Authors: Andy McDermott

Empire of Gold (20 page)

BOOK: Empire of Gold

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The Venezuelan grimaced, shaking off the camouflaged shroud. He looked for his gun, saw it was out of reach, turned back to face Eddie – and drew a knife.

Eddie took on a defensive posture, judging his opponent. The Venezuelan was bigger than him, and probably fifteen years younger. He would have faster reactions, but less experience and training – his uniform was regular army, not special forces. The Englishman’s gaze flitted between the six-inch blade and his opponent’s eyes, waiting for the first sign of the inevitable attack—

The knife thrust at his chest. Eddie twisted to avoid it, then tried to grab the soldier’s wrist, but the Venezuelan had already pulled back. Another stab, another dodge, the razor edge this time close enough to rasp against his jacket’s steel zip.

Third strike—

Eddie gripped the soldier’s arm – but the knife sliced across his chest, tearing his T-shirt. He grunted at the sharp pain, battling to keep hold as the man tried to shake him off. A sweep of his elbow, the point cracking against the soldier’s face just under his left eye socket.

The Venezuelan staggered, giving Eddie the chance to chop at his hand, trying to force him to drop the knife. Another fierce blow, the soldier’s grip loosening . . .

The man shoved Eddie backwards across the uneven stone slabs into a patch of mud. With one last strike Eddie finally knocked the knife away, but his feet slipped in the ooze. One boot lost its grip, and he fell.

He landed on his back with a thick splash, the soldier on top of him. And now it was the Venezuelan’s turn to use his elbow, driving it down with all his weight into Eddie’s stomach.

Even tensing his abdominal muscles to absorb the impact, Eddie still convulsed in sickening, breathless pain. His groan was choked off as the man clamped his hands round his throat. He tried to claw at the soldier’s eyes, but the Venezuelan pulled back out of Eddie’s reach as he squeezed harder—

The pressure abruptly eased. The soldier was no longer looking down at Eddie, but at something above. The Yorkshireman tipped his head back to see an inverted world, buildings hanging over the empty abyss of the sky . . . and an upside-down Nina pointing an AK-103 at his attacker.

A quick flick of her eyebrows told the soldier to release him. Eddie drew in a hoarse breath as his adversary nervously withdrew, and sat up. ‘You okay?’ Nina asked.

He coughed. ‘Bit of a hairball. What about the others?’

‘Macy’s fine, Cuff’ll need a trip to the orthodontist but looked okay apart from that. Kit’s watching the other guy; everyone else got up the wall.’

‘Good.’ He stood, giving the soldier a threatening glare before calling to Valero. ‘Oscar!’ He pointed to the fallen AK. ‘Get the gun – I’ll tie him up.’

Nina kept her rifle aimed at the soldier as Valero retrieved the second Kalashnikov. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘If loggers found this place, what’s the army doing here?’

‘Maybe loggers did find it,’ said Eddie, tugging a length of guy rope from the tent. ‘But they wouldn’t know how to sell the stuff they found, so they started asking around – and word got back to someone at that radar base. Quick arrest, bit of an interrogation, and now someone with stripes on their sleeve knows all about Paititi – and how much treasure’s hidden in it.’ He pulled the rope through the last eyelet and lifted the canvas - to expose a field radio lying on its side, the handset trapped beneath it. The transmit light was on. ‘Buggeration and fuckery,’ he said, lifting the radio and seeing that the handset’s key had been depressed by the unit’s weight; as soon as it was released, the channel cleared and an urgent voice crackled through the speaker. He hurriedly switched it off. ‘He managed to warn his mates – we need to get out of here.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Nina as Eddie tied up the soldier. She gestured towards the large buildings at the plaza’s western end. ‘We need to at least check the temple and the palace first. These guys have already stolen potentially millions of dollars of artefacts – we’ve got to see if there’s anything left before they strip the whole place bare.’

‘We don’t have time. If they think somebody’s found their little secret, they’ll probably be on their way here already.’

