Temple

FIRST READING

On the first day of the ninth month in the year of Our Lord 1535, I became a traitor to my country.

The reason: I helped a man escape from a prison of my countrymen.

His name was Renco Capac and he claimed to be an Incan prince, the younger brother of their supreme ruler, Manco Capac, the man they called the Sapa Inca.

He was a handsome man, with smooth olive skin and long black hair.

His most distinctive feature, however, was a prominent birthmark situated directly below his left eye. It looked like an inverted mountain peak, a ragged triangle of brown skin that sat atop his otherwise clear complexion.

I first met Renco on board the San Vicente, a prison hulk that lay out in the middle of the Urubamba River, ten miles north of the Incans’ capital, Cuzco.

The San Vicente was the foulest of all the prison hulks that lay at anchor in the rivers of New Spain—an old wooden galleon no longer fit for ocean travel that had been dismasted and hauled overland for the sole purpose of housing hostile or dangerous Indians.

Armed as usual with my prized leatherbound Bible a three-hundred-page handwritten version of the great book that had been a gift to me from my parents upon my entering the Holy Orders—I had come to the prison hulk to teach these heathens the Word of Our Lord.

It was in this capacity as a minister of our Faith that I met the young prince Renco. Unlike most of the others in that miserable hulk—foul, ugly wretches who, owing to the shameful conditions my countrymen imposed on them, looked more as dogs than men—he was well spoken and educated. He was also possessed of a most unique sensitivity the likes of which I have not seen in any man since. It was a gentleness, an understanding, a look in his eyes that penetrated my very soul.

He was also of considerable intelligence. My countrymen had been in New Spain for but three years and he could already speak our language. He was also eager to learn of my Faith and understand my people and our ways, and I was happy to teach him. In any case, we soon struck up a friendship and I visited him often.

And then one day he told me of his mission.

Before he had been captured, so he said, this prince had been charged with travelling to Cuzco and retrieving an idol of some sort.

Not an ordinary idol, mind, but a most venerated idol, perhaps the most venerated idol of these Indians. An idol which they say embodies their spirit.

But Renco had been waylaid on his journey to Cuzco, captured in an ambush set up by the Governor with the aid of the Chancas, an extremely hostile tribe from the northern jungles that had been subjugated by the Incan people against their will.

Like many other tribes from this region, the Chancas saw the arrival of my countrymen as a means of breaking the yoke of Incan tyranny.

They were quick to offer their services to the Governor as informers and as guides, in return for which they received muskets and metal swords, for the tribes of New Spain have no concept of bronze or iron.

As Renco informed me of his mission and his capture at the hands of the Governor, I saw over his shoulder a Chanca tribesman who was also being held captive inside the San Vicente.

His name was Castino and he was an ugly brute of a man. Tall and hairy, bearded and unwashed, he could not have been more dissimilar to the young articulate Renco. He was an utterly repulsive creature, the most frightening form I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes A sharpened piece of white bone pierced the skin of his left cheek, the characteristic mark of the Chancas.

He always stared malevolently at Renco’s back whenever I came to visit the young prince.

The day he told me of his mission to retrieve the idol, was extremely distressed.

The object of his quest, he said, was locked inside a vault inside the Coricancha, or sun temple, at Cuzco. But Renco that day learned—by eavesdropping on a conversation two guards on board the hulk—that the city of Cuzco had recently fallen and that the Spaniards were inside its walls, sacking and looting it unopposed.

I, too, had heard of the taking of Cuzco. It was said that the looting taking place there was some of the most rapa cious of the entire conquest. Rumours abounded of Spaniards killing their fellow soldiers in their lust for the mountains of gold that lay inside the city’s walls.

Such tales filled me with dismay. I had arrived in New Spain but six months previously with all the foolish ideals of a novice—desires of converting all the pagan natives to our noble Catholic Faith, dreams of leading a column of soldiers while holding forth a crucifix, delusions of building high-spired churches that would be the envy of Europe. But these ideals were quickly dispelled by the wanton acts of cruelty and greed that I witnessed of my countrymen every day.

Murder, pillage, rape, these were not the acts of men fighting in the name of God. They were the acts of scoundrels, of villains. And indeed at the moments when my disillusionment was at its greatest—such as the time when I witnessed a Spanish soldier decapitate a woman in order to seize her gold necklace—I would wonder whether I was fighting for the right side. That Spanish soldiers had taken to killing each other during their plunder of Cuzco came as no surprise to me.

I should also add at this juncture, however, that I had heard rumours about Renco’s sacred idol before.

It was widely known that Hernando Pizarro, the Governor’s brother and chief lieutenant, had put up an incredible bounty for any information that led to the discovery of the idol’s whereabouts. It was to my mind a tribute to the reverence and devotion that the Incans paid their idol that not one of them—not a single one of them—had betrayed its location in return for Hernando’s fabulous reward. It shames me to say that I do not believe my countrymen, in similar circumstances, would have done the same.

But of all the tales I had heard of the looting of Cuzco, nowhere had I heard of the discovery of the treasured Incan idol.

Indeed, if it had been found, word would have spread faster than the wind. For the lucky foot soldier who discovered it would have been instantly knighted, would have been made a marquis by the Governor on the spot and would have lived the rest of his life back in Spain in unreserved luxury.

And yet there had been no such tale.

Which led me to conclude that the Spaniards in Cuzco had not yet found the idol.

‘Brother Alberto,’ Renco said, his eyes pleading, ‘help me. Help me escape this floating cage so that I can complete my mission. Only I can retrieve the idol of my people. And with the Spaniards holding Cuzco, it is only a matter of time before they find it.’

Well.

I did not know what to say. I could never do such a thing.

I could never help him escape. I would be making myself a hunted man, a traitor to my country. If I were caught, I would be the one imprisoned inside this hellish floating dungeon. And so I left the hulk without another word.

But I would return. And I would talk with Renco again—and again he would ask me to help him, his voice impassioned, his eyes begging.

And whenever I contemplated the issue more closely, my mind would always return to two things: my total and utter disillusionment at the despicable acts of those men I called my countrymen, and—conversely—my admiration of the Incan people’s stoic refusal to disclose the secret location of their idol in the face of such overwhelming adversity.

Indeed, never had I witnessed such unfailing devotion. I envied their faith. I had heard tell of Hernando torturing entire villages in his obsessive search for the idol, had heard of the atrocities he had committed. I wondered how I would act if I were to see my own kinfolk butchered, tortured, murdered. In those circumstances, would I disclose the location of Jerusalem?

In the end, I decided that I would and I was doubly ashamed.

And so despite myself, my Faith and my allegiance to my country, I decided to help Renco.

I left the hulk and returned later that night, bringing with me a young page—an Incan named Tupac—just as Renco had instructed me. We both wore hooded cloaks against the cold and kept our hands folded inside our sleeves.

We came to the guard station on the riverbank. As it happened, since most of my country’s forces were at Cuzco partaking in the looting there, only a small group of soldiers were on hand in the tent village near the hulk. Indeed, only a lone night guard—a fat slovenly thug from Madrid with liquor on his breath and dirt under his fingernails—guarded the bridge that led to the hulk.

After taking a second glance at young Tupac—it was not uncommon at that time for young Indians to serve as pages for monks like myself—the night guard belched loudly and ordered us to inscribe our names on the register.

I scratched both of our names in the book. Then when I had finished, the two of us stepped onto the narrow wooden footbridge that stretched out from the riverbank over to a door set into the side of the prison hulk in the middle of the river.

No sooner had we stepped past the filthy night guard, however, than the young Tupac whirled around quickly and grabbed the man from behind and twisted his head, breaking his neck in an instant. The guard’s body slumped in its chair. I winced at the sheer violence of the act, but strangely I found that I felt little sympathy for the guard. I had made my decision—had pledged my allegiance to the enemy—and there was no turning back now.

My young companion quickly took the guard’s rifle and his pistallo-or ‘pistol’ as some of my countrymen were now calling them—and, last of all, his keys. Tupac then affixed a stone weight to the dead guard’s foot and dropped the body into the river.

In the pale blue moonlight, we crossed the rickety wooden footbridge and entered the hulk.

The interior guard leapt to his feet as we entered the cage room but Tupac was far too quick for him. He fired his pistol at the guard without missing a step. The explosion of the gunshot in the enclosed space of the prison hulk was deafening. Prisoners all around us awoke with a start at the sudden terrifying sound.

Renco was already on his feet as we came to his cage.

The guard’s key fitted perfectly in the lock of his cell and the door opened easily. The prisoners all around us were shouting and banging on the bars of their cages, pleading to be released. My eyes darted around in every direction and in the midst of all this uproar, I saw a sight that chilled me to my very core.

I saw the Chanca, Castino, standing in his cell—standing perfectly still —staring at me intently.

His cage now open, Renco ran over to the dead guard’s corpse, grabbed his weapons and handed them to me.

‘Come on,’ he said, awakening me from Castino’s hypnotic stare.

Dressed only in the barest of prison rags, Renco quickly began to undress the dead guard’s corpse. Then he hurriedly put on the guard’s thick leather riding jacket, pantaloons and boots.

No sooner was he dressed than he was on his feet again, unlocking some of the other cages. I noticed that he only the cages of Incan warriors and not those of prisoners-from subjugated tribes like the Chancas.

And then suddenly Renco was dashing out the door with rifle in his hand, ignoring the shouts of the other prison-and calling for me to follow.

We dashed back across the rickety footbridge, amid a bunch of running prisoners. By this time, however, others heard the commotion on board the hulk. Four from the nearby tent village arrived at the river-on horseback just as we leapt off the bridge. They fired at us with their muskets, the reports of their weapons boom-like thunderclaps in the night.

