though as if drawn by a child, and he remembered that Joseph of Cordoba – the mad monk – was supposed to have been able to predict the future. He flicked through it. Some of the pages had been marked with a modern pen. Someone had scribbled down words and figures, underlining certain areas of the text. Diego Salamanda? The diary had belonged to him and he could have spent weeks deciphering it. It seemed that he had left some of his handiwork behind.
Matt tried to make sense of some of the words but the monk had written in ancient Spanish and anyway his handwriting was almost illegible. “I can’t read this language,” he said. “And although Pedro can speak it, he can’t read…”
“Maybe the professor will be able to work it out,” Jamie suggested.
Professor Chambers. Matt remembered how Richard had looked when he had helped carry her in. The two of them had been inside for a long time.
And then the door of the study opened. Pedro came out. He shook his head briefly and sat down, looking miserable. The doctor followed him. He muttered a few words to Richard, then left the house, doing his best to avoid eye contact. That was when Matt knew that it wasn’t going to be good news.
“Matt…” Richard called him over to the door. “She wants to see you,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “She wants to say goodbye.”
“Is she…?” Matt realized what he’d just been told. “She can’t be dying,” he said. “What about Pedro? Can’t he help her?”
“It’s too late for Pedro. There’s nothing he can do.” Richard sighed. “We’ve called an ambulance for her and it’s on its way now. But she’s not going to make it. I’m sorry, Matt. I don’t know how it happened but she was stabbed. There’s been a lot of internal bleeding and…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “She’s not in any pain. The doctor’s seen to that. But there’s nothing more we can do for her. Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No…” Matt went into the study.
Joanna Chambers was lying on the day-bed that she liked to use as a place to think when she was working. As usual, her desk was completely covered in papers along with a bottle of brandy and a box of her favourite cigars. The old-fashioned radio that she liked to listen to was next to her computer but it was turned off, silent, and somehow that made Matt sadder than anything else, the thought that she would never listen to it again.
She was still in her dressing gown but someone had drawn a blanket over her legs and chest. There was only one light on and it was burning low, casting a soft glow across the room.
He thought she was asleep but as he closed the door, she looked up. “Matt…?”
He went over to her. “The ambulance is on its way,” he muttered. “The doctor says…”
“Don’t tell me any stuff and nonsense,” she cut in, and just for a moment she sounded exactly like her old self. “There’s nothing they can do for me and anyway I’m not going into any local hospital. Dreadful place.” She tried to shift her position but she didn’t have the strength. “Come and sit next to me,” she said.
Matt did as he was told. His eyes were stinging and there was an ache in his throat. Why did it have to happen like this? Why couldn’t she be all right? He remembered Professor Chambers as he had first seen her, piloting her own plane. She had worked out the secret of the Nazca Lines and she had been with him, in the middle of the desert, when they were attacked by the condors. He knew that without her, he would never have located the second gate. And since then, she had looked after them, never once complaining as her house was invaded and her work interrupted.
Matt had used his power to protect himself. Why hadn’t he been able to do the same for her?
“Now you listen to me,” she said. She found his hand and clasped it. “You mustn’t be upset about me. You have a very great responsibility, Matt. I don’t think you have any idea yet what is going to be asked of you. And how old are you? Fifteen! It’s not fair…”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, fighting for breath.
“The Old Ones will be beaten,” she said. “Ever since the world began, there’s always been good and evil, but somehow we’ve managed to muddle through. You’ll see. It may not be easy. What happened today… silly, really. We should have known they would come.”
She let go of his hand. She couldn’t manage very much more.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she said. Her voice was fading away. “I’m so glad I met you, really. I’m glad we had our time here. I’ve always loved this place, always been happy here…”
She pointed at the door with one finger, telling him to leave her. Matt did as she said. Richard was waiting for him outside.
The ambulance arrived ten minutes later. But it was too late. Professor Chambers was already dead.
COUNCIL OF WAR
Matt woke up with the smell of burnt wood in his nostrils and the taste of it in his mouth. He had slept for about six hours but he might as well not have bothered. Even before he got out of bed, he knew that he was as tired as he had been when he got into it shortly after two o’clock the night before.
He’d had to share with Pedro. His own room had been destroyed by the fire, along with everything inside it – and it was only as he opened his eyes the following morning that he realized exactly what that meant. He no longer had a passport. He wasn’t going to be travelling anywhere today, certainly not on a commercial flight – and that must have been just what the attack had set out to achieve. The Old Ones didn’t want him arriving in London. They didn’t want him anywhere near Scarlett Adams. And although there were policemen and private detectives looking out for her, she was completely isolated. One in England. Four in Peru. It certainly didn’t add up to the Five.
Pedro was sitting, cross-legged on his bed, wearing only a pair of shorts. There was a plaster on the side of his head. Matt guessed that he had been awake for a while. Pedro was always the first to get up, but then, of course, in his old life he would have been begging on the streets of Lima, waiting for the commuter traffic long before dawn. The two boys had been lying next to each other in twin beds.
“So what do we do now?” Pedro asked.
“I don’t know, Pedro.” Matt got out of bed and pulled on a fresh T-shirt. “We’ll have to meet and decide.”
“Will we still go to England?”
“Yes.”
Pedro hadn’t spoken very much about the journey and Matt suspected that he was finding it difficult to get his head around it. He had never been out of Peru in his life. Even the notion of getting on a plane was completely alien to him. He had only flown once and that had been in a helicopter which had crashed. The thought of spending fifteen hours in the air and landing in a completely different world unnerved him.
“I am sad that the professor is dead,” he said. “She was very kind.”
“I know.” Matt wondered if he could have saved her. Was her death his fault? It seemed to him now that she had been doomed from the moment they had arrived, although he knew she would never have seen it that way. Even so… It had been two days since they had received the fax with the news about Scar. He wished now that they had all left at once.
There were now just five of them remaining: Matt, Pedro, Scott, Jamie and Richard. They met outside, sitting at a wooden table in the shade of a silk-cotton tree – a kapok, as it was also known. Professor Chambers had liked taking the boys around her garden, showing them all the different plants and talking about them. This one had somehow found its way out of the rainforest, she had said, and she couldn’t understand how it was growing here at all. The table had been set up in the shade, the umbrella-shaped canopy and creamy white flowers of the kapok shielding them from the sun.
They might have been safer in the house but they could hardly bear to look at it, the ruin that it had become. Somehow, it didn’t seem likely that the Old Ones would return… not in the daylight. And anyway, the Incas were somewhere close. There was no danger of a second attack. Richard had brought out a tray of iced lemonade and a plate of empanadas, the little cheese pastries that they had often devoured. But nobody was hungry. They were exhausted and unhappy. Nobody knew what they were supposed to do.
One thing was sure. They couldn’t stay here much longer. The house still had water and electricity and they might even be able to repair the roof. But there was no alarm system. The Incas couldn’t protect them indefinitely.
