*
That evening the CNTP office was so quiet that Sochi’s breath sounded too loud in her own ears. She sat at her desk, inhaling the silence, letting it flow throughout her limbs. Gods, she was tired. She dropped her shoulders, pressing them toward the floor as her physical therapist had trained her. You store all your tension across your shoulders, Sochi, and this tension will block your body’s healthy flow of energy.
When had her life become so damn complicated? Her twenties had been exciting, fun even. But her thirties were proving to be nothing but heartache and hard work.
Sochi closed her eyes with a heavy sigh. She was pathetic. She had a challenging and fulfilling job (two, if you counted the looting), and yet she’d never been lonelier in her life. She needed to get off her butt and find a social life, but she lacked the energy.
A soft chime rang in the hallway, meaning someone had entered the building. High heels tapping rhythmically on the hardwood floor told her the visitor was female. Was it Claire? Was she coming to finish what they’d never really started in the church? No, Claire would never wear heels. Sochi pinched her cheeks to look more alert and opened a file on her desk.
“Hello, Sochi. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
It was Maria Menendez, the new regional director from Lima. Appointed to her position by the country’s president, Menendez came from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Peru, a family highly invested in sugar and silver. Sochi smiled and waved her in. She scanned Maria’s well-curved body as the woman sat down. She was dressed casually in leggings and a tunic that clung to her hips.
“No problem,” Sochi said. “What brings you back up to Trujillo?”
Maria swept her long black waves off one shoulder with a graceful flip of her hand, then, back straight, she leaned forward just enough that her top stretched enticingly.
Sochi’s body responded. Huh. This was interesting. She hadn’t felt even the slightest twitch of sexual interest in anyone for three years. Could the long, frigid winter be over?
“I’m taking a few weeks off. I needed the break from work.” Maria’s clear voice and bright smile pierced Sochi’s gloom. “So I’m here to visit Chan Chan. I’ve never been. I also have plans to go surfing tomorrow with friends. I’ve seen videos of people on those caballitos de totora, but I’ve never tried it myself.”
Sochi felt a flutter in her chest. “I haven’t been on a caballito for ages, but in high school one was permanently attached to my feet.” The feel of a caballito was entirely different than a board.
Maria sat back, looking pleased. “I thought you might be a surfer, since you’re in such good shape.” Her thickly-lashed gaze dropped to Sochi’s chest then back up to her face. “My friends just backed out. I could go by myself, but it would be more fun to go with someone who already knows what she’s doing.”
Sochi opened her mouth to decline, then surprised herself. “I’d love to, although I’m so rusty I may not be of much help.”
Maria dismissed her with another graceful gesture. “We’ll have fun. I thought I would tour Chan Chan in the morning, then surf in the afternoon.”
“Sounds good. Why the sudden interest in Chan Chan?”
“I know quite a bit about the Moche, of course, since their sites are so prevalent in my region. But—and this is a bit embarrassing to admit—until I recently read an old article in America’s Smithsonian, I knew almost nothing about Chan Chan or the Chimú. The article described the Chimú’s charming belief that their people hatched from three eggs.”
“Gold, silver, and copper.”
“Yes. The article made me curious about the Chimú and how much their culture and agricultural practices overlap with the Moche.”
“Chan Chan is a good place to begin.” Sochi leaned back in her chair, relaxed now. How long had it been since she’d spent time with a beautiful woman? This was exactly what she needed to take her mind off Claire. “You, of course, are a gold egg.”
Maria tipped her head, confused.
“The gold egg hatched the ruling class. Didn’t the president’s appointment letter mention you are a direct descendant of one of the first Spanish to settle in Peru?”
Maria blushed. “Yes, I suppose that would have made sense three hundred and fifty years ago, but today?” She shrugged. “My family grows sugarcane. We are not rulers. But what of you? From which egg would you have hatched? Surely you have an Incan princess in your lineage somewhere. Perhaps we are both gold eggs.”
