“We’re here,” Hawke said, interrupting her thoughts. She looked up to see they were in the rear car park of a coffee shop in the Miraflores district of the city. They had called ahead to the Larco Museum and Balta had told them he wanted to meet here. She unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed down from the chunky SUV before following Hawke, Scarlet and Luis into the coffee shop. Reaper and Lexi stayed in the Pajero with a silent Ryan Bale.
Out the front window of the coffee shop they saw huge crowds of people jostling for space along the street.
“What the hell is going on?” Hawke asked.
“Lollapalooza,” Scarlet said matter-of-factly. “Good line-up this year as well.”
“Like who?” asked Lea.
“Foo Fighters, Aerosmith, Chili Peppers, Temper Trap, Kaiser Chiefs, Chainsmokers…”
“An excellent line-up,” Hawke said, giving them a look. “I’m especially proud of the fact I only recognized about two bands out of that lot.”
Lea rolled her eyes and took a step toward their guide. “Do you see him, Luis?”
Luis Montoya stood on his tiptoes to peer over the heads of the customers in the busy shop and looked down-heartened for a few moments before a smile suddenly flashed on his face. “There! He’s over by the other window.”
Lea followed his gaze and saw Professor Mauricio Balta innocuously stirring some sugar into a large cup of coffee. The two empty cups on his table told her he’d been waiting for some time.
They approached him, Hawke scanning the small space for anything suspicious as they went, and as their shadows fell over his table, Balta looked up from his coffee and smiled at them. “You must be here about the mask?”
Hawke held out his hand. “That’s right, Doc. The name’s Hawke, and this is Lea Donovan, Scarlet Sloane and Doctor Luis Montoya from the University of Bogotá.”
The legs of his chair scratched on the tiled floor as he pushed it back to greet them, meticulously shaking their hands with a polite bow of the head. “Please, take a seat,” he said, gesturing at the empty chairs he had obviously arranged around his little table.
“Thanks,” Lea said and sat down opposite him. The others joined her.
Balta spoke first. “So, is it true? Does the Mask of Inti really exist?”
Luis nodded his head. “It most certainly does, Professor Balta! Héctor Barrera saw it with his own eyes… He held it in his hands.”
“Our friend saw it too,” Lea said. “And he has an unusually powerful eidetic memory. He can recall everything he sees for days afterwards. That is how he was able to draw this.”
Hawke pulled out the paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, unfolded it and flattened it on the table before sliding it across to Balta.
Balta opened his eyes wide and gasped with surprise. “Are you telling me that your friend really saw this on the Mask of Inti?”
“Yes,” Lea said. “But now we’re out of ideas. That’s why we need your help.”
“This is truly remarkable,” he said, unable to take his eyes off the slip of paper. Finally he raised his head and stared at Lea. “Are you absolutely certain this is what was on the mask?”
Lea nodded enthusiastically. “Absolutely.”
“What’s so special about it, professor?” Hawke said.
“What’s so special about it?” he asked, raising his eyes to meet them all. “If this is real then we must get back to my office at once. If this isn’t a joke, then what you have here is the key to locating the Lost City of the Incas.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hawke scanned the corridor while Balta fumbled for his keys and opened his door. His office was a modest state of affairs in the Larco Museum in the Pueblo Lire district and moments later they were all gathered inside while their host shuffled into an adjoining room to fetch his life’s work.
“So what’s all the fuss about then?” Scarlet said, looking down her nose at the furniture.
Balta called out in response from the next room. “These markings are certainly Inca pictographs, although greatly simplified, presumably due to the restricted space on the mask.”
“What do they say?” Lexi asked. Reaper stood behind her silently rolling a cigarette and watching the street outside. Balta shuffled back into the room and scratched his head as he scanned the office for something.
“The pictographs are simply depictions of Inti and the sun, but it’s the last one that has my interest. That’s why I wanted to come back to my work.” He stopped speaking and began furiously searching through a box file on his desk.
“So what’s the big surprise?” Hawke asked, looking once again at Ryan’s hand-drawn sketch.
“The final pictograph on the mask is a crude depiction of the Mandala.”
“That’s what I thought,” Luis said. “But I really think we must be mistaken.”
“But what does that mean?” Lexi asked.
Balta looked at her. “The Mandala is a religious symbol which represents our universe.”
“I’m not convinced,” Luis said, looking doubtful. “It doesn’t look all that much like a Mandala, not to mention the fact the Mandala is from India. The more I look at it the less I think it’s a Mandala.”
“You mentioned India before,” Hawke said. “What the hell is an Indian symbol doing on an Inca mask?”
Luis shook his head and put his hands in his pockets. “Quite. Are you certain, professor?”
“I am certain, young man,” Balta said without hesitation. “And I am perfectly aware that the Mandala’s provenance is from the Indian religions. I am also aware that it is to be found here on this satellite image.” With these words Balta swung a piece of paper out of the box file and held it up in front of the team.
“Woah!” Lea said. “That’s the same damned thing, isn’t it?”
Balta nodded. “Yes, but the one you see on this paper is much more complex. The rendering on the mask is clearly a simplified version.”
Hawke stepped forward and looked at the image on the paper in Balta’s hands. “So where does this one come from?”
Luis Montoya sighed. “It’s one of the Nazca Lines hidden up in the mountains just east of the more famous geoglyphs on the plain. Conspiracy theorists claim it’s an Indian Mandala but I have never bought into it.”
“You cannot deny the similarity!” Balta said, raising his voice.
“They do look almost identical,” Lexi said.
“And their similarity to the Indian Mandala is almost exact.”
“Almost,” Luis said with another sigh. “But not exact.”
Balta shook his head. “How can you say that? The Indian Mandala is clear enough for anyone to see, and right here in the mountains of Peru there is one carved into the rock that is almost identical in its nature.”
Luis looked unpersuaded, but Hawke could see the similarity when Lea showed him the pictures of an Indian Mandala she had found on her phone. “I don’t know,” the Englishman said. “If they’re not connected in any way then that’s one hell of a coincidence.”
“Exactly my point!” exclaimed Balta. “The Mandala geoglyph at the Nazca Lines site is what we have called the Sun-Star and Cross. It is one of the most famous of all the glyphs — over one hundred meters in length!”
Luis gave him a look of pity. “Most famous among crazy conspiracy theorists, maybe.”