Temple (11 page)

Race said, 'So if someone instructed us to follow a statue in the
direction of the• Mark of the Sun, they would be telling us to go
to the statue's left?'
'That would be correct,' Chambers said, hesitating. 'I
think.”
'What do you mean, you think?“ Nash said.
'Well, you see, over the past ten years, there's been sub stantial
debate among anthropologists as to whether or not the Mark of the
Sun was found on the left-hand side of the face or the right-hand
side. Incan carvings and pictographs universally depict the Mark of
the Sun—whether on pictures of humans or animals or whatever—under
the carving's left eye. Problems arise, however, when one reads
Spanish texts like the Relaci6n and the Royal Commentaries which
talk of people like Renco Capac and Tupac Amaru, both of whom
were said to have borne the Mark. The problem is, those books say
that Renco and Amaru had the mark under their right eyes. And as
soon as something like that arises, confusion reigns
supreme.'
'So what do you think?'
'Left-hand side, definitely.'
'And we should be able to find our way to the citadel?'
Nash said, worried.
'You can trust my judgement on this one, Colonel,'
Chambers said confidently. 'If we follow each statue to the left,
we'll find that citadel.'
Just then, a sing-song little bell rang from somewhere
nearby.
Race turned. It had come from Nash's laptop—an email message must
have just come through. Nash went back to his seat to get it.
Chambers turned to Race. 'It's all very exciting, isn't it?'
“Exciting isn't exactly the word I would use,' Race said.
He was just glad that he'd finished translating the manuscript
before they had landed in Cuzco. If Nash was going to venture into
the jungle after the idol, he didn't want to be a part of it.
He glanced at his watch.
It was 4:35 pm. It was getting late.
Just then, Nash appeared next to him.
'Professor,' he said. 'If you're up to it, I'd like you to come
along with us to Vilcafor.'
There was something in his tone that made Race pause.
This was a command, not a question.
'I thought you said if I translated the manuscript before we landed
I wouldn't even have to get off the plane.'
'I said that that might be the case. You'll recall that I also said
that if you did have to leave the plane, you'd have a team of Green
Berets looking after you. That is the circumstance now.'
'Why?' Race asked.
'I've arranged for a pair of helicopters to meet us at Cuzco,' Nash
said. 'We'll be using them to follow Santiago's trail from the air.
Unfortunately, I thought the manuscript would be more detailed in
its description of the location of the idol, more precise. But now
we're going to need you for the trip to Vilcafor, in case there are
any ambiguities between the text and the terrain.'
Race didn't like the sound of this. He felt that he had ful filled
his part of the deal, and the idea of going into the Amazon
rainforest made him decidedly uneasy.
On top of that, the tone of Nash's request made him even more
apprehensive. He got the feeling that now that Nash had him on
board the Hercules and bound for Cuzco, his options—and his ability
to say no—were extremely limited.
He felt trapped, railroaded into going somewhere he didn't want to
go. This wasn't part of the deal at all.
'Couldn't I just stay in Cuzco?' he offered lamely. 'Keep in
contact with you from there?'
'No,' Nash said. 'Definitely not. We're arriving through Cuzco, but
we won't be leaving that way. This plane and all the U.S. Army
personnel waiting for us in Cuzco will be leaving the city shortly
after we head off into the jungle in the choppers. I'm sorry,
Professor, but I need you. I need you to help me get to
Vilcafor.'
Race bit his lip. Christ…
'Well… all right,' he said reluctantly.
'Good,' Nash said, standing. 'Very good. Now, did I hear you say
earlier that you had some less formal clothes in that
bag of yours?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, I suggest you get changed into them. You're going to the
jungle now.'
The Hercules flew over the mountains.
Race emerged from the lavatory in the plane's lower cargo deck, now
dressed in a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of black
sneakers—the clothes that he'd packed for his lunchtime baseball
game. He was also wearing a cap—a battered, navy-blue New York
Yankees baseball cap.
He saw the Green Berets on the deck in front of him, preparing and
cleaning their weapons for the mission ahead. One of the
commandos—a red-headed older corporal named Jake 'Buzz'
Cochrane—-was talking animatedly as he cleaned the firing mechanism
of his M16o
'I tell you, boys, it was fucking apples,' he was saying.