Sochi laughed. “Hardly. Most of my blood is native, but there are no records tracing my ancestry. Goat herders didn’t spend too much time working on family genealogy.”
“Ah, a copper egg then.”
Sochi spread her hands. “In the flesh.”
“It’s very nice flesh.”
Now Sochi felt her own blush spreading up her neck. She diverted the conversation back to the Chimú and printed a few articles for Maria. While Maria skimmed through them, Sochi wondered what it would be like to run her fingers through that thick hair. Where might the surfing date lead? Her thoughts skipped from surfing straight to sex, since both gave her a rush impossible to describe. Would it happen with Maria, or would she be one of those women to ruin it? For Sochi, sex itself was the communication—sighs, moans, gasps were all she needed. No words required. Nothing brought her out of the mood faster than a woman constantly talking.
“Thanks for these,” Maria said, snapping Sochi back to reality.
As they talked, Sochi began to actually look forward to their surfing date the next afternoon.
Maria then rose. “I should let you get on with your evening. I’ll pick you up at your house.” Sochi gave her the address. “I drive an older model orange Volvo,” Maria said, “so you can’t miss me.”
“I look forward to it.”
Perfect. It didn’t even matter if Maria was straight. Sochi just needed to spend time looking at her. It would replace the image in her mind of Claire standing in the church, green eyes huge, mouth open in shock.
*
Sochi couldn’t go home and collapse in front of the TV because looters worked at night. She joined her men at their dig, remembering just in time to stop and don her wig and contacts. Exhaustion was making her careless.
After an hour of digging, Sochi tucked the edges of the bandana into the neck of her T-shirt, but it didn’t help much. She was gritty with sand, inside and outside her clothes, inside her nose and mouth. Sand packed itself under her fingernails, filled her socks, and parched her exposed skin. She didn’t doubt there was probably sand working its way up toward her ovaries.
Gods, how she hated sand. This land had once been lush with plants and wildlife—monkeys, jaguars, pumas, iguanas, parrots. The Chimú had built an effective network of canals and sluices. But first the Incas came, enslaved the Chimú, and destroyed the irrigation systems so no one could grow food in the area. Then the Spanish came and destroyed the environment with the need for charcoal and other products. All that was left now was desert, and stupid sand.
At the new moon, the night was as dark as the deepest well. Stars arched above her but shed no light. They’d turned off the lanterns at Rigo’s insistence to avoid detection, but she worried that in the dark someone would accidentally get a shovel in the face.
She worked at Rigo’s side, her brown wig nearly searing her skull as she worked. She slitted her eyes to repel sand. The other diggers had spread out in teams, focusing on those areas the Swedes had yet to excavate. She could just barely see their shadowy shapes. As they dug, Sochi told Rigo about NanoTrax, and that it didn’t work.
“Good. Such a thing would make selling our finds much harder.”
He wasn’t wrong, but still, she would have loved to use such an amazing device to catch Higuchi.
As she tossed the sand aside, her uncooperative brain swung back to Claire. Damn that woman, haunting Sochi in her own backyard. And seeking Chaco’s tomb. A ridiculous task. What on earth had driven Claire to think
she could ever find it?
“I’m going to check on the guards again.” She spoke loudly enough that Tomas could hear. His fluid movements turned rigid as he dug. She glared at him, but he didn’t look up. He knew she didn’t trust him.
The three guards lay next to an excavated pit, arms and feet tied. Sochi wiped fresh blood off the beefiest Swede’s forehead. Gods, these were a pale people. Tomas had kicked the man in the head while Rigo was cuffing him. Tomas danced toward a cliff of violence, and if he fell, he’d take the rest of them with him.
Rigo was guzzling water when she returned, letting it run down his chin and into his T-shirt. “The Swedes may have been telling you the truth when they said they have discovered little of value.”
Sochi lifted her bandanna and drank deeply. “Perhaps, but I suspect many of these international digs have learned the CNTP won’t challenge them when it comes to their reports. Ever since that French team walked away with so many valuable artifacts, other teams do the same thing. Yesterday, the Swedish guy seemed awfully satisfied for the leader of such a failed dig. His tone didn’t match his words.”
