Empire of Gold

32


An hour later, the other members of the expedition had made their way into the cave.

‘Watch out for that,’ said Eddie, pointing, as Olmedo climbed up the rope he had secured round a boulder at the top of the shaft. Set into a nearby wall was a large square panel of silver that looked for all the world like an oversized cat flap. ‘That’s the trap. There’s a reservoir behind it – if you trip it, the flap opens and the water shoots down the hole and knocks you into the spikes.’

The trap was not foremost on the minds of the others, though. Instead, they stared, almost mesmerised, at the city before them. The cave floor sloped quite steeply, the Inca settlement constructed in tiers rising back into the shadows. The structures nearest the cavern’s entrance were small, like those in Paititi, but they became larger and more grand higher up the hill. Visible near the top was what appeared to be another Temple of the Sun, curved walls standing out amongst the rectilinear buildings around it. Behind it, rising above all else, loomed a palace.

‘I have to admit, Nina,’ said Mac, taking off his rain poncho, ‘this is far beyond anything I expected to see. Anything I imagined seeing, even. Pictures of the places you’ve discovered are one thing, but actually being here in the flesh . . . ’

‘It’s incredible, isn’t it?’ she replied, still awed by the sheer scale of the find. ‘But it wasn’t only me who discovered it, though. If it wasn’t for Leonard’s knowledge of Inca history and culture, it would have taken years to put together all the clues – if we ever managed to at all.’

Osterhagen was equally effusive. ‘No, Nina, you did far more than I. You realised the importance of the khipu – and if not for the IHA, I would not even be here at all. And to think I was angry to be asked to meet you!’

‘We both owe a lot to Kit and Interpol as well,’ said Nina, turning to the Indian. ‘He came up with the connection between the artefacts on the black market and the statues.’ The case containing the two – and a half – stone figures was amongst the gear the team had ferried up through the waterfall.

Kit adopted a humble look. ‘I only made a suggestion. I had no idea whether or not it would be true.’

‘All right, can the mutual admiration society hold its annual meeting somewhere else?’ said Eddie as he helped the second of the two soldiers out of the shaft. ‘We’ve still got to explore this place yet.’ He noticed Macy’s somewhat pensive expression. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘I just thought of something,’ she replied, taking out the folder containing the photographs from Paititi. ‘On the map, this place is coloured in gold, yeah? Just like the sun disc we found.’

‘Yes?’ said Nina, wondering where she was leading.

Macy waved a hand towards the waiting buildings. ‘So . . . where’s all the gold?’

‘Maybe it was only symbolic.’

Osterhagen shook his head. ‘No, she has a point. The Incas really did put gold on their buildings – the most important ones, at least. The Temple of the Sun in Cuzco was covered in sheets of gold. They were among the first things the Spanish stole and melted down.’

All eyes turned to the silent settlement. Even in the low light, it was plain that the only building material was stone, not precious metal, without so much as a golden glint even from the temple or the palace.

‘Perhaps we are not the first to find this place,’ said Cruzado.

‘No,’ said Nina firmly. ‘Something this big, there’s no way it could have been kept quiet. The Conquistadors would have bragged about finding it to rub in their victory over the Incas, and there isn’t a treasure hunter in history who could have resisted the fame of revealing a find like this. Besides, look at it. The whole place is almost intact. If it’s been looted, they were very orderly about it.’

It was true. Unlike the ruins of Paititi, where the ceaseless growth of the jungle and the rot of climate and insects had left only broken shells, here the majority of the buildings still had roofs. The coverings of woven leaves had long since gone, but the skeletal wooden beams that had supported them remained in place. ‘Then,’ said Zender imperiously, ‘we must explore the city and find the treasures the Incas left behind.’ He paused, then continued more hesitantly: ‘What are we looking for?’

‘Riches beyond imagination,’ said Osterhagen in a portentous voice, sharing a smile with Nina. He pointed up the slope. ‘The map from Paititi showed the Punchaco in the Temple of the Sun – and the last piece of Dr Wilde’s statues in the royal palace. We start at the top.’

‘Ready when you are,’ said Nina.

