But with the khipu and the painted account of the Incas’ last journey, she wouldn’t need the statues. She would have a map.
She stayed silent, trying not to let the unexpected elation of discovery show on her face. Stikes still had the scorpion, still had another dose of antivenom he could use to take her to the agonising edge of death if he thought she was concealing information. He looked down at her, cold blue eyes piercing her soul. Had he realised that she had worked out more?
No. He turned away and opened the door, summoning the two soldiers back in. They untied her and hauled her back through the cellars.
‘Nina,’ said Kit as she was dumped, rubber-legged, in her cell. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Super fine,’ she moaned. The antivenom may have worked, but she still felt numb and nauseous, the sting on her arm an angry red lump.
‘What did they do to you?’
‘Your turn to find out,’ said Stikes. The soldiers opened his cell. No attempts to grapple the prisoner here; one of the men simply drove a punch into Kit’s stomach, doubling him over.
‘You bastards,’ said Nina, but she was too weak even to raise a hand in protest as Kit was dragged from the cage. ‘He’s not an archaeologist, he can’t tell you anything about El Dorado.’
Stikes held up a hand. The soldiers stopped. ‘Maybe not,’ said the Englishman, ‘but there’s something else he can tell me.’ He leaned closer to the Interpol agent, examining him with unblinking intensity. ‘Why are you here, Mr Jindal?’
‘Smuggling . . . case,’ Kit groaned.
‘No, why are you
‘What do you mean, why is he really here?’ Nina demanded. But Stikes simply gave her a disdainful look before slamming the door behind him.
18
The jungle rolled below, mile after mile of endless green. The Cessna was heading almost due north towards Caracas, detouring slightly to avoid the peaks of the Serrania Mapiche mountains. The sun dropped towards the horizon, casting a golden hue over the landscape. The explorers had left Valverde less than an hour ago, so were not even halfway to their destination, and it would be dark in around forty minutes.
‘Is landing at night going to be a problem?’ Eddie, in the copilot’s seat, asked Valero. ‘Without a radio, I mean.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the Venezuelan replied. ‘I can do it.’
‘Great.’ He looked down the cabin. ‘How’s Ralf?’
‘Asleep,’ said Macy. She and Osterhagen were taking it in turns to watch the injured man, having used the plane’s first aid kit to clean and bandage his gunshot wound. There was a good chance he would recover if he reached a hospital.
‘What about you?’
She grinned half-heartedly. ‘Oh, just kinda wishing I’d worked harder in school so I could have done a medical degree like my parents instead of archaeology. You get shot at less that way. Even in Miami.’
Eddie smiled, then examined a navigation chart. Valero had earlier pointed out a landmark: Cerro Autana, a great flat-topped mountain, standing alone on the jungle plain. The bizarre tower was now many miles behind them, so before long they would pass about ten miles east of the city of Puerto Ayacucho.
He noticed something else. Puerto Ayacucho, as a regional capital, had a fairly large airport . . . but it was also marked as a military facility. ‘Is this an airbase?’ he asked, pointing at the map.
It made sense, but Eddie was suddenly on edge. An airbase so close to the border would serve a strategic purpose, its planes patrolling the edge of Venezuelan airspace . . .
And intercepting intruders.
‘Where are the binocs?’ he demanded.
Macy found them, concerned by his change of tone. ‘What is it?’
‘If Callas has friends in the air force, we don’t need to land to meet them. They can come to us!’ He looked northwest through the binoculars, following the long sparkling line of the Orinoco until he spotted the greys and browns of civilisation. The airport was south of the city.
Even from this distance, it was easy to make out a couple of parked airliners. He was searching for something smaller, however. He panned away from the civilian terminal to a cluster of hangars and support buildings. Their drab functionality told him at a glance that this was the military facility.
Something was moving in the rippling heat. Camouflage paintwork: a fighter jet, rolling towards the runway.
It could have been a coincidence, the plane about to set out on a routine patrol . . . but he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. ‘Oscar – take us down as low as you can, and head away from the city. Quick!’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause if you don’t, we’ll be going down in flames! They’re sending a fighter after us.’
Shocked, Valero banked right and put the Cessna into a steep descent. Macy pulled her seatbelt tighter. ‘Okay, I don’t know much about planes, but aren’t we at kind of a horrible disadvantage in this thing?’ She gestured
