the Source (2008) (19 page)

Chapter
41.

The jungle was everything described in the Voynich. Noisy, hellish and hot. Juarez made everyone wear heavy shoes and watch each step because of the constant threat of fer-de-lance and other poisonous creatures. Cutting through the steaming undergrowth with heavy packs was slow, exhausting work. Sister Chantal leant on the others for support but led with almost manic vigour.

That night, after a hasty supper of fish and rice, they slept in hammocks suspended above the forest floor, shrouded in nets to keep out insects and other inquisitive jungle creatures drawn to their body warmth. Exhausted, listening to the constant chatter of the forest, Ross held his aching wrist and wondered about Lauren, his sadness tempered by excitement. Then he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next afternoon they reached a small lagoon backed by looming cliffs that blocked their path. Covered with trees and dense foliage, the high ridge of rock was another apparent dead end. Then the reinvigorated Sister Chantal called, 'Over here!'

She had walked fifty yards to their right and was pointing up at the cliff. Its fissures reminded Ross of the famous 'face' on Ayers Rock in Australia, with eyes, nose and mouth. Below the mouth a mass of vines and other greenery stretched to the ground like a beard: La Barba Verde.

Using machetes, Hackett and Mendoza cut through the greenery to reveal a large opening in the cliff face. Ross checked his watch, and when he led the others through the gap, he noted it was 1.58 p.m. The passage took them through a series of unusual caves, marbled and striated with fossils, minerals and ores. Under different circumstances he might have stopped for samples.

Eventually, they emerged on to a high shelf, overlooking a narrow valley that stretched to the far horizon. In the afternoon light it was a lush green paradise, splashed with exotic blooms of red, blue and other primary colours. There were fewer trees than there had been in the jungle and on the terrain above the valley. Ross had read once that when trees are burnt or chopped down in a forest, an abundance of other growth quickly fills the rich soil, exploiting the space and the sunlight filtering through the thinned canopy to the forest floor. What had thinned the trees here? He checked his watch again and noticed it was only two minutes past two, which was impossible. Many more than four minutes had passed since he'd last checked his watch, more like thirty. He then realized that the second hand had stopped. The rugged and expensive Tag Heuer had been a Christmas gift from Lauren, and Tags didn't just stop. He shook his wrist and turned to Zeb. 'What time do you make it?'

'Two minutes past two.'

Ross frowned. 'Nigel?'

Hackett glanced at his wrist. 'The same.' Then he tapped his watch. 'Hang on, it's stopped.'

'So has mine,' said Ross. 'It appears all our watches stopped at exactly the same time.' He pointed back at the ridge. 'Perhaps there was something magnetic in the caves we walked through.' He reached into his pack and checked the GPS on his palmtop computer. The screen gave a quick reading then fizzed, like a television with a faulty aerial. 'Wow,' he said. 'Whatever force it is, it's powerful enough to stop satellite signals too.' From this point on, then, they would be blind. Lost in space and time with no idea of where or even when they were. They were now totally dependent on Falcon's notebook - not just to find the garden but also their way back. 'Zeb, what does Father Orlando say we do next?'

Zeb glanced at her notes. 'We keep left and walk along the high shelf, with the valley on our right.' She pointed to the dense forest above it. 'We head over there.'

But Sister Chantal turned right, scrabbled in the undergrowth and began to walk down a narrow, sloping path into the valley. Ross's heart skipped a beat.

'Where are you going, Sister?' asked Zeb, echoing his thoughts. 'The directions don't lead down there.'

Sister Chantal carried on, then stopped on a natural viewing platform.

'Have you seen something?' asked Hackett. 'What's down there?'

She beckoned. 'If you come here, Mr Hackett, I'll show you.'

Ross and Hackett clambered down, leaving the others with the packs and equipment. Perhaps it was the angle of the setting sun, or the perspective from the lower ledge, but as Ross stood beside her and Hackett the valley's secret was revealed: a regular pattern of geometric structures.

It was too much for Hackett, who collapsed to his knees. 'This is it,' he said. 'We've only gone and found it.' Tears streamed down his face. 'This is the mother metropolis.'

