Evil Star

by Anthony Horowitz

  Pedro nodded. “Estoy muerto de hambre.”

  They chose the shabbiest, quietest restaurant they could find, but even so the owner refused to serve them until they had paid. But once he had their money and knew they wouldn’t run away, he took pity on them and served a huge meal of chicharrones – chunks of deep-fried pork ribs – and a jug of chicha, which tasted sweet and fruity and was some sort of ancient Inca beer.

  Matt and Pedro ate in silence. They had no choice. But even so Matt was beginning to feel closer to the other boy – as if the two of them had known each other all their lives and really had no need to talk. A few other travellers came in, but they paid no attention to them and Matt was able to relax and collect his thoughts.

  One of the travellers at the next table was reading a Spanish newspaper. He turned a page and at that moment, everything changed. Pedro nudged him and pointed. Matt turned and saw a photograph of himself – taken by Richard in the middle of York. Matt saw the pale skin, the neat hair, the smiling face and jolted upright in his chair. The picture belonged to another time, another world. He could hardly believe it was himself.

  And then came the fear. Had the Peruvian police published the photograph to try and track him down? How had they got it? He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but he had to know what the newspaper said. And how was he meant to do that? It was the same old problem. The article was in Spanish and Pedro couldn’t read. But then the traveller moved his hand and Matt saw English words. His own name, in capital letters. He leant forward. And there it was, a message that was surely from the Nexus:

  There was a telephone number printed below.

  So someone had finally realized he was missing and had taken steps to find him! Almost for the first time since he arrived in Peru, Matt felt a surge of hope. The Nexus had reached out to him. He was going to be all right.

  He quickly memorized the number before the traveller turned the page. The table had a paper cloth and he wrote it down in tomato sauce, using a toothpick, then tore it out. As soon as they had finished eating, he hurried into the street.

  “We need to find a telephone,” he told Pedro.

  “Sí … un teléfono.” Pedro was the one who had seen the photograph. He knew what was going on.

  Just about every hotel and café in Cuzco had telephone and Internet facilities. Matt went into the first one he found, threw down some money and made his demand in English. He wasn’t worrying about his safety any more. He was shown into a creaky, wooden booth where he took out the scrap of torn paper and dialled the number. There was a pause, a dialling tone, then –

  “Matthew? Is that you?” It was Fabian speaking. He sounded exhausted and excited at the same time and it occurred to Matt that this was a dedicated telephone line and he must have been sitting beside the receiver, waiting for the call.

  “Mr Fabian?”

  “Where are you? How are you? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “I can’t believe it’s you. We’ve all been so worried about you. I nearly went crazy when you and Richard didn’t show up in Lima and then Alberto told me what happened. Is Richard with you?”

  “No. He’s not.” Matt felt a sense of relief just talking to Fabian, hearing his voice once again. “I’m OK, but I need your help.”

  “Of course. We’ve been waiting for you to ring. You don’t need to worry about anything now, Matt. You just need to tell me where you are and how I can reach you.”

  “I’m in Cuzco.”

  “Cuzco?” Fabian was astonished. “What are you doing there?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Just tell me. And as soon as I put this phone down, I’m on my way…”

  Half an hour later, Susan Ashwood received a telephone call at her home in Manchester, England. It was Fabian, phoning from Lima.

  “I’ve spoken to Matthew,” he told her. “You won’t believe the things that have been happening to him but he’s alive and he’s all right. He’s in Cuzco. Don’t ask me how he got there. It’s too long a story. But I’ve already booked a flight and I’ll be there this evening. I’m going to bring him in. And there’s wonderful news, Miss Ashwood. Something you won’t believe. He says he’s found a second Gatekeeper. Another one of the Five…”

  The two of them spoke for some time as Fabian filled her in on what Matt had told him. Then he rang off and Susan Ashwood called Nathalie Johnson to pass on the news.

