Evil Star

THE HOLY CITY

Once again, Matt found himself in the main square at Ica, and this time they were even more nervous than they had been before. It was half past five in the morning but there were plenty of people around. It seemed to him that life began early in Peru. Even so, everything was quiet. There were no tourists yet. The money changers hadn’t come out. If anyone came searching for them, they wouldn’t be too hard to find.

Matt was fairly sure that Salamanda wouldn’t look for them here. As far as the man knew, they could be a hundred miles down the Pan-American Highway – the single road that ran the full length of the country. But Matt wasn’t taking any chances. He had left Pedro to buy the bus tickets for the next leg of their journey while he squatted in the shadows. He was crouching on the edge of the pavement, his arms wrapped around himself, pretending to be asleep. It wasn’t all pretence. He was exhausted. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going.

Pedro returned with the tickets and sat down next to him.

“Cuzco,” Matt said.

“Cuzco,” Pedro agreed and showed him the two slips of paper.

Matt hadn’t been certain that he would really buy them. He knew that Pedro would have preferred to continue south to the city of Ayacucho – where Sebastian and his friends would be waiting. As he took the tickets, Matt glanced at the other boy. Pedro didn’t look pleased by what he had done but he had evidently come to a decision. He was going to stay with Matt.

The two of them ate a quick breakfast of rolls and coffee, bought from a stall, then crept on board the bus at the last moment. By this time, almost every seat was taken and they had to sit apart. Not that it mattered, Matt thought to himself. When they were awake, they couldn’t talk anyway.

Cuzco.

It meant nothing to him. A name spoken by a dying man. It was a town… a city… it could be anywhere in Peru. He guessed it must be far away because the tickets had cost almost half their remaining money. As they set off, jolting through the half-empty main square, Matt looked across the aisle at Pedro who was sitting, cramped, next to the window on the other side of a plump, sweating man. What was he thinking? From the moment he had met Matt, his entire life had been thrown into turmoil. Despite everything, Matt was beginning to worry about him. Pedro had said nothing and shown little emotion since the death of the man called Micos. Of course, he was used to violence and sudden death. But he surely hadn’t been expecting so much more of it.

The Pan-American Highway was long and very straight, running through the landscape as if it had been cut with a knife. For the first couple of hours, there was no real view out of the window. The edges of the road were lined with rubbish – old tyres, pieces of plastic sheeting, tangled coils of wire and mounds of rubble that seemed determined to follow them every inch of the way. Matt had never been anywhere like this before. He had seen rubbish tips in England. There had been parts of Ipswich that were run down and depressing. But the poverty in this country was endless. It had spread like a disease.

The sun rose and suddenly it was hot. Matt looked around at the other passengers: a mixture of city people, farmers, Indians and – once again – animals. The woman sitting next to him was dressed in brilliant colours with a bright-red shawl tied around her neck and a floppy hat. Her skin looked like beaten leather. She could have been a hundred years old. She was examining him curiously and Matt wondered if she had seen through the skin dye, the clothes and the haircut and recognized the English boy underneath. He turned away, afraid she might try to speak to him.

Another hour passed. Then several more. It was impossible to tell how long he had been sitting there. Matt was thirsty. His mouth seemed to be full of dust and diesel fumes. He closed his eyes. Almost immediately he was asleep.

Once again they were back on the shore.

“We should have gone to Ayacucho,” Pedro said.

“I know. I’m sorry. Why did you decide to come along?”

“Because of the man who died. Micos. He died because he wanted to help us. And at the end, when he only had one breath left, he told us to go to Cuzco. It was that important to him. If we didn’t do as he said, his ghost would never forgive us.”

“Do you know anything about Cuzco?” Matt asked.

“Not much. Sebastian went there once and he didn’t like it. It’s a long way away… high up in the mountains. Sebastian told me that you can’t breathe properly because there isn’t enough air. A lot of tourists go there.” Pedro thought for a moment. “It’s not far from a place called Machu Picchu, which is where the Incas used to live.”

“What about the temple of Coricancha?

“I’ve never heard of it.”

The two of them sat in silence for a minute. But in this strange world, a minute could have been an hour or even a day.

“So who do you think he was?” Pedro asked. “He said his name was Micos but he didn’t tell us anything else. And what about the man with the big head? That was Salamanda.”

“Yes.” Matt shuddered.

“I’ve never seen anyone like him. I mean, there are people in Lima with no legs and no arms and stuff like that. You see it all the time. But he was a freak. A real freak. And he was evil. It was like it was oozing from him. He made me want to be sick.”

“Yes. I felt the same.”

Matt glanced at the boat with the cat’s-head prow. He thought that quite soon, he and Pedro must leave the dream island. There was a whole dream world to explore.