The group set out up the hill. The limited space available to the city’s builders meant that the steep streets were even more narrow and twisting than those in Paititi. ‘I wish I’d brought my stick,’ Mac complained.

‘It’d probably be quicker to hop over the roofs,’ said Eddie, looking up at the buildings on each side. They splashed through a stream that ran across their path. ‘Keep our feet dry, too.’

‘I don’t think my feet could get any wetter,’ Nina complained. She looked back to see where the stream led, finding that it drained into the reservoir. The trap was self-sustaining.

Osterhagen halted beside a small, low structure. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

He shone a flashlight inside. ‘A tomb. Look.’ She peered through the entrance, seeing huddled shapes within. ‘Mummies.’

The sight gave Nina a small chill. Unlike the traditional image of an Egyptian mummy, lying flat and completely swathed in cloth, the bodies of Inca mummies were curled up tightly in their shrouds as if straitjacketed – but with their heads left exposed. The sunken eye sockets of a dead, parchment-yellow face stared back at her, shrivelled lips pulled away to expose its teeth almost with a sneer. Behind it, stacked like sacks of flour, were other bodies.

Macy looked over Nina’s shoulder, and wished she hadn’t. ‘Gross. That’s gonna be in my nightmares. How many of them are there?’

Nina looked up the hill, seeing that a whole section of the lost city seemed dedicated to the little mausoleums. ‘Dozens – hundreds, even.’

‘Is there treasure?’ called Zender. ‘Have you found any treasure?’

‘Depends how you define it,’ said Nina, using her own torch to pick out grubby metal inside the chamber. The object seemed like a cross between a knife and a small trowel, a fat blade with a decidedly unergonomic handle in the shape of a heavily stylised human figure.

‘It is a tumi,’ said Osterhagen. ‘A ceremonial knife – they have been found with many mummies. Some were made from gold, but this looks more like bronze.’

‘Only bronze?’ Zender tutted. ‘Then it can wait. But we can’t. Move along, move along!’

Even Juanita seemed exasperated by his impatience, but none of the Peruvian contingent raised a voice to object; he was, after all, technically their boss. Nina had no such concerns. ‘Archaeology isn’t like the Olympics,’ she chided. ‘Bronze isn’t the loser’s consolation prize.’

Mac chuckled. ‘I don’t think that’s quite what the symbolism of the medal ceremony means.’

They continued up the slope. Before long, the pathway became noticeably wider, the surrounding buildings larger. ‘Leonard, go right,’ said Nina when they reached a junction with a tower-like structure to their left. The route ahead continued uphill, but the alternative seemed to lead to a more open area. ‘If it’s like Paititi . . .’

It was. They soon emerged on a plaza, built up at the eastern end, dug out of the sloping rock floor at the west to keep the whole expanse flat. A broad stone stairway led to the higher levels. She looked towards the cave mouth, seeing the lower levels of the city spread out below. ‘God, they were on the run, and they still put in the effort to build all this. It’s incredible.’

‘And we haven’t even found the really awesome stuff yet,’ Macy reminded her, starting for the stairway.

‘All of this is awesome!’ Nina protested with pricked professional pride, looking to the other archaeologists for support. But even Osterhagen was moving with the rest of the group towards the steps, as if magnetically drawn. With a huff, she gave in and followed them.

‘This is how I feel when I’m trying to talk to you about footie,’ Eddie teased her.

They ascended through several steeply ranked tiers of buildings to the Temple of the Sun. As Osterhagen reached the top, Nina paused. ‘Hold on,’ she called. ‘I can hear water.’ Eddie jerked a thumb at the falls. ‘Ha ha,’ she said, with a very fake smile. ‘No, I mean ahead of us. And it’s bigger than that little stream we crossed.’

Osterhagen strode along the side of the temple. ‘I hear it too. I think . . . ah, of course!’ he said as the source came into view. ‘Ritual fountains. They have been found at several other Inca sites.’

Beyond the temple was a small square, overlooked by the shadowed palace on the tier above. Several jets of water gushed out of the paving slabs, falling back into rectangular pools to run off into drainage holes. ‘This must be what makes the stream,’ suggested Kit.

