The Inca Temple
Preston William Child
Copyright © 2011, 2020 by Preston William Child
All rights reserved. No part of this publication might be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Contents
Books by Preston William Child
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Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
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About the Author
Prologue
1432 A.D. The Andes.
By the second year of Ando's marriage, it occurred to him that he'd fallen in love with his wife's maid. His wife, Tiki, caught him deep in the maid's thighs, grinding away. The incident was around the third year when Ando would perform the second marital ceremony according to his tribe's tradition. He had been having sex with the maid in the hayloft, the chickens making little cooing noises in their coops.
Ando had hoped the cooing of the chickens would drown the maid’s own. It didn't.
His wife, Tiki, had promptly put divorce in motion. She was a smart woman who knew to turn disgrace into a possibility for great wealth. She would get half of Ando's gold, and if the maid were to get pregnant—and she hoped the foolish girl did—whatever the maid was entitled to, also came to Tiki.
Ando was a chieftain of the tribe. But even a chieftain couldn't resist the smooth, fetching bob of a pretty maid’s tits, and divorce didn't stop the world from turning on. So Ando decided to outwit the system.
He was on his way that afternoon to the local spa, burdened by a cage of gold. That was two days after he received a summons from the local court requesting his signature on the divorce papers.
Tiki was waiting by apple groves on the sea pass, arms akimbo, the Balumbra River shining leisurely behind her. With her were two old men in official black cassocks, wrinkly and wise looking. Tired eyes searched the load he carried.
"I owe a lot of people. You don't want to inherit my debts, do you?"
"You owe no one, Ando!" she retorted.
"Well, I do have to pay up some debts. It is only fair I do that before sharing what I have."
The two old men nodded. Ando shrugged at his wife. Men looked out for men, his smile said.
It was true. Ando swam in too much avarice to not owe people, yet it was the only excuse to hoard some of his treasure. So it was that the elders presiding over the matter with his wife allowed him two days to put his financial affairs in order, as it were.
—
There were citadels scattered around the foot of the Andes mountains. Different ones for different purposes. The largest of these giant domes were the hotels and spas.
The trail took him up the grassy hill. The further he went, the more of the river Ando saw. And the more robust the thought of bailing. A ship floated on the water like a child's toy. The sun was a blinding yellow about to sink into the river. The Incas said a man's life was like that of the sun; it soared with wealth and died in the arms of a jealous wife.
The river would soon swallow the sun, just like his wife was about to consume his life.
But the earth would swallow Ando before his wife would get the chance to.
—
When Ando arrived at the spa where he lived a third of his life, a servant of the house was waiting with a large square tray of bronze material. The bald teenaged boy was castrated, devoid of worldly desires. He took Ando's collection of gold without looking in his eyes.
The Gerente came out of a side room, followed by a cloud of steam. The Gerente, manager of the inn, keeper of customers’ gold, and accountant general of the spa, was a rotund man. He was in his fifties perhaps, also bald but with a droopy black mustache, Asian eyes—because he was Asian—and a stomach that went ahead of him. His robe was always white; underneath that, Ando had heard he wore nothing else.
Ando took a seat by the warm wall. Opposite him were a table, a single cask of oil, and a pen in the middle. The Gerente spread his arms.
"Ando, my friend, this is the largest you have brought for safekeeping."
Ando nodded seriously.
Seated, the Gerente cocked his friendly face to the side. "What is this I heard, your wife is divorcing you?"
"Uhuh, she offers me my freedom."
"But freedom comes with a great price," said the Gerente. His pickle-colored slanting eyes glanced at the pile of gold Ando brought.
"You shall keep it. I'll come for it later."
"Of course."
The Gerente pulled a dull, red leather-backed book from nowhere. He opened it to a page with Ando's deposit history and started writing. The man's red tongue licked his moist lips.
Ando closed his eyes. The smell of red hot stone eating up water filled his head. He could taste the hissing of dissipating water, and in the eyes of his mind, he saw vapor gripping the stone ceiling.
All of this was going on underground. Ando heard a joyous cry of girls, and his penis popped between his legs. He looked at the servant standing there with his gold.
"Get me a towel."
The Gerente smiled shrewdly.
Ando never got the towel because there was a trembling that shook the place suddenly.
It came and went as swiftly. Ando almost thought he had imagined it. The Gerente frowned.
"What was that?"
"I'll go see." The servant dropped the tray of gold on the table.
Ando looked at the Gerente.
"Maybe you're being robbed?" asked Ando.
"Who would have the guts?"
