by Lyn Hamilton
“Then you’d have to make all these things over for the next one!” I exclaimed.
“Exactly.”
“Good heavens,” I said. “That would mean a lot of gold and silver over five centuries or so.”
“It would indeed.” Steve smiled. “And I just want to find a little of it. Not to keep, of course, but Hilda’s and my reputations would be secure, there’d be years of research to be done on what we found, and we’d not have nearly as much trouble finding the money for our research.”
“Are there many undisturbed tombs left to be found?” I asked. “You’ve told me about the huaqueros, the tomb robbers, and it sounds as if they’re not only good at it, but have been at it forever.”
“That’s true. Thousands of Moche tombs have probably been looted since the Europeans arrived on the scene, and relatively few, maybe in the low hundreds, have been professionally excavated. So much has been lost to us permanently. But there is some good news on that front. The Inca have a story about their origins that says that before the Inca, the world was populated by savages essentially, people who lived in caves, clothed themselves in animal skins, had no religion, no villages, and so on. The Sun God is supposed to have been pretty disgusted by this, and sent one of his sons and one of his daughters to earth—they arrived in Lake Titicaca. They’re told to put a rod in the ground and wherever it sinks right in they are to settle. This they do, and they eventually arrive in the area of Cuzco, build the city, and teach the people how to farm and weave and so on—civilize them, in other words.
“Now, whether or not they believed that story, the Inca were somewhat successful in persuading the Spanish that the Inca empire was the first, and that before it there were only these primitive, unorganized people. This was patently untrue, of course, as we now know. There were lots of very sophisticated cultures long before the Inca were even heard of. But what that meant was that the Spanish were not out there looking for gold beyond what could be found in the Inca cities. Not that they needed to, either. There was plenty of gold there to keep them occupied. So that helped a little.
“As for now, it’s just a battle against time, which we—the good guys, I mean—are losing, in my opinion, despite the fact that the Peruvian government has made it illegal to export any Moche artifacts, and a number of countries, including the U.S., have signed agreements supporting this. So we keep on looking, and sometimes we find what the huaqueros have missed, or we get a chance like this one.
“So I’m going to the INC to try to get a credencial, or extend the one I’ve got, for that site, and start digging before the wall goes up. I figure this may explain why Laforet’s in town. Guerra must have some way of contacting him, and told him he’d found a tomb. And I’m just not prepared to lose another one to pond scum!”
“Didn’t you tell me that it takes a year or two to get a license?” I asked.
“It usually does, hence the letter from the mayor to support the application. I’m stopping off in town to pick up a friend of mine, a Peruvian archaeologist by the name of Ricardo Ramos, who I hope will come with me and help me plead my case. Hilda is heading to Carlos’s place to use his telephone to try to get in touch with Ramos. Hopefully he’s in town, and we’ll be able to find him.
“God, I’d like to find one for Hilda,” he said a moment later. “You aren’t seeing her at her best, you know. She can be a lot of fun. But she had a terrible accident last year; she fell off a ladder into a pit we were digging. Hurt her back very badly. This will be her last season. I’m not sure she should be here at all, she’s in such pain. That’s why she drinks. I assume you can’t have helped notice how much she drinks.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said. “She and Tracey don’t seem to get along too well,” I added. If Steve was feeling this talkative, I figured I’d keep going.
“No,” Steve sighed. “Tracey’s an up-and-comer, that’s for sure. Knows what she wants and gets it. Hilda may consider her a bit of a threat under the circumstances. That’s the only thing I can think of that would explain it. Tracey wanted to do fieldwork this year, but Hilda said her services were required in the lab. Tracey’s disappointed and probably said so. I don’t want you to think badly of Hilda, no matter what it looks like. She’s done absolutely dynamite work down here, from a scholarly perspective. What happened to her is really unfortunate, and it’s one of the reasons we’re all working hard this year. We’d like to find something really great for her.”