Based on her hunch alone, Rigo had chosen to return to the Swedish dig for tonight’s looting. He picked up his shovel and resumed work. “Perhaps this time a foreigner was telling the truth. We have been digging for four hours without—”
“Quiet!” Tomas cried. Digging ceased as he tapped the ground with the edge of his shovel. There. A hollow tap. Tomas and the man nearest him dropped to their knees and dug with their hands. In seconds, they lifted up an eighteen-inch gold mask.
Sochi clutched her chest, too overcome to speak. They gathered around as a flashlight played over the mask. Inlaid with what might be turquoise, although the mask was too soiled to know for sure, the tooth-lined mouth snarled at them. The mask shook in Tomas’s trembling hands.
“Jesus Cristo,” one of the men murmured.
“Good job,” Rigo said to Tomas. Then he looked at Sochi. “The Swedes said there was nothing here, which proves that everybody lies, jefe.”
Nothing fueled looters like finding gold. Within the hour, they’d filled two cloth sacks with more gold, hammered silver, ceramic figurines, and a handful of well-preserved weavings. While the others tossed aside the human bones they uncovered, Sochi stashed hers in neat piles. Since they didn’t have the shaman here, it seemed a good idea. Rigo had told tales of looters spooked by the spirits of those they’d disturbed. If she kept the bones together, perhaps their spirits would be less likely to harass. She ignored Claire’s voice in her head lecturing about destroying the integrity of the site by not following proper procedures.
The mood at the dig became electrifyingly giddy. Only taking breaks to smoke or pee, or in Sochi’s case give the guards water, they increased their haul to three bags.
Ready to quit, with raw blisters stinging like hot needles, Sochi stopped digging. “Rigo, you said everybody lies.”
“Yes?”
“What if Hudson’s information about NanoTrax was a lie? What if the test was meant to fail so the Americans wouldn’t have access to it? What if NanoTrax really does work, but they lied about it?”
Rigo nodded thoughtfully. “Then we would want to know that, jefe.”
Sochi laughed, excited again. She pulled out her phone and texted Hudson: As thanks for looking into NanoTrax for me, would you like to visit your backflap in the CNTP vault? Come to my office next week at your convenience.
She wiped off the sand crusted along her lips. The Swedes lied. Hudson—or his source—might have lied. She was going to push and bribe and blackmail until she had the means to carry out Aurelio’s crazy scheme to catch Higuchi.
*
Just when Sochi thought she couldn’t dig another shovelful, the text came from Deep Throat. Same place, thirty minutes. Sochi waved good-bye to Rigo and strode to her car. Thirty minutes later, she parked in the short, dark alley near the university that Deep Throat preferred. It struck her as stupid and clichéd—the secret name, the dark alley—but he was the paranoid one, not her. Deep Throat was so terrified of Higuchi that he refused to take chances. She knew she should be terrified too, but she had nothing left to give the asshole, not even fear.
Deep Throat huddled in the shadows next to a row of trash bins. The guy was a minister in the regional La Libertad government, but he was positive Higuchi would have him killed if he knew the truth—that Deep Throat was working against him.
“I need an update,” Deep Throat said.
She knew his identity, but after three government employees from the next region were murdered, Deep Throat went “undercover.”
“Things are changing,” Sochi said. “We can’t keep doing this. The CNTP will soon be using drones, so it’ll be too easy for me to get caught. But the drones are good news for you—they’ll help bring Higuchi down.”
He shook his head. “No, the drones will bring Higuchi’s men down, but won’t affect him at all. He’ll still be in control of nearly everything.”
“Sir, I’m sorry. I know you had hopes that La Bruja’s presence would push Higuchi into making a mistake and getting caught, but he’s too smart for that.” Sochi licked her lips, relieved to be finally voicing the words she’d been waiting to say for days. “I want out. It’s just too hard to work for you and the other ministers as La Bruja and work at the CNTP. Looting wrecks me.”
