The Source - Michael Cordy [42]
Reading these facts in his guidebook both discouraged and encouraged Ross Kelly as his domestic Aerocondor flight flew across the Andes from Lima's Aeroporto Internacional Jorge Chávez to the Northern Highlands. The sheer scale of the Amazon emphasized how difficult it would be to find what he was seeking, but it also promised that anything could be lost in its massive, uncharted forest, including Falcon's magical garden. Most of all, though, it made him grasp the enormity of his task.
After he had decided to seek out the garden, he had allowed himself a rush of hope, but now he felt flat and alone. At Xplore he had been able to draw on all the company's resources: surveys, tests and field personnel. Now he was in a strange country with only a frail, possibly insane nun, an intense PhD student and an ancient notebook of cryptic clues to help him.
He glanced to his left, where Zeb was engrossed in a history of Peru. Beside her, Sister Chantal lay back in her seat, mouth open, snoring. She had forsaken her habit and wimple for practical cotton trousers, walking boots and a fleece.
Zeb nudged him. 'You okay?'
'Yeah.'
'Don't worry about Lauren. She's in good hands.' As soon as they'd arrived in Lima, Ross had called his father, and again just before the domestic flight had taken off. Of course, there had been no change in Lauren's condition, but he couldn't stop worrying about whether he had done the right thing in leaving her. His nightmare was that before she died she would wake momentarily, call him, and he wouldn't be there to comfort her and say goodbye. Zeb tapped her book. 'This'll cheer you up. I know where Falcon started his journey.'
'We knew that already – in Cajamarca. That's why we're flying there.'
Zeb flashed him a withering look. 'I mean I know exactly where it started.'
He reached into his crumpled linen jacket and took out his notes. Falcon had written that the quest began in Cajamarca outside a place called La Prisión del Rey, the king's prison. 'You know where La Prisión del Rey is?'
'Yep.'
It did cheer him. If the first cryptic clue tallied with the real world, independent of any interpretation from Sister Chantal, it lent credibility to the other clues. Particularly as he hadn't yet found any place called La Prisión del Rey in his guidebook.
'It goes back to the conquest of Peru by the Spanish, one of the most bizarre events in history. In 1532 Francisco Pizarro crossed the mountains from the coast, with fewer than two hundred men, and established himself in the great Inca plaza in Cajamarca. The Inca emperor, Atahualpa, with an unarmed retinue of thousands entered the plaza in good faith to meet the strange white men.
'Pizarro didn't meet Atahualpa, though. Instead he sent his chaplain, who approached the Inca and informed him that a certain God the Father had sent His Son, part of a Trinity, to Earth, where He was crucified. Before that happened, the chaplain explained, the Son, whose name was Jesus Christ, had conferred His power upon an Apostle, Peter, and Peter had passed that power, successively, to other men, called popes, one of whom had commissioned Charles the Fifth of Spain to conquer and convert the Inca and his people. Atahualpa's only hope of salvation, the chaplain concluded, was to swear allegiance to Jesus Christ and acknowledge himself a subject of Charles the Fifth.
'When he heard this, Atahualpa informed the chaplain that he, the Inca, was the greatest prince on earth and that he would be the subject of no man. This pope, he said, must be mad to talk of giving away countries that didn't belong to him. As for Jesus Christ who had died, the Inca was sorry, but – and here he pointed to the sun – "My God still lives in the heavens and looks down on His children." '
Ross smiled. He liked Atahualpa's style.
Zeb continued: 'The waiting conquistadors were hiding in the massive buildings that surrounded the square and, when the chaplain returned