Renco fired back, handling his musket like the most sea-Spanish infantryman, blasting one of the horsemen his mount. The other Incan prisoners ran ahead of us and overpowered two of the other horsemen.

The last horseman brought his steed around so that it stood directly in front of me. In a flashing instant, I saw him register my appearance—a European helping these heathens.

I saw the anger flare in his eyes and then I saw him raise his rifle in my direction.

With nothing else to call on, I hastily raised my own pistol and fired it.

The pistol boomed loudly in my hand and I would swear on the Good Book itself that its recoil almost tore my arm from its socket. The horseman in front of me snapped backwards in his saddle and tumbled to the ground, dead.

I stood there, stunned, holding the pistol in my hand, staring fixedly at the dead body on the ground. I endeavoured to convince myself that I had done no wrong. He had been going to kill me

‘Brother!’ Renco called suddenly.

I turned on the moment and saw him sitting astride one of the Spanish horses. ‘Come!’ he called. ‘Take his horse! We have to get to Cuzco!’

The city of Cuzco lies at the head of a long mountain valley that runs in a north-south direction. It is a walled city that is situated between two parallel rivers, the Huatanay and the Tullumayo, which act rather like moats.

Situated on a hill to the north of the city, towering above it, is the most dominant feature of the Cuzco valley. There, looking down over the city like a god, is the stone fortress of Sacsayhuaman.

Sacsayhuaman is a structure like no other I have seen in all of the world. Nothing in Spain, or even in the whole of Europe, can compare with its size and sheer dominating presence.

Truly, it is a most fearsome citadel—roughly pyramidal in shape, it consists of three colossal tiers, each one easily a hundred hands high, with walls constructed of gigantic hundred-ton blocks.

These Incans do not have mortar, but they more than make up for that deficiency with their extraordinary abilities in the art of stonemasonry.

Rather than bind stones together with pastes, they build all of their fortresses, temples and palaces by fashioning enormous boulders into regular shapes and placing them alongside each other so that each boulder fits perfectly with the next. So exact are the joins between these monumental stones, so perfectly are they cut, that one cannot slip a knife blade between them.

It was in this setting that the intriguing siege of Cuzco took place.

Now, it is at this point that it should be said that the siege of Cuzco must rank as one of the strangest in the history of modern warfare.

The strangeness of the siege stems from the following fact: during it the invaders—my countrymen, the Spaniards— were inside the city walls, while the owners of the city, the

Incan people, were positioned outside the city walls.

In other words, the Incans were laying siege to their own. To be fair, this situation came about as the result of a long complicated chain of events. In 1533, my Spanish countrymen rode into Cuzco unopposed and, at first, they were to the Incans. It was only when they began to per-the full extent of the riches within the city walls that any pretence of civility vanished.

My countrymen pillaged Cuzco with a frenzy never before Native men were brutally enslaved. Native women were ravaged. Gold was melted down by the wagonload—after which time the Incans began calling my Spanish countrymen ‘goldeaters’. Apparently, they thought that my countrymen’s insatiable lust for gold stemmed from our need to eat it.

By 1535, the Sapa Inca—Renco’s brother, Manco Capac— until that time been conciliatory in nature toward my people fled the capital for the mountains and assembled an enormous army with which he planned to retake Cuzco.

The Incan army—100 000 strong, but armed only with sticks and clubs and arrows—descended upon the city of Cuzco in a fury and they took Sacsayhuaman, the massive stone citadel overlooking the city, in a day. The Spaniards took refuge inside the city walls.

And so the siege began.

It would last for three months.

Nothing on this earth could have prepared me for the sight that I beheld when I rode through the enormous stone tollgates at the northern end of the Cuzco valley.

It was night, but it might as well have been day. Fires burned everywhere, both within the city walls and without.

It looked like Hell itself.

The largest force of men I have ever seen filled the valley before me, an undulating mass of humanity pouring down from the citadel on the hill toward the city—100 000 Incans, all of them on foot, shouting and screaming and waving torches and weapons. They had the entire city surrounded.

Inside the city walls, fires could be seen ravaging the stone buildings situated there.

Renco rode ahead of me, right into the seething mass of people, and like the Red Sea for Moses, the crowd parted for him.

And as it did so, an enormous roar went up from the Incans, a cheer of rejoice, a shout of such fervour and celebration that it made the hairs on my neck stand on end.

It was as if they had all recognised Renco instantly— despite the fact that he was dressed in Spanish clothing—and stood aside for him. It was as if every single one of them knew of his mission and would do their utmost to allow him every possible haste in effecting it.

Renco and I charged through the teeming mass of people, galloping at tremendous speed as the hordes of cheering Incans opened up before us and urged us on.

We dismounted near the base of the mighty fortress Sacsayhuaman and walked quickly through a crowd of Indian warriors.

As we walked through the Incan ranks, I saw that numerous stakes had been driven into the ground all around us.

Mounted on top of the stakes were the bloodied heads of Spanish soldiers. On some stakes, the entire bodies of captured Spaniards had been impaled. Their heads and feet had been hacked off. I walked quickly, mindful to stay close behind my friend Renco.

Then all at once, the crowd in front of us parted and I saw, standing before me at one of the entrances to the giant stone fortress, an Indian dressed in a most glorious manner.

He wore a dazzling red cape and a gold-plated necklace and on his head sat a magnificent jewel-encrusted crown. He was surrounded by an entourage of at least twenty warriors and attendants.

It was Manco. The Sapa Inca.

Manco embraced Renco and they exchanged words in Quechuan, the Incans’ language. Renco later translated it for me thus:

‘Brother,’ said the Sapa Inca. ‘We were anxious as to your whereabouts. We heard that you had been captured, or worse, killed.

And you are the only one who is permitted to enter the vault and rescue the—’

‘Yes, brother, I know,’ said Renco. ‘Listen, we have no time. I must enter the city now. Has the river entrance been used yet?’

‘No,’ said Manco, ‘we have refrained from using it as you instructed, so as not to alert the goldeaters of its existence.’

‘Good,’ said Renco. He hesitated before he spoke again. ‘I have another question.’

‘What is it?’

‘Bassario,’ said Renco. ‘Is he inside the city walls?’

‘Bassario?’ Manco frowned. ‘Well, I… I do not know…’

‘Was he in the city when it fell?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Where was he?’

‘Why, he was in the peasant prison,’ said Manco. ‘Where he has been for the past Year. Where he belongs. Why? What need have you of a fiend like Bassario?’

‘Let it not concern you now, brother,’ said Renco. ‘For it will matter for nothing if I do not find the idol first.’

Just then there came an almighty commotion from somewhere behind us and both Renco and I turned.

What I saw filled my heart with unimaginable horror: a column of Spanish soldiers—no fewer than three hundred of them, resplendent in their forged silver armour and distinc tive pointed helmets—came charging into the valley from the northern tollgates, their muskets firing. Their horses were covered in heavy silver plating and, thus protected, the mounted Spanish troops cut a swathe through the ranks of the Incan warriors in front of them.

As I watched the column of conquistadors hack their way through the Incan ranks, trampling the Indians before them, I beheld two of the riders near the head of the procession, both of whom I recognised. The first was the Captain, Hernando Pizarro, the Governor’s brother and a most cruel man. His distinctive black moustache and unkempt woolly beard were visible even from where I stood, four hundred paces away.

The second horseman was a figure whom I recognised with some degree of dread. Indeed, so much so that I took a second glance at him. But my worst fears were confirmed.

It was Castino.

The brutish Chanca who had been in the San Vicente with Renco.

Only now he rode with his hands unmanacled— free—alongside Hernando.

And then all at once I understood.

Castino must have overheard my conversations with Renco…

He was leading Hernando to the vault inside the Coricancha.

Renco knew this, too. ‘By the gods,’ said he. He turned with haste to his brother. ‘I must go. I must go now.”

‘Speed to you, brother,’ said Manco.

Renco nodded curtly to the Sapa Inca and then turned to me and said in Spanish, ‘Come. We must hurry.’

We left the Sapa Inca and hastened around to the south side of the city, the side furthest from Sacsayhuaman. As we did so, I saw Hernando and his horsemen charge in through the city’s northern gate.

‘Where are we going?’ I inquired as we strode quickly through the angry crowd.

‘To the lower river,’ was all my companion said in reply.

At length, we came to the river which ran alongside the southern wall of the city. I looked up at the wall on the other side of the stream and saw Spanish soldiers armed with muskets and swords walking the ramparts, silhouetted by the orange light of the fires burning behind them.

Renco strode purposefully toward the river and, to my great surprise, stepped boots-and-all straight into the water.

‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Down there,’ said he, indicating the body of water.

‘But I… I can’t. I can’t go in there with you.’

Renco gripped my arm firmly. ‘My friend Alberto, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you have done, what you have risked to allow me to complete my mission.

But now I must hurry if I am to succeed in my quest. Join me, Alberto.

Stay with me. Complete my mission with me. Look at these people.

While you are with me, you are a hero to them. But while you are not, you are just another goldeater who must be killed. And now I must go.

I cannot stay behind with you. If you stay here, I will not be able to help you.

Come with me, Alberto. Dare to live.’

I looked at the Incan warriors behind me. Even with their primitive sticks and clubs, they still looked fierce and dangerous. I saw a Spanish soldier’s head on a stake nearby, its mouth open in a grotesque yawn.

‘I think I will go with you,’ said I, turning and stepping waist-deep into the water next to him.

‘All right, then. Take a deep breath,’ said he, ‘and follow me.’

And with that Renco held his breath and disappeared under the water.

I shook my head and, despite myself, took a deep breath and followed him under the surface.