‘Yeah, but what’s making them?’ said Nina. As well as the tinkle and splash of the fountains, there was still the other noise she had heard, considerably deeper. Beyond the palace, at the very rear of the cavern. ‘Back there.’ She started for the next flight of steps.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Osterhagen, surprised. ‘This is the Temple of the Sun! The Punchaco could be inside.’

‘There’s something I want to check,’ she said. ‘This cave was originally carved out by water. I want to find out why there isn’t still a river running through it.’

‘And I thought you married an archaeologist, not a hydrologist,’ Mac said to Eddie with a wry smile.

Zender edged nearer to the temple’s entrance. ‘We don’t need to wait for her, do we?’ Eddie shot him a cold look. ‘Ah, okay, okay. We can wait. Just for a minute.’

Nina scurried up the steps and forced herself to bypass the waiting temple and whatever riches it might contain to see what lay behind it. Her ears had not deceived her. A jet of white water, so much pressure behind it that it appeared almost solid, blasted out of a six-inch hole in the cave’s back wall into a deep pond, from where channels carved in the rock floor sent it downhill to different parts of the city. It was a primitive water main, a simple but effective piece of Inca engineering.

What was considerably less simple was the way the jet had been created. Surrounding the torrent was not natural rock but a wall, as precisely and solidly built as the towering defence at the cave mouth. It was almost like a plug set into the stone, roughly twelve feet across.

She hurried back to the square. The other team members had put down their gear and were waiting for her impatiently. ‘So, find anything interesting?’ asked Eddie.

‘Yes – I worked out how the Incas built this place,’ she said excitedly. ‘They must have dammed up the river before it went underground. Then they plugged up all but a little hole at the back of the cave so they’d have a water supply, and after that they built all of this, then demolished the dam. But since the river couldn’t flow freely down into the cave any more, it went over the top of it . . . and formed the waterfall. A whole city to hide their treasure, and it’s completely invisible from outside.’

Osterhagen was suitably impressed, taking in the ancient buildings surrounding them. ‘The Spanish never gave them enough credit for their engineering skills. That they could build a place like this is amazing.’

‘Their treasures were amazing too,’ said Zender impatiently, once again edging towards the temple’s entrance. ‘Dr Wilde, are you ready see what is inside? Or is their plumbing more interesting to you?’

Nina was tempted to make everyone wait by exploring the smaller buildings around the square, but decided that since Zender was only here for the glory of finding a big prize, the sooner he saw one the sooner he might leave. ‘All right,’ she faux-grumbled. ‘Let’s give baby his bottle.’ The group laughed, to Zender’s annoyance.

She and Osterhagen led the way to the darkened opening. While the limited space in the cave had forced the Incas to compress most of their architecture, the Temple of the Sun was, if anything, larger than its counterpart at Paititi. A short passage followed the curve of the outer wall before opening into a chamber.

Even before she reached it, Nina saw there was something unusual about the interior. Through the roof’s skeletal remains, the light in the passage had the same diffuse twilight cast as the rest of the cave. But the room ahead was different. Not brighter, but somehow warmer, almost like a dawn.

Osterhagen had seen it too. He quickened his pace. They entered the chamber . . .

And were bathed in golden light reflected off the object on its western wall.

‘Mein Gott!’ gasped Osterhagen, gasping. Nina was equally staggered.

They had found the Punchaco.

It dwarfed its copy from Paititi. That had been four feet in diameter; the golden disc before them now was nearer nine, and at least twice as thick as its counterpart. It stood almost floor to ceiling, mounted on the wall to face the trapezoidal eastern window. Unlike the smaller sun disc, which while ornate had been fashioned only from gold, this was decorated with hundreds of precious stones around its rim and outlining the great face of Inti, the sun god, that stared from its centre. The greatest treasure of the Incas, weighing tons, had been transported across hundreds of miles to protect it from the Spaniards’ gold-lust; a monumental, almost unbelievable journey.

But here it was. And an entire city had been built to house it.

The others filed into the room. ‘Jesus!’ said Eddie. ‘De Quesada would have had a job fitting that into his loo.’

Zender’s mouth dropped open at the sight. He gabbled in Spanish to Juanita. ‘What’s he saying?’ Mac whispered to Macy.

