Temple

CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL

MESSAGE IS AS FOLLOWS:

ATTENTION PERU TEAM. ATTENTION PERU TEAM.

THIS IS CHILE SECOND UNIT. REPEAT. THIS IS CHILE SECOND

UNIT,

FIRST UNIT IS DOWN, REPEAT, FIRST UNIT IS DOWN.

15 MINUTES AGO FIRST UNIT ENTERED COLONIA ALEMANIA IN

CONCERT WITH CHILEAN NATIONAL GUARD, REPORTED ENTIRE

COMPOUND DESERTED. REPEAT. FIRST UNIT REPORTED ENTIRE

COMPOUND DESERTED.

PRELIMINARY TESTING REVEALED HIGH TRACE LEVELS OF

URANIUM AND PLUTONIUM ORE, BUT BEFORE FURTHER DATA COULD BE OBTAINED A DETONATION OCCURRED INSIDE THE COMPOUND.

DETONATION APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN NUCLEAR. REPEAT.

DETONATION APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN NUCLEAR.

ENTIRE FIRST UNIT HAS BEEN LOST. REPEAT. ENTIRE FIRST

UNIT HAS BEEN LOST.

MUST ASSUME STORMTROOPERS ARE ALREADY EN ROUTE TO

PERU.

Race looked up from the message in horror.

Colonia Alemania had been empty at the time the BKA team had arrived. It had also been booby-trapped, set to explode as soon as someone set foot on it.

A sliver of ice ran down Race’s spine as he looked at the final line of the message again:

MUST ASSUME STORMTROOPERS ARE ALREADY EN ROUTE TO PERU.

Race looked at his watch.

It was 11:05 am.

‘How long till they get here?’ Nash asked Schroeder.

‘It’s impossible to say,’ Schroeder said. ‘There’s no know ing how long ago they left the compound. They could have left it two hours ago or two days ago. Either way, the trip from Chile to here is not a long one. We must assume that they are very close.’

Nash turned to Scott. ‘Captain, I want you to get on the horn to Panama and find out when that damned extraction team is going to get here. We need firepower and we need it now.’

‘Got it.’ Scott nodded to Doogie who dashed off toward the radio unit.

‘Cochrane,’ Nash said. ‘How’s the situation with the surviving Huey?’

Buzz Cochrane shook his head. ‘It’s shot. It took a hammering when that Apache went wild during the cats’ attack. Stray gunfire damaged both the tail rotor and the ignition ports.’

‘How long will it take to fix?’

‘With the tools we’ve got here, we can fix the ignition ports, but it’ll take time. As for the tail rotor, well, you can’t fly without it, and it’s a bitch to repair. I guess we could strip some of the secondary systems and use them, but what we really need are brand-new axles and rotary switches, and we ain’t gonna find them here.’

‘Sergeant. Get that Huey ready to fly again. Whatever it takes,’ Nash said.

‘Yes, sir.,’

Cochrane left the circle, taking Tex Reichart with him.

There was a long silence.

‘So we’re stuck here…’ Lauren said.

‘With a group of terrorists on their way…’ Gaby Lopez added.

‘Unless we decide to trek out of here on foot,’ Race suggested.

Captain Scott turned to Nash. ‘If we stay, we die.’

‘And if we leave, the Nazis get the idol,’ Copeland said.

‘And a workable Supernova,’ Lauren said.

‘Not an option,’ Nash said firmly. ‘No, there’s only one thing we can do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We get the idol before the Nazis get here.’

The three soldiers made their way cautiously up the river side path in the pounding subtropical rain.

Captain Scott and Corporal Chucky Wilson led the way, their M-16s trained warily on the dense foliage to their right. The lone German paratrooper, Graf, now armed with an American M-16, walked along the path behind them, bringing up the rear.

Each man wore a tiny fibre-optic camera attached to the side of his helmet which sent images back to the others in the village.

After a while, the three soldiers came to the fissure in the mountain side the fissure that led to the rock tower and the temple.

Scott nodded to Wilson and the young corporal entered the narrow stone passageway, gun-first.

Back in the village, Race and the others watched on a monitor as Scott, Wilson and Graf made their way through the fissure. The images being sent back from the three commandos were depicted in separate rectangles on the screen, in ghostly blackand-white.

The plan was simple.

While Scott, Wilson and Graf entered the temple and seized the idol inside it, the remaining Green Berets and the other German paratrooper private named Molke— would get to work repairing the remaining Huey. Once the idol was obtained, they would all fly out of Vilcafor before the Nazi terrorists arrived.

‘Ah, aren’t we forgetting something?” Race said.

‘Like what?’ Nash said.

‘Like the cats. Aren’t they the reason we’re in this mess in the first place? Where are they?’

‘The cats retreated from the village with the onset of daylight,’ a voice said from behind Race in perfect clipped English.

Race turned to see the fourth and last German man standing behind him, smiling.

He couldn’t have been more different from the other three German males—Schroeder, Graf and Molke. While they were all visibly strong and fit, this man was older— much older, at least in his fifties—and quite obviously unathletic. His most dominant feature was a long grey beard. Race disliked him on sight. His whole stance and posture reeked of pomposity and arrogance.

‘At dawn, the cats departed in the direction of the plateau,’ the man said uppishly. ‘I presume that they returned to their nest inside the temple.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I imagine that since the last few generations of their species have spent almost four hundred years in pitch darkness, their kind are not very comfortable in daylight.’

The bearded man extended his hand in an abrupt German way. ‘I am Doctor Jolann Krauss, zoologist and cryptozoologist from the University of Hamburg. I have been brought along on this mission to advise on certain animal issues raised in the manuscript.’

‘What’s a cryptozoologist?’ Race asked.

‘One who studies mythical animals,’ Krauss said.

“Mythical animals…’

“Yes. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, the yeti, the great cats of the English moors, and of course,’ he added, ‘the South American rapa.’

‘You know about these cats?’ Race said.

‘Only what I have learned from unverified sightings, local legends and ambiguous hieroglyphs. But such is the beauty of cryptozoology, it is the study of animals that cannot be studied, because no-one can actually prove they exist.’

‘So you think we were attacked by a pack of mythical animals,’ Race said. ‘They didn’t look very mythical to me.’

Krauss said, ‘Every fifty years or so, there is a spate of unusual deaths in this part of the Amazon rainforest. At those times, local men who embark on nighttime trips between villages are known to just, well, disappear. On rare occasions, their remains are found in the morning.

At those times, men are found with their throats wrenched from their bodies or their spines ripped out.

‘The local people have a name for the beast that comes in the night to kill without mercy, a name which has been passed down from generation to generation. They call it the rapa.’

Krauss looked at Race closely. ‘We should heed this local folklore very carefully, because it can be of great use to us in evaluating our enemy.’

‘How?’