Ross, too, was awestruck. The ruins of Kuelap had been vast but they were dwarfed now by the lost city laid out below him. Despite the greenery that covered everything, he could clearly see the contours of what had once been a mighty metropolis. The streets, the plazas, even the few remaining pillars that matched the mighty trees in the surrounding jungle were clearly visible. As he peered down he saw two spotted jaguars lope through the boulevards. This once great city had been reclaimed by nature.

'This place has probably been lost to mankind for more than a thousand years. Those circular habitations are typical of the Chachapoyan cloud people. I bet this is where their civilization was born, and many more besides - Christ, this could be the cradle of all South American civilizations. This is fantastic. A life's dream come true.' He called up to the others: 'We're here! We've found it! The mother of all lost cities!'

'Will there be gold?' asked Mendoza.

'There's a simple way to find out. Let's go down and take a look.'

'But what about el abuelo?' wailed Juarez.

'Where's your courage, man?' growled Mendoza.

Hackett laughed. 'Trust me, my friend, these ruins are worth the risk. They'll make us rich and famous. All of us.'

When Hackett led Juarez and Mendoza down into the valley, Ross and Zeb hung back with Sister Chantal. 'What is this place, Sister?' said Ross, quietly.

She did not reply.

'It's not in the Voynich or Falcon's book,' said Zeb, flicking through her notes.

'Perhaps it really is Eldorado,' said Ross, 'and Father Orlando missed it. Perhaps he and the conquistadors walked right past the very thing they were seeking.'

'Look at them,' said Zeb, watching Hackett and the others rushing down the path. Ross detected fondness in her eyes. 'Nigel's like a kid. Who'd have thought the tight-ass could get so excited? For his sake, I hope there is gold here.'

'There is,' said Sister Chantal, emphatically. 'So much that they'll stay here while we go in search of something infinitely more valuable. We should be able to reach the garden and be back in a week. We'll leave them a note.'

Ross realized he had seriously misjudged her. 'You had this little diversion planned from the start, didn't you?'

'The fewer people who know about the garden the better.'

Ross stepped round so he could see her face. 'How did you know this place was here?'

When she met his gaze her eyes were ruthlessly clear. 'I'm the Keeper,' she said, and walked down into the lost city.

Chapter
42.

The breeze dropped as they descended into the valley. By the time they reached the city, there was no movement in the warm, humid air, and the sheen on Ross's skin had developed into rivulets of sweat. As they passed the crumbling gate towers, the sounds of the jungle were replaced with an eerie quiet. Ross listened intently but heard only the occasional drone of insects. Among the vine-clad ruins and the surrounding slopes of the deep, lush valley, he had the surreal impression that he was on the floor of the ocean in a vast, verdant Atlantis. The impression was heightened when he looked up, beyond the towering pillars, to the sun refracted in the hazy blue sky above.

'I don't like this place. It's dead,' said Juarez, as he shuffled along behind Hackett. 'Something bad happened here.'

'Shut up,' said Mendoza.

'Yes, Juarez. Will you relax, for Christ's sake?' added Hackett.

But as they walked down the main boulevard, dwarfed by the towering rock edifices that lined their passage, stepping over thick vines and passing narrow side-streets, Ross noted that both Mendoza and Hackett had spoken softly when they admonished the other man, as if wary of disturbing some malevolent presence. Despite the silence, the sensation of being watched was even more acute than it had been in the jungle. Ross didn't like the place and he suspected that even Hackett, despite his passion for antiquity, wasn't happy. An intangible sense of foreboding reminded him of the time he and Lauren had visited the Colosseum in Rome, which had shared a similar atmosphere of dread and despair. He glanced at Sister Chantal, who kept her eyes straight ahead. Zeb was clutching herself as if she was cold, despite the oppressive heat.

'I don't see any gold,' said Mendoza.

Hackett pointed to the end of the boulevard, flanked by two rough-hewn pillars. 'From what I saw on the ridge, the public and civic areas will be over there. That's where we should search.'

'Screw the gold,' said Zeb. 'I want to know where we're going to spend the night.'