‘He’s telling her to start arranging a press conference,’ she replied. The Scot made a sound of quiet amusement.

Nina regarded the relief of Inti, then turned to see where the Inca god was gazing. Through the window, she could see the waterfall – and, she remembered, there was a gap between two peaks on the opposite side of the valley. Even though the view would be obscured by the falls, the Incas had still made sure the temple faced the rising sun. ‘So what do you think, Mr Zender?’ she asked. The Peruvian official had a hand raised to the Punchaco’s rim, fingertips hovering just above its surface as if afraid to touch it. ‘Worth the trip?’

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he said, so transfixed that he didn’t even turn his head to address her. He finally summoned the willpower to put his hand against the sun disc. Satisfied that it was indeed real, he looked round. ‘Dr Wilde, Dr Osterhagen, this is . . . ’ He struggled for the right words. ‘Amazing!’ was all he could manage. ‘You have found the greatest treasure in Peru’s history. You are both national heroes!’

‘Thank you,’ said Osterhagen, ‘but we are not heroes – simply scholars. The real heroes were here over four hundred years ago, preserving this place for the ages. They made an incredible journey and took great risks to protect their culture and its heritage.’

Zender nodded, rather calculatingly. ‘Yes, yes. If you say that at the press conference, that would be very good!’

‘Let’s save the media planning until we’ve found everything, shall we?’ Nina suggested. ‘There’s still a whole city to explore. And there was something else on the Paititi map.’ She put down her pack and took out the case containing the statuettes. ‘We’ve got two and a half out of three; let’s see if we can complete the set.’

She opened the case, revealing the figurines. The Peruvian contingent looked on in bemusement; Nina had only told a few senior politicians about the IHA’s other ongoing mission when requesting permission to mount the expedition. ‘What are these?’ asked Olmedo.

‘Pointers, I think,’ Nina said. She picked up the first statue; as she had hoped, it glowed with an earth energy reaction, though not an especially strong one. Even so, in the low light it was perfectly clear, the Peruvians reacting with surprise. ‘If I put them all together, I’m hoping they’ll show me the missing piece.’

She carefully brought the three carved purple stones together, cradling them in her hands. The glow changed, a brighter band shimmering – pointing at the sun disc.

‘It’s behind that?’ Kit asked.

Nina grimaced. ‘I hope not – I wouldn’t want to have to damage the Punchaco to get it out!’ She stepped across to the side wall. The line of light moved, the parallax shift indicating that the final piece was close by – but it no longer pointed at the representation of the sun god. ‘No, I think it’s in the palace. Just as the map said.’

‘It shouldn’t take long to find,’ said Macy. ‘Not when you’ve got your own personal weird statue detector.’

Nina addressed the Peruvians. ‘This is the main reason the IHA became involved. There’s no need for you to come with me to find the last statue piece if you don’t want to.’

She had hoped they would take the hint and let her search in peace, but from their expressions – even the two soldiers were intrigued – it was clear they all wanted to satisfy their curiosity. ‘Probably shouldn’t have shown ’em the glowing statues, love,’ said Eddie.

Still carefully holding the circle of figurines, she moved back towards the passage. ‘Well, let’s see where they lead us, then.’

The others following, she left the temple, heading for the palace at the summit of the hidden city.

In the jungle outside the cave, one of the two soldiers left to watch the team’s vehicles looked down the hill. Several minutes earlier, he had thought he heard distant engines, but the waterfall’s never-ending rumble made it difficult to be sure. He had dismissed the sound as nothing more than local traffic picking its way along the winding road – but now he was certain he had heard it again, and closer. He stared down the weaving trail of flattened vegetation made by the off-roaders, but saw nothing except greenery.

His companion, leaning against the Jeep, stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Why would anyone come up here? Nobody’s even supposed to know about this place except those archaeologists.’

‘Someone might have seen our tracks going off the road.’ The reassuring weight of his Kalashnikov AKM rifle hung from one shoulder; he considered unslinging it and heading downhill to investigate. But there was nothing moving amongst the trees except birds, and the noise had stopped. ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure I heard a truck.’