‘Well, for one thing, we can use it to discern certain things about our feline antagonists.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, first of all, we can safely assume that the rapa is nocturnal. The remains of local men are found only in the morning. And we know from our own experience that these cats flee from the morning light. Ergo, they are nocturnal. They hunt only at night and retire for the main part of the day.’

‘If they’ve been shut up inside that temple for generations,’ Race said, ‘how could they have survived? What have they been eating?’

‘That I do not know,’ Krauss said, frowning seriously, as if he were pondering a troublesome mathematical equation.

Race looked up at the mountain-plateau that housed the mysterious temple. A veil of slanting rain covered its rocky eastern face.

‘So what are they doing now?’ he said.

‘Sleeping, I imagine,’ Krauss said, ‘in the safety of their temple. Which is why now is the best time to send our men in to get that idol.’

Scott, Wilson and Graf emerged from the narrow passageway and stepped out into the pool of shallow water at the base of the magnificent crater.

It was unusually dark in the canyon. Any light that there was had been blocked out by the thick rain clouds in the sky and the dense canopy of trees that overhung the crater’s rim. Every fissure and crack in the canyon’s walls was cloaked in shadow.

Scott and Wilson walked in front. Thin beams of light shot out from the small flashlights attached to the barrels of their M16s.

‘All right—’ Scott said into his throat mike.

“—we’re heading up the path now,” his voice said over the monitor’s speakers.

Race watched tensely as, on the screen, Scott, Wilson and Graf stepped up out of the water and onto the narrow pathway that was cut into the crater’s outer wall.

Johann Krauss said, ‘What we must also remember about our enemy, however, is that they are, first and foremost, cats. They cannot change what they are. They think like cats, they act like cats.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that only one species of great cat—the cheetah-catches its prey by chasing after it.’

‘How do other great cats catch their prey?’

‘There are several strategies. Tigers in India are known to lie in wait covered in leaves, sometimes for hours at a time, waiting for their prey to arrive on the scene. Once their prey comes close enough, they pounce.

‘On the other hand, lions in Africa employ quite sophisticated pack-hunting methods—one such technique involves a lioness parading around in front of a herd of gazelles while her colleagues sneak up on the gazelles from behind. It’s quite ingenious really, and very effective. But it is also very unusual.’

‘Why?’ Race asked.

‘Because it implies the existence of some kind of communication between the lions.’

Race turned back to face the monitor.

The three soldiers had made it a short way up the spiralling path, so that they were now about ten feet above the wide body of water that covered the base of the crater.

Race was watching Corporal Wilson’s camera view as it panned out over the flat expanse of water when suddenly he saw a flicker of movement on the water’s surface.

It had been a ripple of some sort—from something just underneath the water’s surface.

“What was that?’ he said.

‘What was what?’

‘Wilson,’ Race said, leaning close to the microphone.

‘Look to your right for a second, at the water.’

Graf and Scott must have heard Race’s question too because, at that moment, all three camera views panned right, out over the glistening expanse of water that encircled the base of the rock tower.

“I don’t see anything…” Scott said.

‘There!’ Race said, pointing at another ripple in the water.

It seemed to have been made by the whiplash of an animal’s tail. An animal that seemed to be travelling in the direction of the three soldiers.

‘What the hell…?’ Scott said as he looked out over the wide body of water before him.

A small bow-wave of water seemed to be cutting across the lake at an unusually quick speed—-coming right toward him and his men.

Scott frowned. Then he took a cautious step forward, toward the edge of the path and the ten-foot drop down to the water’s surface.

He peered out over the edge.

And saw three black cats clawing their way up the sheer stone wall beneath him!

Scott quickly raised his M-16 but at that exact moment an enormous black shape burst out from a dark fissure in the rock wall behind him and slammed into his back, sending him flying off the edge of the pathway and down into the water below, where a whole cluster of other black shapes converged on him in an instant.

Race stared at the monitor in stunned awe as he watched the whole horrific scenefr0m Scott’s point of view. All he saw was the blur of slashing razor-like teeth and flailing human arms, all overlaid with Scott’s own gasps and futile screams.

Then, not a moment later, the camera went under the surface and the screen cut to hash and abruptly there was silence.

In the crater, a roar of gunfire shattered the unnatural stillness as the German soldier Graf jammed down on the trig ger of his M-16.

But no sooner had a flaring tongue of fire spewed out from the muzzle of his gun than—smack!—Graf was pounced upon from above, by a cat that had been lurking on the rock wall high above him!

Further down the path, Chucky Wilson spun instantly to see the struggle between Graf and the cat, saw that the Ger man paratrooper was putting up one hell of a fight.

And then suddenly—riiiiippppp!—Graf’s throat came clear of his neck and his body fell instantly limp.

Wilson blanched. ‘Oh, luck.’

And at that moment the cat standing over Graf’s body slowly looked up at him and stared into his eyes.

Wilson froze. The big cat stepped ominously forward, over Graf’s immobile body, toward him.

Wilson spun.

Only to see another massive black cat standing on the path behind him, cutting off his retreat.

Nowhere to run.

Nowhere to hide.

Wilson turned again and saw the fissures and crevices in the rock wall and for a second thought there might be an escape there. He looked into one of the shadowy fissures in the rockface—

—and found himself staring at the smiling face of one of the cats.

And then with a suddenness that was nothing short of horrifying, the big cat’s jaws rushed toward him at phenomenal speed and in an instant there was nothing.

Everyone just stared at the monitor in silence.

‘Oh my God,’ Gaby Lopez breathed.

‘Shit,’ Lauren said.

The four remaining Green Berets just gazed at the monitor, speechless.

Race turned to the German zoologist, Krauss. ‘They only come out at night, do they?’

‘Well,’ Krauss said, bristling. “Quite obviously, the darkness at the base of the crater allows them to spend the greater part of the day there—’

‘Kennedy,’ Nash said sharply. ‘What’s the status on that extraction team?’

‘I’m still trying to get through to Panama, sir,’ Doogie said from over by the radio pack. ‘Signal keeps dropping out.’

‘Keep trying.’ Nash looked at his watch.

It was 11:30 am.

“Shit,” he said.

He wondered what had happened to Romano and his team. Last he heard, they’d taken off from Cuzco at 7:45 pm last night. They should have been here by now. What had happened to them? Could the Nazis have shot them down?

Or had they just misread the totems and gotten hopelessly lost?

Whatever the case, if they were still alive, one thing was certain: they would find the village eventually.

Which meant he now had two hostile groups on their way to Vilcafor.

“Shit,’ he said again.

Doogie came over.

‘The extraction team took off from Panama one hour ago—three choppers: two Comanches, one Black Hawk.

They estimate that they’ll be here by late afternoon, at approximately 1700 hours. I put up a UHF signal, so they can home in on that and extract us.’

As Doogie reported his news to Nash, a strange thought hit Race: Why wasn’t the Army extracting them via Cuzco? Why were they sending choppers down from Panama?

Surely the easiest way out of here was to go back the same way they had come.