  “Matthew is in Cuzco,” she said. “He saw the advertisement and telephoned Fabian…”

  The two women spoke for about ten minutes.

  And shortly after that, Diego Salamanda received a call at his hacienda near Ica. He barely spoke at all, holding the receiver against his ear. The mouthpiece, of course, came nowhere near his mouth. When he did want to talk, he had to slide the receiver down his face.

  Eventually, he smiled and hung up. The caller had told him exactly what he wanted to hear.

  Now he knew where Matt was too.

  INTO THIN AIR

  The next available flight from Lima didn’t get in until nine o’clock in the evening and Fabian had arranged to meet Matt and Pedro one hour after that, in front of the cathedral in the main square. That gave them the rest of the day to kill until he arrived.

  They spent the time walking around Cuzco, trying to keep out of everyone’s way. It was a weird experience for Matt. Normally someone like him would only come here as a tourist and if he had been dressed differently, that was what people would think he was. He could imagine himself stopping to photograph the long galleries with their stone archways and the bustling shops behind.

  But his disguise had put him right at the heart of the city. Matt had become part of it. At one point, as he and Pedro sat on a step outside a museum, he even found himself being photographed by two Americans. For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he was annoyed to see the expensive zoom lens being focused on him. Before the camera had clicked, he sprang to his feet.

  “Why don’t you take a picture of someone else?” he snapped at the astonished couple. He knew he wasn’t being fair but he still felt a brief sense of victory as the man and his wife backed away, confused.

  Later that afternoon, he and Pedro came upon the temple of Coricancha. In fact, they could hardly have missed it. This was a major tourist attraction, located in the southern part of the city and surrounded by coaches, with a non-stop flow of visitors around the main entrance. Once again there were Inca walls, and a terrace high above, giving panoramic views over the city. There was also a Spanish church on the site. In fact it had been constructed over it – one building on top of another – as if it had been dropped there from outer space.

  Why had Micos sent them here? There didn’t seem to be any reason and Matt wasn’t prepared to waste any of their money paying to get in.

  Even so, he lingered around the entrance and listened as the tour organizers delivered the same lecture to each group of tourists. Coricancha was the ancient word for “golden courtyard”. There had once been a great temple with four thousand priests living here. Every wall had been lined with plates of solid gold and the rooms had been filled with statues and altars … also gold. It had been used as a religious centre and also a celestial observatory by the Incas. But then the conquistadors had come. They had taken everything. They had melted down the gold, ripped out the altars and built their own church on the ruins that remained.

  Would Fabian bring them here on Friday night, Matt wondered? Was there a chance that Richard might turn up? A guard walked out of the entrance and gestured at Matt and Pedro to move away. Pedro muttered something ugly and guttural in Spanish and tugged at Matt’s sleeve. Matt understood. The guard thought they were trying to beg from the tourists. They had no place here. Poor people in Cuzco really had no place anywhere.

  As the evening drew in, they walked back to the square and sat on the long step between the cathedral and the fountain. Matt wondered what Pedro was thinking about. He ha
d tried to explain that Fabian was coming, but he wasn’t sure how much the other boy had understood.

  At last, the darkness came and with it Cuzco was transformed into something almost magical. Matt had noticed how strange the light was by day. At night, the sky became a luminous blue with the mountains stretching out, deep black, below. Thousands of orange lights sparkled in the outlying suburbs and streetlamps glowed all around the square. After the heat of the day, the evening was cool. The restaurants were filling up, the pavements packed with people in no hurry to go anywhere, like extras on some huge, open-air stage.

  The police car entered the square just after nine o’clock. Matt noticed it first: a low, white vehicle with a blue and yellow stripe and a strip light mounted on the roof. There were two men inside. He watched the car as it cruised slowly along the far side and parked in front of one of the money-changing shops. The two men didn’t get out.

