Empire of Gold

  ‘Semantics,’ he said. ‘The name may be wrong, but the story, it seems, is true. Somewhere in Peru is an unimaginable fortune. I did a little Googling upstairs just now. The ransom room, which the Inca emperor said he would fill with gold if the Spanish set him free, was seven metres by five and a half. Thirty-eight and a half square metres. Assuming it was two metres high, that would be—’

  ‘Seventy-seven cubic metres.’

  Stikes seemed almost impressed. ‘Correct. Seventy-seven cubic metres . . . of gold. Do you know how much that would be worth?’

  ‘Y’know, I forgot to check today’s price with my broker.’

  He was less appreciative of her sarcasm. ‘One cubic metre of gold weighs nineteen point three metric tons. And I’m sure you can use your apparent skills at mental arithmetic to work out how many tons would fill the ransom room.’

  Despite herself, Nina couldn’t resist the urge to work it out. ‘One thousand four hundred and eighty-six tons. Point one.’

  ‘Point one,’ Stikes repeated with a sardonic smile. ‘Almost one and a half billion grams of gold – using the American billion, that is. The proper imperial billion seems to have fallen by the wayside. But at today’s price per gram, that’s worth over fifty billion dollars. As you can imagine, General Callas and I are rather keen to find it.’

  ‘Flooding that amount of gold on to the market would drop the price to almost nothing,’ Nina pointed out, still trying to prolong the discussion. She could hear movement inside the box, sinister little ticks and rustles. ‘And Atahualpa told Pizarro he’d fill the room with treasure, not actual solid gold. However tightly everything was stacked up, there would still be a lot of empty space.’

  ‘Frankly, even if it were four-fifths air, it would still be plenty. But the point is, he didn’t fill the room, did he? Instead, he told his people to hide it all somewhere the Spanish would never find it. And they never did. And nor did anyone else.’ His gaze moved to the statues. ‘Until now.’

  ‘I’m telling you, I don’t know how to find it.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t know . . . yet.’ Stikes slipped the elastic band off the box. ‘But as I said, you’re an intelligent woman. And your past record speaks for itself. I’m sure that if you turn your mind to finding El Dorado, you will.’

  ‘Not gonna happen.’

  ‘Oh, I disagree.’ He lifted the lid. ‘Even if it takes a little, shall we say, encouragement?’ He lowered his gloved thumb and forefinger into the box to grab its contents.

  That it took a couple of attempts suggested the contents did not want to be grabbed.

  ‘Ah, shall we not say? We could . . . ’ Nina dried up in instinctive toe-curling fear as Stikes lifted the box’s occupant into view.

  A scorpion.

  Dark green with mottled golden spots and bands across its carapace, it writhed angrily in Stikes’s grip, jabbing its poisonous sting ineffectually at his thick glove. ‘This is a Gormar scorpion, a native of Venezuela,’ Stikes announced, as if presenting it for Show and Tell. ‘There’s some dispute over whether it’s the deadliest scorpion in the world, or only the second. Either way, its sting will kill a healthy adult in ten minutes.’ He moved closer, holding the thrashing arachnid up to Nina’s face. She cringed back in rising terror. ‘Once stung, the only hope of survival is to get an injection of antivenom. Fortunately,’ he glanced at the second box, ‘I have a syringe there.’

  ‘Th-that’s good,’ Nina gasped, heart racing. The scorpion was mere inches from her eyes, bulbous claws snapping at her. ‘’Cause accidents can happen.’

  ‘Oh, this won’t be an accident.’ Stikes moved the scorpion away from her face . . .

  To her bound arm.

  The hideous little beast lashed out with its tail, the poisonous barb stabbing into the back of her wrist. Nina instinctively yelped, as if stung by a bee – before screaming for real as the full horror of the situation struck her. The jab’s initial pain was fading, but already another was replacing it, a burning spreading up her arm. ‘Oh God! Jesus Christ!’

  Stikes returned the scorpion to the box, then opened the second container and took out a syringe containing a colourless liquid. ‘Now, we’re going to discuss El Dorado. If you give me good answers, I’ll give you the antivenom.’

  Nina struggled uselessly against the ropes. The spot where she had been stung had already swollen. The burning sensation pervaded her body, her racing heart spreading the venom faster through her bloodstream. Another kind of pain, an intense cramp, grew in her shoulder muscles. ‘I don’t know where El Dorado is!’ she cried. ‘Osterhagen’s the Inca expert, not me!’

  ‘You can do better than that. Now, you saw the paintings on the wall. You must have deduced what they meant. I mean, even I did, and I’m not an archaeologist.’ He held up the syringe tantalisingly. ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  The cramp reached her throat, feeling as though an invisible hand was slowly tightening around her neck. ‘An – an account of their journey,’ she said. ‘Showing how they fled Cuzco to escape the Spanish. Along the Andes, then out into the Amazon basin. A map.’

  ‘A map, yes. With a very important stop along the way. El Dorado.’

  ‘Yes,’ she croaked. ‘But they thought the – the Spanish would find it, so they moved on.’