'Me too,' said Juarez.

'The public areas and the main plaza should be more open,' said Hackett, 'less claustrophobic.'

'You mean less creepy,' said Zeb.

Hackett was right. The boulevard led to a large plaza. Its vast paving stones were cracked and uneven where plants and trees had grown through them. To the right a large diamond-shaped area - twenty feet wide - was bordered with heavy stones. The earth within it, covered with vegetation and dark blooms, had sunk many feet below the surrounding stones, giving the impression of a vast pit of flowers.

To the left they saw a stepped pyramid, extravagantly overrun with plants. Each of the three steps was the height of a modern house with a steep staircase carved into the front face, leading to a portal in the top tier. The structure was about sixty feet high and reminded Ross of the Aztec and Mayan pyramids he had seen on the Discovery channel. He couldn't help but be impressed by its scale. Just assembling the massive rocks to form the steps would be an amazing feat with today's technology, let alone at the time it had been built.

'Did you know there are more pyramids in Peru than there are in Egypt?' said Hackett. 'And that stepped ziggurats like this are also found in the Middle East and the Mediterranean?'

'How old is it?'

Hackett was cutting away vines. 'I'd say at least a thousand years old.'

'How the hell did they build it?'

Hackett wiped the sweat from his brow. 'With the one resource they had in abundance. Manpower. Ancient civilizations had no unions, but they did have pulleys, levers and armies of men. Durham Cathedral in northern England and the amazing temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia are both almost a thousand years old. The Colosseum in Rome's almost two thousand, while Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza are more than four thousand.'

'Check this out, Ross,' shouted Zeb, from across the plaza. She stood at the edge, pointing at a ring of stones that surrounded a stone bowl. In its centre a pillar about four feet high had been carved into the shape of an exotic flower.

Ross went over to her. The pillar was sunk deep into the ground, and the splayed stone petals formed multiple spouts. 'Looks like there was once a natural spring they directed into a communal fountain.'

But Zeb wasn't listening. Instead her eyes were fixed on the side of the ziggurat. 'Ross,' she whispered, pointing a shaking finger. 'Over there. You see it?'

He blinked. The vines obscured most of the stone but he could see something carved into it. An image he recognized. 'Yes,' he said, mouth dry. 'I see it.'

He rushed over to the ziggurat and, with his good hand, began to hack away the vines, exposing a carving at least six feet high. Zeb reached into her pack, pulled out her notes and flipped through the photocopied pages of the Voynich. She stopped at one and held it up.

'Look, Ross! This is page ninety-three of the Voynich.'

Ross stood back from the ziggurat and took it from her. The carving had been done with more skill than the drawing but otherwise it was identical. He rushed to the next block of stone and cut back the vine, revealing another carving of a strange plant, then another. He reached for Zeb's photocopies. Each of the strange plants carved into the stone was the same as one of those illustrated in the Voynich.

'I thought Father Orlando and the conquistadors never found this place,' she said.

'Perhaps they didn't,' said Ross. He felt dizzy with the heat and the possibilities of what he was seeing. He looked about for Sister Chantal and the others, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Then he heard his name. 'Ross!' He stepped away from the ziggurat as Hackett poked his head out of the portal at the top and waved. 'Ross! Zeb! Come up here. You've got to see this.'

Chapter
43.

The steps up the pyramid were easier to climb than they looked from the ground, even though thick vines obstructed many of them. As Ross led Zeb upwards, he tried to process the images he had seen and what they might mean. He caught himself searching the vegetation for any sign of the flowers and plants depicted in the Voynich and on the ziggurat, but there were none.

At the top of the stairs he entered a portal crowned with a trapezoidal lintel, similar to the one in the ransom chamber at Cajamarca. It led into a cool, gloomy room that smelt like a zoo but was remarkably clean and well preserved. Sister Chantal caught his eye. 'Did you know about the carvings down there?' he hissed.

She said nothing.

