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According to one Spanish chronicler, the mummies of at least three Incas, including Pachacutec, were transported to the San Andrés Hospital in Lima in 1560. The last person to report having seen them was Bingham’s old pal Father Calancha, in 1638. A few attempts have been made to search for the mummies, none successful.

“Did I tell you how I found Pachacutec? That’s a weird story.” Paolo looked at me across his gnocchi to see if I was prepared. I wasn’t, but since I had flown in on the red-eye and had downed a glass of wine, at this point I was pretty much defenseless. “One day a friend of mine confided in me; she said, ‘You know, Paolo, I’m a dowser.’”

“You mean like someone who searches for water with a stick?”

“You can dowse for anything. I gave her a new map I had of Machu Picchu, a good map, and told her I was looking for a stone statue of Pachacutec. When she dowsed it, she picked the same spot I did.”

The look on my face must not have conveyed complete credulousness, because Paolo immediately added, “I’m a skeptic. I like details.” When his friend next came up to Lima, Paolo arranged for them to visit the old hospital grounds. “She starts sensing things, and she zeroes in on the patio. Then she pulls out this special dowsing thing. I gave her a piece of chalk and said, ‘Mark the ground.’ She starts making marks, x x x x x x x. Then she says, ‘This must be wrong—it’s a shape about a meter long. How can he be a meter tall?’ I said, ‘Incas were mummified in a sitting position.’” They found three possible mummies, one of whom Paolo surmised had been cremated. Paolo took a photo of the three sites and then the two of them marked up the patio with fifteen more body shapes with chalk x’s to hide their discovery. “It looked like the crime scene for a mass murder.” He was concerned that time might be running out—the charity that administered the hospital grounds had begun leasing out lots for commercial purposes.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. On the one hand, I’d always found Paolo to be unimpeachably well informed about Machu Picchu. On the other, well, as far as I know, Emily Post never addressed the subject of how to keep the conversational ball rolling when your dinner guest starts talking about dowsing for mummies. So I asked Paolo if he’d like dessert. Over crème brûlée, I tried to get a fix on what he thought of the trouble Bingham had stirred up between Yale and Peru. “Frankly, Bingham didn’t find shit. He bought the Alvistur stuff.” This was the collection of 366 artifacts from the son-in-law of Huadquiña’s owner.

“Machu Picchu was completely sacked before Bingham was born. Far and away the best stuff that Bingham got out of Machu Picchu he didn’t find—he bought. The funny thing was, Bingham snuck that stuff out and they wanted to keep it a dirty secret. But that stuff legally they can keep. It’s the other stuff that has to come back.”

Earlier in the evening, Paolo had described his skill at reading satellite images for signs of undiscovered ruins. “Do you think there’s anything else left to find near Machu Picchu?” I asked.

“Plateriayoc, the lost city of Machu Picchu,” he said without hesitation. The name sounded familiar. Bingham’s polo-playing rival Captain J. Campbell Besley had reported finding a phenomenal city by that name. Plateriayoc means “place of the silver” and is sort of shorthand for the El Dorado of the Andes. In other words, Plateriayoc is a myth.

“There are other Plateriayocs,” Paolo explained. “No one knows about this one. Berns was there. I was close three weeks ago. I had a hell of a time getting there. There’s a wall over a thousand meters long—Berns called it ‘steps’ but it’s not that. It’s covered over now, big-time; the ruins are buried in the jungle.”

Every explorer I’d spoken with in Peru had one secret site that he was hoping to find someday. Paolo was the only one who willingly shared what he was looking for. Why?

“I have to assume that grave robbers are already