A brutal noise shattered his terminal reverie.
The door had crashed open. The noise was downstairs.
Brutal shouts and noises.
Two seconds later police in blue steel helmets and flak jackets were swarming into the sitting room. Half a dozen of them, staring at Nina and Adam. Adam struggled in his shackles and motioned at the door the bedroom but even as he did so Ritter emerged, half naked, gun in hand. A dazzling and deafening helicopter light pierced the window shutters; and then the room filled with gas, or smoke a smoke grenade then there was a massive crash of glass; Adam strained to see it was Ritter he had run into the bedroom and hurled himself, bodily, through the window, which was just visible. The window was shattered; hed jumped from the first floor.
The police ran into the bedroom. Adam heard shouts outside, and more gunshots: they must be pursuing Ritter, through the back gardens. Two other cops snapped the shackles that chained Nina and Adam to the burning radiator, then the metal links of their vile gags.
Nina hurled the plastic from her mouth, shoved herself to her feet and ran to the bedroom door.
But a large policeman stopped her. Stout and strong in his blue flak jacket.
But its my sister. My sister!
The cop held her by her trembling shoulders. You dont want to see whats in there.
32
Witches Market, Chiclayo
Qasiy chay ruwasqaykita osqhayman!
This wasnt the curandero. Jessica opened her eyes. She looked up and left. It was Larry Fielding. And he was shouting at the wizard.
Mana ruwanki chayqa qanmantacha yachakunki!
Behind him was a policeman. A policeman? The Peruvian officer had a gleaming peaked cap, and a hand poised on the butt of a gun, ready to draw.
The wizard shrivelled away: cowering and protesting. Larry reached and pulled the rank cloth from Jessicas mouth; she phlegmed the horrible taste into the dust and coughed up her questions.
What the what the? Jesus Larry how did you find me?
He shrugged: a bashful saviour. I was watching you, and you seemed evasive. We gotta watch out for each other! Didnt quite believe your supermarket shtick.
But
The market traders told me someone had grabbed you so I went to get the cops to help.
As the boy unfastened Jessicas bonds, Larry snapped questions at the shaman, who grovelled his replies.
Kay warmika milloymi apamun nunakunata.
Larry nodded, grimly and disdainfully.
Jess stood up. There was still lizard blood on her stomach. The policeman handed her a handkerchief; she did her best to rub the gore from her skin. The Quechua conversation rattled around the shack, coarse and staccato, like dried beans in a gourd. Larry was the only one in the TUMP team who could speak the ancient Incan tongue.
What? she said. What were they doing?
He put a firm hand on her shoulder. It was just an exorcism. They werent going to kill you, or even harm you. They just think you need exorcising. He glanced around the sun-lanced shack, at the witchy little dolls, the sprigs of dried monkey paws.
Exorcising! Why?
Larry shook his head. You know why. They think TUMP is hexed! They reckon we have cursed the area, stirring all these ancient Moche demons like the pishtacas. He gestured at her rolled-up jeans. They werent actually going to cut off your feet, it was just symbolic. They were trying to placate the Moche god by performing, I guess, a phoney Moche ceremony.
The policeman spoke, impatiently, and in very fast Spanish. But Jess could clearly discern the meaning: he wanted them to leave the market.
Wed better go, said Larry. This is their world. The Quechua speakers. Wed better go now.
Jess was unlikely to disagree. Unsteadily she walked out of the shack. In the darkened aisles of traders she breathed the reeking air of the main market with abject relief; it was just as it always was. People were sitting at dirty counters drinking from steel mugs of coca tea, eating rancid plates of brown octopus, and buying eels in bottles. And monkey paws.
Behind them, in the shack, Jess could hear the policeman yapping angrily at the bruja. What will happen to them?
Slap on the wrist, maybe. The police sympathize with the locals. They dont want us here either, Jess. He grabbed her by the elbow and they stepped into the grubby sunshine of Chiclayo. Black turkey vultures circled, inevitably, in the dusty blue sky over the dusty orange cathedral. As if the whole city was carrion.
The cop told me something. He gazed at her. That gunman who came for Dan has been here too, with friends, asking questions, terrorizing people, asking about us in Zana. And asking about McLintock.
Here? Jess shook her head. They came here? She was still trying to shake off the memory of the little boy with his dirty, wet finger circling her ankle with warm blood. And this guy, McLintock. How does he fit into this?
Larry ignored her question. Theres something else you need to know.
What?
Theyve made a discovery. At Huaca D.