It was at that moment that a sentence from the Santiago Manuscript popped into his head.

A thief never uses the same entrance twice.

Nash turned to Van Lewen. ‘Do we have access to the SAT-SN network?’ He said it ‘Sat-sun’—‘the Sat-sun network’.

‘Yes, sir, we do.’

‘Patch us in. Set a tracking pattern over central-eastern Peru. I want to know exactly where those Nazi bastards are. Cochrane.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get me satellite imagery of Vilcafor. We have to set up a defensive position.’

‘Yes, sir.”

‘What’s SAT-SN?’ Gaby Lopez asked.

Troy Copeland answered. ‘SAT-SN is the acronym for the Satellite Aerospace Tracking and Surveillance Network. It’s the aerial equivalent of SOSUS, the array of hydrophones that the U.S. Navy has stretched across the north Atlantic to detect enemy submarines.

‘Put simply, SAT-SN is an array of fifty-six geosynchronous satellites in near-earth orbit that monitor the world’s airspace, airplane by airplane.’

‘If that’s the simple explanation,’ Race said drily, ‘I’d hate to hear the complex one.’

Copeland ignored him. ‘Any aircraft has seven different types of observable characteristics—radar, infrared, visual, contrails, engine smoke, acoustics and electromagnetic emissions.

The SAT-SN satellites use all seven of these characteristics to record the signature and location of individual aircraft all over the world—military and civilian.

‘What Colonel Nash wants now is a snapshot of central-eastern Peru so that he can spot every airplane over it—in particular, those planes outside regular commercial air corridors. From those pictures, we’ll be able to see where our Nazi friends are and hopefully calculate how long we’ve got till they get here.’

Race looked over at Nash.

He appeared to be deep in thought—as one would expect from a leader who had just lost three of his best fighting men.

‘What are you thinking?’ Race asked.

‘We have to get that idol,“ Nash said, ‘and soon. Those Nazis will be here any second now. But there’s no way past those cats. There’s no way of knowing how to get past them.’

Race cocked his head.

Then he said, ‘There was someone who knew.’

‘Who?’

‘Alberto Santiago.’

‘What?’

‘Remember the boulder that was wedged in the doorway to the temple?’

‘Yeah…’

‘On it was a warning: “Do not enter at any cost. Death looms within.” That warning had the initials “A.S.” written underneath it. Now I haven’t read enough of the manuscript yet, but I can only assume that Santiago and Renco stumbled onto the same problem we have now—before they arrived at Vilcafor, someone opened up that temple and let the rapas loose.

‘But somehow,’ Race said, ‘Santiago figured out a way to get those cats back inside the temple. Then he carved a warning into that boulder for anyone who would think to open it up again.

‘Now, we used the manuscript to find this village and we figured that was all it was good for but the copy I read was only partially completed. I’ll bet my life that the key to getting past those cats lies in the rest of the Santiago Manuscript.’

‘But we don’t have any more of the manuscript,’ Nash said.

‘I’ll bet they do,’ Race nodded at the four remaining Germans.

Schroeder nodded with his eyes.

“And I’ll bet you didn’t translate it beyond the part where it revealed the location of Vilcafor, did you?’ Race said.

‘No,’ Schroeder said. ‘We did not.’

A new look of purpose came over Nash’s face. He turned to Schroeder.

‘Get your copy of the manuscript,’ he said. ‘Get it now.” A few minutes later, Schroeder handed Race a fat stack of paper wedged inside a worn cardboard folder. The stack of paper was a lot thicker than Race’s earlier pile had been.

The complete manuscript.

‘I don’t suppose any of you four are your team’s translator?’ Nash asked the BKA man.

Schroeder shook his head. ‘No. Our language expert was killed during the cats’ attack on the rock tower.’

Nash turned to Race. ‘Then it looks like you’re it, Professor. Lucky I insisted on bringing you along.’

Race retired to the ATV to read the new copy of the manuscript.

Once he was safely ensconced inside the big armoured vehicle, he opened the folder surrounding the new manuscript. He was met by a Xeroxed cover sheet.

It was an odd cover sheet—markedly different from the overly elaborate one he had seen on the earlier copy. The main difference being that this cover sheet was remarkably almost deliberately plain.

The title, The True Relation of a Monk in the Land of the Incas, was written in a very rough handwritten scrawl. One thing was for sure elegance and majesty had been the last thing on the mind of whoever had written this.

And then it hit Race.

This was a photocopy of the actual, original Santiago Manuscript.

A Xerox of the document that had been written by Alberto Santiago himself.

Race leafed through the text. Page after page of Santiago’s scratchy handwriting unfolded before him.

He scanned the words, and soon he found the place where his last He scanned the words, and soon he found the place where his last reading had stopped so abruptly—the part where Renco, Santiago and the criminal Bassario had landed at Vilcafor only to find it in ruins, only to find its people scattered all along the main street, bathed in blood…

Renco, Bassario and I walked up the deserted main street of Vilcafor.

The silence around us filled my heart with dread. Never before had I heard the rainforest so mute.

I stepped over a bloodstained body. The head had been ripped clean from its trunk.

I saw other bodies, saw horrified faces with their eyes open in abject terror. Some had had their arms and legs wrenched from their sockets.

Many, I saw, had had their throats removed by some violent external force.

‘Hernando?’ I whispered to Renco.

‘Impossible,’ my brave companion said. ‘There is no way he could have arrived here before we did.’

As we progressed down the main street of the town, I saw the giant dry moat that encircled the village. Two flat wooden bridges-constructed of several tree trunks laid down side by side—spanned its breadth on either side of the village. They looked like bridges that could be withdrawn at a moment’s notice, the bridges of a citadel town.

Quite obviously, whoever had attacked Vilcafor had taken it by surprise.

We arrived at the citadel. It was a great two-tiered stone building, pyramidal in shape, but round, not square.

Renco hammered on the large stone door set into its base.

He called Vilcafor’s name and proclaimed that it was he, Renco, arrived with the idol.

After a time, the stone slab was rolled aside from within and some warriors appeared, followed by Vilcafor himself, an old man with grey hair and hollow eyes. He was dressed in a red cape but he looked about as regal as a beggar on the streets of Madrid.

‘Renco!’ the old man exclaimed when he saw my companion.

‘Uncle,’ said Renco.

It was at that moment that Vilcafor saw me.

I suppose I expected a look of surprise to cross his face at the sight of a Spaniard accompanying his nephew on his heroic mission—but none did. Rather Vilcafor just turned to Renco and said, ‘Is this the goldeater my messengers have told me so much about? The one who helped you escape from your confinement, the one who rode out of Cuzco by your side?’

‘He is, Uncle,’ Renco replied.

They spoke in Quechuan, but by now Renco had improved my fledgling knowledge of this most peculiar language and I was able to understand most of what they said.