“Apples. Sweet sixteen with cheap Doreen. Gentlemen, mark my words,
she is without a doubt, the most bang-fory6ur-buck whore in all of
South Carolina—'
At that moment, Cochrane caught sight of Race stand-
ing—listeningmat the lavatory door and he cut himself off.
All of the other Green Berets spun around and Race felt instantly
self-conscious.
He felt like an outsider. Someone who wasn't part of the
brotherhood. Someone who didn't belong.
He saw his bodyguard—the tall sergeant, Van Lewen—
hovering at the perimeter of the circle, and he smiled.
'Hey.'
Van Lewen smiled back. 'How's it going?'
'Good. Really good,' Race said lamely.
He walked past the now silent band of rugged Green
Berets, reached the steep flight of steps that led back up to
the main passenger deck.
As he climbed the stairs, however, he heard the Green
Beret named Cochrane mutter something from the cargo bay.
He knew he wasn't supposed to have heard it, but he
heard it anyway.
Cochrane had said, 'Fucking pansy.'
A voice came over the PA system as Race walked back down the centre
aisle of the passenger compartment. 'Commenc ing our descent now.
ETA Cuzco, twenty minutes.'
On his way to his seat, Race passed Walter Chambers.
The bespectacled little scientist was holding Race's notes
alongside another sheet of paper. It was a map of some sort, marked
with a felt-tip pen.
Bolognesi (Iparia }
MOUNTAINOUS j ::
REGION
Chambers looked up at Race.
'Ah, Professor,' he said. 'Just the man I was looking for. A point
of clarification. These notes here, “Paxu, Tupra and Roya',' he
pointed to Race's notes. 'These are in order, aren't they? I mean,
in the order Renco visited them.'
'They're in the same order as they appear in the manuscript.'
'Okay, good.'
'Hey, Walter,' Race said, sitting down next to Chambers.
“There was something I was hoping I could ask you.'
'Yes?'
'In the manuscript, Renco mentions a creature called the titi or
the rapa. What exactly is that?'
'Ah, the rapa; Chambers nodded. 'Hmmm, yes, yes. Not
really my field, but I do know a little bit about it.'
'And?'
'Like many other South American cultures, the Incans had an unusual
fascination with the great cats. They built statues to them, both
large and small, and sometimes they carved huge has reliefs of them
into entire mountain rock- faces. Why, the city of Cuzco was even
built in the shape of a puma.
'This fascination with the great cats, however, is really quite a
strange phenomenon, since South America is known for its lack of
great cats. The only large cats indigenous to the continent are the
jaguar—or panther—and the puma, which are actually only
medium-sized felines. They're not even close in size to the tiger
which is the largest of all the great cats.'
Chambers shifted in his seat. 'The rapa, however, is another story
altogether. It's more like the South American version of Bigfoot or
the Loch Ness monster. It's a legendary creature, a great big black
cat.
'As with Bigfoot and Nessie, you hear of sightings every couple of
years—farmers in Brazil complain about cattle mutilations; tourists
on the Inca Trail in Peru claim to see big cats running around at
night; and occasionally, local men are found brutally killed in the
lowlands of Colombia. But
no-one ever gets proof. There are a couple of photos, but they've
all been discredited—just blurry, out-of-focus shots that could be
anything from an ordinary old panther to a spectacled bear.'
'So it's a myth,' Race said. 'A giant-cat myth.'
'Don't dismiss giant-cat myths so quickly, Professor Race,'
Chambers said. 'They are quite common throughout the world. India.
South Africa. Siberia. Why, it might surprise you to learn that the
most vehement beliefs in giant-cat
myths come from England.'
'England?'
'The Beast of Exmoor, the Beast of Bahn. Giant cats that prowl the
moors late at night. Never caught. Never photographed.
But their prints are often found in the mud.
Goodness, if the sightings are true, chances are that the Hound of
the Baskervilles was not a dog, but actually a giant cat.'
Race snuffed a laugh at that and left Chambers to his work. He
returned to his seat. No sooner had he sat down, however, than he
felt someone sit down next to him. It was Lauren.
'Ah, the lucky cap,' she said, looking at Race's battered blue
Yankees cap. “I don't know if I ever told you this, but I
always hated that damned cap.'
'You told me/Race said.
'But you still wore it.'
“It's a good cap.'