Silence.

The chants and shouts of the Incan hordes were gone now.

In the darkness of the murky river I followed Renco’s kicking feet into a circular stone pipe that was set into the underwater wall of the city.

It was difficult to pull myself through the submerged cylindrical tunnel, its confines were so narrow. And it seemed to go on for an eternity.

But then, just when it seemed as if my lungs would burst, I saw the end of the pipe and the rippling waves of the surface beyond it and I pulled myself harder through the water toward them.

I arose inside an underground sewer of some kind, lit by flaming torches mounted on the walls. I was standing waist-deep in water.

Damp stone walls surrounded me.

Squareshaped stone tunnels stretched away into the darkness. The foul stench of human feces filled the air.

Renco was already wading through the water away from me, toward a junction in the tunnel system. I hurried after him.

Through the tunnels we went. Left then right, left then right—thus we made our way hastily through the underground labyrinth. Never once did Renco seem lost or doubtful—he just turned into each tunnel with confidence and purpose.

And then all at once he stopped and stared up at the stone ceiling above us.

I just stood behind him, perplexed. I could see no difference between this tunnel and any of the other halfdozen that we had just come through.

And then for some reason unknown to myself, Renco ducked underneath the foulsmelling water. Moments later, he came up with a rock the size of a man’s fist. Then he climbed up out of the water and stood astride the narrow ledge that lined the tunnel and with his newfound rock began to hit the underside of one of the stone slabs that formed the ceiling of the tunnel.

Bang-bang. Bang.

Renco waited for a moment. Then he repeated the same sequence.

Bang-bang. Bang.

It was a code of some sort. Renco stepped back down into the water and we both stared up at the wet stone ceiling in silence, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing happened.

We kept waiting. As we did so, I noticed a small symbol carved into the corner of the stone slab that Renco had been assailing. It was a carving of a circle, with a double ‘V’ inscribed within it.

And then all of a sudden—boom-boom, boom—a series of muffled whumps could be heard from the other side of the ceiling. Someone repeating Renco’s code.

Renco sighed with relief. Then he stood up on the ledge again and pounded out a new sequence of thumps.

Moments later, the whole squareshaped section of the ceiling slid away, grinding loudly against its neighbours, revealing a dark, cavern-like space above us.

Renco immediately climbed up out of the water and disappeared into the hole in the ceiling. I followed.

I came up inside a most splendid room, an enormous vault-like chamber, lined on all four sides with magnificent golden images. All four walls of the chamber were made of solid stone blocks, each one ten feet wide and probably as thick.

There was no obvious door, except for a smaller stone this one only six feet in height—set within one of the sturdy walls.

I was in the vault of the Coricancha.

A single flaming torch illuminated the cavernous space.

It was held by a burly Incan warrior. Three other equally large warriors stood behind the torchbearer, glaring at me.

There was another person in the vault, however. An elderly woman, and she had eyes only for Renco.

She was a handsome woman, with grey hair and wrinkled skin, and I imagined that in her prime she must have been a strikingly beautiful woman. She was dressed simply, in a white cotton robe and a gold-and-emerald headdress.

And I must say that in her simple white attire, she looked angelic, almost heavenly, like a priestess of some.. Boom!

I spun at the sudden noise. Renco did, too.

Boom!

It seemed to come from the other side of the walls. Someone pounding on the outside of the stone door.

I froze in horror.

The Spaniards.

Hernando.

They were trying to get in.

The old priestess said something to Renco in Quechuano Renco replied quickly and then he gestured toward me.

Boom! Boom!

The old priestess then turned hurriedly to a stone pedestal behind her.

I saw on the pedestal an object covered with a purple silk-like cloth.

The priestess picked up the object-cloth and all—and despite the insistent pounding on the walls, handed it solemnly to Renco. I still could not see what lay beneath the cloth. Whatever it was, it was about the size and shape of a human head.

Renco took the object respectfully.

Boom! Boom!

Why was he moving so slowly, I wondered incredulously, as my eyes darted to the shuddering stone walls around us.

Once the object was safely in his hands, Renco slowly Once the object was safely in his hands, Renco slowly removed its cloth.

And I saw it.

And for a moment, I could do nothing but stare.

It was the most beautiful, and yet at the same time the most fearsome-looking idol I had ever seen.

It was completely black, carved out of a square block of a very unusual type of stone. It was rough and sharp at the edges, the workmanship crude, uneven. Out of the middle of the block had been carved the visage of a fierce mountain cat with its jaws bared wide. It looked as if the cat— deranged with rage and fury—had managed to push its head out of the very stone itself.

Imperfections within the rock—thin rivulets of the most shade of purple—-ran vertically down the cat’s face, making the image appear even more fearsome, if indeed such a thing were possible.

Renco covered the idol once again. As he did so, the old priestess stepped forward and placed something around his neck. It was a thin leather cord with a dazzling green gem stone attached to it—a magnificent shining emerald that was easily the size of a man’s ear.

Renco accepted the gift with a solemn bow and then turned quickly to face me.

‘We must go now,’ said he.

Then, with the idol under his arm, he made for the hole in the floor. I hurried after“ him. The four burly warriors all took hold of the great stone slab that would cover our exit.

The old priestess did not move.

Renco climbed down into the sewer. I lowered myself after him. As I did so, however, I noticed something quite peculiar.

The vault was silent.

The pounding outside had stopped.

And as I pondered this curiosity some more, I realised with some dread that the pounding had in fact ceased some goodly time before.

It was then that the entrance to the vault exploded inwards.

A great flash of white flared out around the edges of the huge stone doorway, and an instant later, the whole six-foot doorstone just blasted out into a thousand fragments, showering the vault room with fist-sized rocks.

I couldn’t explain it. A battering ram could not possibly have fragmented so large a stone so instantaneously…

And then the smoke and dust in the doorway cleared and I saw the great black barrel of a cannon in the space where the doorstone had been.

My mind reeled.

They had blown open the vault door with a cannon!

‘Come on!’ Renco called from the sewer beneath me.

I immediately started lowering myself into the hole, just as the first Spanish soldiers came charging in through the dust cloud, firing their muskets in every direction.

And as I disappeared through the hole in the floor, the last thing I saw was the Captain, Hernando Pizarro, striding into the vault room with a pistol in his hand. His eyes were wild, and his head turned this way and that as he searched the vault for the idol that he so longed for.

And then, in a single horrifying instant, I saw Hernando look down in my direction and stare directly into my eyes.

I sloshed madly through the dark sewer tunnels, trying with all my might to keep up with Renco. As I did so, I heard shouts in Spanish echoing off the hard stone walls of the tunnels, saw long ominous shadows stretching out around the corners behind us.

Ahead of me, Renco just plunged onward through the filthy water with the Incan idol under his arm.

We hastened through the tunnels, waist-deep in the water, ducking left, bending right, weaving our way through the dark stone labyrinth back toward the river entrance and freedom.

After a while, however, I began to notice that we were racing in the wrong direction.

Renco was not heading back toward the river entrance.

‘Where are we going!’ I called forward.

‘Just move!’ he called back.

I turned a corner just as a torch on the wall above my head was blasted from its mount by a musket shot. I turned and saw a team of six conquistadors wading through the tunnel behind me, the flaming torchlight of the passageway glinting off their helmets.

‘They’re right behind us!’ I called.

‘Then run faster!’

More musket shots rang out, loud as thunderclaps, deafening my ears. Their projectiles exploded against the damp stone walls around us.

Just then, ahead of me, I saw Renco leap up onto a ledge and push up with his shoulder against a stone slab in the ceiling—a slab which I saw bore in its corner the same mysterious symbol that I had seen before, the circle with the double ‘V’ inside it. I leapt up onto the ledge after him and helped him heave the stone upward, revealing the starry night sky.

Renco climbed out first and I followed immediately behind him. We were standing in a narrow cobblestoned street of some sort.

Impenetrable grey walls lined both sides of the alleyway.

I hurriedly began to replace the stone slab when all of a sudden, a musket shot from within the tunnel pinged against the edge of the hole, narrowly missing my fingers.

‘Never mind. Come on, this way,’ said Renco, pulling me down the tiny street.

The walls on either side of me became indistinguishable blurs of grey as we all but flew through the crooked alleyways of Cuzco with Hernando’s soldiers ever close behind us.

As we evaded our pursuers, every now and then we would see brigades of Spanish troops running through the streets, racing for the ramparts.

We also—I am ashamed to say—saw stakes not unlike those outside the city walls. They were set up in every one of the city’s plazas, row after row of stakes, upon which were impaled the horribly mutilated bodies of captured Incan warriors. These warriors had had their hands, heads and genitals hacked off.

In one such plaza, Renco saw an Incan longbow hanging from one of the desecrated corpses. He seized it and the quiver full of arrows on the ground beside it and then ducked back into the maze of alleyways.

I just followed close behind him, not daring to let him out of my sight.

At length, however, Renco turned abruptly and entered a building of some sort. It was a squat stone structure, remarkably solid. In fact, so solid it almost looked fortified.

We passed through several outer rooms before we descended a flight of stone steps and came to a very large subterranean hall.

The hall was divided into two levels—one wide lower and an upper landing that was little more than a balcony that ran around the circumference of the hall.

But it was the lower storey that held my attention.

There were nearly one hundred holes in the dirt floor of hall—pits over which a network of thin stone bridges With a surge of dread, I realised where we were.

We were in an Incan dungeon.

I was reminded of the fact that these Incans had not yet metallurgy, hence they had no bars to create A pit, I saw, was their answer to this dilemma.

I looked up at the balcony that overlooked the lower It was a guard-walk, for the prison guards to patrol they looked down on the prisoners.

