Four hundred years had turned the clay into little more than dust. At my touch the pottery crumbled into dirt and fell on the floor; I felt my back turn cold with horror. Encased in the jar was a mummy that was just like the one I had seen in the museum. This one was headless too. It was folded up in such a way that the jar must have been built around it. But there was one difference. Between its leathery side and arm there was a skull — an eyeless, elongated skull that had been crushed half a millenium earlier by a Headbreaker.
The cave might be an archeologist's dream but it was a nightmare to me. The fetid stench that had been trapped in the jar with the body spread out and filled the air. I wiped my hand on my jacket and left, squirming my way out of the small entrance as fast as I could to taste the thin, clear air outside.
I met Belkev and the others as they wended their way back to the village. While the girls were obviously happy to see me, Comrade Belkev looked as dyspeptic as ever.
"I hope you had fun running around in the mountains instead of doing your job," he spit out at me. "A man has to be crazy to ride on these trails. I could have been killed. Just what would you like me to tell the KGB about this?"
"Tell them you were right. There's no edelweiss."
Chapter Nine
Rosa and Bonita arrived with a friend that night, the East German girl called Greta. She was a bouncy athlete with freckles covering everything that her skimpy nightclothes didn't.
"She said she would tell Belkev about us unless we brought her along," Rosa said ruefully.
"Out!" Greta ordered them.
The sisters seemed to hold a silent debate on whether or not to toss her out the window but discretion won and they departed by way of the balcony. As soon as they were gone, Greta turned to me.
"Three's a crowd," she said.
"Well, I have three drinks here. You take two of them."
She was twenty-two and she had competed in the last Olympics as a freestyle swimmer, leaving the competition only because, according to her, all the other girls on the swim team were lesbian. She wrinkled her turned-up nose in disdain as she talked.
"You were using something the first time I saw you in Belkev's suite. What was it?" I asked her.
"Cocaine." She shrugged. "I have traveled with the swine since Berlin. I need something to make me forget. Now I have found something better."
"What's that?"
That was when she took off her gown. The freckles stood out everywhere. She was well muscled — and agile. And skilled and hungry. Her fingers raked my back urgently.
"Yes, Nickie, oooh. Oh, I can feel the ground moving."
"You read that someplace."
"No, it really did move." She added uncertainly, "I think."
After that we stopped talking. Dimly I heard someone pound on a door downstairs. Then there was more pounding. A sound like a heavy truck makes rumbled outside the window. A boiler pitched in with a muted roar. My mind works very slowly under the circumstances but I did remember that there are no trucks in Aucanquilcha and that the inn has no boiler. When the walls started to shake and the bed began to dance in the floor, I came to.
"Earthquake. Get your clothes on," I ordered her.
I pulled my pants on while Greta got into her nightgown and we were just in time because the fights suddenly blew. Glass from falling pictures scattered over the floor. We could barely keep our balance. Screams could be heard in the hall as people rushed about.
"Let's go. Nobody will see you."
The scene was one of complete chaos. Belkev was in a panic, knocking down everybody in his mad scramble for safety. Dust rained from the beams supporting the roof. The mayor was already downstairs and with a heavy-duty flashlight he waved us through the doors to the street.
The mountain seemed to be trying to rid itself of the village. The trembles that had interrupted our lovemaking were now a full-scale heaving of the earth. Animals ran squealing with terror, their noise only adding to the confusion. The Indians in the village emptied their stables in order to save their livestock, and llamas ran around wildly in the marketplace, their white coats shimmering ghostlike in the dark.
Then, as unexpectedly as it had arrived, the quake subsided and with astonishment we could once again hear each other talk. Greta clung trembling to my arm while Rosa and Bonita tried to hold onto each other.
"These are young mountains," the mayor averred, mostly to calm himself, I suspected. "They are still building."
There was no guarantee that the quake was over but the Indians were already rounding up their animals. One of the bodyguards ran up to me.
"Where is Belkev?" he asked breathlessly.
