The Babylon rite

19

TUMP Lab, Zana, north Peru

The stranger’s coarse, shouting voice was baffled by the fireproof glass in the panel. But his malign intentions were apparent.

The gun was now circling Dan’s temple. Teasing. Sensual. Malevolent. Waiting. Hungry. The words came quick and angry. Building to a climax.

What could she do? She couldn’t do nothing; she couldn’t do anything. She was of course unarmed. She couldn’t simply run in.

Dan was talking now. She strained to hear the muffled words, his fearful responses, but it was said in Spanish, and his voice was quiet, and meek — apologetic. And inaudible. Then the gunman came back, urgent and harsh.

Again Dan demurred, cowering, shaking his head. More fierce queries from the aggressor. The gun was pressed to Dan’s throat once again. And now the intruder was smiling, eerily; maybe getting off on Dan’s terror. Or smiling with satisfaction at a job nearly done.

She cringed, hidden behind the door. Waiting for the bang.

But there was no bang.

Jess crept up a few inches closer, and stared, again. The gunman was still there. Taunting. Teasing. Dan was now almost on his knees. Begging for his life.

She could make a phone call, but to whom? Seeking anxiously for her phone, she tried to remember the numbers she’d been told to keep, by Dan when she had first arrived: North Peru is a pretty lawless place, take down these numbers. Police. Hospital. Me. The US embassy…

What had she done with those numbers? Keyed them into her phone? No. She’d never got around to it. They were in her bag, in a notebook, and her notebook was in the lab.

In the lab with the man with the gun, who was about to kill Dan.

The shouts were louder. So loud she could hear them quite clearly.

‘?Dimelo!?Necesito la respuesta!’

Tell me! Give me the answer.

But I do not know

Tell me. Or you will die. Here. Like an old pig.

What can I say? I have never heard of him! Please do not kill me, please do not kill me…

The intruder scowled, and ceased talking. Jess pressed closer to the thick wire-grilled glass. She didn’t care if she was spotted now. Dan’s voice was supplicant, so frightened, so pleading, she wanted to rush out and save him.

The man had the gun calmly aimed at Dan’s head. As for a simple execution. Enough: she could bear it no longer. Summoning all her courage, Jess pushed at the door but even as she did, she heard voices from a different door. Jess paused to see. It was Larry and Jay casually walking into the lab. And then gazing in horror at the tall intruder.

The gunman didn’t waste time. He levelled the gun first at Larry, and then at Jay, wordlessly telling them to back off. They backed off. Then the intruder poised the gun tenderly, this way and that, as if deciding who to shoot first.

Yet he didn’t fire. Why? Halfway through the door, Jess saw what the gunman had already seen.

A crowd of villagers was pushing into the room. Jay and Larry had obviously been recruiting: hiring local men, for the dig, as they often did. They’d found a dozen farmers and fishmeal workers; big, dark-skinned Zana men who were staring right back at the gunman, utterly unafraid.

Now the intruder looked seriously confused. It was a stand-off. The locals gazed at the gunman, daring him, chins uptilted; three of them had drawn machetes, used for cane cutting: the challenge was obvious. You can shoot one of us, maybe two, maybe three — but you can’t kill us all, we will chop you down.

The tension tautened. The fridges buzzed. The Moche pots stared in reproach across the laboratory.

The gunman swore. ‘ Que chingados! Yo matario tu! ’

But he was edging to the door, and the gun was slack in his hand.

The tallest villager lifted the machete. ‘ Tiratu a un poso! ’

The glinting machete was pointing at the exit, inviting the gunman to go.

And he was going. Barging through the dark villagers, the gunman pushed his way to the door, and then he slammed the door open and was away down the steps: sprinting. A few seconds later they heard the noise of his car, screeching away very fast, leaving a cloud of dust which was visible from the tall laboratory windows.

Gone.

Jay and Larry were already at Dan’s side, helping him to his feet, and sitting him on the stool. He asked, limply, for water. Bewildered, and urgent, Jess fetched water from the fridge. As she took the small bottle of Evian from the refrigerated depths, the Moche skulls smiled at her from their yellow foam cushions.

‘Thank you,’ Dan said, gazing deep into Jessica’s eyes. His hand was visibly trembling as he tried to open the little water bottle; but he was shivering so much he couldn’t open the bottle. Jess did it for him; he guzzled the water.

