“You will never destroy the Altamanus,” Hernandes snarled. “We will come back, always.”
“Right now, I don’t care about that,” Jack said. “What I do care about is ridding the world of anyone who kidnaps and tortures children. All the high ideals of your organization are bogus. The Inquisition was no more than a front for sadists and psychopaths. And I haven’t forgotten that you threatened my daughter and my friends. Nobody gets away with that.” He turned to Costas. “Over to you.”
Costas lit all three sticks of dynamite at once, and tossed them into the rocks out of reach of Hernandes, who shouted with rage, flailing his arms about and trying to reach them, to no avail. Costas looked at Jack. “Time to go.”
“Roger that.”
They ran up the passageway, out of the cavern and past the blood-soaked El Tío, then as fast as they could toward the entrance to the mine. The detonations when they came were like a bellow from the god himself, resonating through the tunnels and making the ground shake. Seconds later, they were enveloped in the dust cloud that came up the passageway, but they kept moving, knowing that they were only minutes from the entrance. Then Jack felt something else: not the vibration of a blast, but a deeper shuddering, as if the whole mountain were shaking. The sound when it came was not a bellow, but a roar.
They passed out of the entrance and on to the plateau just in time to avoid the second surge, a huge eruption of dust that burst out as the center of the mountain collapsed in on itself. They continued to run until they were out of the danger zone, and then Jack turned back to watch, trying to catch his breath, feeling the precious package safe in his bag. Nobody would be going into that place ever again, neither he and Costas nor Juan and Pedro, nor any of the countless others whose lives had been blighted by serving the insatiable greed that had first drawn men to the mountain.
Costas came alongside him, and they stripped off their gear together, panting hard, saying nothing. Jack put his hand on Costas’s shoulder and felt an enormous wave of relief course through him. It was over.
They were free.
23
Two days later, in the early morning, Jack stood on a grassy patch beside a high mountain pass that led from Potosi into the Bolivian Andes. The boy who had guided him sat beside his llama, chewing on coca leaves while he fed grain to the animal from a small sack. Jack did not feel thirsty or hungry, a side effect he knew of the altitude, but he also felt that in this rarefied place he was beyond the need to cater for bodily needs, that there was something else giving him the strength to press on. He knew the thin air would be playing tricks with his senses, heightening the sound of the llama’s hooves on the stones, the smell of thyme on the mountain slopes, the biting cold of the wind, but to Jack that seemed right, as if here at the top of the world it was the senses rather than intellect that should shape his thoughts.
He pulled the woven Inca cape he was wearing closer around him, and stared down at the yawning chasm of the valley and the jagged peaks beyond, a snow-capped fringe that seemed to reach up beyond the atmosphere itself. He could see why this place had been so detested by the Conquistadors, intent only on gold and silver that was not to be found here, but was so beguiling to those who had come to the New World to find purity and light, men such as Father Vieira of Portugal, who had led his small flock from the clutches of the Inquisition to found a place where the persecution that they and their ancestors had endured might become a thing of the past.
The boy got up, gesturing for them to move on, and Jack slung his trusty old khaki bag over his shoulder and continued trudging up the narrow path behind the llama. He felt like a penitent, wounded and scarred from his trials of the last few days, on a pilgrimage to a place of healing. They passed above a thin veil of mist into the clouds, and he was no longer able to see the valley below. The path narrowed even further, skirting a precipitous rocky slope to the left and a drop-off to the right, and then they rounded a corner and entered a wide space of meadows and cultivated terraces set back into the mountainside. In the center was a cluster of low-roofed buildings of stone and mud brick surrounded by paddocks and byres filled with stacks of straw. The boy gestured toward the larger of the buildings, and then led his llama off to join others in one of the paddocks, waving at another boy who was tending them.