  Stikes nodded. ‘So we have a start point, Cuzco; an end point, Paititi; and a map, of sorts. That should make it possible to find El Dorado. How do we decode the map?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He held up the syringe, pushing the plunger slightly with his thumb. Droplets formed at the end of the needle. ‘Try again.’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know! We never worked that out, we didn’t have time!’

  ‘And you don’t have much time now. So think fast. There were markings on the map, between the pictures. What do they say? Are they directions?’

  She gasped as the pain spread, struggling to remember what she had seen. ‘I don’t know! The Incas never developed writing - if they’re directions, I don’t know what they mean! Nobody’d ever seen anything like that before, not even Osterhagen!’

  Stikes regarded her unblinkingly for a long moment . . . then, with a look of grudging acceptance, turned away. ‘All right. You don’t know how to decode the map. Let’s try something else. How did you really find Paititi? And don’t tell me it was the result of years of patient research.’ He picked up one of the stone figurines. ‘It’s something to do with these, isn’t it?’

  Nina was losing feeling in her hands and feet as the scorpion toxin paralysed her. But despite the growing numbness in her extremities, the pain within her was getting worse. The hand was tight at her throat, squeezing harder. ‘They led me here,’ she choked out, struggling to breathe. Any thoughts of resistance had vanished, survival instinct forcing them aside.

  ‘Led you? How?’

  ‘Earth energy, it’s called earth energy. Don’t know how it works, but – statues glow under certain conditions. Point towards each other. IHA had—’ She broke off, convulsing as a searing cramp rolled through her body. ‘Oh God! Please, please!’ She looked desperately at the syringe.

  ‘The IHA had what?’ Stikes demanded. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Two statues, IHA had two statues. I put them together, they pointed to Venezuela. Interpol thought – link to Inca artefacts Callas was selling out of Valverde.’ She started to hyperventilate, forcing air through her constricted windpipe. ‘I don’t know anything else. Please . . . ’

  Stikes regarded the statuette thoughtfully. ‘This “earth energy” effect – can anyone make it work?’

  Nina’s eyes stung, tears blurring her vision. ‘No, only me – something about my body’s bioelectric field. Don’t know why, it just does . . . ’ She panted, each breath a terrible effort. ‘Please, told you everything I know . . . ’

  Stikes remained still, gazing at the stone figure . . . then put it down. He pulled up Nina’s sleeve, searched for a vein, then jabbed the needle into her.
She barely registered the injection through the burning pain – but after a few seconds, the pressure at her throat eased. With a shuddering gasp, she drew in a long, unrestrained lungful of air.

  He withdrew the needle. The syringe was still half full. ‘So, the first two statues led you to Paititi, where you found half of the third . . . and the other half, according to the painting, is somewhere in El Dorado.’ He returned the syringe to its box. ‘Which means you can use these statues to point the way there. Very handy.’

  ‘Not gonna . . . help you,’ Nina croaked, head lolling.

  ‘We both know that you will. But,’ he said, going to the case, ‘I have work to do first. No point making retirement plans until I have the money to pay for them.’

  Nina blinked away the tears, focus returning as Stikes returned the statuette to its foam bed. He put the bag containing the khipu on top of the three figures and closed the case.

  The khipu . . .

  Osterhagen had said the collections of knotted strings were valuable; not so much for their intrinsic worth as their rarity. But what had Cuff called them? Talking knots. A unique form of record-keeping. The Incas had no written language, but they did have numbers.

  Numbers.

  Distances. Directions. Any journey could be reduced to a series of numbers, as long as you knew the system—

  A new tightness pulled at her chest, but this time not because of the poison. It was an adrenalin surge, sudden excitement as she realised what the knots were silently telling her. Not a series of numbers. A string. In this case, a literal one. The khipu was somehow the key to understanding the map, its markings connected to the dozens of cords.

  Stikes had her, and the statuettes, but he didn’t have a source of earth energy. The effect at Paititi had been so feeble it had only provided the vaguest indication of the final statue piece’s location.

  But with the khipu and the painted account of the Incas’ last journey, she wouldn’t need the statues. She would have a map.

  She stayed silent, trying not to let the unexpected elation of discovery show on her face. Stikes still had the scorpion, still had another dose of antivenom he could use to take her to the agonising edge of death if he thought she was concealing information. He looked down at her, cold blue eyes piercing her soul. Had he realised that she had worked out more?

  No. He turned away and opened the door, summoning the two soldiers back in. They untied her and hauled her back through the cellars.

  ‘Nina,’ said Kit as she was dumped, rubber-legged, in her cell. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Super fine,’ she moaned. The antivenom may have worked, but she still felt numb and nauseous, the sting on her arm an angry red lump.

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  ‘Your turn to find out,’ said Stikes. The soldiers opened his cell. No attempts to grapple the prisoner here; one of the men simply drove a punch into Kit’s stomach, doubling him over.

  ‘You bastards,’ said Nina, but she was too weak even to raise a hand in protest as Kit was dragged from the cage. ‘He’s not an archaeologist, he can’t tell you anything about El Dorado.’