Vilcafor grunted. ‘A noble goldeater.., humph… I did not know such an animal existed. But if he is a friend of yours, my nephew, he is welcome here.’

The chieftain turned again, and this time he saw the criminal Bassario standing behind Renco with an impish grin spread across his face.

Vilcafor recognised him instantly.

He shot an enraged look at Renco. ‘What is he doing here—?’

‘He travels with me, Uncle. For a reason,’ said Renco. He paused before he spoke again. ‘Uncle. What happened here?

Was it the Span—?’

“No, my nephew. It was not the goldeaters. No, it was an evil a thousand times worse than that.’

‘What happened?’

Vilcafor bowed his head. ‘My nephew, this is not a safe place for you to seek refuge…’

‘Why?”

“No… no, not safe at all.’

‘Uncle,’ said Renco and sharply. ‘What have—you done?’

Vilcafor looked up at Renco, then his eyes darted to the great rocky plateau that towered over the little town.

‘Nephew, quickly, come inside the citadel. It will be nightfall soon and they come out with the dusk or at times of darkness. Come, you will be safe inside the fortress.’

‘Uncle, what is going on here?’

‘It is my fault, my nephew. It is all my fault.’

The weighty stone door to the citadel rolled shut behind us with a resounding thud.

The interior of the two-storey pyramid was dark, illuminated only by the light of a few hand-held torches. I saw a dozen frightened faces huddled in the darkness before me women holding children, men bearing injuries or wounds. I guessed that they were all Vilcafor’s kin, those fortunate enough to have been inside the citadel when the slaughter had occurred.

I also noticed a squareshaped hole in the stone floor— into and out of which some of the men climbed every few moments. There seemed to be a tunnel of some kind down there.

‘It is a quenko,’ Bassario whispered in my ear.

‘What is that?’ I inquired.

‘A labyrinth. A maze. A network of tunnels carved into the rock underneath a town. There is a famous one not far outside Cuzco.

Originally, quenkos were designed as escape tunnels for the ruling elite—only the royal family of a given town would know the code that would enable them to navigate the labyrinth’s confusing array of tunnels.

‘Now, however, quenkos are mainly used for sport and gambling at festival time. Two warriors are placed inside the maze, along with five adult jaguars. The warrior who successfully navigates the quenko—and evades the jaguars—and finds the exit first, wins. It is very popular to gamble on the result. I would imagine, however, that the quenko in this town is used more for its original purpose as a tunnel through which royalty can beat a hasty retreat.’

Now it happened that Vilcafor guided us to a corner of the citadel where there was a fire. He begged us to sit in some day. Some servants arrived and gave us water.

‘So, Renco. You have the idol?’ said Vilcafor.

‘I do.’ Renco pulled the idol—still cloaked in its magnificent silken cloth—from his leather satchel. He uncovered the glistening black-and-purple carving and the small group gathered in the corner of the citadel gasped as one.

If it were at all possible, I do believe that in the flickering orange light of the citadel the idol’s snarling feline features attained a new level of malevolence.

‘You are truly the Chosen One, my nephew,’ said Vilcafor.

‘The one destined to save our idol from those who would take it away from us. I am proud of you.’

‘And I you, Uncle,’ said Renco, although I gathered from the inflection in his voice that he was anything but. ‘Tell me what happened here.’

Vilcafor nodded.

Then he spoke thusly: ‘I have heard of the inroads the goldeaters have been making into our country. They have penetrated villages both in the mountains and in the wetland forests. I have long believed that it is only a matter of time before they find this secret encampment.

‘With this in mind, two moons ago I ordered a new path be constructed, a path that would lead deep into the mountains, away from these gold-lusting barbarians. But this path would be a special path—-once it was used it could be destroyed. Then, owing to the terrain in these parts, there would be no other entrance into the mountains within twenty days’ travel from here. Any pursuer would lose weeks trying to follow us, by which time we would be long gone.’

‘Go on,’ said Renco.

‘My engineers found the perfect place for this path, a most wondrous canyon not far from here. It is a wide circular canyon with an enormous finger of rock protruding up through the middle of it.

‘As it happened, the walls of this canyon were perfect for our new path and I ordered the commencement of building work immediately. All went well until the day my engineers arrived at the summit of the canyon. For on that day, as they looked down on the canyon beneath them, they saw it.’

‘What did they see, Uncle?’

“They saw a building of some kind—a building made by man—situated on top of the enormous finger of stone.’

Renco cast a worried glance in my direction.

‘I immediately ordered the construction of a rope bridge, and then, accompanied by my engineers, I crossed that bridge and examined the structure on top of it.’

Renco listened in silence.

‘Whatever it was, it was not built by Incan hands. It looked like a religious structure of some sort, a temple or shrine not unlike others which have been found elsewhere in these forests. Temples built by the mysterious empire that inhabited these lands many years before our own.

‘But there was something very strange about this particular temple. It had been sealed by a great boulder. And on this boulder were inscribed many pictures and markings which not even our most holy men could decipher.’

‘What happened then, Uncle?’ said Renco.

Vilcafor lowered his eyes. ‘Someone suggested that perhaps this was the fabled Temple of Solon, and if it was, then in it there would be a most fabulous treasure of emeralds and jade.’

“What did you do, Uncle?’ said Renco seriously.

‘I ordered that the temple be opened,’ said Vilcafor, bowing his head.

‘And in doing so, I unleashed an evil like none I have ever seen. I unleashed the rapa.’

Night fell and Renco and I repaired to the roof of the citadel to keep watch over the town and look for this animal that they call the rapa.

Unsurprisingly Bassario went off to a shadowy corner of the great stone fortress and sat with his back to the room, doing whatever it was that he did.

From the roof of the citadel, I looked out over the village.

Now, it must be said that after our journey through the forests, I had become accustomed to the sounds of the night time jungle. The croaking of frogs, the droning of insects, the rustling of the high branches as monkeys scampered among them.

But there were no such sounds here.

The forest surrounding the village of Vilcafor was absolutely silent.

No animal made a sound. Not a living thing stirred.

I looked down at the bodies that lay strewn all over the main street.

‘What happened here?’ I inquired of Renco softly.

At first he did not reply. Then at last he said, ‘A great evil has been unleashed, my friend. A great evil.’

‘What did your uncle mean when he said that the temple they found might have been “the Temple of Solon”? Who or what is Solon?’

Said Renco, ‘For thousands of years, many great empires have inhabited these lands. We do not know much about these empires, except what we have learned from the buildings they left behind and the stories that have been passed down through the local tribes.

‘One popular tale among the tribes of this region pertains to a strange empire of men who called themselves the Moxe, or Moche. The Moxe were prolific builders, and according to the local natives, they worshipped the rapa. Some say that they even tamed the rapa, but this is disputed.

‘Anyway, the fable that the local tribes most like to tell about the Moxe concerns a man named Solon. According to legend, Solon was a man of remarkable intellect, a great thinker, and as such, he soon became chief adviser to the supreme Moxe emperor.

