Standing before this blocky pile, Ollantay held court. He was in his Inca finery, gaudy woolen tunic and trousers, those gold ear-studs bright in the sun, and he had a gold helmet on his head, looted from some private collection during the bee-sting raids he had mounted on Cusco before this main assault. He stood erect, his face dark and proud, here on this day of his apotheosis.
Mayor Thorson stood before Ollantay dubiously, listening to the conversation that passed between Ollantay and his senior generals, such as they were. They were a pack of thugs and troublemakers who had been attracted to Ollantay’s cause from the highland communities, farms and mines, here to settle old scores. There were even a few of the dispossessed from the raft communities offshore. This core group stood around a wooden box that looked like a coffin, hauled here on a cart.
Among them was a man Gary didn’t recognize, in a fresh-looking AxysCorp uniform. Aged maybe thirty, he was overweight, an unusual sight nowadays; he had a puffy, resentful face, and he stood by Ollantay nervously.
And Kristie was here. Her little boy wore feathers in his hair and had his own Inca-prince costume. He held his mother’s hand, one free finger probing a small nostril. It had been a shock this morning, the first shock of the day, for Gary to see Kristie Caistor at the side of a man like Ollantay. In fact, he saw, she wore a pink plastic backpack, incongruous amid the Inca stuff, and Gary had a faint memory of how she had carried the thing as that bright, pretty London kid, long ago.
Gary murmured to Thorson, “So what’s the plan?”
“Ollantay has spies in Project City,” she said. “Moles. Like that fat guy, evidently. Lammockson and his senior people have holed up in a sports stadium a few blocks thataway.” She pointed northeast along the transverse avenue.
And that was where Lily and Piers must be, Gary thought. What a strange reunion this was going to be. “So we’re going to lay siege?”
“Yeah. Although Ollantay seems to think he has a way in. Meanwhile Ollantay has some kind of ceremony to carry out here.”
“A ceremony. Some Inca thing?” Gary glanced around, at the blank faces of the buildings that surrounded them, the empty roads. He heard the distant buzz of a chopper. “The longer we wait here the more vulnerable we are.”
“Tell me about it. But you know Ollantay. Look at these guys. A lot of them aren’t thinking at all. They’re dispossessed, they’ve slaved for Lammockson, they’re refugees-as we are. The guys from the rafts in particular have got nothing to lose. This is their moment in the sun, their chance to strike back at something, somebody. The events of today have as much to do with testosterone as Lebensraum, I’d say.”
“That’s a grim thought.”
Her face was hard. “Well, we’re here to maximize our own gain. We owe nothing to Nathan Lammockson.”
The fat thirty-year-old broke away from Ollantay’s circle and approached Gary. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Gary Boyle. One of the hostages from Barcelona.”
Gary stared at him, startled. “Have I met you?”
“I was just a kid when you got out. Maybe you don’t remember. I’m Hammond Lammockson.”
Gary immediately saw the likeness to Nathan, which had been pricking his memory. He even spoke with a trace of his father’s London accent. “Wow. Yes, I do remember you. What are you doing here?”
“With AxysCorp’s enemies, you mean? I guess you don’t know my father well. The game’s up for him. He will be put on trial by the newly constituted government of Qosqo.”
“Trial, huh. And what are you, a witness for the prosecution?”
Hammond’s face was resentful, angry. “I don’t know what you think of Nathan Lammockson. I don’t care. As a father he’s a disaster. He spent his life putting me down, belittling me, marginalizing me.”
Gary could imagine that.“Maybe he thought he was toughening you up.”
“Well, he succeeded.”
Gary said, “Lily Brooke, Piers Michaelmas-they’re here, they’re still alive? I’ve not been able to contact them since we came to the area.”
“Oh, yeah. Still alive. Still my father’s favorites. Whereas I’m just a passenger. He was always closer to you people than to me, you hostages.” He sneered. “Like pets.”
Gary recoiled from this man’s bitterness.“You’re his son. I remember Nathan saying that everything he did he was doing for you, you and his grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren. Yeah. You should have seen the frigid bitch he chose for me to have those grandchildren for him. Well, I failed to oblige.”
“I can’t believe you’re planning to betray him.”
“Watch me.” And he walked away, back to the Quechua group, as Ollantay began his ceremony.
Ollantay climbed up onto the coffinlike box. The murmur of conversation around him ceased.
“So we begin the end-game,” Ollantay said. “The showdown with Nathan Lammockson, and the eradication of the stain of colonialism. And it’s fitting that we make ready for the final battle here at this historic site.” He waved a hand. “This is Qoricancha, the temple of the sun-the most important place of worship in the Inca empire. Once, seven hundred sheets of gold covered the walls. The mummified bodies of emperors sat on thrones of gold and silver. Even in this patio where we stand there were golden statues of beautiful women, and llamas, trees, flowers-even golden butterflies. The Spaniards desecrated the temple, seeking only gold, caring nothing for the Incas and their gods, and they turned this stone husk into a Christian church.
“But now the Inca sun rises once more.” He raised a military boot, and slammed it down on the coffin lid. The lid splintered and broke open. Ollantay reached down and hauled up a tangle of bones, broken and dusty, fragments threaded together with bits of wire into a loose representation of a skeleton. Ollantay grasped the skull, its jaw gaping open, and rattled the bones in the air. “Behold Pizarro! Behold Pizarro!”
There was a huge roar from his followers. Two men pushed upright a gibbet improvised from tent poles, and a noose was passed around the neck of the conquistador, five hundred years dead, his bones yellowed and splintered.
As the skeleton was hoisted aloft before the mighty walls of the temple, Mayor Thorson murmured, “God help us all.”
70
It had been an awfully long time since Cusco’s Estadio Universitario had been used for the purposes it was designed for, Lily reflected. Now the stadium’s pitch was crowded by tents and Portaloos. The grass was trampled and cut up by vehicle tracks, where it wasn’t covered by duck boards. Stocks of food and water had been laid in, the gates sealed shut, and gantries that had once hosted television cameras were home to machine gun nests. Lammockson’s private army was short on heavy weaponry, but the pitch was ringed by small artillery pieces.
This was where Nathan Lammockson would make his stand. Since the reports had come in of Ollantay’s approach with his ragged army, Lammockson had put in place a kind of scorched earth policy. He had retreated to this preprepared fortress with a couple of thousand people, his most trusted guards, his closest advisers and supporters, everybody that was precious and loyal to him, in fact. The rest of Project City had been evacuated, the citizens either holed up in churches and cellars or sent to Chosica where they were sheltering on the unfinished Ark. After that the town had been emptied of supplies. Nathan was convinced the rebels would disperse as soon as they got hungry and thirsty.
Inside the stadium the atmosphere was strange. The sky above was bright blue, and the sun, low this winter day, cast a golden light into the stadium, making the polished weaponry gleam, and the murmur of the thousands gathered in this echoing bowl gave it the feel of a sports crowd. It all made Lily feel peculiarly cheerful, as if it were a Saturday afternoon in London and she was taking Amanda’s kids to a football match, at Fulham or Queen’s Park Rangers. But a different sort of fixture was being planned today.
Lammockson himself was at the very center of the pitch, where once soccer teams had kicked off their matches. He was sitting in the sun on a fold-out canvas chair, sunglasses masking his face. But he was ringed by