"I don't know. He ran out of the inn like a rat leaving a sinking ship."
The lights in the inn went back on. The bodyguards, their guns drawn, began to run through the streets calling Belkev's name. There aren't many streets in a village the size of Aucanquilcha, and they soon returned with their dismal report. Belkev was gone.
"We will have to search from house to house," one of them announced.
"You do that. I have another idea," I told him.
They snorted with impatience and ran off to perform their mission, the mayor hard on their heels.
"Why don't you move your mattresses down to the first floor?" I suggested to the girls before I left. I didn't really expect them to do that but it would give them something to argue about and take their minds off their fears.
The inhabitants of the village watched me with nearly Oriental detachment as I hurried through the dirty streets. It was possible that the MIRistas were holding Belkev in one of the houses — but I doubted it. This was not the usual sort of MIRista I was fighting, judging by my experience earlier in the day. Nor was this the usual sort of town, Aucanquilcha. It was an ascent into a bloody past.
The ancient temple overlooked the village. It had withstood this earthquake just as it had withstood a thousand before it, and in the moonlight its silhouette was stark and timeless. The Incas built for grandeur. Their temples were sites to which their enemies were taken to be awed into submission. If the enemy was not properly awed, he ended up in the temple again, this time as a human sacrifice. The huge stone steps led up the face of a pyramid that brought the Incas past the carved Gods of the Gateway. The stones I silently climbed now had once been painted with sacrificial gore. And they would be again if I was right.
I'd followed intuition, but only to a point. From the episode in the cave I had learned that the killer was familiar with the secrets of Aucanquilcha's history and that he was determined to wield them in his assassination of the Russian. I expected that he would even go so far as to make use of the ancient sacrificial table on top of the mountain's temple. But I hadn't followed the ghastly logic far enough and as I reached the last step at the top of the pyramid, I froze.
Belkev was there on the table, lying on his back, his hands and legs hanging down, his head motionless on the edge of the stone table except for the movement given it by the swinging weights of the bola that was coiled around his neck. His eyes were closed and his face was discolored by impending strangulation.
What paralyzed me, though, was sight of the figure standing over him. As the moonlight struck it, I realized what it was that had caught my attention earlier when the killer had tried to catch Belkev on the mountain trail. It was the reflection from the gold plate set into the middle of his elongated skull. This was no ordinary MIRista trying to dress up a murder as sacrifice; it was the real thing, wearing cotton armor decorated with jaguars and a gold belt hung with weapons. His face was handsome despite the distortion of his skull, his eyes as black as obsidian and as narrow as slits. Despite the cotton armor, it was obvious that he was a man of great physical strength. I wondered where the MIRistas had come across him and how many of his kind remained back in the hills. More, I wondered if the MIRistas knew of the powers they were unleashing. Most likely they did and they would see that they were used to the hilt.
The In
dian lifted Belkev's head and placed it on a stone neck rest and then unwound the bola from Belkev's fat neck, revealing ugly red welts like the marks of a hangman's noose. The Russian stirred and his mouth gaped open for air.
The Inca raised an object that gleamed over Belkev's head. I never would have recognized it had I not seen one similar to it earlier in the day. It resembled the gruesome sacrificial knife in the museum but it was heavier, sharper. With one chop the blood from Belkev's guillotined neck would spew twenty feet down the temple steps.
"Atahualpa, I presume," I said as I stepped up to the top level of the pyramid.
It was the Inca's turn to be surprised. He froze, arms suspended in the air. I had used the name of the last Inca emperor and it threw him off more than I'd dare to hope. Then, just as I recognized him from our previous encounter, he also recognized me. The gold crescent of the sacrificial knife swooped down.
Belkev had been watching us with a growing grasp of his situation. As soon as he saw the Indian decide to act, he rolled off the table and hit the stones with a thud. At the same moment the edge of the head chopper bit into the neck rest.
The Indian was not deterred. Because I had come from bed, I had no gun: I had only the knife in its arm sheath. When it slipped into my fingers, his expression was more amused than frightened. The taunting look in his eyes told me that the rifle had never been his weapon, that blades were his forte.