  He thought nothing of it. There were police everywhere in Cuzco, just as there had been in Lima. It seemed that their main job was to keep the tourists happy. Tourism must be worth millions to the Peruvian economy. They had to feel safe.

  But then a second police car joined the first and he began to grow uneasy. They couldn’t be looking for him! Apart from Fabian, nobody knew they were there. Pedro nudged him, glancing in the direction of the second car. The expression on his face was clear. The police in this country were bad news. The two of them had been moved on plenty of times throughout the day and Matt had no doubt that he and Pedro could be arrested just for sitting here. What was the time? Surely it must be getting close to ten o’clock. He wished Pedro hadn’t stolen his watch.

  Two police cars. More policemen on foot. They were entering the square from all sides, moving slowly, seemingly with no particular purpose. What was going on? Pedro was becoming more and more agitated. There was something animal-like about him now. His eyes were wide and alert. Every muscle in his body seemed to be locked. He was sensing danger, even if he hadn’t seen it yet.

  “I think we should move,” Matt said.

  He didn’t want to go. Fabian would arrive any minute now. If he could wait just a few minutes longer, the whole ordeal might be over. And getting up, walking, might draw attention to himself. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to stay where he was. While he was sitting down, unnoticed, he was safe. But at the same time, there were more than a dozen policemen in the square now, fanning out, all of them armed. Had the police come by coincidence or did they know Matt was here? Was this just another raid, or were they looking for him?

  The question was answered in an instant as the passenger door of one of the police cars opened and a man got out. It was Captain Rodriguez. He was standing directly under a streetlamp and it cast a glow across his face with its rough, pitted skin and heavy moustache. He looked like a boxer stepping into the ring and as his eyes swung across the square, Matt knew without any doubt at all that his phone call to Fabian had been intercepted and that he had walked straight into another trap.

  He stood up, forcing himself not to panic. Rodriguez hadn’t seen him since the Hotel Europa and didn’t know what he looked like now that he was in disguise. There were still plenty of people around. The two of them could just walk away, mingling with the crowd.

  Pedro dug his hand into his trouser pocket. When he brought it out, he was holding his rubber slingshot. Matt shook his head.

  “Not now, Pedro,” he said. “There are too many of them.”

  Pedro frowned, then seemed to understand. He put the slingshot away again.

  The scream of a whistle cut through the air.

  Suddenly, all the policemen were running towards the two of them as if they had known where they were all along and had simply been playing a game. Another car cut in from behind. Rodriguez was pointing directly at them and shouting. Tourists and travellers stood gaping, afraid, finding themselves caught up in the middle of something they didn’t want to see. The friendly mask of the country they had come to visit had slipped to reveal the brutality beneath. There were armed police everywhere.

  Matt saw at once that all four corners of the square were cut off. The trap had closed in from every side. There were two police cars speeding towards them … they would reach them in seconds. That left just one direction – up. The cars couldn’t follow them up the steps. He looked round and saw that Pedro had worked this out for himself. He was already halfway up, heading for a group of Europeans standing together at the top. They’d been about to have their photograph taken in front of the cathedral when the police raid began but now they were just staring out, slack-jawed. Matt saw Pedro barge through them. Why? He glanced back and understood. Some of the policemen had taken out their guns. Pedro had seen the danger, but at the same time he had guessed that they weren’t going to fire anywhere near tourists. His move had been quite calculated. He was using the Europeans as a human shield.

  Matt joined him, clambering up the last five steps and then across the top, next to the cathedral. The tourists scattered. Someone cried out. Pedro was moving like the wind and Matt wondered if he would be able to keep up. Already he had discovered something he had suspected all along. It was almost impossible to run in Cuzco. The air was too thin. He couldn’t have been going for more than half a minute and his head was pounding, his throat was sore and he felt as though he was about to faint. He forced himself on, not wanting to be left behind. Pedro was one of the Five. Matt couldn’t lose him now.

