‘Sorry, I forgot about the time difference!’ England was five and a half hours ahead of Venezuela, making it past ten o’clock in Bournemouth. ‘I’ll call back another time.’
‘No, don’t be silly, Edward. It’s never a problem staying up to talk to you. Where are you ringing from?’
‘We’re in Venezuela, but probably won’t be for long. Nina’s on the trail of something.’
‘Venezuela!’ Nan said, alarmed. ‘Is it safe there? I saw all that trouble on the news.’
‘Yeah, we saw some of it too,’ said Eddie, smiling to himself. ‘But everything’s okay now.’
‘Oh, I’m glad. You do lead an exciting life. But when are you going to be in the newspapers, or on television? Everyone saw Nina in the Sphinx last year, but you were only in the background. Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I’m not much of one for publicity. Nina isn’t either,’ he added, ‘but she sort of gets stuck with it. Besides, who wants to be famous? I’d rather be rich.’
‘Well, you’d better get to work on that. And while you’re at it, some great-grandchildren for your old nan would be nice. Before I pop my clogs.’
‘Plenty of time for that, Nan,’ Eddie insisted. ‘But I’ll see what Nina thinks once we find what she’s after.’
At that moment, Nina burst into the room. ‘Eddie, Eddie!’ she said in excitement. ‘We’ve found it! Come and see!’ She rushed back out.
‘She doesn’t waste time, does she?’ said Nan, amused. ‘So, about those great-grandchildren . . . ’
He sighed. ‘I’d better go, before she drags me out. But I’ll call you again when I get the chance.’
‘That’ll be lovely. Will you be coming back to England? I’d love to see you again.’
‘Yeah, soon as I can. I’ll take you for another walk down to the sea.’
‘I can’t wait. Talk to you again soon, Edward. Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ he replied. ‘Bye.’
‘Goodbye, love.’
He hung up, then went into the lounge just as Mac and Kit entered. ‘We were summoned,’ Mac told him wryly.
The three men joined the archaeologists at the table. ‘So, what’ve we got?’ Eddie asked.
‘This is where we’re looking,’ said Nina, tapping a map of Peru. The area beneath her fingernail was in the Amazonas region, south of the border with Ecuador, on the eastern flank of the Andes. ‘Leonard worked out that one of the last places the Incas visited en route was Kuelap, which is a pretty amazing fortress near Chachapoyas.’ She flipped open a reference book to show her audience a picture of its imposing outer wall.
‘Impressive,’ said Mac. ‘And it looks in good shape, too. Did the Spanish discover it?’
‘Actually, no,’ Osterhagen told him. ‘Even though they reached that region, they never found it – which is why it has survived so well.’
‘Which makes it more likely that they never found El Dorado either,’ said Nina. ‘The whole region is cloud forest; high-altitude jungle. Very few inhabitants, now or then – and lots of places to hide.’
‘So how close have you got to finding it?’ Eddie asked.
‘We think within a couple of miles. The directions from Kuelap take you more or less due north for about forty miles, until you reach the point where the Incas headed northeast towards Paititi.’
Kit peered at the map’s contour lines. ‘It looks rather hard to get to.’
Osterhagen shook his head. ‘Not as hard as you think. There is a road that runs through the mountains. Well, I say a road, but it will not exactly be an autobahn. It will be narrow, it will be steep . . . and it will be dangerous. Very dangerous.’
‘Oh, great,’ said Eddie. ‘A death road.’
‘A what?’ Macy asked, alarmed.
‘Well, you know how in the States dangerous roads have barriers and warning signs and kerbs to keep you away from massive cliffs?’
‘Yeah?’
‘This won’t.’ She appeared unhappy at the prospect.
‘Any road is better than no road,’ Mac assured her. ‘But presumably it can’t be too close to the road, or somebody would have discovered it by now.’
‘We’ve got some more clues,’ Nina replied. ‘The map in Paititi showed that El Dorado was very close to a waterfall.’ She nodded towards a laptop. ‘We’ve checked the IHA’s satellite imagery, and think we’ve pinpointed it.’
‘And we should be able to drive most of the way,’ said Osterhagen. ‘There will be a trek through the jungle, but nothing worse than at Paititi. The area around the waterfall is reasonably flat.’
Mac nodded. ‘That sounds good.’
‘For what?’ Eddie asked.
‘For me.’
