But Sochi grabbed her wooden box and stood, fury sharpening her features. Without a word, she staggered toward the path. The wedding ring Claire had rejected rattled inside the box…
Claire shook her head and looked around, forcing herself back to the present. Crap. This was one reason why she’d avoided coming back to Peru. The memories were just too painful. The evening of that horrible fight, Claire had slid a letter under Sochi’s door. A letter of apology. The very next day, Sochi destroyed their relationship by betraying Claire. End of story.
Claire stood, brushed the sand off her palms, and arched her back as she surveyed the land around the ridge. She’d spent enough time this afternoon away from Trujillo to know that the voices had probably faded for good. Why had she expected them to return?
Claire grunted in frustration. Without the voices, she had no way to track down King Chaco’s tomb.
What had she been thinking? That she would simply drive through the Peruvian countryside, listening intently until the voice of King Chaco’s ghost called out to her, I’m over here. Dig down half a meter and you’ll find us. Because tombs had been constructed of wood and adobe, most of them would have collapsed upon themselves centuries ago.
She was stupidly unprepared. She didn’t even have a shovel. She wasn’t the Tomb Whisperer. She’d never been that. The word fraud began sneaking through the hallways of her brain, but she flung it back into its cell and locked the door. Still, the word managed to leak out through the keyhole. She’d found so many tombs not because of her archaeological skills, but because of the voices. And she hadn’t even done that alone. In each case, she’d marked the general area where the voices were the loudest, then five or six people, depending upon the availability of enthusiastic interns or grad students, would carefully excavate until they reached the tombs.
Claire walked the length of the ridge, then slid down into the edge of the sugarcane field. Carefully skirting the rustling plants, she made her way to the shore, rough with rocks and reeds.
Plovers skittered across the narrow beach, running in and out of the pale yellow foam pushed ahead of each wave. Two brown pelicans swooped low over the water, their shadows swimming beneath them.
Claire shielded her eyes against the sun as she gazed out over the white swells gently rolling toward her. Well, crap. What now? She couldn’t find King Chaco’s tomb without the voices. She needed help.
She needed Denis.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sochi
Friday, March 17
Sochi Castillo tried not to worry, but like Mima always said, worry tells you what part of your life needs attention. Sochi chuckled. Since she was always worrying, her entire life obviously needed attention. When everything felt broken, it was hard to know where to start.
Sochi tried to ignore both the waxing moon—still bright as a spotlight—and her racing heartbeat as she crouched near a scrubby bush worrying about the next two minutes. At her side, Rigoberto raised his meaty hand, and the five men behind them stopped. The shaman hovered farther back, not needed for this part of the operation.
Sochi leaned forward, straining to hear. Just over the sandy ridge, the looters talked quietly among themselves, arguing over who would win the World Cup now that the Peruvian team had crashed and burned early in the event. Shovels dug into the sand. One man coughed. The ocean, less than a mile away, salted the warm night air. Sochi’s nostrils flared as she detected the closer smells of hot sweat and cigarette smoke. The leaves of a nearby algarrobo tree rustled quietly.
Rigo lightly touched her shoulder and spoke into her ear. “Let me and the men do this. It may get rough. We do not know these looters.”
Looters. How had her life come to this? Gods, what a mess. Reminded her of one of Mima’s sayings: If you feel as if life is falling apart, it probably is. Stop and fix it. Her grandmother would deliver this homily with a shaking finger. Sochi shuddered. If Mima knew what she was up to tonight, it’d kill her, but when Deep Throat had waved the Peruvian flag in Sochi’s face and given a moving plea for patriotism, she’d agreed. She was doing this at the request of a governmental minister, not because looting was fun. It wasn’t.
“Remember,” she whispered, “no violence.”
Rigo kept his voice low. “Never, jefe.”
Jefe. Boss. That also felt weird, even after all this time. When she nodded, Rigo motioned to the men and they crept forward, pulling bandanas up over their faces. They wore T-shirts, lightweight pants, and sandals, all covered in dust. With the moonlight turning their sticks into ghostly weapons, Rigo and his men dashed over the ridge.
