Jack rose, walked to the small refrigerator, and popped the top on a can of diet soda. There was no way he could tell her about the dreams. She already thought he was crazy.
“You’ve seen the tattoo on Tupac’s chest.”
“What about it?”
“It got me curious, and I did some checking. One thing led to another until I finally ran into a reason that Conrad Altmann might be interested in Tupac. It was rumored, but never proven, that Klaus Barbie smuggled the crown piece out of Germany after the war and that he may have been attempting to reassemble the entire Sun Staff. I looked through Altmann’s study, hoping to find some confirmation that he shared his father’s interest in the artifact, and I think I did. I think he’s using Tupac to find the missing silver staff.”
“For what purpose?”
“You tell me. I think you owe me a complete rundown of the deal the NSA made with Tupac and what Admiral Riles is trying to accomplish.”
Jack studied Janet’s face, but it remained impassive, a mask that revealed no sign of what was going on within her head. It didn’t give him a lot of confidence in her forthcoming reply.
“I’m not fully read in on the operation.”
“Bullshit. They sent you here, so you had a need to know.”
“They only sent me here because you were trying to free Tupac. I was pulled out of Africa and sent here to make sure that didn’t happen.”
“You’re telling me that you don’t know anything about what the NSA wants from Tupac?”
“No. I’m telling you I’m not fully read in. I know Altmann believes that if the fully assembled staff is placed in something called the Altar of the Gods and if the correct code sequence is dialed into the crown piece, it acquires some mystical power that could restore the master race.”
Jack didn’t like where this was going. Not that he believed any of that Thule Society crap, but it was striking a little too close to his somnambulistic visions.
“And Admiral Riles believes that?”
“I doubt it. But I know he’s very interested in obtaining the complete staff for study. His deal with Tupac was that the NSA would help him recover it, thereby returning the holy Incan artifact to its rightful owners. In return, Tupac agreed to loan the Sun Staff to the NSA for a short period of time so that they can study it.”
“And why would Riles want to do that?”
“Again, he didn’t tell me. But I gather that the NSA scientists are puzzled at how the ancient Incans could have created such an intricate, durable device almost a thousand years ago.”
Jack took a sip from the cold soda can.
“One thing doesn’t make sense. Why the delay? Why have Tupac endure days of torture before agreeing to take Altmann to the staff?”
“That was part of Tupac’s demand. He wanted the NSA to break the Sun Staff codes and deliver the answer to him first. It took longer than expected.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You delivered the codes to him?”
“No. I told him the NSA had deciphered them, but Altmann locked me up before I could pass them along.”
“But you have them?”
“Now I do.”
“Damn it, Janet. You’re not making sense. You just told me that Tupac needs the codes and that Altmann needs the codes, but the only organization capable of deciphering them is the NSA.”
“When he locked me in that dungeon, Altmann claimed to have infiltrated the NSA. Maybe he got the codes before I did.”
Jack stood up, drained the last of the soda, and crushed the can in his hand. Tossing it in the trash, he glanced down at Pizarro’s journal, a disconcerting rumble starting in his gut.
“If that’s true, we better hope that the NSA’s right and Altmann’s wrong about what that damn thing can do.”
CHAPTER 80
The appearance of the cave surprised Altmann. It was no wonder that very few people even knew of its existence, the opening little bigger than a blue whale’s blowhole. He was amazed that Tupac Inti and Dolf Gruenberg managed to worm their way inside. But once inside, everything changed almost immediately.
This was no mammoth cavern with stalactites and stalagmites. This was the entrance to an interconnecting network of lava tubes from a long extinct volcano. “Tube” was an excellent description of the tunnel through which he now moved, following close behind Dolf and Tupac Inti. The lights of dozens of flashlights bobbed and weaved along the red walls, ceiling, and floor that continued fairly, but not quite, straight ahead until darkness again reclaimed supremacy.
