Golden Relic

GOLDEN RELIC

by

LINDY CAMERON

The hands tore at Lloyd Marsden's flesh with a surprising savagery. It was hardly
fair, he thought, that in his last moments of life he was also being tormented by a gathering of
avenging gods.

He stared, unblinking, at the carved stone feet of Toltac, noticing for the first time how
disproportionate the toenails were. They were all he could see from where he lay on his workroom
floor; just the feet, surrounded by little dust balls that rolled slightly with each laboured breath
he took.

He was going to die, a relic among relics. The fingers of monsters scraped at his throat while
the Furies flapped and screeched in the darkness at the edge of his life. It occurred to Lloyd,
however, that at least one of the hands striking at him had been human. Was this the price for
refusing to accept that things must change; the punishment for not going quietly into the future?

No, this was history. This was 'punishment for all the desecrations'- that's what the chanting,
spiteful voices were saying. Anubis, curling his jackal-lips into a snarl, poked at Lloyd's chest as
if he had nothing better to do; the three-jawed hound of hell drooled and clawed at his paralysed
feet; and Quetzalcoatl, crouching behind, removed Lloyd's spine with his fingernails.

When the 'destroyer' in his necklace of skulls hovered above him, Lloyd recognised the poisonous
hallucinations for what they were - this Hindu apparition was proof of that. "I've never even been
to India!" his mind screamed. Shiva vanished, to be replaced by the Sun God who smiled sadly down on
Professor Lloyd Marsden, waved his tormentors away, then melted into the dark and dust.

Desecrations indeed! Lloyd thought. How ridiculous! He made a curse of his own - on a dead old
friend and his bloody curse and visions. Lloyd still had the pen in his hand but couldn't remember
whether he'd written the words, or whether he cared anymore.

Charon stood over him, offering his hand. "That's more like it," Lloyd thought. An experienced
guide to the next world was just what he needed right now. In his mind he fumbled for a coin, hoping
Muu-Muu would take care of things here for him.

Pablo Escobar was seething. It was making him sweat and causing a severe irritation
in his left armpit that he could not attend to in this polite company. Polite? He glanced around the
negotiating table. Nobody had been listening to him; nobody ever listened to him. Hell, half the
time nobody even noticed him. He could swing from the light fitting and these people wouldn't even
acknowledge that he'd got up from his chair. Still, he didn't scratch; that would have been bad
manners. He banged on the table instead.

"Excuse me, but I am losing my patience over this issue."

"Dr Escobar," said the dragon lady on his left, "I think if you were to consult a dictionary for
the precise definition of that word you would find that you can't lose what you've never been known
to have."

Escobar stared at the so-called 'mediator' for a moment, while he replayed her statement in his
mind to make sure it had in fact been an insult, before he insulted her in return.

"Dr Tremaine," he stated softly, "the only reason you are here is because the right man for the
job is sadly no longer with us."

"Dr Escobar, the only reason I am here is because I'm being paid, and not nearly enough as it
turns out, to help you, Professor Jorge and your respective museums sort this mess out once and for
all. And we all know that had Dr Mercier been alive to deal with this situation, he wouldn't put up
with your nonsense any more than I plan to. And would you please stop scratching. It's very hard to
hold a serious conversation with someone who can't sit still."

Escobar, mortified, sat on his hands and didn't say a word for ten minutes.

Dr Maggie Tremaine glared at Pierre Dessalines, the man who had talked her into this job, and
silently swore that she would never again allow money to influence her better judgement; she should
have stayed at home.

Professor Benjamin Jorge, Director of the Archaeological Museum in Santiago, Chile, sat forward
eagerly and made the most of Escobar's silence to reiterate his position, and that of his
institution and indeed his government, on the rightful ownership of the 'famous' Tahuantinsuyu
Bracelet.

"Would you agree," Maggie interrupted him, "that it is only famous because of the dispute between
your governments?"

"I don't follow," Jorge stated. Escobar opened his mouth and closed it again.

"The artefact in dispute is a bracelet, quite beautiful and valuable in its own right, but just a
bracelet," Maggie said. "Melt down the gold and sell the gems, you might be able to put a down
payment on a new car. As a cultural artefact, however, it is priceless. But famous? I don't think
so. Everybody knows about it because of your dispute, but even you, and I'm talking to both of you
now, cannot agree on when or where or even why it was made. The only thing you do agree on is that
it is genuine Inca jewellery. But it is still just a bracelet." Maggie gave a palms-up shrug as she
looked from one man to the other. "It has no other significance, does it?" she added.

Jorge and Escobar exchanged guarded glances before returning their puzzled attention to
Maggie.

"If it has no significance, why are we here?" Maggie asked.

"We are here Dr Tremaine because that Peruvian weasel over there," Jorge said, waving
dismissively at Escobar, "thinks he can use against us our generosity in lending the Tahuantinsuyu
Bracelet to the exhibition of Monsieur Dessalines here at the Paris Museum. Escobar believes that
because our bracelet is about to go on display in neutral territory that he can make a case in this
international arena to steal it from us - with your blessing. When it sits at home in its glass case
in Santiago he can deal with no one but me, my institution and my government. In Paris he thinks he
has the chance to create an incident."