The looters let out startled yells. Rigo commanded that they abandon the dig site, which most of them did immediately. Sochi felt their pounding footsteps through her feet. Keeping low, she crested the ridge to watch, then motioned the shaman forward.
In the circle of light thrown by a Coleman lantern on the ground, a sole looter remained. The middle-aged man’s torn khakis and brown shirt were nearly white with sand. He wore a T-shirt tied around his nose and mouth to keep out the dust. The lantern illuminated the devastation his team had wrought on yet another ancient Peruvian tomb.
“No,” the man said. “This is our site. We are locals. Go find your own place to dig.”
Rigo laughed. “Move on, old man.”
One of her men, feisty Tomas, approached the man with a length of pipe, clearly intent on using it. “Gods,” she muttered. “I knew it.” One of these days, Tomas would go too far.
Sochi rose to her full height and strode down the slope into the maze of holes and piles the looters had created. The man saw her approaching in the lamplight.
“Jesus Cristo,” he breathed. “La Bruja sin Corazon.” The witch without a heart.
Tomas stopped and looked over his shoulder. She glared at him.
“Bruja, why bother us?” the man cried. “This is our only way to earn an income.”
When she began her career as La Bruja, Sochi had done her best to become the Heartless Witch. She took credit for any dead body found from Lima up to Ecuador. She paid a few motormouths to talk her up, and soon she had a reputation that frightened even her. She and her men had never actually harmed anyone, but thanks to the power of social media, the country believed the opposite.
Her name, Witch Without a Heart, had been meant to inspire fear, but she just thought it was stupid. Much of what Deep Throat came up with was stupid. But here she was, with a powerful reputation that preceded her. Very few women ran looting gangs, since most of the older men believed women at dig sites angered the spirits.
“You will find another way to put food on the table,” Rigo told the remaining looter, who thrust out his chin in defiance.
“Leave, or my men will help you leave,” Sochi said. “I am afraid they are not at all gentle. And do not return to this site.”
Disgusted, the man raised his shovel in defiance, then stomped off, moonlight bleaching his stooped shoulders until he disappeared into the blue-black night.
Sochi sighed with relief. Another band of rival looters vanquished without violence. This had just been a group of local guys, unarmed and willing to back off. One day she and Rigo were going to stumble upon Carlos Higuchi’s crew, and that encounter could have a very different ending.
Rigo motioned to the man who’d hung back from everything. Julio Rojas, shaman to looters of every nationality, stepped forward. Personally, she didn’t see the need for a shaman, but the men did. Disturbing burial sites could anger the gods. Julio walked in a wide circle, speaking Quechua in a singsong voice, sprinkling crushed-up cigarettes over the ground. When he was done, Sochi handed him a roll of dollars, preferred over the Peruvian currency, and thanked him for his time. With a wave to the others, Julio trudged back up over the sand dune.
As everyone grabbed a discarded shovel, Sochi’s jaw tightened to see the pile of now-broken pots the local looters had tossed aside as worthless. Idiots. “Remember,” Sochi said. “Preserve everything you
find. Collectors will pay us good prices. You crack a pot, I crack your head.” Really, it would be Rigo, since she could barely swat a fly without being overcome with guilt.
Rigo wasn’t the brightest star in the constellation, but he was a warrior and he understood how to lead men. And he was almost more devoted to the Chimú and Moche cultures than she was. “It is midnight,” she continued. “We will dig until five a.m., then pack everything into Rigo’s van. He’ll sell the artifacts and split the proceeds into shares. As usual, Rigo will take two shares, the rest of you one, and myself none. All of the bounty goes to you and your families.”
The men nodded, pleased to be working for the fairest looting boss in all of Peru. They spread out and began to dig.
Sochi retrieved a metal pole abandoned at the edge of the site. While her men dug in pits already opened, she would seek new dig sites. She moved out of the weak circle of lantern light and used only the moonlight to choose a spot. She pushed the sharpened end of the pole into the sandy ground as far as she could. She met resistance, which meant there was no tomb cavity below. She took a few steps and repeated the motion. Her arms would be numb with exhaustion by the end of the night, but she had already achieved her goal. Word would quickly spread that any treasures found in this tomb, ninety miles north of Trujillo, now belonged to the second-most successful looter of Peruvian antiquities—La Bruja sin Corazon. This would remind the most successful looter—Carlos Higuchi—that he wasn’t the only fish in this large pond.
