Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  Monday, January 4, 1540 hours

  Race turned the page, looking for the next chapter, but it wasn’t there. This, it seemed, was the last page of the manuscript.

  Damn it, he thought.

  He peered out the window of the Galaxy and saw the engines mounted on the grey-painted wing outside, saw the snow-capped peaks of the Andes gliding by beneath them.

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

  “Is this all there is?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry?” Nash frowned.

  “The manuscript. Is this all we have?”

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

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you find the location of the idol?”

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

  • LEAVE CUZCO→NTERMTNS.

  • VILLA6ES: RUMAC, SIPO, HUANCO, OCUYU.

  • COLCO—PAUCARTAMBO RIVER—QUARRY THERE.

  • 11 DAYS—COME TO RAINFOREST.

  • RIVER VILLAGES: PAXU, TUPRA, ROYA.

  • STONE TOTEMS—CARVED IN SHAPE OF CAT-LIKE CREATURE-LEAD TO CITADEL AT VILCAFOR.

  • TOTEM CODE—FOLLOW THE RAPA’STAIL FOR FIRST TOTEM.

  • AT EVERY SECOND TOTEM AFTER THAT, FOLLOW THE “MARK OF THE SUN.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Race showed Nash his notes, told him the story of Renco Capac and his flight from Cuzco. He then explained that from what he’d read, Renco had made it to his intended destination—a citadel-town at the base of the Andes known as Vilcafor. He also told Nash that, so long as they knew one particular fact, the manuscript detailed how to get to that town.

  “And what fact is that?” Nash said.

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

  Nash frowned and turned to Walter Chambers, the anthropologist and Incan expert, sitting a few seats away. “Walter. Do you know anything about a ‘Mark of the Sun’ in Incan culture?”

  “The Mark of the Sun? Why, yes, of course.”

  “What is it?”

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

  “The Incans thought birthmarks were signs of distinction,” Chambers said. “Signs sent from the gods themselves. The Mark of the Sun was a special kind of birthmark—a blemish on the face, just below the left eye. It was special because the Incans believed that it was a mark sent from their most powerful god, the Sun God. To have a child with such a mark was regarded as a great honor. The Mark of the Sun indicated that that particular child was special, in some way destined for greatness.”

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

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

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

  “Well, you see, over the past ten years, there’s been substantial debate among anthropologists as to whether or not the Mark of the Sun was found on the left-hand side of the face or the right-hand side. Incan carvings and pictographs universally depict the Mark of the Sun—whether on pictures of humans or animals or whatever—under the carving’s left eye. Problems arise, however, when one reads Spanish texts like the Relación and the Royal Commentaries which talk of people like Renco Capac and Tupac Amaru, both of whom were said to have borne the Mark. The problem is, those books say that Renco and Amaru had the mark under their right eyes. And as soon as something like that arises, confusion reigns supreme.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “Left-hand side, definitely.”

  “And we should be able to find our way to the citadel?” Nash said, worried.

  “You can trust my judgment on this one, Colonel,” Chambers said confidently. “If we follow each statue to the left, we’ll find that citadel.”

  Just then, a sing-song little bell rang from somewhere nearby.

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

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

  “Exciting isn’t exactly the word I would use,” Race said. He was just glad that he’d finished translating the manuscript before they had landed in Cuzco. If Nash was going to venture into the jungle after the idol, he didn’t want to be a part of it.

  He glanced at his watch.

  It was 4:35 P.M. It was getting late.

  Just then, Nash appeared next to him.

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

  There was something in his tone that made Race pause. This was a command, not a question.

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

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

  ‘Why?” Race asked.

  “I’ve arranged for a pair of helicopters to meet us at Cuzco,” Nash said. “We’ll be using them to follow Santiago’s trail from the air. Unfortunately, I thought the manuscript would be more detailed in its description of the location of the idol, more precise. But now we’re going to need you for the trip to Vilcafor, in case there are any ambiguities between the text and the terrain.”