Renco didn’t miss a step. He just marched out onto one narrow stone bridges and peered down into the holes it. Wails and shouts erupted from below, from the starving prisoners who had been left in their pits the siege had begun a week earlier.

Renco stopped above one of the pits. I followed him out the stone bridge and looked down into the dirty hole truly, this is what I saw.

The pit itself must have been at least five paces deep, earthen walls. Escape was impossible. At the got-of the dirty well sat a man of average size, but filthy and putrid.

Although he was thin, this man did not seem nor was he shouting like the rest of the poor, forlorn creatures in the prison hall. He just sat with his back pressed up against the wall of his pit, looking, if anything, relaxed and at ease. His composure that wanton coolness of criminals around the world—made my skin crawl. I wondered what Renco could want with such a character.

‘Bassario,’ said Renco.

The criminal smiled. ‘Why if it isn’t the good prince Renco…’

‘I need your help,’ said Renco directly.

The prisoner seemed to find this humorous. “I cannot imagine what the good prince could possibly want with my skills,” the criminal laughed. ‘What is it, Renco? Now that your kingdom is in ruins are you thinking of embarking upon a life of crime?’

Renco looked back toward the entrance to the underground chamber, watching for Spaniards. I shared his concern. We had been in this dungeon too long already.

‘I will only ask you this once, Bassario,’ said Renco firmly.

‘If you choose to help me, I will take you out of here. If you do not so choose, then I will leave you to die in this pit.’

‘An interesting choice,’ remarked the criminal.

‘Well?’

The criminal Bassario stood. ‘Get me out of this hole.’

Renco immediately went to fetch a wooden ladder resting against the far wall.

For my part, I was worried about Hernando and his men.

They could arrive at any moment and here Renco was bar gaining with a convict! I hurried over to the door through which we had entered the prison hall. When I got there I peered around the stone doorframe—

—and saw the dark demon-like figure of Hernando Pizarro striding down the stairs toward me!

My blood curdled at the sight—the wild brown eyes, the hooked black moustache, the scraggly black beard that had not been shaved for weeks.

I whirled back inside the doorway and started running.

‘Renco!’

Renco had only just lowered the ladder into Bassario’s pit when he turned and saw the first Spanish soldier come charging into the prison hall behind me.

Renco’s hands moved quickly and in an instant he had his longbow raised with an arrow drawn back to his ear. He let fly with the missile and it streaked across the room, careering right for my head. I ducked and the arrow smacked into the forehead of the soldier behind me. His feet flew out from under him and he was thrown to the floor in a heavy heap.

I rushed out onto the network of stone bridges, ran quickly over the foul dungeon pits.

More conquistadors entered the prison hall behind me, Hernando among them, firing their muskets wildly.

By this time Bassario had emerged from his pit and now he and Renco were running across the wide section of dirt floor at the far end of the prison hall.

‘Alberto! This way!’ Renco called, pointing at the wide stone doorway at that end of the dungeon.

I saw the opening at the other end of the hall, saw a solid squared-off boulder suspended above it by a pulley-like mechanism. It wasn’t a big boulder—it was roughly the size of a man—and it was exactly the same size and shape as the doorway beneath it. Two taut lengths of rope held it above the doorway, each rope weighed down by stone counter weights, making it easier for the prison guards standing on the elevated guard-walk to raise and lower the boulder into the opening.

I ran for the door.

Whence I felt a terrible weight slam against my back and I was thrown forward. I fell heavily onto one of the narrow stone bridges and saw to my surprise that I had been pummeled from behind by a Spanish soldier!

He knelt astride my body, drew his dagger and was about to run me through when abruptly an arrow struck him in the chest. In fact the arrow hit the soldier with such force that it knocked his peaked steel helmet clear off his head and threw him bodily off the bridge and into the pit beneath us!

I looked down into the pit after him, only to see four bedraggled prisoners converge on him as one. I lost sight of the hapless soldier, but an instant later I heard a scream of the most utter and absolute terror. The starving prisoners in the pit were eating him alive.

I looked up just in time to see Renco slide to the ground next to me.

‘Come on!’ said he, grabbing my arm, pulling me to my feet.

I got up and saw that Bassario had arrived at the far doorway.

Musket fire rang out all around us, the rounds kicking up bright orange sparks as they bounced off the stone bridge beneath us.

Just then, a stray round hit one of the ropes that held the squared-off boulder suspended above the stone doorway at the far end of the hall.

With a sharp twang the rope snapped…

… and the boulder began to lower itself into the door way!

Beneath it, Bassario looked up in horror, then back at Renco.

‘No,’ Renco breathed as he saw the descending boulder.

The doorway—forty paces away from us, and the only way out of the dungeon—was being sealed up!

I evaluated the distance, took in the speed at which the boulder was grinding down into the square stone opening.

There was no way we could make it.

The doorway was too far away, the boulder descending too rapidly. In a few moments, we would be sealed inside the dungeon, trapped and at the mercy of my bloodthirsty countrymen who were at that very moment racing out onto the network of stone bridges behind us, firing their muskets.

Nothing could save us now.

Renco obviously did not see it that way.

Despite the roaring body of musketeers behind us, the young prince quickly looked about himself and spied the pointed steel helmet of the Spanish soldier who had fallen into the pit beneath me.

Renco dived for the helmet, grabbed it, and then turned and threw it side-handed, sliding it across the dusty floor of the dungeon toward the rapidly-closing doorway.

The helmet slid across the dirt floor, spinning laterally as it did so, its silver pointed peak glinting in the firelight.

The boulder in the doorway kept descending, grinding against the sides of the stone opening.

Three feet.

Two feet.

One foot.

At which moment the rapidlyspinning helmet slid into the threshold of the doorway and wedged itself perfectly in between the descending boulder and the dirt-covered floor, stopping the boulder’s downward movement! Now the thin boulder stood poised a bare foot above the floor, balanced on top of the helmet’s pointed steel peak!

I looked at Renco, astonished.

‘How did you do that?’ said I.

‘Never mind,’ said he. ‘Go!’

We ran off the bridge together and dashed across the wide section of dirt floor that led to the partially-open doorway— where Bassario stood waiting for us. In a dark corner of my mind, I wondered why Bassario hadn’t just run away while Renco was occupied saving me. Perhaps he thought he stood a better chance of survival staying with Renco. Or maybe there was some other reason…

Frighteningly loud musket fire rang out all around us as Renco dropped down onto his behind and slid feet-first through the narrow gap between the boulder and the floor.

My slide was somewhat less graceful. I dived headfirst onto the dust-covered floor and wriggled clumsily on my chest through the gap and out into a stonewalled tunnel on the other side.

I was getting to my feet just as Renco kicked the helmet out from under the boulder and the great squareshaped stone completed its sealing of the doorway with a loud whump.

I sighed, breathless.

We were safe. For the moment.

‘Come, we must hurry,’ said Renco. ‘It is time we farewelled this wretched city.’

Back in the alleyways. Running posthaste.

Renco led the way, with Bassario behind him and me last of all. At one point in our runnings, we came across a stockpile of Spanish weapons. Bassario took a longbow and a quiver full of arrows; Renco, a quiver, a rough leather satchel—into which he placed the idol—and a sword. For my own part, I took a long glistening sabre. For indeed, although I may be a humble monk, I hail from a family that has bred some of the finest fencers in all of Europe.

‘This way,’ said Renco, charging up a flight of stone steps.

We hurried up the stairs and came to a series of uneven roofs. Renco hastened out across the rooftops, hurdling low dividing walls, leaping across the small gaps between the different buildings.

Bassario and I followed until at last Renco fell to the ground, behind a low wall. His chest heaved as he breathed, rising and falling quickly.

He looked out over the low wall above him. I did the same. What I saw was this:

I beheld a wide cobblestone plaza filled with perhaps two dozen Spanish troops and as many horses. Some of the horses were freestanding, while others stood harnessed to a variety of wagons and carts.

On the far side of the plaza, set into the outer wall of the city, stood a large wooden gate. This gate, however, was not indigenous to Cuzco, but was rather an ugly appendage affixed to the city’s stone gateway by my countrymen after the city had been seized.

Positioned directly in front of the enormous wooden gate was a large flatbed wagon drawn by two horses who faced in toward the city, away from the gate itself. Mounted on the back of this wagon was a sizeable cannon pointed in the other direction.

Nearer to us, at the base of the building on which we now sat, stood about thirty miserable-looking Incan prisoners. A long length of black rope was threaded through the steel manacles that each prisoner wore around his wrists, binding all of them together in a long dejected row.

‘What are we going to do now?’ I inquired of Renco anxiously.

‘We’re leaving.’

‘How?’

‘Through there,’ said he, indicating the gate on the far side of the plaza.

‘What about the sewer entrance?’ said I, thinking it to be the most obvious escape route.

‘A thief never uses the same entrance twice,’ said Hassario. ‘At least, not once he has been detected. Isn’t that right, prince?’

‘Correct,’ said Renco.

I turned to appraise the criminal Bassario. He was in fact a rather handsome man, despite his grimy appearance. And he smiled broadly, his eyes twinkling—the smile of a man happy to be part of an adventure. I could not say that I shared his joy.

Now Renco began to rummage through his quiver. He pulled out some arrows whose points had been wrapped in cloth, creating round bulbous heads.

‘Good,’ said he, looking about himself and finding a lighted torch hanging on a nearby wall. ‘Very good.’

‘What are you planning to do?’ I inquired.

Renco did not appear to hear me. He merely stared out at three horses standing unattended on the far side of the plaza.

‘Renco,’ I pressed, ‘what are you planning to do?’

At which point Renco turned to face me and a wry smile crossed his face.