It made Altmann think of nineteenth-century coal miners making the long walk back to the surface at the end of a long day’s work, their bobbing lanterns as impotent as fireflies, pushing the endless dark back a tiny bit, only to have it slide in from behind as they passed.
Though tubular, the walls weren’t smooth. In places water had leaked in, carving its own structure, augmenting the naturally occurring nooks and crannies with side passages of its own. It was into one of these steeply descending, narrow slots that Tupac Inti led them. Forced to tromp through a foot of swiftly flowing water, Altmann’s feet ached with the cold, but it could not dampen his mood. From nearby the silver staff called out, its sweet song summoning its soul mate, the golden orb crown piece.
Here in these underground halls the water splashed and echoed with a mystical rhythm, each drip a note thrumming within Gaia’s womb. Altmann laughed out loud, the sound drowning the more subtle noises that had so enchanted him. He hadn’t felt like this since he’d been a boy, since he’d made his first kill.
It was only a cat. A sickly, scrawny one at that. What he’d done was a kindness, although he hadn’t intended it as such. He’d meant to drag it out, to extend the animal’s sweet suffering until it screamed and yowled for the release that only death could bring. But like a young man with that first woman’s hand on his crotch, his excitement had exploded too soon, terminating his pleasure long before he’d wanted it to end.
Tupac Inti stopped ahead, turning to stare back at Altmann with a questioning look on his face. Dolf had turned to look at Altmann too. Something in those looks pissed him off.
“Keep moving.”
Five minutes passed, and then ten before the passage suddenly stopped descending and the tunnel widened. Here, the cold water became more than waist deep, forcing the men to hold their weapons and flashlights above their shoulders. Even Altmann removed his Sig P226 from his shoulder holster to keep it dry. The ripples produced by their passage sent shimmering waves of reflected light skittering across the tunnel’s red walls and ceiling. The chill Altmann had previously regarded as pleasant agony now made his teeth chatter, threatening hypothermia.
Altmann glanced at the adult daughter he had first met at the airport this morning, smiling at the thought of how she’d corrected him when he’d called her Priscilla. Bones was what she wanted to be called, a nickname she didn’t bother to explain. Although the water rose almost to her shoulders, she made no complaint, seeming to endure its chill with less distress than he was feeling.
From behind, low mutters and curses reached Altmann’s ears, but he ignored his men’s grumbling. He would endure the cold and discomfort to get what he wanted, and they would because Altmann demanded it.
The tunnel rounded a bend, and Tupac Inti scrambled up onto a rocky outcropping on the right, forcing Dolf to provide slack in the rope to avoid pulling the native man back into the water. Dolf climbed up, stopping on a ledge as Inti squeezed sideways into a crack in the wall.
Altmann grasped a rocky handhold, wet and slippery from the passage of the other two men, and clambered up, hearing Bones splash out of the water close behind him. When Altmann stood erect on the ledge, he saw Dolf vanish around a bend inside the crevice. His lieutenant’s voice, tinged with excitement, echoed out into the larger tunnel.
“We’re here!”
“Do you see the staff?”
“Yes.”
&
nbsp; “Don’t touch it. I’m coming in.”
Altmann holstered his gun and turned to help Bones up onto the ledge. Then, seeing the first of the others start to follow her up, he directed his flashlight into the man’s face.
“The rest of you wait where you are.”
The prospect of waiting rib-deep in the icy water brought a fresh round of German and Spanish curses from the long line of armed men.
Removing his backpack, Altmann stepped up to the crack, turned sideways, and shuffled inside. What had been a very tight fit for Inti and Dolf only gave Altmann the occasional jab from a protruding rock. Three meters in, an opening yawned before him. Altmann stepped out into a room the size of a London double-decker sightseeing bus, formed by an ancient lava bubble.
Then he saw the silver staff, glittering in the glare of Dolf’s flashlight beam, lying atop a narrow ledge on the far wall. With excitement palpitating his heart, Altmann walked forward, directing his own flashlight at the object he’d desired for so long.
