The Moche Warrior

The fanged god, the Decapitator, steps forward. The tumi is raised; gold flashes through the air. The Priestess raises the cup. Iguana and Wrinkle Face take their places at the head of the shaft. The great ceremony begins.

In the tomb, the sacrificed llamas, headless, rest on either side of the coffin, the Warrior’s dog nearby. The mummies of the female ancestors are placed in the tomb, two at the head of the coffin, two at the foot.

Iguana and Wrinkle Face, masks glinting in the light of torches, take the ropes and slowly lower the Great Warrior way down into the chamber. The body is placed in the coffin, head to the south, toward Cerro Blanco. With proper ceremony, the coffin is sealed with copper straps.

The guardians, those who will protect the Warrior through all time, go before the Decapitator. One is placed beside the Warrior, the other, feet cut off, in a niche above the coffin. Now the chamber can be sealed, the shaft filled.

The new Warrior Priest sits cross-legged on his litter, his standards to either side, his dog at his feet. The Bird Priest takes the cup of sacrifice from the Priestess and passes it to him. May our new Warrior save us from the water that rushes from the mountains, destroying everything in its path. He must: If he cannot, it is the end of our world.

13

Rolando guerra’s journey to his final resting place was more seething mob than funeral procession, the animosity of his friends and relatives barely held in check by the solemnity of the occasion.

It looked as if half the town had crowded into the Plaza de Armas as the casket, carried by six members of the Guerra family, went into the plaza and up the church steps. Guerra’s wife and two small children followed the coffin, the woman sobbing, and the children, a little boy and girl, looking perplexed. An older woman—Guerra’s mother, I surmised—walked ramrod straight and dry-eyed behind them.

Mayor Montero had sent one of his policemen to the hacienda to urge us not to attend the funeral in order not to inflame the situation, and it was good advice indeed. The crowd was an angry one, threatening to erupt at any moment, I thought, as Puma and I pulled back into a lane and retreated to the market area.

“Bad scene,” was all Puma said. It was a bad scene indeed. While the Guerras were, I gathered, considered loners, Rolando’s death had played into the anxiety people were feeling about the approaching El Nino, which, together with the invasores that came with it, threatened their livelihood and their safety.

The marketplace where I’d taken Ines to get some supplies was abuzz. There seemed to be a general feeling that Rolando shouldn’t have been looting, but there was an almost universal resentment of people who came from somewhere else. A few of the shopkeepers glared ominously at me as I went by, and one old woman slapped a flyswatter rather menacingly in my direction as I drew near her.

We had a conference that evening, in what we’d named the war room that heady night, which now seemed so long ago, when, flushed with enthusiasm for what we saw as the absolute Tightness of the cause, we’d planned Operation Atahualpa, our invasion of Cerro de las Ruinas.

This time, sitting around the dining room table after Ines had left for home, we had to decide whether to go on, after this latest grisly discovery, or to close up for the season, pack up the lab and head home.

“I don’t know,” Hilda said, her voice even raspier than usual. “I just don’t know. Part of me wants to go on, the other…” Her voice trailed off.

“We’re so close, Hilda,” Steve said. “I can just feel it. We’re going to find something big.”

“I know you think so. But is it worth the risk?” she replied.

“Of course it’s worth it!” Steve exclaimed. “Are you saying we should just give up and let the looters have it all? Hilda, you’ve been working toward this your whole career!”

“Maybe I picked the wrong career?” she asked with a tight little smile.

“I’m with Hilda,” Ralph said. “Yes, it’s important, but not worth getting killed over. And just carrying on as if nothing has happened. Unseemly, really. Guerra, for all his bluster, was just trying to make a living.”

“So was Al Capone, Ralph,” Tracey snorted. “Surely you’re not condoning looting.”

“Your comparison is odious,” Ralph snapped back. Everyone’s nerves were on edge. “I’m not condoning it. I just think we have to be sensitive to the people around here. Capone, I can only assume, lived in a nice home in Chicago, ate well. Guerra probably lived in a hut. And it’s a terrible way to go, choking on sand. My God.”

Ralph and Tracey glared at each other.

“Enough!” Steve sighed. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s hear some arguments pro and con, lay them out on the table, and then we’ll vote, okay? I’ll start. On the pro side, I think we’re close to finding a tomb, maybe an untouched one.”

“And maybe we’re not,” Ralph said morosely.

“Well, that pro and that con pretty well cancel each other out, I’d say,” Steve said. “Anyone else?”

Tracey put up her hand. “Guerra’s gone, so there should be no more incidents, should there? That’s a definite pro, wouldn’t you say?”

Everyone nodded, except me that is. I thought they were wrong. I’d seen firsthand the mood in town. In the first place, Guerra was not the only one involved in looting. His whole family was famous for it, and the rest of them were still among the living. It may have been obvious to everyone else what had happened. Guerra had been tunneling into the side of the huaca. His back dirt, the dirt from the tunnel he was digging, was piled up for all to see. He’d been in a hurry, and therefore careless, and hadn’t moved the dirt far enough away, or even on the right angle, to prevent it from sliding back into the tunnel. While the police were already calling Guerra’s demise death by misadventure, the unfortunate but perhaps predictable end of a careless huaquero, I was pretty sure the rest of the Guerra family didn’t see it that way.

By the end of the evening, everyone agreed to stay on, except Ralph, who was wavering. He said he’d think about it overnight.

Later there was a light tapping at my door. Steve stood outside with two glasses and a bottle of scotch. “Can we talk?”‘ he whispered. “Downstairs?”

I nodded and followed him down the steps. The power was out again, so I lit a couple of candles while he poured the drinks.

“What do you think of all this?” he asked as we settled into armchairs.

“I’m not sure what to think,” I said. “The mood in town is pretty ugly.”

“It is,” he agreed. “Do you think I’m crazy to encourage everybody to stay? Or do you think I’m just plain crazy?” He smiled wearily.

“Maybe,” I said. “To both.” I was kidding, of course, but he looked so pained, I felt bad. “Look,” I said. “They’re grown-ups. They can make up their own minds.” Why, I wondered, was he talking to me, instead of Tracey?

As if he could read my mind, he said, “I suppose you know about Tracey and me.” He paused. “You do know we are… ?”

“Yes.”

“I guess you couldn’t have missed all the creeping around in the night.” He laughed ruefully. “I feel kind of silly,” he went on. “A guy my age with a woman like that, twenty years younger. One of my students to boot!”

“She’s very attractive,” I said sympathetically. At least I tried to sound sympathetic, a difficult feat.

“My wife left me last year. For a younger man. Twelve years younger, in fact. I don’t know why it should be more humiliating to have your wife leave you for a younger man than it would be for one the same age or older, but it is. Maybe humiliating isn’t the word. Demoralizing would cover it better, perhaps.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. I thought of the dying days of my marriage to Clive and the parade of younger women I’d put up with for a while. Suddenly I was feeling genuinely sympathetic: humiliating and demoralizing indeed. “Been there,” I added.

“Have you? Really?”

I nodded.

“You probably won’t believe this, but the affair wasn’t my idea. It was hers. I was flattered, of course. I mean, it didn’t take much to persuade me. I gave it a couple of nanoseconds’ thought, I confess.

“But now…” he said softly. “Now I’m wondering why she… I mean, maybe this is the anxiety of a middle-aged guy, but I’m wondering if she did it for some other reason, to displace Hilda on the project or something.” He stopped. “I’m sorry, I have no business burdening you with this.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “But I don’t think you should assume that. You’re an attractive man, and you both share the same interests.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this, actually. Why would I ever try to convince Steve that everything was okay with Tracey, I wondered, when I found him rather appealing myself? But the fragility of the middle-aged man’s ego never ceases to amaze me, and I felt I had to say something to make him feel better, even if it wasn’t in my own best interests.

“Thanks,” he said. We talked for a few more minutes about the work, about his children of whom he was obviously very proud, about the approaching El Nino. Then he got up from his chair and came over to mine. Leaning over, he kissed me. It was a nice kiss, the kind that makes you think you might not mind making the guy’s breakfast for a while. We parted company at the top of the stairs, leaving me wondering what was going on. I like to think I am not lacking in self-confidence, but I try to temper it with a firm grasp on reality. The point was, a contest between me and Tracey for a man was not one I’d expect to win. Was I doing the same thing I’d thought Steve was doing, having self-doubts about a member of the opposite sex, or was there something more calculated happening? There was something about the conversation, I thought, that didn’t ring entirely true, but perhaps it was just that there was so much left unsaid.

The Hacienda Garua contingent hung in. Even Ralph decided to stay. The trouble was, most of the Peruvian crew wouldn’t come back to work at the site. If they’d thought the place evil with a few relatively harmless accidents, this latest incident hadn’t improved their impression of the place one bit. Pablo stuck with us, as did Ernesto, surprisingly enough, the fellow who’d cut himself so badly. I’d heard he had a wife and four children, so maybe a few evil spirits were not enough to deter him from earning his living. Tomas too agreed to stay on. The students all stayed, with the exception of Robert, who said he’d had enough and headed back to Lima.

The one positive aspect of all this was that I was able to get Puma a real paying job. When the Peruvian workers disappeared, Steve tried to carry on with the small team he had, but the work slowed considerably.

“I’ve just got to get more manpower out here,” he groaned. “We’ll never get this done.”

“I have an idea,” I said. “How about Puma? He couldn’t do the technical work, but he can carry the dirt and work the sieve. He could sure use some money, if there was some way we could pay him.”

“I pay the Peruvian crew,” Steve said, “and with several of them gone, there’ll be some money. When can he start?”

The answer was right away. “Amazing!” Puma said. “Working on an archaeological site! Do you think we’ll find treasure?”

“You never know,” I replied. “And even if we don’t, this way you’ll be able to make sure we don’t unleash some terrible curse.”

I’d meant it as a joke, of course, but Puma heartily agreed with me.

Puma, as it turned out, was a willing and hard worker—when he showed up. In the first place, he wasn’t an early riser. While the rest of us started work as soon as it was light, Puma usually turned up a little rumpled-looking, late in the morning. Some days he didn’t show up at all. It was annoying because we were sorely shorthanded, and everyone left had to pitch in. Steve didn’t seem terribly perturbed by it: He said it was pretty standard behavior for a boy that age, and that Puma would be paid when he showed up, and not when he didn’t.

I tried to talk to Puma about it. He was always very contrite, saying there was something else he’d had to do, and I had a feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me, but that was about it. Gradually, we all took the attitude that with Puma, like the magician he was, it was sometimes you see him, sometimes you don’t.

I was assigned to help Pablo, working beside him to catalogue all the little pottery shards he uncovered, making notes on the depth, the exact placement, and bagging and tagging them all. We started work right at dawn, and worked until the wind and the dust made it impossible to continue. Then we hauled everything back to the lab, and worked well into the evening cataloguing the day’s finds.

Even Lucho was called up for action, made to haul sand and staff the sieve. His complaining and shuffling drove us all crazy, but we needed him to work. What that meant was that the hacienda was left unguarded at least part of the day, before Ines came to make supper.

Tracey’s prediction that there would be no more incidents was regrettably not correct. While Rolanda Guerra might be gone, his family was not, and, as I had feared, they took to hanging around the site, watching us work with a real malevolence in their stance. They plainly blamed us for Rolando’s death, even though the police had made it clear to them that Rolando was looting illegally: He’d been caught red-handed after all, albeit almost dead at the time. The Guerra family, however, saw it differently. In their eyes, Rolando had been forced to take desperate measures because of us, measures that had ended his life prematurely.