  But Pedro was looking out for Matt. As a policeman swung around the corner, he shouted out a warning. Matt ducked low. There was an explosion and one of the stone steps spat dust. They were shooting at him! Matt felt a tremor of disbelief. Rodriguez had given orders to take him dead or alive.

  The gunshot had been a mistake. Now everyone in the square was panicking, running in all directions, desperate to get away. For a moment, the police found themselves powerless. The boys were out of sight. Then something strange happened. The policeman who had fired the shot threw himself backwards and lay sprawling. Matt twisted round and saw that the slingshot was in Pedro’s hand. He certainly knew how to use it. The policeman had been standing in front of a road that was otherwise unguarded. Matt forced some air into his lungs and set off.

  Out of sight. That was the key. Matt knew they had to get under cover. They had to find somewhere to hide. Give them a bit of time and maybe they could work out what to do next. Pedro ran through an open gateway leading off the street, signalling at Matt to follow. Matt did just that and found himself in a rough courtyard with patches of grass growing through the rubble and the dust. There was another market here. Stalls, lit by oil lamps, stood haphazardly against the walls. They were open even at this time of the evening and a few backpackers were wandering idly between them, examining the hats and ponchos, rugs, beads and bags on sale. The great mass of the cathedral rose up behind.

  The two boys didn’t stop. They came to a second archway and burst out to find themselves in another street. But this time they were not alone.

  A very old Indian woman sat facing them, squatting on the pavement with a little pile of handmade jewellery. Her hair hung down in two long pigtails and there was a baby, wrapped in a striped blanket, nestling against her chest. She was looking straight at them and as they stood there, panting, wondering which way to go, she suddenly smiled, showing yellow teeth that were little more than stumps. At the same time, she pointed towards an alleyway that led off behind her.

  Matt wasn’t sure what to do. The old woman was behaving as if she knew them. It was almost as if she had been sitting there all evening, waiting for them to come so she could point out the best way. Matt fought to get more air into his system and to keep the dizziness at bay.

  “Which way?” he shouted at Pedro.

  The old woman raised a finger to her lips. This was no time for a discussion. Once again, she pointed the way. Behind them, they heard shouting. The police had entered the marketplace.

  “Gracias, señora,” Pe
dro muttered. He had decided to believe her.

  The two of them ran up the alleyway, disappearing into the shadows that pushed in from both sides. Tattered posters hung on the walls and wooden balconies jutted out over their heads. The street was cobbled and Matt’s rubber sandals were almost torn off his feet as he tried to run.

  But was it worth going on? Matt could hear sirens and whistles echoing all over the city and with a heavy heart he knew that he and Pedro were never going to get out of this, no matter how fast they ran. They were two rats in a maze. They could scurry round the streets and passageways of Cuzco until they were exhausted or they could find a building to hide in but it would make no difference. It might take the police all night to find them but they would do it in the end. Cuzco was surrounded by mountains. There was no way out.

  Somewhere, just out of sight, another car pulled up. Boots stamped down on concrete. A whistle blew. Even Pedro was beginning to slow down. Sweat was dripping off his face. It would all be over very soon.

  The alleyway led to another narrow street with a T-junction at one end. Pedro started towards it but almost at once a blue van came skidding to a halt and three policemen piled out. One of them shouted excitedly into a radio while the other two took out their guns and began moving towards them. Matt didn’t have the strength to move. His heart was about to burst. He could only watch as the two men approached.

  And then it happened again.

  Another Indian appeared, stepping out of a doorway, pushing a heavy cart laden with food and drink. He was wearing white trousers and a dark jacket but no shirt. Nor did he have any shoes. Long hair hung down, obscuring most of his face. He stopped in the road, completely blocking it and it seemed to Matt that he had acted quite deliberately. He had known they were coming and wanted to give them more time. The policemen began shouting. One of them was trying to push past. The Indian nodded and smiled at the two boys. With renewed strength, they set off the other way.