‘No, I agree with Dr Wilde,’ said Valero. ‘It took us over two hours to reach here from Valverde – it will take even longer from the military base. If we take the road south to Matuso, they will never catch up with us. And when we get to the Jeep, I can use the satellite phone to report to the Bolivarian Militia. The more I know about what is here, the more I can tell my superiors.’

Eddie didn’t like the idea of delaying their getaway, but Valero was right; it would take some time for more soldiers to reach them. ‘Okay, but be quick about it. Ten minutes, no more.’

It took over half that long just to assemble all the expedition members. Both soldiers were tied to a tree, Eddie and Kit taking their weapons after Valero recovered his pistol. With Eddie pointedly checking his watch, the group hurried up the broad steps to the Temple of the Sun.

Where something incredible awaited them.

‘
M
y God!’ Nina gasped, Osterhagen echoing her words in German. Everyone stared in amazement. The chamber was roofless where the wood had long since decayed, but an overhanging tree blotted out most of the light. At the east end was a single window . . . facing the wonder opposite.

Mounted on the west wall was a metal disc, a stylised face surrounded by elaborate patterns of spirals and interlocking lines. It was some four feet in diameter, at its deepest four inches thick . . . and even covered with the dirt of ages, it was instantly obvious that it was made from solid gold.

‘The Punchaco!’ exclaimed Becker.

Even through his awe, Osterhagen shook his head. ‘No, it is too small, and there are no jewels. It must be a copy.’

‘What’s a punchaco?’ Macy asked.

‘A sun disc,’ Nina replied. ‘One of the greatest Inca treasures.’

‘
The
greatest,’ Osterhagen corrected her. ‘It represented the sun god Inti, and was in the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco. As well as being made of pure gold, it was decorated with thousands of precious stones. But when the Spanish arrived, even though they looted the temple of a huge amount of gold, the Punchaco was gone.’

Eddie moved further into the room. Before the golden face was a large stone slab, which he guessed was an altar – and behind it was proof that someone else knew of the sun disc’s existence. ‘The Spanish weren’t the only ones who wanted to get their hands on this thing,’ he said, holding up a length of heavy-duty chain.

Nina rounded the altar to see a trolley made of thick steel with six fat little tyres, as well as a pile of equally beefy metal struts, several of which had been fastened together to form the basis of a truss. She also recognised the pulleys of a block and tackle. ‘Looks like they were going to lift the disc off the wall and stand it on this cart.’ She went to the window. At one time it would have allowed the light of dawn to shine on the Punchaco. Though the view was now blocked by trees, she could still make out the main gate to the east – and closer, the oddly proportioned crate.

Its purpose was no longer a mystery. It was the right size to accommodate the sun disc.

‘It’s a good thing we
did
come in here,’ she said, with a faintly accusing look at her husband. ‘They were about to steal the sun disc. And they were probably saving it until last – it’s not something they could carry off in their pocket like the artefacts Interpol recovered. That much gold must weigh tons.’

Kit examined the sun disc. ‘It’s about one metre twenty across, and . . . ten centimetres deep. So it would weigh . . . ’

‘The volume of a cylinder is
pi
r squared h,’ Cuff mumbled through the handkerchief he was holding to his mouth. ‘So that’s . . . ’

‘One hundred and thirteen thousand, one hundred and forty-two cubic centimetres,’ Nina announced, performing the calculations in her head, to the surprise of Valero and Osterhagen’s team. ‘Or zero point one one three cubic metres, more or less. And I think gold is something like nineteen times denser than water, which weighs a metric ton per cubic metre, so . . . ’ Another moment of thought. ‘We’re talking over two tons of gold. The weight of an SUV.’

‘No wonder they left it till last,’ said Eddie. ‘Be a bugger to get out of here.’

‘But if this is only a copy,’ said Macy, ‘where’s the real thing?’

‘Still hidden, somewhere,’ suggested Loretta.