The situation came to a head one day when I returned to the hacienda with Ines to find an axe through the beautifully carved front door, and a message for us sprayed across the front of the house. What the painter lacked in artistry, he made up for in brevity and clarity. Asesinos!—murderers—the message read. Lucho returned to his post as guard of the hacienda forthwith; Cesar Montero, the mayor, had a police guard posted on the site for a couple of days to deter the culprits, and Carlos, the landlord, tutted and clucked, and then sent a crew over to paint it out.

With all this drama and activity, it took me a while to realize that I hadn’t seen Puma recently. With some irritation, I headed over to the commune to get him. Nothing appeared amiss when I first got there. The place looked pretty much the same, laundry flapping in the breeze, a couple of the commune members working away at the far end of the garden. I checked the kitchen. Pachamama wasn’t there. Then I went to their little hut. There was only one sleeping bag— Puma’s, I thought, but he wasn’t in it. All of Pacha-mama’s belongings appeared to be gone. Everyone else was out working, so I headed for the main house once again and knocked on Manco Capac’s door. He was a minute or two in opening it, but cordial enough when he saw me. “Come on in,” he said. “Beer?”

“Not right now, thanks,” I replied.

“Mind if I do?” he asked, opening a little refrigerator in his room in anticipation of my reply.

“Of course not,” I said, idly thinking as I watched him reach for the beer that his refrigerator reminded me of the one I had at home, that is, virtually empty. Two thoughts then struck me: one, that this was the first time I’d thought about my home in a rather long time; and two, that there was a significant difference between his refrigerator and mine. While mine tended to yogurt well past its best-before date, various half-empty jars of heaven knows what, a couple of tins of tuna and salmon, and if I was lucky, white wine, his was rather more aristocratic: champagne, Perrier-Jouet if I wasn’t mistaken, judging by the flowers on the bottle—I’ve heard it’s lovely—and a couple of jars of a rather distinctive shape and color that I decided held caviar. There were a couple of other tins too, which, on closer examination I was sure, would prove to contain pate. Not your average supermarket peppercorn pate, either. Real foie gras, from France. Manco Capac might have come to live a back-to-basics life in Peru, but his definition of basic, in the food department at least, was definitely upmarket. It was also more than a little expensive.

Maybe, I thought, as he opened his beer, he’s treated himself to these things because he has a cold. Come to think of it, though, didn’t he have the sniffles last time I was here? Maybe he has allergies, or maybe, and now light began to dawn, maybe his expensive tastes also run to cocaine.

When I pulled back from this edifying stream of consciousness—it’s amazing what the little light in a refrigerator can do for your thought processes—I found him looking at me closely.

“Would you like something else?” he said. “I have only champagne and, of course, caviar.” He laughed. “Birthday present from my family, actually, but it sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Don’t tell the others, or I’ll have to share.”

Good comeback, I thought, and very convincing, but it should be. He’s an actor. Apparently he was a good enough actor to fool the other members of the commune into thinking he shared their taste for the simple life.

“I came to see Puma and Pachamama,” I said, changing the subject. “But I can’t find either of them.”

“Gone,” he replied.

“What do you mean, gone?” I asked.

“Just gone. Disappeared. Poof.” He paused. “He’s a magician. Poof. Get it?”‘

I got it. “Very amusing. Would you have any idea of when exactly they went poof?” I said through clenched teeth. I could hear a certain tone creeping into my voice, one a certain shopkeeper normally reserved for suppliers who didn’t deliver on time, and parents who allowed their children to bring drippy ice cream cones into her store.

“Last night. Maybe the night before, actually. I can’t remember exactly.”

My, what a short memory! “Did you see them go?”

“Nope.”

“And did you report their disappearance?”

“Nope. Why would I? People come and go. There is nothing to stop them. Our philosophy here is go with the flow.”

That expression again. “Two kids disappear in the night,” I hissed, “and all you can say is go with the now?”

Well, it beats asking people to commit suicide together so they can beam up to some spaceship or something, doesn’t it?“ he snapped, and I thought that for a second I had seen the real person under go-with-the-flow Manco Capac, one who despised what he was doing and the people he was with. ”People are free to do what they wish here,“‘ he said, his voice returning to normal. ”Those two kids, as you call them, are young adults. People stay here as long as they need to, and if they wish to, they move on.“

“But Puma’s sleeping bag is still here.”

“So maybe he’s planning to come back!” The man shrugged.

“Do you know their real names?”

“No. Choosing a new name here is part of casting off our former lives, our former hang-ups, to express the unspoiled part of ourselves. We choose new names so we can go forward.”

There didn’t seem much point in continuing a conversation that had gone out of style by the seventies, so I left him to his caviar and champagne, and quite possibly, his drug habit.

I started back to the site, but didn’t get very far. It really bothered me, thinking about the kids. I knew they weren’t really kids, but they were so naive, and not terribly bright. I couldn’t believe they’d just leave, Puma in particular, and not send me a message. He knew where I was, at the hacienda, and I’d have thought he’d have come there if they were in trouble. Maybe Manco Capac, whatever his name was, was right. They’d just decided to move on. They didn’t owe me an explanation, really. I wasn’t their mother, although occasionally I felt as if I were. I felt somehow bereft, though. It seemed they’d become, when I wasn’t looking, an important part of the fabric of my new life.

The fact was I didn’t like this Manco Capac, and I didn’t trust him at all. It wasn’t just that he used an alias. The only difference between him and me in that regard was that he’d gotten to choose his. Mine, I’d been assigned. But anyone who picked the name of the first Inca, son of the Sun God, had a personality disorder of some sort, I felt certain. There was something patently false about the man. Communes weren’t really in style anymore, I didn’t think, and even if they were, you didn’t come to live on a commune to eat caviar. It didn’t make sense. The more I thought about him, the more worried about the kids I got, and the worse I felt about not listening to Puma, probing more. Hiding behind my own alias, I hadn’t even asked him his real name.

Guilt is a powerful motivator. I turned the truck around and headed back into town to make enquiries. Campina Vieja was far enough off the beaten track as far as tourism went that people like Puma and Pacha-mama should have been easy to spot, and I hoped someone would recall having seen them.

I checked a couple of cafes I’d seen them in, and then the bus station, where the ticket agent said he had no recollection of them, but that I could check back in a day or two with the other ticket agent who’d been on duty the previous three days. The other alternative, he said, was to wait for the buses to go through and to ask the individual drivers and attendants. There was no time for that: It could take days before I’d checked them all. An ice cream vendor outside the bus station said he’d seen someone who resembled my description of Pachamama, but that she had been alone.

I determined that I’d have a private chat with Steve to see what he could suggest. I didn’t want to go to the police personally, not just because I wasn’t sure how much scrutiny my passport would stand up to, but also because not knowing what the kids’ real names were would make it just a little difficult to fill in a missing persons report. I thought Steve might want to talk to the authorities, though. He’d always shown a more than casual interest in how the two kids were getting along.

When I got back to the site, however, there was no opportunity for that discussion to take place. As I pulled up, I could see the whole bunch of them waving at me from the top of the huaca, and soon, at their instructions, I was heading up there to join them. They were almost dancing with excitement, and with good reason. They had found very promising signs of a tomb, an area about ten feet long and eight feet wide lined with adobe bricks, and what looked to be the outline of timbers, the vigas that would roof the chamber. The center was still filled with earth, but it was clearly a different color and texture.

“This is the lining of a burial chamber, I’m almost certain,” Steve explained for my benefit. “With this kind of structure, a large brick-lined chamber, it’ll be a tomb for someone important. The Moche didn’t build these kinds of chambers for just your average guy. I expect the roof timbers will have collapsed under the weight of all this earth, but I think it may just be an untouched tomb, although we can’t be absolutely sure until we get there.”

“There’ll be flying femurs tomorrow!” Ralph crowed. “Please, please, let there be untouched ceramics for me.”

Only Hilda was quiet, perhaps because of the effort it took her to climb the huaca, or because she felt it was almost too much to hope for.

By now it was getting late, and Hilda called a halt to the day’s work. I had to run my usual taxi service into town for the workers and students, although I could do it in one trip now with all the defections, while Steve took the others home in our second truck, thereby eliminating another opportunity for me to speak to him.

Dinner was a fairly raucous affair, and for a change Hilda stayed for most of it, helping to plan the next day’s work. “What makes everyone so sure they’ve found an important person’s tomb?” I asked Ralph.

“Because of where it is, and the type of tomb it is,” he replied. “First of all it’s right in the huaca. That says a lot. Also, the Moche appear to have had a range of burial procedures and rituals which depended, by and large, on the individual’s status, in much the same way we do. Some of us are buried in simple graves with wooden markers, others with elaborate headstones and the finest coffins,”‘ he said.

“For the Moche, the commonest form—the grave with a simple wooden cross, if you will—would be a pit burial, just a shallow grave really, with a few burial goods interred with them. The middle class, if we can use that term, would have had more elaborate burials. A shaft would have been constructed down several feet, then a chamber hollowed out, sometimes to one side, like the foot on a boot. The bodies were lowered down the shaft, either horizontally or vertically depending on the size of the shaft, and placed in the chamber. We know that much from Moche ceramics, my specialty.” Ralph smiled. “Burial scenes are depicted on several that we know of, and they show the bodies being lowered into the chambers by two ritual or perhaps mythological beings, Iguana, someone with the face of a lizard, and Wrinkle Face, a being with a very wrinkled face, as the names imply.

“For the higher status individuals, and this is what we’re hoping for here, large chambers were constructed, large enough to hold the individual, lots of grave goods, some very elaborate, and other sacrificed animals, like llamas or dogs, and individuals, perhaps their retainers in life. Sometimes there are even guardians, bodies placed in niches above the principal body. So these graves are much larger, they have been known to have adobe walls, and they are more likely to have timber roofs. The presence of these three things, a large chamber, the adobe walls, and the roofing, is what makes us pretty excited about what tomorrow may bring.”

“So what will this look like, if we get in?” I asked.

Steve jumped into the conversation with enthusiasm. “Moche dead are normally buried flat on their backs, arms at their sides, with the head usually facing more or less south and away from the shaft. They were wrapped in cloth, then enclosed in some kind of cane sleeve or tube, although there wouldn’t be much of the cloth or the cane left, probably. The head normally rests on a plate of some kind, its material related to the status of the individual, a gourd for the lowliest, a gold disc for the most powerful. The feet are often in sandals, silver ones for the big guys, much more humble ones for those of lower status. If we’re really lucky and it’s a warrior priest or something, he’ll be wearing the full regalia—ear spools, the headdress, back flaps, necklaces, everything. Actually, I don’t even want to think about this, in case it jinxes us.” Steve laughed.

“How do we think the huaqueros missed this one?” I asked. “If indeed they did.”

“If” is a good way to put it,“ Steve replied. ”Remember what I told you about Moche pyramids. They were built platform on top of platform. There could be individuals buried in the different levels. It’s possible that huaqueros found a tomb higher up in the structure and figured that was it.“

It was at this point that Hilda decided to retire for the night, this time without the scotch bottle, a development I considered real progress, and perhaps an indication of just how important she felt the next day’s work would be. The rest of us sat around for a while waiting to see Ines off. Tomas was a little later than usual, and I figured once Ines had left, everyone would start to head upstairs to get some rest for the big day ahead and I might have an opportunity to have a quiet word with Steve about Puma and Pachamama.