Jack paused for a moment, taking in the view, then crossed a mountain stream that ran through the terraces and made his way toward the buildings, passing several other people working the crops and taking straw to the byres. There were Inca among them, but one woman looked more European than Andean, with striking blue eyes and a complexion that could have been Mediterranean, possibly Spanish or Portuguese. She smiled as he passed, pointing up toward the main building, and Jack nodded in acknowledgment. He knew that he was expected; the boy whom Marco had sent earlier with the message was probably the other one tending the flock.
He reached the entrance to the largest building, a single-story farmstead of several rooms with a wide patio in front. The air was filled with the smell of llamas and coffee, of woodsmoke and cooking. Before Jack could knock, a man came out, smiling, and offered him a mug of steaming coffee.
“Jack. Very good to see you. Have this before we talk.”
Jack was not at all disarmed by the familiarity, despite the man being someone he had never seen before, and he accepted the drink gratefully, shaking the proffered hand as he did so. The man was of medium height, with a beard and cropped dark hair, and wore a distinctive metal cross over his sweater. Like the woman, he was clearly of European origin, though he seemed completely at one with this place. He gestured at Jack to sit down on a simple wooden bench under the patio. Jack did so, taking off his bag and placing it beside him, and the man sat down as well. Together they looked out over the valley while Jack drank his coffee. It tasted of this place, of the animals and the smell of the air, and he felt instantly refreshed. “Thank you,” he said. “That was much needed.”
“We always add a little something, a herbal infusion to help with the altitude. The same that your guide will have been chewing.”
“I’m grateful to you for sending him. I’d never have found this place otherwise.”
“I should introduce myself. Father Francisco Pereira. But you know who I am, of course. I’m the current head of this community.”
Jack put his hand on the mud-brick wall behind him. “These buildings are old,” he said. “Eighteenth, perhaps early nineteenth century?”
Father Pereira nodded. “The mud brick has been renewed many times, but the stone foundations date from the time when the children and grandchildren of Father Vieira’s followers founded this place in 1743. They had been wandering through these mountains for years, the survivors of the massacre of the original community by the soldiers of the Inquisition, seeking a place where they could be self-sufficient and safe. We’ve been here ever since, the descendants of those original few, all of us the result of many generations of intermarriage with the local Inca.”
“Hence your toleration of the altitude,” Jack said.
“And our ability to survive on very little, on the basics of life.”
Jack gestured at the building again. “You have no church?”
Father Pereira opened his arms expansively at the view. “When you have all this, who has need of a church?”
Jack nodded at the cross on his chest, a crude conjoining of two ancient metal spear points. “I’ve heard about that.”
“From Maria de Montijo? It is another great treasure, the cross she found in the catacombs that we believe is the original made by the Roman legionary Proselius. The story of Proselius giving his cross to the Christian woman whom he could not save has been passed down through the generations since he arrived among our ancestors in Spain in the third century. He had made it from two broken spears on the battlefield where he had his first vision of God. Maria brought this to us when she began to fear that the Altamanus were on her trail, and now it will be worn by the head of our community al
ways.”
Jack peered closely at it. “Those are Roman pilum points, undoubtedly. And of the right period.” He sat back again. “I know that Maria feels very much a part of your community.”
“Everyone is part of this community who is descended from the Christian Jews who gave protection to Proselius and his precious cargo. That includes you, Jack.”
“I am honored.”
“The honor is ours. You have carried on the legacy of those countless generations, and have saved the greatest treasure of Christendom from the forces of darkness.”
“What do you think will become of the Altamanus?”
Father Pereira pursed his lips. “They will not go away. You have cut off one head of the monster, but there are more. The monster may lie dormant for a while, licking its wounds, perhaps even for generations. We are used to it. We have been confronting the Altamanus since the time of the Roman Empire. With their greatest prize now so far from their grasp, their power will diminish. But we will always be on our guard.”
Jack opened his bag and took out the swaddled package inside. “My bag went through a world war before I owned it and since then has carried some pretty amazing artifacts, but I think this one takes the cake.” He handed the package over to Father Pereira, who took it reverentially and placed it on his lap. The leather had solidified with age, but in so doing it preserved the shape of what lay inside. “Will you open it?” Jack asked quietly.
