The Inca Temple

by Preston W Child

  Olivia waited.

  —

  Alex shined his torch on the woman. He extended the torchlight past her figure down the hallway. Satisfied that there were no traps, he turned his light on the woman again.

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "We want the gold."

  "Alright, and how do you plan to get at it?"

  Alex's eyes shifted in their sockets, unsure of what to say next. He hadn't prepared a conversation where he'd be reasoning more than a bird making a call of instinct on a dinner of worms.

  He looked back at his people, about fourteen of them, plus him, probably fifteen. With the AKs and pump actions, he should be able to hold forth, and if all else failed, he'd tell Pietro it was a call he had to make in the circumstances. He smiled at his own shrewd thoughts just then.

  Olivia followed the movement of her eyes. She shined her own torch on the group and counted. She missed one or two men in the shadows.

  "It's a choice you are making. Are you sure you want to ride this train?"

  "Where is the train going?" Alex asked stupidly.

  Olivia chuckled, not entirely at the man's naiveté, but because he misunderstood her manner of speaking.

  "Come get it then."

  Alex cocked his gun. Olivia stepped back one foot.

  "You go on, get the gold, give them to me, and we'll talk about keeping you alive or not."

  "And Pietro? Where is he?"

  "He will come, don't worry about him."

  "This treasure here is finders keepers," Olivia said calmly. "Every human for himself. You take what you get."

  "I take what I get."

  Olivia stepped back another foot. Behind her, Diggs and Liam were pointing their guns from behind lights from lamps placed on the floor so that the hoodlums could not see them.

  Miller and Anabia Nassif were at the square holes in the wall, ready to plunge them in. Alex and his men advanced several more collective steps. Olivia cast a furtive eye on the floor where her hands had marked it when she was searching for the holes in the floor.

  She stopped, and the men stopped too.

  She heard Miller whisper behind her, "Olivia, what are you doing?"

  Her heart was beating violently in her chest. Alex and his men were two yards away now, close enough to shoot her at point-blank range. Even Alex, in all his cluelessness, couldn't miss, she mused.

  Then she took several steps, four, five. Alex and his men stepped on the trap spot. The events that followed happened without apparent logic to it.

  She watched the leader, Alex, walk past the end of the line of trap holes and panicked. But just when she thought her ruse had failed, the clicking sounds erupted. They lasted for just a few seconds, rapid metal clacking, and plat!

  Several men were shrieking from spikes reaching into the roof. Other spikes came plunging from the roof. Some men got staked through their chest, others through their thighs and arms. The man who was standing behind Alex got it in the head, the rest of the body made it past and writhed sickly on the floor.

  Alex was too struck to hold on to his gun. It fell on the floor beside him; blood sprayed his face and clothes. A puddle formed around his feet quickly.

  Two others made it past in time. The two guys fell on their knees in shock.

  Alex wheeled on Olivia. He screamed, "What did you do?"

  Olivia heard the soft pop of the blocks being sucked into the wall, the concrete door sliding out of place, and the coolness of trapped air blew her hair.

  She pulled her gun in Alex. Diggs and Liam joined him while Miller and Anabia packed their stuff.

  Alex stared at the guns, his rage dissipating with every free breath he took. The two with him stayed on their knees; they put their hands on their heads and closed their eyes.

  "What's your name?"

  "Alex."

  "Alex, you made the hard choice of coming after us. This temple already made its own choices hundreds of years ago. We were going to make those traps go off by ourselves."

  Alex stared at her. He heard her voice but listened to the gags of breath, leaving the bodies of his men behind him.

  "You made a choice, remember that."

  Olivia put her gun away and picked up the AKs from the floor. One of them dripped blood.

  —

  8

  Vatican City, Rome.

  Andrew Gilmore stepped off a bus at Piazza de San Pietro and walked the rest of the way to the gates of Vatican City. He went straight to Emilio Batolini's quarters.