When Tomas came to pick up Ines, however, he brought with him bad news. Gonzalo Fernandez, the night guard at the site, had walked off the job. Just after dark, Fernandez had seen, according to Tomas, an apparition of an owl, a creature associated with death in this part of the world. This was not just any owl, apparently. This one was several feet tall. Furthermore, the Guerra family had paid him a visit after we’d left to go back to the hacienda and told Fernandez he’d be dead by morning if he stayed.

Steve slumped in his chair and sighed. “Well, I guess there’s nothing for it. I’m sleeping at the site tonight. Tracey, Rebecca, where’d you put the gun?”

“Caja Ocho, in the lab,” Tracey replied. But there Was no gun in Caja Ocho.

“That was the number, wasn’t it?” she asked me.

“Definitely,” I replied. We searched through several boxes. No gun.

“It must be Lucho,” Tracey said. “Where is he?”

But Lucho swore up and down he didn’t have it. He even invited us into his room to see, but the place was such a mess, it would have taken us hours to search it.

“Never mind,” Steve said. “It was only a precaution. Just thought I might bag me a seven-foot owl. Something for the record books.” He grinned as he headed out the door, loaded down with a couple of blankets and a pillow.

“I’ll take the second truck, Rebecca,” he called back. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind bringing me back here for breakfast and a shower after you drop off the students, so I can leave this truck at the site. Don’t use all the hot water in the morning, you guys,” he called from the cab of the truck as he pulled away.

But in the morning, Steve was gone.

14

Carlos Montero stood in his office, beads of sweat breaking out on his brow and upper lip. “Missing!” he exclaimed. “How can that be? I haven’t heard from him, no.” He looked nervous to me, the way he wiped his brow a couple of times with a large pink handkerchief. It was warm in there, but perhaps not that warm.

“I’ll make a couple of calls, why don’t I?” he said. You do that, I thought. I was rapidly reaching the conclusion that there was something terribly wrong in Campina Vieja, and that a single sinister thread had been snaking its way through all the events of the past several weeks, from the death of Lizard in my shop, Edmund Edwards in his, to the disappearance now of Steve, Puma, and Pachamama. And Montero, I was convinced, was part of it.

When I had first arrived at the site that morning, I’d thought Steve, while I could not find him, must be somewhere nearby. The bedding he’d taken with him was still there, the pillow still bearing the imprint of his head in a rather endearing sort of way, the blankets tossed aside as if he’d arisen in a hurry. There was certainly no sign of violence or an accident of any kind.

“He’s gone to pee in the woods,” Pablo said, pointing to faint footsteps in the sand that headed in that direction, and it seemed the obvious conclusion. I waited several minutes, but Steve didn’t return. “Maybe he got lost in the woods,” Pablo added.

Lost in these woods? “I don’t think so,” I replied. Where I come from there are woods to get lost in. These woods did not qualify. You’d have to reach either the highway or a side road in fifteen minutes max. And you’d see the mountains or the sea right away to get your bearings.

I drove back to the hacienda to get the rest of the team, watching for Steve as I went. There was a little concern about Steve but nothing serious. By about ten in the morning, however, I could feel a little buzz of anxiety in the group. Hilda sent me back to the hacienda to make sure he hadn’t walked back. I was tempted to point out that the easiest and fastest route between the site and the hacienda was the road, and I’d traveled on it three times already. Back I went again. No Steve.

Hilda then sent a small team into the woods, and I went with them. There were lots of footprints in the sandy soil: It was obvious these woods were well traveled, but any discernible footprints stopped at an adobe brick wall. There was evidence someone had had a sort of picnic lunch there recently, but that was all. It could have been one of the workers, or just a passerby. It wasn’t Steve: He’d only taken a bottle of water with him. Beyond that was a much-used trail with so many footprints it would be impossible to follow any one of them. We called Steve’s name time and time again, and listened carefully for a response, however faint. There was none.

About noon, Hilda pulled me aside. “I don’t want to create a panic here, so would you do me a favor? Drive over to Montero’s place, the Fabrica Paraiso, and tell him about this. Ask him what he thinks we should do. If I go, it’ll look as if I’m really concerned, which I am, incidentally, I will tell you. But you travel around all day, and it’s almost time for you to go and get Ines…” Her voice trailed off. She looked at me almost beseechingly.

I nodded. It was exactly where I was planning to go anyway. “Do you think we should call his family?” I whispered.

“Not yet,” she replied. “No need to worry them unnecessarily. Maybe tonight, if—‘’ Her voice caught for a second. Pablo and one of his team approached us.

“I’m off to get Ines,” I said loudly enough that those nearest us could hear. “I’ll take the long way and watch out for Steve as I go.” Hilda looked relieved.

Now Montero returned from his phone calls; two of them I’d strained to hear but couldn’t. “I don’t think we should call the police just yet,” he said. “I have contacts, you know, and I’ve spoken to them, and they’ll be on the lookout. They’ll make enquiries. Let’s wait until tomorrow before we go to the police. Come back and see me again if there’s no sign of him.”

On the surface, I suppose, that made sense. Steve had only been missing a few hours, and Montero’s advice would be considered rational under normal circumstances. But these weren’t normal circumstances, as I knew only too well. I fully intended to come back to Paraiso, but not perhaps when Montero was expecting me. I had two plans for the Montero family when everyone at the hacienda had retired for the night: I was going to search Lucho’s room, since lately he hadn’t been sleeping there, and I was going to take another look around the Paradise Crafts Factory.

Judging from his room, Lucho was a grown man developmentally stuck in his teens. The place was a mess, clothes tossed everywhere, particularly the floor. Posters covered every available spot on the walls, the only difference from the teenagers I knew being the content. Instead of rock or rap groups, Lucho’s tended to military recruitment posters with a somewhat fascist bent.

I began to systematically search the room, checking under the bed, lifting the pillows and bedding and then, nothing found, lifting the mattress as well. No gun.

Next I went through the closet and dresser. It’s unpleasant going through someone’s underwear drawer when they aren’t there, but perhaps it would be worse if they were. Still no gun.

I went through his desk, and even pulled the furniture away from the wall as quietly as I could to check behind it. I shook out the carpet, causing a bout of sneezing that I strained to muffle, but not much else.

Just as I was about to give up my search, I saw the edge of an envelope sticking out slightly from behind one of the posters on Lucho’s wall. It was not the gun I was looking for, obviously, but I wondered what someone would choose to store behind a poster. The envelope was addressed to me. Rebeca, the childish scrawl said.

I turned it over to find it sealed, but with the wrinkled look of an envelope that has been steamed open.

Dear Rebeca, the letter began. First of all you got to excuse my writing. I didn’t do very good at school. I was sick alot and got behind. That was an understatement: The writer, whoever he or she was, was the worst speller I had ever encountered. After momentarily pondering the inadequacy of the education system, I read on.

I no my speling is bad. But please read all of this any way. Your my only hope.

What was this? I wondered.

I no I shoulda told you before, but for a couple years I grew very high grade marigana. Mainly I smoked it myself, altho from time to time I gave it for a small donation to freinds. The police dont no the diference between selling the stuff and acepting a donation, so you could say I am some times on the wrong side of the law. I am not proud of this. I only tell you so you no I am a person who tells the truth, so you ‘will beleive what I have to tell you.

I am not sure how to make you understand but here goes.

Up untill a while ago, I cant remember ecaxtly, I thought all this stuff about recarnation was bull shit, just like you do. But then one time when I was laying on my bed, trying out some of my own home growed product if you take my meaning, something realy ^mazing happen. I beleive what happen was I got in touch with my spirit self. A bright light arked through my mind like a comet and then I was able to go back and forth through all my lives. Realy.

It was the most amazing mind trip of all time. Do you no what I learnt? I will not keep you in sespense. In all ages I was the prophit. I could always tell what woud happen next. When I opened my mouth, words about the future woud roll off my tounge. It surprised me at first, but now I’m used to it.

First I was that lady—Casandra—who told the Tro-jins about the big wodden horse. How stupid can you get of course it was full of Greek soldiers. Then I stood on a street in Rome and told Julius Ceasar to beware the Eyes of March. He didnt listen and we no what happened to him. Also I told Napoleon not to go to Russia but he didnt listen either.

It is not a good job let me tell you being a prophit. Becuse they never listen. And if they do, usully they dont like what you say. If your lucky they only put you in a deep dark dundgeon. Maybe I am now thinking that is why I have spent time in jail, bad karma from another life or something. But it gets worse. Sometimes they put out your eyes with red hot pokers other times they burn you at the stake. Like it is not good.

Another nutbar. I sighed. Whatever had I done—in another life, of course—to deserve this? But I read on.

The person I was that was closest to what I am now I think was a freind of Atahualpa (speling?) the Inca king. This freind was called Wayna and my name now is Wayne. Dont you think that is amazing? I told Atahualpa that the Spanish were not gods, just bad guys looking for gold and treasure and in the end I think he beleived me but it was to late.

At the end of this experience which I beleive took several days I came back to the present, but not the same. People dont beleive me tho. I tried to tell them, but what did they do. They called the police and they put me in the hospital for two weeks.

I told the doctors too. They didnt beleive me neither. I also told them all about histry. Even tho I didnt like school much, I always liked histry. I watch all those programs on TV about ancient mysterys and stuff. I always wondered why I liked it so much but now of course I no. It is on account of my former lives as a prophit.

By now, of course, I knew who had written it. But was there a point to this? I wondered. And if there was, would I ever be able to figure it out?

When I got out of there the police were still pretty interested in me, the writer went on. So I desided to come to Peru to see if I coud get closer to this Wayna the freind of Atahualpa which as I have explaned to you is me. I borrowed some $$$ from my brother, I didnt tell him tho so I guess hes mad at me too like every body else.

Its worked out good tho. I have the lady freind her real name is Megan. She was Joan of Ark in another life so she nos what its like.

The thing is the realy important part is that since I can remember all these times in histry I no where the treasure is. I have seen cities of gold that you get to thru cracks in the rock. And most especialy I no where Atahualpa hid the most fabulus treasure ever so as the Spanish coudnt find it. You no how I no? Because I helped him do it. And I have seen it with my own eyes I mean in this life time. And it is near here. I found it once but I was on a bit of a bad trip so I have to find il again. I could pay my brother back so he woudnt be mad any more but also I coud pay off the deficet for every country in the world. I coud build houses for those refujees and feed all those kids you see on TV with those big bellys and sad eyes.

The trouble is Megan is mad because I used the $$$ I earnt to buy marigana. She doesnt realy understand I need it to fuse with my former life as Wayna so I can find the treasure. Shell get over it but right now she is gone and I am alone.

To make things even worse I think the Spanish are after me. Like if I can go back to my former lives then may be they can come forward to now if you no what I’m getting at. I think they mean to kill me good this time. Please help me.

Your freind Wayne, who you no as Puma, the letter ended.

What was one to think about a letter like this? I didn’t know whether to just forget it—and perhaps congratulate Pachamama, or Megan, should our paths ever cross again, for having the foresight to leave her somewhat deranged boyfriend when she had a chance—or, on the other hand, to try to find a thread of reality in all the madness.