We made really good time to Trujillo, stopping only once to get gas at a Shell station. It was barely nine o’clock when we roared around Trujillo’s Plaza de Armas, with its brightly painted buildings and a rather extraordinary, and disproportionate, statue of an athlete atop a column. Steve soon pulled up to the door of a dark red building. A tall, angular man with an incipient beard was leaning against the doorjamb. He walked toward the truck as we pulled up, and climbed into the backseat.
“Buenos dias,”‘ he said.
Steve reached into the backseat and shook his hand. “Hilda found you, I see,” he said. “Ricardo, this is Rebecca MacCrimmon, Rebecca, this is Dr. Ricardo Ramos.” We smiled at each other. I liked him immediately. “Did Hilda give you the details?”
“Some.” Ramos looked at his watch. “Let’s go get a coffee. The INC office doesn’t open until nine-thirty. You can fill me in, in the meantime.”
We found a little chifa and got some coffee, and for Steve and me, toast with marmalade. Steve told Ramos all about his visitations from Arturo. Ramos didn’t seem to find anything unusual in an archaeologist dealing with a huaquero, I noticed. Then Steve unfolded a map and spread it out on the table. “Hacienda,” he said, stabbing his finger on the map. “Current site.” He pointed again. “And here, the new site. Arturo says the locals call it Cerro de las Ruinas.”
Cerro de las Ruinas, hill of ruins. Steve pulled an aerial photograph out of his briefcase. “Let’s have a closer look,” he said. “This was taken recently, about two months ago.” We all peered at the aerial photograph. I could follow the riverbed, and soon found the hacienda and the site we were currently working on. Where Cerro de las Ruinas was concerned, we had to do some searching.
“Got it!” Ramos exclaimed finally. “Right here,” he said, pointing. I looked at the spot he was indicating. I could make out the trees quite easily, and then, right beside them, a shadow that indicated there might be a wall. On one side of the wall, shaded by the trees, there was a dark outline that Ramos said was a hill. It was difficult for me to make it out, but they had the training, I didn’t, so I just tried to get my bearings. A little farther along, on the other side of the wall, I could see the roofs of some little huts. The commune, I thought suddenly. So Guerra was Puma’s farmer, the fellow he thought was building a wall between himself and the commune. Presumably it wasn’t having a commune in his backyard that was bothering Guerra so much. It was the prospect of anyone at all nearby seeing him hauling treasures out of the ground.
“So what do you think?” Steve asked.
“Well,” Ramos said, rubbing the stubble on his chin, “it’s hard to be certain there’s anything worthwhile there from this photograph. On the other hand, you’re right about the Guerra family. I certainly wouldn’t mind being a burr in their saddle for a change, instead of the other way around.” He paused, then shrugged. “Let’s go for it!” he said. Steve grinned.
“We’ll have to go for the preemptive strike,” Ramos added. “With the Guerras, one whisper about this, and they’ll have the whole family out digging the place up and destroying everything in their path before we can get there.”
“So let’s go, then,” said Steve, looking at his watch.
At 9:30 the two men disappeared into the INC offices, and I was left to mind the truck.
About an hour later the two men emerged. “Let’s roll,” Steve said, getting behind the wheel. “The airport. We’re going to Lima! The people here are calling ahead. They’ll see us as soon as we can get there.” I could sens
e his excitement.
At the airport, I saw them right to the gate. There was a flight already boarding.
“Head back for Campina Vieja, will you, and tell Hilda. I’ll get a message to you sometime tonight via Montero. If it’s a no, then I’ll make my own way back from Trujillo on the bus. If it’s a yes, time will be of the essence, and I’ll need you to meet the plane, okay?” I nodded.
“Are you okay with this, really?” he asked.
“I am. I’ll stand by,” I replied.
“Don’t speak to anyone except Hilda, Ralph, or Tracey about this, will you?” he said.
“Of course not,” I said.