Lauren's eyes wandered appraisingly over his T-shirt, jeans and
Nikes. Race noticed that she was dressed in a thick khaki shirt
rolled up at the sleeves, khaki trousers and a sturdy-looking pair
of hiking boots.
'Nice outfit,' she said, before he could say exactly the same
thing.
'What can I say?' he replied. 'When I packed for work today I
wasn't expecting to go to the jungle.'
Lauren threw her head back and laughed. It was the same laugh Race
remembered from the old days. Totally theatrical and of utterly
dubious sincerity.
'I'd forgotten how dry you were,' she said.
Race smiled weakly, bowed his head.
'How have you been, Will?” she asked gently.
'Good,' he lied. 'And you? You've obviously done well for yourself.
I mean, geez, DARPA…'
'Life is good,' she said. 'Life is very good. Listen, Will…“
And there it was. The transition. Lauren had always been good at
getting down to business. '… I just wanted to talk with you before
we landed. I just wanted to say that I don't want what happened
between us to get in the way of what we're doing here. I never
meant to hurt you—'
'You didn't hurt me,' Race said, perhaps a little too quickly. He
looked down at his shoelaces. 'Well, nothing that didn't mend after
a while.'
Not exactly true.
It had taken him a lot more than a while to get over Lauren
O'Connor.
Their relationship had been a classic sort of affair: the all-
American college mismatch. Race was smart, but had no money. Lauren
was brilliant, and her family had money to burn. Race went to USE
on a half sports scholarship. In return for playing football for
them, they paid half his tuition. He'd scraped together the other
half by working nights behind the bar at a local nightclub.
Lauren's parents had paid all her fees in full, in one up-front
payment.
They were together for two years. The footballer with decent but
not spectacular grades in languages, and the tall, beautiful
science major who was acing everything.
Race had loved it. Lauren was all he'd ever wanted in a
companion—intelligent, outgoing, acidly funny. At football parties,
she'd stand out like the sun on a cloudy day. And when she'd search
the room for him and find him and smile, he'd melt.
He fell in love with her.
And then Lauren won a scholarship to study at MIT for a year, doing
theoretical physics or something like that. She
went. He waited. Now it was the classic long-distance rela
tionship. Love over the phone. Race was faithful. He lived for
their weekly phone call.
And then she came back.
He was at the airport, waiting for her. He had the ring in his
pocket. He'd practised the speech a thousand times, got it just
right so that he'd drop to one knee at precisely the right moment
and ask her.
But when she came through the Arrivals gate that day, she already
had a diamond ring on her ring finger.
'Will. I'm sorry,' she'd said. 'But… well… I've met someone
else.'
Race never even got the ring out of his pocket.
And so he'd spent the rest of his time in college nose- down in the
books, resolutely single and unimaginably miserable.
He'd graduated fourth in his class in ancient languages and, to his
complete surprise, got an offer to teach at NYU.
With nothing else he wanted to do except maybe slashing his
wrists—he took it.
And now, now he was a humble language professor working out of an
old clapboard office in New York City while she was a theoretical
physicist working at the cutting edge of the United States
military's most esteemed high- technology weapons department.
Hmmm.
Race had never expected to see her again. Nor, he thought, did I
want to. But then, when Frank Nash had men tioned her name earlier
that morning, something inside of him had clicked. He'd wanted to
see what she had made of herself.
Well, he had seen that now and what he saw was clear— she'd made a
hell of a lot more out of herself than he had.
Race blinked, snapped out of it.
He came back to the present and found that he was star ing at her
wedding ring.
Jesus, get a grip, he thought to himself.
'Frank said you did a good job with the manuscript,'
Lauren said.
Race coughed, clearing his throat as well as his mind. 'As much as
I could do. I mean, hey, it isn't theoretical physics, but, it's..,
well, it's what I do.'
'You should be proud of what you do,' she said. And then
she smiled at him. 'It's good to see you again, Will.'
Race smiled back as best he could.
Then she stood and looked about herself. 'Well, anyway, I'd better
be getting back. Looks like we're about to land.'
It was late in the afternoon when the Hercules landed heavily on a
dusty private airstrip at the edge of the Cuzco valley.
The team disembarked the plane on board the troop truck that had
made the journey to South America in the big plane's belly. The
massive truck rumbled out of the rear loading ramp and immediately
headed north along a badly- paved road toward the Urubamba
River.