The Copper Egg

by Catherine Friend

  Claire’s eyes flew open. “Holy crap. I saw the Carina Nebula. The three bright clusters were lined up in a perfect vertical line. This means Ixchel was near Chan Chan. And the tomb was close to Uncle and Auntie’s house.”

  Sochi squeezed her hands. “Excellent.”

  “But where do we look? Most of the area around Chan Chan has been developed.”

  They stared at each other, as if their eyes held the answers. Sochi cocked her head. “May I see the eggs again?”

  She rearranged them in her hand. “These shallow scratches still bother me. They’re light, as if added later. Perhaps by the person who removed them from the tomb? And here, what I thought were two half-circles…couldn’t that be two Cs, standing for Chan Chan?” She lined the three eggs up side by side and began following a line. When it disappeared on one egg, it appeared on the next.

  Heads touching, they studied the scratching. Then Sochi laughed. “It’s a freaking map! Look. The double Cs are here, near this small square. Then there are eight more squares.”

  “The nine compounds of Chan Chan?”

  “Yes, then if you follow the scratch, it passes through Chan Chan, then turns north. The line stops at this hatch mark. If the map is to scale, then the hatch mark is directly on top of…”

  They looked at each other. Claire’s chest opened up. Could it be? Could she and Sochi, with all their picnic lunches and talks, have been sitting right on top of the damn tomb all along?

  “It’s our hill,” Claire whispered, the excitement dispelling some of the drug in her system.

  Sochi did a quick search online and found the GPS coordinates for Chan Chan. “Adjust the coordinates just a bit because the hill is north of Chan Chan.”

  Claire texted Higuchi: Have coordinates for tomb. Send coord for hostages.

  A set of GPS coordinates appeared on her screen. “Thank the gods,” Sochi breathed as Claire sent them to her phone. Then Claire sent a set of GPS coordinates to Higuchi.

  Sochi grabbed her keys. “You stay here until the San Pedro wears off. I’ll go find Mima and Denis.”

  After Sochi left, the house was silent. Claire stood, feeling shaky but not as badly as before. Could she do this? Only taking half of the piece must have helped. She called the twenty-four-hour taxi service and had the man drop her off at La Casa del Sol, where she managed to reach her room, retrieve the metal detector, then take Señora Nunez’s car keys from the back of the small office.

  She hadn’t given Higuchi the exact coordinates. This way if Sochi came up empty-handed in her search for Mima and Denis, Claire had one more card to play. But the truth was that someone had sent her the three eggs. This was her treasure hunt, and she would be FTF if it killed her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Claire

  Driving at night while under the influence of San Pedro was just as bad, if not worse, than driving drunk. The streetlights became white suns with glowing haloes. Traffic lights were moving blobs of color. But Claire managed to find the narrow road that ran north of Chan Chan without hitting anything or anyone. She parked the car close to the row of towering bushes that separated Chan Chan from the sugarcane field north of it. She didn’t see anyone following her.

  The warm night air felt cool on her moist skin so she just stood there for a minute, collecting herself. Past the sugarcane field the sandy ridge rose, outlined against the midnight blue sky. Overhead the three star clusters of the Carina Nebula lined up, one on top of each other, like a stop light.

  With her bag over her shoulder, and the metal detector, Claire pushed through the bushes and took the trail that wrapped around the sugarcane field. She set her flashlight app on low.

  She finally reached the long, narrow hill that ran east and west. It began high on the east end, then gradually sloped westward to a last bit of flat land planted in sugarcane, before reaching the beach. She and Sochi would come here to escape. They’d sit up there, removed from the world, and talk. Few others came here because it was hard to reach, and it was dry and barren. Only the two of them seemed to appreciate its stark beauty.