I know, I was there. I-
No. A new discovery. This morning. A major, major discovery. Dan phoned me an hour back. And it changes everything. Apparently. Larry sighed. Thats all I damn well know! Thats all Dan said. It changes everything.
They sprinted to the car.
Two hours later she was back in Huaca D. The same dust, the same sleeping bones; yet this time it was all different.
All children?
Dan nodded, making the beam from his headtorch jiggle forlornly. All of them children. He stepped into the antechamber. We broke in by accident, this morning. One of the villagers put a shovel through the wall; we found a little passageway, and then this. We hadnt geosurveyed this section, we had no idea; this is so unusual.
Jess stared. Her hands were shaking with the tension. This discovery was a revelation: it altered everything as Larry had said. The large, low antechamber, concealed beyond the main tombs of Huaca D, contained more skeletons than any other Moche tomb to date. Here they were, laid out in little sleeping rows.
Jess stared. Her hands were shaking with the tension. This discovery was a revelation: it altered everything as Larry had said. The large, low antechamber, concealed beyond the main tombs of Huaca D, contained more skeletons than any other Moche tomb to date. Here they were, laid out in little sleeping rows.
All of them children.
Dan stooped to the nearest line of small and silent bones. Were guessing they were first sedated, at least I hope they were sedated, maybe with nectandra, then their throats were slit and their chests cut open. Here, look, you can see the breastbone. This one here.
Jessica leaned. The breastbone was crudely severed. A heart extrusion?
Dan sighed and nodded and rubbed a dusty hand over his dusty face. He looked wearied: even in the quarter-light of this dismal adobe hall she could see he was beyond tired. He was vanquished. But his voice retained some professional lucidity.
Probably they used a tumi blade. To hack the children open. Alive. Some of these fibrous remains imply look- He pointed. The children were tied by the hands and feet before the ritual began.
Jess felt sick. First the horrors of the witches market, now this. She gazed at her shaking hand, and wrestled away the terror.
Dan was intoning now, like a priest who had lost his faith, who nonetheless had to deliver a sermon for Easter, The remains are, we think, the earliest evidence of ritualized blood sacrifice and of the severe mutilation of children, the earliest evidence that has so far been seen in South America. It may even be the biggest mass sacrifice of children anywhere in the ancient world.
Picking up a flashlight, Jess played it along the dormitory of bones. The quiet little children were all present and correct, all tied and hacked and dismembered, and left here. In neat little rows. She remembered her own nursery school, in sunny LA, when they would sleep in the afternoon. This was like that, but satanically upended. Here was a kindergarten of evil. Like the children of the Goebbels family, in the Berlin bunker, schlaft gut, schlaft gut, meine kindern.
Its ghastly, was all she could say. Ghastly. Just just ghastly. Her flashlight played across the hideous space and picked out a different bone, a larger, cruder, horsier skull. Just visible in the morbid shadows at the far corner of the antechamber. Whats that?
A llama head. Dans voice expressed a shrug. There are other llama remains all around. Jay thinks they probably had a feast. As they did it. Eating llama as they killed the children.
Horrible.
Possibly they played music as they did it. Feasting and music, and killing their children.
How many corpses?
Eighty.
Jess swayed in the darkness. The orphanage of sleeping bones stared back at her, reproachfully. A gassed Montessori; a tiny Holocaust school for infants. It was worse than Jessicas experience of Calcutta. It reminded her of her father in the hospice. The absolute tyranny of death: the oncoming darkness.
One small skull was tilted to the side, as if the child had tried to sleep as they cut open his chest. Tears sprang to Jessicas eyes.
Are you OK? Dan touched her gently on the arm.
Yes.
I heard what happened in Chiclayo, eh, Larry told me on the cell sweetheart, are you sure?
Her headtorch caught his face. She muttered, Really, Im fine. It was just a ritual, imitative magic, apotropaic theatre.
Getting rid of the evil we bring? Ah, yes.
The adobe dust hung in the ancient air. She said, They think we are the vampire gringos, Dan. Like in the Inca legends of the conquistadors, the white men who eat the fat of the Peruvians: the pishtacas. And they also think we are digging up demons. Digging up the God Who Mustnt Be Named, the terrible god we cannot identify. Thats what Larry said.
Who knows, they might be right? Eh? He gestured across the pitifully neat little remains, the speechless silenced rows of infant skulls and infant femurs, stretching into the darkness of the antechamber. You know, this really is different. Unique. What are we digging up? Mm? What kind of people? Maybe it should be closed down.
You should be pleased. She tried to sound sincere, even encouraging. This is a tremendous find. As you say, Dan, there probably isnt anything like it in the literature.