Ever since Puma had disappeared, I’d wondered if he was connected in some way to Moche artifacts. I know where the treasure is. I have seen cities of gold that you get to thru cracks in the rocks… the most fabulous treasure ever… and it is near here. It sounded like the words of a madman, but was it possible Puma had indeed seen something, in this lifetime, drunk or drugged though he might have been at the time? To make things even worse I think the Spanish are after me. If he had, then he might well be right about the Spanish being after him, not, as he maintained, from a different time, but right here and right now. Pachamama—Megan, that is—had left because she didn’t believe him. I didn’t know what to think, but with all the strange things that were happening, I was beginning to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I was sure about one thing, however, and that was that I was more than a little annoyed with Lucho. I was waiting as he came shuffling back through the main door heading for his room, having chosen tonight of all nights to stay here. I was so irritated, in fact, that I didn’t care if he knew I’d been searching through his belongings.

“What were you doing with this letter?” I demanded. “It is very clearly addressed to me!”

Lucho looked wary but said nothing.

“When did it arrive? Did someone deliver it? Well?” I demanded, one foot tapping the floor impatiently. “Answer me!”

“I don’t know,” Lucho whined.

“It was in your room,” I said. I could hear a dangerous tone in my voice.

“I forgot,” Lucho said. He was practically sniveling.

“When did it arrive?” I asked again.

“Yesterday,” Lucho said hesitantly.

“Are you sure?” Manco Capac had said yesterday that the kids had left one or two days before.

“Maybe the day before,” he conceded. This was the second person—Manco Capac being the first— who’d had a serious lapse of memory where Puma’s whereabouts were concerned.

“Who brought it?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. I glared at him. “I don’t!” he repeated stubbornly. “It was on the floor inside the front door when I came in. I didn’t see anybody.”

“But you opened it,” I said very quietly.

“No way,” he said, and that was the last I could get out of him. I stomped upstairs and told myself to sleep. But I couldn’t, unbidden images of Lizard and Edmund Edwards, and most of all the Spider, haunting me. Very late, I decided that I should go to plan B, back to the Paradise Crafts Factory and look around one more time, to see if I’d missed anything. Lucho’s door was closed and there was no sign of a light on, as I eased my way out the front door.

I hoped, as I started the truck, that Hilda had been well into the scotch and thus sleeping soundly. I pulled the truck off the highway several hundred yards from the factory, concealing it behind an old abandoned hut, and went the rest of the way on foot, thankful, for once, for the covering blanket of the garua.

Montero’s little industrial complex was in darkness except for one light over the front door of each of the buildings. I headed around to the rear of the factory building, hoping that one or other of the doors had been left ajar to help cool down the work area after the tremendous heat from the kiln.

All were closed and locked, but I had a fallback. I’d noticed during my tour of the place that the back door was old, with a very poor lock of the bathroom door variety, where you simply push a button on the inside doorknob. Montero was not overly worried, it seemed, about intruders. If he’d really been up to no good I’d have expected better locks, for some reason. Having had some experience getting locks of this sort open, I figured I’d be able to get in reasonably easily-In the absence of a credit card, I’d brought a couple of tools from the lab that I thought would do the trick. They did, and with very little effort I let myself in. I locked the door from the inside.

The room was stifling, and I stood for a moment or two, waiting until my eyes adjusted to the dark, as sweat began trickling down my back from the heat and my fear.

I made my way to the end of the room where Antonio’s drafting table was located, and, turning the shade down as far as I could, switched on the light. In another minute, I’d unlocked the filing cabinet next to the table.

The top drawer was filled with drawings, the second with photographs. It took me a moment or two to see how the files were organized: in large sections by year, and then within that, by type of artifact.

My purchases from the auction house had been abandoned in customs, and A. J. Smythson, to whom they’d been sent, had died between two and three years earlier. I went back three years in the file and started to search.

There were several bulging files for that year, quite a few for stirrup vessels done by subject, one file for portraits, another for animals, still another for birds. What I was looking for wasn’t there. After checking every file for that year, I went back four years, and started working through those files as well. At the very back of the drawer I found a file marked miscellaneous and opened that.

Midway through the file, I almost exclaimed out loud. I’d found what I wanted. Before I could look further, however, I heard the sound of a car engine Very nearby. I stuffed the file back into the drawer, closed it, pushed the lock shut and extinguished the light, almost in one motion. Footsteps crunched on the sand and gravel that surrounded the building. Then the back door rattled, and the glare of a flashlight swept the upper windows. Night watchman, I thought, checking the doors and windows. I hoped his patrol did not include searching the interior.

The steps moved on, then the two doors by the kiln were tried in succession.

I waited, barely breathing, until the footsteps died away. The check of the property must have been fairly thorough, because several minutes went by, and I still hadn’t heard the sound of the car engine starting, a signal that this inspection was at an end. Did this mean, I wondered, that the watchman was permanently stationed there for the night, or was he checking out the other buildings more carefully? I waited several minutes more, then, deciding I couldn’t wait all night, I plotted in my mind a route back to the truck that would take me away from the main buildings.

I remembered the old ruin of a building out back, and after looking carefully about me, and pulling the locked door shut behind me, I headed across the sand in its direction. It was quite a distance away, but I made it, then stood behind it to listen. Absolute silence greeted me. I kept close to the walls of the building and went around to the back where a door was located. That’s strange, I thought, but at that moment, a flashlight came around the comer of the main building once again, and I pulled back into the darkness. As soon as the guard, or whoever it was, had made his circuit, I looked again.

Two things caught my attention. First of all there was a padlock on the door of the ruin. That shouldn’t have been necessary, I thought. Secondly, an electric cord had been threaded under the door. As unnecessary as a padlock might be on a- ruined building, electricity was even less useful, I’d have thought. I picked it up. I couldn’t slide under the door, of course, but I decided to follow the cord back to see if it was actually plugged in somewhere. The cord snaked its way along the wall of the building farthest away from the factory. I came to the corner of the building, and followed the cord around it. It was very dark, and I stumbled over an object in my path. A large object. I switched on the flashlight I had brought with me. Carlos Montero was dead. Shot. It was all I could do to keep from screaming.

I thought for a second or two what I should do. Carlos was beyond help. They’d find him soon enough. I angled away from the building and made a large circle back to the truck.

Back at the hacienda, I opened the front door and started across the courtyard in the dark. “Hands up,” a voice said. “Turn around very slowly.”

This time, it wasn’t Lucho playing freedom fighter.

I turned around to face the voice.

15

Hilda stood in shadow, her tall, slight figure barely discernible to my eyes, framed only by the dim light from outside. I on the other hand was the perfect target, caught in the beam of her flashlight. She gestured at me to move into the dining room, then shut the door behind her. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” she rasped. “And don’t tell me you’re Rebecca MacCrimmon just trying to catch up on some work in the lab. I’ve had your passport checked. The name and the number don’t match.”

What to do? Sometimes in life you have to take a chance, make a choice. Feeling as if I stood on the edge of a precipice, I made my decision, and, taking a deep breath, stepped off.

“My name is Lara McClintoch,” I said. “I’m co-owner of an antiques shop called Greenhalgh and McClintoch in Toronto. I’m here because several weeks ago I went to an auction and picked up what I thought was a box of junk, except that there were objects in it, supposedly replicas of pre-Columbian artifacts, that I later decided were real. One of them came from here, Campina Vieja, at least that’s what it said. Two of the objects disappeared; someone was killed, murdered in my shop; our one employee, a dear friend of mine, was attacked; and then the shop was set on fire. The police think my employee has something to do with it all, and if they think that, they’ll end up charging him with manslaughter at the very least. And if they clear him, then they’ll be after me for arson probably, insurance fraud that went wrong. So I went to New York to find the source of these objects, and someone else got murdered.”

I paused to catch my breath and then continued. “After that, I headed for the source, or what I thought was the source, and here I am. That’s the short version, but you get the general idea,” I said, trying not to sound terrified.

“That’s quite a story,” she said. Wait till you hear the rest of it, I thought. “Perhaps the missing details would make it more plausible,” she went on, more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “What did these objects look like?”

“There was a silver peanut, about life-size; an ear spool of gold, turquoise, and some other materials; and a flared vase with serpents drawn around the rim, sort of like this,” I said, dropping my hands slightly to indicate the shape.

“It’s called a florero,” she said, and then I knew I was safe. You don’t correct people’s description of things, I decided, if you’re planning to shoot them.

“A florero,” I agreed. “It had hecho en Peru stamped on the bottom, and there was a card that said it was a pre-Columbian replica from Campina Vieja.”

Hilda said nothing, so I pressed on. “So now,” I said into the shadows, “perhaps you could return the favor and tell me who you are and why you’re here.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“I don’t think the average person would know how to check out a passport,” I replied.

“Even fewer average people know how to get a fake one,” she snapped.

“Touche,” I replied.

“Furthermore,” she went on, her voice heavy with rebuke, “my name really is Hilda Schwengen, and I really am an archaeologist.”

I said nothing, just waited.

“I am also,” she said reluctantly, “from time to time, a consultant to U.S. Customs.”

“Consultant? What’s a consultant? Are you an agent? And,” I added, pushing my luck a little, “could we discuss this in a little more civilized manner? Would you mind putting down the gun—is it the one we’re looking for, by the way?”

Another pause. Finally she stepped forward, to the other side of the table, and set the gun in front of her. “Sit down,” she ordered. She pulled up a chair and sat facing me: We were like two opponents in a chess match, sizing each other up. Her hair, usually tied back, was down around her shoulders, and she was wearing a bulky cotton terry robe, which emphasized her thinness somehow, and no shoes. I was also in my bare feet, having taken off my shoes to creep in. This encounter was beginning to have the rather endearing air of a pajama party, except for the gun. I could see it was a small pistol of a size that would fit in a handbag, not the one I’d been looking for.

“You’re an agent?” I prompted after a moment or two of silence.

“No,” she said. “I just give them information from time to time.”

“An informant?”

“If I’m an informant, I’m not a paid one,” she sighed. “I keep my eyes and ears open, that’s all.”

“Drugs? Artifacts?”

“Artifacts, mostly. You weren’t the first person to notice that Campina Vieja seems to be a little hive of activity where artifact smuggling is concerned,” she said, irony in her voice. I took this sentence to be very encouraging, though, in that it appeared to signal that she was prepared to believe at least some of my story. We stared at each other across the table. Finally she put the gun down on the floor beside her chair. It was a generous gesture.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me how you got a false passport and got down here,” she said.

“Nope.” We looked at each other, each waiting for the other one to say something. I decided to leap in.

“You say you pass information along from time to time. I don’t suppose you know anything that would help me get out of this little pickle I find myself in?”

“Sorry, no,” she replied. “Nothing concrete at all.”

“Do you think something awful has happened to Steve?” I asked hesitantly.

“I don’t want to think about it, but yes, I’m afraid that is a very real possibility.” She looked away, perhaps to hide the tears forming at the corners of her eyes but not yet spilling over. She’s in love with Steve, I thought, and that’s why she doesn’t like Tracey. My face, as usual, betrayed my thoughts.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, pulling a cigarette pack out of the pocket of her robe and lighting up. “And you’re wrong. I’m not in love with him. I’m extremely fond of him, though. He’s been having an affair with Tracey, but I expect you must know that. You can’t have missed all that creeping around in the night.

“Steve’s separated from his wife, and even if he wasn’t, it’s none of my business, but I really disapprove of professors having affairs with their students,” she continued. “I’m not naive, I know it goes on all the time. But I’ve insisted she work in the lab and not with Steve at the site, because the others have, or will, figure it out, and I don’t think it’s good for morale.”

I said nothing. I still didn’t think I was wrong about her being in love with Steve.

“Are you married?” she asked suddenly.

“No, divorced. You?”

“Single. Married to my work, as they say. Boyfriend?”