  It was a high afternoon, and the former cardinal was in his bathroom, cleaning himself, said the maid, a young nun. She looked young enough to be in her teens. High cheekbones and a slightly hooked nose suggested a strong Roman ancestry.

  She showed Andrew to a seat in the ornate living room, served him coffee, and bowed out of sight.

  There have been changes in the living room since the last time he was here. Such swift changes within the length of two days.

  The curtains were newer and thicker. The furniture had also been switched with more opulent design. More expensive paintings had also been installed on the walls. Andrew counted six of them, none of which he cared to know their artists.

  He sipped the coffee; it was high standard, fit for a cardinal. A crooked cardinal, he thought. Andrew bought a paper on his way out of Sicily. The Pope's piety was in the news once more.

  We are servants, not courtiers, said the old man.

  Andrew snickered sadly at the painting across the large room. The Lord and his disciples were eating the last supper in it. A work of art fit for the best of them. He allowed himself to consider how much that painting could cost. Maybe a few thousand dollars.

  Emilio sang as he came out of the bathroom. He was singing off-key in his baritone voice that endeared many people to him. Those brooding eyes that brimmed of kindness looked across the room and settled on Andrew's face.

  He had a thick white towel around his sinewy girth. The motion of rubbing his bald pate stopped.

  "Andrew?"

  "Father."

  "What are you doing here? Y-you are supposed to be—"

  "Dead?"

  Bartolini's mouth dropped open. His face colored around his scrubbed neck.

  "Why?" Andrew asked.

  The former cardinal smiled. He recovered from his earlier shock; he walked into his bedroom. The door to the small balcony there was open. Sunlight washed the bed and red-blue carpet with a golden color. The carpet glittered, it was new too.

  The old man opened a drawer. He pulled the small pistol from under clean shorts. He heard a click behind him and turned around, slowly.

  Andrew was standing there. The gun in his hand was pointing at Emilio's hairy chest.

  "You won't."

  Andrew shrugged. "Maybe, but why not?"

  Those kind eyes remained so dark, wise, inconsistent with the heart that pumped blood through them. Emilio lowered his hand. The gun dangled from his side limply.

  "Why don't you do it then? Get it over with."

  "Not yet. Tell me what's going on. Why did you want me dead?"

  Wearily, Emilio sat down on his bed and looked out the window. He heaved a long sigh. Rome hummed outside; a church bell announced some call. The beautiful maid worked somewhere in the house. Cookware chimed.

  "Something big is going down in Peru."

  "What?"

  Emilio glanced at him. "Peru. A country in South America—"

  "I know, but what has that got to do with me?"

  "A lot. Your sister is there now, I heard. If she succeeds, she will be one of the richest women on Earth. The amount of gold rumored to be in the Inca temple is ridiculous, to say the least. She wasn't supposed to go there. None of them was supposed to go there. You were all supposed to die, all of you."

  "What's in it for you?"

  Emilio looked at Andrew and shrugged. "A break. From my uncertainty, my disgrace. I have gone, of course, too long that I can't find my way back. Red
emption. Forgiveness is hard to find—"

  "And killing me, killing people will make it easier?"

  "No, but having enough could. Living free, having whatever I want could make it easier." His eyes turned to Andrew again.

  "Do you know what it is like to live on other humans' mercy? Have you ever wanted to make things right so much you just can't breathe? You wouldn't understand, Andrew."

  Emilio left the bed and went to the window. His enormous stomach spilled over the towel around his waist. There at the window, with the sun glinting off his head and face, he looked pitiful.

  "My share was worth two billion dollars, Andrew. That's a lot of money—"

  "And you are one hell of a greedy man, a criminal."

  "If you live as long as I have, and have seen some of the things I have, you'll have a different view of me. But you know nothing of how the world works."

  Andrew lowered his gun momentarily. Anger burned his throat.

  "But you were a cardinal! A holy man!"

  Emilio yelled in reply, "NO! I'm not! I never was!"

