The Inca Prophecy

by Adrian D'hagé

  Two hours later, they reached a fast-running stream, gurgling and tumbling over rocks worn smooth by the ages. Renzo moved forward and tugged O’Connor’s arm.

  ‘Fernando says there’s movement behind us.’

  O’Connor moved to the rear of the column and slid behind the cover of a tree, just before a bend in the track. He slung his carbine, cocked his Glock and waited.

  Minutes later, Juan Carlos appeared around the bend, moving cautiously, and O’Connor stepped on to the trail.

  ‘Take off your pack,’ he ordered.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Juan Carlos replied.

  O’Connor pointed his Glock at Juan Carlos’ head. ‘Take it off!’

  The colour drained from the man’s face as Aleta joined them, Socimi submachine gun at the ready. He did as he was told.

  ‘Face down on the ground,’ O’Connor ordered, grabbing the pack and shoving it towards Aleta.

  It didn’t take long for Aleta to find an Iridium satellite phone with three spare batteries, hidden in a secret compartment. O’Connor checked the call log. Since they’d left Itahuania, Juan Carlos had made two calls a day, all to the same number.

  ‘No prizes for guessing who owns the receiving phone,’ O’Connor muttered. He took a length of cord from his own pack and bound Juan Carlos’ wrists tightly, and heaved him into the buttress roots of the ceiba tree.

  ‘I apologise,’ Huayta said quietly. ‘I feel responsible – and betrayed,’ he added, a look of deep concern on his wizened face.

  ‘The bad apple in the barrel,’ said O’Connor, ‘but if we’re going to beat the zenith, we’ve got to keep moving, even if Wiley’s assets aren’t far behind.’

  After another two hours, O’Connor called a halt and dropped to one knee. Beneath the decaying leaves and other detritus that formed the jungle carpet, O’Connor had spotted something unusual in the half-light. He reached for his machete and scraped away the leaves, revealing a series of ancient stones.

  ‘We’re getting close. The compass coordinates are within a hundred metres.’

  ‘Be careful,’ was all Huayta said.

  O’Connor looked at his watch, unsure that being careful was an option. There was less than an hour to go until the zenith. They moved on, with Aleta close behind, the rest of the group following. The stones were just visible beneath the leaves. O’Connor followed them, hacking his way through vines and dense undergrowth, until they suddenly came upon a small clearing, crossed by the path. He took a step forward but something jagged against his leg.

  ‘Get down!’ he yelled, grabbing Aleta and pushing her into the jungle on the side of the track. An ancient mechanism had been set off that released a huge boulder enclosed in a wicker basket. Suspended on vines matted together into ropes, the primeval wrecking ball thundered past their position, brushing the path and missing them by centimetres. Aleta’s eyes were wide with shock.

  ‘Don’t move,’ O’Connor said calmly, and they waited for the massive boulder to swing backwards and forwards in ever-decreasing arcs, until it came to rest, gently oscillating up and down at the end of the vines.

  ‘One trap avoided,’ O’Connor said with a grin, helping a shaken Aleta to her feet.

  ‘But how many more?’ Aleta wondered aloud, gasping for breath.

  They cautiously crossed the clearing and pushed along the moss-covered stones, deeper into the jungle, the canopy so dense now, it was almost dark.

  ‘If the lost city’s here, it’s easy to see why it’s never been spotted by satellite,’ said O’Connor. ‘If it gets any darker we’ll need a torch.’

  They reached a point where the track passed a river and suddenly there was a high, moss-covered wall on the other.

  ‘A wall … And the stones are fitted so tightly together. Inca!’ said Aleta.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ O’Connor agreed.

  Aleta grabbed O’Connor’s arm. ‘What are they?’

  O’Connor had already seen them. Ahead two ancient skulls had been mounted on poles either side of the path, their jaws twisted in a deathly grimace.

  They continued to follow the archaic wall and suddenly an entrance appeared ahead. The group passed through the archway and Aleta put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘The Lost City of Paititi!’

