“That’s Carla.” I laughed. “And el Hombre.” No wonder I liked Hilda, I thought. We saw life in much the same way.
“They’d just ordered cocktails and were looking at the menu when I looked in, so I think they’re there for a while,” she went on. “The tables in the dining room were pretty well all taken, except for one, which had a reserved sign on it, so I went back to the bar and ordered, a scotch, and nursed it as long as I could. I kept my eye on the dining room entrance, but no one came or went while I was there, except for the mayor who came into the bar to glad-hand a few people, including myself. That was it.”
“Did you happen to notice an American, not too tall, big head, long ponytail, white shirt and jeans?”
“Yes. He pulled up a stool at the bar and ordered a beer,” she replied.
“Did he speak to anyone?”‘
“Just the bartender. Why? Do you recognize him?”
“Manco Capac.”
“Manco Capac? Are we talking about the spirit of the first Inca? Or maybe the ghost of one of the later Incas that took that same name? The guy looked pretty substantial to me.”
“Not a ghost. A megalomaniac, maybe, and he has royal tastes: caviar, pate de foie gras, and champagne. Head of the commune where Puma and Pachamama were staying. I keep thinking that all of these paths keep crossing somehow. It’s just that I don’t get the connections between all the people involved.”
“Hard to see what a commune has to do with artifact smuggling, I agree. What do you want to do now? Wait and see where they go from here?”
“I guess so, and see if anyone we know shows up. If Laforet is going to do a deal of some kind, do we think it would be in a public place?”‘
Hilda shrugged, and we settled down to watch.
About twenty minutes later, Pablo and a bunch of young friends came along.
“Everyone we know is showing up,” I moaned. “They can’t all be in on this, can they? How can we narrow down our suspects, if everyone is here? My, my,” I added. “Ralph and Tracey too.”
“Ralph!” Hilda exclaimed. “He never goes out at night!” But he had. Our second borrowed truck had pulled up about a half a block from El Mo, and Ralph also went in.
“I think it’s time for another drink, don’t you?” Hilda said. “I’m going in again.”
A few minutes later she returned. “I think Laforet and friend are finishing up, and we should be seeing them out here soon. Cesar, the mayor, is in the dining room; Lucho, Pablo, Ralph and Tracey, and that fellow Manco Capac are in the bar. The reserved table is for Carlos Montero, and he is expected, although I gather they keep the table for him every night, and sometimes he just doesn’t show. I talked to Ralph briefly while Tracey was chatting up the bartender. He says Tracey insisted on coming into town to phone home, and to enquire around El Mochica for any news of Steve. He said he tried to dissuade her but couldn’t. He took her to the Telefonico del Peru office for the call and then brought her here. He’s planning to take her back to the hacienda soon, but he’s obviously hoping we’ll go back and help him manage Tracey. He says she’s getting quite worked up about Steve.”
“Not right this minute,” I said, pointing toward the door to El Mochica. “Here they come.”
Laforet and Carla left the bar, got into his car, and headed back in the direction they came from. “ T think they’re going back home,” I said. “We’d better go on foot, or they may start to notice the truck. If I’m wrong and they drive off somewhere, though, I’ll be fit to be tied.” ‘
Our luck held out again. We were in position across from the house when they arrived, having taken a shortcut along a tiny little lane. We watched as they went into the house, and then for about another hour. The downstairs lights went out, and soon the upstairs ones did too, leaving the house in complete darkness. I went around the corner and shone the flashlight for a second on my watch. “Twelve-thirty,” I whispered to Hilda.
She beckoned me back around the corner. “Look,” she said. “We can’t both watch these people twenty-four hours a day. I think they’re down for the night, don’t you, but just in case, I’ll stay here. I think I got more sleep than you did last night, so I’ll do the first night shift. Let’s go back to the square and get a motorcycle taxi to take you back to the hacienda, and get the truck for me. I’ll be perfectly safe in the truck, and you can come and spell me off first thing tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said, “if you’re sure you’ll be all right. But we’ll have to hope that something happens soon. We can’t keep this up forever.”
“I think something will happen soon,” she replied. “After all, he’s got a real treasure there now, hasn’t he?”
That night, I dreamt that I was at Cerro de las Ruinas. In the dream it was the same night. Ines and Tomas Cardoso, her brother, the shaman, were there. He donned the skin of a puma, she the feathers of a condor. They told me not to look. But I did. I lay facedown in the sand, my head buried in my hands at first, but then I raised my head ever so slightly and looked toward the huaca. First, I saw a condor soaring overhead, a large cat prowling the summit. Then above the huaca, I saw the most horrible figure. At first it looked like a crab, then a giant spider, which metamorphosed into a man, but a man with fangs for teeth. In one hand he held a tumi blade—the one, I knew, from Edmund Edwards’s store—in the other a severed head. I covered my eyes in terror. I heard growls and then shrieks, as if a terrible battle was raging. In my dream, I knew it was for control of the huaca, the struggle between evil and good. Then there was silence, and I was back in my room once more.
Still later, Ines Cardoso was standing at the foot of my bed. I was dreaming again. I must have been, although I believed I was awake. Her figure had a luminescence to it, a fuzziness about the edges, that I thought meant I was asleep. “Cuidado al arbolado!” she said again, this time very agitated. Beware of the woods.
And then I knew what she had been trying to tell me. Etienne Laforet. La foret. French for forest. I was to beware of Etienne Laforet. I understood then, that if Laforet had seen only one ear spool of my Moche warrior, he would be pleased to find the pair. If he had seen both of them before, then he knew I didn’t find mine at Cerro de las Ruinas. And if this was the case, then he would do what he thought he had to. He would do what he did when Lizard headed for Canada to reclaim the missing artifacts, what he did when Edmund Edwards made a mistake, perhaps as simple as losing his nerve. Laforet would send for the Spider. I had not bearded the lion in its den. I had put my hand into the viper’s nest.
The next morning, we found the summit of the huaca disturbed. Several feathers were lying in the sand.
17
What had seemed a devilishly clever plan to smoke out a smuggling ring had, by the next afternoon, become an exercise that on the one hand was a logistical nightmare, but on the other, almost defined the word futile. As to the former, Hilda and I had to keep shuttling back and forth between town and the hacienda, one of us always watching Laforet’s place. Hilda had declared a day off for everyone, but a couple of the students volunteered to help pack up the lab, and there was the shopping and taxiing around to be done. Even with two vehicles now, it was a chore. No one wanted to be left alone at the hacienda for very long. Tracey was particularly high maintenance in that regard. Understandably, I supposed, with her lover missing, she needed to be taken into town to call home on three separate occasions.
As to our real mission, our surveillance exercise, el Hombre never left the house; no one came to visit. The pinnacle of excitement was reached when I followed Carla to the market to watch her buy bananas.