Father Pereira was suddenly overcome by emotion, and staunched his tears with the back of one hand. “No,” he said eventually, clearing his throat. “No. This is the wrapping put on by Proselius himself, and we are sworn not to remove it until peace reigns on earth.”
“Well,” Jack said, leaning forward and giving him a piercing look. “I’ve cast my archaeologist’s eye over it and I can give you a few hints. What’s inside is definitely pottery, not metal or glass. It’s obvious from the weight. So we can get rid once and for all of the idea that the Holy Grail was some kind of chalice. From the likely shape, I’d say this is the kind of basic pottery drinking bowl that you’d expect to see in a modest Jerusalem household of the early Roman Imperial period. When I realized that after I first picked it up in the mine shaft, I became convinced that it could be genuine. You can see many examples of these simple cups from Judaea in archaeological museums around the world. This is the drinking cup of the common people at the time of Jesus.”
“As it should be,” Father Pereira said. “The idea of the chalice was a medieval fantasy. That is what makes this an even greater treasure.” He lifted the object in his hands, and then turned to Jack. “Why are you doing this? Why are you entrusting this cup to us? It could be the centerpiece of your museum, and the greatest story of archaeological discovery ever told. It would assure your name and that of your team of the highest place in the annals of archaeology.”
Jack pondered his response, looking at the scene of tranquility in front of him, at the llamas jangling their bells in the distance and the women carrying baskets in from the terraces. “The truth is, some artifacts are best not displayed in museums, and some stories of discovery are best left untold,” he replied at last. “You yourself said it. The darkness that drove the Inquisition is still there. To reveal the treasure now would provide a beacon of hope for many, yes, but it could also unleash dark forces on both sides, those who would use it as the Crusaders used the cross to prosecute holy war, and others who would start wars of their own to see it destroyed. The Inquisition of the seventeenth century may never rise again, but even worse has happened in recent time than the horrors of those years. The history of the last century has shown that.”
“It will assuredly be safe here,” Father Pereira said, pointing up at the jagged snow-capped peak behind him. “For the Inca this mountain is an apu, a protective spirit. It is one reason why our community is immune from any outside interference; the mountain spirit is seen as protecting us, and we in turn are its guardians. No government troops have ever come here, and the guerrillas steer well clear. At the top of the mountain is a sacred cave where the apu resides, a place that the Inca call the gateway to heaven. This package will go there, and will be safe until the time is right to reveal it.”
Jack smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. I couldn’t think of a better outcome. It’s been fantastic to reach the end of the trail, but sometimes it’s best for the world if the mystery remains.”
Father Pereira looked at him quizzically. “You are a dreamer, Jack. Most of us dream only at night, and our dreams are as dust in the morning. But those who dream during the day live out their dreams as reality: the visionaries and the romantics, the poets and the explorers. You are one of those, and we’re grateful to you for it.”
Jack got up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and reached out to shake Father Pereira’s hand. He stepped off the patio, and then turned back. “One final question,” he said. “Did Father Vieira ever find his promised land?”
The other man smiled. “Does Jack Howard ever find the treasure at the end of his quest?”
Jack thought for a moment, then gestured at the swaddled shape in Father Pereira’s hands. “Not always,” he said. “Often the treasure is in the quest itself, in the companionship and the revelation, in the danger and the adventure. But sometimes, just sometimes, he does.”
He turned down the path, waving at the boy with the llama who was coming up to join him. This place was as close to El Dorado as Father Vieira could ever have envisaged, and Jack felt for a moment like casting his bag aside and lying down in the meadow, soaking up the place, allowing his dreams to find their final resolution far above the yearnings that drove men to seek new horizons and new treasures in the world below. But he was not ready for that yet, and his own home awaited him, his friends and his family. It was time to go.
