“Well, I’m not just going to dump her out on the street. Poor people elsewhere eat dogs. No telling what they eat here. If I just leave her, the hotel’s liable to have her put down.”
“So what’s left? You gonna take her with us?” She meant the suggestion as sarcasm.
It had a different effect on her young companion. “Why not?” he replied defiantly, as if the thought had already occurred to him. “I could sure use an alternative to your company.”
Ashwood held her temper. “You can’t take a house cat into the jungle.”
“Why not? She’s small, doesn’t weigh much. I’ll carry her in my pack.”
“You’re crazy. Something down there’ll make a meal of her. This is a domesticated animal we’re talkin’ about, Jason.” She sounded disgusted. “Big tough actor, the guy who carries the machine gun in one hand and the grenade launcher in the other, and you’re gonna nursemaid a cat through the jungle?”
“Watch me.”
“When’d you decide to do this?”
“Spur of the moment. I’ve never done anything like it before, so why not do it now?”
“I can’t stop y’all. But I don’t want to hear about it when things get tough, you understand? The cat has any problems, they’re your problems.”
“That’s what I had in mind.” He gazed fondly at his newfound friend. The cat lifted its head, eyes shut with pleasure at his touch. “Pretty bold of her sneaking in here like this. I think I’ll call her Macho.”
Ashwood rolled her eyes. “You can’t call her Macho if she’s a female. Call her Macha if you have to. And you’d better hope she keeps quiet while we’re out or the hotel will make machaca out of her.”
Carter rose and latched the interior window, barring the only exit. “I’m sure she’ll sleep ‘til we get back.” He glanced across at the animal. “You’ll be quiet, won’t you?” The only response was a continuing sessile purr.
“God,” Ashwood muttered. “When we get down into the lowlands you gonna talk to the snakes and piranhas too?”
“If I think there’s any chance of getting an answer,” he shot back.
“Throw on some clothes and let’s move.”
They made inquiries at the hotel desk, at the American Express office down the street, and around town. An English-speaking cop finally directed them to the offices of the Organización por la Conservación de la Selva Sur, on the north side of the Plaza de Armas. A busy researcher juggling a handful of slides told them to try another room in the same building.
The guide’s office was a tiny, jumbled mess. Gear and books crowded the battered desk into a corner and all but obscured the famous view of the ancient cathedral across the plaza. A telephone and an antique manual typewriter clung precariously to one side of the desk.
The office’s single occupant was a soft-voiced, swarthy young man with lively eyes and delicate features. He stood barely five seven and looked much too young to be a representative of his chosen profession. His English was excellent, but that was to be expected, Carter mused.
“Your timing is not good,” he informed his visitors. “I’m supposed to go to Lima to check out some new equipment. I’m not really interested right now in going into the selva.”
“What would it take to get you to change your mind, sonny?” Ashwood added something in rapid-fire Spanish and Carter eyed her in surprise. Obviously pleased, the guide replied in his own language.
Their haggling gave Carter time to study the contents of the office. He found a stack of high-quality eight-by-ten photos: greenery, something that looked like a black alligator with a dragon’s tail, a pair of impossibly large otters, and a jaguar napping in a tree.
After Ashwood and the man settled on a price there were handshakes all around, at which point Carter learned that henceforth they would be trusting themselves to the expertise of one Igor von Mannheim de Soto.
“We’re really going into unexplored jungle with a guide named Igor?” Carter whispered to his companion.
“You’ve lived in L.A. too long,” Ashwood admonished him. “South America isn’t any more ethnically homogeneous than the North. So there’s German and Russian in the kid’s family. It’s his competency that concerns me, not his genealogy.”
“You never told me you spoke Spanish.”
She ignored the observation. “He says he grew up in the Madre de Dios district and knows it the way you’d know Beverly Hills. He’s been guiding since he was fifteen.”
“That’s right,” agreed Igor, blandly indifferent to his new employer’s outright appraisal of his qualifications.
“He’s fresh enough to be enthusiastic and crazy enough to take us wherever we want to go. Aren’t you, sonny?”
“Sure. You said that you want to see ruins. What you really mean is that you want me to help you try to find Paititi.”
Ashwood gaped at him. “Now, what makes you think that’s what we want?”
He sat on the edge of his desk. “Because every norteamericano who comes to this part of the world and says they want to go looking for ruins really means they want to try and find Paititi. People have been doing that since Pizarro’s time.”
Carter pursed his lips. “Actually I thought we were looking for—”
“Treasure,” said Igor, interrupting. “There is no treasure. Everyone wants to believe there is. I know better.”
“How do you know that?” Carter wondered aloud.
“Because if there was any treasure the conquistadores would have found it centuries ago. Pizarro’s men could smell gold, like dogs can smell carrion.”
“How come you know all about this?” Ashwood asked him.
The young man slid off the desk and fumbled at an overloaded, collapsing bookcase that was now wholly supported by its literary content. He extracted a dusty volume and flipped through it as he spoke.
“The Spaniards could not find Paititi because it doesn’t exist. It is a legend. Not that they didn’t try. They tortured and killed a lot of Incas. People unable to provide information they didn’t have died because of honest ignorance. In 1912 your Mr. Hiram Bingham found the city of Machu Picchu up above the town of Agua Caliente. A lot of people think that was the city that gave rise to the stories about Paititi. But Bingham found no gold. Just a lot of old buildings that were falling down.
“It’s pretty. I like to go there myself sometimes and stay the night, after most of the tourists have left. But treasure?” He smiled.