Nina looked towards the entrance. ‘Somewhere here, maybe?’

Osterhagen had the same idea. ‘The palace! We have to search it.’

‘Two minutes,’ warned Eddie. ‘The longer we’re here, the more chance we have of getting caught.’

‘I know, I know,’ Nina snapped, bustling the others to the door.

They hurried out and ascended another set of steps to the building on the highest tier of the jungle city. It too was open to the elements, and in a state of partial collapse where windborne seeds had taken root and grown into infinitely patient, subtly destructive trees, but more than enough of the structure remained to reveal its stark majesty. Every block had been carved with painstaking precision to fit exactly amongst its neighbours without needing mortar to secure it, and in contrast to the plain architecture elsewhere in Paititi the palace was decorated, geometric patterns carved into the stonework and sculpted heads jutting from sections of wall.

‘Split up,’ Nina ordered. Much as it pained her, she ignored the ancient adornments to search the various rooms for any unlooted treasures. Though there were a few remaining artefacts that would be valuable from a cultural perspective, nothing stood out as being so financially. The raiders had been thorough. ‘Find anything?’ she called.

‘It’d help if I knew what I was looking for,’ Eddie complained from a neighbouring room.

‘Anything obviously valuable – gold, silver, jewels. If it shows up on the black market, we can tie it back to here and give Interpol some legal ammunition.’

‘If we just take it with us, we can stop them getting hold of it,’ Macy piped up.

Nina was about to give her a refresher course on professional ethics when Eddie called out again. ‘Nina! In here.’

She knew from his tone that it was important. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s not gold or silver or jewels,’ he said as she entered the small chamber, ‘but I’m pretty sure you’ll think it’s valuable.’

Unlike the palace’s other rooms, one end of this had a roof of sorts where an alcove was set into the wall. The space was around six feet deep, slightly wider. Set into its rear was a foot-high arched recess. Something stood inside it.

She took out a flashlight. Its beam revealed that the alcove’s walls were painted; though in places split by cracks and scabbed by mould, most of the images were still discernible.

But it wasn’t the paintings that had seized her attention. Even before she brought the light on to it, she recognised the shape in the recess. And when she did, she also recognised the colour.

A strange purple stone.

‘It’s the third statue . . . ’ she whispered. Like the other two figurines cocooned in their case in her backpack, it was a crude but recognisably anthropomorphic sculpture, arms held out in such a way as to interlock with its near-twins when they were placed together.

Except . . . there was only one arm.

‘What—’ she gasped. There was
less
to the statue than met the eye. It stood sideways in the niche, its right side to her – but there was no left side. It had been sliced in half down its centre line. ‘No!’

‘Yeah, I thought you might not be happy about that,’ said Eddie as she plucked it from the recess and turned it over in her hands. ‘Why do you think they chopped it in two?’

‘No idea,’ she said, disappointment welling. For all the archaeological wonders of the lost settlement, the statuette had been her primary reason for coming here – but she now had no more clues to lead her to the rest of it.

Unless . . .

She switched off the flashlight. ‘Hold this for a minute,’ she told Eddie, passing the figurine to him. As the other expedition members filtered into the room, she took the other two statues from their case. No eerie light, but there was a mildly unsettling sensation through her palms, like the tingling of a very low current.

‘What are you doing?’ Osterhagen asked.

‘Seeing if maybe this isn’t the end of the line for the Incas.’ Nina slid the statues together shoulder to shoulder . . .

The others made sounds of surprise as the linked figures glowed, very faintly but just enough to stand out in the shadows. ‘Give me the other one,’ she said to Eddie. He slipped it between the pair. She used her thumbs to nudge it into position, the lone arm in place round its neighbour – and the glow subtly changed, strongest on one particular side of the triptych. ‘Eddie, you’ve got a compass, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

She turned the statues, the brighter glow remaining fixed as they moved. ‘What direction is it pointing?’

BOOK: Empire of Gold

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