  Chapter 53

  The jungle had long since reclaimed the city, but the dark shapes of the buildings were unmistakable. The stone Plaza de Armas was covered in moss and surrounded by four massive pyramids, each standing sentinel at the compass points. Two stone towers stood between the pyramids, one at either end of the plaza. Beyond the towers and the pyramids, O’Connor could just make out more moss-covered stone buildings, overtaken by vines and jungle undergrowth.

  Huayta followed close behind O’Connor and Aleta, his heart racing. He struggled with his emotions, wanting to warn them of what lay ahead, but disciplining himself against such a move. The prophecy, he knew, had to unfold the way his forebears had decreed.

  The silence was eerie, and nothing stirred in the ancient city. Suddenly O’Connor caught a movement near the top of one of the pyramids.

  ‘Get down!’ He pushed Aleta behind an ancient stone altar with a wooden top.

  Thwock! A poison-tipped arrow embedded itself in the wood.

  ‘The Yaminahua … the protectors of the city,’ Huayta explained. ‘Some of them have never seen a white man.’

  ‘Well, at least we know we’re in the right place, but I’m betting they’re not in the mood to chat,’ O’Connor said.

  Huayta nodded. ‘The only thing they will understand is a show of force on your part. That will alert them to their own prophecy. They’ve been waiting for centuries, and they’ve always known that one day, the chosen ones would come.’

  O’Connor took up a position behind the altar and adjusted the sights on his M4AI carbine. An Indian warrior appeared from behind the dark summit of one of the pyramids and O’Connor fired. The Indian’s cry echoed off the walls of the towers as he tumbled down the steps of the pyramid and into the plaza. O’Connor ducked behind the altar as a volley of arrows thundered into the woodwork.

  Without warning the air was shattered by the crackle of rifle fire. Huayta’s guides were engaging the Yaminahua tribe from positions on the top of the ancient city walls. The brightly painted bodies of five more Indians tumbled lifeless into the stone plaza. Suddenly, the jungle was filled with the sound of panpipes.

  ‘Jesus Christ. What the hell is that?’ O’Connor asked Huayta.

  ‘They’re saluting you,’ Huayta said, smiling broadly. ‘Look!’

  O’Connor judged there must have been 300 warriors. They appeared from behind the gloom of the pyramids, dressed in their ceremonial war tunics. Each wore gold amulets and some had golden headbands topped with brightly coloured feathers. The sound of the panpipes receded and one by one they retreated into the jungle. They had acknowledged O’Connor and Aleta as the chosen people.

  ‘I want sentries posted on top of all four pyramids,’ O’Connor said.

  Huayta smiled. ‘It’s done,’ he said. Huayta’s men began scrambling into position.

  O’Connor looked at his watch. Less than twenty minutes before the sun reached its zenith – not that you could tell from down here, he thought. Less than twenty minutes to find the third crystal skull and find out what to do with all three. The task seemed nearly impossible, and for a moment O’Connor thought it might be beyond them. He scanned the city, searching for a clue. ‘What do you suppose the towers are for?’ he asked Aleta.

  ‘I’m not sure, but there are steps leading up to the tops.’

  ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ O’Connor replied. He moved carefully up the stone steps of the nearest tower, with Aleta close behind. When he reached the top, he whistled softly. A solid-gold flagstone block had been set at an angle in the middle of the stone parapet. Engraved in the centre was the Greek letter phi, .

  ‘The Mayans weren’t the only ones to use the golden r
atio in their buildings,’ Aleta mused in wonderment.

  ‘The question is, what does it mean?’ O’Connor replied, placing his foot on the symbol but without result. ‘Unless …’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘This is somehow related to the Fibonacci sequence,’ O’Connor replied. Aleta knew that the sequence was a mathematical formula considered by many to be the core of the natural world. From the number of seeds in a sunflower to the spirals of shells and the branching of trees, the Fibonacci sequence was at the base of it all.

  ‘I’m wondering if instead of using the golden ratio, the Inca used the golden angle?’ O’Connor mused.

  ‘One hundred and thirty-seven point five degrees?’

  ‘And that might just be the clue we’re looking for,’ O’Connor said, his mind racing. ‘The Fibonacci sequence is embedded in nature and leaf patterns —’

  ‘The sunflower!’ they exclaimed in unison.

