Golden Relic (29 page)

"Maggie, Maggie, if you had been there, you would have gone along with us."

"I doubt it. But if I had, I would have realised sooner rather than later sometime in the last 36
years just how ridiculous the whole thing was."

"Please credit us with some sense, my dear. We talked many times over the years about who we
would turn the Hand over to when the time was right, the problem was the time was never right. It
seemed that each time we settled on a possible new Guardian he would die or transfer to India or be
arrested on fraud charges. It was quite bizarre. The last time Alistair brought it up was the night
before the Cuzco earthquake in 1986. He never mentioned it again."

"Pavel, for goodness sake, you don't think the Hand was responsible for these things?"

"I couldn't say one way or the other, Maggie. But as I said, you had…"

"I know, you had to be there to understand."

"Maggie I accept that you don't believe in these things but let me give you an analogy that you
might be able to understand. You are, are you not, a lapsed Catholic?"

"You know I am a devout atheist," Maggie stated.

"But I guarantee you can't tell me, in all honesty, that you could stand in the Vatican and
scream out 'this is all bullshit'."

"That's not the same," Maggie said, straightening her shoulders.

"Why, because you think God might just get you in then end?"

"All right, okay, I get your point."

Sam who had been pacing the room, stopped in front of Pavel. "You say you trusted the team
members who left ahead of you, Pavel. Have you considered that one or more of your Guardians also
trusted them, perhaps enough to reveal what you all decided in 1962?"

"I suppose it is possible," Pavel acknowledged.

"Which means there might be as many as five other people who know about the Hand being spread
around the world. And if just one of them told someone else then there's no way of knowing how many
people really know about it."

"But why would they tell anyone?"

"Oh, Pavel don't be so naive," Maggie said. "Not everyone spends the rest of their life looking
under the bed for monsters because they got spooked by a horror movie one night."

"It could have been an accident," Sam suggested. "One of them, even one of your Guardians, could
have got drunk at a party one night and started telling a tall tale about a golden relic, a wicked
curse and a strange plan that was put in motion to protect the descendants of the last Inca king.
It'd make a great bedtime story too."

"It seems possible Pavel, that half the world might know your little secret," Maggie teased.

"Oh
merde
, but this cannot be so."

"Let's consider the possibility for a moment," Sam said, rummaging around in her pack. She pulled
out a notebook, placed it on the table in front of Pavel and opened it to the page, marked by the
photo of Manco City, where she had listed the names that Maggie had identified. "Which one is
William Sanchez?" she asked sitting on the edge of the bed, and resting her elbows on her knees.

Pavel pointed to the man beside Noel Winslow in the back row. "And that is Barbara Stone, the
other Guardian," he said tapping the woman sitting in the front next to one of the porters. "She
lives in San Francisco," he added.

"San Francisco?" Sam repeated. "When was the last time you spoke to her Pavel?"

Pavel shook his head. "Maybe the end of 1996. Why?"

Sam took a breath. "The Life and Death show was in San Francisco in June of last year."

"Oh my god," Pavel exclaimed. "We must find out if she is all right. Oh no, but she was moving, I
don't know where to. This is dreadful."

"It's much too late to do anything tonight Pavel," Maggie said, taking hold of his hand. "Tell us
who the other two men in the photograph are."

Pavel glanced at the list of names and then back at the photo. "The man next to Sanchez is Dwight
Jones and the big fellow in the front is Elmer Rockly. I'm sure you've met him, Maggie."

"Shit," Sam said, dropping her head into her hands.

"Now what?" Maggie asked.

Sam sat up and glanced from Pavel to Maggie. "You remember how I asked Rivers to check the
internet for any odd incidents that coincided with the exhibition tour dates?"

"Yes, and he had some information on a failed suicide and a fire or something," Maggie said.

"An art broker by the name of Dwight Jones died in a gallery fire in New York on March 15, 1997,"
Sam said quietly. "And a man named Elmer Rockly was killed in a hit and run snow mobile accident in
Anchorage on July 6 last year."

"I am going to throw up," Pavel moaned, making a dash for the bathroom.

Sam and Maggie sat and stared at each other in silence until Pavel returned 10 minutes later.

