Inca Gold

    "They'll turn up," said Giordino consolingly. "They can't remain hidden away in some rich guy's collection forever."
    "You don't understand the discipline of archaeology," Shannon said dully. "No scholar can study the artifacts, classify or trace them without knowing their exact site of origin. Now we can learn nothing of the people who once lived here and built the city. A vast archive, a time capsule of scientific information, has been irretrievably lost."
    "I'm sorry all your hopes and efforts have come to grief," Pitt said sincerely.
    "Grief, yes," she said, thoroughly defeated now. "More like a tragedy."
    Rudi Gunn walked back from the helicopter that was transporting Miller's body to the morgue in Lima. "Sorry to interrupt," he said to Pitt. "Our job is finished here. I suggest we pack up the helicopter, lift off, and rendezvous with Dr. Ortiz at the City of the Dead."
    Pitt nodded and turned to Shannon. "Well, shall we move on to the next disaster your antiquity looters have left us?"
    Dr. Alberto Ortiz was a lean, wiry old bird in his early seventies. He stood off to one side of the helicopter landing site dressed in a white duck shirt and matching pants. A long, flowing, white moustache drooped across his face, making him look like a wanted poster for an aging Mexican bandido. If flamboyance was his trademark, it was demonstrated by a wide-brimmed panama hat sporting a colorful band, a pair of expensive designer sandals, and a tall iced drink in one hand. A Hollywood casting director searching for someone to play a beachcomber in a South Seas epic would easily have decided that Dr. Ortiz fit the role to perfection. He was not what the NUMA men had pictured as Peru's most renowned expert on ancient culture.
    He came smiling to greet the newcomers, drink in left hand, right extended for shaking. "You're early," he said warmly in almost perfect English. "I didn't expect you for another two or three days."
    "Dr. Kelsey's project was cut short unexpectedly," said Pitt, grasping a strong, callused hand.
    "Is she with you?" asked Ortiz, peering around Pitt's broad shoulders.
    "She'll be here first thing in the morning. Something about using the afternoon to photograph the carvings on an altar stone beside the well." Pitt turned and made the introductions. "I'm Dirk Pitt and this is Rudi Gunn and Al Giordino. We're with the National Underwater and Marine Agency."
    "A great pleasure to meet you gentlemen. I'm grateful for the opportunity to thank you in person for saving the lives of our young people."
    "Always a joy to play the palace again," said Giordino, looking up at the battle-scarred temple.
    Ortiz laughed at the distinct lack of enthusiasm. "I don't imagine you enjoyed your last visit."
    "The audience didn't throw roses, that's for sure."
    "Where would you like us to set up our tents, Doctor?" Gunn inquired.
    "Nothing of the sort," Ortiz said, his teeth flashing beneath the moustache. "My men have cleaned up a tomb that belonged to a rich merchant. Plenty of room, and it's dry during a rain. Not a four-star hotel, of course, but you should find it comfortable."
    "I hope the original owner isn't still in residence," Pitt said cautiously.
    "No, no, not at all," replied Ortiz, mistakenly taking him seriously. "The looters cleaned out the bones and any remains in their frantic search for artifacts."
    "We could bed down in the structure used by the looters for their headquarters," suggested Giordino, angling for more deluxe accommodations.
    "Sorry, my staff and I have already claimed it as our base of operations."
    Giordino offered Gunn a sour expression. "I told you to call ahead for reservations."
    "Come along, gentlemen," said Ortiz cheerfully. "I'll give you a guided tour of the Pueblo de los Muertos on our way to your quarters."
    "The inhabitants must have taken a page from the elephants," said Giordino.
    Ortiz laughed. "No, no, the Chachapoyas didn't come here to die. This was a sacred burial place that they believed was a way station on their journey to the next life."
    "No one lived here?" asked Gunn.
    "Only priests and the workers who built the funeral houses. It was off limits to everyone else."
    "They must have had a thriving business," Pitt said, staring at the maze of crypts spread throughout the valley and the honeycomb of tombs in the soaring cliffs.
    "The Chachapoyan culture was highly stratified but it did not have a royal elite like the Inca," explained Ortiz. "Learned elders and military captains ruled the various cities in the confederation. They and the wealthy traders could afford to erect elaborate mausoleums to rest between lives. The poor were put in adobe, human-shaped funeral statues."
    Gunn gave the archaeologist a curious look. "The dead were inserted into statues?"
    "Yes, the body of the deceased was placed in a crouched position, knees tucked under the chin. Then a cone of sticks was placed around the body as a cagelike support. Next, wet adobe was plastered around the support, forming a casing around the body. The final step was to sculpt a face and head on top that vaguely resembled the person inside. When the funeral receptacle was dry, the mourners inserted it into a previously dug niche or handy crevice in the face of the cliff."
    "The local mortician must have been a popular guy," observed Giordino.
    "Until I study the city in greater detail," said Ortiz, "I'd estimate that it was under continual construction and expansion as a cemetery between A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1500 before it was abandoned. Probably sometime after the Spanish conquest."
    "Did the Inca bury their dead here after they subdued the Chachapoyas?" asked Gunn.
    "Not to any great extent. I've found only a few tombs that indicate later Inca design and architecture."
    Ortiz led them along an ancient avenue made from stones worn smooth by the elements. He stepped inside a bottle-shaped funeral monument constructed of flat stones and decorated with rows of diamond-style motifs intermingled with zigzag designs. The workmanship was precise, with refined attention to detail, and the architecture was magnificent. The monument was topped by a narrow, circular dome 10 meters high (33 feet). The entrance was also formed in the shape of a bottle and was a tight fit, allowing only one man to squeeze through at a time. Steps rose from the street to the exterior threshold outside, and then dropped to the floor inside. The interior funeral chamber had a heavy, damp, musty smell that hit like a punch on the nose. Pitt sensed a haunting grandeur and the ghostly presence of the people who performed the final ceremony and closed the crypt for what they thought would be eternity, never envisaging that it would become a shelter for living men not born for another five hundred years.
    The stone floor and the burial niches were empty of funerary objects and swept clean. Curious, smiling faces of carved stone, the size of a serving platter, beamed midway around a corbeled ceiling that stepped up and out from the vertical walls. Hammocks had been strung from sculpted snake heads protruding from the lower walls with wide eyes and open, fanged mouths. Ortiz's workers had also spread straw mats on the floor. Even a small mirror hung from a nail driven into a tight seam between the rows of the masonry.