Deep Throat stepped forward, revealing his long, tired face. “But Sochi, you can’t quit. La Bruja is driving Higuchi to take more risks. No one in the government can confront him directly, so giving him competition from La Bruja is the only way.”
Why did she have such a problem saying no to authority? Deep Throat had given her this secret assignment and identity nearly two years ago, and she’d been flattered. But now she was exhausted. And the idea of looting with Claire in the country made her sick to her stomach.
“No, sir, I’m sorry. You’re going to have to find someone else to act as La Bruja. Rigo is a flexible man. He’ll be able to switch his allegiance to another woman. He doesn’t even know who I really am anyway.”
The man moved closer. She could feel him attempting to intimidate her, but they were the same height. “Sochi, I am sorry about this, but the stakes are too high. I cannot allow you to quit.”
“I’m done.”
“I am told you have a beloved grandmother whom you call Mima. She is healthy for her age. You wish her to remain so?”
Sochi grabbed Deep Throat by his suit lapels and shook him. “Don’t you dare threaten my family.”
“Sochi,” the man gasped. “This is bigger than you or me or your Mima. We must exorcise Peru of Higuchi’s influence. The CNTP has no power. The regional government has no power. As a regional minister, all I can do is advise the president. But he has let things go too far with Higuchi. You cannot quit now.”
“What if I’m caught?” She released him and he fell back a step.
“I will, of course, reveal that you are working for me.”
“If Higuchi is so harmful to our country, why don’t you just kill him?” She was shocked to hear those words come out her mouth.
“We’re too afraid to try. If we fail, we’re dead.”
“You keep your fucking hands off my grandmother.”
Without replying, Deep Throat scurried down the alley.
Sochi climbed into her car, drove home, and ended the night the way all her nights ended…exhausted and alone. The only difference was that today she’d frozen in front of Claire Adams, and tomorrow she was going surfing with a beautiful woman.
Anything could happen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Claire
Saturday, March 25
The key to hunting for treasure was always being on the lookout for clues. And the key to seeing clues was a simple one: Observation. Claire learned this early in life, probably during her family’s annual Easter egg hunts. Her little brother, Nick, would run out into the backyard, wide-eyed and crazed, dashing every
where. Despite his energy, he’d find few eggs. On the other hand, Claire would stand on the deck and observe. She knew the eggs would never be hidden higher than her brother could reach. She knew nature wouldn’t be harmed in the hiding of the eggs. With those constraints, the hiding places soon became obvious. When she was ten, she found every single candy egg. Her brother was despondent, so she shared. The next year they worked out a system. Claire would stand on the deck and shout directions to Nick: “In the crook of the oak tree. Behind the bird bath. Under the sprinkler.” They’d split the take, one-third for her, two-thirds for Nick, since he did the running, and they were both happy.
Claire applied the same observational skills in bars during her twenties. Friends would ask her advice on whether they should approach a particular woman and offer to buy her a drink or ask her to dance. Claire would have already observed how the woman responded to others around her, so she had a good idea of her friends’ chances. If Claire recommended a friend approach a particular woman and she was successful, the friend had to buy Claire a drink. Too many nights Claire’s success resulted in a killer hangover the next morning, so she switched her fee to a used book.
So here she was in Peru, facing the same need to observe. She’d already determined that Denis’s maps covered too much territory, so were useless. She was hoping to pick up clues through careful observation during the Ixchel visions, but these things were so random that she despaired of ever learning anything. She needed more clues.
Bored, Claire sat in her hotel room in the overstuffed chair, laptop on her thighs. She skimmed the science news and found an article about how Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson had spotted an error in James Cameron’s movie, Titanic, which she’d seen once and refused to watch again because she hated to cry over movies. During the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were in the water, staring up at the night sky, Tyson recognized that the sky was wrong for 1912. Talk about brilliant. Tyson “nipped at my heels,” as Cameron said, for about ten years until Cameron agreed to change it if Tyson would send him the proper star field.
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