Then the man in the poncho turned on an electric torch and the light sprang out to reveal a narrow corridor with a staircase leading down. They were inside the wall. The great stones were on both sides. Where did the steps lead? Matt couldn’t even begin to guess.
The light also showed the face of the man who had come to their rescue. Matt had only glimpsed him in the street and the earflaps of his hat had concealed much of his face. Looking at him more closely, he saw that he did bear a very close resemblance to Micos – although without the scar. He was also slightly thinner, with a narrow chin and the beginnings of a beard. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old.
“Who are you?” Matt asked again. He wondered if his voice would carry out into the street. But that was impossible. The walls were at least a metre thick.
“My name is Atoc,” the man replied. His accent was strange. There was a hint of Spanish in it but also something else, some sort of native Indian.
Atoc was the name that Micos had spoken just before he died. He had wanted to get a message to this man. His brother? Matt hoped not but that would explain why they looked so alike.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“It is an old, Inca passage. Very secret. Very few people know.”
“Where does it lead?”
“I take you somewhere safe where Salamanda cannot find you. There are friends waiting but it is far and there is still much danger. Police looking everywhere. We cannot talk now.”
Atoc turned to Pedro and spoke briefly in Spanish. Once again, to Matt’s ears his accent sounded strange. Presumably he was translating what he had just said. Pedro nodded. A decision had been made.
“This way,” Atoc said. He swung the light at the stairs. “We go down. It will be easier soon.”
They began to climb down. Matt tried to count the steps but after twenty-five he gave up. The walls were very narrow, pressing in on them from both sides, and he could feel the weight of the earth pushing down from above. There was a heaviness in his ears and the air was getting cold. He could only see a few steps at a time. The torch wasn’t powerful enough to light much more. But as they reached the bottom with a second passageway bending round ahead of them, he became aware of a strange, yellow glow, coming from somewhere just out of sight. They began to walk forward and soon Atoc switched off the torch. The way ahead was lit, but not by an electric light. Matt turned the corner and gasped.
The passage ran on for as far as he could see, with flames burning in small silver cups set into the walls, about twenty metres apart. They must have been fed by a hidden oil supply. But it was the walls themselves that caught the light, magnified it and reflected it back. The walls were lined with sheets of what looked like brass, but – Matt somehow knew – were actually solid gold.
How much gold was there in the world? Matt had always thought it was precious because it was rare and he remembered what he had heard outside the temple of Coricancha. The Spanish conquistadors had looted the city. They had been mad with greed. They had taken all the gold they could lay their hands on. Or that was what they had thought. But now he could see that they had found only a fraction of what was there. Tons and tons of it must have been used to make this incredible route far below the city. It was stretching ever further into the distance, picking up the light from the lamps, turning night into day.
They were not intended to make the journey on foot. Another Indian, dressed like Atoc, was waiting for them with four mules. Matt wondered how the animals could bear to be here, so far underground, but he supposed they must be used to it. The Indian bowed low as he approached. Matt smiled, feeling increasingly uneasy.
“Please. We must hurry,” Atoc said.
Matt and Pedro climbed onto the first two mules. Atoc and the Indian took the two behind. There were no saddles, just brightly coloured blankets, tied underneath. Matt had never ridden an animal in his life and wondered how he was meant to make this one go. But the mule knew what it was doing. The moment all four of them had mounted, it set off at a fast pace, its hooves thudding rhythmically on the soft, earth-covered floor.
One after another, the flickering oil lamps lit their progress. Nobody spoke. Matt noticed that some of the gold panels had designs beaten into them: faces and warrior figures bristling with weapons. After a while, the passage widened and they passed countless treasures, lined up against the walls: jars and pitchers, cups and trays, idols and funeral masks – many of them made of silver and gold. He wondered how long it would take them to reach wherever they were going. The fact that he had no idea of their destination only made the journey seem longer. And it was almost impossible to measure the passing of time. All he knew was that they were climbing. The path had been sloping upward almost from the start, but he was sure they were getting no closer to the surface. So they must be heading out of Cuzco, into the mountains. That was the only possible explanation.
After at least one hour and possibly as much as two, they suddenly stopped. Despite everything, Matt had been drifting into sleep and he was nearly thrown right over the animal’s head. His legs were sore from constantly rubbing against the coarse hair. And he had added the smell of mule to the many other smells he had picked up since Lima.
“We walk from here,” Atoc said.
They all dismounted, leaving the animals with the other Indian who had never spoken, not even to tell them his name. Matt assumed that there must be another exit from the tunnel, some other way to bring the mules into the open air. Ahead of them was another narrow staircase and a lever set in the wall. Atoc raised a finger to his lips and pulled the lever. Matt heard a slight creaking, the turning of a wheel, and guessed that the mechanism being used was similar to the one that had first opened the wall and let them in.
Atoc waited a moment, listening. Somebody whistled, two single notes that sounded like a bird. At once, he relaxed. “We can go up,” he said.
They began to climb. Matt could see a circle ahead of him, lit by a white light that seemed to hang in the far distance. Some sort of tattered curtain hung down. It was only as he passed through that he realized that this was the mouth of a cave, surrounded by foliage, and that the light was the full moon. And then he was back out in the open, on a hillside high above Cuzco, with two more Indians in ponchos bowing at him, just like the man in the tunnel.
Pedro joined him and they saluted him too. Then Atoc appeared. Matt looked back. There was a round hole in the ground, the entrance to a cave. But it only ran a couple of metres. The back wall was solid. The steps had disappeared. Matt realized that the lever must have been pulled a second time and some sort of huge boulder had rolled into place. The exit from the tunnel was as impossible to find as the entrance.
So what now?
The two Indians gestured and he followed them away from the edge of the hill and into what looked like the ruin of an ancient football stadium, a theatre, a fortress… or perhaps a mix of all three. There was a flat area, roughly circular in shape, covered by grass and surrounded by gigantic boulders that had been arranged in a zigzagging line. There were three levels to the stadium. Whatever activity had once taken place in the arena could have been witnessed by thousands of people, standing or sitting above. The place was lit by floodlights and there were still twenty or thirty tourists wandering through the ruins. Nobody took any notice of their arrival. They had come out of nowhere and Atoc had made sure nobody had seen them arrive.
“This… Sacsayhuaman,” he told Matt. “Sacsayhuaman means ‘Royal Eagle’ and this place was once a great fortress until the Spanish came. You see the throne of the Inca!” He pointed to the rough shape of a seat that had been cut into the rock on the opposite side. There was a girl in a fleece sitting there, having her photograph taken. Atoc frowned in distaste. “Now we leave,” he said.