The Copper Egg

by Catherine Friend

  She turned back at the door. “One more thing. How do you know Hudson?”

  If the man had anything to hide in those eyes, the wink disguised it. “Wednesday night poker game.”

  Claire was calmer on the drive home. She could do this. She would fully embrace the egg. She would draw its energy toward her. Her confidence seemed more stable, as if a table had been leveled so it no longer rocked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Claire

  Saturday, April 1

  The email Claire received the next morning was full of typos, one she would have easily dismissed as a stupid prank except that the writer sounded so very matter-of-fact about cutting off her fingers. She reread it several times, her temper flaring. Holy shit. Who the hell was this guy? She had no doubt he was connected somehow to one of her three stooges, but the tone wasn’t arrogant enough to be Higuchi. He would have signed the email and not used a fake address, kingchaco@gmail.com.

  This guy thought that threatening her fingers would help her find the tomb faster. Higuchi thought pressuring her would accomplish the same thing. What the hell was wrong with these people? Treasure hunting couldn’t be done to a freaking schedule, especially when her only source of clues was her visions.

  Claire called her boss, Mac, again.

  “Hey, you still in Peru?”

  “Yup. Thanks for the advice about being followed. It worked. Now I have another problem. Someone—probably one of the people following me, or at least connected to them—has just threatened to sneak into my hotel room and cut off my fingers if I don’t hurry up and find what he wants me to find.”

  Silence. “Huh. Adams, I gotta say your life is starting to sound like a really bad adventure flick, maybe one starring an ancient Nicholas Cage.”

  “I know, right? But what would you do? Give up? I hate that idea.”

  “Can you hire a bodyguard?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Maybe hook up with some big strong dyke who can pound a man into the ground with one hand while tuning her Harley with the other?”

  “I wish, but I don’t know anyone like that.”

  Mac sighed. “I’d offer to come down there myself and do the pounding, but you know, there’s my company that’s falling apart without you.”

  “How do you protect yourself at night when you sleep?”

  “Me, personally? I live in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I sleep like a baby. Also, Roger barks whenever a mouse farts, so he’s my alarm system.”

  “I’m glad for you. But no advice?”

  “Yes. Get out of Peru now, before something ugly happens. No hotel door is going to stand up to someone who really wants to get inside.”

  Claire shivered. “That’s not very comforting.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Okay, well, thanks.”

  She sat there, unsure of what to do. She needed to call Sochi, but she was afraid. She called her mom but her parents were still rafting, or maybe had gone on to the next adventure. What was wrong with her parents? Why couldn’t they remain within cell phone range? Was that too much to ask?

  Nancho couldn’t drive Claire today, and she didn’t want to pay for a taxi to drive her up the coast just so the three jokers following her would have something to do with their day. All she wanted to do was sink further into Ixchel’s life and talk to Sochi, but she couldn’t yet bring herself to explain that someone—probably Hudson—had switched the letter she’d slid under Sochi’s door, that their breakup and three years of heartache had been caused by the man she’d considered her best friend.

  Instead, she decided to be a tourist and just walk through downtown. The air felt like spring, not surprising since Trujillo called itself the City of Perpetual Spring. She checked out the other churches—San Francisco, Santa Clara, La Merced, Santo Domingo, and La Compañia.

  Claire visited the archaeological museum, actually recognizing some of the finds she’d made. Then on to the zoological museum and its taxidermied animals. By now she was having so much fun leading her posse on that she even went to the toy museum.

  While back at the main plaza watching a marinera contest, a lovely dance that bugged the hell out of her because tradition held that the male dancers wear shoes and their female partners go barefoot, Claire noticed her three shadows looked tired. Good. The coolest movie characters were those who managed to send a beer or room service to the undercover cops following them, but she wasn’t that cool. She wanted these people to be uncomfortable. She wanted them to leave her alone.