‘When Solon reached old age, as a reward for his years of loyal service, the emperor presented him with a hoard of fabulous riches and bequeathed to him a temple to be built in his honour. The emperor said that Solon could have the temple built at any location he desired, in whatever shape or form. Whatever he wanted, the emperor’s best engineers would build.’

Renco stared out into the darkness.

‘It is said that Solon requested his temple be built at a secret location and that all his riches be placed inside it.

Then he instructed the emperor’s most able huntsmen to capture a pack of rapas and place them inside the temple with his treasure.’

‘He put a pack of rapas inside the temple?’ said I incredulously.

‘That is so,’ said Renco. ‘But to understand why he did that, you must understand what Solon wanted to achieve. He wanted his temple to be the ultimate test of human conduct.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Solon knew that word of the immense treasure inside his temple would spread quickly. He knew that greed and avarice would drive adventurers to seek it out and plunder its riches.

‘And so he made his temple a test. A test of the choice between fabulous wealth and certain death. A test designed to see if man could control his own wanton greed.’

Renco looked at me. “The man who conquers his greed and chooses not to open the temple lives. The man who succumbs to temptation and opens the temple in search of fabulous wealth will be killed by the rapas.’

I took this in silently.

‘This temple that Vilcafor has spoken of,’ said I, ‘the one situated atop a giant finger of stone. Do you think it is Solon’s temple?’

Renco sighed. ‘If it is, then it saddens me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it means that we have come a long way to die.’

I stayed with Renco a while on the roof of the citadel, staring out into the rain

An hour passed.

Nothing emerged from the forest.

Another hour. Still nothing.

At which time, Renco instructed me to repair to the citadel and sleep. I happily obeyed his command, so fatigued was I from our long journey.

And so I retired to the main body of the citadel, where I lay down on a mound of grass. A couple of small fires burned in the corners of the room.

“I rested my head in the hay, but no sooner had my eyelids touched than I felt an insistent tapping on my shoulder.

I opened my eyes and found myself looking at the ugliest face I have ever seen in my entire life.

An old man stood crouched in front of me, smiling at me with a toothless grin. He had horrid tufts of grey hair sticking out from his eyebrows, nose and ears.

‘Greetings, goldeater,’ said the ancient fellow. ‘I have heard of what you did for young Prince Renco—aiding his escape from his cage—and I wanted to express my profound gratitude to you.’

I looked around the citadel. The fires were now out, the people who had previously been huddled about the room were now silent, sleeping. I must have actually fallen asleep, at least for a short time.

‘Oh,’ said I. ‘Well, you.., you are welcome.’

The old man pointed a bony finger at my chest and nodded knowingly.

‘Take heed, goldeater. Renco is not the only one whose destiny lies with that idol, you know.’

“I do not understand.”

‘What I mean is Renco’s role as guardian of the Spirit of the People comes directly from the mouth of the Oracle at Pachacamac.’ The old man smiled that same toothless grin.

‘And so does yours.’

I had heard of the Oracle at Pachacimac. She was the venerable old woman who kept watch over the temple-shrine there. The traditional keeper of the Spirit of the People.

‘Why?’ said I. ‘What has the Oracle said of me?’

‘Soon after the goldeaters arrived on our shores, the Oracle announced that our empire would be crushed. But she also foretold that so long as the Spirit of the People stayed out of the hands of our conquerors, our soul would live on.

But she made it very clear that only one man—and one man only—-could keep the idol safe.“

‘Renco.’

‘Correct. But what she said in full was this:

“There will come a time when he will come, A man, a hero, beholden of the Mark of the Sun. He will have the courage to do battle with great lizards, He will have the jinga, He will enjoy the aid of brave-hearted men, Men who would give of their lives, in honour of his noble cause, And he will fall from the sky in order to save our spirit. He is the Chosen One.”

‘The Chosen One?’ said I.

“That is right.”

I began to wonder whether I fell into the category of a ‘bravehearted man’ who would give of his life to help Renco. I decided that I didn’t.

Then I mused on the Oracle’s use of the word jinga. I recalled that it was a quality most revered in Incan culture.

It was that rare combination of poise, balance and speed. The ability of a man to move like a cat.

I recalled our daring escape from Cuzco and the way Renco had leapt lightly from rooftop to rooftop, and how he had slid down the rope to land on the back of my horse. Did he move with the surefooted grace of a cat? Without a doubt.

‘What do you mean when you say he will have the courage to do battle with great lizards?’ I inquired.

The old man said, ‘When Renco was a boy of thirteen, his mother was taken by an alligator as she was retrieving water from the banks of her local stream. Young Renco was with her at the time, and when he saw the monster drag his mother into the river, he dived into the water after her and wrestled with the ugly beast until it released her from its grip.

Not many men would leap into a stream to do battle with such a fearsome creature. Not least a boy of thirteen.’

I swallowed.

I had not known of this tremendous act of courage that Renco had performed as a boy. I knew he was a brave man, but this? Well. I could never do something like that.

The old man must have read my thoughts. He tapped my chest again with his long bony finger.

‘Don’t dismiss your own brave heart, young goldeater,’ said he. ‘You yourself displayed enormous courage when you helped our young prince escape from his Spanish cage.

Indeed, some would say that you showed the greatest courage of all—the courage to do what was right.’

I bowed my head in modesty.

The old man leaned close to me. ‘I do not believe such acts of courage should go unrewarded either. No, as a reward for your bravery, I would like to present you with this.’

He held up a bladder which had evidently been taken from the body of a small animal. It appeared to be filled with some variety of liquid.

I took the bladder. It had an opening at one extremity, through which I surmised the bladder’s holder could pour out its contents.

‘What is it?’ I inquired.

‘It is monkey urine,’ said the old man keenly.

‘Monkey urine,’ said I and flatly.

‘It will protect you against the rapa,’ said the old man.

‘Remember, the rapa is a cat, and like all cats, it is a most vain creature. According to the tribes of this region, there are some liquids that the rapa despises with a fury. Liquids which, if smeared all over one’s body, will frighten off the rapa.’

I smiled weakly at the old man. It was, after all, the first time I had ever been given the excrement of a jungle animal as a token of appreciation.

“Thank you,” said I. ‘Such a… wonderful.., gift.’ The old man seemed terribly pleased by my response and so he said,

‘Then I should like to provide you with another.’

I endeavoured to beg off his generosity—lest he give me another variety of animal discharge. But his second gift was not of the physical kind.

‘I would like to share with you a secret,’ said he.

‘And what secret is that?’

‘If ever you need to escape from this village, enter the quenko and take the third tunnel on the righthand side.

From there, alternate left then right, taking the fist tunnel you see every time, but make sure you go to the left first.

The quenko will take you to the waterfall overlooking the vast wetland forests. The secret to the labyrinth is simple, one only has to know where to begin. Trust me, young goldeater, and mark these gifts.