"Start running, Belkev, and don't stop," I shouted.
Belkev scrambled to his feet and headed for the steps. He hadn't gone far when the Indian snatched up the bola and threw it, all in one motion. The bola wrapped itself around the Russian's feet and he went down heavily on his head. The Indian laughed and said some words in a language that I didn't understand. Then he picked up the sacrificial knife and threw it at Belkev's prone body.
The weapon twirled like a planet, spinning straight toward Belkev's heart. Instead of cutting into it, though, it crashed into the armored vest and ricocheted off into the dark. At this I stepped over the Russian's body to meet the Indian's next attack.
From his waist he loosened a strange apparatus consisting of a pair of bronze chains that were attached to a gold handle. At the end of the chains there were wicked-looking, star-shaped metal balls. It was a Headbreaker! He swung it high around his head and the massive balls whistled. Then he started to come around the table, his bare feet padding on the cold stone like jaguar paws.
I had already seen the evidence of the damage a Headbreaker could wreak upon a victim. From the way he swung the thing, I knew that he was an expert in its use and that I wouldn't be able to defend myself and Belkev at the same time. I hooked the body of the unconscious Russian with my foot and pulled him onto the stairs where he tumbled down the steps out of sight, a tub of lard that would go to the victor.
With each onslaught of the primitive Headbreaker I found myself forced back toward the edge of the stairs. There in the moonlight I tried to gauge the Indian's style. A barroom brawler swinging a broken bottle lets the momentum of his swing carry him off balance. But this was an adversary who was capable of swinging fifteen pounds of jagged metal without pitching an inch. He reminded me of the samurai, who were trained to incorporate their swords into their bodies, thereby combining a philosophy of combat with sheer nerve that made them the perfect fighting machines. Even as the whistling swing of the Headbreaker's weights missed my chest, his follow-through was bringing the bronze stars around again, this time at a new and unexpected angle.
Suddenly they reached for my feet. I jumped, just as he had calculated, expecting me to land helplessly in the path of his backswing. Then his narrow eyes widened a shade as my bare foot shot out and smashed into his chest, kicking him backward ten feet and onto the stone table. A lesser man would have had a broken sternum but the Indian only rubbed his chest thoughtfully and approached me again, this time with some caution. As he stepped forward, he spoke words I could not comprehend.
"I can't understand a word you're saying," I told him, "and it's too bad because one of us is saying his last words."
By this time the stiletto was circling in my palm as I looked for the opening that would allow me to plunge it through his heart. Simultaneously the Headbreaker rattled in his hand as he also searched for an opening. When the chains tangled for a second, I lunged forward behind the tip of the knife. He danced out of the way and swung the Headbreaker at the same time. I ducked as the bronze stars danced over my head.
"You're okay with those things, my friend. Now let's see how you are without them."
I feinted another attack and the Headbreaker came whistling down like a locomotive. I caught his hand and yanked the gold handle from it. As his body bulled into mine, I sank a left hook into his belly. It was like pounding a stone wall. Headbreaker and stiletto both fell onto the stones. I had a grip on his quilted armor and I smashed his jaw down to the headbreaker I call my knee. As he bounced off it, I hacked his shoulder.
This was supposed to be the scene where he sank to the floor. Instead, he jumped up and almost kicked the wind out of me. Two conclusions came to my puzzled mind. One, South American Indians are expert at playing soccer or any other sport that involves kicking. Two, I thought I smelled the faint, acrid scent of lime leaves. The Incas, like most other people in that part of the world, habitually chewed coca and lime leaves as a narcotic. Possibly my enemy was so doped up on cocaine that it would take a bullet to make him feel pain.
And I realized one other thing only too well; I was sucking air in gasps, just like Belkev. I was exhausted by the ordeal of the fight. All the Indian had to do now was to stay on his feet until I dropped. He knew it as well as I did. I swung a lazy left hook at his jaw. He dropped under it and scissor-kicked me to the stones. An elbow to his windpipe kept him off my back until I got to my feet again, weaving like a drunk.
