“Lemme guess,” said Ashwood sarcastically. “That boy’s the only one, the only one in the world, who knows the location of the lost city of Paititi and could guide you to it.”
“Not exactly.” Da Rimini had a wild look in her eyes. She no longer acted the oversized ingenue Carter had met in Cuzco. It took a very special, very unusual woman, he thought, to plunge into the selva with two heavily armed men hoping to find … what? “But he did know that his uncle had taken some white men in search of his grandfather, and how to track them.”
Carter found that her darting gaze and quirky gestures were making him more nervous than the AK-47s. The supercilious Bruton Fewick might be obsessed, but at least he wasn’t unbalanced. The more Carter saw and heard of her, the less assured he was of Francesca da Rimini’s state of mind. How would she react to the discovery that the fabled lost city of Paititi consisted of a single crumbling wall, some overgrown paving stones, and three holes in the ground?
“You I know, Jason Carter. Your outfitter, Igor von Mannheim de Soto, I also recognize, and the ugly old woman is clearly the friend you mentioned.” Ashwood tensed but said nothing. Da Rimini’s gaze danced over Fewick. “But who is this unpleasant fat man?”
“His name’s Bruton Fewick. He’s kind of an archaeologist. He’s the one who first figured out where this place was. Marjorie and I, we sort of appropriated the information from him and got here first. He didn’t like that, which is why we’re tied up.”
“That is correct,” said Fewick with misplaced self-importance. “I am the official discoverer of Paititi. The rest of you are nothing more than intellectual interlopers.”
Da Rimini responded by continuing to treat him with all the deference she would an ant. She glared at the disintegrating wall. “This is Paititi? This is all there is? Where is the city? Where is the lost gold of Atahualpa?”
“This is a priceless archaeological site,” Fewick informed her. “That is gold enough.”
She glared murderously at him. “Don’ joke with me, gordo. Not after what I gone through to get here.”
“I believe it may have been an Incan runners’ station,” he added stiffly.
She brushed the suggestion aside. “All the runner’s stations are up in the mountains. The jungle would have slowed communication, not speed it up, and the selva tribes were hostile to the Incas.”
“There’s no treasure here.” Despite the delicate situation in which she found herself, Ashwood couldn’t pass up an opportunity to sneer. “You blew it, sister. The only ones who’ll make money on this little hike are the locals.” With a jerk of her head she indicated the three guides seated around the cookfire.
“We’ll see.” Da Rimini was gazing fixedly at the wall. “There has to be treasure here. There must be treasure!”
“Not necessarily,” Fewick began. The archaeologist’s ingenuousness made Carter wince. “If one considers the available literature it is clear that—”
“Shut up! Shut up, cállese usted!” Da Rimini slammed the barrel of the pistol across Fewick’s face.
Carter’s guts twisted but he said nothing. Fewick hadn’t welcomed his predecessors with open arms, but neither had he hurt them.
The archaeologist stumbled backward but did not fall. A trickle of blood started from where his lip had been split.
“Tie him with the others!”
Blanco Fernández slipped his rifle over his shoulder and moved to comply. As he did so Da Rimini spoke sharply to Fewick’s porters. With admirable alacrity, they grabbed what supplies they could carry and beat it into the jungle.
While Da Rimini angrily studied the unimpressive wall, Carter studied her. She had her hair secured with a single elastic band and her clothing was soaked through. Standing there clutching Fewick’s pistol she looked like she-was auditioning for a part in a cheapie Filipino adventure epic. Except that the gun she held wasn’t packed with blanks. The hint of madness in her eye did much to mitigate her physical attractiveness.
Meanwhile her guide, his uncle, and his grandfather nattered on, oblivious to the inexplicable doings of the Europeans who had variously employed them.
“What do you intend to do with us?” Igor inquired.
Her response was rather less considered than Fewick’s had been.
“Why, I’m going to kill you, of course. Did you think we carried these guns all this way to hunt hoatzins? But you will live for a while. We want that one,” and she gestured at Fewick, “in case there is information to decipher, and the rest of you to help with any digging.”
“What if there are no secrets here?” Carter asked her. “What if there is no treasure?”
Her lower lip pushed out slightly. “If we find the treasure I am going to shoot you to protect it. If we don’ I will shoot you out of disappointment. Or perhaps I will have you tied to palo santo trees. Have you been introduced to the charms of the palo santo?”
Within the limitations imposed by his current posture Carter adopted his best leading-man pose. “I thought you liked me.”
“You very pretty, but I prefer my men determined, with a little more here.” She tapped the side of her head. “Like the Fernández brothers.” Behind her, Manco Fernández shifted his AK-47 and grinned.
Carter was dubious as he studied the two older, unattractive men. Then he noted anew the fancy jungle attire, the expensive weapons. “Money,” he said. “You’re with them because they have money.”
“It don’ disinterest me,” she replied amiably. “We understan’ each other, Manco and Blanco and I. Sí, they have money. But not nearly enough for them, or me. So when I tol’ them that I knew of some rich norteamericanos who were goin’ to go looking for Paititi, they were anxious to come with me to see for themselves. This is not the first time we have done this, but it is the first time anybody has found something for us.”
“Hey, I recognize that one!” Manco Fernández was looking at Carter. “He’s an actor. I saw him at the Odeon in Miraflores, in Prison Planet. Santa Maria, what a stinker of a picture!”
Carter sighed. “Don’t expect me to give you your money back.”
Ashwood regarded the critic. “What do you boys do for fun when you’re not working as spear-chuckers for Fran the Giant?”
Self-importance colored Manco’s reply. “We are bottlers.”
“Pardon?” said a confused Carter.
The man straightened proudly. “Surely you have been in Peru long enough to have heard of Inca Cola.”
“Oh God.” Ashwood rolled her eyes.
“No, I haven’t.” Carter felt like he was acting a role in one of the screenplays his agent received on a regular basis from an eager slaughterhouse worker in Kansas City.
“It’s not cola like in Coca or Pepsi.” Blanco Fernández tied the last of his knots. “Actually it uses a grapefruit base. My brother an’ I,” he declared smugly, “own the concession for most of central Peru an’ the whole selva region as far north as Iquitos.”
“We have big plans,” Manco announced. “My brother an’ I are three-quarter Indio, one-quarter Spanish. All our lives we resent the way the Spanish imposed their culture on our people and destroyed much of our heritage. It has always been our dream to emphasize that culture in a contemporary way. For that we need much money. Hard currency, not intis. The profit margin in soda bottling is thin.”