“For a while, but he dumped me about a year ago.”

“For another woman?”

“Worse than that,” I replied. “He left me for politics.”

“My gawd!” she exclaimed, and suddenly we both got the giggles. It was part hysteria, but also part relief for both of us, I think, to be able to talk to someone about our hidden selves. It was as if a dam had burst, and suddenly we were sharing confidences one would normally share only with the closest of friends.

She told me about her back injury, the pain, and how she’d found out about Steve and Tracey’s affair.

“I blame Tracey,” she said. “I think she’s a scheming little bitch who is trying to take over from me, and using Steve to do it.” She made a face. “You don’t have to say it. I know I’m the one who’s the bitch. I’m being completely unfair, I realize that. I don’t even know her, really. I just met her at the start of this season, and I confess I’ve made no effort whatsoever to get to know her. In fact, I’ve acted in such a way to keep her at a distance. Perhaps I am jealous. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I hate the way she sits with him at dinner and chatters away. Puts me off my food, although I know that leaving the table with a bottle of scotch halfway through the meal is not exactly a mature way of dealing with it.

“In a way, even though Steve and I have never had that kind of relationship, I feel like the tired old first wife who’s being thrown over for a younger woman. Steve and I have been a great team, but this is my last season in the field. My back won’t take another.” I nodded sympathetically. “So next year it’ll be Steve and Tracey instead of Hilda and Steve, and I feel just wretched about it. But let’s drop this dreadful topic and talk about why you’re here in the first place. Details, please.”

I told her about Clive moving in across the street, and how upset and irrational I’d been at the time. I told her about the auction, about Lizard and Alex, and how everything I’d done since the day of the fire had been an attempt to make amends. “But the harder I try to fix things, the worse they get.” I sighed. “Unless I can figure out what’s going on around here, Alex is in big trouble, I’ve lost the store, and I won’t be winning any popularity contests with the police back home.”

I told her about the train of events that had taken me from Toronto to New York and then on to Lima, omitting, for Lucas’s sake, the side trip to Mexico. I related how I’d first looked up Lizard’s wife, and followed her around Lima.

“That got me nowhere,” I conceded, “so I decided to come here, the point of origin of the florero, thinking there must be some connection to Montero and the Fabrica Paraiso,” I concluded. This was a test. I wanted to know what she’d say about Montero.

“I agree,” she said, “that Montero and Paraiso would be the main suspect in all this, but I’ve looked around there and I can’t see anything unusual there.”

“Me neither. I looked everywhere except the washroom.”

“I’ve done the washroom,” she replied. “Invented tummy trouble so I could stay in there long enough to pull a board out and check behind the pipes even. Nothing. I’ve also had occasion to check out the body shop.”

She sighed. “But maybe I’m grasping at straws here, in desperation. Maybe I want it to be Montero because he’s so revolting. I find myself looking for evil in everything he does.”

“The florero had the words hecho en Peru on the bottom. I suppose after all this it really could have been a replica,” I said.

Hilda looked at me as if I was quite naive. “It’s easy enough to put a light slip over the bottom of the vase and put a stamp on it,” she said. “It’s done all the time, in fact. When it gets to its destination, you just soak the slip off, and there it is, genuine Moche.”

Of course, I thought. “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” I exclaimed. I went back to the courtyard where I’d dropped my bag when Hilda had startled me. I returned and handed her the photograph I’d taken from the files of the Fabrica Paraiso.

“Nice,” she said. “A florero.”

“Not a florero. The florero,” I replied. “The one from the auction. See, the snakes around the rim? I’m sure it’s the same one. I thought when I found it at Paraiso that I’d merely confirmed that my florero had come from Paraiso, just as the card that came with it indicated. But as soon as you mentioned the use of the slip and stamp as a way of concealing artifacts, it hit me: This is the way they get the stuff out. Someone photographs a looted object, and sends it over to Paraiso. Antonio does a drawing, then, in the case of ceramics, designs and makes the mold, and several copies are churned out right along with all the regular reproductions. They all get stamped with the made in Peru symbol, including the original in the way you described it to me, with the slip on the bottom. They get packed up together, probably in shipping crates from the Fabrica des Artesanias Paraiso, which would clinch it. Anyone looking at them would assume that they are all reproductions. It would certainly look that way, with rows of identical objects coming from a crafts factory.”

“I like it,” she said.

“There is, however, one problem with my theory,” I said. Hilda looked at me. I took the plunge. “Carlos Montero is dead.”

“Dead!” she exclaimed. She seemed genuinely shocked. “When? How?”

I told her what I’d found. She looked aghast. “Who would do this?” She paused. “What does this mean? You must be right about the photograph, but with Montero dead, does this mean… ?”

“There are several questions, actually,” I said.

“Another is, do you think there could be anything to this?” I pulled Puma’s letter out of my T-shirt pocket and handed it across to her. “I know he sounds nuttier than a fruitcake, and there’s no question he’s a tad, shall we say, delusional,” I said, watching the skeptical expression on her face as she read. “But I know him,” I went on. “He’s not particularly bright, although he’s actually quite a talented magician, and he’s kind of sweet. I mean, look where he says he wants to find the treasure to feed all the world’s hungry children,” I said, pointing to the place in the letter. “And when you talk to him, you don’t get the impression that he’s dangerous or anything, or even that he is totally out of it, by any means.”

“So what are you saying?” Hilda asked.

“I’m saying, what if there is a treasure trove around here? And if there is, who knows about it?”

“A better question might be, does this treasure, assuming it exists, have anything to do with Montero and Paraiso?” Hilda said. “I have no idea what the answers to these questions might be.”

“I don’t either, but I do still think I’m right about the way the artifacts are being taken out of here,” I said. “Obviously I’m wrong about the leader. But if not Montero, then who? With Montero dead, we have nothing.”

“We’re not going to solve this tonight,” Hilda said, standing up carefully and stretching. “It’s time we got some sleep. But you say we have nothing. That’s not entirely true. We have Etienne Laforet, an art dealer and known buyer of illegal artifacts, and he’s right here in Campina Vieja, blatant as they come. There has to be a good reason for him to stay a few days. With him we have two problems. We’ve never been able to catch him with any Moche pieces on his person—and believe me, the Peruvian authorities have searched him more than once when he left the country—nor in his gallery. Plainclothes officers have been in. This means he’s probably not in this alone.

“Ideally what I’d like to do is take an artifact to him, get him to buy it, and then watch what he does— a sting, if you get what I mean. Which brings me to the second problem: We don’t have a suitable artifact to use. I can’t risk a piece from a museum collection, and while I might be able to sneak something out of this lab, we haven’t found anything he’d buy, I don’t think. He only takes high-end stuff. We don’t have anything to deal with,” she said, shaking her head.

“Oh, but we do,” I replied.

16

Over the Pacific, off Peru’s shores, a huge, warm, moist body of air begins to move slowly toward land. As it hits the shore it becomes the garua, the mist from the sea, swirling over the sand of the desert. But it does not stop there. It moves across the land to the wall of rock called the Andes, and somewhere, high in the mountains, the garua turns to rain. Torrents of rain. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the rocky gorges fill with water, hurtling downward. Waterways, both ancient and modern, built to tame it, now strain to contain it, and fail.

Just as dark was falling the next evening, Hilda and I were standing in the shadow of the awning of the hard-Ware store, watching Laforet’s house. To help conceal ourselves, we’d dressed in dark colors, she in a navy turtleneck and trousers, I in jeans and a large black sweater I’d borrowed from Tracey. There were lights on in the house, but none at the front door, to provide the anonymity Laforet’s visitors required, no doubt. We’d told the others we were going into town to call Steve’s ex-wife and children, and not to wait up for us.

It had been a rather strange day. Not one word was heard about Carlos Montero. Lucho shuffled around the hacienda as usual. There were no visitations from the police. Around two, Hilda went over to Paraiso. I told her exactly where to look. “Nothing,” she said on return. “No cord. No Carlos.” She paused. “Are you sure… ?”

“Absolutely,” I replied.

“I went in and asked Montero’s wife, that timid little thing, Consuelo, where he was,” Hilda went on. “She said Trujillo. He’d left her a note: typewritten. Anyone could have typed it, of course. Machine sitting right out there.”

I thought soon enough alarms would go off, about Montero but also the others. Someone was bound to notice eventually that Campina Vieja was becoming the terrestrial equivalent of a black hole, sucking people into oblivion. Not that day, though, it seemed.

We’d decided I’d be the one to go into Laforet’s, Hilda being better known in these parts than I, and with a reputation to protect where archaeological objects were concerned.

After about forty-five minutes of watching, and seeing absolutely nothing, and with Hilda getting uncomfortable standing so still, I whispered to her, “Time to beard the lion in its den.” I slipped across the street and up to the door, the Moche ear spool, which Hilda had declared to be the perfect bait, wrapped in a soft handkerchief of Steve’s, tucked into a canvas tote bag.

After I’d knocked, the curtains in a dark upstairs room stirred slightly before I heard footsteps inside coming toward the door. It opened a crack, someone looked at me, as I held up my bag and tried to look furtive, which wasn’t difficult, and a man’s voice farther back in the house said, first in French, “Entrez-Come in.”

As the door opened and I saw who was standing there, sheer apprehension almost made me change my mind and run away. A young woman greeted me, dressed in one of those outfits that young women occasionally wear these days, where—and I know this will position me solidly in the camp of old fuddy-duddies—it’s difficult to tell whether it’s a dress or a slip, a very short pink satin number with shoestring straps, over irridescent silk stockings. Her long nails were painted black, her dark hair was piled up on her head, and she swayed provocatively on very high-heeled, black, patent-leather sandals as she led me toward the back of the house. Carla Cervantes, Lizard’s widow, gave no indication she recognized me. Although it was unnerving to see her here, it made me think that while I did not yet understand how or why, the pieces in this puzzle were snapping into place.

I entered a darkened room, an office, with a desk and only one light source, a desk lamp that cast a pool of brightness on the desk in front of me but did nothing much to illuminate the rest of the room. For a second or two I thought I was alone, until I realized that a man was there, el Hombre, presumably, his chair swiveled around to face the back wall, so that I was addressing the back of his head. “You may leave us now, Carla,” the voice said in heavily accented Spanish, and the young woman shrugged and left, closing the door behind her as she went. I could hear her heels clicking down the hall and then up the stairs to the second floor.

“Are you the man they call el Hombre?” I asked. Hilda and I had decided that I should pretend I didn’t know his real name.

“I am,” the voice replied in English. “Why are you here?”

“I have,” I stammered, “something I want to sell, and I’m told in town you might buy.”

“Name?” he demanded.

“I’d rather not say,” I replied. I heard a soft chuckle.

“Put it on the desk, in the light,” he instructed, and I placed the little Moche man in the circle of light.

With a creak, the chair swiveled toward the light, and I caught my first glimpse of the man they called el Hombre. Second, actually. Predictably, considering who had opened the door, I found myself face-to-face with Carla Cervantes’s pal in the hotel in Lima. I remembered him well. The question was, did he remember me?

Here again there was no flicker of recognition that I could detect. A hand, minus two fingers, which I could see had been cut, maybe even hacked off at the knuckles, reached out and picked up the ear spool. With his other hand, he held a magnifying glass, which he placed against the object, then bent his head to examine it closely. I got to look at a bald spot on the top of his head for a moment or two.

“Very nice,” he said finally. “Where did you get it?”

Hilda and I had rehearsed my answers all the way into town. “Near Cerro de las Ruinas,” I replied.