“Listen, Pedro,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about everything that’s been happening. It’s all happened so fast – the airport, meeting you, all the rest of it – I didn’t have a chance to work it out. But now I have. And maybe I’ve been stupid. I may have got it all wrong.”

He paused.

“Let’s start with Salamanda. He’s our enemy. He’s the one who wants to open the gate. He must have paid someone to kill William Morton and take the diary. But it wasn’t Salamanda who snatched Richard. He more or less told me that himself. He didn’t even know Richard had been kidnapped.”

“Then who…?”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking. Richard and I arrive in Lima and we’re met by a driver who says that he’s working for Fabian. He tells us his name is Alberto but he could have been anyone. He heads for a hotel where Captain Rodriguez and the police are waiting for us. We’re walking into a trap.

“But on the way, another bunch of people run into us. They shoot at the driver and try to grab us. They take Richard, but I get away.”

“They were trying to stop you! They didn’t want you to go to the hotel because they knew the police were there!”

Matt nodded. “That’s right. Micos was one of them. I recognized him at the hacienda. He was there, with them, in Lima. And last night, he must have followed us somehow to Salamanda’s place. Or maybe he was always waiting for me to show up.”

“Maybe he could have told you where your friend is.”

“I wish he’d told us more. Who he was. Who he was working for.”

“He didn’t know he was going to die.” Pedro thought for a moment. “This temple…”

“Coricancha. If we can find it, maybe we can find Richard.” Matt picked up a pebble and threw it into the sea. It made no sound as it hit the water. “How long will it take us to reach Cuzco?”

“They said twenty hours when I bought the tickets.”

“Well, if we can sleep most of the time, at least we can talk.”

“Yes.” Pedro frowned. “What about this place, Matteo? Where are we now? How come we can understand each other… and remember everything when we wake up?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “When I met you here on this island, I hoped you’d be able to tell me.”

“No chance. I don’t know anything about anything. I’m just me. I do juggling and I steal from tourists. It’s all a mystery, and how I got mixed up with you is the biggest mystery of all.”

“Then let’s get moving.” Matt stood up. “I think we should get off this island. You’ve got a boat. We can take it.”

“Where?”

“There are five of us, Pedro. That’s what this is all about. We have to find the other three.”

The two of them went over to the boat and dragged it off the shingle. Matt climbed in and Pedro pushed off. Suddenly, the mainland looked a long way away. Matt looked up. The sky, still black, was clear. The huge swan hadn’t returned.

The swan. Salamanda had been talking about it in his dining room.

The silver swan must be in position five days from now…

That was what Salamanda had said, but what did he mean? Did he have the power to enter this dream world? Was the swan in some way controlled by him?

Matt shivered. Pedro leapt in, water dripping from his ankles and feet. The boat seemed to have a life of its own. Almost at once it turned away from the island and, picking up speed, it carried them out to sea.

Matt jolted awake again.

The bus had stopped at a crossroads with a few ramshackle buildings and stalls selling food and drink. The old woman who had been sitting next to him got off and Pedro, carrying two bottles of water and some more rolls, was able to join him. As the doors hissed shut and they set off again, Matt remembered the piece of paper that they had found in Salamanda’s study and took it out again.

It had been photocopied from the diary. He was sure of it. The entire page was covered in lines, some of them forming shapes. There was a sort of rectangle that narrowed at one end. A drawing of what looked like an elaborate spider. And there was writing everywhere, going in every direction, some of it so tiny that it would have been unreadable even if it had been in English. There were four lines in the very centre of the page. They looked like a verse from a poem. And in the bottom, left-hand corner, a blazing sun and two words in capital letters:

Was that Spanish? Somehow it didn’t sound like it. What did the page mean and why had Salamanda felt the need to photocopy it? Matt folded the paper away. He would solve the mystery later, once he had found Richard.

They drove on.

The countryside was changing. It was much more mountainous, covered in dense green vegetation. The road, which had been straight before, now continued in a series of hairpin bends as the bus climbed ever higher. Matt remembered what Pedro had said and sniffed the air cautiously. It was definitely getting thinner. Even the colour of the sky was different; a harder, more electric blue. There were farmhouses, thrown onto the upper slopes as if by chance, and strange fortresses, small and circular, built of solid stone. It would be impossible to grow anything here, or so Matt thought. But then they turned another corner and he saw that someone -the local Indians or some civilization before them – had carved fantastic terraces into the sides of the hills, shoring them up with boulders and then planting them with crops. It must have been the labour of hundreds of years.