  Taking a few deep breaths, Claire turned to her right, facing the foothills of the Andes. Four dark peaks ascending to the right, a plateau, then a sharp drop. There it was: the exact image from Ixchel’s vision. The tomb had to be buried in the hill in front of her. The problem was, how deep? By this time, the caverns of the tomb would have collapsed upon themselves. It would be an archaeological team’s job to slowly remove the layers, creating a clear image of what the tomb once looked like, and who was buried inside it. All Claire needed to do was dig up a few treasures to satisfy Higuchi, then she’d call the CNTP. She suppressed a few giggles as she puzzled things out, still high enough to find the whole thing amusing.

  If Señora Facala’s boyfriend, NP, had entered and exited the tomb, there must be some sort of door. When she waved the detector along the side of the hill, it began to chirp weakly. Working methodically, she moved from right to left, climbing the hill. With each step the detector’s beeping grew stronger. She walked along the top of the hill, the detector now very, very excited. Her mouth went dry with treasure hunting fever. There had to be a huge amount of something metallic beneath her feet.

  The detector slipped from her sweating hands. Thunk.

  Claire stopped. That sounded like wood, which made no sense because the Chimú didn’t have much wood available to them. She tapped the ground with the detector and heard the same clunk. Then she jumped up and down. This, in retrospect, might not have been the wisest move, but she was still under the influence of San Pedro. The ground gave way beneath her, and she plummeted straight down into a cloud of dust and cracking wood.

  Claire yelped as she slammed against the side of whatever she fell into, then hit a pile of something and rolled over and over until she landed with an “oomph” at the bottom. Sand swirled up her nostrils and into her mouth. She lay there, stunned, heart pounding, coughing so hard her eyes watered. Finally, she caught her breath and was able to test her arms, then her legs. Nothing broken, but she felt banged up. Her arm burned from a cut, and she was covered with scrapes. Everything hurt.

  Above her, faint moonlight filtered down through the dust. She coughed and wiped her eyes again. Half way down, she’d hit a pile of dirt and debris that luckily broke her fall; otherwise she would have fallen at least three meters.

  Claire’s hip burned. When she shifted, she discovered she’d landed on her phone and smashed it to bits. She cursed. How could Higuchi call her for the true coordinates? Had she put her friends in even more danger? Not being truthful with Higuchi might have been another miscalculation, thanks to her treasure hunter’s fever.

  Claire dug a spare flashlight from her bag. When she switched it on, at first she couldn’t see anything because of the dust she’d created. She waited patiently, thinking that this couldn’t be Chaco’s tomb. No way could its chambers have remained intact all these centuries. But the air smelled old, as if it hadn’t been refreshed in years. Finally, enough dust settled that Claire could see the wall next to her.

  She gasped and leapt to her feet, wincing at the pain. A niche in the wall held a warrior’s mask. Empty eyes stared back at her. Golden spikes radiated out from the face, each set with a dark red jewel. But was it really gold? It was so dull. She ran her fingers along the mask. Gold gleamed in the marks left by her fingers.

  Heart really racing now, she swung the flashlight along the walls. She was in a chamber about three meters by ten meters. A forest of slender bamboo poles supported planks holding up the ceiling. The plank and pole had given way where she’d fallen through.

  The walls were a dull surface that reflected more light than adobe should. She wiped the wall again, feeling cool metal under her fingertips. She wiped more surface with her sleeve.

  Claire gasped. The walls were covered in pounded gold.

  This was it. This had to be King Chacochutl’s tomb.

  She ran her flashlight along the floor an
d stepped back in alarm. Dozens of skeletons lay stretched out down the middle of the chamber. She focused the flashlight upward. There was no ladder in the corner, no door. No way to get back out. Suddenly cold, she hugged herself, trying to calm her breathing, feeling blood trickling down her forehead and arm.

  She was used to uncovering skeletons in the ground, not sharing a dark chamber with them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Claire

  Triage first. She ripped off the bottom of one tank and did her best to wrap it around a gash on her arm, which had splattered blood all over her. She wiped the blood off her lip, dabbed the cut on her forehead until it stopped bleeding, then examined the cut on her knee. The arm gash would need stitches, and perhaps the one on her knee as well, but scars didn’t bother her. Scars were the stories our bodies had to tell.

