Inquisition

by David Gibbins

  Marco led them out into the sunlight again, and Jack saw that the puff of dust from the explosion had covered them in a sheen of white. The boys around them looked like an army of ghosts, as if they were preparing for some voodoo ritual in front of their god. Marco caught his gaze, and led them farther out. “You’ll find very few places in the world where people, especially children, are so constantly on the edge between life and death, and where the shadow of death hangs over them night and day. For the local Inca it has been this way for countless generations, since even before the Spanish came along, when the local chieftains began to work the mountain. It’s as if they’re enslaved to it, with no hope of reprieve. All we can do is try to improve their chances of a better life through education. But it’s an unrewarding task, with no other employer within hundreds of miles.”

  “So what do we do now?” Jack said.

  Marco turned to them, his face serious. “Father Pereira has decided that it’s too risky for me to go to the town and be seen with you. If the Altamanus are here and see us together, they’ll know that I must have come from the mission. He’s fearful that they will then try to capture me and use their techniques to find out its location. Instead I’m to give you the details of a place in Potosi that you can use as a safe house before you venture into the mine tonight. You have to wait until then because the area of the mine that you will need to penetrate is currently being dynamited, and a way through will need to be reopened and shored up by the boys when that finishes this afternoon. You’ll stay up here for the remainder of the day, resting in the place where you’ve just slept, and then make your way down to the town under cover of darkness once evening falls. There’s a tunnel leading from the safe house all the way under the entrance of the mine; once there, you’ll meet up with Juan. From now on, until you get back to the mine, you’re on your own.”

  “What is this safe house?” Jack asked.

  Marco passed him a slip of paper. “Memorize this location. It’s an entrance in an alleyway behind the Casa de la Moneda, the buildings of the mint. A woman who will recognize you will meet you there at nine p.m. In the nineteenth century, an earthquake opened up a chamber beneath the mint that had been sealed up since the late seventeenth century. The passageway leading to it from the mountain was dug to allow the chamber to be a secret smelting and minting establishment, right under the noses of the official mint. A maverick assayer had the idea of setting up his own illegal mint rather than just creaming bullion from the official output, which was the usual way but risky—the assayers were constantly investigated and if caught were immediately garrotted. As it happens, he wasn’t so lucky and was arrested for other reasons, but the chamber remained undiscovered and was sealed up with the minting equipment still inside, exactly as it had been when it was last used in 1686. After it was revealed by the earthquake, those who found it decided not to tell the authorities but to keep it as a safe house, at a time when there was much revolutionary disruption in Bolivia and such a place was useful for harboring refugees from the various military regimes. The mission has known about it since then and used it for the same purpose when it has been necessary for someone to go to ground.”

  “How will we contact you or Father Pereira when this is all over?”

  “We will know how to find you. We have many friends among the boys of the mine.” Marco turned and shook hands with both of them. “One other thing. Are you armed?”

  Jack patted his bag. “Beretta 9 millimeter with three mags. Both of us.”

  “Good.” Marco squinted as the sun broke through a cloud, then gestured back at the opening into the mountain behind him. “Out here, the miners are Christians. Inside, they worship the devil. When you go in there, you are going to have to do all you can to keep out of the clutches of the devil as well. Go now, and get some rest. Keep out of sight until dusk. God be with you.”

  20

  An hour after dusk that evening, Jack and Costas moved carefully into the lower reaches of the town, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as they made their way toward the address that Marco had written on the scrap of paper. There were enough other Europeans in the town, priests and municipal officials and mining engineers, for them to pass without undue notice, but even so Jack was concerned that they should find the alley behind the Casa de la Moneda before too many eyes followed them from windows and cafés and they attracted the inevitable trail of children.

  As they entered the alley, a woman who had clearly been waiting hurried up to them, gesturing for them to follow her down a stepped passageway. She stopped at a door, looked around, then opened it with a key, ushering them in and locking it behind her. They followed her down another flight of stairs, through a succession of low barrel-vaulted cellars to a far room with a stack of wooden beams beside one wall. She moved these aside, revealing a low door. She unlocked that too, ushered them inside, and then left without saying a word, locking the door again behind her. She had completed her task, and Jack knew that she would have wanted to minimize communication with those she was helping in case she were to be captured and made to talk.

  They walked cautiously into the chamber. It was like a church crypt, lit by candles, and was constructed from blocks of the gray-green rock they had seen on the mountain. At one end of it Jack could see a grille that he knew must mark the entrance to the tunnel that Marco had talked about, their access point to the shaft under the mountain some two kilometers away. But for the moment it was what lay in the center of the room that drew his attention: a succession of tables and anvils set into the masonry, with tools on the floor and walls all around. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “I see what Marco meant. It’s an intact seventeenth-century mint, with all the equipment and tools still in situ. Fascinating.”

  “Always good to get a little more archaeology in when you’re under duress.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Talk me through it, Jack.”

