Charlie Thorne and the Lost City

by Stuart Gibbs

  Charlie heaved a quick sigh of relief, thrilled that she wasn’t dead, then snapped to her feet and ran back through the doorway into the attic space above the sanctuary, untying the rope from her harness as she ran.

  High above, on the platform in the spire, Esmerelda recovered her gun, but Charlie had already disappeared into the safety of the church. Cursing again, she raced back down the rickety stairs as fast as she could, snapping her own phone out of her pocket as she did.

  Thanks to the trick with the rope, Charlie had an extremely big head start on her. Too big to catch the girl herself.

  It was a good thing she hadn’t come alone.

  “Paolo! Gianni!” she shouted in Italian. “She got the jump on me! Don’t let her get away!”

  Charlie raced through the attic space of the church, carabiners clanking on her climbing harness, then emerged into the large landing at the far end. From there, both bell towers had staircases that led back to the ground floor. Charlie opted for the one that she hadn’t used before, because most people would have retraced their steps, and Charlie didn’t like to act like most people. That was what your enemies would expect you to do, and Charlie now had enemies. Again.

  Sure enough, when she exited the bell tower into the crowded foyer of the Basilica, she immediately noticed two men barging through the entrance near the other set of stairs. The men looked a great deal like Esmerelda, with similar narrow features. They were tall and menacing and had the same dark look in their eyes that Esmerelda had revealed while holding the gun. Charlie assumed they were her brothers.

  One of them had a mop of dark hair, while the other’s head was closely shaved. Baldy seemed to be the smarter of the two, as he was taking his time to scan the crowd, while Moptop simply barreled toward the stairs. Baldy immediately spotted her—he knew exactly who to look for—and yelled to his brother.

  Charlie bolted for the closest exit. There were hundreds of people in her way—but there were even more people between her and the Castello brothers, which gave her an advantage. Plus, Charlie was thin and lithe and quick on her feet, allowing her to slip through the masses, while the thugs had to bulldoze their way through the crowd.

  Esmerelda was far behind, only making her way through the attic space; it hadn’t been easy to come down the rickety stairs from the spire in a hurry.

  Charlie made it out the door of the Basilica and into the streets of Quito, though she had little faith that she would be able to outrun the Castellos. Luckily, she had made additional plans in case things went wrong.

  On her visit to the sporting goods store the night before, Charlie had bought something besides climbing gear, something she had decided not to tell Esmerelda about: a mountain bike. It was secondhand and a bit banged up, but in good enough shape for her purposes. She had ridden it up here late the night before and locked it to a drainpipe in an alley across the street. It had been an ordeal to pedal up the steep hill—but going down it would be easy.

  Many more people now lined the sidewalks in anticipation of the procession; they already stood two and three deep. Charlie squeezed through them to get to the alley, unlocked the bike, put on the helmet she had left with it, then squeezed back through the crowds to the street again.

  The brothers were out the door of the church and racing toward her—but now Charlie knew she would have no problem getting away. She gave them a taunting wave goodbye, took a moment to enjoy the stunned looks on their faces, then hopped on the bike and raced downhill, leaving her enemies far behind.

  Or so she thought.

  She had gone only a block when she noticed the black sedan racing up the hill, coming toward her and the Basilica. There were three men inside the car, but it was the one at the wheel who grabbed Charlie’s attention.

  It was the same man who had come to Puerto Villamil by speedboat the day before, looking for her.

  He noticed her, too. He swerved across the street, trying to block her escape.

  Charlie pedaled hard, slipping past the car at the last second. Its bumper kissed her rear tire, almost sending her flying, but she steadied herself and continued onward.

  The black sedan pulled a quick U-turn, jumping the curb and making the spectators gathered on the sidewalk scatter. Then it came after her.

  Charlie had expected that things might go wrong—but not this wrong. She had only planned to escape people on foot, not people in a car.

  This wasn’t going to be easy.

  TEN

  Charlie raced through the streets of downtown Quito, pedaling furiously while Ivan Spetz bore down on her.

  Ivan hadn’t been able to get on a plane out of the Galápagos until late the night before. By the time he arrived at the Iglesia de San Francisco, it was closed. So he had gotten a good night’s sleep at a hotel and come back first thing in the morning, only to learn that the Devil’s Stone was now in the spire at the Basilica. He had immediately headed that way, hoping to get there before Charlie—only to see his young adversary racing away from the cathedral like someone who had just made off with something very important. Now he floored the gas pedal and sped after Charlie through the city.

  The streets were old and paved with stones, which rattled Charlie as she hurtled down them. Even worse, in preparation for the procession, they were empty of other cars. Barriers had been erected to keep out vehicles, but Ivan had simply ignored them in his haste to get to the Basilica. On the open streets, he was gaining on Charlie quickly.

  So Charlie changed the game. When she reached the Plaza Grande in the center of town, she veered up onto the sidewalk.

  The Plaza was thronged with people: Food vendors were selling fresh fruit and steaming bowls of fanesca; salesmen hawked leather goods and souvenirs; cucuruchos and other celebrants in costume headed to the start of the processional; and hundreds of locals and tourists were vying for a good spot to watch.

