The Last Monument

by Michael C. Grumley

  Velez continued downward before Angela stopped. “Wait!” She whirled around, frantically searching. “Where’s Joe?”

  No sooner had she spoken than a loud squeal sounded and a truck appeared around the church’s southmost wing. It smashed through a barrier of small, stone-potted plants, causing the front bumper of Morton’s yellow Toyota pickup to rip clean off and go twirling several times in the air before tumbling across the concrete.

  Unfazed, the truck roared forward at full speed, Anku holding onto the top of the cab for dear life. They saw Rickards inside, behind the wheel, steering directly for them.

  They covered the distance in seconds and careened to a stop beneath the trees, tearing through a thick row of bushes.

  Both men jumped from the vehicle as the sounds of the helicopter approached again, making another pass.

  Morton was stunned. “How’d you know where we were?”

  “Ask Anku.”

  Without another word, all four followed Velez hurriedly down the steps, disappearing into the parking garage.

  ***

  High above, the Mi-17 circled over the top of the church, looking for the truck.

  In front of the church, Ottman’s Humvee screeched to a halt, allowing Fischer and Becker to leap out and sprint inside, where several people were frozen in place, watching.

  Fischer spotted the young woman behind the desk and shouted, “Where did they go?!”

  She stammered. “Uh…I don’t—”

  Becker was closer and on her in seconds, grabbing the girl by the shirt and forcefully hauling her up and over the counter. “Where?!” he screamed.

  The panicking girl pointed to the hallway on the far side.

  “Show us!” yelled Becker and threw her forward, sending her stumbling to the ground. “Now!”

  ***

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Velez ran along the wall of the garage’s first level, passing several cars before stopping and pointing his key ring at a small maroon Nissan.

  When the others reached him, he handed the keys to Morton and Angela. “Take it!”

  Out of breath, Angela stared at him. “Are you—”

  Velez put a hand up to stop her, then grinned. “The Lord provides.”

  Morton needed no convincing. “Thanks, Father,” he said and snatched the keys from his hand. But upon reaching the driver’s side door, he frowned at the amount of room inside. Looking up, he immediately threw the keys to Rickards. “You’re driving.”

  Rickards circled and passed him, glancing at the empty back seat. “Looks pretty tight in the back too.”

  “Just get in, I’ll fit!”

  Angela stared at Velez one last time before tightly wrapping her arms around him. “Thank you!”

  “Out through the exit,” he said. “Then keep to the right.”

  Rickards squeezed into the driver’s seat and looked around. Finding the ignition, he inserted the key and searched for the brake release.

  He found it and released before dropping the car into Reverse and backing them out of the spot. Then he stopped.

  “Let’s go!”

  Rickards shook his head, slowly putting both hands on the wheel.

  “What are you waiting for?!” yelled Morton. “Punch it!”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?!”

  “They have a helicopter. They’ll notice a car speeding out of the garage. We have to blend in.”

  Morton fell quiet and reached into his pocket for another pill. “Right. Good. That’s a good idea.”

  Rickards finished his thought and calmly pulled the gearshift back into Drive. He turned to Angela, who was staring at him from the passenger’s seat.

  “Tell us where we’re going, Professor.”

  ***

  Fischer and Becker threw the young girl to the side and burst out through the side door. Scanning the open courtyard, they immediately spotted Morton’s yellow truck parked idly beneath the trees with the driver’s door still ajar.

  When they reached it, Becker checked the cab while Fischer rushed forward across the garden to the edge of the steps. Unsure, he looked around, examining the rest of the courtyard, dotted with dozens of visitors, all strolling along the causeway atop the giant garage that connected to a strip of restaurants and shops on the opposite side.

  Spotting no one, Fischer continued down the stairs to the top level of the garage.

  Nothing.

  75

  Once they were out of the garage, Angela pulled out and opened her uncle’s journal, prompting Morton, in the back seat, to look at her curiously.

  “Where’s the rest?”

  She looked back. “In my pocket. But I left my uncle where he was. In the church.”

  Rickards briefly glanced at her from behind the wheel. “What did you find?”

  “Him and his things,” she said. She quickly unwrapped the journal and once again began flipping through the pages. “And this.”

  “What is that, a journal?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the love of God, please tell me there’s a map in it.”

  “There is,” she said, finally stopping near the end of the book. “Not in the traditional sense, but definitely a drawing with a location. Just north of Lake Titicaca. A place called…” she squinted, “Ur…cag…uary.”

  “What?”

  “Urcaguary,” she repeated.

  “What does that mean?” asked Morton.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t say.”

  The car fell silent while Angela continued studying the pages, until Anku, sitting quietly in the back with Morton, spoke.

  “Urcaguary,” he said with a different pronunciation.

  “Yes, Urcaguary.” Morton nodded.

  Anku turned to look at him and smiled, saying something much longer in Quechuan.