"Someone strong enough to shake the mountain, maybe."
The tremor came again. This time it lasted a full ten seconds. The blocks seemed to separate from each other, just a quarter of an inch and back. The cask of ink fell and rolled off the table. Ando caught it before it shattered on the concrete floor. The Gerente's mouth had dropped though, Oriental eyes sharp with suspicion.
When the shaking started again, it didn't stop.
The floor rose, and with it Ando, the Gerente, and the table. Halfway, the floor stopped its ascent, the ceiling plunged down, squashing Ando and the Gerente together. Ando had heard about earthquakes in stories but had never seen one.
"My gold," he breathed.
Ando's last thoughts were of the ship on the river, the sun getting swallowed, and the maid's round breasts.
—
1
Patrick Coleman was a man built for the wild, or so he would like to think. He stood six feet and some inches. A scalp of yellow hair and scraggly beard, bright green eyes, a smile that ca
me slowly when he was amused but turned to a laugh when he was curious.
And right at that moment, when he stood before the dark man in the Trail Head Equipment store, he felt more amused than annoyed.
"Five hundred dollars for a pickax?"
"Yes, it is so," said the dark man with a shrug.
Patrick shook his head. He waved his credit card in the air. But the man shook his head.
"No card, only cash."
"I don't have cash."
The man pursed plump baby lips and shook his thick head of black curly hair. The locals all looked alike to Coleman. Like the Asians down at the small China street where he got the other tools in his green duffel.
He had cash. Coleman was only looking to get back at the man for trying to cheat him. He paid cash.
He put his dark shades on and walked into the hot afternoon. He started sweating immediately. He had driven halfway up the grassy hillside before he remembered he might need ropes. But he kept on.
Heat rose from the road as he throttled the small jeep up along.
He passed fields where locals worked in gardens and small-scale farms. They waved at the foreign man. The white man who had been going up the mountain for three days now. They must wonder what business he had there.
He arrived at the ruins of the Trans citadel twenty minutes later. Ten minutes had taken him to the point where he had to park his jeep in the road and walk the rest of the other ten minutes.
Coleman called the place Trans citadel after his favorite cartoon show, Hotel Transylvania. He walked through the narrow path, around the fallen walls and stones as old as time themselves. Coleman arrived at a point of rocks, away from the ruins. He had only the blue sky above, the birds in it, and the spread of greenery as far as the eyes could see.
"Right, shall we dig?"
He dropped his bag and extracted from it the pickax, a small spade, a powerful torchlight, and a sledgehammer which he hooked to his belt. He looked at his bag, then at his surroundings.
"Be safe now, okay?" he said to the duffel. "I should be back up before sundown."
He set the alarm in his wristwatch to 3 pm. That means he had just three hours to spend down there.
There was an aperture in the ground before him. It was the size of two manholes. Coleman had only been down a manhole once, in New York. It was for a paper on abandoned tunnels under the city.
He heaved and lowered himself down and was gone.
—
Down in the chamber, Coleman's torch caught the sides of a room. It looked like a hallway of sorts; it was a meter in breadth, about one and a half meters to the smooth ceiling. The walls were the same as the ones outside in ruins. The difference was, the bricks down here seemed to have been laid without mortar. He touched the fissures, dry dirt powdered off with the tips of his fingers.
"Interesting."
He walked on; the heels of his boots made thick thudding sounds. But no echoes. He stopped walking and sent the light of the torch all around. There were no air vents, nor cracks. Is that why there are no echoes?
The hallway branched off both right and left further down, and he stopped again. Here there were signs written in the ancient language of the Incas.
He took a small pocketbook and searched in it.
"No use," he breathed.
He walked on and stopped. His jaw dropped open. The floor dropped sharply, and the walls widened. He went down to check and saw the cracks. He ran the torch along the floor up to the wall. The crack snaked along and into the ceiling, like thunder.
He placed a tentative foot forward. He stamped on the splintered concrete. It felt solid in the bones of his hips. He walked gingerly. Convinced that it held, he went on.
The torch fell on rubble. Scree so old the dirt had calcified into a hardened material. When he touched it, he realized that about a hundred years ago, the soil was still loose.
The hallway continued behind this hill of rubble. Per his record, a pile of gold was in some vault down there.
He wondered what magnitude of earthquake hit the inn and sealed its treasure from the world.
—
When Patrick Coleman pulled himself out of the hole two hours later, he was thirsty as hell and hungry. He took one last look at the hole. Coleman smiled. He had found the hole by accident; he had, in fact, fallen through it while investigating the terrain.