As she took a few steps and probed another spot, her long brown hair stuck to the back of her hot neck. Checking over her shoulder to make sure no one watched, Sochi stuck a finger under the edge of the wig and scratched the base of her skull. She hated this damned wig. She also hated the brown contacts, but both were necessary. Not even Rigo knew she wore a disguise. Deep Throat had insisted that he be the only one who knew what she was up to. But wearing contacts while digging in the sand meant her eyes stung most nights, and were red-rimmed by morning. She didn’t participate in the digs every night, mostly to give her eyes a rest and grab some sleep.
As Sochi repeatedly jammed the pole into the ground, the breeze moaned through the flat, broad leaves of the abandoned avocado grove next to the tomb, as soft as Claire’s sighs during…Damn it. Sochi shook herself. Damn that woman. She hit a rock with the pole, wincing at the shock to her upper arms. Stop thinking about Claire. Just stop it.
She diverted herself with thoughts of her parents. She’d always been grateful to them for giving her a native name instead of a Spanish one, even though Xochiquetzal was Aztec, not Chimú or Moche. During three years of middle school in the States while her mother was posted to the Peruvian embassy, Sochi had grown tired of teachers and students freaking out over the X, so she started using Sochi. It was an okay name, but she loved the Quechua language. Mima spoke it almost more than she spoke Spanish, and Sochi had picked up a surprising amount. Some day she was going to get a dog and name it Suyana, which meant “hope.”
An hour later, winded, Sochi leaned her sweaty forehead against the pole. The humid March air was hot against her skin. Claire had taught her to love with her whole heart. She had taught her how to need a person so desperately that sometimes neither words nor thought could fill the need—only touch would do. Then she left, with only a few nasty words as her farewell, teaching Sochi what it felt like to be tossed aside like a broken pot.
Claire had destroyed her life. All Sochi wanted was five minutes with that woman—to tell her exactly what she thought of her, then push her straight into the Pacific Ocean. Well, maybe she’d kiss her and have sex one more time, then she’d push her into the ocean. Sochi laughed softly so the others couldn’t hear. Could she be any more messed up? No, she didn’t want sex. She wanted revenge. She wanted justice.
A low whoop from one of the men drew her back to the main dig area. Rigo and Miguel had uncovered a small cache. Sochi watched as her men cleaned off the items—a gold and turquoise ear ornament, a gilded copper drinking cup, four carvings of deer, and two spouted bottles decorated with reddish brown and cream glazes. It wasn’t the Lord of Sipan’s tomb, or King Chaco’s tomb, if that fabled tomb even existed, but still, a nice haul. Her eyes filled as she scanned the soil-encrusted artifacts. Incredibly beautiful. With a heavy sigh, Sochi resumed her work.
For a while, she and Rigo worked together. He told her more of what he knew about Higuchi’s main crew boss, Nopa. “He’s a killer,” Rigo murmured. They all spoke softly to avoid attracting attention.
“Does Higuchi ever work the sites, or is it just Nopa and his men?”
“Nopa does his dirty work, no matter what it is,” Rigo said, sounding deeply disgusted. “Nopa is not a man you want to meet out here, in the dark. Some of our men have talked about carrying.”
“I don’t like guns,” Sochi said. “Surely it hasn’t come to that.” She’d asked Deep Throat about weapons the last time they’d met in his favorite dark alley, but he’d refused.
Hours later, her back ached. Deep Throat wouldn’t pay for guns, but she was going to insist he buy them a metal detector. The new ones could detect man-made objects as deep as six meters. She stretched. In a short time, the sky behind the mountains would lighten to a soft, hazy blue. She took Rigo aside. “Denis will buy most of this.”