I stepped out into the wideopen plaza with my hands folded inside my saturated monk’s cloak, my sodden hood pulled low over my wet hair.

I kept my head bowed as I crossed the plaza—stepping deftly aside as clusters of soldiers ran past me, ducking quickly as horses wheeled about in my direction desperate not to sport any attention.

Renco guessed that the soldiers in the plaza would not yet know that a renegade Spanish monk—me—was aiding the Incan raiding party.

As such, so long as they did not notice my soggy clothing, I should be able to get near the three unattended horses and bring them over to a nearby alleyway where Renco and Bassario could mount them.

But first I had to clear a passage to the gate, which meant getting the flatbed wagon with the cannon on it out of our path. That task would be harder. It required that I ‘accidentally’ scare the two horses harnessed to the wagon.

Thus I carried concealed within my sleeve one of Renco’s sharply pointed arrows, ready to—God forgive me—surreptitiously jab one of the poor creatures as I walked past them.

I crossed the plaza slowly, careful to keep my eyes averted, not daring to lock eyes with anyone.

As in the other plazas around the city, this one had stakes driven into the ground all around it. Severed heads were impaled upon them. The blood on the heads was fresh and it trickled down the stakes to the ground. My fear was extreme as I passed them—such would be my fate if I didn’t get out of Cuzco soon.

The gate came into my view and with it the flatbed wagon that stood in front of it. I saw the horses and tightened my grip on the arrow inside my sleeve. Two more steps and-

‘Hey! You!’ barked a coarse voice from somewhere behind me.

I froze. Did not look up.

A large soldier with a pot belly stepped in front of me, so that he stood in between myself and the two horses. He wore his pointed conquistador’s helmet perfectly and his voice was laced with authority.

A senior soldier.

‘What are you doing here?’ said he and curtly

Said I, ‘I am sorry, so sorry… I was trapped in the city and I…’

‘Get back to your quarters. This isn’t a safe area. There are Indians in the city. We think they’re after the Captain’s idol.’

I couldn’t believe it. I was so close to my objective and now I was being turned away! I reluctantly made to leave when suddenly a strong hand landed on my shoulder.

‘A moment, monk—’ the soldier began. But he cut himself off abruptly as he felt the dampness of my cloak.

‘What the-.’

Just then, a sharp whistling sound filled the air around me and then—thwack!—an arrow smacked into the big soldier’s face, shattering his nose, causing an explosion of blood that splattered all over my face.

The soldier dropped like a stone. The other soldiers in the plaza saw him fall and whirled about, searching for the source of the danger.

Suddenly a second whistling sound filled the air, and this time a flaming arrow flew down from one of the darkened rooftops surrounding the plaza and shot low over the flatbed wagon in front of me and slammed hard into the big wooden gate behind it.

Shouts filled the air as the conquistadors opened fire on the shadowed source of the arrows.

I, however, was looking at something else entirely.

I was looking at the cannon on top of the flatbed wagon, or more particularly, at the fuse protruding from the breech of the cannon on top of the flatbed wagon.

The fuse was alight.

The flaming arrow—I did not know at the time, but I understand now that it was Bassario who fired it—had been so well aimed that it had lit the fuse on the cannon!

I did not wait for what would happen next. I just ran for the three unattended horses as quickly as I could, for no sooner did I reach them than the cannon on the flatbed wagon went off.

It was the loudest noise I had ever heard in my life. A monstrous blast of such intensity and power that it shook the world under me.

A billowing cloud of smoke shot out from the cannon’s barrel and the big wooden gate in front of it snapped like a twig. When the smoke cleared before it, a gaping ten-foot hole could be seen in the lower half of the giant gate.

The horses harnessed to the flatbed wagon bolted at the sudden thunderous blast. They reared on their hind legs and took flight, galloping off into the alleyways of Cuzco, leaving the damaged gate wide open.

The three horses I had been charged with procuring reared too. One of them bolted and ran off, but the other two calmed quickly as I held them firmly by their reins.

The Spanish soldiers were still firing blindly up into the shadowy rooftops. I looked up into the darkness. Renco and Bassario were nowhere to be seen—

‘Monk!’ someone called suddenly from behind me.

I turned and saw Bassario come running up with his longbow in his hand.

‘Well, you couldn’t have fouled this up any more, could you, monk?’ said he with a smile as he leapt up into the saddle of one of my horses. ‘All you had to do was scare the horses.’

‘Where is Renco?’ I inquired.

‘He is coming,’ said Bassario.

Just then a series of shrill, angry screams swept across the plaza and I turned instantly—and saw the row of manacled Incan prisoners charge as one at the Spaniards in the plaza.

The Incans were free, no longer joined together by the long length of black rope!

Then suddenly, I heard a death scream and saw Renco up on one of the rooftops—standing over a fallen conquistador, hurriedly taking the fallen man’s pistol, while six more Spaniards hustled up the stairs on the side of the building, chasing after him.

Renco looked down at me and cried, ‘Alberto! Bassario!

The gate! Go for the gate!’

‘What about you!’ I called.

‘I’ll be right behind you!” Renco called back as he ducked under a musket shot. ‘Just go! Go!”

I leapt up into the saddle of the second horse.

‘Come on!’ Bassario cried, kicking his horse.

I spurred my own steed and shot off the mark, turning the beast sharply so that it charged toward the gate.

It was then that I turned in my saddle and saw a most amazing sight.

I saw an arrow—a pointed arrow, not a flaming one— soar across the plaza from one of the rooftops. Trailing behind it, wobbling like the undulating body of a snake, was a long length of rope—black rope the rope that had bound the row of Incan prisoners together!

The arrow shot over my head and, with a firm smacking sound, lodged in the intact upper half of the big wooden gate. No sooner had the arrow hit the gate than I saw the entire length of rope behind it go taut.

And then I saw Renco at the other end of the rope—up on one of the rooftops standing with his legs splayed wide, with his newfound satchel draped over his right shoulder— saw him lash the leather belt of his Spanish pantaloons over it, and grab hold of the belt with one hand. Then I saw him leap off the roof and swing—no, slide—down the length of the rope, over the entire plaza, hanging onto the belt with one hand.

Some Spanish soldiers opened fire on him, but the dashing young prince just used his free hand to pull his pistol from his waistband and fire it at them while he slid at incredible speed down the rope!

I spurred my steed on, increased her speed, and pulled her in at a full gallop under Renco’s rope just as he reached the end of his slide. He released his grip on the belt and dropped down perfectly onto the rump of my horse.

In front of us, Bassario leapt like a seasoned horseman through the enormous hole in the wooden gate. Renco and I followed close behind him, riding double, vaulting through the gate amid a hail of wild gunshots.

We burst out into the cold night air—riding hard across the massive stone slab that formed a bridge over the city’s northern moat—and the first thing I heard as I raced across that bridge was a roar of total and utter jubilation from the hoards of Incan warriors in the valley before me.

‘How’s it going?’ a voice said suddenly.

Race glanced up from the manuscript and for a moment was disoriented. He looked out through the small window to his right and saw a sea of snowcapped mountains and an endless expanse of clear blue sky.

He shook his head. He’d been so absorbed in the story that he’d forgotten he was on board the Army cargo plane.

Troy Copeland stood in front of him. He was one of Nash’s DARPA people, the hawk-faced nuclear physicist.

‘So, how’s it going?’ Copeland said, nodding at the bundle of paper in Race’s lap. ‘Found the location of the idol yet?’

‘Well, I’ve found the idol,’ Race said, flipping through the remainder of the manuscript. He was about two-thirds of the way through it. ‘I think I’m about to find out where they took it.’

‘Good,’ Copeland said, turning. ‘Keep us posted.’

‘Hey’ Race said. ‘Before you go, can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘What is thyrium261 used for?’

Copeland frowned at the question.

‘I think I have a right to know,’ Race said.

Copeland nodded slowly. ‘Yes… yes, I guess you do.’ He took a breath. ‘As I think you were told before, thyrium261 is not indigenous to Earth. It comes from a binary star system called the Pleiades, a system not far from our own.

‘Now, as you can probably imagine, planets in binary star systems are affected by all sorts of forces because of their twin suns—photosynthesis is doubled; gravitational effects, as well as resistance to gravity, are enormous. As such, elements found on planets in binary systems are usually heavier and denser than similar elements found here on Earth. Thyrium261 is just such an element.

‘It was first found in petrified form in the walls of a meteor crater in Arizona in 1972. And even though the specimen there had been inert for millions of years, its potential sent shockwaves throughout the physics community.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you see, on a molecular level, thyrium bears a striking resemblance to the terrestrial elements uranium and plutonium. But thyrium outweighs both of these earthly elements by an order of magnitude. It is denser than our two most potent nuclear elements combined. Which means it is infinitely more powerful.’

Race began to feel a sense of dread crawling up his spine.

Where was Copeland going with this?

‘But like I said, thyrium has only ever been found on Earth in petrified form. Since 1972, two other samples have been discovered, but again both of those specimens were at least 40 million years old. Which is of no use to anyone since petrified thyrium is inert, chemically dead.

“What we have been waiting for for the past twenty-seven years is the discovery of a specimen of “live” thyrium, a specimen that is still active on a molecular level. And now we think we’ve found it, in a meteorite that crash-landed in the jungles of Peru five hundred years ago.’

‘So what does thyrium do?’ Race asked.

‘A lot,’ Copeland said. ‘A whole lot. For one thing, its potential as a power source is astronomical. Conservative estimates predict that a properly constituted thyrium reactor would generate electrical energy at a rate six hundred times greater than all the nuclear power plants in the United States combined.