'What carvings?' said Hackett. 'Are they anything like these?' He stepped aside and shone his Maglite torch on the walls. Zeb gasped. The walls were decorated with intricately carved, three-foot-square frames, each of which contained a scene, like a storyboard or comic strip. 'Neither the Incas nor their predecessors had a written language,' he said. 'It wasn't until the Spaniards chronicled their conquests and discoveries that anything was written down. This was how the ancients who once lived here recorded events.'

'And what events they were,' whispered Zeb.

'I told you something bad happened here,' said Juarez.

Even Ross, with no training in language or symbols, could follow the narrative. The first carved image depicted the flower-shaped fountain in full flow, surrounded by a circle of human figures kneeling before it, as if in worship, while a benign sun shone down from above. The second image was of the same fountain, this time surrounded by a circle of human figures dancing and eating strange plants, like those in the Voynich. In the next image the fountain was dry and the flowers were dying. The fourth showed figures digging the diamond-shaped pit and throwing piles of human bodies into it. In the next a figure was laid on top of the ziggurat and another was pulling out its heart. The sixth showed the fountain again with two drops falling into it: from the sacrificial heart and the sun. The last image was of a line of humans of varying sizes, men, women and children, leaving the city and going into the jungle.

'I don't understand,' said Hackett.

'Isn't it obvious, Nigel?' said Zeb. 'When the fountain dried up people became sick and died. They performed sacrifices to bring the water back but they didn't work so the city died and the survivors left.'

'I understand the story,' said Hackett. 'I just don't understand why they were so dependent on a fountain. This isn't the desert. It's a rainforest - and it's been one for thousands of years. They wouldn't need a small fountain to stay alive and healthy.'

'Unless it wasn't ordinary water,' said Zeb.

Ross thought again of the unusual plants depicted in the carvings and the Voynich. Had they grown here because of something in the spring water, something unique to Father Orlando's garden? Excitement coursed through him. Had the water contained some unusual chemicals or minerals on which the people had relied? 'The water probably came from a subterranean stream with a source not far from here,' he said. 'Then something happened - a geological shift, a subterranean landslide - which dammed the stream and dried up the spring.'

'So, although the spring's dried up its source might still exist?' asked Zeb.

'Yes.' He returned her smile. Orlando Falcon's garden was seeming less and less like a myth. 'And it might be pretty close.'

'Whatever they thought was in the water,' said Hackett, pointing at the penultimate image, 'they offered two sacrifices to bring it back.' He tapped the drops. 'Human blood and the tears of the sun.' He smiled a wide, boyish smile. 'And do you know what that is? Gold.'

Ross thought of the ore-riddled caves they had walked through to reach the valley. Perhaps they contained seams of gold, once mined by the inhabitants of this place.

'Where would the gold be?' said Mendoza.

'In a sacred place.' Hackett pointed again at the carvings and tapped the image of the ziggurat. 'Somewhere in here.'

Just then, Juarez's voice cried, 'Sister Chantal's found something!'

Ross and the others followed Hackett's Maglite beam to the far recesses of the chamber where Juarez stood with the nun, pointing his torch down a flight of dark steps that disappeared into the depths of the pyramid. The stairs descended one flight, levelled out, then turned back on themselves, descending further into the darkness. The zoo smell wafted up from the bowels of the stone ziggurat. Animal droppings lay on the rough-hewn steps. Large ones.

Mendoza cocked his weapon, Hackett pulled a pistol from his backpack, and Juarez took the rifle from his shoulder.

'If there's gold it'll be down here,' said Hackett, moving to the stairs.

'I go with you,' said Juarez, eyes bright with uncustomary bravado. 'You said we share everything. I want to see this gold.'

Hackett prodded a vine, which slithered away. A snake. 'Whatever you say.' He checked his pistol, then glanced nervously at Ross and Mendoza. 'You're coming, too, aren't you?'

Mendoza nodded. Ross hesitated, holding his broken wrist. He hadn't come for gold or to explore any ancient lost city, and he wasn't armed, but he felt compelled to see what was down there. 'I'm coming,' he said.

'I'm not,' said Zeb. 'I'll stay with Sister Chantal.'

'Let's go.' Hackett adjusted his hat, then headed down the stairs.