Epilogue
Three days later, Jack stood near the cliff edge above Kynance Cove in Cornwall, contemplating the broad sweep of the bay from Lizard Point to the craggy headland of the Rill to the northwest. It was a beautiful day, as near to dead calm as they could hope for in October, perfect for the dive they had planned to do beneath the waters of the cove below him. He could see as far as Land’s End some eighteen nautical miles to the west, and beyond that to the open ocean that continued uninterrupted for over three thousand miles to the Caribbean and the coast of South America.
It was the same vista he had contemplated only two weeks before from the cleft in the rock above the cannon site, holding the silver Spanish coin that had sparked their extraordinary quest. Yet here it was different, less constricted. Numerous ships had been wrecked in the cove below and still more on the jagged rocks beyond the end of the peninsula, but the ripples of the tidal stream that he could see off the point would always have given some hope, some possibility for ships blown in from the west of rounding the peninsula and finding safe haven. And here, instead of just seeing storm and wreck, he also saw ships striking out west, close-hauled and beating out to sea or with the full force of an easterly behind them, among them the ships of his own ancestors that had swept round the point with the ebbing tide, sailing off toward the horizon for duty and glory and fortune.
As he continued staring, time seemed to contract. A seagull swept by, circling and holding in the breeze as it eyed him for food, and then dropped down to join the others on the rocks that rose from the waters below. Farther offshore, a seal popped up, scanning the cove, and a brightly colored fishing boat stopped to haul in a crab pot, flashing and sparkling as it bobbed in the sea. In his mind’s eye, Jack saw the successive waves of history that had passed over these waters, flashing by as if in fast motion: the simple rowed boats of prehistory, the broad-beamed, square-rigged ships of the Phoenicians and the Romans, the high-sterned carracks and galleons of the Age of Discovery, and the ships of the seventeenth century that had so gripped them over the past weeks: the Schiedam with her cargo of guns and tools and people from far-off Tangier, and from even further away, from the Indies West
and East, the pirate ship that might lie below them today, carrying an unimaginable treasure out of the mists of legend into real history, into the present day.
He picked up his mask and fins and shifted his weight belt on his shoulder. He had already made one trip down the steep path to the cove carrying his scuba rig, and now he would be joining the others with the remainder of his equipment. His wetsuit was only half on, keeping his upper body cool in the breeze, but even so he was warming up and looking forward to getting in the water. He reached the final flight of rock-cut steps and then was beside the sea, negotiating the rocks on the foreshore and walking out across the sand.
The rock in the cove was serpentine, a beautiful variety unique to the Lizard peninsula, maroon and green and gray, run through with contrasting seams. He paused to touch an outcrop, the rock silky smooth where it had been polished by the sea, the streaks of red deep and vibrant where it was still wet. When he had first brought Rebecca here nearly ten years before, she had called it Utopia, and she had been right. Kynance Cove was a kind of dream land, an elemental place of rock and sea and sand, and as he followed the sand through a passage in the rock to the further beach, he felt as if he were entering a more elevated place, one where life was distilled to its essence. This was his El Dorado, his Mountain of Silver, where all that mattered to him now were the people ahead of him preparing to dive and the quest that had drawn them all to this place.
The headland that divided the two beaches was itself split off from a further jagged outcrop called Asparagus Island, the space in between forming the second beach; it was intertidal, inundated and swept clean by the sea twice a day. Stepping through the shallow lagoon between the beaches, Jack understood what Rebecca had sensed as a girl, the feeling of entering a place that was pristine and untouched. To his right, the serpentine of the headland was marked by great caves, gouged out by the sea over the millennia, and to his left the huge slab of Asparagus Island was itself split by a fracture line that he could see running at an angle from the cliff to a sheltered corner of the sea below. He walked in that direction, following the line of footprints in the sand, rising over the hump in the middle of the beach and seeing the water in the little cove beyond. Tucked under the lee of the island was their entry point, at the base of the fracture line, and he could see the others there, in various stages of kitting up and preparation for their dive.
Inquisition Page 27