  Stikes held up a hand. The soldiers stopped. ‘Maybe not,’ said the Englishman, ‘but there’s something else he can tell me.’ He leaned closer to the Interpol agent, examining him with unblinking intensity. ‘Why are you here, Mr Jindal?’

  ‘Smuggling . . . case,’ Kit groaned.

  ‘No, why are you really here?’ A silent moment as the two men locked eyes. Then Stikes clicked his fingers. ‘You’ll tell me very soon,’ he said as the soldiers hustled Kit away.

  ‘What do you mean, why is he really here?’ Nina demanded. But Stikes simply gave her a disdainful look before slamming the door behind him.

  18

  The jungle rolled below, mile after mile of endless green. The Cessna was heading almost due north towards Caracas, detouring slightly to avoid the peaks of the Serrania Mapiche mountains. The sun dropped towards the horizon, casting a golden hue over the landscape. The explorers had left Valverde less than an hour ago, so were not even halfway to their destination, and it would be dark in around forty minutes.

  ‘Is landing at night going to be a problem?’ Eddie, in the copilot’s seat, asked Valero. ‘Without a radio, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the Venezuelan replied. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Great.’ He looked down the cabin. ‘How’s Ralf?’

  ‘Asleep,’ said Macy. She and Osterhagen were taking it in turns to watch the injured man, having used the plane’s first aid kit to clean and bandage his gunshot wound. There was a good chance he would recover if he reached a hospital.

  ‘What about you?’

  She grinned half-heartedly. ‘Oh, just kinda wishing I’d worked harder in school so I could have done a medical degree like my parents instead of archaeology. You get shot at less that way. Even in Miami.’

  Eddie smiled, then examined a navigation chart. Valero had earlier pointed out a landmark: Cerro Autana, a great flat-topped mountain, standing alone on the jungle plain. The bizarre tower was now many miles behind them, so before long they would pass about ten miles east of the city of Puerto Ayacucho.

  He noticed something else. Puerto Ayacucho, as a regional capital, had a fairly large airport . . . but it was also marked as a military facility. ‘Is this an airbase?’ he asked, pointing at the map.

  ‘Si,’ Valero replied. ‘That is why we are going to Caracas. I didn’t want to land in the middle of Callas’s friends.’

  It made sense, but Eddie was suddenly on edge. An airbase so close to the border would serve a strategic purpose, its planes patrolling the edge of Venezuelan airspace . . .

  And intercepting intruders.

  ‘Where are the binocs?’ he demanded.

  Macy found them, concerned by his change of tone. ‘What is it?’

  ‘If Callas has friends in the air force, we don’t need to land to meet them. They can come to us!’ He looked northwest through the binoculars, following the long sparkling line of the Orinoco until he spotted the greys and browns of civilisation. The airport was south of the city.

  Even from this distance, it was easy to make out a couple of parked airliners. He was searching for something smaller, however. He panned away from the civilian terminal to a cluster of hangars and support buildings. Their drab functionality told him at a glance that this was the military facility.

  Something was moving in the rippling heat. Camouflage paintwork: a fighter jet, rolling towards the runway.

  It could have been a coincidence, the plane about to set out on a routine patrol . . . but he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. ‘Oscar – take us down as low as you can, and head away from the city. Quick!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause if you don’t, we’ll be going down in flames! They’re sending a fighter after us.’

  Shocked, Valero banked right and put the Cessna into a steep descent. Macy pulled her seatbelt tighter. ‘Okay, I don’t know much about planes, but aren’t we at kind of a horrible disadvantage in this thing?’ She gestured towards the propeller.

  ‘That’s why we’re trying to stay under their radar,’ Eddie told her. ‘Most of it’ll be pointing west, towards Colombia. We might have a chance.’ Valero’s expression, however, suggested it would be very small.

  Macy saw their shared look. ‘Oh, great! After everything we’ve been through, we’re going to be blown up by the Venezuelan Maverick and Iceman?’

  ‘We’re not going to be blown up,’ Eddie growled. He raised the binoculars again.

  Perspective flattened the runway against the landscape as the plane descended. Where was the jet? He couldn’t see it. Lost in the heat distortion, or—

  It was already in the air, a dark dart pulling up sharply atop a cone of flame from its afterburner. Its silhouette triggered his memory of aircraft recognition training: a Mirage 5, a French-built, delta-winged fighter. Some versions lacked radar . . . but not, he remembered, the V
enezuelan variant.

  It would find them. Soon. ‘Buggeration,’ he muttered.

  ‘Oh boy,’ Macy gulped. ‘Not good?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Shit shit shit, why didn’t I pay attention in biology class?’

  The jet levelled out, afterburner flame disappearing – and turned in their direction. ‘Oscar,’ said Eddie, ‘I don’t have a fucking clue how, but we’re only going to stay alive if you can lose it.’

  Valero shot him a disbelieving look. ‘I don’t have a fucking clue how either!’ He eased out of the dive, the Cessna only metres above the rainforest canopy.

  Macy pointed. ‘There’s a river. Maybe we could fly along it, behind the trees.’