They passed through villages and then towns. Everything was strange here, quite different from the other side of Peru… more ancient and spectacular. The mountains were huge, enclosing everything. And then the bus reached the top of a valley and Matt saw the city of Cuzco spread out in front of him. It was like nothing he had ever seen in his life.

It really wasn’t like a city at all. That was his first thought. There were no skyscrapers, no office blocks, no main roads, no traffic lights nor even very much traffic. Cuzco was like something out of a storybook, and one written a long time ago. Looking out of the bus window, Matt saw a central square dominated by two Spanish cathedrals and all around, neat, white-fronted houses with terracotta roofs that continued in a sprawl for what looked like several miles, to the foothills on the other side.

But it was only when they had left the bus and begun to make their way on foot towards the centre that Matt was able to get the measure of the place. Cuzco was a beautiful city of archways and verandas, wrought-iron lamps, cobbled streets and pavements so highly polished that they could have been inside a museum or a palace. Every building seemed to be either a restaurant, an Internet cafe or a shop piled high with textiles, jewellery and souvenirs. There was poverty here too. Matt saw a tiny boy, barefoot and dirty, asleep in a doorway. Old women sat in the street, blinking in the sunlight. Shoeshine boys looked for trade around the churches. But the poverty seemed almost picturesque here – just something else for the tourists to photograph.

And there were tourists and backpackers everywhere. As they entered the main square, Matt heard English voices and his immediate instinct was to throw himself into the arms of the first person he met. He needed help. A rich English tourist was the perfect answer. At the very least, they would help him reach a British embassy and they, in turn, would arrange his flight home.

But even as he started forward, he knew he couldn’t do it. First of all there was Richard. He couldn’t just abandon his friend, and if Matt left the country, he might well be condemning the journalist to death. After all, he was the one they wanted. Not Richard.

And then there was Pedro. Whatever had happened to Matt, and however much he hated being here, he had managed to find one of the Five. They were meant to stay together. Running away wouldn’t help anyone, and Matt knew he had to see this through.

He stood back and watched as a group walked past, following a woman waving an umbrella. He fell in with them. At least it gave him a little comfort to hear his own language.

“Cuzco has always been known as the holy city,” she was saying. “It was certainly holy to the Incas, who made this the centre of their empire. They were ruling here in 1533 when the Spanish conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, invaded. The Spanish destroyed much of the city and built their own palaces and cathedrals on what was left, but even today you will see a great deal of Inca influence. In particular, you should look at the amazing walls, fitted together without the use of cement. We’ll have plenty of chance to examine Inca building methods this afternoon, when we visit the temple of Coricancha…”

Coricancha. That was where Matt had been told to go. He was tempted to stick with this woman – but there was no point. He had imagined something small and hard to find but it seemed that the temple was a major tourist attraction. And anyway, he was meant to be there on Friday evening at sunset. What day was it now? Matt had no real idea. He had just spent an entire night on a bus. That would make it Wednesday or Thursday. He hardly knew where he was and he had no idea when he’d arrived. In a way, he was just like Pedro: desplazado. Utterly displaced.

The woman with the umbrella moved off. The tourists obediently followed. Matt turned to Pedro, who was standing in the square looking lost. Of course, he had barely been out of Lima in his life and in many ways the city of Cuzco must have been as strange to him as it was to Matt.

“We need to find somewhere to stay,” he said.

Pedro looked blank.

“A hotel…” Matt added. He knew they couldn’t afford one, but it was the only word that Pedro would understand.

Pedro shook his head. He looked doubtful.

Matt rubbed a finger and thumb together. The well-known gesture for money. “Somewhere cheap,” he said.

They walked together out of the square and along a straight, narrow street with a wall about five metres high on one side. It must have been built by the people that the tour guide had been talking about – the Incas. It could have been made as long ago as a thousand years, when they were in command of the city. The stones were huge. Each one must have weighed a ton. But at the same time they were all irregular in shape, with seven or eight edges. Somehow they had all been locked together without mortar. There were tourists taking photographs of each other against the wall. Street sellers were hawking pictures of it on cards.

The first hotel they came to refused to take them. It was a small, rough-looking place filled with students and backpackers smoking and sipping beer in the open courtyard. Matt crouched in the street beside the door, once again disguising his height, while Pedro spoke to the receptionist – an elderly woman with suspicious eyes. He had money, but she wasn’t having any of it. What he didn’t have was a passport. The money was certainly stolen. Why would two Peruvian beggar boys want to stay in a tourist hotel unless it was to rob the other guests?

The second hotel was the same. At the third, Matt went in and tried to book a room, speaking in English. The owner stared at him in something close to shock and he could understand why. The language he was speaking simply didn’t fit in with his appearance and he backed away quickly. He had no need to remind himself that the police were looking for him. The fact that Captain Rodriguez had been at the hacienda proved that he was in the pay of Diego Salamanda – if any more proof were needed. Matt had no papers, no identity. If the police got their hands on him a second time, he would disappear for good.

