8
Venezuela
As it turned out, Nina didn’t need to work on her
language skills in the four days it took to make the arrangements
with the Venezuelan government. The moment she heard about the
plan, Macy practically begged to volunteer her services. Though
initially dubious, Nina knew one area where Macy’s abilities far
outclassed her own: with her part-Cuban heritage, the young woman
was completely fluent in Spanish. And, she had to admit, while Macy
could sometimes be annoying, she was usually fun
company.
Which right now was
more than she could say of her husband. Though things had thawed,
there was still the uncomfortable feeling of tiptoeing over
eggshells around each other. Nina hated it – and was sure that
Eddie did too – but neither was willing to make the first move and
apologise to the other.
That said, there were
larger matters on her mind. The United States and Venezuela were
not close at the best of times, but over recent months the
Venezuelan president, Tito Suarez, had made increasingly vocal
accusations of US interference in his country’s affairs. The State
Department, conversely, had noted increasing civil unrest in
Venezuela’s cities, to the extent of issuing a suggestion – not
quite a warning, but the subtext was clear – that American citizens
should postpone all but essential visits to the Bolivarian Republic
until the situation improved.
From the penthouse
balcony of her Caracas hotel, however, Nina saw little evidence of
brewing revolution in the city below, only cars and billboards and
a giant video screen on the front of what she assumed from the mast
on its roof was a television station. Despite her being an
American, the Venezuelan government had rolled out the metaphorical
red carpet for the IHA’s director and her expedition. She had a
shrewd idea why; considering her past record, the prospect of her
discovering a legendary city in the jungle would be irresistible,
bringing the nation both international prestige and tourist money.
She had never visited the country before, and had been surprised
and impressed by its capital, a bustling and in places strikingly
modern metropolis. There was clearly a lot of money at
work.
However, it was also
clear that, even under an ostensibly socialist government, that
wealth was far from evenly spread. Beyond the skyscrapers, great
chunks of the city were packed tight with ramshackle little
structures: the barrios, home to
millions of the urban poor. Yet between these cramped slums were
towering condominiums, expansive villas, even golf courses. With a
gap so large financially and small physically between rich and
poor, it was easy to imagine resentments simmering away until they
boiled over.
She wasn’t planning
on staying long in Caracas, however. Returning to the suite –
though it was a beautiful day, the stench of smog was stinging her
sinuses – she joined Eddie, Macy and Kit to await their
visitor.
He finally arrived
over half an hour late, which could have been down to the
gridlocked streets, but Nina suspected was just as likely due to
his displeasure at being there at all. Dr Leonard Osterhagen, a
burly German in his fifties with a trim salt-and-pepper goatee that
matched his hair, worked for not the IHA but one of the other
United Nations cultural organisations – and in very short order
made his opinion of the newer agency plain. ‘I do not see why the
IHA has assumed control of this expedition,’ he said. ‘And I resent
being shanghaied from our dig in Peru.’
‘You weren’t
shanghaied, Dr Osterhagen,’ said Nina in a placatory tone. ‘It was
simply a request for inter-agency cooperation.’
‘Cooperation! It was
an order, I think. When the IHA makes a demand, everyone else must
dance for it.’
‘I’ll have to
disagree with that interpretation,’ she said, her patience already
wearing thin.
‘Well, of course you
do. You are the one who benefits. The IHA takes money away from
other agencies, diverts funds from serious research and puts it
into grand exhibitions, like Atlantis. Our work is not supposed to
be a fairground show.’ He gestured at Kit. ‘And we are
archaeologists, not policemen! Why is Interpol
involved?’
Nina passed a folder
to Osterhagen. ‘Take a look.’
He scowled and
flipped it open . . . and his expression became first one of shock,
then wonder. Inside were the photographs of the black market
artefacts Kit had shown her in New York. He shuffled back and forth
through them before looking up at Nina in amazement. ‘Where were
these found?’
‘That’s the thing,’
Nina said, relieved by his abrupt change of attitude. ‘They’d been
sold on the black market, which is why Interpol got involved, but
they were found here. In Venezuela. And that’s why I requested this meeting. You’re one of the world’s
foremost experts in Inca history, so I thought you might be
interested. But if you’d prefer to leave it to the IHA . . .
’
Sourness crept on to
Osterhagen’s face as his displeasure at being played and his lust
for knowledge fought it out, but the latter was quickly victorious.
‘The site these came from . . . you think it may be . . . ?’ He
mouthed a word.
Nina spoke it for
him. ‘Paititi. Somewhere in the south of the country, along the
middle Orinoco.’
‘Paititi! In
Venezuela? But – of course, Raleigh and the Manoans, Juan Martinez
being set adrift. Twenty days’ travel along the Orinoco. It could
be . . . ’ His gaze went right through Nina as he focused on the
images in his mind.
