But that was not what had caught our attention and made our hearts skip a beat.
In front of the main entrance to the building, bare of any covering of soil, but at the same time obstructed by tons of stone blocks and columns, we saw something both hopeful and worrying. It was something we had not expected to find at all.
Cabins.
Or to be precise, what must once have been cabins.
Now they were no more than the charred remains of what must have been five wooden buildings. Only their foundations stood, holding up fragments of blackened walls.
They were definitely the remains of a devastating fire.
And the evidence that we were not the first western people in the Black City.
My voice trembled involuntarily as I asked, “Does anybody have the slightest idea what all this means?”
The silence was eloquent enough. I realized that both Professor Castillo and Cassandra were staring at the remains of those cabins holding their breath.
“I don’t understand anything,” Cassie said in a whisper.
At last the professor stepped forward. “Valeria!” he said almost inaudibly. And he started to run calling out once again: “Valeria!”
Cassie and I followed him with an ominous feeling in our hearts.
By the time we arrived, the professor was already standing amidst the remains of charred wood. He was looking around with an expression halfway between relief and annoyance.
“This wasn’t the work of my daughter’s expedition,” he said confidently a moment later.
I followed his glance, studying the surroundings, and soon realized he was right. The remains of those wooden buildings were not those of a recent fire. The vegetation seemed to have left them untouched, as if afraid of entering the clearing, but it was obvious they had been in that state for a long time.
Much longer than a few weeks.
Cassie picked up a piece of wood from the ground and it practically dissolved in her hand.
“It’s rotten,” she said, looking around. “It must be years old, maybe decades.”
“But, who could have…” the professor wondered, deep in thought. “It doesn’t make any sense. And this soil…” He picked up a handful and put it to his nose.
“It looks as if they’d sprayed the place with some kind of defoliant, like the Americans did with Agent Orange in Vietnam,” I suggested. “But I wonder why.”
“I guess the people who built these wooden houses would’ve known why,” Cassie said, moving some pieces with her foot.
“Whoever they were.”
The professor ran his hand along the charred beams. “Something’s clear, the natives didn’t do this. These wooden planks have been cut and polished with modern tools, and they’ve used nails to join them.” He turned to us as if that were the final clue to solve all the mysteries, and then he added thoughtfully, “Indigenous people don’t use nails.”
Suddenly Cassandra turned excitedly to Iak, who had stayed at the edge of the clearing, and cried, “Perhaps this was Percy Fawcett’s work! Your grandfather and his father must have built this, Iak!”
Of course, I thought, who else but the Fawcetts could have been here? But then a few moments later, as I was searching among the ashes of the other cabins, I realized she was wrong.
Partially hidden by the rubble and twisted by the fire, the structure of several bunk beds was clearly recognizable amid the torn boards and pieces of old moth-eaten mattresses.
We knew very little about the Fawcett expedition, it was true. But we did know that his eight mules only carried the essentials for a long expedition over unknown lands, and those would certainly not have run to iron bunk beds.
Professor Castillo was sifting through fragments of iron and wood, unearthing an old tin cup and a rusty brass washbowl in the process, as he searched for any clue about the men that had lived there.
“Who could they have been?” he asked, addressing no one in particular. “Clearly someone was here years ago but… who?”
“Perhaps archeologists?” Cassie suggested, without much conviction. “Although surely they’d have announced the discovery of a place like this with fireworks!”
“Maybe they were garimpeiros,” I said, “Gold-diggers.”
“Gold-diggers? Here?” the professor asked skeptically.
Cassie snapped her fingers. “Of course! Perhaps they heard the legend of the Black City, just like we did. And they decided to come and see if it really existed, thinking it might be full of treasure.”
“The legend of El Dorado…” I suggested with a smile, following that train of thought.
“But that’s absolute nonsense,” the professor argued with sudden animation. “Everybody knows the origin of the El Dorado myth is the name the Spaniards gave the Chibchas chief when they saw him daubing gold powder over his body and then diving in the Guatavita lagoon, a few miles from where Bogotá is today. El Dorado was a man, not a place. Everything that came after is pure fiction and Hollywood movies.”
I turned to Cassie in surprise, with an unspoken question on my lips: Everybody knows?
She replied with a nod. She did not need to be told that this was the first time I had heard of the myth.
“Although there could be a third possibility,” she said. “Treasure hunters. If any treasure hunter had known about the Black City, they’d have had no qualms about coming in search of gold or jewels or archeological remains.” She waved her arms taking in the charred ruins with the gesture. “And of course they’d never have told the scientific community about it.”
Eduardo Castillo seemed to be weighing the possibility. In the end he accepted it with an uninterested wave of his hand.
“The truth is, it doesn’t really matter,” he said at last. He pointed at the huge black stone building. “What we ought to do is explore the surroundings and try to find traces of Valeria’s expedition. We need to find out whether they’ve been here too.”