  Jack pointed to the grille in the far corner. “I assume that the ore came in by sack through the tunnel. It’s hard to imagine it being carried more than two kilometers from the seams under the mountain, but there it is. Somewhere nearby there must have been a smelting factory, presumably in some other part of this complex that’s maybe yet to be uncovered. The hot liquid silver would have been cast into thin bars that would then have been pounded and rolled into thin strips, to the thickness of the coin denomination required. Those strips are what would have arrived in this room for the actual minting process. They were called cobs, hence the name Spanish colonial hammered coins are often known by today.”

  “So this room is where the silver was made into coins.”

  “That’s right. The first thing was to make planchets, what we would call flans or blanks. Those heavy table shears like manual paper-cutters would have been used to do that, requiring the workmen to put their full strength into cutting the metal. Then, once you have the planchets roughly sized, you hold them in tongs and use these other shears and the hammers and chisels to snip and cut them to the exact weight required. You then give the planchets an acid bath to clean them, probably in that vat over there, and you’re ready for the final part of the process.”

  “The hammer and the anvil.”

  Jack picked up a rusted cylinder beside the anvil, the base showing an incised obverse design of the Habsburg coat of arms of Spain. “The next stage is the fun bit, where all the idiosyncrasy of the final product comes in. You anchor one die in the anvil, the obverse, you place the planchet on top of that, you hold the other die in a pair of tongs over it and your assistant whacks the whole thing as hard as he can with a heavy metal mallet. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a reasonable coverage of both designs on the coin. If you’re a bit sloppy or tired, the designs might only partially appear. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s the weight that counts, and providing you can see the assayer and mint marks you’ve got your piece of eight.”

  “And then if you’re a Portuguese Jewish merchant name
d João Rodrigues Brandão, when you get your coins you go one step further and stamp in your own distinctive mark of a Star of David to make them really yours.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So we’ve nearly got the full story. We start with finding those coins on the wreck of the Schiedam, we go to Port Royal where the coins were taken after being robbed from the treasure ships, and then we come here to the place where they were minted. Next step, the mountain where the ore was mined.

  “Let’s hope that closes the story in more ways than one.”

  “Speaking of which, it’s time to do our equipment check,” Costas said. “Three hours to go until zero hour at midnight, and I want to get some rest.”

  “Roger that.”

  They opened up their packs and checked the contents systematically, laying them out and putting back the items they would not need immediately. They had side-mounted hydration units, one water flask in each side pocket, with hoses that clipped on the shoulder straps of the packs beside their necks; in their first-aid kits they also carried rehydration sachets and water purification tablets should they need to take water from the mine, and Costas had a water-purifier pump. For food they carried energy bars and quick-burst energy gels used by athletes, all they expected to need given that they only planned to be inside the mountain for a short time. Costas pulled out his breathing helmet, a sealed full-face unit developed at IMU that had a Kevlar helmet, a mask to protect the eyes, and a double-filter breathing unit, with a quick-fit attachment for a miniature air cylinder in the event that they had to go underwater. He checked the fittings, and waved it at Jack. “They may believe in the protective powers of their voodoo god, but I wasn’t overly impressed by that one we saw. With all those butts in its mouth, it looked like an advertisement for lung disease, not something to ward it off. I’ll take my chances with one of these.”

  “I’m with you on that,” Jack said. “We’ve each got a backup, too, so Juan can have one if he wants.”

  They tested the headlamps on their helmets and the 1,000-lumen diver flashlights that they also carry with them, and then the spare batteries. Lastly, they both took out the holsters containing the Beretta 92F pistols that had been issued to them by the captain of the Embraer from the on-board armory, not the first time they had needed to be armed on an archaeological quest. They checked that the magazines were full, loaded a magazine into each pistol, and then strapped the holsters over their shoulders. Jack checked that his sheath knife was securely on his belt, and then tied his bag up and clicked the flap shut.

  “Okay,” Costas said, shutting his own bag. “Any final thoughts?”

  “I’m glad I stopped Rebecca from trying to come with us. She wasn’t happy with me, and I feel bad about laying down the law. But there was no way I was having her involved in this.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “And you?”

  “Final thoughts? When will this headache go, and when can I have my next gin and tonic from my favorite poolside bar in Mauritius? Will it be this week, or next? That’s all that matters. And making sure Lanowski puts Little Joey to sleep properly for the flight back from Port Royal. I should have given them a call, really.” He put his pack on the floor to use as a pillow, and then lay down with his hands clasped over his front. “Time for some shut-eye. My alarm is set for midnight.”

  He was asleep almost immediately, snoring gently. Jack lay down too, knowing that he still needed to rebuild his strength after his injury and that the altitude would be taking a toll on him as well. But he was only able to doze fitfully, woken by a dream of rushing water and darkness, of being sucked back down again by the boat, unable to disentangle himself. He lay awake after that thinking not of ancient relics, but of the people who had enriched his life, the people he loved: Rebecca and Costas, Maria and Maurice, all the others. He remembered the words of the Roman Laurentius when he had been challenged to produce the wealth of the Church and had declared that the true treasure was in the people, in the congregation. Perhaps that was the lesson of the Holy Chalice, Jack thought, now as it had been then: that it was not the artifacts that mattered but the people, that the hunt for lost treasures was really about giving meaning and measure to the lives of those who had embarked on the quest.

