by Rob Jones
“Our friend saw it too,” Lea said. “And he has an unusually powerful eidetic memory. He can recall everything he sees for days afterwards. That is how he was able to draw this.”
Hawke pulled out the paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, unfolded it and flattened it on the table before sliding it across to Balta.
Balta opened his eyes wide and gasped with surprise. “Are you telling me that your friend really saw this on the Mask of Inti?”
“Yes,” Lea said. “But now we’re out of ideas. That’s why we need your help.”
“This is truly remarkable,” he said, unable to take his eyes off the slip of paper. Finally he raised his head and stared at Lea. “Are you absolutely certain this is what was on the mask?”
Lea nodded enthusiastically. “Absolutely.”
“What’s so special about it, professor?” Hawke said.
“What’s so special about it?” he asked, raising his eyes to meet them all. “If this is real then we must get back to my office at once. If this isn’t a joke, then what you have here is the key to locating the Lost City of the Incas.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hawke scanned the corridor while Balta fumbled for his keys and opened his door. His office was a modest state of affairs in the Larco Museum in the Pueblo Lire district and moments later they were all gathered inside while their host shuffled into an adjoining room to fetch his life’s work.
“So what’s all the fuss about then?” Scarlet said, looking down her nose at the furniture.
Balta called out in response from the next room. “These markings are certainly Inca pictographs, although greatly simplified, presumably due to the restricted space on the mask.”
“What do they say?” Lexi asked. Reaper stood behind her silently rolling a cigarette and watching the street outside. Balta shuffled back into the room and scratched his head as he scanned the office for something.
“The pictographs are simply depictions of Inti and the sun, but it’s the last one that has my interest. That’s why I wanted to come back to my work.” He stopped speaking and began furiously searching through a box file on his desk.
“So what’s the big surprise?” Hawke asked, looking once again at Ryan’s hand-drawn sketch.
“The final pictograph on the mask is a crude depiction of the Mandala.”
“That’s what I thought,” Luis said. “But I really think we must be mistaken.”
“But what does that mean?” Lexi asked.
Balta looked at her. “The Mandala is a religious symbol which represents our universe.”
“I’m not convinced,” Luis said, looking doubtful. “It doesn’t look all that much like a Mandala, not to mention the fact the Mandala is from India. The more I look at it the less I think it’s a Mandala.”
“You mentioned India before,” Hawke said. “What the hell is an Indian symbol doing on an Inca mask?”
Luis shook his head and put his hands in his pockets. “Quite. Are you certain, professor?”
“I am certain, young man,” Balta said without hesitation. “And I am perfectly aware that the Mandala’s provenance is from the Indian religions. I am also aware that it is to be found here on this satellite image.” With these words Balta swung a piece of paper out of the box file and held it up in front of the team.
“Woah!” Lea said. “That’s the same damned thing, isn’t it?”
Balta nodded. “Yes, but the one you see on this paper is much more complex. The rendering on the mask is clearly a simplified version.”
Hawke stepped forward and looked at the image on the paper in Balta’s hands. “So where does this one come from?”
Luis Montoya sighed. “It’s one of the Nazca Lines hidden up in the mountains just east of the more famous geoglyphs on the plain. Conspiracy theorists claim it’s an Indian Mandala but I have never bought into it.”
“You cannot deny the similarity!” Balta said, raising his voice.
“They do look almost identical,” Lexi said.
“And their similarity to the Indian Mandala is almost exact.”
“Almost,” Luis said with another sigh. “But not exact.”
Balta shook his head. “How can you say that? The Indian Mandala is clear enough for anyone to see, and right here in the mountains of Peru there is one carved into the rock that is almost identical in its nature.”
Luis looked unpersuaded, but Hawke could see the similarity when Lea showed him the pictures of an Indian Mandala she had found on her phone. “I don’t know,” the Englishman said. “If they’re not connected in any way then that’s one hell of a coincidence.”
“Exactly my point!” exclaimed Balta. “The Mandala geoglyph at the Nazca Lines site is what we have called the Sun-Star and Cross. It is one of the most famous of all the glyphs – over one hundred meters in length!”
Luis gave him a look of pity. “Most famous among crazy conspiracy theorists, maybe.”
Balta dismissed Luis’s objections with a wave of his hand. “The Sun-Star and Cross glyph is one of the most precise pieces of geometry in the ancient world, and yet we still don’t know exactly what it represents. Many believe it is a celestial map charting some universal space we don’t even know about yet!”
“How did the people who carved it into the mountain get so much geometric precision over a thousand years ago?” Lea asked.
Balta shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know, but this is why I do what I do!”
With Balta’s enthusiastic words still hanging in the air of his office, Hawke looked down at the satellite photograph of the Sun-Star and Cross, sitting innocuously in the Peruvian mountains. He saw what Balta was describing easily enough – the design of the Sun-Star itself did seem to match the pictures he had just seen of the Hindu Mandala, but the professor wasn’t finished yet.
“More intriguing than that are these symbols here,” he said. “When I mentioned this back at the café I never dreamed it could be real, but after consulting my papers… I can hardly believe I’m saying this but they really do appear to be giving us some sort of clue about…”
“About what?”