Even without coming any closer to the main entrance we could see that it was firmly blocked by sections of columns and large pieces of what had been the eaves.
Still, we were determined to take a look inside, so we went toward the right-hand corner of the building, so as to go around it and find some other entrance.
I looked down at the barren ground as I walked beside Cassie. “I can’t imagine why anyone would bother to do something like this to the land, damaging it so drastically,” I said. “Whoever did this wasn’t satisfied with just clearing the brush and felling the trees. They wanted to make sure nothing ever grew here again.”
“Maybe Attila the Hun decided to take a ride around here,” Cassie said.
“Sure, maybe.” I smiled. “Although there’s something that intrigues me even more.” I looked back for a moment. “Why on earth would they burn down the cabins? From the beds and other stuff it’s obvious this is where they lived.”
She took a moment before answering. “Perhaps they didn’t want to make it easy for any other gold-diggers that might come after them by leaving the beds made,” she said without any particular interest.
“I don’t think so. They’d have been crazy to risk someone seeing the smoke and coming to investigate, don’t you think?”
“Well, then it might have been an accidental fire.”
I shook my head. “In all five cabins? And if it was, wouldn’t they have rebuilt them?”
In the end she raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“So what, Ulysses?” She smiled. “The only thing I’m glad of is that it looks as though they survived the fire, and at least we haven’t found a pile of roast skeletons.”
She had just finished saying this when we turned the corner of the building and her smile of relief froze on her face.
42
Stuck in the mud in front of us in three orderly rows, roughly carved and tied with wire, were seventeen wooden crosses.
Professor Castillo was standing several feet back, keeping his distance as if afraid tha
t if he came near he might see Valeria’s name written on one of them.
He was livid and unable to move. “Do you think…?” he muttered.
I took two strides toward the nearest cross, though I was equally uneasy about the possibility. But I could soon see that there was no chance it could be true.
“The wood is old. It’s moldy and rotten,” I said as I scraped it with my nail. “I’m afraid that in the end…”—I looked at Cassie—“there were… casualties from the fire after all.”
“But then, they could be from the Fawcett expedition,” she said as she bent over beside me. It seemed she was not ready to accept the final doom of those unknown people.
I shook my head.
“Remember there were only three of them, Cassie. And besides…” I put a finger on the horizontal piece of the little cross. “Check this out.”
She squinted her eyes as she looked at the surface of the wood.
“I can’t see anything. Except that it looks as if someone had scrawled something on the wood, but it’s illegible.”
I got my diving knife out and scraped a bit off the inscription so that it became clearer.
“Híjole!” she cried, jumping up as she pointed at the cross. “Here it says 1918 – 1940!”
“1940?” the professor asked, looking closer. “Are you sure?”
“Wait a minute,” she said.
She went to the other crosses, passing her hand over their surface without any result until finally she called, “Here! There are some legible letters, then what looks like a name and under them a date. It ends in four and zero.”
“Well… I’d say that confirms it,” I said. “Don’t know what it confirms, but it does.”
“Then…” The professor was thinking aloud. “If the graves are from 1940, it means they were here only fifteen years after the Fawcetts.”
“Perhaps it was a search party,” I suggested.
“Fifteen years later? If that was the case they sure took their time.”
“Whatever it may be,” I said, looking at this disquieting graveyard, “whether they were treasure hunters or a rescue party, it looks as if things didn’t go as planned.”
And there we were, the three of us.
Standing in front of a mysterious graveyard, in the middle of a mysterious unknown city and without the least idea of what it all meant.
The professor, his initial apprehension overcome by now, was walking among the crosses. Occasionally he would bend over one of them with a deepening frown.
“It seems that at one point there were inscriptions on all the crosses,” he remarked. “But they’re so worn down that it’s impossible to read them.”
“In this climate, dead wood decomposes very quickly,” I said.
He went on as if he had not heard me. “Although there’s something here…” He put his right hand on one cross and his left on another. “Something that I find rather strange.”
“The graves?” Cassie asked.
Professor Castillo raised his eyes and said, “That’s precisely what I find strange. The fact that these are graves.”
“Why do you think it’s strange? Because there are no flowers?”
“No, my dear, because they’re too close to each other. You see?” He spread his arms to show there was less than two feet between them. “It’s as if… as if they’d just put the crosses here, but with nothing underneath.”
“Are you suggesting that they’re just ornamental?” I asked. “If that’s the case, I can really think of better ways of decorating the garden.”
My friend shook his head.
“No, it’s not that. Even though the inscriptions are illegible, there is no question they’re there, and I’m sure that each one of these crosses represents someone who died here.”
“So?”
“So nothing. I’m only saying that although the crosses are real and put there in memory of the people who died, I don’t think there are any bodies buried under them. And don’t ask me what I mean by that, because I really have no idea.”