Then someone pushed through the scientists, and poured a liberal measure of the local liquor from a small glass bottle into a plastic cup. Dan looked at it for a moment — and sank the booze.

‘Aguardiente?’ The villager with the bottle nodded, quite shyly.

‘Gracias, amigo,’ Dan said. ‘ Gracias. ’

The villager spoke in a deep Zana voice. You pay us. You feed our children. You are our friends. We are not afraid of guns.

Dan thanked the villagers again, and then some more. But the men just bowed, and turned solemnly; then they moved to the door, and disappeared.

Jessica watched as Dan took another gulp of the liquor; he saw her scrutinizing him.

‘Jess. Guys. Thanks… I’m OK.’

Jay was the first to ask, ‘How the hell did he get in?’

Dan shook his head. ‘The front door. I guess. Just kicked it open?’

‘Who was he? How long had he been here?’

‘Five minutes. Jess was in the washroom, he just marched in and he pinned me to the wall and… started… asking questions.’

Jess had so many questions of her own. But her boss — her boyfriend — was maybe too shocked for an interrogation. She looked at Jay. ‘Do we tell the police?’

Dan shook his head. ‘The police? What can they do? I’ll give them a description, but, eh, how many criminals are there in Peru? Who are they gonna ask? What are they gonna ask? Did you see a tall Peruvian?’

Larry persisted. ‘So who was he? Race, accent?’

Dan shrugged.

‘Peruvian, probably. Mestizo maybe. South American for sure. Maybe a local villain?’

‘A Haquero, perhaps? A graverobber?’

‘Could be.’ Dan sighed, and held the cup in his hand as if it was the Holy Grail, the Eucharist. ‘I just don’t know! He stank a little of this stuff, aguardiente. Not too much. Not a total lush. More professional than that.’

‘The gun was a Glock,’ said Jess. And three male faces turned her way. ‘My uncle is a gun nut. In Utah, I used to vacation on his ranch. A Glock’s a pricey gun for a local criminal. Glock 23, 45-mil, five hundred bucks minimum.’

Jay gestured in frustration. ‘Which means?’

‘I don’t know either!’ Jessica sighed. ‘But this wasn’t some average cane farmer with a grudge. Where would they get a smart gun like that? How?’

Larry suggested, ‘A haquero, then, like I said?’

Dan answered. ‘He wasn’t interested in new finds, new tombs. He just kept asking, me the same f- the same damn questions. Endlessly. With that gun.’

‘What questions?’

‘What we were doing here. What we’d found, stuff like that…’

Jess walked around the lab, pacing, thinking, thinking hard; she paused by the first large jar, and turned. ‘He was asking you about a man. Wasn’t he? I overheard it.’

‘Did he? Yes. Yes, maybe he did. I was so damn scared. But he did

… yes, he did.’

‘Did this guy have a name?’

‘Something odd. Something strange. Yes. I remember: Archibald McLintock. ’

‘Who?’

‘ McLintock.’ Dan repeated. ‘Ar-chi-bald Mc-Lin-tock. He said it precisely. What did I know about… Archibald McLintock. Such an odd name — that’s all.’

Jay looked at Jess and at Larry. ‘So who the fuck is that?’

Larry snorted. ‘Does it matter? Someone just tried to kill Dan.’

Jessica raised a hand. ‘I think it matters, I think it matters a lot. It’s gotta be linked.’

‘To what?’ Larry’s voice was verging on angry. ‘Jess, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘The truck. In Trujillo. That slammed into the garage.’

‘Eh?’

Her voice was almost as passionate his now. ‘Think about it. First an explosion, then a gunman. Can it really be coincidence? All this violence.’

‘Sorry, Jess, no idea.’

‘ Maybe, in Trujillo, it wasn’t the garage they were aiming for. Maybe it was Pablo himself, Pablo and the museum. Maybe someone is hunting down people who are connected with the Moche.’

‘Where’s the evidence?’

Jessica insisted, ‘I remember him saying, Pablo, the day it happened, that he’d had people in the museum — asking questions. He said they were… unpleasant people. Knowing Pablo, they could have had guns and he would call them “unpleasant” — isn’t that just a bit strange? And now this. Here. A gunman.’

A silence. Dan looked at her long and hard. ‘So you reckon that whoever they are, they are coming for anyone — anyone who knows too much about the Moche? ’

‘Yes. I do.’

The only sound in the room was the buzz of the fridges. Containing the smiling Moche skulls in their soft collars of yellow foam.