“About… Paititi.”
“And what’s that again?” Scarlet said. “Didn’t Lund mention something about that?”
Ryan sighed and collapsed in a leather chair in the corner.
“Paititi,” Luis said, once again with a sigh, “is supposed to be the famous Lost City of the Incas.”
“There is no supposed about it,” snapped Balta. “There is ample evidence for its existence, and men have tried to locate it dozens of times – never with any success, I might add. But now the Lost City of Gold may be within our reach! For generations man has sought the incredible treasures within its hallowed ruins but never have they had anything like this to help them locate it!”
“I don’t know. How do we even know it exists?” Lea asked. “I mean, really?”
Balta smiled at her, barely able to contain his excitement. “Inca legends are very clear in their description of the Lost City. They describe it as being somewhere north of Cusco and to the east of the Andes.”
“But a legend is a legend,” Lexi said, unpersuaded.
Balta paced up and down his office, his excitement growing. “Then think about the massive gold that the Spanish plundered from Cusco. We know from Inca descriptions that they only got their hands on the smallest fraction of the full amount of their treasure – so where is the rest? Why, in the Lost City, of course!”
“So you say…” Luis said.
“I do say! And if all that is not enough – what about the Mask of Inti? We now know it exists because your friend saw it for a few precious moments. That mask was found on board the San José, a Spanish galleon that was obviously carrying looted Inca gold back to Spain! If your friend’s sketch of the mask is accurate, then the piece of paper it’s on is worth a thousand times more than everything found on that raised galleon!”
“How so?” Lea asked. “It’s just on
e mask.”
“Oh God…” Ryan mumbled.
“Because of the clues carved into it!”
Hawke sighed. “All right, prof. I think you’d better walk us through these symbols in a little more detail.”
“It’s very straight-forward – these smaller pictograms here say Follow the Sun, Cross and Sacred Stone and The Tomb of Pachacuti will illuminate the Path to Paititi.”
“That’s pretty unambiguous, I admit,” Hawke said.
“To me,” Balta continued, “this says quite clearly that the road to Paititi will start in the tomb of Pachacuti.”
Lea spoke next. “So the next question is obviously who’s that and where’s his body?”
Balta looked at her and shook his head with confusion. “Pachacuti, or in full, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui was the ninth Sapa Inca.”
“Oh,” Scarlet said. “That clears it up then.”
“Like a king or something?” Lea asked.
“In a way, yes, but more than that. The Sapa Inca was also known as the Apu, which is loosely translated as the Divinity. Pachacuti was the ninth such man, and most archaeologists today believe it was he who ordered the construction of Machu Picchu as his royal estate.”
“Machu Picchu?” Hawke said.
“Yes, the famous Inca citadel in the Urubamba mountains.”
“And is his tomb there?”
Balta looked confused and shook his head. “There have always been differing accounts about the location of Pachacuti’s final resting place, but recently discovered documents from the Sixteenth Century suggest he was buried in Toqocachi, which was the Imperial City of the Incas in present-day San Blas.”
“So what you’re saying is we don’t know where his tomb is?”
“Yes, up until today, but now this sketch might have changed all that.”
“I admit it’s pretty interesting,” Scarlet said. “For once.”
“If you think this is interesting now, wait until I tell you about this symbol here.” As he spoke he indicated the penultimate symbol – a small stepped cross with twelve points around on its outer edge and a circle in the center.
“A weird cross thing with scratches in the middle of it?” Lea said.
Balta looked up at her. “It’s not a weird cross, but a chakana, or the Andean cross. It represents a simplified compass, and the scratches are not scratches, my dear.”
“Then what are they?”
“They are a rendering of what the Inca called talking knots, or quipus.”
“Come again, doc,” Scarlet said.
He looked at her, confused.
Lea rolled her eyes. “She means please explain further, Professor Balta.”
“Ah…”
“I read about those once,” Lexi said. “Aren’t they the Inca system of measuring distances and time and whatever?”
“The term you’re struggling to find is Inca metronomy,” Ryan said.
“The man is right,” Balta said.
“And what do these quipus tell us, professor?” Lea asked.
“The markings are for Fifty Tupus, and then Fifty Rikras.”
“What’s fifty tupus?” Hawke asked.
“A hell of a lot messier than twenty-two poos, I’d think,” Scarlet said.
“Give it a rest, Cairo,” Lea said. “We’re trying to do serious business.”
Scarlet grinned at her. “Fifty Tupus sounds like serious business to me.”
“The tupu,” Balta continued with an admonishing glance at Scarlet, “is an Incan unit of distance, measuring about six kilometers. I think we’re being told to follow the sun and cross if we want to find Pachacuti’s tomb, and from there he will lead us to the Lost City of Paititi.”
“At this Toqocachi place?” Lea asked.
“Maybe,” Balta said. “We’ll need to get a map.”
Hawke turned to face Balta. “I’m concerned the people who stole the mask may come for you next, professor, so we need to hurry. Get Google Earth fired up, Lea.”
“Wait.”