  Charlie swerved through them all on her bicycle. She had to slow down considerably to avoid running into anyone—although she still clipped a few people and knocked one unfortunate tourist into the central fountain.

  Ivan Spetz couldn’t follow her though the crowds with his car. He had to go all the way around the plaza, while Charlie could cut right across it.

  Charlie slalomed through a pack of tourists and emerged onto the far side of the plaza with a big lead on her pursuer… only to find another car barreling toward her. A silver sedan.

  It appeared that whoever was after her had brought backup.

  Charlie shot across the street, tucking into an alleyway as the silver sedan skidded past her. Then she pedaled with all her might.

  Escaping one car on a bicycle would have been tricky, but two was going to be almost impossible.

  Charlie had chosen a bicycle to escape for one main reason: She wasn’t old enough to have a driver’s license. There were some advantages to a bike; it was light and maneuverable and it could go places cars couldn’t. But there was also a huge disadvantage: Charlie had to power it herself. Right now it was helpful that she had started high in a city that was built on a mountain, so she could head downhill, but she still had to pedal to do that, and after her adventure on the spire, her strength was already flagging.

  She shot through a series of alleys, trying to pick routes too narrow for the cars to follow, but both drivers understood which way she was going. They were speeding down the streets on either side of her, keeping her boxed in. And they were gaining ground. Charlie caught glimpses of them every time she crossed a street.

  So she changed her tactics again. The next time she entered an alley, she hit the brakes, skidding to a stop, then spun around, returned to the street she had just crossed, and cut down it, heading toward the street the black sedan was on. It took more energy to get the bike moving again, and her muscles screamed, but hopefully the sedans would keep going, not realizing she had changed course, and she would be able to escape.

  Unfortunately, Ivan Spetz was onto her. He hit the brakes too and pulled a U-turn
. The street was so narrow, he took out a fire hydrant, shearing it off the sidewalk. A geyser of water erupted in its place, but Ivan paid no attention.

  When Charlie cut across the street he was on, she found him racing right back up it toward her.

  Charlie gasped in surprise and forced herself onward. The black sedan fishtailed wildly around the corner and dropped in behind her, closing the gap between them quickly.

  A park appeared up ahead, a plain of grass studded with palm trees. There were more tourists and cucuruchos crossing it, heading toward the procession.

  Charlie leapt the curb and cut across the grass.

  Ivan Spetz did the same.

  But the park wasn’t as crowded as the Central Plaza had been. The people in it saw the sedan bearing down on them and scrambled out of the way. Charlie had been hoping to gain ground on Ivan there, but she was actually losing it. The black sedan churned after her, flattening any obstacles in its path. It plowed through some decorative landscaping and sent a fruit cart flying, splattering mangos and melons.

  Charlie was cruising on fumes now, her energy almost depleted.

  She had one last trick up her sleeve, and it was going to be extremely risky.

  The other side of the park was bordered by a major road, much bigger than the city streets she had been racing along, three lanes of traffic on each side, the cars moving at a good clip. Charlie watched them closely as she approached, assessing how fast they were moving, focusing on the gaps between them.

  The numbers came to her.

  She altered her direction slightly and pedaled with everything she had left.

  The black sedan was almost on top of her.

  Charlie fired across the sidewalk directly into traffic.

  She had timed things to avoid the cars perfectly, entering just behind one set and shooting across before the next wave came.

  Ivan Spetz had no such luck. His sedan was far too big to make it through the traffic. He punched the brakes as hard as he could, swerving wildly, and even then he still clipped two cars and sent them skidding. More cars crashed into those, and a traffic jam blossomed instantly.

  Charlie cut across the next three lanes of traffic. On the far side of the road was one of the steep canyons that surrounded the city. It almost seemed to be from another time period, with a dirt trail running downhill between ramshackle huts, many of which had goats grazing in their yards. Charlie dropped onto the path and raced downward.

  Behind her, Ivan’s car was damaged but still drivable. Ivan hit the gas, leaving the traffic jam he had created behind, then sped onward. He watched Charlie drop into the ravine and veered onto the road that wound along the side of it.

  Still, the course through the ravine was the much faster route out of the city. The road had to snake back and forth to descend the mountain, whereas the canyon path followed the slope directly. Charlie jounced down it, flying past homes and gardens and animal pens, dropping more than a thousand feet down from the city before she saw another road.

  The ravine continued on the other side of it. Charlie was racing for it when she saw the silver sedan speeding down the road, heading right toward her.

  She was so distracted by it, she didn’t see the chicken until it was too late.

  The bird dumbly wandered out of someone’s front gate, right in front of her. Rather than plow over it, Charlie tried to avoid it, but her tires skidded in a patch of loose gravel. She caught her front tire on a root and upended, crashing down and tumbling through the dirt to the shoulder of the road.

  The silver sedan braked directly beside her.

  Charlie was badly banged up and exhausted and her bike had been mangled in the wreck. The frame was bent and the front tire had blown out. There was no way she was riding away and she was too wiped out to run.

  All she could do was grimace and accept her fate.