One of the early Aztec rituals of bravery called for the matching of one captured warrior against four Aztec soldiers, three of them right-handed and the fourth one left-handed. The lone warrior had to fight them one at a time with a war club that was edged with feathers; his opponents used clubs edged with obsidian blades. I didn't know whether the Incas practiced the same torture but this situation was coming pretty close to it. The Indian was as fresh and as strong as when we started but I was dead on my feet, starved for air and ready to drop.
He didn't even bother to use the bola remaining on his gold belt. Each time I set myself on my feet he launched a flying kick that jolted me back to my knees. I knew that soon I wouldn't even be able to rise. My body was numb and sick from lack of oxygen; I was moving woodenly, slowly. I even prayed for the KGB to arrive with a rescue squad but I knew it was still playing Gestapo games in the village. Just one or two more falls to the stones and I would be finished.
Confidently the Indian took a long leap and kicked out both feet at my head. It was easy enough for me to drop but as I did so, I raised my arm and grabbed the dangling bola, pulling at it with every bit of strength I had left. The Indian screamed as he felt his momentum carry him off the platform; then he vanished with a tangle of flailing arms.
I was on my hands and knees, heaving for breath and unable to follow his descent. Had he been able to climb back to the top of the steps at that moment, I am sure I would have lain down and let him kill me. But he didn't return and with every second my heart calmed down and I could feel renewed sensation in my limbs.
My knife and the Headbreaker were gone, kicked off the platform during the fight. All I had left was the gas bomb, useless under the circumstances. On the other hand, I had Belkev — and Belkev was good bait.
I slid over the edge of the platform and worked my way down the steps in the moon's light. There was utter silence. In five minutes I had located the Russian. By putting a thumb to his temple, I ascertained that he was dead to the world in a temporary sense only. The bola was tangled around his legs. I unwrapped it quickly and stole back into the shadows.
The Indian would be r
eturning now, stalking Belkev and me. I forced my heart to a slower beat, even at the risk of losing consciousness for lack of oxygen. There was no risk too great when I considered that anyone who lived in the high Andes would have to be supremely aware, ever alert to the slightest sign of danger. I was right, because I felt his presence before I saw him.
The Indian was a wispy shadow, a bit more solid than the shadows around him. He slipped along the dressed stones of the temple wall only ten feet from Belkev's lumpy body. There he was motionless in one spot for ten minutes by the count of my heartbeat before making up his mind that I must have headed back toward the village for help. Now his attention became fixed on the inert body sprawled in front of him; I let the adrenalin flow through my veins to speed my last reserves of energy.
The moonlight picked up the gleam of the sacrificial knife as it flew through the air. At that moment I swung the bola once and let go. The Indian looked up just in time to see the two weights whirling toward his head — but not in time to move. An ugly, wheezing sound came from his mouth as the weights tangled around his throat. His eyes bulged and his body went rigid. In a moment his sphincter muscles would relax and he would foul himself where he stood. He was dead, hung, his neck broken. He collapsed like a house of cards, one leg giving out and then the other, and he pitched forward over Belkev, the knife still in his hand.
I rolled his body over, breathing with relief. I was forcing the knife from his rigid fingers when my heart thudded again. A cloud had moved away from the face of the moon and I saw the dead man's face clearly. There was no gold plate in his skull. It was a different man — it was the Indian's bait.
I dove for the ground before I even heard the whispering of the Indian's bola whirling for my throat. Metal grazed over my back and smashed into the wall. I saw a figure with a gold blaze on its head racing toward me, leaping over the body of the dead man and swinging a second bola high overhead. I hugged the wall and rolled to the side as one of the weights dug up the ground next to my ear. Then I swung my bola up and caught his, using his strength to lift me off the ground. Our weapons uncoupled and each of us swung at the same time, the weights colliding and ringing eerily through the night.
The Inca Death Squad Page 7