  ‘Exactly! The angle between the florets on the sunflower is 137.5 degrees,’ O’Connor said. Both knew the golden angle was obtained from two points on the circumference of a circle. The golden angle was easily calculated by dividing 3600 by and subtracting the answer, 222.5, which produced the golden angle of 137.508.

  ‘And the sunflower originated from the Americas. The Inca might have seen a connection?’

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’ O’Connor whipped out his compass and aligned it with the centre of the gold symbol. ‘Sixty-eight and three-quarter degrees … half the golden angle!’

  ‘And if there’s a flagstone on the other tower, that’s the other half!’

  ‘The intersection …’ Again, they both spoke together.

  ‘Carlos! Quickly!’ O’Connor shouted. We’ve only ten minutes before the sun reaches the zenith. I need you on top of the other tower,’ and he doubled back down the steps to the plaza. ‘Line me up,’ he called when Huayta had reached the opposite flagstone.

  ‘Move towards Aleta more,’ Huayta commanded. ‘Yes … Okay, you’re in line with me.’

  ‘Come forward,’ Aleta directed. ‘Further … a little more … stop,’ she called when O’Connor came into line with the direction of .

  O’Connor grabbed his knife and scraped away the moss from the tightly fitting plaza stone beneath him. The knife sank deep into the moss as O’Connor cleared the centuries of debris to reveal an indentation in the shape of a puma head. O’Connor dropped his pack and retrieved the solid-gold puma head they’d discovered in the tomb. It was the exact size and shape of the stone indentation. Making sure that Aleta and Huayta were safely off the towers, he slowly placed the head into the corresponding shape on the keystone. To his delight, it clicked home. The ground began to tremble as the front of the left tower sank into the earth, revealing dusty stone stairs that hadn’t seen the light of the jungle since the Inca had fled the Spanish invasion and established the city centuries before.

  Aleta gasped. ‘The walls … they’re lined with gold!’

  Huayta nodded. ‘Twenty-two-carat gold sheet,’ he confirmed. ‘Like the walls of the temple in Cusco. If the Spanish had found this city, they would have melted down everything in sight, but Paititi has lain hidden from their grasp.’

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ urged O’Connor. ‘Two minutes to the zenith!’ He grabbed the boxes containing the precious crystal skulls and led the way into the citadel, probing the encroaching darkness with his torch beam. The stairs descended and took a sharp turn to the right before leading towards a large, circular catacomb with a domed roof. The niches in the walls glinted in the light of the torch. They were crammed with priceless Inca artefacts: solid-gold statues inlaid with emeralds and other precious stones, miniature replicas of the Golden Sun Disc, corn with stalks of solid silver and ears of gold, gold goblets and vases filled with emeralds and turquoise. But all of this paled in comparison with the inner sanctum. Here, the walls were lined with gold Inca mummies.

  ‘The Golden Sun Disc and the last crystal skull!’ Aleta exclaimed. ‘And look at the diamond in the middle!’ The gold jewel-encrusted sacred disc of the Inca, once suspended in the Coricancha, had been fitted into a perfect circular groove in the stone floor. Beside it lay ropes of golden thread. A huge diamond, the size of a billiard ball, was embedded in the centre. Directly beyond the disc, a crystal skull identical to the ones carried by Aleta and O’Connor sat in a small carved niche. An eerie blue light glowed deep within the crystal. O’Connor continued to shine his torch around the room and across the granite flagstones.

  ‘And look!’ Aleta shouted, barely containing her excitement. Just inside the entrance, a golden icon of a skull had been carved into a flagstone. ‘And there’s another one on the other side!’ O’Connor and Aleta carefully removed the crystal skulls from their carrying cases and placed them on the carvings, where they locked in perfectly.

  ‘Now what?’ O’Connor wondered aloud, but as he spoke, a thin beam of sunlight appeared through the ceiling.

  ‘See!’ Aleta exclaimed, pointing to a small hole in the gold sheet on the roof of the cupola. ‘There must be a gap in the canopy.’

  ‘Which the Yaminahua tribe have maintained for centuries, waiting for just this moment,’ Huayta said, the awe in his voice clear.