  When Claire felt she could walk without shaking, she took a few steps. Directly across from her was a table with buckets and rags and brushes. She tucked a rag and a brush into her back pockets. Two large white buckets rested on the floor beside the table. The flashlight revealed the buckets were half-full of a black sludge. She leaned closer and sniffed. Oil.

  A quick scan of the walls showed what she’d missed the first time: torches, wrapped with cloth, mounted along the walls every two meters or so. She dunked one of the torches into the oil, replaced it, then lit it with a very old book of matches from the table. It ignited with a terrifying whoosh. Smelling of oil, the torch threw off a golden light, and a little black smoke as well. She didn’t dare light all of them without more ventilation, but the torch helped dispel the gloom. Weaving carefully through the forest of bamboo poles, she lit two more torches in the chamber.

  Then she turned her attention to the skeletons on the dirt floor. The ones nearest where she’d fallen were a bit jumbled, but still recognizable as llamas or alpacas. She counted twenty skulls. The next skeletons were human, likely female. Twenty of them. Some still had small shreds of cloth nestled against a shoulder blade or tucked in around a waist, but most of the fabric had turned to gray powder. She walked slowly, aching to know what had happened. Had Cualli figured out how to use the egg? Or was one of these women Cualli?

  About halfway down the row of skeletons, Claire stopped. One skeleton had the remains of an orange and brown sash wrapped around its waist, with a small woven pouch attached. She let out a long breath. In the last vision, Cualli had worn an orange and brown sash, and she’d taken Ixchel’s woven pouch.

  Cualli hadn’t survived. She hadn’t figured out how to use the copper egg. She’d sacrificed her life to save the woman she loved.

  Saddened, Claire reached the end of the chamber, which turned to the left into darkness. Another chamber. She retrieved a bucket of oil, then used her flashlight to illuminate the way as the path snaked 180 degrees to the left. This chamber was about the same size, with the same forest of bamboo poles holding up planks overhead. But almost the entire floor was piled full of items she couldn’t identify. She lit three more torches, then bent down and brushed a hand over the nearest item. Gold flashed in the flickering light.

  “Holy shit.” Claire’s voice echoed in the narrow chamber. Gold. The entire chamber was filled with gold masks, gold chains, gold bowls, gold vessels, anything that King Chaco might need in his new home. She shivered at the sight, and leaned against the gold-plated wall for support. A treasure hunter’s dream.

  There was more gold here than all the gold items recovered in Peru during the last twenty years. No wonder the person who’d sent her the eggs wanted to find this tomb. The walls were covered in pounded gold, with the same niches as in the first chamber. Each niche held special items. One was a pair of gold hands, the fingers reaching toward the ceiling. Others held conus shells that came from the more tropical seas of Ecuador. One held a ceremonial Tumi knife, its silver handle inlaid with gold and copper. She turned the knife over in her hands, then touched the edge of the semi-circular blade. A thin line of blood beaded on her finger.

  Claire replaced the Tumi knife, then marveled at all the craftsmanship surrounding her. Using the rag, she wiped down the walls, then lightly brushed at the top items on the pile on the floor, which was just enough to send sparkles of light flashing around the room. If only her phone had worked so she could take photos. The tomb would never look this undisturbed again.

  That it was still standing, still intact, was beyond amazing. Obviously, people had successfully cared for this tomb for centuries, bringing in the bamboo and planks to keep the ceiling from collapsing.

  The darkness at the end of the chamber curled to the right this time. She shone her light around the corner. The room was empty but for the bamboo poles and two large objects. Claire lit two more torches, then approached what looked like a long cabinet. The item’s surface was coated with too much dust to see clearly, so she brushed it off and inhaled sharply. A ferocious Chimú warrior had been carved into a slab of light brown soapstone.

  Holy shit. This was an altar, a sacrificial altar. She used the cloth to wipe more dust from the carved warrior. He wore a large, spiked headdress that ran to the top and side edges of the altar, each spike ending in a small, delicate oval. The ovals formed a pattern that ran around the altar’s top edge.

