The God Complex: A Thriller (20 page)

Sophie, for the first time in hours, raised her head from the laptop and the professor’s research. A small jolt had disturbed her train of thought.

“Welcome to the top of the world
,” said the steward, offering her a refill of her coffee.

“Top of the world
?” asked Sophie, looking out of the window at what seemed to be a fairly flat area surrounded by mountains.

“We’re over 13,000 f
eet above sea level,” said the steward. “We’ve landed at El Alto Airport in Bolivia.”

“Thank you,” she said, holding out her coffee cup. “How are my travelling companions?”

“Both sleeping, the quiet, scary one, the whole way; the cute one fell asleep a couple of hours ago.”

“Thanks
.” Sophie grinned tentatively. Hearing the steward refer to Cash as cute reminded her of exactly how much she was attracted to him herself. Those thoughts, however, had to remain locked away. He had destroyed half her life as it was.

He opened his eyes under her gaze.
“Hello.” He smiled. “Hello,” she said, looking away.

“We’ve arrived
.” Cash stretched languidly, looking out of the small window.

“Yes,” she said
. “How did you get on with those?” she said, indicating to the folders strewn across the table in front of him.

“
Nothing. No clues whatsoever.”

“You?” he asked
, motioning to the laptop.

Sophie looked around to see where the steward was. He had disappeared into the cockpit. Her face broke into a huge
— and Cash remembered, naughty— smile. A smile that said she knew something she shouldn’t or you didn’t.

“Unbelievable!” she said the smile remaining fixed.

“You found out why they killed our fathers?” asked Cash.

“No, much bigger.”

“You’ve proved our innocence?”

“What’s going on?” whispered Rigs, joining the group. Sophie’s smile dropped
when she realized her breakthrough with him had been short lived. Rigs was avoiding her gaze again and speaking only to Cash.

“Sophie’s found something.”

“Clues to why your father was killed?” asked Rigs of Cash, keeping his voice as low as possible.

Sophie shook her head wildly
. “No. Well, yes and no, everything, the answer to everything is in here.”

“Everything?” asked Cash confused
. “So it will prove our innocence?”

“Maybe
. Well probably not, but we may be on the cusp of understanding everything, at least about us.”

“All you need to know about us is
that we’re in deep shit,” said Cash. “Let’s take one problem at a time. Let’s clear our names and avenge our fathers before we solve the answer to everything, whatever that means.”

‘Not
‘us’ us, I mean us
humans
! Everything means
everything
about humans, the Earth, the universe,
everything
!” she said, her excitement levels increasing.

“Can you explain to me how finding the answers to the universe will help us?” asked Cash.

“Because, your father believes there are people already here who know far more than they’re letting on, protecting a knowledge from the past that we’ve lost.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t know.”

“The government?”

Sophie shook her head. “No, nothing like that, much smaller, guardians… protectors of a knowledge that we are being protected from.”

“A secret society, like the
Masons?”

Sophie shook her head.

Rigs chuckled quietly. “The Catholic Church, the Knights Templar?”

“Much smaller
. He thinks that some of the ancient civilizations were aware of the secret and ultimately paid the price for that knowledge.”

“You
’re saying these guardians are killers?”

“Our fathers are dead
.”

“And the most powerful telescope ever built was destroyed,” added Cash.

“Kind of what you’d do to protect a secret?” nodded Sophie knowingly.

It took just over an hour to reach the site
. The sun was hanging onto the last of its daylight. Sophie unpacked her kit and quickly mapped out the measurements that had previously been carried out by Cash’s father.

“Amazing!” Cash
said, looking out across the landscape. “To think this is thousands of years old.”

Rigs looked at the rocks that littered the area, large
, perfectly shaped, and carved stones. Some had to weigh nearly a hundred tons.

“Can’t be,” he said
. “Look at that one, it’s got drill holes running down that edge.”

“Pumapunka, unknown origins,”
Cash read from the pamphlet he had picked up. “Over there, where Sophie is, that’s Tiwanaku, newer but just as amazing.” The barren terrain was littered with the most amazing collection of stones he had ever seen. “You can hardly catch your breath. We’re so high up and we’re supposed to believe they were carving and moving these giant stones around, building these structures?” asked Cash in wonder.

They wandered back to Sophie
. Rigs held back, taking great interest in the sun gate as described by the pamphlet.

“How’s it going
,” asked Cash, adding knowingly, “at the Kalasasaya Temple?”

“I’m impressed,” she said.

He held up the pamphlet. “Built about two thousand years ago…” he started to read.

Sophie shook her head
. “Not according to your father’s research, he reckoned nearer ten to twelve thousand years ago.”