‘So, Dr Osterhagen,’
she said, ‘are you interested in joining the
expedition?’
He blinked, returning
to the present. ‘I think . . . it would be best if you had an
expert like myself accompanying you, yes. In the interests of
inter-agency cooperation.’
She smiled thinly.
‘I’m glad you agree.’
Osterhagen regarded
the photographs again. ‘I will need my assistants, of
course.’
‘I’ll make the
arrangements,’ Nina told him. The German gave her the details, then
departed – with an almost pained look as he was made to return the
photos of the Inca treasures.
‘Wow,’ said Macy. ‘I
didn’t realise some people had such a problem with the
IHA.’
‘Experts get very
territorial,’ said Nina. ‘Especially when there’s funding
involved.’
Eddie laughed. ‘Thank
God you’ve never got stroppy with anyone who’s stepped on your
turf, eh?’ He went to a large map of Venezuela laid out on a desk.
‘So we’ve got the expert on board. What about local support?’ He
tracked the Orinoco river south along the Venezuelan-Colombian
border until it turned back east into the former country, picking
out the tiny dot that marked Valverde.
‘The Venezuelans are
giving us a guide, and a pilot,’ said Nina, slightly annoyed by his
jibe.
Kit joined Eddie at
the map. ‘Military?’
‘Militia, I
think.’
‘What’s the
difference?’ asked Macy.
‘The militia’s loyal
to el Presidente,’ said Eddie. ‘The
military’s loyal to the country. Not always the same thing.’ He
looked more closely at the map. ‘Better take plenty of bug
repellent. That’s a big load of green nothing around there – jungle
and swamps, probably.’
Nina looked at the
photographs, then across at the case containing the two statues.
‘There’s something else there. Let’s
hope we can find it.’
Two days later, the
expedition assembled in the little jungle town of Valverde, where
Nina discovered to her surprise that their Venezuelan guide and
pilot were the same person. Oscar Valero was a heavy-set man in his
forties, proudly dressed in the olive-green fatigues and cap of the
Bolivarian Militia; it was also clear from his not exactly subtle
questions that he had been told to keep a close watch on the
yanquis.
Osterhagen,
meanwhile, had been joined by his assistants – three of them,
giving Nina the feeling that he was trying to match the numbers of
‘her’ team. Ralf Becker, gangling and thatch-haired, was another
German and Osterhagen’s deputy, while the other two were Americans:
Loretta Soto, a plump and shy Hispanic woman, and Day Cuff, a
long-faced young man with a pretentious little triangular ‘soul
patch’ beard. Cuff’s eyes had immediately locked on to Macy – more
specifically, her chest – and it seemed nothing short of a nuclear
strike would draw them away.
They met in the bar
of the optimistically named Hotel Grande, mostly for the practical
reason that it was Valverde’s only hotel, but also because of its
connection to the Interpol investigation: a payphone in its lobby
was the landline through which Stamford West had communicated with
his local contact. Like the hotel, though, the payphone was the
only one in Valverde. The stream of people using it seemed to rule
out any chance of spotting an obvious suspect.
‘Lot of soldiers
around here,’ Eddie noted as another uniformed man made a call.
There had also been a visible military presence on the
streets.
‘There is a base near
here, to watch the border,’ explained Valero. ‘To keep out the
drug-running dogs and the Colombian puppets of the gringo
imperialists. No offence,’ he added with a cheery smile at
Nina.
‘None taken,’ she
replied icily. ‘You know what we need you to do for the aerial
survey, right?’
‘Sí, no problem. If there’s something out there,
we’ll find it. You wanna start now?’
The way Osterhagen
leaned forward expectantly told Nina that she wasn’t the only one
impatient to begin the search. ‘No time like the
present.’
Becker sprang to his
feet. ‘Great, okay, let’s go!’ he said enthusiastically as he
donned a hat – a rather familiar-looking fedora.
Eddie grinned. ‘He
thinks he’s Indiana Jones,’ he whispered to Nina.
‘All archaeologists think they’re Indiana Jones,’
Nina replied as she stood, equally amused. ‘Well, except the ones
who think they’re Lara Croft.’
He regarded the tall,
bony German. ‘I’m glad he went for the Indy look. I wouldn’t want
to see him in Lycra and hot pants.’ His smile widened. ‘Now
Macy, on the other hand . . . ’ His
wife batted his arm.
Valverde was about
two kilometres south of the Orinoco, its airstrip between the two.
It was only a ten-minute walk from the Grande to what passed as a
terminal, a hut with radio masts rising not quite vertically from
its roof. The expedition members had been flown in by government
helicopters, but the waiting aircraft was considerably more basic –
a Cessna Caravan, a single-propeller, nine-seater light plane that
was as unexciting and utilitarian in appearance as its name
suggested.