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

  On top of that, the tone of Nash’s request made him even more apprehensive. He got the feeling that now that Nash had him on board the Galaxy and bound for Cuzco, his options—and his ability to say no—were extremely limited. He felt trapped, railroaded into going somewhere he didn’t want to go. This wasn’t part of the deal at all.

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

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

  Race bit his lip. Christ . . .

  “Well . . . all right,” he said reluctantly.

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

  “Yeah.”

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

  The Galaxy flew over the mountains.

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

  He saw the Green Berets on the deck in front of him, preparing and cleaning their weapons for the mission ahead. One of the commandos—a red-headed older staff sergeant named Jake “Buzz” Cochrane—was talking animatedly as he cleaned the firing mechanism of his M-16.

  “I tell you, boys, it was fucking apples,” he was saying. “Apples. Sweet sixteen with cheap Doreen. Gentlemen, mark my words, she is without a doubt, the most bang-for-your-buck whore in all of South Carolina—”

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

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

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

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

  Van Lewen smiled back. “How’s it going?”

  “Good. Really good,” Race said lamely.

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

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

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

  Cochrane had said, “Fucking pansy.”

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

  On his way to his seat, Race passed Walter Chambers. The bespectacled little scientist was holding Race’s notes alongside another sheet of paper. It was a map of some sort, marked with a felt-tip pen.

  Chambers looked up at Race.

  “Ah, Professor,” he said. “Just the man I was looking for. A point of clarification. These notes here, ‘Paxu, Tupra and Roya’,” he pointed to Race’s notes. “These are in order, aren’t they? I mean, in the order Renco visited them.”

  “They’re in the same order as they appear in the manuscript.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “Hey, Walter,” Race said, sitting down next to Chambers. “There was something I was hoping I could ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “In the manuscript, Renco mentions a creature called the titi or the rapa What exactly is that?”

  “Ah, the rapa,” Chambers nodded. “Hmmm, yes, yes. Not really my field, but I do know a little bit about it.”

  “And?”

  “Like many other South American cultures, the Incans had an unusual fascination with the great cats. They built statues to them, both large and small, and sometimes they carved huge bas-reliefs of them into entire mountain rock-faces. Why, the city of Cuzco was even built in” the shape of a puma.

  “This fascination with the great cats, however, is really quite a strange phenomenon, since South America is known for its lack of great cats. The only large cats indigenous to the continent are the jaguar—or panther—and the puma, which are actually only medium-sized felines. They’re not even close in size to the tiger, which is the largest of all the great cats.”

  Chambers shifted in his seat. “The rapa, however, is another story altogether. It’s more like the South American version of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. It’s a legendary creature, a great big black cat.

  “As with Bigfoot and Nessie, you hear of sightings every couple of years—farmers in Brazil complain about cattle mutilations; tourists on the Inca Trail in Peru claim to see big cats running around at night; and occasionally, local men are found brutally killed in the lowlands of Colombia. But no one ever gets proof. There are a couple of photos, but they’ve all been discredited—just blurry, out-of-focus shots that could be anything from an ordinary old panther to a spectacled bear.”

  “So it’s a myth,” Race said. “A giant-cat myth.”

  “Don’t dismiss giant-cat myths so quickly, Professor Race,” Chambers said. “They are quite common throughout the world. India. South Africa. Siberia. Why, it might surprise you to learn that the most vehement beliefs in giant-cat myths come from England.”

  “England?”

  “The Beast of Exmoor, the Beast of Bahn. Giant cats that prowl the moors late at night. Never caught. Never photographed. But their prints are often found in the mud. Goodness, if the sightings are true, chances are that the Hound of the Baskervilles was not a dog, but actually a giant cat.”

  Race snuffed a laugh at that and left Chambers to his work. He returned to his seat. No sooner had he sat down, however, than he felt someone sit down next to him. It was Lauren.

  “Ah, the lucky cap,” she said, looking at Race’s battered blue Yankees cap. “I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I always hated that damned cap.”