  There was a sudden clattering from the direction of the stairs, and the sound of the door closing. Jack reached for his Beretta, keeping it concealed under his pack with his finger on the safety. Someone came into the room, and he could see it was the woman who had brought them in here. She was clearly distraught, and came toward them quickly. “Dios mío, Dios mío,” she said, fanning her face with her hand.

  Costas had got up, and held her by the wrists, calming her down. “What is it? Tell us.”

  She stared into his eyes, taking deep breaths. “I was sent here by Marco to tell you. They have arrived. He said you would know who I meant. They have been to the mine, questioning everyone there, and they have taken the boy. Not Juan, but his little friend.” She put her hand over her mouth, trying to control her emotions. “My nephew Pedro. They took him into the mine.”

  “Okay,” Jack said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll find him. I need you to go to Marco and tell him that this changes nothing. This changes nothing. Can you do that?”

  She sniffed, wiping her eyes, and nodded. “Sí, I will do that now. Please be careful. And bring back my nephew.”

  She turned and hurried back toward the door, closing it behind her. Jack turned to Costas. “We need to go now. Once our message reaches Juan, he’ll be looking out for us. We’ll just have to hope that he managed to evade capture too.”

  “And that Pedro hasn’t given the game away. The boys must all have seen those fish symbols carved into the walls, even if they couldn’t know their significance. Miners are often superstitious, and they’d be used to the idea of symbols to ward off bad luck, including those from hundreds of years earlier whose meaning might be lost.”

  “All I’m thinking about is that boy. If we hadn’t come to Potosi, he might not have been taken. He’s our responsibility.”

  “If they have gone deep and we’re following them, we might have the upper hand. There may be no other way out for them than to get past us.”

  Jack took a deep breath, steeling himself for what lay ahead. He remembered his discussion with Maria and Rebecca and Jeremy just before they had left Portugal for Jamaica. Then, he had wanted to follow all the strands, to go to Port Royal first, to see where that would lead him. He had not yet felt that narrowing of focus, that intense drive to put all his energies into one objective that he had known would come when the time was right. Now, though, that time had come. Being hung in chains on the island, being taken to his limit in the sea had stripped him to the basics, and focused him on what had got him into those predicaments in the first place. The passage that lay ahead of them into the mountain was constricting his focus further. And there was no going back now; once in there, there could be no deviation, and there was no other reason for entering that place where no human being rightly belonged. He just prayed that they would be the first to the secret place, and that they could reach the boy before it was too late.

  Costas took out his Beretta, pulled back the slide to chamber a round, and replaced the gun in its holster. Jack did the same with his, then they both took out their breathing masks, hooked them round their necks and over their heads, and pulled the straps tight. They put on their backpacks and activated their headlamps, switching on the lights and angling them to see a few meters in front of them as they were walking.

  Jack led the way to the entrance to the tunnel, pulled open the grille, and played his beam along the rough-cut rock walls. It seemed incredibly narrow, just wide enough for a small Inca to carry a sack of ore, and it was hard to believe that it extended more than two kilometers before it joined one of the shafts from the mine entrance. He was going to have to be hunched down all the way, and would have to marshal all his reserves to batt
le the claustrophobia that this place seemed designed to bring on. He half turned his head so that he could see Costas’s beam. “This is it, then. You good to go?”

  “I’m behind you, Jack. Good to go.”

  21

  Almost an hour later, Jack went down on all fours to ease the pain in his back, scraping his shoulders against the jagged rock of the tunnel wall as he did so. It was the most constricted space he had ever tried to negotiate for this length of time, and every step had become agonizing. For each brief spell of a few meters where they could walk, hunched over and squeezed between the walls, there were long stretches where they could only crawl, and then sections where even crawling was impossible because of the protrusions on the floor. The only advantage of the appalling constriction was that he had long ago ceased to concern himself with claustrophobia, as all his thoughts and energy had been focused on the physical struggle. Where the tunnel had widened for a few meters he had moved aside to let Costas squeeze ahead of him, but now Costas had stopped too, lying on his back on a flat section of rock. This was far harder going than either of them had imagined, and Jack was seriously beginning to wonder whether they would make it in time for their rendezvous with the boy, in a little less than half an hour now.

  He rolled over and sat upright in a gap, hitting his helmet against the rock as he did so, then activated his wrist computer to check the air quality, seeing that it was still within acceptable parameters. Before entering the tunnel, they had observed a slight but vital movement of the air, crucial for their survival; the difference in altitude between the chamber where they had entered and the mine entrance where they would exit meant a difference in pressure, one that drew in air from the shaft ahead and in turn from outside. As a result, the air was cleaner here than they had experienced with Marco at the mine entrance, and during their halts they had lifted their visors several times to take quick bites of the energy bars that they had brought along with them.