Empire of Gold

‘No,’ said Nina firmly. ‘Something this big, there’s no way it could have been kept quiet. The Conquistadors would have bragged about finding it to rub in their victory over the Incas, and there isn’t a treasure hunter in history who could have resisted the fame of revealing a find like this. Besides, look at it. The whole place is almost intact. If it’s been looted, they were very orderly about it.’

It was true. Unlike the ruins of Paititi, where the ceaseless growth of the jungle and the rot of climate and insects had left only broken shells, here the majority of the buildings still had roofs. The coverings of woven leaves had long since gone, but the skeletal wooden beams that had supported them remained in place. ‘Then,’ said Zender imperiously, ‘we must explore the city and find the treasures the Incas left behind.’ He paused, then continued more hesitantly: ‘What are we looking for?’

‘Riches beyond imagination,’ said Osterhagen in a portentous voice, sharing a smile with Nina. He pointed up the slope. ‘The map from Paititi showed the Punchaco in the Temple of the Sun – and the last piece of Dr Wilde’s statues in the royal palace. We start at the top.’

‘Ready when you are,’ said Nina.

The group set out up the hill. The limited space available to the city’s builders meant that the steep streets were even more narrow and twisting than those in Paititi. ‘I wish I’d brought my stick,’ Mac complained.

‘It’d probably be quicker to hop over the roofs,’ said Eddie, looking up at the buildings on each side. They splashed through a stream that ran across their path. ‘Keep our feet dry, too.’

‘I don’t think my feet could get any wetter,’ Nina complained. She looked back to see where the stream led, finding that it drained into the reservoir. The trap was self-sustaining.

Osterhagen halted beside a small, low structure. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

He shone a flashlight inside. ‘A tomb. Look.’ She peered through the entrance, seeing huddled shapes within. ‘Mummies.’

The sight gave Nina a small chill. Unlike the traditional image of an Egyptian mummy, lying flat and completely swathed in cloth, the bodies of Inca mummies were curled up tightly in their shrouds as if straitjacketed – but with their heads left exposed. The sunken eye sockets of a dead, parchment-yellow face stared back at her, shrivelled lips pulled away to expose its teeth almost with a sneer. Behind it, stacked like sacks of flour, were other bodies.

Macy looked over Nina’s shoulder, and wished she hadn’t. ‘Gross. That’s gonna be in my nightmares. How many of them are there?’

Nina looked up the hill, seeing that a whole section of the lost city seemed dedicated to the little mausoleums. ‘Dozens – hundreds, even.’

‘Is there treasure?’ called Zender. ‘Have you found any treasure?’

‘Depends how you define it,’ said Nina, using her own torch to pick out grubby metal inside the chamber. The object seemed like a cross between a knife and a small trowel, a fat blade with a decidedly unergonomic handle in the shape of a heavily stylised human figure.

‘It is a tumi,’ said Osterhagen. ‘A ceremonial knife – they have been found with many mummies. Some were made from gold, but this looks more like bronze.’

‘Only bronze?’ Zender tutted. ‘Then it can wait. But we can’t. Move along, move along!’

Even Juanita seemed exasperated by his impatience, but none of the Peruvian contingent raised a voice to object; he was, after all, technically their boss. Nina had no such concerns. ‘Archaeology isn’t like the Olympics,’ she chided. ‘Bronze isn’t the loser’s consolation prize.’

Mac chuckled. ‘I don’t think that’s quite what the symbolism of the medal ceremony means.’

They continued up the slope. Before long, the pathway became noticeably wider, the surrounding buildings larger. ‘Leonard, go right,’ said Nina when they reached a junction with a tower-like structure to their left. The route ahead continued uphill, but the alternative seemed to lead to a more open area. ‘If it’s like Paititi . . .’

It was. They soon emerged on a plaza, built up at the eastern end, dug out of the sloping rock floor at the west to keep the whole expanse flat. A broad stone stairway led to the higher levels. She looked towards the cave mouth, seeing the lower levels of the city spread out below. ‘God, they were on the run, and they still put in the effort to build all this. It’s incredible.’

‘And we haven’t even found the really awesome stuff yet,’ Macy reminded her, starting for the stairway.

‘All of this is awesome!’ Nina protested with pricked professional pride, looking to the other archaeologists for support. But even Osterhagen was moving with the rest of the group towards the steps, as if magnetically drawn. With a huff, she gave in and followed them.

‘This is how I feel when I’m trying to talk to you about footie,’ Eddie teased her.

They ascended through several steeply ranked tiers of buildings to the Temple of the Sun. As Osterhagen reached the top, Nina paused. ‘Hold on,’ she called. ‘I can hear water.’ Eddie jerked a thumb at the falls. ‘Ha ha,’ she said, with a very fake smile. ‘No, I mean ahead of us. And it’s bigger than that little stream we crossed.’

Osterhagen strode along the side of the temple. ‘I hear it too. I think . . . ah, of course!’ he said as the source came into view. ‘Ritual fountains. They have been found at several other Inca sites.’

Beyond the temple was a small square, overlooked by the shadowed palace on the tier above. Several jets of water gushed out of the paving slabs, falling back into rectangular pools to run off into drainage holes. ‘This must be what makes the stream,’ suggested Kit.

‘Yeah, but what’s making them?’ said Nina. As well as the tinkle and splash of the fountains, there was still the other noise she had heard, considerably deeper. Beyond the palace, at the very rear of the cavern. ‘Back there.’ She started for the next flight of steps.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Osterhagen, surprised. ‘This is the Temple of the Sun! The Punchaco could be inside.’

‘There’s something I want to check,’ she said. ‘This cave was originally carved out by water. I want to find out why there isn’t still a river running through it.’