‘But there’s an added bonus. Unlike our terrestrial nuclear elements, when thyrium is used as the core element of a fusion reactor, it decomposes with one hundred per cent efficiency. In other words, it leaves no contaminated waste byproducts. As such, it is unlike any power source on this earth. Uranium waste must be discarded in radioactive rods. Hell, even gasoline produces carbon monoxide. But thyrium is clean. It is a perfectly efficient power source.

Perfect. It is so internally pure that, based on our modeling, a raw sample of it would emit only microscopic quantities of passive radiation.’

Race held up his hand. ‘All right, all right. That all sounds great, but last I heard, DARPA wasn’t in the business of providing America with power stations. What else does thyrium do?’

Copeland smiled, caught.

‘Professor, for the last ten years, DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office has been working on a new weapon, a weapon unlike anything this world has ever seen. It is a device code-named “Supernova”.’

As soon as Copeland said the word, something twigged in the back of Race’s mind. He recalled a conversation he’d overheard between Copeland and Nash soon after he had boarded the plane. A conversation in which they had mentioned a breakin at Fairfax Drive and the theft of a device called a Supernova.

‘What exactly is this Supernova?’

‘Put simply,’ Copeland said, ‘the Supernova is the most powerful weapon ever devised in the history of mankind.

It’s what we call a planet killer.’

‘A what?

‘A planet killer. A nuclear device so powerful that when detonated, it would completely destroy nearly a third of the Earth’s mass. With a third of its mass gone, the Earth’s orbit around the sun would be corrupted. Our planet would spin out of control, out into space, further and further away from the sun. Within minutes the Earth’s surface—what was left of it—would be too cold to sustain human life. The Super nova, Professor Race, is the first manmade device that is capable of ending life as we know it on this planet. Hence its namesake, the name we give to an exploding star.’

Race swallowed. In fact, he felt positively weak.

A million questions flooded his mind.

Like, why would someone build such a device? What possible reason could there be for creating a weapon that could kill everyone on the planet, including its own creators? And all that considered, why was his country building it?

Copeland continued, ‘The thing is, Professor, the Super nova that we have at present is a prototype, a workable shell. That device the device that was stolen from DARPA headquarters last night—is useless. For the simple reason that the operation of the Supernova requires the addition of one thing. Thyrium.’

Oh, great… Race thought.

‘In this regard,’ Copeland said, ‘the Supernova is not all that dissimilar to a neutron bomb. It is a fission device which means it operates on the principle of splitting the thyrium atom. Two conventional thermonuclear warheads are used to split a subcritical mass of thyrium, unleashing the mega-explosion.’

‘Okay, wait a second,’ Race said. ‘Let me get this straight.

You guys have built a weapon—a weapon that is capable of destroying the planet—that is dependent upon an element that you don’t even have yet?’

‘That’s correct,’ Copeland said.

‘But why? Why is America building a weapon that can do all this?’

Copeland nodded. ‘That’s always a difficult question to answer. I mean—’

‘There are two reasons,’ a deeper voice said suddenly from behind Race.

It was Frank Nash.

Nash nodded at the manuscript in Race’s lap. ‘Have you found the location of the idol yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then I’ll make this quick so you can get back to work. First of all, what I am about to tell you is of the utmost secrecy. There are sixteen people in the country who know what am I about to tell you and five of them are on this plane. If you mention any of this to anyone after the completion of this mission, you’ll spend the next seventy-five years in jail. Do you understand me, Professor?’

‘Good. The justification for the construction of the Supernova is twofold.

The first reason is this. About eighteen months ago, it was discovered that state-funded scientists in Germany had begun the secret construction of a Supernova.

Our response was simple: if they were going to build one, so were we.’

‘That’s great logic,’ Race said.

‘It’s exactly the same logic Oppenheimer used to justify building the atomic bomb.’

‘Geez, you’re standing on the backs of giants there, Colonel,’ Race said drily. ‘And the second reason?’

Nash said, ‘Professor, have you ever heard of a man named Dietrich von Choltitz?’

‘No.”

‘Commanding-General Dietrich von Choltitz was the Nazi general in charge of the German forces in Paris at the time of the Nazis’ withdrawal from France in August of 1944. After it became apparent that the Allies were going to retake Paris, Hitler sent Choltitz a communique. It ordered Choltitz to set thousands of incendiary devices all over the city before he left … and then, after he was gone, to blow Paris sky-high.

‘Now, to von Choltitz’s credit, he disobeyed the order. He didn’t want to go down in history as the man who destroyed Paris. But what is important here is the logic behind Hitler’s order. If he couldn’t have Paris, no-one could.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Race said warily.

‘Professor, the Supernova is but one evolutionary step in a highlevel strategic plan that has existed in U.S. foreign policy for the last fifty years. That plan is called the Choltitz Plan.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I mean is this. Did you know that throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Navy had standing orders to ensure that at any given time there were a number of nuclear ballistic missile submarines stationed at certain strategic locations around the world. Do you know what those submarines were there for?’

‘What?’

‘The orders those subs had were very simple. Should the Soviet Union in any way defeat the United States in any sudden or unforeseen engagement, those boomers had orders to launch a rain of nuclear missiles not just on Soviet targets, but on every major city on the European and U.S. mainlands.’

‘What!’

‘The Choltitz Plan, Professor Race. If we can’t have it, no-one can.’

‘But this is on a global scale…’ Race said in disbelief.

‘That’s right. That’s exactly right. And therein lies the reason for the creation of the Supernova. The United States is the most dominant nation on this earth. Should any nation seek to alter that situation, we will inform them of our possession of a workable Supernova. If they take further steps and a conflict ensues and the United States is beaten—or worse, crippled—then we will detonate the device.’

Race felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

Was this for real? Was this policy? If America could not control the world, it would destroy it?

‘How can you build something like that?’

‘Professor Race, what if China decided to wage war against the United States? What if they won? Would you have the American people under the rule of a Chinese regime?’

‘But you’d rather die?’

‘Yes.’

‘And take the rest of the world with you,’ Race said. ‘You guys must be the sorest losers of all time.’

‘Be that as it may’ Nash said, changing his tone, ‘the law of unintended consequences has taken its effect on this situation.

News of the creation of a device with the potential to destroy the planet has brought other parties out of the woodwork, parties who would see such a weapon as a powerful bargaining chip in their own crusades.’

‘What kind of parties?’

‘Certain terrorist groups. People who if they got their hands on a workable Supernova would hold the world to ransom.’

‘Right,’ Race said, ‘and now your Supernova’s been stolen, probably by terrorists.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘You opened Pandora’s box, didn’t you, Doctor Nash.’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid we did. And that’s why it is imperative that we get hold of that idol before anyone else does.’

With that, Nash and Copeland left Race alone with the manuscript once again.

Race took a moment to gather his thoughts. His mind was swirling.

Supernovas. Global destruction. Terrorist groups. He found it difficult to concentrate.

He shook it all away, forced himself to focus, found his place in the manuscript again—the part where Renco and Alberto Santiago had just blasted their way out of the besieged city of Cuzco.

Then Race took a deep breath, adjusted his glasses and entered the world of the Incas once again.

We raced through the night, Renco, Bassario and myself, spurring our horses on, making them gallop faster than they had ever done so before. For behind us, close behind us, were the Spaniards—Hernando and his legion of mounted troops, galloping across the countryside, hunting us like dogs.

After departing through the northern gates of the Cuzco valley we veered right, heading to the northeast. We came to the Urubamba River—the same river that had held Renco’s prison hulk—and crossed it not far from the town of Pisac.

And thus began our journey, our desperate escape through the wilderness.

I will not trouble you, dear reader, with every trifling incident of our arduous journey, for it went for many days and the incidents that took place during it were far too numerous. Rather, I shall mention only those occurrences which are pertinent to my grander tale.

We were headed for a village named Vilcafor—so Renco informed me—of which his uncle was the chieftain. This village was to be found in the foothills of the great mountains far to the north, at the point where those mountains met the great rainforest to the east.

Apparently, Vilcafor was a secret citadel town heavily fortified and well defended what was maintained by the Incan nobility for use in times of crisis. Its location was a carefully guarded secret, and it could be found only by following a series of stone totems placed at certain intervals in the rainforest, and then only when one knew the code to find the totems. But to get to the rainforest, first we had to traverse the mountains.

And so we entered the mountains—the stupendous rocky monoliths that dominate New Spain. It cannot be overstated just how magnificent the mountains of this country are.

Their steep rocky bluffs and high pointed summits-capped with snow all year round—can be seen for hundreds of miles, even from the dense rainforests of the lowlands.

After a few days of travel, we discarded our horses, prefer ring to navigate the delicate mountain trails on foot. Carefully, we walked along slippery narrow paths cut into the sides of steep mountain gorges. Gingerly, we crossed long sagging rope bridges suspended high above raging mountain rivers.

And all the while, echoing through the maze of narrow gorges behind us, were the shouts and marching footsteps of the Spaniards.

We came to several Incan villages, situated in the navels of the splendid mountain valleys. Each village was named after its chieftain—Rumac, Sipo and Huanco.

At these villages we were supplied with food, guides and llamas. The generosity of these people was incredible. It was as if every single villager knew of Renco and his mission and they could not have moved faster to help us. When we had time, Renco would show them the black stone idol and they would all bow before it and fall silent.

But we rarely had such time.

The Spaniards pursued us doggedly.

On one occasion, as we left the town of Ocuyu—a village situated at the base of a wide mountain valley—no sooner had we surmounted the crest of the nearest hill than I heard the reports of heavy musket fire from behind us. I turned to gaze back down the valley.

What I saw filled me with horror.