“Staying at the Hacienda Garua, are you? I didn’t think they’d found much there yet, but the vigas sound promising, don’t they?”

I didn’t answer his questions, but it made me very nervous to think he knew so much about the project. “I said I found it near, not at, Cerro de las Ruinas,” I said. “And I’m not saying exactly where.”

“But you didn’t find it recently,” he replied. “This object has been partially cleaned and restored.” Hilda and I had rubbed a little dirt into it before we came, but we couldn’t put back the aging of centuries in a matter of hours.

“Of course it has,” I said. “We have a lab.”

“You’re an expert on restoration, are you?”

“I know enough,” I replied testily. My nervousness was coming across as annoyance, which was good. “Are you interested or not?”

He chuckled again. “Sensitive type, aren’t you? I’m sure you’re only selling this to help out a sick friend.” He smirked. He paused after he said it, congratulating himself, no doubt, on his deep understanding of the dark side of human nature. “I’m interested,” he said at last. “How much?”

This one was tricky. Hilda and I both regarded the ear spool as priceless, and from an academic point of view it was. But it also had a commercial value, and we were not at all sure what that was. I wanted to look neither an expert nor a fool.

“A pair of these might get as much as $100,000, I’ve heard,” Hilda had said. “But half a pair isn’t worth half the price, if you understand what I’m saying. So let’s assume that rather than $50,000, it’s worth $25,000. Ask for ten.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” I replied.

“Nonsense!” He laughed. “A thousand.”

We went back and forth a few times and settled on $2000. What a rip-off, I thought indignantly: My little Moche man was worth more, much more, than that.

“Cash!” I insisted.

“Of course,” he replied, opening the drawer in his desk and tossing two little packets of U.S. currency onto the table. As I reached for it, his mangled hand slammed down on mine. “You wouldn’t be associated with the police in any way, would you?” he asked, his voice a really menacing whisper. “Because if you are, you will be taken care of, do you understand me?”

“Of course not,” I gasped. “I understand.” His hand drew back from mine and the money. “Go out the back,” he said, pointing to the right. I heard Carta’s footsteps on the stairs. I grabbed the money and fled the room, down a hallway toward a back door. I passed the kitchen on the way out, and took a peek in as I went by. It didn’t appear to be much used as a kitchen, rather, it looked more like a darkroom. The window was covered over, and there were several photographs hanging up to dry, some of them artistic poses, shall we say, of Carta, the kind you’d have some difficulty, and embarrassment, getting developed at your corner photo shop. Pervert, I thought, as I slipped out the back door into a little garden fragrant with night flowers, then through a gate to the side street. But then I had another idea about Laforet’s photographic talents, one more related to the subject at hand, the smuggling of artifacts, and my theory on how it was done. Away from the house, I paused for a moment and took a deep breath, willing myself to relax.

There was a smell of something in the air, ozone, perhaps, and lightning crackled off in the distance. Heat lightning, I thought. It doesn’t rain in the desert. There was a feeling, though, a change in the air, that at home I would have thought meant a storm.

I circled back to where Hilda was waiting, and handed her the bag. “Two thousand, can you believe it?” I whispered.

She groaned. “We’d better get it back,” she said. “How did you get out?” she added. “Back door?” I nodded.

“ T think we need to reposition ourselves slightly so we can see both the front door and the alleyway where I came out. The good news is that the alleyway deadends, so there’s only one way out of there,” I said. We waited to make sure that the curtains didn’t move and then stationed ourselves a little farther along the street. While we waited, I filled her in on what had happened, and Laforet’s connection with Carla Cervantes, his mini photo studio setup, and his knowledge of our activities, which we both agreed was unnerving. I also told her about Laforet’s missing fingers.

“Interesting,” Hilda said. “He’s a bit of a legend around here, you know. He’s slippery as anything, and he always seems to get away, even when his partners in crime do not. There’s a story that one time he almost got caught with illegal artifacts at the border with Ecuador, but got away, losing his fingers in the process, and leaving his partner to take the blame. I have no idea of whether or not this is true, of course, but you have confirmed his fingers are missing, and regardless, it does say something about the man, doesn’t it?”

“No matter what kind of man he is,” I said, “for better or worse, we’re in play.”

About a half hour later, the front door opened, and two shadowy figures emerged into darkness, Carla and the Man, no doubt. They got into his Mercedes and pulled away.

Unwilling to have the truck seen, we’d parked near the crowds in the Plaza de Armas and made our way through the lanes to Laforet’s place on foot. It had been a calculated risk: We knew Laforet had the Mercedes, but we’d decided, wrongly as it turned out, that he wouldn’t leave the house. We followed on foot, thinking this was hopeless, but luck was with us. At the end of the little street, the Mercedes pulled into the main square, but the crowds were so thick that they made very little progress, so much so that we passed him on foot, and were in our truck and waiting as the Mercedes edged past us.

They didn’t go far, another block or two to El Mochica bar. Personally I wouldn’t have taken the car that few blocks, but then I hadn’t worn high heels like Carla’s in at least fifteen years. I let Hilda out. “Your turn,” I said. “Go in and have a look around. I don’t think it would be a good idea for him to see me.”

While I waited for her, I watched the entrance. A motorcycle taxi pulled up, and someone I knew headed into the bar. It was Manco Capac, eschewing for a while the solidarity and simple life of the commune, and his epicurean tastes, for the smoky conviviality and bar fare of El Mochica.

About forty-five minutes later, Hilda climbed back into the truck, alcohol on her breath. I hoped we weren’t into another bout of drinking, but she seemed okay.

“Well, I gave Lucho a bit of a turn,” she said in answer to my question. “He was in there holding up the bar with a couple of his young pals. Planning the next invasion of somewhere or other, I think. I don’t think he was too pleased to see me. He was the only person in the bar that I recognized. I made a pretense of looking around for a friend, and checked out the dining area. The mayor was there, holding court at one table, bobbing up and down to talk to everybody in the room. I didn’t know anyone else, but there was a man there with a young woman who’d forgotten to dress. Pink slip, black lipstick and nail polish. I figured that must be them.”

“That’s Carla.” I laughed. “And el Hombre.” No wonder I liked Hilda, I thought. We saw life in much the same way.

“They’d just ordered cocktails and were looking at the menu when I looked in, so I think they’re there for a while,” she went on. “The tables in the dining room were pretty well all taken, except for one, which had a reserved sign on it, so I went back to the bar and ordered, a scotch, and nursed it as long as I could. I kept my eye on the dining room entrance, but no one came or went while I was there, except for the mayor who came into the bar to glad-hand a few people, including myself. That was it.”

“Did you happen to notice an American, not too tall, big head, long ponytail, white shirt and jeans?”

“Yes. He pulled up a stool at the bar and ordered a beer,” she replied.

“Did he speak to anyone?”‘

“Just the bartender. Why? Do you recognize him?”

“Manco Capac.”

“Manco Capac? Are we talking about the spirit of the first Inca? Or maybe the ghost of one of the later Incas that took that same name? The guy looked pretty substantial to me.”

“Not a ghost. A megalomaniac, maybe, and he has royal tastes: caviar, pate de foie gras, and champagne. Head of the commune where Puma and Pachamama were staying. I keep thinking that all of these paths keep crossing somehow. It’s just that I don’t get the connections between all the people involved.”

“Hard to see what a commune has to do with artifact smuggling, I agree. What do you want to do now? Wait and see where they go from here?”

“I guess so, and see if anyone we know shows up. If Laforet is going to do a deal of some kind, do we think it would be in a public place?”‘

Hilda shrugged, and we settled down to watch.

About twenty minutes later, Pablo and a bunch of young friends came along.

“Everyone we know is showing up,” I moaned. “They can’t all be in on this, can they? How can we narrow down our suspects, if everyone is here? My, my,” I added. “Ralph and Tracey too.”

“Ralph!” Hilda exclaimed. “He never goes out at night!” But he had. Our second borrowed truck had pulled up about a half a block from El Mo, and Ralph also went in.

“I think it’s time for another drink, don’t you?” Hilda said. “I’m going in again.”

A few minutes later she returned. “I think Laforet and friend are finishing up, and we should be seeing them out here soon. Cesar, the mayor, is in the dining room; Lucho, Pablo, Ralph and Tracey, and that fellow Manco Capac are in the bar. The reserved table is for Carlos Montero, and he is expected, although I gather they keep the table for him every night, and sometimes he just doesn’t show. I talked to Ralph briefly while Tracey was chatting up the bartender. He says Tracey insisted on coming into town to phone home, and to enquire around El Mochica for any news of Steve. He said he tried to dissuade her but couldn’t. He took her to the Telefonico del Peru office for the call and then brought her here. He’s planning to take her back to the hacienda soon, but he’s obviously hoping we’ll go back and help him manage Tracey. He says she’s getting quite worked up about Steve.”

“Not right this minute,” I said, pointing toward the door to El Mochica. “Here they come.”

Laforet and Carla left the bar, got into his car, and headed back in the direction they came from. “ T think they’re going back home,” I said. “We’d better go on foot, or they may start to notice the truck. If I’m wrong and they drive off somewhere, though, I’ll be fit to be tied.” ‘

Our luck held out again. We were in position across from the house when they arrived, having taken a shortcut along a tiny little lane. We watched as they went into the house, and then for about another hour. The downstairs lights went out, and soon the upstairs ones did too, leaving the house in complete darkness. I went around the corner and shone the flashlight for a second on my watch. “Twelve-thirty,” I whispered to Hilda.

She beckoned me back around the corner. “Look,” she said. “We can’t both watch these people twenty-four hours a day. I think they’re down for the night, don’t you, but just in case, I’ll stay here. I think I got more sleep than you did last night, so I’ll do the first night shift. Let’s go back to the square and get a motorcycle taxi to take you back to the hacienda, and get the truck for me. I’ll be perfectly safe in the truck, and you can come and spell me off first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, “if you’re sure you’ll be all right. But we’ll have to hope that something happens soon. We can’t keep this up forever.”

“I think something will happen soon,” she replied. “After all, he’s got a real treasure there now, hasn’t he?”

That night, I dreamt that I was at Cerro de las Ruinas. In the dream it was the same night. Ines and Tomas Cardoso, her brother, the shaman, were there. He donned the skin of a puma, she the feathers of a condor. They told me not to look. But I did. I lay facedown in the sand, my head buried in my hands at first, but then I raised my head ever so slightly and looked toward the huaca. First, I saw a condor soaring overhead, a large cat prowling the summit. Then above the huaca, I saw the most horrible figure. At first it looked like a crab, then a giant spider, which metamorphosed into a man, but a man with fangs for teeth. In one hand he held a tumi blade—the one, I knew, from Edmund Edwards’s store—in the other a severed head. I covered my eyes in terror. I heard growls and then shrieks, as if a terrible battle was raging. In my dream, I knew it was for control of the huaca, the struggle between evil and good. Then there was silence, and I was back in my room once more.

Still later, Ines Cardoso was standing at the foot of my bed. I was dreaming again. I must have been, although I believed I was awake. Her figure had a luminescence to it, a fuzziness about the edges, that I thought meant I was asleep. “Cuidado al arbolado!” she said again, this time very agitated. Beware of the woods.

