Nina huffed. ‘Oh, God. Just when I think I know everything about you, you always come up with some new fetish! But,’ she went on, turning back to Osterhagen, ‘if everything goes to plan, we’ll have the khipu back in our possession soon.’
‘Excellent,’ he said, relieved. He held up his notes, which included colour printouts of the painted wall. ‘I think I have worked out how the knots on the khipu relate to the markings on the map. Once we have the khipu, it should, I hope, be quite straightforward to calculate the location.’
‘Can’t we just use the statues?’ Eddie asked. ‘I mean, the other half of the last one should be in El Dorado. You can just use your magic mojo to point to it.’
‘Not without knowing where to find another earth energy source,’ Nina reminded him. ‘We only know about Glastonbury, and we can’t triangulate a position without one. Unless you want me to wander around South America holding the statues out in front of me until they start glowing.’
‘I suppose. It’d be pretty funny to watch, though. So, we get the khipu back, work out the map, and then . . . ’
‘And then,’ said Nina, ‘we find El Dorado.’
26
Colombia
Francisco de Quesada leaned against the door frame, hoping the view would calm his frustration and anger. It wasn’t so much the scenery he was admiring – though the impossibly blue sweep of the Caribbean beyond the clifftop edge of his palacio’s infinity pool was certainly something to behold – as the occupants of the pool itself, a pair of stunningly beautiful women who had responded to his click of the fingers by entering a passionate, lip-locking embrace, making a show of unfastening each other’s bikini tops. There was normally nothing like a pair of twenty-year-old bisexual models to take his mind off life’s burdens.
Not today, though. The weight hanging over him was too heavy to ignore. Annoyed, he turned back to his guests, who were studiously attempting to ignore the display in the pool. ‘I don’t see why you can’t make this go away,’ he snapped. ‘You have done before – why not now?’
His visitors shifted uncomfortably, and not solely because they were wearing formal suits in the humid heat. ‘The thing is,’ said Corwin Bloom, the bald and doleful chief representative of the American law firm de Quesada had on permanent standby, ‘with all the previous charges against you, the evidence could be made out to be tainted and therefore inadmissible, or witnesses, ah . . . dealt with. But on this occasion you were seen by millions of people on national television making a deal with General Callas.’
‘That was in Venezuela, not Colombia. Surely that doesn’t count as admissible evidence?’
‘The DEA submitted it,’ said Bloom’s assistant, Alison Goldberg, a starchy young woman in black-rimmed glasses and stiletto heels. ‘Under the rules of Plan Colombia, evidence obtained by the DEA, no matter from where in the world, is admissible in Colombian narcotics-related cases.’
Bloom put down his briefcase on a table and opened it, handing a document to the drug lord. ‘This is a memo we, ah, obtained from within the Ministry of Justice, from the minister himself.’ De Quesada began to read it, his expression rapidly darkening as he flicked through the pages. ‘To summarise, they think they have you.’
The Colombian hurled the papers to the floor. ‘No one has me!’ he snarled, snapping his fingers angrily at a broad-shouldered bodyguard standing near a drinks cabinet. By the time de Quesada reached him, the man had poured a large glass of Scotch and soda filled with clinking ice cubes. He downed half the amber liquid in a single gulp, and crunched a cube between his teeth.
‘We also learned there is a plan in motion to take you into custody,’ said Goldberg.
De Quesada whirled on her. ‘And you didn’t tell me this the moment you came through my door?’ He looked in alarm at the bodyguard, who hurried away to alert his comrades.
‘They’re waiting for the final warrants to be signed,’ said Bloom. ‘We have a source inside the Ministry who will alert us as soon as this happens. You’ll have ample warning.’
‘Not if they’re already here.’ He crossed to a window and looked suspiciously out at the cliffs across the channel.
‘We didn’t see anyone when we arrived,’ said Goldberg.
‘No. You wouldn’t.’ De Quesada finished his drink, chewed another ice cube, then waved for the Americans to follow him. ‘Tell