  The body of the warrior was squat and wearing a ceremonial reed skirt that flared out from stubby legs. One bit of skirt flared out far enough to reach the right side and end in another oval. All the rest of the skirt’s reeds flew out to the left and bottom edges.

  She gently stroked this carved masterpiece. Ixchel’s father had been one of the craftsmen to work on this tomb. Uncle had said Atl could create wonders with any material. Did he build this masterpiece? The thick side edges of the carved top were lined with a deep groove. The base of the altar was built of mortared adobe bricks.

  Claire moved toward the second item, which was a platform with a body wrapped in cloth.

  Chaco’s body. The top layers of cloth had succumbed to time, but those closer to the body remained more or less intact and were decorated with copper discs. An exquisite gold and copper burial mask gazed fiercely at the ceiling, the eyes made of emeralds and amber. Arranged next to Chaco on the platform were war clubs, shields, a copper spear, and dozens of ceramic vessels. There was also a curious pile of rope sandals and the remains of clothing.

  She shone her light at the wall. This was where the tomb ended. A wooden door, mostly in splinters, bulged out into the room. The caretakers must have entered through a tunnel leading to that door. The tunnel had obviously collapsed.

  She returned to the altar and continued cleaning its surface. The carving was breathtaking. But her head shot up at a metallic clunk in another chamber. She stopped breathing to listen hard. More clanking.

  A ladder. Someone had just lowered a ladder down into the tomb.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Claire

  By the time Claire reached the first chamber, someone was coming down a yellow metal ladder leaning against the hole she’d made. She laughed with relief to recognize Sochi’s legs.

  “Did you find Denis and Mima? Are they okay?”

  Sochi’s head was bleeding, and her eyes blazed. “They’re okay. They were in Denis’s garden.” She jerked her head toward the legs now descending the ladder. “So were these guys.”

  The person down the ladder, armed with a gun, was the man Claire had accosted at Mardonio’s wake.

  “This asshole is Nopa,” Sochi said sourly as she gently probed the cut along her hairline. Her white-blond hair was stained red on the right side of her head.

  “We’ve met,” Claire said.

  Nopa had a bruise of his own, just about where Claire had hit the man who’d tried to break into her room. “Nopa,” she snapped. “How’s your face?”

  But he paid them no attention. Instead, tears streamed down his face as he gazed reverently around the chamber, as if he’d entered a church. He whooped then began cursing with joy in Quechua.

  The
next man down the ladder wore sharply creased wool trousers. Higuchi.

  Claire’s jaw dropped. “But I thought you left the country with Hudson and the artifacts.”

  “That was my son, Antonio. He and Hudson went to high school together for a year in Japan.” He dusted off his slacks. “Thank you, Claire Adams, for cooperating with my timeline, although you have cut things quite short. I only have tomorrow in which to publicize this Chaco victory.” He gazed around the chamber. “However, I don’t see anything but old bones.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Higuchi tugged at his cuffs, looking uncomfortable. Good. She hoped he was claustrophobic. “I knew you’d given me the wrong coordinates. It’s what I would have done. So when Ms. Castillo arrived, I persuaded her to tell me exactly where to find the tomb. I knew you’d already be here.”

  “Aren’t you smart.” Claire winced at Sochi’s wound. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded.

  Higuchi spoke up the ladder. “You can deliver that package now. We’ll need her in a few minutes.” He turned to Claire. “Give us a tour, won’t you?”

  One of the guards descended carefully with a bound woman over his shoulder.

  “Maria,” Sochi cried.

  Her hands were bound, but her mouth was free. She glared at Higuchi. “I should have listened to you. Salazar led me into a trap so this jerk could snatch me.”

  Higuchi perspired slightly in the hot, dry air. “The minister is a fool who finally realized that it is better to work for me than to work against me. Let’s go on that tour.”

  Sochi reached for Maria, but Nopa raised his gun. “Higuchi,” Sochi said. “Let Maria go. She’s not part of this.”

  “I need her,” Nopa growled, done rhapsodizing over the tomb. “I need three.”