It was Reaper’s voice. He was still watching out the window but now he was pulling his gun from his belt. “I think maybe a little trouble is coming our way.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Stay away from the windows,” Hawke said to Balta, and moved to join Reaper at the front. Before he had gone two paces Balta’s entire office rocked with the force of a prodigious explosion from somewhere in the corridor.
“Double envelopment!” Scarlet yelled as the force threw her to the floor.
“Or pincer movement as we say in English,” Lea said.
“That would have so much more authority,” Scarlet said, shielding her head from the blast, “if only you could actually speak English, darling.”
With plaster dust and wood splinters raining down from the explosion, they staggered to their feet and readied for a fight.
“I think they might have some grenades, ladies,” Lexi said.
Hawke thought that was a good guess, but his concerns they would use a second grenade were put to bed when he heard men bundling into the building from the rear and approaching the professor’s office door. More of the CGF rebels were now approaching the front of the office from the street.
Balta looked up with an expression of strained fear on his wrinkled face. “Are these the people you said would come for me?”
“Unless you forget to pay your council tax bill this month, then yes,” Scarlet said.
“Will they kill me?”
“Only when they’ve used you.”
Hawke took control. “Reaper and Scarlet take the back and Lea, Ryan and I will take the front. Lexi, you take Luis and the professor into the adjoining office. They want Balta but they might settle for Luis.”
“Thanks,” Luis said.
And with that the assault began.
“Flashbang!” Hawke yelled but the fuse was short and the next second it had detonated in a blinding flash of light and noise, and now in the dusty confusion created by the blast they were totally disoriented.
Lea staggered to her feet, coughing up plaster dust and trying to regain her balance. She was dimly aware of screaming but her head felt like it was wrapped in cotton wool. And then she saw the rebels as they burst into the office and fought their way toward Balta. They had the mask but they still needed the knowledge. In the confusion and chaos of the fight, Lea thought it was good to know that Dirk Kruger didn’t know everything.
A rebel rushed her and took a swing, but she dodged it and ducked her head to avoid his follow-up punch. She grabbed his shoulders and kneed him hard in the groin. It was a dirty trick but he looked like he deserved it and she would use anything in her arsenal to defend herself. He doubled over and she thrust her right hand forward, striking his chin with a palm strike and knocking his head back. He toppled over on his arse and she finished the job with a swift kick, delivering her left boot around the right side of his chops and putting him to sleep for hours.
“Nighty night!” she said.
Across the room Ryan Bale was fighting with another man, but this time he looked like he meant it. She moved to help him but then she saw something had changed with her ex-husband. Usually he looked like he wanted to do anything but fight, but not this time. This time he was almost enjoying it as he pounded his fists on his opponent and sent him staggering back to get his balance back.
The fight had dragged Hawke into the corridor, and now he was grappling with another of the rebels and putting him in a choke hold. He grabbed his neck and squeezed hard, pushing his fingers behind his Adam’s apple to finish the choke. The man’s face went purple and he stopped breathing, but Hawke couldn’t stop. At that second all he could think about was Maria Kurikova, and that heart-melting smile of hers. The fact she had walked away from her homeland to fight alongside him. The smell of her perfume. Ryan’s loss… And the rage rose in him like molten lava as he faced an enemy so close to the one who had taken her life.
The man was unconscious now, but
instead of letting him fall to the floor, Hawke pulled his arm back and powered a mighty fist into his face and smashed his nose to a pulp, and again and then again, and then…
“Joe! Leave it.”
He turned to see Lea. She looked horrified at what he was doing. He wanted to scream, but instead he let the man’s unconscious body fall to the floor and sprinted back into the office and the main fight, pumped full of adrenalin. Back in the fray, he saw the surprising sight of Ryan Bale taking out his frustrations on one of the rebels.
Ryan was not a born fighter – it wasn’t in his nature – but he was a tall man, nearly as tall as Hawke, and if he put on some weight and changed his attitude he knew he could be dangerous. Today, it looked like something in him had snapped and it didn’t take a genius to know what. Either way, it seemed to Hawke that perhaps Ryan Bale was a different man now, and that just maybe he had taken his first steps toward pointing his life in a new direction.
Hawke noticed any rebels who were still standing began to retreat and leave the fight, fleeing from the office, all except the man who was fighting Ryan.
The young Londoner moved into the fight now instead of backing away, and continued to deliver a salvo of blows into the man’s face. Blood was pouring down from his opponent’s broken nose, and he was spitting it out of his mouth as he tried to fight back but if Ryan had learned anything from Joe Hawke it was never give your enemy a chance to get back on his feet.
If he was going down, then send him down.
And then he did something that stunned them all.
He rammed a powerful head-butt into the goon’s face and knocked him out cold.
“Holy Shit, Ry!”
But Ryan didn’t stop there, and padded forward to the unconscious man. He grabbed his collar and punched him again, and then thundered a kick into his side.
Lea ran to him and pulled him back. “Ryan! He’s out cold, leave it!”
“He killed Maria!” Ryan screamed.
“No… he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did! And he killed Sophie too! They’re all the same.”