  Andrew brought his gun back up. His gripped tightened, his lips trembled. He strained. He held back the scream of anger building up in his throat. Andrew would be hunted for life if Emilio Batolini died by his hands. Even though the man wasn't a cardinal anymore, he still enjoyed papal protection for reasons Andrew could not comprehend. Perhaps, evil men were kept in the presence of good so they could be tortured daily by that which they so much hated.

  Andrew dropped his hand. Emilio Batolini shook his head. "You were always the best of them all. And there was always more to you than meets the eye. Tell me, how did you escape the crash?"

  Andrew's gun went back up.

  "Take off your towel."

  "What?"

  "Take it off!"

  Emilio took the towel off to reveal a bushy pubic hair and a sizeable penis between his shriveling thighs.

  "Put it on your head and cover your face!"

  Emilio did it.

  "Turn around."

  A minute after, the man pulled the towel off.

  Andrew was gone.

  —

  Miami, Florida.

  Yes, said Chief Tom Garcia of Miami Police Department. Olivia was almost killed in the street by a truck. She had reported the case, and shortly after had hopped a plane off to South America.

  "No, I don't know exactly what she's doing our there, but knowing Olivia, I'd say it's gotta be something big."

  Andrew said he was grateful for Tom's help.

  Tom said Betty, his wife, wanted to say hello. Andrew said he was short on time, and he'd be checking up on the couple soon after. Next, he placed a call to Moscow, when he could not reach Miller and the other numbers.

  Victor Borodin answered swiftly.

  "I have been sitting by this phone for days," he said, his voice gay. A girl's voice laughed around Victor. "Marie is here, Andrew. Do you remember my girl?"

  Andrew smiled and closed his eyes. All the life I let pass me by. He opened his eyes and said hello to the girl who spoke profoundly accented English. Victor came back and told him about his accident while working.

  "I think someone is trying to wipe the team out. I was in an airplane crash too."

  "The hell!"

  "But I think the others are alright. They're in Peru."

  "Yeah, I know," Victor said in a mournful voice. "I really wish to come down there. But my legs are hung in a cast. The doctor says I'll be garaged for a week, another week of physiotherapy. I'm bummed. I hate it. Those boys are having all the fun without me."

  Andrew laughed.

  "Did Olivia tell you the place in Peru?"

  "Yeah, I can mail the details to you."

  "Good."

  Andrew called out a bookstore’s mail down the street and dropped the call.

  He waited until dark before he left the hotel where he was holed. Batolini wasn't a man to underestimate. Neither should his conscience be overestimated; he took the information off the bookstore's mailbox at 8 pm. He deleted the message and tipped the shy girl who had crushed on Andrew since the first time he came in looking for a map of the Vatican years back.

  At 9 pm he was at the airport with just one piece of luggage.

  Hours later, he was over the skies that carpeted South America.

  —

  A vital phone call followed these events, as mentioned earlier.

  Inexorable Emilio Batolini was behind the phone. His voice came in clean and squeaky.

  "The priest is hot," he said.

  The man on the other side was silent for ten seconds. During that time, Emilio Batolini thought he had been disconnected. He called, "Are you there?"

  "Yes, I am. What's not sure is whether you'd be there in Rome by morning."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "My clients paid you munificently, I recall. And your end of the bargain was that you'd have the priest on a plane to Brazil, where, I also vividly recall, he'd disappear forever when he crashes in some river."

  "Yes, but he escaped, I could not guarantee he will not escape. But he did. What was I supposed to do?"

  "I also have information that he was in your quarters. Not so? Certainly, you had the chance to eliminate him right there also."

  Emilio cursed. He looked across the room again to see if the nun who had been tending his needs was back. But no, he knew he would never see her again because she wasn't a nun, she had been planted in his place, to spy on him.

  "My clients are going to need their money back, in full, of course. We'd be sending someone by to make the collection—"

  "But I…I—"

  "You spent it on exotic paintings, curtains, and carpets. We know. We'll be taking all of that as well. I would offer a bit of personal advice—make yourself scarce when the collector comes. You have one hour, Batolini."