And then I knew what she had been trying to tell me. Etienne Laforet. La foret. French for forest. I was to beware of Etienne Laforet. I understood then, that if Laforet had seen only one ear spool of my Moche warrior, he would be pleased to find the pair. If he had seen both of them before, then he knew I didn’t find mine at Cerro de las Ruinas. And if this was the case, then he would do what he thought he had to. He would do what he did when Lizard headed for Canada to reclaim the missing artifacts, what he did when Edmund Edwards made a mistake, perhaps as simple as losing his nerve. Laforet would send for the Spider. I had not bearded the lion in its den. I had put my hand into the viper’s nest.

The next morning, we found the summit of the huaca disturbed. Several feathers were lying in the sand.

17

What had seemed a devilishly clever plan to smoke out a smuggling ring had, by the next afternoon, become an exercise that on the one hand was a logistical nightmare, but on the other, almost defined the word futile. As to the former, Hilda and I had to keep shuttling back and forth between town and the hacienda, one of us always watching Laforet’s place. Hilda had declared a day off for everyone, but a couple of the students volunteered to help pack up the lab, and there was the shopping and taxiing around to be done. Even with two vehicles now, it was a chore. No one wanted to be left alone at the hacienda for very long. Tracey was particularly high maintenance in that regard. Understandably, I supposed, with her lover missing, she needed to be taken into town to call home on three separate occasions.

As to our real mission, our surveillance exercise, el Hombre never left the house; no one came to visit. The pinnacle of excitement was reached when I followed Carla to the market to watch her buy bananas.

There were two unsettling aspects to the visit to the market, however, neither of which had anything, I thought, to do with Carla. One was that the place was abuzz with talk about the weather, about torrential rains in the mountains that were threatening the irrigation and water control systems. The consensus in the market appeared to be that the government’s evacuation plans might need to be put into effect any day. People were stocking up with provisions. It was a little difficult for me to fathom this anxiety, however. The place was as dry as a bone.

Secondly, it was on this trip to the market that I got the first intimations that someone else was watching too. Nothing substantial really, just a sense of someone else being there. A couple of times I had a feeling I was being followed, but when I turned there was no one unusual in sight. At other times I’d have the impression of someone pulling back out of sight, or I’d catch a glimpse of a man disappearing down a lane. In the end, though, I decided I’d been imagining it. I had a deathly fear of the Spider, that he might be around, but quite frankly, if he was, and if I was his target, I didn’t think he’d just hang about watching me. So I concentrated on being the spy rather than the spied upon.

When it came right down to it, the trick to surveillance, Hilda and I found, was nothing like trying to keep from being seen. It was trying to keep from falling asleep. Hilda and I took turns napping in the backseat while the other watched the house. Sometimes we watched on foot, at other times we parked the truck down the street where we could watch both doors. We alternated watching posts not just to avoid drawing attention to ourselves by staying in one place for too long, but also to keep ourselves moving.

That evening, as they had before, Carla and the Man drove the three short blocks to El Mochica for dinner. This in itself was not surprising: El Mo boasted the only white tablecloth dining in town. Cesar appeared to eat there once again, and Carlos’s reserved table remained vacant. Lucho held up the bar with his friends.

While Laforet and the others dined or drank in style, Hilda and I ate barbecued chicken sandwiches from a polleria down the street. If there is a national dish in Peru, I decided, it was chicken, polio. There are as many pollerias in Peru as there are pizzerias at home.

“I’m going to grow feathers any minute,” Hilda groaned as I handed her another chicken sandwich. We were sitting in the truck outside El Mo. “And the sandwich after this, I’ll start to cluck. I sincerely regret I didn’t eat Ines’s lovely dinners while I had the chance, and if I don’t get to sleep in a real bed soon, my back will never recover.” I nodded sympathetically.

“For some reason,” she went on, waving her sandwich in the direction of the bar, “ T thought this smuggling operation would work like a well-oiled machine. I have no idea why I thought that: I know absolutely nothing about smuggling, but nevertheless, that is what I thought. I had this idea we’d hand Laforet the ear spool, and then everyone would spring into action, including us, and we’d follow them, and then call in the local police force, all four of them. I had no idea smuggling could be this boring,” she sighed.

“I don’t know how well this operation ran at one time,” I replied. “It probably once did run like a well-oiled machine. But it must have gone seriously off the rails just over two years ago, when the parcel containing three pre-Columbian objects was in transit to a Toronto gallery, when the gallery owner—the sole proprietor, I might add—died. And he died under exceptional circumstances, circumstances that guaranteed that the police were all over the place.

“There would be nothing the smugglers could do to recover the antiquities that wouldn’t bring suspicion on them. So they did the only thing they could. They waited. I recall Steve saying that Laforet hadn’t been seen around here for a couple of years, that he was farther south for a while. They waited, and then the objects finally came up for auction at Molesworth Cox.

“Theoretically, it should have been straightforward. You send someone to buy them back. It doesn’t really matter what you have to pay, as long as they are considered replicas, because they are worth a fortune. But then it went wrong again. Two people, not one, came to get them. Lizard, Ramon Cervantes, a customs agent from Lima, and someone I refer to as the Spider. It’s possible they were in this together: Spider didn’t have a paddle for bidding that I could see, so perhaps that was Lizard’s job. But I don’t think so. They didn’t look like pals to me. In any event, neither of them got what they wanted. I did, and then the peanut disappeared, and finally Lizard ended up dead in my storage room and the florero is gone. The only person that could have killed him is Spider. Who else in Toronto would be after a customs agent from Lima?

“Then I go to Ancient Ways in New York, and after I’ve been there, mentioned the Toronto dealer’s name, and asked for Moche artifacts, Edmund Edwards ends up dead too.

“On the surface, at least, things don’t appear to be going too well for our smuggling ring. But now Laforet is back in town. Why? Or more precisely, why is he still here when Carlos is dead, even if no one but us has noticed, and the whole town is in turmoil because of a huaquero’s death and because of the impending rain? Is it because the threat to the organization was Lizard, or perhaps the old man in New York, or even Carlos—although I still think Paraiso must figure in this somewhere—and all are now dead, or is it because something very big has been found, something worth taking a risk for? I think we need to keep watch, because something is going to happen.”

“You’re thinking of Puma’s treasure, the one you get to through cracks in the rock, aren’t you?” Hilda said.

“I am,” I replied.

It was at about this point that Tracey and Ralph showed up, parking the second truck just outside El Mo.

“Seems to me the* only person who isn’t here tonight is that pal of yours, the Inca reincarnated,” Hilda said.

“Manco Capac,” I said. “You’re right. It’s the same crew as last night, except for him. Why don’t I, while Tracey and Ralph are in there, take the second truck—I have a set of keys—and go out to the commune to see if he’s there? I’ve also been thinking about Carlos and that little ruined house out back of Paraiso. I think while everyone is here and comfortably settled for an hour or two, I could just take another look.”

“Okay,” Hilda replied. “I’ll hold the fort while you’re gone. Be careful.”

I was greeted at the commune by a rather wild-eyed teenager who went by the name of Solar Flare. Despite my aversion to these nicknames, I had to admit the name suited her. Her reddish-blond hair radiated straight out from her head in spikes, and she spoke in bursts, seemingly unrelated words strung together as if in challenge to the listener. I asked if Puma and Pachamama had been heard from.

“No!” she replied. “Gone. Manco Capac says they won’t be back!” Did he now?

I wondered what would make him so certain of that.

“Is Manco Capac here?”

She shook her head. “New moon.”

“And that means?”

“Retreat.”

“What’s he retreating from?” I asked.

“Not what, to,” she replied.

“Okay,” I said. “What is he retreating to?”

“Mountains,” she replied. “Meditating.”

“You’re saying he’s gone up in the mountains to meditate, are you?” This conversation was hard work.

“Yes,” she said. “Preparing for the end of the world. I’m preparing for it too. It’s soon. Everywhere but here,” she added.

“What a relief,” I said. “Do you know exactly where he goes in the mountains?”

“Secret,” she said, shaking her head. “A place with special power. Spoil it if others knew about it.”

“Of course,” I said. “He goes every new moon, does he? How long does he stay away?”

“Two or three days,” she replied. “He comes back much refreshed.”

I’ll bet he does, I thought. Knowing his tastes, I was willing to wager my last dollar—which I was getting close to, come to think of it, unless one counted my ill-gotten gains as a huaquero—that every month Manco Capac, using meditation as an excuse, probably headed off somewhere like the Lima Sheraton or its equivalent, and spent a couple of days swilling expensive wines and trying his luck at the slot machines in the lobby. Manco Capac, I was more and more convinced, was a fake.

I left Solar Flare preparing herself for the end of the world, and headed out for the highway, parking the truck in my by now regular space behind a little clump of trees and the old hut. The spot was near the old riverbed, and to my surprise, I could hear the rush of water in what earlier in the day had been the merest trickle of a stream. They must be right about rain up in the mountains, I remember thinking, as I turned away from the water and crossed the sands to the ruin.

It was very dark—the new moon, of course—and, not wanting to use my flashlight, I had to stop from time to time to make sure I was heading in the right direction. All was quiet at Paraiso when I got there. Carlos Montero was, as Hilda had said, nowhere to be seen. The padlock was still on the door to the ruin.

While the walls of the place were not particularly high, the days when I could haul myself up and over even a low wall were long gone, if indeed they’d ever existed. There were a couple of wooden crates, empty, I discovered, very close to the wall, near a place where the wall was lowest, its bricks fallen away in disrepair. There were many footprints there, I could see, as I beamed my flashlight about for a second or two. With a little effort, I moved the crates up against the wall at the lowest point and climbed up on them, then onto the top of the wall itself. On the other side there was a pile of old bricks that provided a step of sorts down.

I turned on my flashlight and swung it around the interior. It looked deserted: a couple of old pop cans, some empty paint cans, and the ubiquitous foam coffee cups were all I could see. In the center of the space was a very large square of woven bamboo matting, the type I’d seen used as fencing to enclose construction sites in town. The only thing that struck me as strange about it was that it looked very pristine and new, unlike the rest of the junk that had been tossed aside in the area.

Just to make sure, I lifted the corner of the matting. Underneath it was an extraordinary sight: a round hole about ten feet across that had around its perimeter man-made stairs, carved into the rock, that spiraled down into the earth. I aimed my light down into the hole, and saw that the steps snaked down about twenty-five feet. At the bottom was a faint glimmer of water. It looked to be a natural formation of some sort, almost a chute down into the ground, into which someone, a very long time ago, had carved steps.

I hesitated for a moment or two, not terribly comfortable with heights. The stairs were very narrow, open on the inside, so one false step would send me plummeting downward. Then I thought of Puma. The commune was within easy walking distance of this place. Had he, in his marijuana haze, come here? Perhaps the footprints outside the wall were his, and he’d got in the same way I had. Cities of gold you get to through cracks in the rocks, he’d said, the greatest treasure ever. I stuck my flashlight in my belt, directing the beam downward, and started my descent, pulling the woven matting back in its place over my head.

After one circuit of the perimeter on the spiral, I could no longer stand upright, but had to sit on the stairs and lower myself step by step, ducking under overhanging rock as I went. At last I stepped into the pool of water only a few inches deep at the bottom.

I was in a rock chamber not that much larger than the chute down which I had come, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, probably naturally formed by the action of water on limestone. To my right was a door, leading where I could not imagine. Against the wall to my left was a table covered in packing materials and three wooden crates, none of them yet sealed shut.

In all three crates were rows and rows of cresoles, the little pots found in tombs, each identical, made in the shape of a round man. All of them, as near as I could tell, were fakes, reproductions from the factory above. The workmanship was not particularly good, and they were absolutely identical, each made from the same mold. But why hide these in some subterranean vault? My idea about putting the antiquity in with a number of fakes should have meant that the objects were handled using the normal channels, not hidden away down here. There was also a sizable dolly which could transport the crates. But where from down here would you take them? You’d need a crane rather than a dolly to get them up to the surface.