“I will contact him today,” Rigo said, his eyes gleaming, his fingers already rolling a San Pedro joint. As part of their post-dig ritual, her men smoked tobacco soaked with the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus sap. Rigo said they hoped to commune with the dead whose tomb they’d just desecrated, but she knew the ritual was mainly an excuse to get high after a hard night’s work.
When she was satisfied he knew how much each item was worth, she left the men to their hallucinations and trudged back to her car, which she’d parked on the gravel road leading to the highway. Pleased but exhausted, Sochi drove as fast as she dared. On the outskirts of Trujillo, she pulled into a deserted gas station and parked in back. She pulled off the coarse wig, scratching her head frantically until her cropped, white blond hair regained its body. She removed the brown contacts. Her hair and ice blue eyes didn’t match the deep caramel color of her skin, which Sochi loved. The contrast confused everyone. She squirted drops into her burning eyes, sighing with relief.
Then she grabbed the hanging travel bag from her backseat and stood next to the wall, out of sight of the highway, and changed from her digging clothes into a blue raw silk suit with a pale peach silk blouse. She kicked off her sandals and slipped into moderate heels.
Back on the highway, Sochi checked her watch. Crap. She would be late for the meeting. She finally reached the city, passing the yellow and white cathedral that always reminded her of a wedding cake.
Gods, she loved this city. She loved all of Peru. True, the northern part was mostly hills of stone and sand, but the land had captured every shade of beige and brown ever created, and thus shone with its own sort of beauty. After being dragged from embassy to embassy by her parents, when Sochi finished college she moved back to Peru. Finally, she had stability, something she’d never gotten from her parents. She was home. She was here for life. She knew this because not even Claire—when they’d still been speaking—could lure her away. Peru was more than her home. Peru was her responsibility.
Sochi pulled into the parking lot behind the building, relieved to find a spot, then dashed for the back door. The organization’s name was artistically hand-painted on a sign above the door: Centro Nacional de Tesoros Peruano: CNTP. National Center for Peruvian Treasures.
She clattered up the steps, nodded to the receptionist, and hurried down the polished hallway. She loved this old building. “I am so sorry to be late,” Sochi said as she nearly ran over her boss, also headed toward the conference room.
Executive Director Aurelio Mamani glared at her. “I was about to start without you.” His flared nostrils proclaimed that he disliked delaying meetings for a mere assistant.
Eight peopl
e waited in the conference room, sipping coffee and nibbling alfajores cookies. Aurelio flashed his politician’s smile around the table. “I’m delighted to welcome all of you CNTP regional directors to Trujillo. I’m sure you’ve met our newest director, Maria Menendez, from the southwestern region.” Everyone nodded and smiled at the stunning brunette seated next to Sochi. When the attention was back on Aurelio, Sochi snuck a peek at Maria. Turned out Maria was doing the same to her. When they exchanged shy smiles, a jolt of pleasure zipped through Sochi.
Aurelio’s voice was pompous. “I know Lima is a more convenient location for most of you when it comes to our meetings, but I felt it would be good to increase the visibility of northern Peru by meeting here in Trujillo this month.”
He nodded at Sochi, so she ran through some of the mundane items on the agenda, then turned the meeting back over to him.
He leaned forward, gazing into each director’s eyes for a moment. “Today’s topic is looting. It’s getting worse. We need to brainstorm new methods for stopping the total destruction and export of our culture and our history. This country has lost more artifacts to looters in the last forty years than in the last four hundred. I hope you have brought your ideas and thoughts to share with the rest of us. Between Carlos Higuchi and La Bruja, we have a war brewing between looters.”
Suddenly exhausted, Sochi sat back and listened as Aurelio directed a lively discussion. She took notes without paying much attention, often flexing her right hand, stiff from slamming the pole into the ground for hours on end. Her ankles itched from the sand. Her eyes ached. But still, it had been a productive night’s work.
Deep Throat would be pleased. As he often said, the best way to keep Peruvian artifacts from leaving Peru was to steal them before looters could. Sochi struggled with her conscience every day, but a job was a job. And besides, she agreed with him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Claire
Saturday, March 18
The Copper Egg Page 4