They could save your life.’

Refreshed by my slumber, I wandered up onto the roof of the citadel once again.

There I found Renco, nobly keeping his vigil. He must have been supremely fatigued, but he did not betray any such weariness. He just stared vigilantly out over the main street of the town, oblivious to the veil of rain that landed lightly on the crown of his head. I arrived at his side wordlessly and followed his gaze out over the village.

Aside from the rain, nothing moved.

Nay, nothing made a sound.

The eerie stillness of the village was haunting.

When he spoke, Renco didn’t turn to face me. ‘Vilcafor says he opened the temple in daylight. Then he sent five of his finest warriors into it to find Solon’s treasure. They never returned. It was only with the onset of night that the rapas emerged from within the temple.’

‘Are they out there now?’ I inquired fearfully.

‘I they are, then I have been unable to see them.’

I looked at Renco. His eyes were red and he had large bags beneath both of them.

‘My friend,’ I said gently, ‘you must sleep. You have to retain your strength, especially if my countrymen find this town. Sleep now, I shall keep the vigil, and I shall wake you if I see anything.’

Renco nodded slowly. ‘As usual, you are right, Alberto. Thank you.’

And with that he went inside and I found myself standing alone on the roof of the citadel, alone in the night.

Nothing stirred in the village below me.

It happened about an hour into my watch.

I had been watching the tiny wavelets of the river, glistening silver in the moonlight, when suddenly a small raft floated into view. I spied three figures standing on the deck of the small vessel, dark shadows in the night.

My blood ran cold.

Hernando’s men…

I was about to run to get Renco when the raft pulled alongside the village’s small wooden jetty and its passengers stepped up onto the wharf and I garnered a better look at them.

My shoulders sank with relief.

They were not conquistadors.

They were Incans.

A man—dressed in the traditional attire of an Incan warrior—and a woman with a small child, all of them covered against the rain by hoods and cloaks.

The three figures walked slowly up the main street, staring in awe at the carnage that littered the muddy road around them.

And then I saw it.

At first I thought it was just the shadow of a swaying branch cast onto the side of one of the huts that lined the street. But then the branch’s shadow swayed away from the hut’s wall and another shadow remained in its place.

I saw the dark outline of a large cat—saw the black feline head, the upturn of the nose, the tips of its high-pointed ears. Saw its mouth open in silent anticipation of the kill.

At first I couldn’t believe its size. Whatever this animal was, it was enormous—

And then suddenly the animal was gone and all I saw was the hut’s wall, bare and empty, illuminated by the moon’s rays.

The three Incans were now about twenty paces from the citadel.

I whispered loudly to them in Quechuan. “Over here!

Come quickly! Come quickly!’

At first they didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.

And then the first animal stepped slowly out into the main street behind them.

‘Run!” I called. ‘They’re behind you!’

The man of the group turned and saw the giant cat standing in the mud behind them.

The animal moved slowly, with precision and calculation.

It looked like a panther. A massive black panther. Cold yellow eyes looked down a tapered black snout—-eyes that stared with the unblinking coolness of the cat.

At that moment, a second animal joined the first and the two rapas stared intently at the small group before them.

Then they both lowered their heads and tensed their bodies like two tightly wound springs waiting to burst into action.

‘Run!’ I cried. “Run!”

The man and the woman broke into a run and hastened toward the citadel.

The two cats in the street leapt after them in pursuit.

I ran to the open doorway that led from the roof of the citadel down into the main body of the structure. ‘Renco!

Someone! Anyone! Open the main door! There are people out there!’

I hastened back to the edge of the roof and arrived there just in time to see the woman reach the base of the citadel carrying the child in her arms. The man arrived right behind her.

The cats bounded down the street.

No-one downstairs had opened the door.

The woman looked up at me with frightened eyes—and for the shortest of moments I found myself entranced by her beauty. She was the most striking woman I had ever—

I made my decision.

I ripped my cloak from my body and, holding onto one end of it, hurled the other end out over the edge of the roof.

“Grab my cloak!’ I called. ‘I will pull you up!’

The man snatched the other end of my garment and handed it to the woman.

‘Go!’ he cried. ‘Go!’

The woman took hold of my cloak and I pulled on it with all my strength, hauling her—and the child in her arms—up toward the roof of the citadel.

No sooner was she off the ground than I saw the warrior beneath her get pummelled by one of the rapas. The man’s body made a sickening sound as it was thrown against the outer wall of the citadel. He screamed as the rapa began to eat him alive.

With all my strength I heaved on my cloak, lifting the woman and the child to safety.

They reached the rim of the roof, and in the light falling rain the woman grabbed hold of the stone battlements, while at the same time she attempted to hand her child over to me.

He was a small boy; with large, frightened brown eyes.

I struggled to hold onto three things at once the woman, the boy, my cloak and I looked out in horror to see that several other rapas had slunk out into the main street of Vilcafor to view the commotion.

Just then, one of the cats beneath us leapt up from the mud and tried to snap its jaws around the woman’s dangling feet. But the woman was too alert. She lifted her toes at the very last moment and the cat’s jaws closed on nothing but air.

‘Help me,’ she pleaded, her eyes frantic.

‘I will,’ said I, as the rain beat down on my face.

Whence the cat in the mud beneath her leapt again, this time reaching out for her with its huge scythe-like claws, and this time it caught the hem of her cloak and to my absolute horror I saw the entire cloak go taut under its weight.

‘No!” the woman cried as she felt the weight of the cat begin to pull her down.

‘Oh, Lord,’ I breathed.

At which moment the cat yanked down hard on the woman’s cloak and she tightened her grip on my wet hand, but it was no use, the great cat was too heavy, too strong.

With a final scream, the woman slipped out of my grasp and, with her child in her arms, she fell off the rim of the roof and out of my sight.

It was then that I did the unthinkable.

I leapt out over the rim after her.

To this day, I don’t know why I did it.

Maybe it was the way she had held onto her son that made me do it.

Or maybe it was the look of pure fear on her beautiful face.

Or maybe it was just her beautiful face.

I don’t know.

I landed rather unheroically in a pool of mud that lay in front of the citadel. As I did so, a spray of brown wetness splattered all over my face, blinding me.

I wiped the mud away from my eyes.

And immediately saw no less than seven rapas standing in a close semicircle around me, staring at me with their cold yellow eyes.

My heart was pounding loudly inside my head. What I intended to do now, I surely did not know.

The woman and the boy were right beside me. I stepped in front of them and yelled fiercely at the phalanx of monsters before us.

‘Be gone, I say! Be gone!’

I extracted an arrow from the quiver on my back and slashed it back and forth in front of the giant cats’ faces.

The rapas didn’t seem to care for my pathetic act of bravado.

They closed in around us.

Now truly, it must be said that if these fiendish creatures had looked large from the roof of the citadel, up close they looked positively massive. Dark, black and powerful.