He hurried across the trail, taking just a second to look at a dig he had toiled at close to the ruins. It was his first attempt when he came to Machu Picchu. He shuddered to think how long it would have taken him to get to the point where he was now if he hadn't taken that fall the previous day. He hadn't broken any bones in his feet, thankfully.
Driving through the busy evening street life of the Tumba Real, he told himself, "I need men. Men to dig for me."
—
But first, he sat down that night in his hotel to do a preliminary story of what he'd found. He wrote for two hours and sent the finished article off through email to the New York Times.
He drank warm beer and slept through the heat.
—
A shrewd little girl with curly hair came to the counter of the car rental upon hearing the bell. She wore a turquoise-colored gown with frills at the shoulder and more at the knees where the gown stopped. She could be twenty or more, but she had enough prettiness to make her look older.
"Can I help you?"
Patrick Coleman exhaled loudly. "Thank God, you speak English—"
"I do a little."
Coleman looked around the shop again. They seem to have everything. Items hung on shelves without a particular category; carpentry tools hung behind the counter, some shaped peculiarly. The girl gestured at the shelf. "You want to buy something?"
"No, I want someone."
"Want to buy someone?"
He uttered a small laugh. "No, I need men to dig for me."
A door opened at the far side of the shop, and a man came out. He had shoulder-length black hair, curly like the girl’s. His eyes were dark too, average height, in need of a shave. But the men of this town all need to shave, he thought. Coleman rubbed his own one-day stubble.
The girl looked at the man. When he came closer, Patrick saw the grey in his hair. And the resemblance with the man was more striking.
"Is my daughter treating you well?"
"I'm looking to hire some hands, sir, and"—he glanced at the girl—"she was helping."
"Some hands? What do you want hands for?"
"No, not that sort of hands. I'm working at the ruins in the hills. I need men to help me dig."
"What are you digging for?"
The girl touched her father's elbow. The father looked at her questioningly.
"Can you help me?"
"How many men?" she asked.
"Two would be just right."
She leaned into her father's ear, and Patrick saw she was actually taller than the man. She smiled at Coleman and said, "Follow me, please."
—
They went down the crowded street. The still air boiled with humidity and heat. Most of the men went about shirtless, and their hairy chests shone with perspiration. The aroma of cooking meat, garnished with strongly scented spices, filled Patrick's nose, and wet bodies rubbed him. Curious eyes stared at the tall white man. The girl wriggled through the people, lithe-bodied, long hair like a black river between her shoulder blades. She said greetings to young women under brightly-colored awnings selling fruits and silverware.
"So what are you looking for in the rubble?" she asked suddenly without looking.
"You don't think there's value in what I do, I know."
"I never said that."
"You don't have to, I see it in your eyes. Everyone here thinks so."
"We just met, and you already know how I feel about your work?"
Patrick shrugged.
The girl turned onto a side street, less packed. The shops here sold clothes in different colors, all of them brilliantly colore
d. Patrick caught up with her.
"Where are we going?" he asked as they rounded another corner and struck down a broad street.
"To get your hands."
"Thank you. What's your name?"
She stopped before an auto-repair shop. "We are here," she said.
The garage was dark inside. An old black Buick with a rusting grille stood on a jack; the engine was suspended from a hoist in the ceiling. There were men back there in brown, greasy jumpsuits.
"Leno, a minute?" the girl called.
Leno looked stick thin. He was the fist clean-shaven Peruvian Patrick laid his eyes on.
Patrick listened as the two spoke the language, and the conversation lasted two minutes. Two guys came out of the auto shop. They showed Patrick their teeth. Then they shook hands with him. One had a thick scar that ran from his left temple across his nose to his neck. The other had a thick black mustache and reminded Patrick of Captain Haddock in Tintin comics.
Patrick rubbed a palm soiled with black grease on the seat of his black jeans.
"My name, Uzo," said the one with the thick black beard.
He gestured at his friend. "He is Reno. We are strong. We dig well."
The girl smiled and said, "You have your men."
Patrick nodded.
The girl left immediately; she never told Coleman her name.
—
The next morning, he traveled faster up the hill because he had company and was in a good mood.
Patrick Coleman pegged the earth around the hole and tied his rope.
"Now, we go down."
The two men now dressed in work clothes, boots, and tank tops. Their long-sleeved shirts were tied around their waists.
The scarred one looked at the archeologist dubiously. "Why you tie rope?"
The Inca Temple Page 1