‘Oh,’ said Cuff in
sneering disappointment. ‘That’s what we’re flying in? I was hoping
for something a bit less prehistoric.’
Valero seemed
insulted. ‘It’s only twenty-five years old, perfectly safe. What
did you expect? A jumbo jet?’
Cuff wasn’t
satisfied. ‘Whatever, it’d better be well maintained if you expect
me to set foot in it. Although somehow I doubt Venezuelan
airworthiness testing is quite up to
FAA standards . . .’
Eddie had already
taken a dislike to the smug twenty-something, and decided he wasn’t
going to put up with an entire flight of whining. ‘Hey, Dave, how
about not pissing off the guy we need to keep us from a fiery
screaming death?’
The already nervous
Loretta looked even more upset at the thought, but Cuff responded
with a haughty huff. ‘It’s not Dave. It’s Day. Day F.
Cuff.’
‘Oh, of the Boston
Cuffs, no doubt,’ Eddie said in his Roger Moore voice, guessing
that he was supposed to be impressed. ‘Well, since it’s going to be
a long flight, either stop moaning or F. Cuff off.’
‘Eddie,’ Nina chided,
trying to conceal her amusement.
Cuff’s mood was far
more readable. ‘You know, Leonard,’ he said to Osterhagen, ‘I think
I’ll sit this out. Aerial surveys aren’t my
speciality.’
Osterhagen frowned,
but nodded. ‘And Loretta, you don’t look very happy. Do you want to
stay here too?’
‘Thank you,’ Loretta
said with a relieved sigh. ‘I really don’t like flying. I – I’m
sure this is a very good plane,’ she hurriedly added to Valero,
‘but it makes me nervous.’
The Venezuelan
shrugged. ‘Two less people, it saves me fuel. No
problem!’
Cuff set off back
towards town, Loretta following. Macy nudged Eddie. ‘Thanks,’ she
whispered.
‘For
what?’
‘For getting rid of
him. What a creep. Didn’t you see the way he was staring at
me?’
‘Nah, I was too busy
looking at your tits,’ said Eddie, grinning - earning him swats
from both the remaining women.
Everyone boarded the
plane as Valero circled it to make his pre-flight checks. That
done, he clambered inside and took a navigation chart from a door
pocket. ‘Okay, this is where we go,’ he said, pointing out the
planned search pattern. ‘We keep out of this grid, though.’ He
tapped a rectangular marking near the border. ‘Military
airspace.’
‘Be just our luck if
what we’re looking for is right in the middle of some army base,’
said Eddie, checking the map for settlements and landmarks. It was
unlikely that anything would go wrong during the flight, but he
preferred to be prepared.
Valero shook his
head. ‘If the military had found anything, President Suarez would
know. No point sending you to look for something he already knows
about, hey?’ He fastened his seatbelt. ‘Okay, you
ready?’
‘Let’s go,’ said
Nina.
Valero donned his
headphones and started the engine, steering the Cessna to the end
of the landing strip. He spoke with local air traffic control over
his headset, then looked back at his passengers. ‘Hold on tight,’
he said. ‘This will be bumpy.’
He revved the engine
to full, then released the brakes. The Cessna surged forward. Macy
yelped as she was jolted about, and Nina gripped her seat as hard
as she could to hold herself in place. Even though the worst of the
unpaved runway’s dips and humps had been bulldozed out, it felt
like riding a bicycle with flat tyres over jagged
rocks.
‘Glad we didn’t –
pack the – fine china for the picnic,’ Eddie managed to get out
through his rattling teeth.
Valero laughed,
adjusting the trim controls and pulling back on the control yoke.
The Cessna tipped back, then a few seconds later the battering
stopped as it left the ground. Sounds of relief filled the
cabin.
‘Jeez,’ said Nina.
‘The only rougher flight I’ve had was the one that crashed!’
Another laugh from Valero, and he brought the Caravan up to two
thousand feet before turning to begin the aerial
survey.
The Cessna had been
chosen for the task because its wings were mounted above the
fuselage, giving its occupants an uninterrupted view of the
landscape. The low cruising altitude was near enough to the ground
to let the observers pick out details, but still give them the
expansive overview they needed. The Orinoco, in places an almost
mile-wide gently snaking line of reflected sky and patchy cloud,
passed below; on each side, green pointillist swathes of dense
jungle, dotted with darker patches of swampland, stretched off to
the horizon.
Macy gazed down at
the rainforest, awed by its scale. ‘How are we going to spot
anything in all that?’
Osterhagen was the
expert. ‘We look for straight lines – any sign of artificial
construction. It’s how the ruins of a pre-Colombian civilisation
were found on the border of Brazil and Bolivia about ten years
ago.’
‘Also watch for
sawtooth patterns, zigzags,’ added Becker, waving a finger to
illustrate. ‘The Incas often built defensive walls that
way.’