“You’re a gem!” he said, hugging me. “See you tomorrow one way or the other.” He turned toward the aircraft, but then turned back, and much to my surprise, hugged me again. I watched as the two men crossed the tarmac and went up the steps to the aircraft.
I drove carefully back to Campina Vieja, not wishing a run-in with the police for any reason. I went first to the site, and Hilda came over to the truck as soon as I pulled up, dust swirling. I told her what had happened.
“We’re trying to look nonchalant,” she said, irony *n her voice. “So no one will guess anything’s up, not even the students. We’ve told them that Steve had to go to Trujillo on business, so you drove him, and that Ralph and I are filling in for him for the day. I took Ines into the market this morning, but I’ll leave it to you to pick her up as usual. Don’t say anything at dinner while Pablo’s there, will you?”
I could feel myself getting caught up in the excitement. It was almost impossible to avoid. All this secrecy and plotting, the rush to Trujillo. Tracey, for some reason, wasn’t looking as interested as I would have expected; in fact she was a little withdrawn. I wondered whether the hug from Steve meant all was not well with the two of them. The rest of us could barely do justice to Ines’s meal of sopa and fish and brown sugar pudding while we waited.
Pablo and Ines eventually left for home, and as soon as they were gone, we got down to planning how we would approach closing down one site and moving to the next with the greatest of speed. The idea was to spring the credencial on Guerra before he knew what was happening. Superstitiously, we kept saying we’ll do this and that we get the credencial, as if planning for it might prevent it from happening.
“I think I hear a truck!” Ralph exclaimed, and we all strained to listen. The front door creaked open, and Lucho’s shuffling steps could be heard crossing the courtyard at the slowest pace imaginable. Tracey, I saw, had her fingers crossed. Lucho handed Hilda an envelope. “My uncle sent me over with this,” he said.
We all stared at the envelope, Hilda included, for a moment or two. I felt like an actor at the Academy Awards. Then she ripped it open, scanned it quickly, and raised her fist in triumph.
“We’re on the move!” she exclaimed. A spontaneous roar of approval erupted from our lips.
I didn’t get much sleep that night. There were so many things to think about: the next day’s plans, of course, but also the arrival in town of a known buyer of antiquities. After a few hours’ tossing and turning, and reaching no conclusions, I crept quietly down the stairs, shoes in hand, and eased my way out the door. It was still dark, about 5:30 in the morning. As quickly and as quietly as I could, I started the truck, threw it into gear, and swung it around to head out. As I did so, the beam caught Hilda in her upstairs window, her arm raised as if in a benediction, a curious sort of blessing. I gunned the engine. Operation Atahualpa was under way.
12
Did he hear it? The soft swish of the sand as it began its descent, slowly, first a trickle, then faster and faster, filling the void. Did he turn from his work at the sound, now a soft rumble, to see his fate sealed, or, dazzled by what he had found, did he work on, oblivious of what was to befall him? Did he scrabble at it, not comprehending at first, thinking that with a few short strokes he’d be free? Or trapped, did he curse fate, as the air slowly ebbed away?
I’d gassed up the truck in town on my way back to the site the previous day, so, throwing caution to the winds, I just floored it, trimming a full twenty minutes off the drive to Trujillo. By 8:10 I was at the gate, impatiently scanning the skies for the incoming aircraft. Steve and Ricardo were on standby for the flight, so I wasn’t sure they’d made it. If they hadn’t, I was to wait there until they did. The flight was a few minutes late, but as soon as the steps were rolled up and the door opened, Steve and Ricardo, who’d maneuvered themselves to the front of the plane, bolted down the steps and across the tarmac.
Seeing them coming, I headed for a Telefonico del Peru booth, where, upon my arrival, and in what I considered a stroke of brilliance, I’d posted an out of service sign. Using Hilda’s phone card, I called Montero. “We’re on our way,” was all I said before slamming down the receiver and waving to the two men.
