Libertad held the evidence behind his back, as they waited for the woman to be brought.
Antonia was not particularly concerned to be brought before the council. She had been working on several projects since her recent arrival, and it was natural that the council would wish a report.
Federico and Paulo were not likely to return for several hours, so this meeting couldn't be about their activities. She certainly hoped not.
When she entered the council chamber there were three men in the room whom she didn't recognize.
Each looked dirty and dusty, as though recently arrived from a long journey. She didn't find their presence comforting.
"Antonia, when did you last see Federico? He appears to be missing." The chairman began without preamble, watching her face for a reaction to the name.
"I have not seen him since yesterday, comrade. I have no idea where he might be." Antonia believed that her voice had remained level, although she had been disconcerted at the mention of the name. She knew that she was fighting for her life now, and the least mistake would cost her dearly.
The chairman paused for a few seconds, lengthening the silence between them. When he was sure that she had no more to say, he resumed. "In that case, I don't suppose that you can explain how Federico has come to be at this meeting." He looked at Libertad, who immediately drew the bloodstreaked head from behind his back. The dead eyes stared accusingly at the beautiful Spanish woman.
Antonia's hands flew to her eyes to hide the grisly sight. From the look of the painful grimace etched into his face she had sent her childhood playmate to a horrible death.
Looking between her fingers, she searched the faces of the others. From their grim expressions, she was convinced that they knew who was responsible for the attack that had killed Federico.
She had to escape. Now.
Antonia bolted for the door, but was intercepted by two guards. In a desperate move she wrenched an arm free and pulled a knife from one man. She slashed him across the midriff, and he collapsed shrieking, his guts leaking from the wound.
She drove the knife toward the second man's throat, but he reacted faster than his dying companion, catching Antonia's wrist in a powerful grip and backhanding her across the temple.
The red-haired woman collapsed like an ivory doll thrown to the floor by an angry child.
The chairman gazed angrily at the fallen woman. "Take her to the interrogation room. Make sure that she tells everything she knows." Stupid woman, he thought to himself as Antonia was carried from the room. She should have used the knife on herself while she could.
Soon she would be begging for a chance to cut her own throat.
18
Bolan hiked along with renewed energy, knowing that his immediate problem, a water supply, was almost solved.
He searched for another hour, guiding himself by his acute sense of hearing. Occasionally he had to retrace his steps when the soft gurgling sound grew fainter, before he found his way to the small stream that had beckoned him.
The tinkling came from a small drainage ditch, a narrow channel beside a broad corridor, as Bolan discovered when he put his foot into it. He dropped to his knees and cautiously sampled the water, relieved to find it sweet and pure.
The big man drank his fill and started on his way again, this time following the small rivulet upstream. He guessed that if he found the source of the water, he might very well find a way out of the labyrinth.
Bolan walked a seemingly endless distance, feet aching in his poorly constructed prison shoes.
He didn't notice any incline at all. The slope upward had to have been very shallow, with only a gradual rise to ground level.
Suddenly the stream dipped underground into a hole too narrow to accommodate more than Bolan's head, leaving him without a guide. The path forked at this point, as he determined by groping a narrow column of rock that divided the tunnel. He paced a short way up each corridor before trying his luck. The left trail appeared to climb, while the track to the right continued straight ahead.
After filling his water pouch Bolan chose the left fork, preferring to continue to climb. He wanted out as soon as possible, and the passageway to the right might continue for another hundred miles, for all he knew.
He began to regret his decision when the corridor began to shrink. Soon he was ducking his head to avoid a low ceiling, while the width had narrowed to the point where the sides brushed his shoulders.
A few minutes later, Bolan ran into another dead end. However, as he determined from feeling the area ahead of him, this was a very different tunnel end.
The other corridor had simply stopped, unfinished, as though the workmen had quit for the day once upon a time, and had never returned to complete their tasks. This path ended in a fiat, smooth-finished surface.
Bolan hammered a clenched fist on the wall.
The vibrations didn't feel as though there were solid rock ahead. He shoved, hard. Nothing happened.
He moved to the extreme left and tried again.
With a groan from a hinge that probably hadn't budged in five hundred years, the rock moved two inches, swinging back like a door. He could see a faint light through the crack, although to his dilated pupils it seemed so dazzling that he had to shut them. Another energised push opened the rock wall a foot more, and Bolan squeezed through.
He opened his eyes gradually, peering through narrow slits until he became accustomed to the light.
Bolan observed that he was in the lower level of some tall structure, with a large opening like an atrium extending far above him. A stairway angled upward, folding back and forth on itself as it headed for an opening above. A soft amber tinged light streamed down, catching motes of dust and small flying insects in its beam.
The ground was covered with pots of various sizes, some intact and some reduced to shards, which probably had contained gifts of some kind to the gods. Bolan tried to remember if the Incas had practiced human sacrifice the way the Aztecs to the north commonly had.
For a brief moment he imagined this as the site of an ancient and barbaric ritual, captives stretched on an altar at the top of the pyramid, while priests cut open the victims' chests and ripped out the still beating hearts. Possibly the hearts had rested in those decayed jars.
Bolan began to climb, anxious to reach the sunlight, careful of his footing on the disused stairway. He breathed deeply, savoring the fresh air after the stale and uncirculated air of the maze.
The stairs turned several times before Bolan reached the final landing, where he found himself in a small rectangular structure open on one long side.
Flaking paintings adorned each wall. He poked his head out cautiously.
He was on the top of a high temple in the middle of a ruined city. A steep set of stairs led to the ground, with the top step flanked by two snarling stone jaguar heads. Several hundred yards away, another pyramid faced him, almost completely hidden beneath a green mantle of vines and mold. A level area between the two large structures was dotted with fallen columns and altars. All around the temple, stone houses stood open to the sky, thatched roofs long since withered into dust.
Beyond the ruined village, a high ring of jagged hills encircled the valley. At one time, a road must have meandered over one of the clefts between the peaks, but the trail was invisible beneath the underbrush that had overgrown the site.
The sun was setting to his left, but the rays were still strong enough to show several men standing by a cave mouth half a mile away. Several more openings pockmarked the hills in the same vicinity.
Bolan had just found the lair of the Shining Path.
It wouldn't be long before the scorpions hiding among the rocks got a surprise visit from the Executioner.
It was going to be quite a party.
Libertad hurried from the interrogation chamber to report to the council on the latest information he had obtained from his victim. With the assistance of skilled torturers, he had been able to break Antonia's will.