and the upstairs passenger compartment. Race sat in the upstairs section with the five other scientists going along on the expedition. The six Green Berets accompanying them were down in the cargo hold, stowing and checking their weapons.
Of the five civilians, Race knew two: Frank Nash and Lauren O'Connor.
'We'll have time for introductions later,' Nash said, sit- ring down next to Race and hauling the briefcase onto his lap. 'What's important right now is that we set you to work.'
He began unclasping the buckles on the briefcase.
'Can you tell me where we're going now?' Race asked.
'Oh yes, of course,' Nash said. 'I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before, but your office just wasn't secure. The windows could have been lased.'
'Lased?'
'With a laser-guided listening device. When we speak inside an office like yours, our voices actually make the win dows vibrate. Most modern office towers are equipped to deal with directional listening devices—they have electronic jamming signals running through the glass in their windows. Older buildings like yours don't. It would have been way too easy for someone to listen in.'
'So where are we going?'
'Cuzco, Peru-capital of the Incan empire before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1532,' Nash said. 'Now it's just a large country town, a few Incan ruins, big tourist attraction, so they tell me. We'll be travelling non-stop, with a couple of mid-air refuellings on the way.'
He opened the briefcase and extracted something from it.
It was a stack of paper—a loose pile of A3 sheets, maybe forty pages in total. Race saw the top sheet. It was a Xerox of an illustrated cover sheet.
It was the manuscript Nash had spoken about earlier, or at least a photocopy of it.
Nash handed the stack of paper over to Race and smiled.
'This is why you are here.'
Race took the pile from him, flipped over the cover sheet.
Now, Race had seen medieval manuscripts before—-manuscripts painstakingly reproduced by hand by devoted monks in the Middle Ages, back in the days before the printing press. Such manuscripts were characterised by an almost impossible intricacy of design and penmanship: perfect calligraphy - including wonderfully elaborate leading marks (the single letter that starts a new chapter)—and detailed pictographs in the margins that were designed to convey the mood of the work. Sunny and gay for pleasing books; dark and frightening for more sombre tales. Such was the detail, it was said that a monk could spend his entire life reproducing a single manuscript.
But the manuscript that Race saw now even in black- and-white photocopied form—was like nothing he had ever seen.
It was magnificent.
He flicked through the pages.
The handwriting was superb, precise, intricate, and the side margins were filled with drawings of gnarled snaking vines. Strange stone structures, covered in moss and shadow, occupied the bottom corners of each page. The overall effect was one of darkness and foreboding, of brooding malevolence.
Race flicked back to the cover page. It read:
NAF,AT/O VERI/ PRIESTO IN RUR/$/NCAR//$: OPERIS ALBERTO LIJ/S SANTIAGO
ANNO DOMINI MDLXV
Race translated. The true relation of a monk in the land of the A manuscript by Alberto Luis Santiago. It was dated
Race turned to face Nash, 'All right. I think it's about time you told me what this mission of yours is all about.'
Nash explained.
Brother Alberto Santiago had been a young Franciscan missionary sent to Peru. in 1532 to work alongside the con quistadors. While the conquistadors raped and pillaged the countryside, monks like Santiago were expected to convert the Incan natives to the wisdom of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
*Although it was written in 1565, well after Santiago's eventual return to Europe,' Nash said, 'it is said that the Santiago Manuscript recounts an incident that occurred around 1535, during the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors. According to medieval monks who claimed to have read it, the manuscript recounts a rather amazing tale: that of Hernando Pizarro's dogged pursuit of an Incan prince who, during the height of the siege of Cuzco, spirited the Incas' most venerated idol out of the walled city and fled with it into the jungles of eastern Peru.'
Nash swivelled in his seat. 'Walter,' he said, nodding to the bespectacled, balding mart sitting on the other side of the centre aisle, 'help me out here. I'm telling Professor Race about the idol.”
Walter Chambers got up from his seat and sat down opposite Race. Chambers was a mousy little man, three- quarters bald and bookish, the kind of guy who'd wear a bow tie to work.
'William Race. Walter Chambers,' Nash said. 'Waiter's an anthropologist from Stanford. Expert on Central and South American cultures—Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs and, especially, the Incas.'
Chambers smiled. 'So you want to know about the idol?'
'It would seem so,' Race said.
'The Incas called it “the Spirit of the People”,' Chambers said. 'It was a stone idol, but one that was carved