  ‘Then the Yaminahua were really on our side?’ Aleta asked, watching the dust particles in the growing beam of sunlight.

  ‘Yes, but they treated you as an enemy until you successfully killed several of their number. That was the sign they were looking for. Those that gave their lives did so willingly, allowing the remainder of the tribe to retreat. Far from wanting any revenge, they are overjoyed that this moment has finally arrived.’

  The beam strengthened, moving towards the centre of the disc and the diamond. At over 1000 carats, it was bigger than anything in the known world, dwarfing the Golden Jubilee and Cullinan diamonds.

  Suddenly, the cuts on the diamond split the sun’s rays in three directions, shining at the three crystal skulls.

  ‘The sun is at its zenith,’ Huayta observed calmly. ‘The Inca prophecy will now be revealed.’

  The power of Inti, the Giver of Life, energised the skulls and all three were instantly connected. Slivers of deep-blue electricity connecting the crystal crackled around the walls.

  ‘Stand back and let the images appear,’ Huayta advised.

  ‘It’s just like a hologram,’ Aleta whispered in awe, as the first of the images appeared over the centre of the Sun Disc. ‘That’s the President of the United States, and the Prime Minister of Israel.’

  ‘They’re in the Oval Office,’ O’Connor agreed, unable to tear his eyes away from the image. ‘Just the two of them.’

  ‘As you’re aware, Mr President,’ the Israeli Prime Minister intoned, ‘when Eisenhower sat in this office before the Suez Crisis in 1956, my predecessor, David Ben-Gurion, was deceptive. He didn’t tell Eisenhower about his secret meetings with the British and the French, and Eisenhower read about our invasion across the Suez in the newspapers. I don’t want to make the same mistake with you. A nuclear-armed Iran is simply unacceptable to Israel, and we’re going to attack the day after tomorrow. We don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Let me be blunt,’ said McGovern, his face set in determination. ‘An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will destabilise the entire Middle East, and that is not acceptable to the United States. Fifteen million barrels of oil a day – nearly a third of the world’s supply – passes through the Hormuz Straits and if you attack Iran, they will close them. That will double – quadruple – inflation overnight. The results would be disastrous for the US and for the world. You have to give diplomacy a chance.’

  ‘We’ve tried that, and it hasn’t worked. Neither have the sanctions.’

  ‘You don’t have many friends left in this world, Prime Minister.’ The President wasn’t pulling his punches. ‘After your disastrous attack on the Gaza aid flotilla in international waters, even Turkey’s against you – and in the Muslim world,
they were the only friends you had. You attack Iran, and a billion Muslims are going to see this as an attack on Islam itself.’

  The Israeli Prime Minister shrugged. ‘They said that when we attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and they said it again when we attacked the Syrian reactor in al-Kibar. The world has to understand that Israel will not stand idly by while her enemies arm themselves with nuclear weapons that can achieve what Ahmadinejad has vowed to do – wipe Israel off the map!’

  The anger between the two leaders was palpable and the power grid between the crystal skulls intensified as the hologram shifted to the massive Ramon Air Force Base in the Negev Desert of Israel, where Air Force Colonel Erez Rosenberg was briefing his F-15 and F-16 pilots.

  Aleta held her hand to her mouth.

  ‘My God!’ she said. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it will be, unless our civilisation changes course,’ O’Connor said, ‘and the meeting between the President and the Prime Minister of Israel … before we left Cusco there was a report in the media of another one in three days’ time.’

  ‘We have much to learn about the nature of time,’ Huayta said. ‘Even the way holograms are created is not fully understood, but the meeting in three days’ time will follow the course of the one you’ve just witnessed. If you’re going to change the course of that prophecy, you will have to find a way to warn your president.’

  ‘Even if I could get to Washington without being arrested, words are not going to have sufficient impact,’ O’Connor replied, his mind racing. ‘Is this the only place and time the skull configuration can be energised? If we could find a way to direct a beam of light onto all three skulls at once, would that energise the crystal as it has now?’

  Huayta nodded. ‘Provided you can replicate the conditions, the disc will do the rest.’