  “You told me,” Race said.

  “But you still wore it.”

  “It’s a good cap.”

  Lauren’s eyes wandered appraisingly over his T-shirt, jeans and Nikes. Race noticed that she was dressed in a thick khaki shirt rolled up at the sleeves, khaki trousers and a sturdy-looking pair of hiking boots.

  “Nice outfit,” she said, before he could say exactly the same thing.

  “What can I say?” he replied. “When I packed for work today I wasn’t expecting to go to the jungle.”

  Lauren threw her head back and laughed. It was the same laugh Race remembered from the old days. Totally theatrical and of utterly dubious sincerity.

  “I’d forgotten how dry you were,” she said.

  Race smiled weakly, bowed his head.

  “How have you been, Will?” she asked gently.

  “Good,” he lied. “And you? You’ve obviously done well for yourself. I mean, geez, DARPA . . .”

  “Life is good,” she said. “Life is very good. Listen, Will . . .” And there it was. The transition. Lauren had always been good at getting down to business. “. . . I just wanted to talk with you before we landed. I just wanted to say that I don’t want what happened between us to get in the way of what we’re doing here. I never meant to hurt you—”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” Race said, perhaps a little too quickly. He looked down at his shoelaces. “Well, nothing that didn’t mend after a while.”

  Not exactly true.

  It had taken him a lot more than a while to get over Lauren O’Connor.

  Their relationship had been a classic sort of affair: the all-American college mismatch. Race was smart, but had no money. Lauren was brilliant, and her family had money to burn. Race went to USC on a half sports scholarship. In return for playing football for them, they paid half his tuition. He’d scraped together the other half by working nights behind the bar at a local nightclub. Lauren’s parents had paid all her fees in full, in one up-front payment.

  They were together for two years. The footballer with decent but not spectacular grades in languages, and the tall, beautiful science major who was acing everything.

  Race had loved it. Lauren was all he’d ever wanted in a companion—intelligent, outgoing, acidly funny. At football parties, she’d stand out like
the sun on a cloudy day. And when she’d search the room for him and find him and smile, he’d melt.

  He fell in love with her.

  And then Lauren won a scholarship to study at MIT for a year, doing theoretical physics or something like that. She went. He waited. Now it was the classic long-distance relationship. Love over the phone. Race was faithful. He lived for their weekly phone call.

  And then she came back.

  He was at the airport, waiting for her. He had the ring in his pocket. He’d practiced the speech a thousand times, got it just right so that he’d drop to one knee at precisely the right moment and ask her.

  But when she came through the Arrivals gate that day, she already had a diamond ring on her ring finger.

  “Will. I’m sorry,” she’d said. “But . . . well . . . I’ve met someone else.”

  Race never even got the ring out of his pocket.

  And so he’d spent the rest of his time in college nose-down in the books, resolutely single and unimaginably miserable.

  He’d graduated fourth in his class in ancient languages and, to his complete surprise, got an offer to teach at NYU. With nothing else he wanted to do—except maybe slashing his wrists—he took it.

  And now, now he was a humble language professor working out of an old clapboard office in New York City while she was a theoretical physicist working at the cutting edge of the United States military’s most esteemed high-technology weapons department. Hmmm.

  Race had never expected to see her again. Nor, he thought, did I want to. But then, when Frank Nash had mentioned her name earlier that morning, something inside of him had clicked. He’d wanted to see what she had made of herself.

  Well, he had seen that now and what he saw was clear—she’d made a hell of a lot more out of herself than he had.

  Race blinked, snapped out of it.

  He came back to the present and found that he was staring at her wedding ring.

  Jesus, get a grip, he thought to himself.

  “Frank said you did a good job with the manuscript,” Lauren said.

  Race coughed, clearing his throat as well as his mind. “As much as I could do. I mean, hey, it isn’t theoretical physics, but, it’s . . . well, it’s what I do.”