  That’s when Claire headed straight for the Japanese guy. She walked around the crowd and went for him. He looked up in alarm, but the only way he could have avoided her was to start running. She stopped in front of him. “Tell your fucking boss to back off. Leave right now or I’ll call to that cop standing over on the corner.”

  The man sneered. “I am so frightened.”

  “Maybe he can’t arrest you, but don’t you think Higuchi will be disappointed in you?”

  With a tight jaw, he walked away. Claire turned and headed for the ungrateful woman she’d saved from certain drowning, but she slid into her orange Volvo and took off. By the time Claire started looking for the native guy, he’d melted away into nothing.

  She stopped at a shop and bought something to drink, then she called Sochi.

  “Yes?” Her voice sounded impatient.

  “Hi, I was just calling to ask Mima how she’s doing after her ordeal.”

  “This isn’t Mima’s phone.”

  Claire made a face, glad Sochi couldn’t see her. “Yes, I understand that.”

  Sochi sighed. “She’s fine. A little dehydrated, and madder than a shorn llama, but otherwise she’s, you know, just Mima.”

  “Could we get together and talk?”

  “I said everything I needed to say yesterday.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Las Dulces, thirty minutes.”

  *

  Claire arrived first and filled a small plate full of Sochi’s favorite treats. When Sochi joined her ten minutes later, her gaze dropped to the plate, then back to Claire.

  Sochi wore the same sort of thing she always wore—short, tight skirt and silk blouse that clung to her breasts and ribcage. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, which, thankfully, she pushed back onto her head.

  Claire, of course, wore her two tanks and cargo shorts. Despite the years and bad feelings between them, their appearances hadn’t really changed. Claire felt as if she were sitting across the table with both a total stranger and her best friend.

  “You’ve lost weight,” Claire said. “I thought you could use something sweet and fattening.” The first ten minutes were, to say the least, awkward, with Sochi answering her questions with one word or one sentence. But as the plate emptied, they both relaxed. Claire told her about her parents’ latest adventure. Sochi discussed a few of their mutual friends.

  They remained careful with each other, but the tightness around Sochi’s eyes had smoothed out. It felt so good to be sitting there, talking, that Claire almost reached for her hand. Your brain sets down patterns, and despite the three years, Claire’s pattern was to tease Sochi and make sexual jokes and touch her as much as possible. Today she could do none of that.

  “So, what’s new in the world of Peruvian archaeology?” What a stupid question. Where had her courage gone? Oh, yeah. She didn’t have any.

  Sochi studied her hands. “Did you hear about what some kids found outside of Huanchaquito a few years ago?”

  Claire shook her head. Huanchaquito was along the beach between Chan Chan and the airport.

  “They were playing in the dunes near the pizzeria and found a pile of bones. The pizzeria owner called an archaeologist. In just a few days they uncovered the bodies of forty-two children, centuries old. And seventy-six llamas—or alpacas—they weren’t sure. Enough clothing remained that they identified the kids as Chimú, likely from Chan Chan.”

&n
bsp; “Sacrifices?”

  “Yes. The kids, mostly teens, had been killed over seven hundred years ago with a hatchet blow to the chest, then the ribs pulled apart and the heart removed.”

  “I’m guessing an El Niño drought made them do it?” Toward the end of the Chimú civilization, El Niño often took up residence over the northern coast and wreaked havoc on all aspects of the people’s lives. Year after year, the rain pounded so constantly it became impossible to grow crops. The waters offshore warmed up enough to suffocate algae and phytoplanktons—food for fish, birds, and sea mammals. The animals were forced to migrate or starve. As a result, most of the Chimú’s food sources disappeared or died. The rains turned their homes and fields into mud.

  Sochi nodded. “Yes, the Chimú were desperate, so they sacrificed children hoping to appease the gods and stop the rain.”

  “I can’t imagine standing there as a parent, watching your child being killed.”