Then, and abruptly, the rapa standing nearest to me lashed out with its forepaw and snapped the sharpened point of my arrow clean off. The big creature then lowered its head and snarled at me, tensed itself to launch and then—

Something dropped with a loud splash into a muddy puddle of water to my right.

I turned to see what it was. And I frowned.

It was the idol.

It was Renco’s idol.

My mind spun like a windmill. What was Renco’s idol doing down here? Why would anyone throw it down into the mud at a time like this!

Whence I looked up and saw Renco himself leaning out over the edge of the citadel’s roof. It was he who had just thrown the idol down to me.

And then it happened.

I froze.

The noise was like nothing I had ever heard in my life.

It was only a soft sound, but it was utterly pervasive. It cut through the air like a knife, piercing even the sound of the falling rain.

It was similar to the sound a chime makes when it is struck. A kind of highpitched hum.

Mmmmmmm.

The rapas heard it too. Indeed, the one which had only moments before been readying itself to attack now just stood there in front of us, staring in a kind of dumbstruck wonderment at the idol which now lay half-submerged in the brown puddle beside me.

It was then that the strangest thing of all happened.

The pack of rapas around us slowly began to move backwards. The rapas were stepping away from the idol.

‘Alberto,’ Renco whispered. ‘Move very slowly, do you hear. Very slowly. Pick up the idol and go to the door. I’ll have someone let you back inside.’

I obeyed his command to the letter.

With the woman and child beside me, I scooped up the wet idol in my hands, and with our backs pressed firmly against the wall of the citadel, we slowly made our way around its circular outer wall until we were at the doorway.

For their part, the rapas just followed us at a careful distance, entranced by the melodious song of the wet idol.

But at no stage did they attack.

And then all at once the large stone slab that acted as a door to the citadel was rolled aside and we all slid in through it, and as I came in last of all and the great doorstone was rolled back into place behind me, I fell to the floor, breathless and soaking and shaking, and totally and utterly amazed that I was still alive.

Renco came hurrying down from the roof to meet us.

‘Lena!’ said he, recognising the woman. ‘And Mani!’ he cried, taking the boy up in his arms.

I just lay exhausted on the floor to the side of all this happiness.

I am ashamed to say it now, but in that moment I actually felt a pang of jealousy toward my friend Renco. No doubt this astonishingly beautiful woman was his wife as one would expect of so dashing a character as Renco.

‘Uncle Renco!’ the boy exclaimed as Renco held him high.

Uncle?

My eyes snapped up.

‘Brother Alberto,’ said Renco, coming over. ‘I don’t know what it was you were planning to do out there, but my people have a saying. “It is not so much the gift as the intention behind it that matters”. Thank you. Thank you for rescuing my sister and her son.’

‘Your sister?’ said I, staring at the woman as she removed her waterlogged cloak and revealed a minuscule tunic-like undergarment that was itself soaked through to the skin.

What I saw made me swallow.

She was far more beautiful than I had at first perceived— if indeed such a thing were possible. She was perhaps twenty years of age, with soft brown eyes, smooth olive skin and flowing dark hair. She had long slender legs and smoothly muscled shoulders, and through her saturated undergarment I could see her ample bosom and—much to my embarrassment—her erect nipples.

She was radiant.

Renco wrapped her in a dry blanket and she smiled at me and I truly felt weak at the knees.

‘Brother Alberto Santiago,’ said Renco formally. ‘May I present to you my sister, Lena, first princess of the Incan empire.’

Lena stepped forward and took my hand in hers. ‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ said she with a smile.

‘And thank you for your most brave act.’

‘Oh, it was.., nothing,’ said I, blushing.

‘And thank you also for rescuing my errant brother from his prison cell,’ said she.

Seeing my surprise, she added, ‘Oh, rest assured, my hero, word of your noble deed has spread throughout the empire.’

I bowed my head modestly. I liked the way she called me ‘my hero’.

Just then something occurred to me and I turned to Renco. ‘Say, how did you know the idol would have that effect on the rapas?’

Renco gave me a crooked smile.

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t know it would do that.’

‘What!’ I cried.

Renco laughed. ‘Alberto, I am not the one who jumped off a perfectly safe roof to rescue a woman and child I didn’t even know!’

He put an arm around my shoulders. ‘It has been said that the Spirit of the People has the ability to soothe savage beasts. This I have never seen, but I have heard that when it is immersed in water, the idol will calm even the most enraged animal. When I was awoken by your shouts and I saw the three of you surrounded by the rapas, I surmised that this was as good a time as any to test that theory.’

I shook my head in wonderment.

‘Renco,’ said Lena, stepping forward, ‘I hate to disturb your revelry, but I have come with a message.’

‘What?’

‘The Spaniards have taken Roya. But they cannot decipher the totems. So whenever they reach one, they have Chanca trackers scour the surrounding area until they pick up your trail. After the goldeaters sacked Paxu and Tupra, I was sent here to tell you of their progress since I am one of the few who know the code to the totems. I have since learned that they have burned Roya to the ground. They have picked up your scent, Renco. And they are on their way here.’

‘How long?’ said Renco.

Lena’s face darkened.

‘They move fast, brother. Very fast. At their current rate of travel, I estimate that they will be here by daybreak.’

‘Found anything?’ Frank Nash said suddenly from behind Race.

Race looked up from the manuscript to find Nash, Lauren, Gaby and Krauss standing in the doorway to the ATV, looking at him expectantly. It was late in the afternoon, and owing to the storm clouds overhead, the sky behind them had already begun to darken considerably.

Race looked at his watch.

4:55 pm.

Damn.

He hadn’t realised he’d been reading so long.

Night would fall soon. And with it would come the rapas.

‘So? Have you found anything yet?’ Nash asked.

‘Er…’ Race began. He’d become so engrossed in the manuscript that he’d almost forgotten why he was reading it—to find out anything he could about defeating the rapas and getting them back inside the temple.

“Well… ?’ Nash said.

‘It says that they only come out at night, or at times of unusual darkness.’

Krauss said, ‘Which explains why they were active in the crater earlier.

It was so dark in there, even during the day, that they were—’

‘It also looks like the rapas know that this town is a good food source,’

Race said, cutting Krauss off before he could justify his earlier error—an error that had resulted in the deaths of three good soldiers. ‘They attacked it twice in the manuscript.’

‘Does it say how they came to be inside the temple?’

‘Yes. It says that they were put inside the building by a great thinker who wanted to make the temple a test of human greed.’ Race looked up at Nash pointedly. ‘Guess we failed that one.’

“Solon’s temple.. ’ Gaby Lopez breathed.

‘Did it say anything about how we can fight them?’ Nash asked.

‘It did say something about that, two things actually.

One, monkey urine. Apparently all cats hate it. Douse yourself in it and the rapas will steer well clear of you.’

‘And the second thing?’ Lauren said.