  Morton raised his eyebrows and replied.

  When Anku spoke again, Angela twisted her head. “Does he know where it is?”

  “Yes,” Morton said, nodding. “But he says it’s not a place. It’s a name.”

  “A name? As in the name of a place?”

  “No. As in the name of a person.”

  76

  Karl Ottman watched as the thundering Russian Mi-17 helicopter approached and slowed to hover several meters from the ground, allowing the pilot to check for cross breeze before finally descending again and bouncing onto the grass field just outside of La Paz.

  It had taken Ottman’s cyber expert forty-five minutes to find them. One at a time, isolating each of the two dozen cars emerging from both sides of the parking garage. Painstakingly tracking each car as it made its way through the city, all on different routes until enough had stopped to allow the live satellite images to confirm they were not Reed and Rickards. Through a painstaking process of elimination, he finally concluded that one of two remaining cars was their target.

  When one of the two finally stopped in a small suburb outside of La Paz, full attention was turned to the maroon-colored sedan heading northeast, passing the northern end of Lake Titicaca and the national reserve, before reaching a wide dirt road and turning east.

  A fragile Ottman was hauled up into the body of the helicopter by the hand of Fischer, blades still beating the air, where he was then lowered into the middle of three leather-bound seats.

  Harnesses were pulled across his body and tightened before both Fischer and Becker took their seats on either side. Both reached out to pull up heavy M16A2 rifles into their laps. Combat weapons known more simply as M16s.

  Doors on both sides closed with a loud thud and headsets were pulled down from above onto each head, including Ottman’s, who promptly raised a hand to move his microphone into place.

  Reed and Rickards would now be outside of the city and away from populated areas, exactly what he had been waiting for.

  Ottman had had enough of the games. They were close now. He could feel it. He was sure the Reed woman had found in the church what Ottman himself h
ad been searching for all these years.

  He could not have been more right.

  77

  “Whoa.”

  Navigating around potholes in the dirt road, Rickards glanced at Angela. “What?”

  She looked up at him with a frozen expression. In her hands, also frozen, was something that had just slid out from between two pages of her uncle’s journal.

  “What’s that?”

  Angela slowly opened the small, folded paper. After a moment of reading, she gasped. “Oh…my…God.”

  Morton leaned forward from the back seat. “What?”

  She didn’t answer until Rickards abruptly pulled over, allowing the trail of billowing dust to envelop them.

  When she did answer, it was as if a light had just gone off.

  “It’s a letter.”

  “Not another letter,” groaned Rickards.

  “No,” she said. “Not a letter. The letter. It’s what the Germans are looking for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They already knew everything else,” she said, “or at least they appeared to. Not a surprise, since Percy Fawcett’s writings are all public information.” She paused, raising the paper. “But not this one.”

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s a letter written by Fawcett to his wife. And dated 1923. Telling her to keep this one secret.”

  She turned back to search the journal more closely and found another paper. This one was larger and also folded and carefully stuffed inside. When she opened it, she stared at both Rickards and Morton. “And this one is in German.”

  Rickards glanced over his right shoulder. “Sprechen sie Deutsch, Mike?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I don’t think you need to, this time,” said Angela, turning the large paper around so they could both see it. “Look who it’s addressed to.”

  Rickards squinted at it and his expression turned to a look of surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Angela shook her head.

  “What does it say?” Morton reached out to take it, studying it for a moment before his own eyes widened. “Heinrich Himmler!”

  Angela looked at Rickards. “This is what my uncle found in Germany as a Monuments Man. This is why he disappeared!”

  “This is what they don’t have?”

  She nodded, turning back to Fawcett’s letter. “This is what they needed. It’s the missing piece--a secret letter to his wife explaining where it is. Including descriptions and landmarks. Everything someone would need—”

  “If something should happen to him,” finished Rickards.

  “That’s right,” Angela added. “Which means that Fawcett’s final expedition was not to find it. Because he already had. It was to excavate it.”

  Rickards sat staring at her. “So, your uncle found these papers in Germany and came here to search for it.”

  “I think that’s exactly what happened.”

  “And he found it?”

  “Apparently.”

  “So, if he had Fawcett’s secret instructions and landmarks, why did it take him a decade to do it?”

  Angela was reading the journal. “I’m not sure. It looks like there may have been some misinformation in Fawcett’s letter. Intentional misdirection, perhaps in case it fell into the wrong hands. Which obviously it did since the Nazis ended up with it.”

  “And what if your uncle is doing the same thing?”

  Angela returned to the final handwritten pages of the journal and considered the question. “No. He sounds angry in here. He is specifically telling us where it is.”

  She looked up from the leather-bound book and peered through the car’s windshield. “It’s this way.”