I looked under the first layer of little pots and found a second, all the same. I checked the third layer. By now it was getting monotonous, rows and rows of not particularly exceptional fake ceramics. There must be something here, I told myself, keep looking. From the bottom layer, I picked a cresole at random and took it out to have a better look, turning it around and then looking inside. Small plastic bag, white powder: cocaine. It had to be. Cocaine was being shipped out in little Moche pots. The Paradise Crafts Factory was more aptly named than I ever would have guessed.

I went to the second crate and checked the second layer of pots, all empty, and then the third layer. I could hardly believe what I saw. Gold peanut beads, dozens of them, some of them the size of my fist, gleamed in the beam of my flashlight. Beneath them lay a golden scepter, gold breastplate, back flap, nose flap, and ear spools, not unlike the one I’d held, of gold and turquoise and other stones. I took a look at the shape of the helmet and tried to recall what Steve had told me about Moche rituals. “It’s the warrior priest,” I gasped at last. “They’ve found the tomb of a warrior priest!”

I never made it to the third box. As I reached it, I thought I heard a scraping sound above me, and tiny pinpoints of light showed through the matting above. I extinguished my flashlight quickly and moved toward the door that shouldn’t by any rights lead anywhere. There was nowhere else to hide. I heard the matting being pulled off the entrance to the chamber and a grunt as someone lowered themselves onto the steps. I grabbed the door handle and pulled. Nothing happened. Open, please, I said to myself. I yanked and the door opened. I stepped behind it, pulling the door closed behind me. I had no idea where I was, and was afraid to turn on the flashlight even for a second. I just stood there, shivering, partly in fear, but also because the air was cold and damp, with an unmistakable odor of something starting to rot. I heard a splash as the intruder stepped off into the water at the bottom.

Then, much to my surprise, the lights came on. The electrical cord, I thought. They’ve strung a cord out from the factory to light this place. There must have been a switch in the chamber which I had not seen, although it would have never occurred to me to look for a light switch in an underground chamber. I was in a long, man-made tunnel heading some distance underground. There were wires strung the length of it, and from time to time a dim bulb.

I felt terribly exposed standing there. I would be seen instantly if whoever was out there chose to open the door. On the plus side, however, I could see where I was going, and I knew where Carlos Montero had gone. His crumpled body had been stuffed into a little niche in the tunnel wall.

I turned and plunged down the tunnel. The ground rose slightly as I went along, and after about 500 yards or so, maybe more, I took a right turn and found myself at the foot of a wooden staircase leading upward. Cautiously I inched my way up to the underside of a trapdoor. I pressed my ear to the wood and listened. I could near nothing. I raised the door an inch or two. Total darkness greeted me. I pushed the door back and climbed up, shutting it behind me. I was in a little hut, about eight by ten, and windowless. There were four other crates there. Listening at the door once more, I again heard nothing, and let myself out.

It took me a second or two to get my bearings, but when my eyes adjusted, I could see the outline of the Andes against the sky. Behind the hut was a grove of trees, and beyond that, presumably, Paraiso, although I couldn’t see it for the trees; I could see nothing to the right or the left. I found myself a hiding place not far from the hut and waited. About fifteen minutes later, a dark but familiar shape emerged from the hut with the first of the crates. It was Lucho. After the crates had been stacked, which took about a half hour in all, I’d estimate, Lucho shuffled away from the hut in the direction of the mountains for several yards, and then walked parallel to the mountain range, stopping every few yards to do something I couldn’t see. I could smell gasoline. Having walked about fifty yards away from the hut, he turned left, walked about twenty feet, and then turned left and made his way back, then an equal distance past the hut, stooping over at regular intervals again, before making his way back.

Finally he went back into the hut, and I heard the trapdoor slam.

I edged my way out in the direction he had come. It was still very dark, but I could make out two straight rows of painted white stones stretching off in either direction. At regular intervals between them I found, on closer examination, old paint cans stuffed with rags doused in gasoline. It’s a runway, I realized, an illegal runway. Lucho, or someone else, would set the paint can contents ablaze at the right moment, and the aircraft would come in. The desert floor was hard, and packed flat, the stone markers were straight as arrows. The Moche artifacts, and the cocaine, would be gone that night, under cover of the new moon, and with the added benefit of everyone being distracted by the possibility of flooding. There would be absolutely no way I would be able to stop them alone.

I headed back for the truck, terrified that I’d run into Lucho. I thought the trees would provide protection, and plunged into them. Cuidado al arbolado! be damned, I thought. They were the only cover around. But it was also tough going, the thorns a constant hazard in the dark, slowing my progress, and distorting my sense of direction. Just as I was about to emerge from the forest, someone stepped out from behind a tree and shone a light directly in my eyes.

“Rebecca, it’s you!” the voice exclaimed.

“Puma,” I hissed. “Turn out that light. Where have you been?” For a moment I caught a glimpse of what it must be to be the parent of a teenager—the surge of emotion, part relief but also part rage, when the offspring you’ve imagined lying seriously injured, or even, God forbid, dead, in the middle of an intersection blithely reappears. I wanted to shake him and give him a good talking-to, but I didn’t have time.

“Looking for the treasure like I wrote you. Come, you’ve gotta come with me right away,” he said, pulling on my arm.

“Puma, I can’t right now. I’ve seen your treasure. Now I’ve got to go and get help. Why didn’t you come back to the commune or the hacienda?” I found myself asking.

He looked exasperated. “Because they’re after me, like I told you. The Spanish. I came to get you again, but one of them was there. So I had to hide. ”Come quickly,“ he insisted, pulling my arm roughly. ”It’s important. It’s life or death!“

“Not the ‘pocalypse again,” I said, my irritation plain. I didn’t want to shake him anymore: I was contemplating strangling him.

“No!” he exclaimed. “Real life. Now!”

This is ridiculous, I thought. But there was something in his voice, an edgy panic perhaps, that made me follow him across the sand toward a cluster of small houses not far away.

He gestured to me to be quiet and to crouch down as we drew near. Soon we were creeping across the front porch of the largest of the houses and up just beside the screen door. Inside, I heard the scraping of a chair against a wooden floor, a cough or two, and then a gruff voice said, “You are here to be tried for the murder of Rolando Guerra. How do you plead?”

God, no, I thought, leaning carefully over until I could just see into the room.

Steve Neal was standing there, his head in profile, hands tied behind his back. He did not reply to his accuser. On the far side of the room was a group of women and children. I could not see the speaker. “Go,” I said to Puma, putting my mouth right up to his ear. “Go and get the police. Here, keys to the truck, by the highway,” I said, pointing toward the clump of trees where I’d left the vehicle. Puma nodded and crept away. I hope they believe him, I thought, and I hope they hurry.

“How do you plead?” the voice inside said harshly. “Guilty or not guilty?”

Still Steve said nothing. I edged myself toward the door to see better. Steve, thinner already, with a stubble of beard, was surrounded by five men, all of whom I’d seen at Rolando Guerra’s funeral, and none of them happy. The sixth, a forty-something man I recalled having seen in the nasty confrontation at the site, was sitting at the table, the judge of this kangaroo court. A little girl, Rolando’s daughter, sat listlessly playing with a doll.

“In the absence of a plea, you have been found guilty,” the man growled. “The sentence is death, by hanging. Is there anything you have to say?”

“Yes, there is,” Steve said. The judge looked surprised, whether from Steve’s perfect Spanish, or the fact that Steve was now intent upon being heard, I couldn’t guess.

“Then say it!” the man ordered.

Steve took a deep breath and began. “It is not I who is on trial here, it is you.” The men shuffled angrily in their seats.

“Quiet!” the judge ordered. “Let him speak.”

Steve paused for a moment, then went on. “You are living in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. This is a land of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, and disease. And yet,” he paused, “and yet, on this tiny strip of sand, wedged between the mountains and the sea, a little over two thousand years ago, a great civilization was born.

“Somehow the people of this region gained control of the waterways, built canal systems to allow the desert to bloom, for a nation to flourish. They built cities that would reflect their power, huge ceremonial centers of towering pyramids, that must have struck other people dumb with amazement. These people are now called the Moche, after the river south of here, and the language, muchic, that was spoken in ancient times.

“Their cities held the largest adobe brick structures anywhere, anytime, expressions of their might, their temporal power. There were huge ceremonial courtyards lined with astounding works of art, frescoes that may have told their whole history in a single panel. These were cities where artists flourished, a civilization wealthy enough that the elite could support an artist class, some of the most singularly gifted artists of any age. The society of the Moche was one organized around rituals, some of them bloody indeed, and yet their art soared above the bloodshed, expressing their belief in the supernatural and in the sacredness of the everyday. They buried their dead with elaborate rituals and great care. You can tell a lot about people when you know how they treat their dead,” he said, looking accusingly at every man in that room, one or two of whom squirmed visibly. “And the Moche buried even the lowliest among them with ceremony and respect.

“These people did what you do. They fished the waters off these coasts, they hunted deer, they engaged in athletic events, they had toothaches, they made war.

“How do we know these things? We know this because we are able to study the remarkable works of art they left behind. There are ceramic vessels that show us the faces of these people, portraits that we believe are uncannily accurate. There are other vessels that show us ancient fishermen using the same reed boats, the caballitos, that fishermen off these shores use today; we see scenes of the deer hunt, of ritual combat, of sacrifice. We look at their works, their craftsmanship, and we see a great people, the people who are your ancestors.

“Your children study the stories of the conquistadores, of Spain, Greece, and Rome. Should they not learn as much—no, should they not learn more, of the great civilizations from which they are descended? Of course they should.

“But every time you steal one of the objects the Moche created, and sell it to the el Hombres of this world, a little bit of your heritage is lost to you and to the rest of us. I know you are thinking that this is easy for me to say, that I live in a nice house in California, with two cars, and count as necessities things you can only dream of having, that I don’t have to struggle to put food on the table. You’re right, and I’m going to say it anyway. You are not just robbers of the dead. You rob your children of their heritage. You rob yourselves of your pride.” He paused. “That’s all I have to say.”

Not one word was uttered when he’d finished. Some of the faces I could see showed confusion, others resistance. I felt it could go either way. Then an older woman, hair long and grey, a brown shawl wrapped around her shoulders, stood up. It was Rolando Guerra’s mother, the woman who had walked dry-eyed behind his coffin. She began to speak quietly, so much so that I had to strain to hear. “I have lost an uncle to this, I have lost a husband, and now,” she said, her voice breaking, “ T have lost a son. Hear what this man says. We know why Rolando died. This man did not kill him. Rolando killed himself. This must stop. You say you do this, you rob the tombs, to make a better life for your families. But your children and your wives would rather have you with them.” The other women nodded, the older children looked on solemnly, and the young ones, sensing perhaps that something very important was happening, fell silent.

“ T would rather have my son alive than all the gold in Peru,” she said, tears now in her eyes. “We will survive without it. For God’s sake, stop this now.”

Still no one said anything. I pulled the screen door open, stepped into the room, and said, “El Hombre doesn’t just smuggle antiquities. He also ships drugs. That is the kind of person you are dealing with. And tonight, he is flying cocaine and the contents of a tomb of a Moche warrior out of Peru from a dirt runway on the other side of the woods. What’s it going to be?”