As he drew close, Altmann saw that the staff wasn’t actually resting on the ledge. It had been lovingly placed atop twin mounts of carved wood that supported the artifact an inch above the ledge so that no part of the metal touched the stone. In its own way, the staff was as beautiful as the golden orb that occupied the waterproof top pocket of his backpack. Perfectly cylindrical, it looked to have been precision machined and polished bright. Judging by the age of the wood mounts upon which it rested, it had lain in its current position for at least a decade. But despite the passage of time, it bore no trace of tarnish.
The finely engraved symbols twisted and intertwined their way up the staff from its base all the way to the top, where the golden orb had once been fastened. Now, for the first time in five centuries, both pieces of the Incan Sun Staff occupied the same room.
Bones’s voice at his left shoulder caused Altmann to glance at her.
“So perfect.”
She leaned her walking stick against the wall and stepped forward. Altmann was struck by the reverence in her gaze as she reached out both hands to gently lift the legendary object from its resting place, rolling it on her fingers as she examined its symbols. Then Bones turned to face him, extending her arms as if she was offering the staff in tribute.
Cool to the touch, the staff’s surface was incredibly smooth, making the edges of the runes etched into its surface feel even sharper than they were. Repeating the movements that he’d just watched Bones make, Altmann rolled the staff across his palms, the motion animating the symbols as if he were rapidly flipping the pages of a cartoonist’s sketchbook.
A gentle longing in the pit of his stomach made him want to remove the orb from the backpack, place it atop the staff, and enter the code that would cause them to interconnect. But this was not the place.
Altmann nodded at Bones, and she retrieved her walking stick from where it leaned against the cave wall. She twisted the top, and it came free, revealing a padded, hollow compartment within. Altmann carefully guided the silver staff into its new carrying case and then let Bones seal the protective cap back in place.
When he looked up, he caught Tupac Inti’s gaze, the man’s dark eyes glittering ominously in the flashlights’ glare. Altmann understood the hatred in that look. After all, Inti had just handed the Quechua people’s most sacred artifact to one of their sworn enemies. Even worse, Tupac understood the legend of the Sun Staff’s true power as only a direct descendent of its original keepers could.
Altmann grinned and then nodded at Dolf.
“Let’s go.”
It was time to bring the legend to life.
CHAPTER 81
Levi Elias looked up from his desk to see Dr. Denise Jennings standing in his door, her graying hair pulled back so tightly that she’d never need a face lift. He motioned her to a chair and watched as she closed the door behind her and took a seat. His nose caught the faint hint of her shampoo, one of those herbal scents he found mildly unpleasant. Then again, Levi wasn’t a big fan of scented anything. Thank God she didn’t wear perfume. Some aging men and women started applying smells as heartily as teenage boys who had seen too many body-spray commercials.
“You’re in awfully early. What have you got for me?”
“Big John texted me at four this morning.”
“Texted you?” His voice carried with it the concern her statement triggered. “From where?”
“No need to worry. Big John used an embedded encryption that only the node stored on my device could decrypt.”
“And its content?”
“Altmann probability, 0.83.”
Levi felt the first glimmer of hope he’d felt in the last twenty-four hours.
“Should we bring Admiral Riles in on this?”
“That’s your call, but I think it’s too early. Big John identified communications activity between high-ranking military officials who are known to have taken bribes from Altmann. Nothing specific, but it implies that Altmann may have contacted key figures there.”
“Do we have any indication of the subject of those communications?”
“The military received a bomb threat against the Tiahuanaco archeological site. They have temporarily closed the site in response to the threat. However, the closure may be completely unrelated to Altmann and the Sun Staff.”
“When was the threat received?”
“Late last night.”
“Do we know its source?”
“The message claimed to be from a communist rebel group affiliated with the Shining Path.”