"I have brought this on us, haven't I?" he said, sitting down and staring at the list of names,
to which Sam had added Sanchez, Stone, Jones and Rockly. "I feel very old and tired," he added,
before ripping the page from the notebook. He screwed it up and threw it across the room.

"This is not your fault, Pavel," Maggie insisted. "And we're all tired. We should go to bed."

"You know," Sam said, ignoring the suggestion, "I think that whoever is doing all this doesn't
actually know who the Guardians are."

"You mean they're just tracking down everyone who was there," Pavel said.

"Yeah, or everyone in this picture, which amounts to the same thing," Sam said.

"Who took the photograph?" Maggie asked.

Pavel shook his head. "Pah, I don't remember. Maybe one of the porters."

"What was the situation you had that made you decide to fake your death?" Sam queried.

Pavel laced his fingers together and stared at the floor. "I had been, um, having an affair with
a woman, a married woman here in Cuzco," he confessed.

"Oh Pavel, not again!" Maggie said.

"Her husband, when he found out," Pavel continued, "reacted very badly. He threatened to kill me,
and when I was hit by a jeep that swerved across the road to get me, I knew he was serious."

"Are you sure it was the husband driving the jeep?" Sam asked.

"No, I just assumed it was he."

Sam frowned. "If everyone thought you were dead why was Noel Winslow coming here to find you? In
fact, now that I think of it, your postcard to him said 'got your message' so how…"

"Noel knew that I was alive. He was the only person who did."

"Oh that's bloody charming, that is," Maggie declared, stomping over to the bar to pour herself a
whisky. "And you couldn't let your other friends know that you'd just changed your name and gone
bush?"

"I didn't plan to be in hiding so long, Maggie. But when I got Noel's telegram about the Hand I
thought it best to remain dead, and incognito at Inticancha, until he arrived to explain."

Sam ran her hands through her hair and then held her head as she shook it and smiled. "There is
one person we haven't considered at all."

"Who?" Maggie asked, returning to her seat at the table.

"William Sanchez's idiot son. Whatever happened to him, Pavel?" Sam asked.

"I have no idea. He returned to Cuzco with the others. I think Jean put him on a plane to his
mother in San Francisco. But I remember now, that it was Paolo who took the photograph."

"And he would be, what, about 46 or so now?" Sam queried.

"What an intriguing idea," Maggie remarked.

"Far-fetched if you ask me," Pavel said.

"Well you're an expert on all things far-fetched, so you would know," Maggie laughed.

"Let's play with this," Sam suggested. "Paolo would be about the same age as, say, Enrico
Vasquez," she grinned.

"And Pablo Escobar," Maggie laughed.

"You may be right Maggie," Sam said, "it's more likely that an idiot grew up to be an imbecile
who can't organise his own sock drawer…"

"Without help," she and Maggie finished in unison.

"But why would Paolo Sanchez be doing this?" Pavel asked.

"Greed and revenge, Pavel, they're two of the oldest and poorest excuses for bad behaviour known
to man," Maggie said. "He might hold you all responsible for his father's death."

"Pah," Pavel snorted. "It was his father's own greed that unleashed the vengeance of the
huacas
. We had nothing to do with William Sanchez's punishment or death."

"But a 10-year-old boy is more likely to blame you," Maggie stated.

"Of course, he might have grown up believing he really
is
the reincarnation of Tupac
Amaru," Sam laughed.

"I think you two have lost your plots. I am going to bed," Pavel said, bumping the table as he
stood up. "No I'm not. Who is this?" he asked, pointing to the surveillance photos that had slipped
out of Sam's notebook. "I think I know him."

"Of course you do, that's Phineas," Maggie said. "Marcus Bridger," she added, when Pavel didn't
seem to recognise the nickname.

"No not him, him," Pavel stressed. "The one with the nose too big for his face."

"That is Andrew Barstoc. He's Bridger's right hand man and my prime suspect," Sam stated.

"Barstoc?" Pavel closed his eyes. "Oh, Andy. He was on a dig with us maybe five years ago."

"But he's not an archaeologist or anything," Sam noted. "He's a businessman."