  Sochi played with the edge of the paper placemat. “Perhaps, but think about it. For a sacrifice to mean something, you have to believe that doing it is the most important thing in the world, that what you are gaining is more important than what you are losing. Perhaps the parents felt honored that their child was going to help save their people. To me, sacrifice isn’t frightening. It’s something that you do freely because it’s right.”

  Claire sighed. She couldn’t put this off any longer, so she handed Sochi a handwritten note. “This is not word for word because I can’t remember exactly what I wrote three years ago, but it’s close enough. This is the letter I thought I’d slid under your door.”

  Sochi read the letter, then let it drop onto the table. She covered her face with her hands, breathing deeply.

  Claire waited until Sochi looked her in the eye. “Sochi, I’m really sorry. When you burned my letter, when you didn’t reply, and then the press hit me with all the voices stuff, the only conclusion I could draw was that you’d rejected my apology and talked to the press to punish me.” Something stuck in her throat so she looked down at the table until she could swallow again. “I can’t undo the damage. I just want you to know that I’m very, very sorry.”

  Sochi watched a couple walk by, then stared out the window. “I would have accepted your apology if I’d gotten it.” She let out a huge breath. “Did Hudson do it?”

  “I think so. You know how he was always in and out of my office. He must have replaced my letter with the horrible one.”

  “That asshole’s never getting his backflap now.”

  Claire relaxed and finally let herself smile. “Sochi, I know that forgiving someone for breaking trust is one of the hardest things to do, so I won’t blame you if you can’t. But maybe, if we both take Mima’s advice about the head and the heart, we could one day be friends again.”

  Sochi looked at Claire, her eyes swimming. “I accept your apology. As for trust and forgiveness, that I…” She pressed her lips together, then stood. “Thank you for helping me rescue Mima yesterday. I must go.”

  Claire sighed as Sochi walked away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sochi

  Sunday, April 2

  When her La Bruja phone chimed early the next morning, Sochi forced herself to check it. A text from Rigo: We cannot give up. We are close to a jackpot. Even if we can’t find Chaco’s tomb, the Adams woman will.

  She pulled the covers over her head. She didn’t want to get up, even though stacks of files and project reports awaited her at the office. Sunday was the perfect day to work because there’d be no smarmy Manuel yammering on about his drones, no Aurelio pushing her to conduct the NanoTrax sting, even though she was getting closer to making it happen.

  She sat up and stretched, knowing she wouldn’t sleep even if she stayed in bed. Mima had been put in danger and it was Sochi’s fault. How could she keep Mima safe and retire as La Bruja? Claire said Higuchi had kidnapped Mima, but Deep Throat was just as capable of harming her. Mima was refusing to stay at her niece’s house in Sausa, but instead had come back to her apartment in Trujillo.

  After seeing Clare at Las Dulces yesterday, it was as if all the air had leaked out of Sochi’s hate balloon, leaving a limp, empty shell. She’d felt angry and hurt for so long that she didn’t know what else to feel. It had been nice just sitting there, nibbling on the cookies as if they were friends again. She might, in time, be able to move toward forgiveness, but trust? Too risky. Even though she’d seen Claire’s version of the real letter, it was just too hard to let go of the anger she’d nursed like a delicate flower for so many years. With a groan, she finally forced her feet onto the bare floor and stood.

  Mid-afternoon she took a break at work, munching on a power bar and guzzling a Coke. She rehearsed what she would say to Rigo tonight. This would be a hard conversation, since she and Rigo had a rich history…

  …Sochi had been “dead” twelve months now. She’d died the day Claire left the country. Sochi imagined herself the world’s only living, breathing corpse. Her eyes appeared dead when she looked in the mirror, her skin dull as mud. She’d drained all her tears months ago and lacked the will to produce more. Tears meant you cared. Tears meant you had hope and pain and a functioning organ inside your chest, slightly to the left.

  She managed to mimic a normal life. She repainted all the rooms in her little house. She’d have a harder time picturing Claire in the bedroom if the walls were now lime green.

