‘Do we have units on the ground there?’
‘I was able to get two operatives into the city of Antofagasta at about the same time as their aircraft arrived. They picked up the trail but are having difficulty maintaining contact with Morgan’s team.’
‘How so?’ Aaron asked, straightening a little.
‘The team have hired two vehicles and a large supply of mountaineering equipment such as oxygen bottles, crampons, ice axes. They departed the city this morning to the south east. There’s not much out there and my men were not able to get close enough to the team to place GPS markers on their vehicles without being spotted. They’re essentially tracking them blind, and contact is getting sketchy even with their satellite phones. Wherever they’re headed, it’s pretty much the most remote location anywhere in the region.’
‘We’ll deploy immediately,’ Aaron ordered. ‘Morgan must have at least one play left to be travelling into such a hostile region. Have you been able to plot any potential destination?’
‘There’s nothing out there sir except high mountains, volcanoes and barren plains. Their presumed destination is the mountains of the Atacama Desert, but it will take them at least a day or two to travel that far.’
Aaron thought for a moment. ‘What of Yuri Polkov?’
‘His private jet is making for the same location, sir.’
Aaron nodded.
‘Prepare the men,’ he ordered. ‘We will follow Polkov, and in time he will lead us to Lucy Morgan and her team.’
XXXV
A brutal wind swept into Ethan’s face as he climbed the steeply inclined slope, the bitter cold biting into his skin as it swept up from the arid Atacama desert far below and was chilled by the high atmosphere.
He stopped for breath and gazed around at the spectacular scenery, wide mountain ranges against a hard blue sky that, literally, took his breath away, the air at this altitude immensely thin and barely breathable. The barren wastes of the Atacama Desert stretched away into the distance far below and vanished into an asthmatic haze, a wilderness that they had been traversing for two days now.
‘Does anybody else have a problem with us climbing an active volcano?’ Lopez rasped as she joined Ethan.
Surrounded by debris fields from previous eruptions that littered its slopes, Mount Llullaillaco was the second highest volcano in the world and the seventh highest in the Andes mountain range. Perpetually capped with snow patches, the ridge upon which they stood was thousands of metres above sea level.
‘The mountain’s name is from the Aymara dialect, and means treacherous water,’ Lucy informed them as she reached the ridge, ‘probably because of the snow run-off in spring that would have been laced with volcanic debris.’
‘Fascinating,’ Lopez murmured without interest. ‘Got any decent explanations for why we’re up here in the middle of nowhere?’
Behind them, a small baggage train of native huaqueros followed, one of them helping Jarvis and two of his men along the ascent. The climbing route selected needed no specialised techniques, but the sheer altitude was in itself a danger and oxygen was being carried as part of their equipment. Ethan and most of the team carried crampons and ice axes to cross major ice patches that they had encountered above the snow line. Nearby, Ethan could see warning signs erected to warn of land mines left since the conflict between Argentina and nearby Chile in the late 70s and early 80s.
‘There have been numerous archaeological expeditions to this mountain in the past,’ Lucy explained as they waited for Jarvis. ‘American archaeologist Dr. Johan Reinhard directed three surveys of archaeological sites on the summit, and in 1999 on Llullaillaco’s summit an Argentine-Peruvian expedition co-directed by Reinhard and Constanza Ceruti found the preserved bodies of three Inca children, sacrificed half a millennia earlier. It was the highest Inca burial so far discovered in Tawantinsuyu and is now the world’s highest archaeological site.’
‘Sacrificed?’ Lopez echoed. ‘Children?’
‘It was a common practice among the ancient Inca,’ Lucy confirmed. ‘They were conducted as part of the capacocha, a sacrificial rite that celebrated key events in the life of an Incan emperor. The best examples we have are of a six year-old girl nicknamed La nina del rayo, or Lightning Girl, due to her remains having been partially burned by a lightning strike, a young boy, and a teenage girl nicknamed La doncella, or The Maiden. Their remains were perfectly preserved due to the extreme aridity and cold temperatures of this area, perhaps why it was chosen by the Inca despite its extremely difficult location.’
‘Can’t we just go and look at the remains in a museum?’ Jarvis asked as he finally reached them, his features drained and his breath coming in short, fast gasps.
‘We’ll be looking at your remains in a museum if you go much higher,’ Lopez observed with what might have been a hint of anticipation in her tones. ‘You should wait here.’
Jarvis straightened his back and sucked in a lung full of the thin air, which took a lot longer than it should have. ‘I won’t be quitting any time soon.’
‘More’s the pity.’
Ethan turned and looked up at the volcano’s distant peak. ‘You think that there are more of these mummies up here, something that you can use to help Bethany?’
Lucy nodded as she reached into her pocket with her gloved hand and produced both a map and the quipu she had recovered from the remains at Huyuana Picchu.
‘I do,’ she said, ‘and this quipu is guiding us. The direction of the quipu’s longest pendent pointed us to this location, but it is the knots within it that are directing us to a particular spot on the mountain side. If we find that, we should find what we’re looking for.’
‘Which is?’ Lopez enquired demurely.
‘Fresh remains preserved from decay by the extreme cold and aridity of this region, and likely the most highly protected of all Inca burials,’ Lucy replied as she set off again. ‘That’s what we need here and if I’m right, the remains won’t be entirely human.’
Lucy marched off up the hillside, leaving Lopez, Ethan and Jarvis looking at each other. Lopez flashed a bright smile at Doug Jarvis.
‘Not entirely human. Seems likely won’t be on your own then, Doug.’
Lopez trudged off in pursuit of Lucy before Doug could reply. ‘Why are you still hanging out with her?’ he asked Ethan as they began climbing again.
‘I’m not,’ Ethan replied. ‘She showed up in Cambodia, had probably been following us for some time.’
‘How did she know what you were doing?’
‘Lucy came looking for me in Chicago, and when she couldn’t find me her first port of call afterward was Lopez.’
Jarvis peered up the hillside, squinting against the fine spray of ice crystals being whipped off the surface of the snow through which they crunched. ‘But she didn’t accompany Lucy.’
‘Lucy said that Lopez wasn’t interested in finding me, which I can imagine is probably true. I pretty much left her in the lurch when I quit Warner and Lopez Inc.’
Jarvis nodded absentmindedly. ‘Makes me wonder what happened to change her mind.’
‘I’m guessing that she had an attack of conscience,’ Ethan replied. ‘She knows what’s at stake here because Lucy told her.’
‘Why did you quit?’ Jarvis asked, changing the subject abruptly.
Ethan did not reply for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. ‘I needed a change from Chicago, from everything. After we did that final job for you in New York City, after Joanna showed up alive and well and went on her way it just seemed like the end of a chapter and I needed to get out. I stayed working with Lopez for over a year but my heart wasn’t in it.’