“No way
,” said Cash. “That’s older than the pyramids!”

“Or about the same age,”
Sophie said. “Add to that the irrigation system— which is beyond ingenious— and the mathematical intricacy of the site, and you have to seriously question who on Earth was capable of this when we’d struggle with some of it today.”

Cash looked around in awe.

“Over there where Rigs is hovering menacingly is—” Sophie started.

“The sun gate
.” Cash smiled. “And he’s not hovering menacingly, he’s just awkward.”

“You say awkward, it looks menacing
. Anyway, yes the sun gate. That’s an astronomic calendar. They understood the solar system long before modern astronomers had any idea that we weren’t the only planet. ”

“It’s a stone gate, what
nine feet high? How is that a calendar?”

“It
’s complicated, more so by the fact that your father believes it has been moved. That’s why I needed to take the measurements. I’ll do the calculations later.” The sun had begun to drop behind the mountains and the light was fading fast.

Rigs walked across to them
, his shadow stretching off into the distance, alien-like as his body and limbs stretched off across the landscape.

An eerie silence settled
when the last of the tour buses departed. It was a barren, desolate location, its thin air adding to the mystery of who had built such an amazing city thousands upon thousands of years earlier, high in the mountains.

Cash shivered involuntarily
. The whole place seemed a little… he didn’t know what, but closed his eyes and could almost envision how it would have looked millennia before. A bustling city, surrounded by rich, fertile lands, a people who worshipped the skies, understood the solar system long before man forgot the Earth wasn’t flat.

A taxi horn tooting brought Cash back to the present
. Sophie and Rigs were staring at him.

“You
alright?” she asked.

Cash
nodded and was led towards their impatiently waiting taxi.

“Amazing
,” Cash said again after they pulled away.

“First of many
,” said Sophie, scribbling wildly into a notepad.

Travis Davies had made it back to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia to a hero’s welcome. A round of applause took him from the entrance almost to his office by the staff lining the corridor to herald their leader.

When he reached
his office, he closed his door and took a minute to enjoy the silence after the chaos. His desk was lined with updates and reports by his staff, who had worked diligently to prove his innocence while he was incarcerated. None of it was of any use. Everything led to a dead end, or more precisely, to the twenty dead Afghans who, from seemingly nowhere and with no apparent backing, had almost brought America to her knees.

Travis considered the only piece of good news
of the day. Cash and Rigs were alive. Senator Noble’s involvement was certainly questionable and worthy of further digging. He made a note to look a little more closely at the all-powerful Senator. An email alert popped onto his screen. ‘Cash and Rigs located’ was the subject heading. He clicked on the email. Their faces had triggered an image recognition program. He read through the detail. What the hell were they doing in Bolivia?!

Conrad Noble received the news shortly after Travis Davies. Thanks to the significant number of ex-CIA personnel, his DIS team was still very well connected within the organization. There was little that went through the agency that DIS was unaware of, particularly in the areas of interest to their clients.

Conrad passed the news to Antoine, who was as in the dark as Conrad as to the
significance of Bolivia. However, Antoine knew someone who would know more— his sister Anya.

He travelled down to the depths of the Noble vaults and found his sister next to the Hadron
Accelerator with a group of scientists who were all uncharacteristically hugging each other and crying.

“That was quick!” she said
, rushing towards him.

“What was quick?”

“I only just left a message for you to come down.” She shook her head, clearing her thoughts. “It doesn’t matter, we’ve done it!”

“It
-it
worked
?” gasped Antoine, looking at the stone tablets..

“It worked, we have the fuel!”

Antoine sat and soaked in the moment; it had taken thousands of years and a fortune almost beyond comprehension, but they had done it!

“It’ll take us a few weeks to make the quantity we need but we’ve done it!” she cried.

He nodded, enjoying the moment. What they had achieved would save countless millions. What had been a pipe dream and a punt had actually worked.

“I need to speak to Bea, we need to alter our plans,”
Antoine said, running through the impact of what they had achieved. Up until that point, he had not dared plan for Anya’s success; it would simply have been a bonus. He hugged his sister again and stood to leave.

“Wait a minute,” said Anya
. “If you didn’t get my message, why did you come down?”

“O
h, yes,” he stopped and turned back. “It was to find out whether you knew of any reason why Professor Harris’ son would be in Bolivia?”

Anya’s excitement instantly died
. She could simply lie and tell him she didn’t but she could not lie to Antoine. Total and utter loyalty to the leader of the family was obligatory, no matter what.

“Where in Bolivia?”

“La Paz, I think.”

“Pumapunka,” she said quietly. “The answers you seek, lay around us in our past,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Something I said to Charles many, many years ago. They’re following the clues that will lead them to our future.”