"You get all types on an archaeological dig, Sam," Maggie explained. "It's not just dedicated or
loopy scientists like me and Pavel who like spending weeks in the jungle or desert digging things
up. Doing a dig is a popular semester break activity for students of everything from history,
anthropology and engineering, to psychology or business studies. Then there are the holidaying
amateur archaeologists who work the rest of the year as lawyers, teachers or bus drivers."

"Was Barstoc part of your new dig at Inticancha?" Sam asked.

"No. We only started work there, this time around, at the end of 1995."

"Well, was anyone from the original dig on the one with Barstoc?" Maggie asked.

"Yes, Elmer Rockly was there that summer," Pavel replied. "In fact he and Andy, who was poncy
sycophant by the way, spent a lot of time drinking together."

"So," said Sam, "if we return to one of our earlier theories that one of your Guardians may have
told some of the other members of the original team, then it's possible that Rockly then passed the
story on to Barstoc. I love it!" she exclaimed. "It's a classic example of the Six Degrees of
Separation, with a straight line from my prime suspect to the Hand of God in four steps."

"What?" Pavel asked, as if he thought he'd missed a very important clue.

Sam laughed. "There's a play, and a movie, called Six Degrees of Separation in which a theory is
proposed that everyone in the world is connected by no more than six associations."

"There's also a silly game called the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon that demonstrates the theory,"
Maggie said. "You play by using movies to link any actor in the world to the American actor Kevin
Bacon. There's even a search engine on the internet called the Oracle of Bacon that uses a massive
data base to work it out for you. You key-in the name of an actor, no matter how obscure, and the
oracle connects that person through other actors to Kevin Bacon in as few steps as possible."

"I don't think this internet is going to help our plan after all," Pavel moaned. "We don't even
have a computer here and already I'm confused."

"I'll give you an example," Sam said. "Even though I've never met him, there are three degrees of
separation between me and Professor Stephen Hawking. This is because I know an actress in Melbourne
who is a friend of the English actor Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard in Star Trek.
Professor Hawking guest starred in one episode of that series."

Pavel narrowed his eyes and studied Sam. "Does this three degrees benefit you in any way?"

Sam shrugged. "I suppose I could call him up, introduce myself as a friend of a friend, and ask
him to explain the Big Bang Theory to me in words of less than three syllables."

Pavel laughed. "It would be a much better idea to invite him over to put his genius to work on
solving our little mystery."

"Speaking of our mystery," Maggie said, "I suggest, Pavel, that you do not leave the hotel again
until we all leave on Wednesday. If we really are going ahead with this so-called plan, then we
should take a few precautions, especially with Agent 00-Vasquez hanging around. Sam and I can go
looking for an internet connection tomorrow, once we work out what rumours we want to start and in
whose lap we want to drop them."

Sam, who was sharing a large cafe table with three English backpackers and an American
couple who were videotaping their lunch, sat drumming her fingers on her leg while she waited for
Maggie to show her face in an upstairs window across the street.

Three and half days of dodging spies or henchmen, or whatever they were that followed them every
time they left the hotel, was starting to take its toll on Sam's nerves. It had been quite a lark at
first trying to lose the men that Enrico Vasquez had obviously put in place to tail them. On one
occasion they'd taken five buses and two hours to get just half way across town to visit Maggie's
friend Jonathan, who had a computer and modem. And on Sunday they'd caught five separate taxis from
the Hotel Royal Inca to the Hotel Royal Inca just for the fun of watching the guy behind them
scrambling for the next available taxi each time. Vasquez himself had taken up permanent residence
in a restaurant on Plaza Recogijo from where he waved cheerily to them every time they entered or
left the hotel, but he made no attempt at contact.

Pavel meanwhile had been hiding out, in either his room or theirs, nutting out the finer details
of his great plan. Or so he said. Sam suspected it was because he was embarrassed to be seen in
public after Maggie had decided on Saturday morning that making Pavel less recognisable, and more
respectable, was a good excuse for getting rid of his 'woolly mammoth look'. She'd insisted he shave
off his sideburns and moustache, for the first time in 25 years, and had then attacked his hair with
a pair of scissors. He was now almost unrecognisable as Dr Pavel Mercier, but because he thought he
looked strange he'd adopted a rather startled expression.