‘Anything obviously valuable – gold, silver, jewels. If it shows up on the black market, we can tie it back to here and give Interpol some legal ammunition.’
‘If we just take it with us, we can stop them getting hold of it,’ Macy piped up.
Nina was about to give her a refresher course on professional ethics when Eddie called out again. ‘Nina! In here.’
She knew from his tone that it was important. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s not gold or silver or jewels,’ he said as she entered the small chamber, ‘but I’m pretty sure you’ll think it’s valuable.’
Unlike the palace’s other rooms, one end of this had a roof of sorts where an alcove was set into the wall. The space was around six feet deep, slightly wider. Set into its rear was a foot-high arched recess. Something stood inside it.
She took out a flashlight. Its beam revealed that the alcove’s walls were painted; though in places split by cracks and scabbed by mould, most of the images were still discernible.
But it wasn’t the paintings that had seized her attention. Even before she brought the light on to it, she recognised the shape in the recess. And when she did, she also recognised the colour.
A strange purple stone.
‘It’s the third statue . . . ’ she whispered. Like the other two figurines cocooned in their case in her backpack, it was a crude but recognisably anthropomorphic sculpture, arms held out in such a way as to interlock with its near-twins when they were placed together.
Except . . . there was only one arm.
‘What—’ she gasped. There was less to the statue than met the eye. It stood sideways in the niche, its right side to her – but there was no left side. It had been sliced in half down its centre line. ‘No!’
‘Yeah, I thought you might not be happy about that,’ said Eddie as she plucked it from the recess and turned it over in her hands. ‘Why do you think they chopped it in two?’
‘No idea,’ she said, disappointment welling. For all the archaeological wonders of the lost settlement, the statuette had been her primary reason for coming here – but she now had no more clues to lead her to the rest of it.
Unless . . .
She switched off the flashlight. ‘Hold this for a minute,’ she told Eddie, passing the figurine to him. As the other expedition members filtered into the room, she took the other two statues from their case. No eerie light, but there was a mildly unsettling sensation through her palms, like the tingling of a very low current.
‘What are you doing?’ Osterhagen asked.
‘Seeing if maybe this isn’t the end of the line for the Incas.’ Nina slid the statues together shoulder to shoulder . . .
The others made sounds of surprise as the linked figures glowed, very faintly but just enough to stand out in the shadows. ‘Give me the other one,’ she said to Eddie. He slipped it between the pair. She used her thumbs to nudge it into position, the lone arm in place round its neighbour – and the glow subtly changed, strongest on one particular side of the triptych. ‘Eddie, you’ve got a compass, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
She turned the statues, the brighter glow remaining fixed as they moved. ‘What direction is it pointing?’
‘Why are they doing that?’ asked Valero, entranced.
‘They react to the earth’s magnetic field,’ said Nina, simplifying for convenience. ‘And they also point towards each other. That’s part of what led us here.’
Eddie, meanwhile, had checked his compass. ‘Southwest,’ he reported.
‘Huh. That’s why we didn’t realise it had been split into two parts – they’re both on the same bearing from Glastonbury, so we only saw one glow.’
‘Why isn’t it as bright as at Glastonbury?’ Macy asked.
‘The earth energy mustn’t be as strong here. Or maybe it was once, but the confluence point moved.’
‘Earth energy?’ demanded Osterhagen. ‘What confluence point? What is going on?’
‘It’s why the IHA’s involved, I’m afraid. But it means the other piece of the statue is somewhere southwest of here.’
‘Have to look for it later,’ said Eddie. ‘Time’s up, and we need to get the fuck out of here.’
‘Another minute, please,’ said Osterhagen, turning his attention to the alcove’s walls. He switched on a torch of his own, sweeping it across the murals. Becker and Macy followed suit, while Loretta brought out a camera and began taking photos. ‘These paintings . . . I think they are the story