He expected a sarcastic retort, but no answer came. Assuming the other soldier was busy lighting yet another cigarette, he continued, ‘And I know you’re going to say that we almost ran into plenty of trucks on the way here, but I meant it was nearer than the road.’ He turned to await a response—

A man in dirty, ragged jungle camouflage was behind his comrade, one hand clamped over his mouth – and the other driving a knife deep into his throat, spraying blood over the Jeep’s windscreen.

The soldier grabbed his AKM—

A loud, flat thump came from the undergrowth, and he fell, hit in the back by a bullet. He writhed in pain, trying to scream, but only managed a choked gurgle, blood from a shredded lung frothing in his throat and mouth.

The shooter stepped from the bushes. He was short, barrel-chested . . . and wearing a blood-red beret.

Arcani Pachac.

‘Any sign of the rest?’ the Maoist leader asked as his scout pulled the knife from the second soldier’s neck and let the twitching corpse drop to the ground.

‘No, Inkarrí,’ the camouflaged man replied. ‘Their tracks go to the waterfall, but there’s nobody there. They must be behind it.’

Pachac nodded, then almost as an afterthought raised his weapon again. The automatic had been modified with a makeshift silencer, a two-litre plastic soda bottle stuffed with shredded newspaper and polythene bags taped to his pistol’s barrel. Smoke coiled from the hole in the end of the bottle where the bullet had seared through; the torn-up scraps inside had caught fire. He pulled the trigger, a second round smashing into the back of the wounded soldier’s skull. The shot was still loud, the improvised suppressor too crude to do more than muffle it – but, crucially, it didn’t sound like the sharp crack of gunfire. To anyone outside the immediate vicinity, it could be mistaken for a falling branch or other similar natural event. And the waterfall’s thunder masked it still further.

He pulled the smouldering bottle from the gun, then unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt. ‘The way is clear. Move up.’

The luckless soldier had heard engines. Before long, three off-road vehicles came into sight, following the archaeological team’s path. Two were old, battered and unassuming 4×4s - a rusting Ford F-150 pickup with a cargo bed full of rebels, and a long-past-its-prime Toyota Land Cruiser with sagging suspension. Leading the parade, however, was something much newer and more expensive: a bright yellow Hummer H3. Pachac was perversely proud of the vehicle, which his group had obtained by the simple expedient of murdering its owner; the oversized, cartoonish 4×4 was a perfect symbol of the kind of capitalist excess he was aiming to destroy, and it gave him a certain satisfaction to use it against them.

He also got a kick out of driving the huge, opulent vehicle, but kept that to himself.

The crowded trucks stopped behind the expedition’s vehicles, and Pachac’s men emerged. Like him, all were dirty, their clothes grubby and crumpled from a life spent in the rough and on the run. And like him, all were killers. Though they called themselves revolutionaries, to the Peruvian government the True Red Way were terrorists, and hunted as such.

But this time they were not working alone. Pachac ordered his men to head for the falls, then went to the Hummer. Inside was a high-tech field radio. He took the handset and spoke into it. ‘This is Pachac. We’re at the waterfall.’ He wasn’t concerned about the Peruvian authorities overhearing; the radio’s messages were encrypted.

‘Have you seen Wilde and the others?’ the reply came. The voice was clipped. British.

‘No, but they are definitely here. My contact in the village described the woman he saw. Red hair, in a ponytail – it must be her. We think they have found a way behind the waterfall.’ Pachac looked up at the thrum of an approaching helicopter. ‘Is that you I can hear?’

‘Of course it is. How many of them are there?’

‘My contact counted fourteen people. Four of them were soldiers. We have executed two of them already.’

‘We’ll take care of the waterfall – then you take care of the rest of them. But I need Dr Wilde and the Interpol agent, Jindal, alive. You understand?’

‘I have told my men,’ said Pachac impatiently.

‘Good.’ A bleep told the Peruvian that the call was terminated. He followed his men through the trees as the helicopter moved away.

None of Nina’s prior knowledge of Inca civilisation had prepared her for – she realised with amusement that she had started using the name without irony – El Dorado. The other known sites were long-looted and derelict; here, relics of the city’s inhabitants still remained. The palace’s rooms contained belongings left by its occupants, and she had to force herself to walk on by as she followed the statues’ glowing light deeper into the building.

