“I’m always hungry, but that’s not the point.”
“What
Grant smiled. “My obsession with food will get us that surveillance spot.”
FORTY-FOUR
Zotkin swept the ground with his radiation meter.
“Anything?” Colchev said.
Zotkin shook his head. “Just a tiny amount of elevated background radiation.”
The Mandala was positioned at the summit of a flat-topped mountain twenty miles northwest of Nazca. After arriving in Santiago without incident, Colchev had the jet refueled and immediately flew on to the town of Ica, Peru, which was the closest airport to the Mandala. It had been a short drive to the turnoff from the Pan-American Highway, then another mile to the path that led them up to the plateau.
The trek up the mountain hadn’t been an especially hard one on anyone except for Fay, who stood off to the side panting from exertion as she watched their search. There was no need to closely guard her. If she ran, Kiselow, the only man Colchev and Zotkin had left, would chase her down.
From this ground-level vantage point, the massive drawing just looked like a random collection of lines strung together. Holes in the dirt punctuated the intersections of lines in several places, but they served no discernable purpose and hid nothing.
They had concentrated their initial search on the center white space that radiated lines in multiple directions. Unless the xenobium was buried deep beneath the surface, the radiation meter would detect a pronounced signal, but nothing significant registered on the device.
Zotkin shook his head. “I’ve been over every inch of this drawing. The xenobium might have been here at one time, but it’s gone now.”
“We never had a chance to find it here,” Colchev said. “Did we, Mrs. Turia?”
Zotkin and Kiselow turned to Fay, who smirked.
“You really are stupid if you thought I would tell you anything.”
Colchev nodded appreciatively. “Very good act. Convincing, although I gave it a fifty-fifty chance that you were lying.”
Fay laughed. “I’m sure.”
“It doesn’t matter. I would have chosen this location to visit first anyway. More isolated and easier to get the xenobium if it really was here.”
Zotkin took Colchev aside. “Do you want me to kill her?”
Colchev sighed. “Eventually.”
“Now.”
“Not yet. The news from Rapa Nui this morning said that all power was out, but there were no mass casualties.”
“What if Kessler was wrong about the gamma rays?”
“No. The experiments they did with the Australian sample proved that gamma ray emissions from the weapon would be deadly at that range. Somehow they got it off the island.”
“Do you think Locke survived?”
“If he did, we may need Fay as a bargaining chip. But when we do find the xenobium, we will kill her. Satisfactory?”
Zotkin looked as if he were about to protest again, but held his tongue.
Colchev turned around. “All right. Back to the car.” He checked his watch. “We should be at Cahuachi in forty-five minutes.”
Girdled by adobe brick walls, the terraced Grand Pyramid loomed over the sprawling Cahuachi complex. In the days when the city served as the religious center of the Nazca culture, its citizens would ritualistically climb the myriad stairs in a procession that snaked around the forty structures built to house the civilization’s heritage and treasures.
Today the city was uninhabited, awaiting the arrival of the first tourist buses.
Jess was surprised that Tyler had been able to convince the police to provide six officers for the search at Cahuachi, but the show of force had been for naught. Jess shouted Fay’s name repeatedly. Silence was the only response. There was no sign of her or Colchev.
“Do you think they’ve come and gone?” she said to Tyler.
“I doubt it. They wouldn’t have made it before nightfall yesterday, and searching in the dark would have been difficult.”
After a thorough inspection of the grounds, the lead officer called his men back to the main plaza, where he approached Jess and Tyler with a combination of regret and annoyance.
“Senor Locke,” he said. “She is not here.”
“Are you sure they couldn’t be hiding somewhere?” Jess said.
The policeman shrugged. “Senor, this place very big, but we look everywhere. Nobody here.”
“Officer,” Tyler said, “I think the best option is to leave some of your men here and take us to the Mandala. They could be there instead.”
The policeman frowned. Jess had never gotten the feeling that he believed their story. “I’m sorry, senor,” the officer said. “We go now.”
“We’re staying for a while to look around.”
“We are?” Jess asked. “What about the Mandala?”
Tyler nodded slightly to show her that he had a plan.
The policeman shrugged. “Okay. If you see these people, call us and we come back.”
The officers returned to their cars and drove off, leaving the rental as the only car in the lot.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Jess said.
Tyler started walking toward the Grand Pyramid. “Without some muscle, we’ll never be able to take Colchev. We don’t even have any guns. If Colchev
“Which means he’ll come here.”
“Right. And if the xenobium really is here, we need to find it before he does.”
Jess suddenly understood. “Then we’ll have something to bargain with!”
“If we find it, that is. We’ll do better to search on our own. Since this is probably a Peruvian national monument, the police wouldn’t look too kindly on us breaking in and stealing an artifact from it.”
“That kind of thing didn’t seem to bother Indiana Jones.”
“Yeah, but they never show you the actual sequel to his tomb raiding: Indiana Jones and the Museum’s Repatriation Lawsuit.”
“You’re not going to trade the xenobium for Nana,” Jess said. “Are you?”
Tyler’s jaw clenched. “We can’t. I’m sorry. It would be too dangerous for Colchev to get his hands on it.”
“I’m getting her back!” Jess cried out. “I don’t care about the damn xenobium!”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “We will get Fay back. We can use the xenobium as a lure.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll think about how that will work later. Let’s get the xenobium first.”
Jess grunted and shrugged his hands away, but she didn’t argue further.
Tyler and Jess checked the interior chambers that had been excavated, including the large tunnel that seemed to be the main entrance inside, but it ended at a brick wall and there was no indication of a way further into the pyramid. They climbed to the top of the exterior so they could get a better lay of the land. A maze of walls, trenches, and stairs had been unearthed around it, revealing the smaller mounds that seemed like pale imitations. Beyond that were sere hills and pocked terrain that could have served as a backdrop for a film set on the moon. The blue of the clear sky was the only reminder that she wasn’t looking at a sepia-toned photo.
