’t think I like the sound of that,’ the Indian said unhappily.
Nina wasn’t keen either. ‘What are you doing?’
Eddie pointed back towards the lost town. ‘In about thirty seconds, they’ll have boots on the ground – and another thirty seconds after that, the guys we tied up’ll have told them we just did a runner out of the gate. We need to slow ’em down long enough for you to get to the trucks.’
‘We’re not going to leave you!’ she protested.
‘It’s a tactical withdrawal, not a last stand. We’ll be there, you can bloody believe it!’ She was still hesitant, so he gave her a reassuring smile. ‘We’ll be fine. Go on, see you soon.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said with a faint smile of her own, before going after the others.
Eddie watched her retreat, then turned to Kit. ‘You ready?’
‘No, but that never seems to matter, does it?’ A grim grin from the Interpol officer. ‘What do we do?’
‘Keep your gun on the gate. Soon as anyone comes out of it, fire a couple of rounds. We’re trying to buy time, so we need to keep ’em bottled up for as long as we can.’
‘Are we shooting to kill?’
‘They will be.’ The Mil tipped out of its hover, swinging round to circle the area. ‘Okay, they’re down,’ said Eddie. ‘Soon as the shooting starts, we’ll do a running retreat. You back up by twenty, thirty metres, get behind a tree and cover me while I move, then I do the same for you.’
‘Okay.’ They hunched behind an earth mound, about sixty metres from the gate. The team had been extremely unlucky, Eddie thought; the chopper must have been visiting the radar base for it to have responded to the soldier’s SOS so quickly. It also still posed a threat – it was a transport, not a gunship, but it could follow the fleeing 4×4s and report their position.