Empire of Gold

eyes.

She felt the swirling, clammy darkness rising to swallow her again, and shifted her head, resting it against the metal bars for the coolness they provided. But it didn’t last long. The awful weariness pulled at her once more . . .

A noise startled her into wakefulness. Two soldiers dragged Kit into the room and dumped him back in his cell before slamming its door and leaving. Nina pushed herself upright. ‘Kit,’ she said, her voice weak. ‘Kit, are you okay?’

The bruises on his face revealed that Stikes had used old-fashioned interrogation techniques in addition to his vile little pet. One eye was blackened, the lower lid puffy and swollen, and there was a smear of blood down his chin from a split lip. ‘I’ve had better hospitality,’ he croaked. ‘I . . . ’ His face suddenly twisted with pain, and he let out a choked scream as he clutched his chest.

‘Kit?’ said Nina, alarm rapidly turning to fear. ‘Kit! Oh my God!’ She tried to stand, but her legs still felt rubbery. ‘Hey!’ she shouted at the guard. ‘Do something, help him!’

The guard gave her an uncomprehending look, apparently not understanding English, before turning his gaze back to the convulsing Indian . . . and doing nothing.

Horrified, Nina rattled the door. ‘He’s dying! Help him!’ But the soldier’s expression remained dispassionate. Appalled, she realised what that meant; now that he had been interrogated, Kit was expendable. She tried to reach across the empty middle cell to him, but he was too far away. ‘Kit!’

His moans stopped, and he slowly raised his head to give her a pained wink with his swollen eye. ‘It was worth a try,’ he rasped.

Nina glanced back at the guard, who still showed no signs of understanding what was being said, before lowering her voice. ‘You were faking?’

‘If he had opened the door, I could have found out how well I remembered my unarmed combat training.’

The guard was younger and considerably beefier than Kit. ‘As much as I want to get out of here,’ said Nina, ‘I’m kinda glad you didn’t put it to the test.’

Kit managed a look of mock affront. ‘Are you saying I couldn’t have taken him down?’

‘I’m saying that I know how I feel right now. I’d guess that you probably feel worse.’

‘You’re probably right.’ He slumped on the concrete floor, sweat beading his forehead.

‘What did Stikes want from you?’ Nina asked, hoping that conversation would help him – and her – stay awake.

A hesitation. ‘He . . . asked me lots of questions about Interpol. He wanted to find out how much I had told headquarters about Callas.’ He moved his arm to display a reddened scorpion sting. ‘He believed me when I said that they knew nothing. Eventually. But what about you?’ he went on before Nina could ask another question. ‘What did he want from you?’

‘El Dorado. How to find it.’

‘And did you tell him?’

She looked away, shamefaced. ‘Yeah. All about the statues, earth energy, how I used them to find Paititi . . . everything.’

With visible strain, Kit sat up. ‘Nina, you did nothing wrong. Nobody can stand up to torture, however strong they think they are.’

‘Eddie probably could.’ The thought of her husband filled her with sudden guilt; her own suffering had pushed him from her mind. ‘Oh, God, I hope he’s okay. I don’t even know what happened to him at Paititi.’

‘I think he is still alive. Stikes seems to be the kind who would enjoy telling you if he wasn’t.’

Despite her efforts to stay focused, the sickening tiredness was rising to swallow Nina again. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she whispered, slumping against the bars.

The trek westwards was not difficult physically; the thick jungle canopy actually made movement easier by starving the undergrowth of light. Eddie and the others made steady, if plodding, progress.

What made it unpleasant were the humid heat, which refused to lessen even after the sun had set, and the insects. They were bad enough in daylight, but once the twilight gloom forced Macy to switch on the torch they swarmed around the light. ‘You know what?’ she complained after a particularly huge and loathsome bug batted her in the face with its wings. ‘Screw the rainforest! They can bulldoze the whole place into strip malls for all I care!’

Eventually, to everyone’s relief, the jungle thinned, giving way to open ground that had been subjected to slash-and-burn cultivation. Before long they found themselves on a road – not a glorified dirt track like those found in the rainforest, but an actual paved highway. It was only one lane in each direction, but to the exhausted group it seemed like an eightlane motorway. ‘Oh, thank God!’ Macy cried. ‘Civilisation! Kinda.’

There was no sign of traffic. Eddie checked his watch; it was coming up to nine p.m. ‘Let’s hope somebody’s out at this time of night. And that Venezuela doesn’t have laws against hitchhiking!’

They laid Becker down beside the northbound lane, and waited. After a few minutes, headlights appeared to the south. Eddie stood in the road and waved for the approaching vehicle to stop. Macy joined him. ‘What?’ she said, to his look. ‘If the driver’s a guy, he might be more likely to stop for a hot babe, right?’

She was covered in dirt and sweat, clothes torn, hair a ratty, tangled mess. ‘Right now you look about as hot as I do. But maybe he likes it dirty . . . ’

‘Shut. Up!’

The vehicle, a beaten-up pickup truck, stopped. Macy did the talking, explaining that they had been in a crash – she left out that it had involved a plane to avoid awkward questions – and forced to walk through the jungle. The