Macy nodded, then
looked back out of the window. The others did the same, scanning
the ground below with eyes and binoculars as Valero brought the
plane into its search pattern.
The first sector
contained nothing but trees and marsh. As did the second, and the
third. Eddie, however, spotted something in the fourth after they
crossed back to the south side of the river. ‘Is that a road over
there?’ he asked Valero, pointing.
The pilot looked
through his side window. ‘Sí. It goes
through Valverde to Matuso, to the south. Oh, and there is another
road off it that goes to the military base.’ He gestured westwards.
A faint line could be made out, winding through miles of jungle
until it reached a distinctly rectilinear patch of brown amongst
the greenery.
Eddie peered at it
through binoculars. ‘Radar station, it looks like.’ Even at this
distance he could make out a rectangular antenna. He also spotted
various small buildings and an empty concrete helipad. No hangar to
protect a chopper from the jungle elements, though, so airborne
visitors probably didn’t stay long.
‘Hey, hey!’ Valero
held up a hand, trying to block his view. ‘No spying,
okay?’
Smiling at the
Venezuelan’s paranoia, Nina turned her attention back to the
jungle. South of the Orinoco was a mostly flat plain of nothing but
rainforest for two hundred miles to the Brazilian border, and well
beyond. If the Incas had come all the way here from their homeland
in the Andes, they had picked as good a spot as any to hide their
settlement. She knew from first-hand experience how hard it was to
pick out even large structures beneath the jungle
canopy.
The plane flew on.
There was a moment of excitement when Osterhagen saw something that
at first glance appeared man-made, but, when Valero circled, it was
revealed as nothing more than a low ridge of granite breaking up
through the soil. Another sector cleared, on to the next, the
Cessna diligently avoiding the restricted airspace surrounding the
base. The engine’s constant drone and vibration became increasingly
wearisome as the flight stretched into its second hour, as did the
sheer visual monotony of the greenery below. The only variation
came from more rocky scarps pushing their way up into the jungle,
but disappointment further blunted the thrill of potential
discovery as each flypast revealed nothing but natural stone.
Then—
‘Is that another
road?’ Macy asked.
Nina glimpsed a thin
brown line amongst the trees. ‘Not much of one. More like a
track.’
Osterhagen checked a
map. ‘There is nothing marked on here.’
Valero looked down at
the narrow path. ‘A logging track,’ he said, disgusted. ‘This whole
region is prohibido for logging.’ He
pulled a notepad and pencil from the door pocket, scribbling down
the GPS coordinates. ‘I will have to report this when we
land.’
‘Wait,’ said Nina, a
thought occurring. ‘How far are we from the road between Valverde
and that other town?’
Eddie checked the GPS
unit, then applied the figures to Osterhagen’s map. ‘Two or three
miles, maybe. What’re you thinking?’
‘Well, we know
somebody discovered a trove of Inca artefacts. What if they were
loggers? They went deep into the jungle to look for hardwood trees
. . . but found something a lot more valuable.’
‘And then used the
payphone in Valverde to talk to West after finding buyers,’ said
Kit. ‘It’s possible.’
Nina tried to follow
the track. It was only intermittently visible, the work of the
loggers ironically having exposed their secret to view from the
air, but now she knew it was there she could just about make out
its course. ‘Fly along it,’ she told Valero. ‘If we don’t see
anything, we can go back to the search pattern. But if these
loggers really did find Paititi . . . ’
Valero changed
course, reducing the Cessna’s speed as its occupants all stared
intently at the jungle below. The track curved confusingly in
places, the loggers apparently having gone out of their way to fell
specific trees, but in general it headed westwards. Nina looked
further ahead . . .
A distinct line ran
through the trees. She almost dismissed it as another geological
feature – until something else about it caught her attention.
‘There!’ she said, sitting up and pointing. ‘Do you see
it?’
Osterhagen took a
sharp breath, pressing his face against the window for a better
look. ‘Yes. Yes, I do! Oscar, take us closer.’
Valero complied,
turning the Cessna. From some angles the feature almost vanished
into the jungle – but from others it stood out clearly, even
through the all-covering vegetation. It was faint, like a shadow or
a ghostly impression of an item long since removed, but it was
definitely there. A shape, a few hundred metres long.
A zigzag. Too
regular, too precise to be natural.
Macy turned excitedly
to Osterhagen. ‘Inca defences, just like you said.’
The German couldn’t
tear his eyes from the sight. ‘It must be, yes. It must
be!’
Nina examined the
surrounding landscape as the plane continued to circle. At one end
of the mysterious line, the ground sloped steeply away to
marshland, hints of a cliff visible through the tall trees. A cliff
would provide a natural defence on one side; had a wall been built
on others to protect a settlement?
There was only one
way to know for sure. ‘We’ve got to get down there,’ she announced.
‘I think we’ve found Paititi!’