By nine we were back on the highway. I drove again. Steve and Ricardo hadn’t had even as much sleep as I had, so they dozed while I drove. The trip back was slower, with lots more traffic, and I had to ease up considerably in the towns, now crowded with people. A couple of times I caught myself pounding the wheel in frustration.
Just a little before noon, I pulled the truck up in front of a yellow building on the main street of Campina Vieja. Waiting there were Carlos Montero and an older, slimmer version of the man, His Honor, the mayor, Cesar Montero. They climbed into the backseat of the truck, and to make room Steve climbed into the back. Two policemen on motorcycles, exactly one half the town’s police force, pulled ahead of me, and I wheeled the truck away from the curb and back onto the highway until we reached the dirt road which led to the site. Hilda, Tracey, and Ralph all saw our dust and were waiting for us when we got there.
The truck had barely come to rest when Steve was up and out the back, yelling, “Okay, let’s roll!”
Ralph and Hilda had briefed the students just a few minutes earlier, and the place was abuzz. Three students—Susan, George, and Robert—and a couple of the Peruvian workers crammed into the back of the truck with Steve, and the cavalcade pulled away again. Ricardo sat up front with me, Tracey sat in the backseat with the two Monteros (one could only hope the mayor was not as bad as his brother), and, as we pulled away, I heard Hilda and Ralph begin directing the remaining students and crew to start filling in the excavation with the back dirt just as fast as they could.
The truck and its police escort pulled out onto the highway again, heading north. About a mile farther along, we turned left off the highway at a small marker and bounced along what was not, to my way of thinking, a road, just a dusty trail in the sand. I just concentrated on not getting off the track and bogged down. Ahead of us I could see the algarrobal, the thorn tree thicket. We circled to the right around it, and on the far side pulled to a stop, police lights flashing. Then everyone was out of the truck and running— all of us, that is, except Carlos and Cesar, who hung way back—toward what appeared to be a very ordinary hill.
Two things about that moment I will never forget: the expression on Rolando Guerra’s face, and my first sight of Cerro de las Ruinas.
Seeing what must have looked like a horde of howling banshees, Guerra reached for a rifle, but before he could do that, the police, guns out, shouted at him to get his hands up. Steve and Ricardo went up to him and shoved their credential in his face. The police quickly searched Guerra’s truck and a little lean-to on the property, and looked along the wall. There was nothing. No mounds of looted artifacts, just a pile of bricks, a trowel, a shovel, a jacket.
For a moment or two, I thought that we’d made a mistake, that we were terrorizing a simple farmer trying to protect a little piece of land. Then, for just an instant, I saw a look of pure hatred, then sly cunning flash across Guerra’s face. He was guilty of something, all right. Whatever it was he was up to, he was up to no good.
But there was no reason to detain him. The police told him the archaeologists had the right to dig the land, and that he would have to leave.
In a bit of an anticlimax, Guerra picked up his tools, his rifle, and jacket, and pulled away in a beat-up old Chevy truck, without so much as a backward glance.
All of us, exhausted from the waiting, the anticipation, the adrenaline rush, looked about.
“What a mess!” Ramos said.
Over to our right was what appeared to be a bare hill, only one small bush clinging to life on the slope. I shaded my eyes to see the top. It was flattened irregularly, and the sides were streaked with deep vertical cuts that appeared to be the result of torrents of water in a time long before.
There was a large flat area in front of the hill, its surface marred by depressions of all sizes that made me think of the pockmarked surface of the moon. Scattered across the sand, which now in the late afternoon was swirling about the site, were shards of pottery, black and terra-cotta, and almost unbelievably, fragments of bone. A plait of dark hair, bleached red, lay forlornly on the edge of a crater.
“What is this?” I gasped.
“Huaqueros,” Steve said. “They’ve been digging here. That’s what the depressions are, the places they’ve dug. Some are very old, others very recent. Looters look for metals, so if they come across ceramics, or bones, they just toss them.”