  78

  The road continued east, steadily dropping in elevation with every turn as it wound deeper and deeper into the mouth of a large canyon. Walls on each side were lined in various layers and hues of strata beneath an afternoon haze that gave it a somewhat copperish tint.

  The road became increasingly narrower over the several miles until it finally appeared little more than two parallel footpaths, prompting Rickards to continually look at Anku in his rearview mirror, wondering if they were still even on the correct road.

  For his part, Anku remained calm and quiet, riding along with very little movement beyond the normal rocking of the car through dips and holes. He peered out through the dusty window at the canyon walls slowly crawling by, a relaxed smile on his face.

  Morton tried to talk to him multiple times, but Anku’s replies were brief. After yet another attempt, Rickards spoke up.

  “Anything new?”

  Morton shook his head. “Nope. Just keeps saying he hasn’t been here in a long time. Since he was a boy.”

  “You sure he still knows the way?”

  “He doesn’t seem the least bit concerned.”

  When they finally arrived, it appeared to be just as Morton had expected, as well as Angela. Dozens of adobe-like houses made from large mud bricks lined the narrow road. Each sported thin metal roofs, with some structures open and entirely without doors, like sheds. Farther up the slope were actual huts made from materials resembling thin trees with brown grass tops.

  Rickards brought the car to a stop just as several Quechuan gathered around the road to investigate. All were dressed in remarkably bright and colorful clothing, presenting a stark contrast against the drabness of the barren hills behind them.

  In the back seat, Anku spoke briefly to Morton before studying the door to open it. Then he slammed the door shut behind him.

  “He says to wait here.”

  “Are we unwelcome?”

  “No. But the Quechua have customs for welcoming people, even their own.”

  “I see.”

  Together, the three remained inside, watching Anku approach and exchange several long gestures, followed by conversation and reaching out to embrace another man with a handshake that looked more like grasping each other’s forearms.

  Anku then disappeared around the corner of a building without even a glance back to the car.

  “Would be nice to get out and stretch,” Rickards muttered.

  Morton shook his head at Rickards while adjusting himself in the back seat. “Don’t. It’s a sign of disrespect.”

  “Stretching?”

  Morton inhaled and popped another tiny pill. “Standing on their ground uninvited.”

  Angela looked over her shoulder. “How many of those are you allowed to take?”

  “All of them, if I have to.”

  Morton returned the tiny bottle to a pocket and glanced at his watch. He paused, blinking, continuing to stare at it. After a short silence, he looked at the others. “My watch is no longer working.”

  Rickards looked at him in the mirror and checked his own, puzzled. “Neither is mine.”

  “Where’s your stick?” Angela asked.

  “It’s not a stick. It’s a highly sensitive piece of equipment. Made up of sensors that—”

  “It’s called a pole,” said Rickards.

  She laughed.

  “Fine. It’s a pole. And was left in my truck by Mario Andretti here.” Morton grabbed the headrest of Rickards’ seat and pulled himself forward. “Wait a minute. Turn on the radio.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, turn on the radio.”

  Rickards complied, reaching forward to press the knob. When the radio came on, it shocked all three by blaring something unrecognizable at full volume with all lights illuminated on the panel. They covered their ears until Rickards could turn it back off.

  “Who the hell set it like that?”

  “I don’t think anyone did,” Morton said slowly, before making a full scan through all of the windows. “I think we’re here.”

  ***

  After a dozen or so minutes, Anku returned with several other Quechua, who gave the others permission to leave their vehicle. The Quechua then led them back the way they’d come, past several structu
res and up a steep trail, winding toward a dense grove of southern beech trees that provided cover to dozens more huts.

  On the way up, they stopped several times for Morton, who struggled against the steep incline, sweating profusely and having to sit or kneel multiple times. Though he was heaving with deep breaths, he brushed off offers to help him back up.

  Upon making it to flatter ground, they were then all led to the largest hut, situated deep beneath the trees and close to one of the canyon’s cliff walls.

  Inside, sitting on mats upon a dirt floor, were several waiting Quechua positioned in a semicircle as if by rank. Angela wondered how long they had been there.

  In front, Anku bowed deeply and the others echoed the gesture, motioning respectfully to the very old woman sitting in the middle. She was dressed in similarly colored clothing. Her face was deeply wrinkled and she met their gazes with dark, beaming eyes.

  “Urcaguary,” Anku stated in a formal and elevated tone.

  The three looked at each other and then down again to the old woman. “Urcaguary?”

  The woman’s only movement was a smile. She sat with her legs crossed, hands resting calmly on top of them.

  “Hello…” Angela stammered.

  There was no reaction, prompting Morton to translate. When she replied with something longer, he stared at her curiously before turning to the others. “She says, ‘You are the first in a long time.’”

  Angela and Rickards looked at each other.

  “The first what?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Angela smiled shyly at the woman and then at the others on either side before lowering her head and kneeling onto the dirt. All nine of the Quechua silently watched.