Operation: Amazon

- 18 -

Banks moved slowly toward the nearest doorway opening. The sun was already climbing high, throwing the inside of the building into shadows that were almost black. He switched on the light on his rifle and stepped cautiously forward.

He’d expected crude living quarters, or possibly a storage area for food, so what he found inside surprised him.

The first hint was when his gun’s light reflected back, yellow and gold, from the wall directly ahead. He moved the light around. He had walked into a room some 12 feet square and eight feet high, and every inch of wall and roof was covered in tiles, squares of eight inches each, and all, by the look of it, carved in thick, solid slabs of gold.

Wiggins whistled as he followed Banks and Buller inside.

“What the fuck is this now, Cap? Fucking Eldorado?”

“Maybe it is at that,” Buller said, and Banks turned to see if the man was joking, but he looked deadly serious.

“Legends usually start somewhere in fact,” Buller added.

“Tell me about it,” Banks replied. He shone his rifle barrel’s light around, but there was nothing in the room apart from the carvings on the wall.

“Wait,” Buller said. “Hold the light steady and let me have a closer look.”

There was little sign of the smugness he’d shown earlier; there was now only a wide-eyed face of childlike wonder. For once, Banks could completely understand what the other man was feeling. He did as requested and held the light steady over a patch of the wall. Buller studied it closely.

“I’m no expert,” the man said after a few minutes. “But this looks like some kind of story, maybe a history.”

“If so, it’s one that’ll have to wait until we’re secure,” Banks replied. “Wiggo, next building. Let’s make this a quick sweep. I don’t want us to be still fucking about here when it gets dark again.”

The next building was tumbled in ruin, the roof long gone and only fragments of the walls left standing but they were amazed to see more of the gold tiles, lying, discarded in piles on the ground, with vines and roots growing through them.

“They’ve got so much of it. It has no value to them,” Buller said in a hushed voice, as if the very idea of it appalled him.

“Well it’s no’ as if they’re going to be down the club on a Saturday night blowing the lot on booze, blow, strippers and fags, is it?” Wiggins replied. “Although maybe we should get the kit bags from the chopper and fill them up with some of these wee shiny tiles, Cap? Might help with our pensions?”

Banks laughed.

“Sounds like a fucking plan to me, Wiggo. Maybe on the way back,” he said. “But first let’s make sure this place is as dead as it feels.”

‘Dead’ was exactly how it felt. If Banks hadn’t known better, he’d have said that no one had been here except themselves for many years. It had that same sense of empty loss that he often got from visiting remote and abandoned homesteads back in the Highlands of home. The weather was better here, and they didn’t have mounds of gold tiles just lying around unclaimed in the Scottish hills, more’s the pity, but he felt the same sense of sadness and longing for a past long gone in this place that he did across the sea.

That feeling was exacerbated the farther along the causeway they traveled. There was more gold, more tumbled ruin, and still no sign that any of the buildings had ever actually been lived in. He remembered the tighter-packed buildings they’d passed on the track along the far side of the hill on that first night, and wondered if they’d need to sweep that area too, or whether that would be just as empty and dead as this.

He looked across to the other side of the pathway and saw that Hynd and McCally had advanced almost up to the steps of the pyramid, 20 yards or so ahead of Bank’s threesome.

“Wiggo,” he said. “Get a shift on. Time’s a wasting here.”

They hurried past the last tumbled building, pausing only long enough to make sure it was more of the same mixture of aged ruin and scattered gold, and met Hynd and McCally at the foot of the pyramid steps.

“All clear on your side, Sarge?” he asked.

“Aye,” Hynd replied. “But there’s enough gold to buy Aberdeen twice and still have change.”

“Same over here,” Banks replied. He tapped at his ear and spoke to the chopper captain. “All clear so far. We’re heading inside the pyramid to check that out so we might go dark. Watch our backs.”

“We’re right here and not going anywhere until you get back, Captain,” came the reply, then Banks led the squad, with Buller in the middle, up the steep stairs of the pyramid.

Like their first ascent, it proved to be hard going. Buller, not having the benefit of their military-grade fitness, struggled after the first few steps, and they were forced to keep a snail’s pace to cater for him.

“We shouldn’t even be going this way,” the businessman complained at the approximate halfway point of the climb, where he had to stop for a rest. “The gold seam’s down in the cave far below.”

“Securing the site means securing the whole site,” Banks replied. “Not only the shiny, expensive bits.”

“There’s naebody here. An idiot could see that.”

Wiggins stepped up close to the man.

“Are you calling the captain here an idiot?”

“That’s not what I meant…” Buller blustered. “I’m just saying…”

“And I’m just telling you. Last time. Shut the fuck up or you’ll get a skelp.”

Buller looked from Wiggins to Banks, and back to Wiggins. The private winked at him, and smiled.

“What’s it to be?”

Buller went back to climbing.

Banks waited on the top step for Buller to catch up. He tapped at his ear and spoke, looking down the length of the causeway to where the chopper sat quiet at the far end.

“Everything still okay down there?” he asked.

“All quiet, Captain. I think we’re the only ones here.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said. “Checking out now. Will check back in when I can.”

Buller heaved himself up the last step, stopped, and looked around.

“Well, you got us up here. Now what?”

“Now we go down through the dungeon we were held in before,” Banks said. “I need to make sure it’s empty. And it’ll get us to your cave soon enough. What has me worried is that those people, when they weren’t being bloody big snakes, must have lived somewhere, eaten somewhere, and we haven’t found that yet. I won’t be happy until then. So into the pyramid we go, to see what’s what.

“But first, I need to warn you. If nobody’s been here since the night before last, then your man Wilkes will be inside here. And it’s not pretty.”

Buller waved a hand as if pushing the words away.

“It won’t be anything I haven’t already seen. I told you before, they made me watch.”

“It’s your funeral,” Banks said.

“No. It’s Wilkes’. But he got paid well enough, so fuck him.”

“Nobody gets paid well enough for this,” Banks said, and led them into the altar room at the top of the pyramid.

Wilkes’ body was still splayed out on the altar. A swarm of bloated black flies crawled over it feasting in so thick a carpet that the body appeared to squirm in the throes of a fit.

“Well, that’s fucking disgusting,” Wiggins said.

Before Banks could counsel caution, the private stepped forward, and rolled the body off the altar. The swarm of flies rose lazily in the air and started to dissipate almost immediately. Wiggins went over to the wall and Banks saw that the cauldron of oil still sat there in the corner. Wiggins bent toward it, obviously intent on using the contents to burn the body. He didn’t get as far as lifting it, for the room echoed with the sound of rock grinding on rock. They had to step back as the altar stone slid across the floor, slowly with loud grinding and the crash and clatter of wood on wood somewhere under their feet.

Seconds later, they stood looking down into a dark hole below them. A run of stone steps led away, down into the darkness.