  "Come on—"

  "Your time starts now."

  "Hey, you can’t—"

  Click.

  "Hello?"

  Batolini slammed the telephone in its cradle and flopped on the bed. His stomach rocked like a water balloon.

  He closed his eyes and prayed for the first time in years.

  —

  Peru.

  Machu Picchu.

  Pietro Oscar was back. And as though for a strange reason, he was not as mad as in similar situations. The remainder of his men would say it was as though he expected that nothing should have happened differently.

  This frustrated his boys even more.

  "Come on," he said to the rest of his men, and they followed through the open entrance into the next ring in the maze.

  Only when they arrived at the latest bloodbath did Pietro show any excitation. He counted the fallen. He compared with the standing; his mathematics showed he was in enormous deficit.

  "We need more men!" he snapped.

  Then he let himself go. He sprinted for a moment, and that confused his boys much. Breathing heavily and standing in the dark, he bawled into the gloom:

  "I will find you, Americans! I will find and kill you all!"

  —

  Olivia and her team heard Pietro's voice. Of course, it did not echo. They heard it come to them as though he was only yards away, and if she just pointed her torchlight and let the bright light go as far as possible, she'd see the man there in the shadow. Anabia was standing beside her; both of them stared pointlessly at the darkness.

  "Are we going to have more trouble, do you think?"

  "I don't know," she said, her voice just above a whisper.

  "I think we should prepare, though, for the eventuality that he may come back with more reinforcements."

  The team had just walked twenty meters in both directions of the curve. There were no round or square blocks to be seen. There were no doors, too; they were stuck, seemingly.

  The spirit of the team had gone from elation to listless confusion.

  Miller stopped pacing when that didn't clear his head. Diggs
was by himself, tinkling with a strange gadget that looked like a small printer. None of their phones worked, so outside resources were out of reach.

  Olivia wasn't sure, but at some point in the disappointing day (no one had checked what time it was), the lad Reno had cried. His eyes were red when she saw them in the light. Olivia hadn't felt pity, just indifference. Reno was, after all, just a boy.

  One of the lamps had gone off. Two more flickered some minutes later. What would they do when the lamps all die?

  She heard a hiss and turned around.

  Lawrence Diggs' tinkling just yielded something. He was crouched on the floor. His device was beeping. There was a single antenna on it. He grabbed a tiny cable from the small knob at the head of the antenna. He hoped to connect it to a port in the box-like device.

  They gathered around him when the hissing sound cleared. It became static, like those from telephones.

  "You had this all this time, Diggs?" Liam asked.

  Diggs grunted.

  He glanced at Olivia. The light enhanced his angular face giving him the appearance of Norse warriors.

  "We need to call for reinforcements. I have guys who would fly in two hours. What'd you say?"

  "Yes, Diggs. We need all the help we can get. But we'll be putting more lives in danger."

  "What do you have in mind then?" Miller asked.

  Olivia thought deeply. For reasons that she could not explain, a part of Olivia's mind wanted desperately for Andrew to be with them.

  "Andrew. Let's call him."

  Miller said, "We could not reach him, remember? We don't know if he's alright."

  "Yeah, I know, and that's why we need to call him. And Victor Borodin. To know if they are safe—"

  "And if they are headed down here yet," Liam added.

  Diggs asked Olivia to give him her cellphone. The former CIA agent connected the cellphone with a cable to the box. The hissing stopped. "I'm disconnecting our transmitters now."

  Olivia heard a click in her ear. Diggs gave Olivia her cell.

  "Here, dial Andrew, see if you can get through."

  Olivia dialed.

  A recorded voice of Andrew said if he didn't answer the call three times, then he was either sleeping or dead.

  "Grim," Liam murmured.

  Olivia gave the cellphone back. Diggs asked if Olivia took what Andrew said seriously. She shrugged. "Typical Andrew, he'll call me back when he can."