“That’s fine,” Cassie said nonchalantly, as if it were all some kind of a joke. “One more mystery to add to the list. Is anybody counting?”
Half an hour later we had taken a complete round of the strange solitary building and were back in front of the main entrance.
Iak was not in the least curious. He was sitting on a stump at the outer edge of the clearing and was quietly smoking a cigarette he had apparently rolled himself. It was clear he did not intend to take a single step further.
“Well…” the professor said, sounding disappointed. “It looks like we won’t be able to get in after all. I was certain we’d find a back door.”
“Wait a second,” I said. I pointed at the chaos of fallen columns in front of us. “We could still try through there.”
The professor looked at me skeptically. “But you can’t even get past that,” he said. He pointed to the entrance. “That pile of stone looks as if it’s about to collapse and, I can assure you, I wouldn’t want that to happen on top of me.”
“Don’t you worry,” I said as I tightened the backpack straps, “I’ll go.”
And without giving them a chance to protest, or myself to think too much, I climbed on to a great rectangular slab. There seemed to be a narrow passage I could crawl through, between the fallen columns and piled-up fragments of lintel.
I had to crouch to get under a slab that could have weighed hundreds of tons. It was hanging precariously over the remains of a cracked wall which was itself buttressed by some unsafe-looking rubble. I felt that the slightest touch would bring everything down.
Trying not to think about that, I began to crawl through that tunnel as I prayed I would not stumble on any snake. The way was getting narrower and full of cobwebs which I had to push back as I went.
At one particularly narrow point I was dragging myself on my stomach when I clearly felt a long insect with many legs creeping on my neck and up my scalp, and I wasn’t able to move my arm to slap it off.
Further on, the way seemed to close in ahead and it looked as though I would be forced to turn around. But the faint light that came in from outside revealed a new passage, about ninety degrees to my right. I slid down that new hole panting and discovered that it gradually widened so that I could at least crouch. A few yards further on, I was able to get to my feet.
Unfortunately, I also discovered that daylight did not reach this far in, so I found myself in total darkness.
I could have kicked myself for not thinking before I started, but then I remembered I was carrying my lighter in one of my pockets. I took it out and lit it.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” said a voice that was definitely not mine.
I turned around and saw Cassandra, with the professor close behind, coming out of the last rubble-strewn passage.
“What…” I muttered, surprised at seeing them there. “But I thought—” I stopped talking when I realized that neither of them was looking at me. Their attention was caught by something that was in front of them and behind me.
By the faint flame of the lighter a doorway was revealed decorated with strange symbols which seemed to have weathered the centuries well. Further in we could glimpse a great hall with a legion of columns disappearing in the darkness.
“Let’s make some torches,” I said as I looked into the shadows. I knew they would not say no.
43
Fifteen minutes later, after making our way back down the same tricky passages, we gathered together wood and resin and made more torches. Then we went back in, bringing some light into that place that was definitely shadowy, perceptibly cold, and even more silent than the jungle outside.
At the bottom of a short slippery stone stairway we found ourselves in a great underground hall. It was so large we could hardly see where it ended. The ceiling was supported by dozens of wide columns totally covered by carving, from their bases to their lintels. Professor Castillo passed his fingertips along t
he cuneiform symbols with an odd mixture of pleasure and frustration.
“My kingdom for a camera,” he muttered. “My kingdom for a camera…”
In the darkness I suddenly stumbled on something lying on the floor (the light from my torch was not much stronger than the flame of a lighter). I swore out loud as I hit the hard floor and lost the torch, which rolled a few feet away.
“What happened, wey?” Cassie asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, thanks. I just tripped over something and fell over.”
“What a surprise.”
“Well, guess what, I can’t see in the dark. Nobody’s perfect,” I said. I was getting tired of her constant chiding about my supposed clumsiness. I rubbed my right wrist which had borne the brunt of the fall, then stood up again. I aimed an angry kick at whatever it was that had made me fall.
To my surprise, the noise my foot made when it hit the stone was unmistakably metallic.
Intrigued, I bent down and groped for the object until I found it. It weighed ten or twelve pounds, had the cold feel of steel and a shape so recognizable that for a moment I thought it must have been my head that had been hit.
“I think you should come and see this,” I called to my friends, who had wandered off while I was searching on the ground.
“See what?” the professor asked.
“It’s a surprise.”
Slowly, the light of the torches gathered around me. When they were close enough to see what I was holding, not a word came out of their mouths. Only a simultaneous, slow gasp of astonishment.
It was probably just the same way I would have reacted myself if I had found either of them holding a rusty old submachine gun.
“Is that… what I think it is?” Cassie asked, baffled.
“It must have been here a long time,” I said. “But there’s no doubt it’s a military submachine gun.”
“A weapon from the forties?” the professor asked, remembering the date on the crosses.
“Well, I’m no expert on the subject, but now that you say so, it’s more than likely. The design looks old and it’s covered in rust.”
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 18