Antoine grabbed a pen and paper. “Write down every location they could possibly visit. We have to stop them.”

“There could be hundreds,”
Anya said.

“I don’t care, list them all! In order of importance!” he commanded, sensing her reticence.

Doctor Ernesto Rojas awoke to silence. The small village where he had spent the previous few days was rarely, if ever
, silent. The young doctor had only recently arrived in the country, as an attempt by the Papua New Guinea government to improve its health offering to its indigenous tribes. They had struggled for years to entice doctors to spend time in the tribal villages. A recent expansion of Cuba’s major export had resulted in the young doctor being made available to them. Cuba exported more doctors than the rest of the world’s richest and most developed countries combined.

The young Cuban had taken a few weeks to acclimatize to the Iamult people who inhabited the area on the banks of the Sepik
River, as had they to him. Thanks to their friendliness and welcome and the outstanding work he had already undertaken, he had won them over, as had they him. Their almost medieval existence, deep in the jungle, separated from any hint of modernity, was frightening and liberating all at once. Phone calls were a three-day trek away. Electricity was restricted to the lightning bolts that lit up the sky during a storm. Food was simply what they caught or grew. Money was irrelevant.

There was always something happening, something being built
or carved in the village. Whatever it was, there was never a lack of helpers. Everyone chipped in and did their bit for the village. It was the first real community he had ever experienced and he had grown to love it.

He listened
. Still nothing other than the occasional bird call. Not a sound from the village. The ramshackle collection of wood and mud huts had little soundproofing. Snoring, farting, sex, you heard it all, and not only your immediate neighbors. There was little privacy and very few moments when one’s thoughts were one’s own. He lay still, almost wishing for the silence to break. Minute after minute passed. Still nothing came from the village. The sun was up and while Ernesto was by no means a late riser, by village standards he was positively lazy, rising after the sun.

He listened more
intently. The silence was beginning to unnerve him. Something was very wrong.

After ten minutes, no sound had emanated from the village itself. He chastised himself for letting something so ridiculous unnerve him. Perhaps they had a day of silence, a day of rest
. Perhaps there was a festival they had all gone to. It could be many hundreds of positive things he told himself, forcing himself from his bed. He threw on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and stepped out into village. The main square was fifty yards to his right. He looked towards it, nobody was there. Normally, it would be bustling with people. He looked across at the huts on the other side of the small road. The women would normally be chatting in front of their homes, preparing meals for that day. None were there. He looked down the length of the road away from the square, nothing. Not completely nothing; there was something lying in the dirt track they called a road.

He ran towards it
. It was a body, that of a young boy he knew as Jay. He had been Ernesto’s most ardent helper and supporter. He was always there, always at Ernesto’s side, fascinated to learn what the young doctor was doing and why.

Jay was lying face down on the street
. It looked as though he had been crawling and had stopped mid-crawl. His skin was loose, wrinkled, unlike how tight and smooth it had been a few hours before.

Ernesto looked around, not wanting to touch the boy without his famil
y’s permission. There was no one to ask. Ernesto rolled Jay over. His horrified face stared up at him. His skin was drawn tight against the bones, all muscle and definition had gone, only leathery skin remained. It was as though every ounce of moisture had been drawn out of his body. Ernesto examined the rest of the body; it was the same. It wasn’t as though moisture had been drawn out, it was that it
had
been. Jay was desiccated. He had died at some point during the night but had naturally mummified within hours, which wasn’t medically possible.

Ernesto ran to Jay’s home
and, after knocking for a few seconds, he entered. Jay’s parents and two younger sisters lay dead in their beds, mummified, just like Jay. An hour later, Ernesto had failed to find a living soul in a village of over ten thousand. The entire village had perished in one night.

Over the next few hour
s, he travelled to two nearby villages. The story was the same. Ernesto was distraught, terrified and still two days away from a phone. Why had he survived when everyone else had died? The fourth village gave some suggestion of an answer. A young Catholic nun sat forlorn in the village square, a young girl by her side.

“They’re all dead, all dried out, like mummies
!” she cried when she saw Ernesto walking towards her.

“But she
’s okay?” he said hopefully, pointing at the young girl.

“She’s an orphan I brought with me from another village,
she’s not Iamult,” the nun said through the tears.

“So it’s only the Iamult?” gasped Ernesto
. He had visited four villages, all roughly the same size, meaning fifty thousand people were dead. But Ernesto knew there were many more villages spread along the river and that the Iamult people numbered nearly 350,000. In one night, they had potentially witnessed the sudden and catastrophic extinction of an entire race of people. He had to get to a phone.