I saw Hernando and his troops—a whole gigantic column of at least one hundred men—marching on foot at the far end of the valley. Mounted troops flanked the enormous body of foot soldiers, riding ahead of them into the town that we had only just left, firing their muskets at the unarmed Incans.

Later, Hernando would divide his hundred-man legion into three thirty-man divisions. Then he staggered their marching times, so that while one division marched, the other two rested. The rested divisions would then march later, overtaking the first group in their turn, and the cycle would continue. The result was a constantly moving mass of men, a mass that was always moving forward, always closing in on us.

And all this while Renco, Bassario and myself stumbled ever forward, struggling through the rocky wilderness, fighting fatigue every moment of the way.

Of one thing I was certain: the Spaniards would catch us.

The only question was when.

Yet still we toiled on.

Now at one point on our journey—and I must say, at a time when my countrymen were so close behind us that we could hear their voices echoing off the canyons to our rear— we stopped at a village named Colco, which is situated on the banks of a mountain river known as the Paucartambo.

It was in this town that I obtained a clue as to why Renco had brought the criminal Bassario along on our journey.

For in the village of Colco there is a quarry. Now, as I have said before, these Indians are masterful stonemasons.

All of their buildings are constructed of the most finely cut stones, some of which can be as tall as six men and weigh more than a hundred tons. Such stones are harvested in the massive quarries of towns like Colco.

After speaking quickly with the town’s chieftain, Renco was escorted to the quarry—a monumental hole that had been dug into the side of a mountain. He returned a short while later with a goat-skin sack in his hand. The sides of the sack bulged with sharp, rocky corners. Renco handed the sack to Bassario and we rode on.

I did not know what was in that sack, but on the nights when we stopped to rest, Bassario would slink away to a corner of the camp and light his own fire. Then he would sit crosslegged and work over the sack with his back to Renco and myself.

After eleven days of this most brutal travel, we emerged from the mountains and beheld a most momentous sight, a vista like none I have ever witnessed.

We saw the rainforest spread out before us, a seamless carpet of green stretching out to the distant horizon. The only breaks in the carpet were the tablelands—the wide, flat step-like formations in the landscape that marked the gradual transition from rugged mountain range to verdant river basin—and the wide bands of brown that snaked their way through the dense jungle, the mighty rivers of the rainforest.

And so we plunged into the jungle.

It was like Hell on earth.

For days we travelled through the eternal shade of the rainforest. It was wet and it was damp and Lord, how it was dangerous. Obscenely fat snakes hung from the trees, small rodents scurried about under our feet, and on one night—I was certain of it—I saw the veiled outline of a panther, a shadow superimposed on the darkness, slinking silently on padded paws across a nearby branch.

And then, of course, there were the rivers, in which there lurked the greatest danger of all.

Alligators.

Their craggy triangular heads alone were enough to make a man’s blood turn to ice, and their bodies, black and heavy and armoured, were at least six paces in length. Their eyes always watched us—unblinking, reptilian, repulsive.

We travelled down the rivers on reed canoes donated to us by the river villages of Paxu, Tupra and Roya—boats which seemed pathetically small when compared to the inordinately large reptiles in the water all around us—and we climbed down the steep cliffs of the tablelands with the aid of skilled Incan guides.

In the evenings, by the light of the fire, Renco would instruct me in his language, Quechua. In return, I would teach him the finer points of swordsmanship with the two glistening Spanish sabres we had pilfered on our way out of Cuzco.

While Renco and I fenced, if he wasn’t toiling away in some corner of the camp Bassario would often practise his archery. Apparently, before he was imprisoned (for what I knew not), Bassario had been one of the finest archers in all of the Incan empire. I believed it. One evening I saw him throw a rainforest fruit high into the air and pierce it with an arrow a moment later, such was his skill.

After a time, however, it became apparent to us that the harsh terrain of the rainforest had slowed our pursuers somewhat. The sounds of Hernando and his men hacking at the branches of the forest behind us grew progressively more faint. Indeed, at one time I thought that perhaps Hernando had given up on his pursuit.

But no. Every day, runners from the various villages we had passed through would catch us up and inform us of the sacking of their town.

Hernando and his men were still coming.

And so we toiled on.

And then one day, not long after we had left the village of Roya, at a time when I was walking at the head of our expedition, I pushed aside a large branch and found myself staring into the eyes of a snarling catlike creature.

I fell backwards with a shout, dropping with a loud splat in the mud.

The next thing I heard was Bassario chuckling softly.

I looked up and saw that I had revealed a large stone totem of some sort. The snarling cat that I had seen was nothing but a stone carving of a great, catlike creature. But the carving was covered in a veil of trickling water, giving the unwary traveler—me—the impression that it was well and truly alive.

As I looked at it more closely, however, I noticed that the stone carving on the totem was not dissimilar to that of the idol that was the cause of our frenetic journey. It was a jaguar of some kind, possessed of large feline fangs, snarling—no, roaring—at the incautious explorer who happened to stumble upon it.

I have wondered more than once at these Incans’ fascination with the great cats.

They idolise these creatures, treat them as gods. In fact, warriors who show feline coordination in their movements are most revered in their armies—it is seen as a great skill to be able to land on one’s feet and pounce immediately back into the fray. Such a warrior is said to be possessed of the jinga.

Why, the very evening before I stumbled so embarrassingly upon the stone totem, Renco had been telling me that the most feared creature in their mythology is a great black cat known as the titi in Agmara, or the rapa in Quechua.

Apparently, this creature is as black as the night and almost as tall as a man even when standing on all four legs. And it kills with unparalleled ferocity. Indeed, Renco said, it is that most feared variety of wild animal—the kind that kills for no other reason than for the pleasure of killing.

‘Well done, Brother Alberto,’ said Renco as I lay in the mud, staring up at the totem. ‘You’ve found the first of the totems that will lead us to Vilcafor.’

‘How will they lead us there?’ I inquired as I rose to my feet.

Said Renco, ‘There is a code, known only to the most senior of Incan nobles—’

‘But if he tells you, he’ll have to kill you,’ Bassario interjected with a rude grin.

Renco smiled indulgently at Bassario. ‘True,’ said he. ‘But in the event that I should die, I shall need someone to continue my mission. And to do that, that someone will have to know the code to the totems.’

Renco turned to face me. ‘I was hoping that you would be willing to bear that responsibility, Alberto.’

The?’ said I, swallowing.

‘Yes, you,’ said Renco. ‘Alberto, I see the qualities of a hero in you, even if you do not. You possess honour and courage in far greater quantities than the average soul. I would have no hesitation in entrusting my people’s fate to you should the worst befall me, if you would allow it.’

I bowed my head and nodded, acceding to his wish.

‘Good,’ Renco smiled. ‘You, on the other hand,’ he said, grinning wryly at Bassario, “would give me considerable hesitation.

Now go stand over there.”

Once Bassario had moved to stand some paces away from us, Renco leaned close to me and indicated the stone carving of the rapa in front of us. ‘The code is simple: follow the rapa’s tail.’

‘Follow the rapa’s tail…’ said I, looking at the totem.

Sure enough, out of the back of the carving extended a thin snaking feline tail, pointing to the north.

‘But,’ Renco suddenly held up his finger, ‘not every totem is to be followed in this way. It is this rule that only the most senior nobles know. Indeed, I was only told of it by the high priestess of the Coricancha when we arrived there to get the idol.’

‘What is the rule, then?’ I inquired.

‘After the first totem every second totem is to be distrusted. In those cases, one is to follow the totem in the direction of the Mark of the Sun.’

‘The Mark of the Sun?’

‘A mark not unlike this one,’ Renco said, indicating the small triangular birthmark below his left eye, the dark brown blemish of skin that looked like an inverted mountain.

‘At every second totem after the first one,’ he said, ‘we are not to follow the rapa’s tail, but rather to go in the direction of the Mark of the Sun.’

‘What will happen if one continues to follow the rapa’s tail?’ I inquired.

‘Won’t our enemies ultimately realise that they are travelling in the wrong direction when they find no more totems?’

Renco smiled at me. ‘Oh, no, Alberto. There are more totems to be found, even if one goes in the wrong direction.

But they only lead the bamboozled adventurer farther and farther away from the citadel.’

And so we followed the totems through the rainforest.

They were spaced at varying intervals—some were but a few hundred paces from their predecessors, others were some miles overland—so we had to be careful that we travelled in direct lines. Often we were aided by the river system, since at times the totems had been carefully placed along the riverbanks.

Following the totems, we travelled in a northerly direction, crossing the wide rainforest basin until we came to a new tableland that led up to the mountains.

This tableland stretched from the north to the south for as far as the eye could see—a giant jungle-covered plateau—a single step that Our Lord had built to aid him in stepping up from the rainforest to the mountain foothills. It was dotted with waterfalls all along its length. It was a truly magnificent sight.

We climbed the tableland’s cliff-like eastern face, hauling with us our reed canoes and paddles. It was then that we came to a final totem which directed us upriver, toward the gigantic snowcapped mountains that loomed above the rainforest.

We rowed against the gentle current of the river in the pouring afternoon rain. After a while, however, the rain stopped and in the mist that followed it the jungle took on an eerie quality. The world fell oddly silent and, strangely, the sounds of the rainforest abruptly vanished.

No birds chirped. No rodents rustled in the underbrush.

I felt a rush of dread flood through my body.

Something was not right here.

Renco and Bassario must have felt it, too, for they paddled more slowly now, dipping their oars silently into the glassy surface of the water, as if not daring to break the unnatural silence.

And then we rounded a bend in the river and suddenly we saw a town on the riverbank, nestled up against the base of the enormous mountain range. An imposing stone structure stood proudly in the centre of a cluster of small huts, while a wide moat-like ditch surrounded the entire enclave.