‘Well, it was very strange,’ Race said. ‘At one point in the story, just when the cats were about to attack Santiago, the Incan prince threw the idol down into a puddle of water.

Once the idol came into contact with the water, it emitted a strange kind of humming noise that seemed to stop the cats from attacking.’

Nash frowned at that.

‘It was very peculiar,’ Race said. ‘Santiago described it as sounding like a chime being struck, and it seemed to operate on the same principle as a dog whistle—some kind of high-frequency vibration that seemed to affect the cats but not the humans.

‘The really strange thing,’ Race added, ‘was that the Incans seemed to know about this. On a couple of occasions in the manuscript it’s said that the Incans believed that their idol, when immersed in water, could soothe even the most savage beast.’

Nash glanced at Lauren.

‘Could be resonance,’ she said. ‘Contact with the concentrated oxygen molecules in water would cause the thyrium to resonate, the same way other nuclear substances react with oxygen in the air.’

‘But this would be on a much larger scale—.’ Nash said.

‘Which is probably why the monk also heard the humming sound,’ Lauren said. ‘Human beings can’t hear the resonant hum caused by the contact of sa3 plutonium with oxygen— the frequency is too low. But since thyrium is a whole order of magnitude denser than plutonium, it’s possible that when it comes into contact with water, the resonance is so great it can be heard by humans.’

‘And if the monk heard it, then it must have been twice as bad for the cats,’ Krauss added pointedly.

Everyone turned to face Krauss.

‘Remember, cats have a hearing capability approximately ten times that of human beings. They hear things that we physically cannot, and they communicate on a frequency that is beyond our auditory range.’

‘They communicate?’ Lauren said flatly.

‘Yes,’ Krauss said. “It has long been accepted that the great cats communicate via grunts and guttural vibrations that are well beyond the aural perception of humans. The point, however, is this: whatever that monk heard was probably only one-tenth of what the cats heard.

That humming sound must have driven them crazy, hence the pause it gave them.’

‘The manuscript went even further than that,’ Race said.

‘It didn’t just make them pause. The cats seemed to follow the idol after it had been dropped in the water. It was as if they were drawn to it or something, hypnotised even.’

Nash said, ‘Did the manuscript say anything about how the idol came to be inside the temple?’

‘No,’ Race said. ‘Not yet, at least. Who knows, maybe Renco and Santiago wet the idol and used it to lead the cats back inside the temple. Whatever they did, somehow they managed to lure the cats back inside the temple and at the same time put the idol inside it.’

Race paused. ‘It’s not entirely inappropriate, really. By placing the idol inside the temple, they merely made it another part of Solon’s test of human greed.’

‘These cats,’ Nash said. ‘The manuscript says they’re nocturnal, right?’

‘It says that they like any kind of darkness—nighttime or otherwise. I guess that would make them nocturnal and then some.’

“But it says that they came down to the village each night to hunt for food?’

“Yes.’

Nash’s eyes narrowed. ‘Can we assume, then, that they leave the crater to forage for food every night?’

‘Judging from the manuscript, that would appear to be a safe assumption.’

‘Good,’ Nash said, turning.

‘Why?’

“Because,’ he said, ‘when those cats come out tonight, we’re going to go inside the temple and get that idol.’

The day grew darker by the minute.

Black storm clouds rolled in overhead, and with the cool air of the late afternoon, a thick grey fog settled over the village.

A light rain fell

Race sat next to Lauren as she packed some equipment to take over to the citadel in anticipation of their nighttime activities.

“So how has married life been to you?’ he asked as casually as he could.

Lauren smiled wryly to herself. ‘Depends which one you’re talking about.’

‘There’s more than one?’

‘My first marriage didn’t exactly work out. Turned out he didn’t share my career ambitions. We got divorced about five years ago.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I’ve recently remarried,’ Lauren said. ‘And it’s been great. Real nice guy. Just like you, in fact. Lot of potential, too.’

‘How long?”

‘About eighteen months now.’

‘That’s great,’ Race said politely. In truth, he was thinking about the incident he had witnessed earlier—Lauren and

Troy Copeland kissing passionately in the back of the Huey.

He recalled how Copeland hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. Was Lauren having an affair with him? Or maybe Copeland just didn’t wear his ring…

‘Did you ever get married, Will?’ Lauren asked, yanking him from his thoughts.

‘No,’ Race said softly. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘SAT-SN report is coming through,’ Van Lewen said from a computer terminal on the wall of the ATV.

He, Cochrane, Reichart, Nash and Race were now standing with the two German BKA agents—Schroeder and the blonde woman, Renee Becker—inside the eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. It was parked close to the river, not far from the western logbridge and the muddy path that led up to the fissure, in anticipation of their nighttime assault on the temple.

Lauren had already left the ATV for the citadel, with Johann Krauss in tow behind her.

Just then, Buzz Cochrane returned to the ATV with a handful of sloppy light-brown mush. The smell of it in the confined space of the vehicle was putrid.

‘There ain’t a single monkey out there that I could catch to get its piss,’

Cochrane said. ‘Guess they get out of here before nightfall.’ He held up the brown mush in his hand. ‘I was able to get this, though. Monkey shit. I figured it’d be just as good.’

Race winced at the smell of it.

Cochrane saw him. ‘What? Don’t want to smear yourself in shit, Professor?’ He looked over at Renee and smiled.

“Guess we’re lucky it ain’t the professor who’s going in there, then, ain’t we?’

Cochrane began to apply the monkey excrement to the exterior of his fatigues. Reichart and Van Lewen did the same.

They also applied it to the rims of the narrow slitlike windows of the ATV.

While Race had been reading the manuscript earlier, Nash had got the other civilians to set up a base of operations inside the citadel. While they had been doing that, the four remaining Green Berets had been hard at work trying to fix the surviving Huey.

Unfortunately, they’d only managed to repair the chopper’s ignition ports. Repairing its damaged tail rotor had been more difficult than Cochrane had at first anticipated. Complications had arisen and it still wouldn’t turn over and the Huey couldn’t fly without it.

Then, with the onset of dusk, Nash decided that the retrieval of the idol had to take priority. The Rangers had been taken away from the chopper and brought over to the ATV, where Race had briefed them on the wet idol incident in the manuscript.

As Race did exactly that, Nash ordered Gaby, Copeland, Doogie and the young German private, Molke, to remain in the citadel.

He had said that it was a necessary part of his plan for seizing the idol to have most of the team stationed inside the citadel when the cats arrived in the village-while he and a few of the Green Berets remained in the ATV, closer to the riverside path that led up to the temple.

Race—who had only just finished briefing the Green Berets on the wet idol incident—was to join them in the citadel immediately.

‘SAT-SN is in,’ Van Lewen said from the computer terminal.

‘Satellite imagery should be coming through any minute now, too.’

‘What’s it say?” Nash said.

‘Take a look,’ Van Lewen said, stepping aside.

Nash stared at the screen in front of him. The image on it showed the northern half of South America: