Jason shook his head. Im flying to the States Tuesday. A three-month assignment on the West Coast, Canada, Oregon. Ill be just fine, dude. Will that cop agree to this?
Yes, I think so. In the end its up to us. Of course wed have to come back as witnesses at some point. But that could be months.
So, said Nina, thats what we do. We do it fast, and we keep moving. We dont give them a chance to catch us. Here. She reached for her jeans pocket, and brought out an envelope.
Adam recognized her writing. France, August 4th-9th. Your fathers receipts. You brought them?
I had the feeling we would make this decision. Her smile was fixed. This is where he went next. She opened the envelope. Southwest France. Near Bergerac.
Where?
Its a castle. The Templars were imprisoned there. Its called Domme. He spent three days there. It must be crucial. She murmured the words like a prayer for the dead. Domme Castle, Sarlat-le-Caneda. In the Dordogne.
I had the feeling we would make this decision. Her smile was fixed. This is where he went next. She opened the envelope. Southwest France. Near Bergerac.
Where?
Its a castle. The Templars were imprisoned there. Its called Domme. He spent three days there. It must be crucial. She murmured the words like a prayer for the dead. Domme Castle, Sarlat-le-Caneda. In the Dordogne.
36
Huaca D, Zana, Peru
Mio Dios. The torchbeams played across the little skeletons, illuminating one tiny skull, then another. Esto es terrible.
The voice was unexpected: not the same as before. Jessica squinted to see who was in the tomb, then she glimpsed the shine of a cap badge. Police. It was the police.
The Peruvian officers lifted her to her feet. The police? She felt a sudden urge to fight back, to protest: they had frightened her so much, sent her into the darkest terror. Vainly she slapped a hand away, pushed at one of the officers. Almost flailing.
They looked at her in the semi-dark, perplexing, questioning, bewildered. Senorita
This was foolish, and Jessica knew it. She was chiding them for what? Saving her life? They were doing their job and they had done it well.
Senorita?
She calmed, a little. I soy Lo Siento. I am sorry I was scared
They dismissed her words with a wave: they wanted her out of the huaca straightaway.
Stumbling over the bones, she obeyed: following them slowly out of the antechamber, and down the passageways, making the long retreat out of the huaca. No one spoke: the only sound was the scrape of boots in mud, the whisper of dust disturbed.
She steeled herself for what she was about to see as she approached the quadrangle of light that was the pyramidal exit: Dans body, prone in the Zana dust. But as she reached the fresher air, her apprehension was replaced by confusion. The body was already gone: only the bloodstains remained.
The tallest policemen, a handsome English-speaking man with a gentle smile, touched her mud-dusted shoulder. Your friend is already in an ambulance.
He is alive?
No. I am sorry, no. He was killed, but we must examine the body.
Jessica resisted the surging sadness, the tears she hadnt cried. What about the killers?
They escaped. Someone from the village, from Zana, called us, they heard the shooting. Please- He gestured at one of three police cars, their red lights flashing absurdly, in the desert air. We would like you to come to Chiclayo, and make a full statement. Is that permissible?
Yes. Jessica shrugged. She was exhausted to the point of indifference; numbed by it all. Of course.
The questioning, in Chiclayo police headquarters, lasted four hours. It was polite, efficient, depressing, and repetitive. Towards the end Jessica found her mind wandering, gazing at the maps and mug-shots on the wall of the grubby office. What was she going to do now? TUMP was obviously finished. Her life was probably in danger. She didnt especially care. Her lover, Dan, was dead: at the moment when hed told her he loved her, almost exactly as shed realized she probably reciprocated his feelings, he had been taken from her.
Death had a cruel sense of humour.
The police drove her back to Zana to collect her stuff. They expected her to move out of town for her own safety, she had to pack at once.
The police car stopped near the town plaza. Jessica alighted, reassuring the police that she could drive back to Chiclayo on her own. But they insisted on escorting her. She yielded to their protection, and agreed she would meet them at the lab in three hours. Then they could follow her Hilux to Chiclayo.
Jessica began her walk to the lab, and her little apartment next door. But as she walked, another enormous wave of melancholia almost knocked her legs away. The sadness was like a sack of rocks, as if she was hauling eighty kilos of grief on her back.
She needed to pause and think. Finding a broken bench in the town square, Jessica sat down, under fraying palm trees with gangrenous trunks.
Taking a can of cherry cola from her bag, she cracked it open, and drank. She was also hungry, but she had no food. Drinking the cola, she stared up the road. It terminated after two blocks with a rubbish-filled maize field, and then came the huacas. With the little children. And the bloodstains. The sadness was unbearable.
She stood and tossed the can in a bin, and began her walk to the lab. But a small black child was in the way, kicking a football against a wall of the grimy Panateria Tu Casa. A peeling wall poster for Inca Kola, El Sabor de Peru! flaked a little more paper onto the dirty street each time the ball thumped.
Ola, Eduardo.
The kid stopped, and turned, and grinned at Jessica. He was the son of the cleaner at the archaeology lab, at the other end of town. Jess often saw him running late to school, in shoes so battered he might as well have gone barefoot. She would never see him again. Eduardo answered, eagerly, Buenas dias, Senorita Silverton! Another kick of the ball, ?Quieras jugar?
Do you want to play?
Jess smiled, sadly, and turned down the offer. No, gracias. Los estadounidenses somos muy malos jugando al futbol.
I am an American, we are useless at soccer.
The boy grinned, and Jessica said goodbye, feeling herself stumble on the finality of the word adios, adios then she walked quickly to the lab.
She found Larry inside hastily packing away equipment.
They looked at each other. And Jessica knew that anything they said would feel pointless and wrong.
What are you going to do, Jess? Go home to California?
Jessica sat on a stool. Christmas in Redondo, with my mom? She sighed. Maybe. You? What about you? And Jay?
Still thinking. Jays already bought his ticket to Chicago. But Im not sure. He picked up a Moche pot, then set it down. The police say they might want us as witnesses pretty soon. So wed just have to come back.
They told me the same. I might go to Lima till the New Year. Lie low.
Larry pulled up a stool and sat beside her. What a freaking mess! Poor Dan.
I know.
You must His embarrassed eyes barely met her gaze. I mean, Dan and you, it must be horrible
She shook her head. She didnt want to talk about Dan.
Larry seemed to understand. He stared at the window. Just who the fuck are these people, Jess? Who is doing this?
Jessica did not reply; there was no reply. No one had any idea. The fridges hummed in the silence; she wondered idly what would happen to their contents. The Moche bones and skulls. The notion of these things made her faintly nauseous.
Larry swivelled, and leaned closer, his voice lowered. Jess Did you, did you find the police kinda odd?
What do you mean?
Her colleague shrugged, his concerned face was darkened by a puzzled frown. I thought they seemed scared. Like they knew something, or sensed something, and it frightened them. Gut feeling, is all. But I definitely got the sensation they were trying to close this all down: close down the lab, get us out of the way, get shot of the whole business. They dont seem keen to follow up leads. Like, Archibald McLintock, he must be crucial to this case, yet they werent interested when I told them. They were more interested in asking me when I was going to leave Zana, and go to Lima, or America. They just wanted me gone.
Jessica stared at him, absorbing the information. He was right: the cops hadnt even asked her about McLintock. Why not? What were they avoiding? But, Larry, she had to ask the obvious question, what could be so bad it frightens the police?
37
Domme Castle, France
Et ici, le graffiti du diable
The guide was brisk to the point of rudeness, evidently keen to get the job done. And Adam could see why.
A howlingly cold wind was scouring down the Dordogne Valley, surrounding the walls of ancient Domme, besieging the town on the rock. There were very few tourists in all Domme, as they had already discovered: the Hotel de Golf was shut, the famous grotte was shut. The Cafe de Dordogne was so shut it looked as if it would never reopen. The only tourists for many kilometres were huddled here, in the castle. Doing the rudimentary tour.
Adam tried to understand the fat female guide as she talked in relentlessly fast French. But he didnt have enough of the language to even begin to understand.
It wasnt much of a castle anyway. More of a glorified medieval gatehouse with bulging walls and plain stone rooms These were the two large notoriously severe cells, in which dozens of Templars had been incarcerated for several years after the arrest of the entire Order in
1307
The squalor and stench would have been indescribable, Adam decided. Dozens and dozens of men locked in here for years.
Et voici un dessin, satirique, du Pape, et ici Saint Michel, a droit.
The terrors of the knights would have been intense. Waiting in here, ragged and half-starved, half-crazed even, fearful of the jingle of the gaolers key, wondering if their turn had come to be taken for the torturing. To have their feet burned with hot irons, to be put to the rack.
To be persuaded to slash your own face into ribbons.
He glanced anxiously behind him at the big old wooden door where Nina was gazing closely at some of the medieval graffiti. Like a botanist inspecting an orchid. Then she turned and asked the guide a question, in French. Adam didnt understand any of it, though he tried to overhear. He heard the name McLintock.