  And then she finally caught a glimpse of who was in the car.

  It wasn’t Ivan Spetz’s men after all.

  Dante Garcia was at the wheel, and Agent Milana Moon sat beside him.

  Dante rolled down the window and shouted, “If you want to live through the next five minutes, then get in the car.”

  Charlie wasn’t thrilled to see the CIA, but she was smart enough to understand the odds of survival.

  She climbed into the back seat.

  ELEVEN

  Although Esmerelda Castello had lied to Charlie Thorne about many things, she had been honest about working at the Darwin Research Station. She had started there as a volunteer six years before, although her real motivation, even then, was to track down the mysterious treasure Charles Darwin had discovered.

  The treasure was a Castello family obsession. Esmerelda had a distant ancestor who had been on the Beagle with Darwin. After the voyage, the crew had been ordered to never speak of certain things, but her ancestor had hinted to his family that something incredible had been found. Esmerelda knew that the story had probably been twisted and embellished as it was passed down through the generations, but it was evident that Darwin had found something of great value in South America—and that the discovery had been hushed up.

  Esmerelda’s father had devoted his life to unraveling the truth, a task that had consumed him. He had majored in anthropology, specializing in the cultures of South America, and that had given him access to many restricted texts. He had spent years poring over everything of Darwin’s he could find, as well as the writings and journals of Captain FitzRoy and everyone else on the Beagle who had ever put a pen to paper. For the most part, he had come up empty, finding nothing but rumors that couldn’t be verified. In the process, he had squandered his money, ruined his academic reputation, and destroyed his marriage.

  But his children still loved him. Esmerelda fondly recalled how her father would tuck her into bed at night, telling her tales of the great treasure Darwin had found and how one day, he too would track it down. Not only would he find riches beyond her wildest dreams—but he would become famous as well, earning his place in the pantheon of great explorers. If Hiram Bingham had gained fame for simply stumbling across a remote outpost like Machu Picchu, imagine what would happen if he found a great city of gold!

  When Esmerelda and her brothers grew older, her father had shown them the cache of information he had gathered: photocopies of Darwin’s writings, notebooks filled with potential clues, even a few pages he had illegally torn from journals of sailors on the Beagle. Esmerelda’s mother had angrily dismissed all of it as useless garbage amassed by an obsessive lunatic, but Esmerelda and her brothers were hooked.

  Ultimately, her father’s fascination had cost him his life. He was so busy trying to find Darwin’s clues that he neglected his own health until it was too late. By the time he learned of his cancer, it was too far along, not that it would have mattered. He had no money to pay for treatment. He ended up decrepit and destitute, with nothing to show for all of his work…

  Until the very end.

  In the last days of his life, Esmerelda’s father received a package. For years he had been trying to connect with other descendants of the crew of the Beagle, and he had come across a family in rural England who still had the letters that their great-great-great-grandfather had sent back home from the trip. Esmerelda’s father had struck up a friendship over email, presenting himself as a historian interested in the untold tales of the crew on such a great voyage. The family had agreed to copy the letters for him, although with one thing or another they had kept forgetting about it, forcing Esmerelda’s father to repeatedly send reminders. Finally, perhaps because they had realized how sick he was, they had forwarded them.

  Esmerelda’s father had spent his final days poring over the communications, desperately searching for something of importance. And then, at the bottom of the pile, he had found it.

  The last letter was merely a scrap. A remnant that had been damaged in a fire. The family apologized for the condition, thinking some ancestor or another had been careless with it, but when E
smerelda’s father read the bit that remained, his conclusions were very different.

  The letter began in midsentence, as though a previous page had been lost:

  … Master Darwin’s discovery, of which I have written to you before. Darwin remains incensed at Captain FitzRoy as to how he handled it, and his behavior has been intolerable. He has blasphemed the captain and crew often and spent days at a time sulking in his cabin. Bos’n Jeffords says Darwin behaved even more strangely onshore in the Galápagos, repeatedly throwing lizards into the sea and etching nonsense into the shell of a live tortoise. But then, we have all been on edge since our hurried departure from Guayaquil. Captain FitzRoy’s moods have also been erratic. He is friendly one day and monstrous the next. If he knew I was writing to you of all this, he’d give me the lash for sure. So I beg you to destroy…

  The rest of the letter was gone, charred to ash.

  Esmerelda’s father had called to her, demanding that she come to his bedside at once, then triumphantly displayed the letter when she arrived. “At long last!” he had crowed. “Proof!”

  Esmerelda had spent enough time listening to her father and studying the voyage of the Beagle that she immediately knew what her father was responding to. There were three pieces of information in the scrap of paper that, as far as she knew, had only been speculation up until then:

  First there was the reference to Darwin’s discovery. Although Darwin had certainly made great discoveries on his voyage—discoveries that had altered the course of science—no one on the voyage itself had been aware of that at the time. Even Darwin himself hadn’t realized what he had discovered for years afterward. For example, the Galápagos finches he had become renowned for noticing the differences between. Darwin hadn’t even realized they were different varieties of finch, thinking them all to be entirely different species of bird, until he had returned to London and an ornithologist had shown him his error.