The citadel of Vilcafor.

But none of us had much care for the great citadel. Nor did we take much notice of the village around it that lay in smouldering ruins.

No. We only had eyes for the bodies, the scores of bodies that lay crumpled on the main street on the town, covered in blood.

Race turned the page, looking for the next chapter, but it wasn’t there.

This, it seemed, was the last page of the manuscript.

Damn it, he thought.

He peered out the window of the Hercules and saw the engines mounted on the green-painted wing outside, saw the snowcapped peaks of the Andes gliding by beneath them.

He looked over at Nash sitting on the other side of the aisle, working on a laptop computer.

‘Is this all there is?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry?’ Nash frowned.

‘The manuscript. Is this all we have?’

‘You mean you’ve finished translating it already?”

‘Did you find the location of the idol?’

‘Well, kind of,’ Race said, looking down at the notes he’d taken as he’d translated the manuscript. They read:

• LEAVE CUZCO-ENTER MTNS.

• VILLAGES: RUMAC, SIPO. HUANCO. OCUYU.

• COLCOPAUCARTAMBO RIVER—QUARRY THERE.

• 11 DAYS—COME TO RAINFOREST.

• RIVER VILLAGES: PAXU, TUPRA, ROYA.

• STONE TOTEMS—CARVED IN SHAPE OF CATLIKE CREATURE—LEAD TO CITADEL AT VILCAFOR.

• TOTEM CODE FOLLOW THE RAPA’S TAIL FOR FIRST TOTEM.

AT EVERY SECOND TOTEM AFTER THAT, FOLLOW THE ‘MARK OF THE SUN’.

FOLLOWED TOTEMS NORTH ACROSS RAINFOREST BASIN—CAME TO TABLELAND LEADING UP TO MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS.

AT FINAL TOTEM WENT UPRIVER TOWARD MTNS-.-FOUND CITADEL IN RUINS.

‘What do you mean you’ve kind of found it?’ Nash asked.

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Race said. ‘The manuscript virtually ends in mid-sentence when they reach the town of Vilcafor. There’s obviously more to be read, but it isn’t here.’ He didn’t add that he was beginning to find the story kind of interesting and actually wanted to read more of it. ‘You’re sure this is all we have?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Nash said. ‘Remember, this isn’t the original manuscript, but rather a half-finished copy of it, transcribed by another monk many years after Santiago wrote the original. This is all there is, this is all that the other monk managed to copy from the original.’

He frowned. ‘I was hoping we’d get the exact location of the idol from it, but if it doesn’t give us that, then what I need to know are the generalities: where to look, where to start looking. We’ve got the technology to pinpoint the location of the idol/f we know where to begin our search. And by the sound of things, from what you’ve read so far, it appears that you have enough there to tell me where to start looking. So tell me what you know.’

Race showed Nash his notes, told him the story of Renco Capac and his flight from Cuzco. He then explained that from what he’d read, Renco had made it to his intended destination—a citadel-town at the base of the Andes known as Vilcafor.

He also told Nash that, so long as they knew one particular fact, the manuscript detailed how to get to that town.

‘And what fact is that?’ Nash said.

‘Assuming the stone totems are still there,’ Race said, ‘you have to know what the “Mark of the Sun” is. If you don’t know what it is, then you can’t read the totems.’

Nash frowned and turned to Walter Chambers, the anthropologist and Incan expert, sitting a few seats away.

‘Walter. Do you know anything about a “Mark of the Sun” in Incan culture?’

‘The Mark of the Sun? Why, yes, of course.’

“What is it?’

Chambers shrugged, came oven ‘It’s just a birthmark, really. Kind of like Professor Race’s there.’ He nodded with his chin at Race’s glasses, indicating the dark triangular blemish on the skin under his left eye. Race cringed. Ever since he was a kid, he’d hated that birthmark. He thought it looked like a smudged coffee stain on his face.

‘The Incans thought birthmarks were signs of distinction,’ Chambers said. ‘Signs sent from the gods themselves.

The Mark of the Sun was a special kind of birthmark, a blemish on the face, just below the left eye. It was special because the Incans believed that it was a mark sent from their most powerful god, the Sun God. To have a child with such a mark was regarded as a great honour. The Mark of the Sun indicated that that particular child was special, in some way destined for greatness.’

Race said, ‘So if someone instructed us to follow a statue in the direction of the• Mark of the Sun, they would be telling us to go to the statue’s left?’

‘That would be correct,’ Chambers said, hesitating. ‘I think.”

‘What do you mean, you think?“ Nash said.

‘Well, you see, over the past ten years, there’s been substantial debate among anthropologists as to whether or not the Mark of the Sun was found on the lefthand side of the face or the righthand side.

Incan carvings and pictographs universally depict the Mark of the Sun—whether on pictures of humans or animals or whatever—under the carving’s left eye. Problems arise, however, when one reads Spanish texts like the Relacion and the Royal Commentaries which talk of people like Renco Capac and Tupac Amaru, both of whom were said to have borne the Mark. The problem is, those books say that Renco and Amaru had the mark under their right eyes. And as soon as something like that arises, confusion reigns supreme.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘Lefthand side, definitely.’

‘And we should be able to find our way to the citadel?’

Nash said, worried.

‘You can trust my judgement on this one, Colonel,’

Chambers said confidently. ‘If we follow each statue to the left, we’ll find that citadel.’

Just then, a singsong little bell rang from somewhere nearby.

Race turned. It had come from Nash’s laptop—an email message must have just come through. Nash went back to his seat to get it.

Chambers turned to Race. ‘It’s all very exciting, isn’t it?’

“Exciting isn’t exactly the word I would use,’ Race said.

He was just glad that he’d finished translating the manuscript before they had landed in Cuzco. If Nash was going to venture into the jungle after the idol, he didn’t want to be a part of it.

He glanced at his watch.

It was 4:35 pm. It was getting late.

Just then, Nash appeared next to him.

‘Professor,’ he said. ‘If you’re up to it, I’d like you to come along with us to Vilcafor.’

There was something in his tone that made Race pause.

This was a command, not a question.

‘I thought you said if I translated the manuscript before we landed I wouldn’t even have to get off the plane.’

‘I said that that might be the case. You’ll recall that I also said that if you did have to leave the plane, you’d have a team of Green Berets looking after you. That is the circumstance now.’

‘Why?’ Race asked.

‘I’ve arranged for a pair of helicopters to meet us at Cuzco,’ Nash said.

‘We’ll be using them to follow Santiago’s trail from the air.

Unfortunately, I thought the manuscript would be more detailed in its description of the location of the idol, more precise. But now we’re going to need you for the trip to Vilcafor, in case there are any ambiguities between the text and the terrain.’

Race didn’t like the sound of this. He felt that he had fulfilled his part of the deal, and the idea of going into the Amazon rainforest made him decidedly uneasy.

On top of that, the tone of Nash’s request made him even more apprehensive. He got the feeling that now that Nash had him on board the Hercules and bound for Cuzco, his options—and his ability to say no—were extremely limited.

He felt trapped, railroaded into going somewhere he didn’t want to go.

This wasn’t part of the deal at all.

‘Couldn’t I just stay in Cuzco?’ he offered lamely. ‘Keep in contact with you from there?’

‘No,’ Nash said. ‘Definitely not. We’re arriving through Cuzco, but we won’t be leaving that way. This plane and all the U.S. Army personnel waiting for us in Cuzco will be leaving the city shortly after we head off into the jungle in the choppers. I’m sorry, Professor, but I need you. I need you to help me get to Vilcafor.’

Race bit his lip. Christ…

‘Well… all right,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Good,’ Nash said, standing. ‘Very good. Now, did I hear you say earlier that you had some less formal clothes in that bag of yours?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I suggest you get changed into them. You’re going to the jungle now.’

The Hercules flew over the mountains.

Race emerged from the lavatory in the plane’s lower cargo deck, now dressed in a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of black sneakers—the clothes that he’d packed for his lunchtime baseball game. He was also wearing a cap—a battered, navy-blue New York Yankees baseball cap.

He saw the Green Berets on the deck in front of him, preparing and cleaning their weapons for the mission ahead. One of the commandos—a red-headed older corporal named Jake ‘Buzz’ Cochrane—-was talking animatedly as he cleaned the firing mechanism of his M16o

‘I tell you, boys, it was fucking apples,’ he was saying.

“Apples. Sweet sixteen with cheap Doreen. Gentlemen, mark my words, she is without a doubt, the most bang-fory6ur-buck whore in all of South Carolina—’

At that moment, Cochrane caught sight of Race standing— listening at the lavatory door and he cut himself off.

All of the other Green Berets spun around and Race felt instantly self-conscious.

He felt like an outsider. Someone who wasn’t part of the brotherhood.

Someone who didn’t belong.

He saw his bodyguard—the tall sergeant, Van Lewen—hovering at the perimeter of the circle, and he smiled. ‘Hey.’

Van Lewen smiled back. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Good. Really good,’ Race said lamely.

He walked past the now silent band of rugged Green Berets, reached the steep flight of steps that led back up to the main passenger deck.

As he climbed the stairs, however, he heard the Green Beret named Cochrane mutter something from the cargo bay.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to have heard it, but he heard it anyway.

Cochrane had said, ‘Fucking pansy.’

A voice came over the PA system as Race walked back down the centre aisle of the passenger compartment. ‘Commencing our descent now. ETA Cuzco, twenty minutes.’

On his way to his seat, Race passed Walter Chambers.

The bespectacled little scientist was holding Race’s notes alongside another sheet of paper. It was a map of some sort, marked with a felt-tip pen.

Bolognesi (Iparia }