By now it was late morning. Matt was thirsty, hungry and exhausted. He could feel the lack of oxygen in the air. Every time he exerted himself, he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. How high up were they? On the bus, it had felt as if they were climbing for hours.

He looked at Pedro and gestured. “Do you want to eat?”

Pedro nodded. “Estoy muerto de hambre.”

They chose the shabbiest, quietest restaurant they could find, but even so the owner refused to serve them until they had paid. But once he had their money and knew they wouldn’t run away, he took pity on them and served a huge meal of chicharrones – chunks of deep-fried pork ribs – and a jug of chicha, which tasted sweet and fruity and was some sort of ancient Inca beer.

Matt and Pedro ate in silence. They had no choice. But even so Matt was beginning to feel closer to the other boy – as if the two of them had known each other all their lives and really had no need to talk. A few other travellers came in, but they paid no attention to them and Matt was able to relax and collect his thoughts.

One of the travellers at the next table was reading a Spanish newspaper. He turned a page and at that moment, everything changed. Pedro nudged him and pointed. Matt turned and saw a photograph of himself – taken by Richard in the middle of York. Matt saw the pale skin, the neat hair, the smiling face and jolted upright in his chair. The picture belonged to another time, another world. He could hardly believe it was himself.

And then came the fear. Had the Peruvian police published the photograph to try and track him down? How had they got it? He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but he had to know what the newspaper said. And how was he meant to do that? It was the same old problem. The article was in Spanish and Pedro couldn’t read. But then the traveller moved his hand and Matt saw English words. His own name, in capital letters. He leant forward. And there it was, a message that was surely from the Nexus:

There was a telephone number printed below.

So someone had finally realized he was missing and had taken steps to find him! Almost for the first time since he arrived in Peru, Matt felt a surge of hope. The Nexus had reached out to him. He was going to be all right.

He quickly memorized the number before the traveller turned the page. The table had a paper cloth and he wrote it down in tomato sauce, using a toothpick, then tore it out. As soon as they had finished eating, he hurried into the street.

“We need to find a telephone,” he told Pedro.

“Si… un telefono.” Pedro was the one who had seen the photograph. He knew what was going on.

Just about every hotel and cafe in Cuzco had telephone and Internet facilities. Matt went into the first one he found, threw down some money and made his demand in English. He wasn’t worrying about his safety any more. He was shown into a creaky, wooden booth where he took out the scrap of torn paper and dialled the number. There was a pause, a dialling tone, then -

“Matthew? Is that you?” It was Fabian speaking. He sounded exhausted and excited at the same time and it occurred to Matt that this was a dedicated telephone line and he must have been sitting beside the receiver, waiting for the call.

“Mr Fabian?”

“Where are you? How are you? Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“I can’t believe it’s you. We’ve all been so worried about you. I nearly went crazy when you and Richard didn’t show up in Lima and then Alberto told me what happened. Is Richard with you?”

“No. He’s not.” Matt felt a sense of relief just talking to Fabian, hearing his voice once again. “I’m OK, but I need your help.”

“Of course. We’ve been waiting for you to ring. You don’t need to worry about anything now, Matt. You just need to tell me where you are and how I can reach you.”

“I’m in Cuzco.”

“Cuzco?” Fabian was astonished. “What are you doing there?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Just tell me. And as soon as I put this phone down, I’m on my way…”

Half an hour later, Susan Ashwood received a telephone call at her home in Manchester, England. It was Fabian, phoning from Lima.

“I’ve spoken to Matthew,” he told her. “You won’t believe the things that have been happening to him but he’s alive and he’s all right. He’s in Cuzco. Don’t ask me how he got there. It’s too long a story. But I’ve already booked a flight and I’ll be there this evening. I’m going to bring him in. And there’s wonderful news, Miss Ashwood. Something you won’t believe. He says he’s found a second Gatekeeper. Another one of the Five…”

The two of them spoke for some time as Fabian filled her in on what Matt had told him. Then he rang off and Susan Ashwood called Nathalie Johnson to pass on the news.

“Matthew is in Cuzco,” she said. “He saw the advertisement and telephoned Fabian…”

The two women spoke for about ten minutes.

And shortly after that, Diego Salamanda received a call at his hacienda near Ica. He barely spoke at all, holding the receiver against his ear. The mouthpiece, of course, came nowhere near his mouth. When he did want to talk, he had to slide the receiver down his face.

Eventually, he smiled and hung up. The caller had told him exactly what he wanted to hear.

Now he knew where Matt was too.