  She continued to work at the CNTP, so she had no choice when Aurelio sent her to represent him at the Lambayeque event. She dressed in her best suit, too loose now since dead women forgot to eat, and drove to Lambayeque.

  As she approached the museum, she remembered how much she and Claire hated this place, not for the artifacts it held, but for what it had begun. A team of lucky looters had stumbled upon the Lord of Sipan’s gold-laden tomb in 1987. Before they could steal much, Walter Alva rescued the site and built a museum in Lambayeque to display the treasures. Sadly, the Sipan discovery started a looting frenzy in northern Peru that turned into an epidemic, like the gold rush in America.

  The museum was celebrating an anniversary so Aurelio sent her to be a “visible and supportive” presence. But since no one from the CNTP was around, she donned the disguise she’d recently purchased—a heavy, dark brown wig, and a pair of cocoa brown contacts. If she could mingle with others in the field and not be recognized, perhaps she could pull off the assignment from Minister Salazar, who had just convinced her to start looting as a way to put more pressure on Higuchi. She’d fought his request for months, but he finally convinced her. Yet she knew she couldn’t do this by herself. She needed help. The likelihood of finding the person she needed here was slim, but as Sochi wandered the museum, she examined each person she passed, not sure what she sought.

  She’d been here several times before, but the gold jaguar mask with its sharp incisors, and the delicate pottery figure of a fisherman on his caballito still took her breath away. While she stared at a glass-encased suit of ceremonial dress, the curled shoulder pads looking like a collar of waves, a man stepped beside her. “Stunning,” he said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And a relief that it is still here, within the boundaries of Peru instead of in America or Europe or Japan.”

  Sochi looked at him, surprised at the passion in his voice. With his wide cheekbones, sharp as anvils, his broad, flat nose and full lips, the man could have been the model for all the gold masks in this museum.

  “I share your views,” Sochi said.

  Together they moved to the next display, a pounded gold panel with images of rulers overseeing crowds of peasants. “Sometimes,” the man said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, “I think it would be better if we found all the riches and dug everything up just to make sure that we—the descendants of the Moche and the Chimú and half a dozen other cultures—could keep our people’s treasures in Peru.”

  Sochi gave him a sideways glance, but his gaze continued straight
ahead, staring at the gold panels. “There are over twenty international teams of archaeologists working in the country right now,” she said, “doing their best to ensure that happens.”

  “Archaeologists are too slow, too methodical. The treasures must be pulled from the earth quickly before others have time to ship our treasures overseas or pack them over the Andes.”

  Sochi’s nostrils flared. “You are talking of looting your own country.”

  His black eyes bored into hers. “Yes, I am. The ends justify the means.”

  Her mouth fell open. Apparently dead people could still be surprised.

  He stuck out his hand. “Rigoberto Garcia.”

  She shook it automatically, searching frantically for an alias. “I’m Juanita Perez. Come with me,” she said.

  She led him into a smaller room of pottery pieces, one with no visitors at the moment. They sat on the carved wood bench along one side. She kept her voice low. “Since I was a child, I’ve been concerned about the artifacts buried in nearly every square foot of this country. From age ten to age twenty, I turned at least eighty items in to the CNTP.”

  Rigoberto nodded. “I, too, have found many things. But I did not turn them in.” His grin was wicked. “I sold them to feed my parents and my sisters.”

  “Are you a drug lord? Murderer? Untrustworthy?” After each question, Rigoberto shook his head vigorously. “I have no idea who you are or what your background is, but you feel solid to me. Reliable.”

  Now he nodded. “I have done many things in my life, not all of them legal, but I am trustworthy. I do not abandon my friends or my post.”

  Knowing the risk she took, Sochi plunged ahead. The money from Deep Throat was burning a hole in her mind. “I have a plan,” she said, “to create a fearful looting boss called La Bruja sin Corazon, who will loot but keep the artifacts in Peru. But I need help. I cannot lead men every night on digs. I have other responsibilities.”