But she knew she could explore the rest of the palace later. For now, finding the final piece was her top priority.

‘It can’t be much further,’ said Kit as the group entered a large room. ‘We’re almost at the back of the palace.’ The hiss of the water jet echoed off the walls.

This deep in the cave, there was much less light than in the Temple of the Sun. Eddie switched on his Maglite. ‘Is that something there?’

The beam found an alcove set into the rear wall – familiar markings within. ‘I think it is,’ said Nina, her pace and heartbeat getting faster.

Osterhagen was right with her. ‘Just like the map from Paititi!’

‘Only part of it,’ said Macy as the others crowded round to look. More flashlights illuminated the painted walls.

Nina knelt to enter the alcove. ‘Yeah. The people who made this map, this is where their journey ended. They didn’t go on into the jungle.’ The golden city marked the end of the trek from Cuzco.

But she was more interested in the nook set into the wall. In it stood a small figure, carved from an unusual purple stone.

Half a figure. The other piece of the last statuette. It had patiently stood here for centuries, waiting to be reunited with its mirror image – and its near-twins. The set was about to be completed.

She put down the other figures, their light vanishing, and cautiously touched the statuette in the niche. It lit up with a rippling glow – strongest in one direction. Towards the sculptures at her feet. ‘This is it!’ Nina said. ‘The last piece.’

‘Maybe now we’ll find out what all the bloody fuss is about,’ said Eddie.

‘Let’s hope.’ She reached for it—

A distant boom, a drawn-out rumble of something enormous tearing apart . . .

The floor shook, little cascades of dust and grit dropping from the walls. The statuettes on the floor clinked against each other. ‘Terremoto!’ cried Zender, frantically looking round for shelter.

‘It’s not an earthquake,’ said Eddie, straining to listen over the sound of water. ‘More like . . .’

‘Artillery,’ Mac finished for him.

Another tremor rolled through the ground. A new sound, closer, more frightening. Overhead. Rock straining against rock. ‘Shit!’ said Eddie. ‘The whole f*cking place is going to come down! We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘The statues!’ Kit almost shouted.

‘I’ve got them,’ said Nina. No time to see what happened when they were brought together; she jammed them all into the foam-lined case and closed it. ‘Okay, let’s go!’

Everyone ran for the exit, Mac and Eddie side by side at the rear. Over the thumps and rumbles of rock, Nina realised that another sound was changing. ‘The waterfall – listen!’ The thunder of the falls was dying down. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get outside!’

They rushed on to the terrace overlooking the square behind the Temple of the Sun. The fountains were still gushing, fed by the subterranean reserve backed up behind the dam at the cave’s rear.

But ahead, the flow concealing the cavern’s mouth was weakening, glimpses of the valley’s far side visible through the thinning curtain.

The river had been blocked.

Alexander Stikes looked out of the hovering Hind’s cabin with a smile. Krikorian had just unleashed a barrage of S-8 rockets into the steep cliffs channelling the river – which had collapsed in a most satisfying manner, thousands of tons of rubble dropping into the narrow waterway. The waters behind the makeshift dam were already rising even as those ahead of it drained away, but the flood would find an alternative route down into the valley long before it could overflow the new obstacle. ‘Nicely done, Krikorian,’ he said into his headset. ‘Gurov, take us back to the falls. Let’s see what’s behind them.’

The Russian pilot complied, the Hind swinging about and flying along the dwindling river before crossing the falls and hovering over the pocket jungle. Stikes’s smile widened as he saw the result of his attack. The strength of the cataract had already diminished enormously, exposing a broad cave mouth behind it – was that a wall blocking the lower half? If so, it was an impressive piece of ancient construction work – and the pool at its base was rapidly draining. It would soon be possible to reach the cave without even getting one’s feet wet.

Pachac, he saw, wasn’t going to wait that long. The terrorist leader, easy to spot in his red beret, was pointing at the wall, directing men bearing assault rifles and rocket launchers across the pool.

Ready to take the cavern and its contents by force.