Levi considered this new information. None of it was specific to Altmann or the Sun Staff, and right now he had received no updated reports of Altmann’s location. The man had taken Tupac Inti and a couple of dozen armed men, departed his Cochabamba compound yesterday morning aboard three helicopters, and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. The available satellite imagery had been of no use either.
Levi turned his attention back to Dr. Jennings. “Thank you, Denise. Let me know if Big John comes up with something more specific.”
The computer scientist nodded, rose from the chair, and walked out of the office. Levi watched her go and then began composing an encrypted message to Janet Price. It wasn’t much to go on, but he’d rather have Jack and Janet check it out than have them sit idle in Oruro. The trip would take them a few hours.
There was a clear connection between the legend of the Sun Staff and those old Incan ruins. That didn’t necessarily mean that was where Altmann would go. But at the moment, it was the only thing he had. Decision made, Levi picked up the phone and placed a high-priority intelligence request to retask the next available satellite for a fresh batch of high-resolution imagery of the Tiahuanaco site.
As he’d agreed to join Admiral Riles in breaking the rules, it was time to go all in.
CHAPTER 82
The laptop speaker issued its new-message alert, redirecting Janet’s attention from Jack to the display.
“We’ve got a lead. Time to pack up and hit the road.”
As she started to shut down the laptop, Jack stopped her.
“Hold on. Let me check to see if any of my connections have come through with anything.”
Janet stood and stepped away, letting Jack slide onto the seat she’d just vacated. She looked over his shoulder as he logged into an e-mail account named [email protected] and checked for new messages. There was only one, and it contained just a single line of text.
Home is where the heart is.
Jack deleted it, logged out, and shut down the laptop.
Janet caught his eye. “What was that about?”
“Just a friend offering his help.”
“A friend?”
“Stefan Rosenstein.”
The name caught Janet by surprise. “The Bolivian senator? How do you know him?”
Jack’s smile held a hint of the old cockiness. “You mean there’s something about me the NSA doesn’t know?”
Janet ig
nored the jab. “What kind of help?”
“We’ll find the answer at his house in La Paz.”
“Alright. That’s on the way to where we’re going.”
“Which is?”
“The Tiahuanaco ruins.”
Janet saw the surprise flash in Jack’s eyes; then it was gone, almost as if she’d imagined it. Only Janet didn’t believe it had been her imagination. It wasn’t unusual that Jack would recognize the name. Tiahuanaco was a famous Bolivian site situated fifty miles west of La Paz. But the look she’d seen in Jack’s face had been more than recognition. It was a strange mixture of excitement and dread.
“What makes the NSA think Altmann’s headed for Tiahuanaco?”
“They just said they want to investigate unusual activity there. It may be nothing.”
Jack surprised her by not arguing the tenuous nature of the NSA lead. He merely nodded, rose to his feet, and began rapidly packing his gear. Again Janet felt the reluctant excitement in his movements, as if Jack were fighting an internal duel, simultaneously winning and losing.
Shrugging aside the disconcerting insight, Janet began her own preparation for departure. If something was waiting for them at Tiahuanaco, they would deal with it when they got there. On the way, they’d see just how much help Jack’s friendly senator could really provide.
CHAPTER 83
By the time they reached La Paz, the sun was already sinking low in the west, painting the snow-covered slopes of Mount Illimani pink. At twenty-one-thousand feet, the peak was often shrouded in clouds, but not this evening. Except for a narrow swath along the western horizon, the skies were clear.
Somehow Jack could feel that tonight was the night he’d been unknowingly seeking for almost two years. Somewhere out there, Conrad Altmann had the Incan Sun Staff in his possession, and Jack was going to find him. There would come a moment when he would have his chance to grasp the staff, just as Pizarro had done in his dreams. And like it had for Pizarro, that touch would free him of the entity that threatened his sanity.
There was no way Jack could tell Janet that part of his plan without her concluding that he’d already lost his mind. Perhaps she would be right to think it. After all, hadn’t he had the very same doubts?
Dead Wrong Page 22