"Create an incident?" Maggie repeated. "Don't you mean open a debate?"

Professor Jorge ran his fingers through his moustache thoughtfully. "It depends on where you are
sitting."

"Would you like to comment on this, Dr Escobar?" Maggie asked.

Escobar cleared his throat. He would like to have used his hands for emphasis but he was still
sitting on them. "The one fact that my esteemed colleague continues to ignore," he said, "is that
this is an Inca relic. It belongs to Peru. It is part of our cultural heritage."

"It is as much our heritage as yours, Escobar," Jorge stated. "The border that has divided us for
the last 70 years is not even the same one which separated us 120 years ago, and further back when
Tahuantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, was at its height there was no Chile or Peru. The northern reaches
of what is now my country were part of that Empire, and therefore we share that heritage."

"So the borders have changed," Escobar shrugged. "They can change again."

Jorge gave Maggie an I told you so look. "Would you call a not-so-veiled threat to our borders a
debate or an incident?"

Maggie closed her eyes for a moment and then said, "I think I would call a ten minute
recess."

Jorge and Escobar left the room together in silence, but as soon as the door closed behind them
Maggie could tell that their heated conversation in Spanish had a lot more to do with animal
husbandry than any kind of professional discourse or attempt at diplomacy.

Maggie put her head down on the table and took a breath before sitting up and shaking her head at
Pierre Dessalines. "This is intolerable," she said. "I realise the need for a mediator to stop
Escobar and Jorge from throttling each other and causing some kind of 'incident', but quite honestly
I'm going to need a Valium or something or I might just strangle that Escobar myself." Maggie smiled
and added, "With my own bare hands and a great deal of enjoyment."

"I am sorry, Maggie," Pierre said. "I have on three occasions stopped myself from throwing Dr
Escobar in the Seine. Even Professor Jorge is becoming a little tiresome. That is why I asked you to
come. I thought you would be the best person to handle this."

Maggie waved her hands at nothing in particular. "I probably am, Pierre," she said. "It's just
that, apart from the fact that Escobar is so irritating, I can't understand why the Director of his
Museum in Cuzco has delegated this job to him. If the Peruvian's really are serious about claiming
this relic as their own, why isn't Emilio himself here arguing this rather dubious case, rather than
entrusting it to his most inept assistant?"

"It is Escobar's grail. To him it is personal."

"But he has no case. And when the personal becomes political it also becomes dangerous. We have
to convince him of that. Or more sensibly we have to inform Emilio of the danger, so that he will
recall Escobar and end this nonsense."

When the two rivals returned to the conference room Escobar took up his argument at almost the
same point, as if there had been no recess or verbal fracas in the hallway outside.

"I return to Professor Jorge's own statement, with which I cannot help but agree," he said, "that
the northern reaches of what is now Chile did form part of Tahuantinsuyu. However, as the relic in
question was unearthed in Punta Arenas, so far away from any part of the Empire that it couldn't
have gone any further south without crossing the ocean and turning up in Antarctica, one can only
assume that it was stolen. It therefore belongs to Peru."

Maggie felt a tension headache crawling across the top of her head and pressing on her eyebrows.
Pierre excused himself from the table, with obvious relief, to attend to his assistant who had
entered the room.

"I'm sorry, but I don't follow your logic, Dr Escobar," Maggie said, as politely as possible.
"Who do you think stole it?"

Escobar flung out his hands. "Who knows? Probably a conquistador four centuries ago, but maybe it
was the German tourist caught trying to smuggle it out of Chile ten years ago. He claims he stole it
from a little museum in Punta Arenas; but he was a thief, that makes it likely he was a liar. He
could just as easily have taken it from a house in Cuzco, Lima or anywhere else in Peru."

"Or Santiago in Chile, or Sydney, Australia for that matter," Maggie stated, quite baffled at
what passed for sound argument in Escobar's little corner of the universe. "I can't imagine why the
thief would lie about where he found the bracelet unless… oh, of course, he was trying to sabotage
your claim to ownership."

Maggie hesitated long enough for Escobar to take a breath before continuing. "Unless you have
proof, which you have yet to present, there is no reason not to believe that the German tourist
found the bracelet, just as he said, in Punta Arenas - which is in Chile, is it not Dr Escobar?"

"Yes, but…"

"There are no buts, Dr Escobar. You have defeated your own argument. It matters not where it was
found when you cannot prove where it came from in the first place."

Escobar began rifling through the notes in front of him looking for another stand to take, while
Jorge grinned triumphantly at Maggie who tried to ignore both of them.

Maggie pondered, instead, the consummate skill of professional mediators whom, she assumed,
managed to remain objective while dealing with opposing points of view. She concluded, however, that
they probably only ever dealt with valid disputes between evenly matched sides with justifiable
though differing opinions presented by sane people with well-researched arguments. Dr Pablo Escobar
would not be found within spitting distance of a negotiation of that kind and, well, she was an
archaeologist not a mediator, professional or otherwise, and objectivity was not a concept she
normally associated with fools or foolish notions.