Gold of the Gods (4 page)

'And the letter O is different to all the
other letters,' whispered Christina, finishing
Beck's sentence. 'It seems to be covered by
some sort of flap.'

'And that's because it's actually a keyhole,'
said Beck, pushing a fingernail into the
curve on the outer side of the carved O.
There was a click as the central portion of
the O slid back. Beneath was the unmistakable
outline of a keyhole.

'The other key. It's the lock for the other
key,' murmured Marco. 'Beck, you're a
genius. And not one of us ever saw it. We
never knew what this key was for and it was
in front of us all along. We were all so scared
of the curse, we never dared to sit in
Gonzalo's chair. That's what he's been trying
to tell us all along.'

Marco grappled with the smaller key and,
with shaking hands, inserted it into the
lock. And turned. As if by magic, the belly
of the toad on the embossed crest swung
open. Beck blinked in astonishment. In
front of them lay a golden amulet. It had
been made in the shape of a toad, just like
the one on the family's coat of arms. Its
stomach bulged and its eyes glowed green in
the dim light while its mouth gaped wide
open.

Christina picked up the amulet on its
gold chain and dangled it in front of them.
'
La rana
,' said Marco in disbelief. 'The
legend we were told as children. The toad
will appear when the Lost City is found.'

But Beck's attention had shifted to a
folded parchment that still lay in a
delicately carved recess at the back of the
secret compartment. The words
Mapa
Ciudad de Los Koguis
were still clearly visible
in a copybook italic script.

'Map of the City of the Kogis,' said Beck,
his voice breaking with excitement. 'This is
what your dad was looking for all along. But
he must have decided to hunt for the Lost
City without the map . . .'

'. . . and the kidnappers must have
thought he had discovered it,' said Marco,
finishing Beck's sentence. 'And now they
want to find the Lost City and loot the
gold.'

'So at last it all makes sense,' whispered
Christina in a trance, her head swaying
gently in time with the golden frog. '
Perdido
no más
.'

'
Perdido no más
,' echoed Beck. 'Lost no
more. The Lost City is lost no more!'

CHAPTER FIVE

Huddled over Gonzalo's table, Beck and the
twins peered down at the ancient piece of
parchment in awed silence. At first glance it
hardly looked like a map at all. Lines,
crosses, circles and numbers tumbled across
the page as if the mapmaker had been
grappling with a complex set of
mathematical equations rather than the
location of a Lost City.

In the bottom right-hand corner was a
circle with a cross roughly drawn across it.
'Compass rose,' said Beck, stabbing his
finger at the map. 'Well, at least we know
which way we're facing. These old maps
were very basic – the conquistadors had no
reliable instruments for plotting their
position.' Beck remembered his time with
the Tao tribe in the South Pacific, learning
to navigate with the stars.

'Some of these numbers must be nautical
miles and I think it's divided into sections.
This bit here must be the coastline, roughly
where we are now. Look, here!' He pointed
to where the word
Cart
had been written
next to the rough outline of a castle. 'This
must be Cartagena. And this' – he pointed
to a miniature symbol of a Spanish galleon
further along the coast – 'must be where
they landed when they found the city the
first time.'

Along the bottom of the map was a
signature that reminded Beck of a document
signed by Queen Elizabeth I he had once seen
in a history book at school. Above a series of
florid curves and flourishes were the words
Gonzalo de Castillo
with
Año de Nuestro Señor
written in smaller letters underneath, followed
by some Roman numerals: MDXXII.

'Fifteen . . . twenty . . . two,' stumbled
Christina, peering hard at the numbers. 'I
knew those boring Latin lessons would
come in handy one day. That was the year of
Gonzalo's death. He must have hidden this
map not long before he died.'

'Or was murdered, like the legend says,'
muttered Marco darkly.

His words were interrupted by the sound
of a bell clanging in the courtyard outside.
The teenagers jumped guiltily, as if they had
been caught red-handed in the middle of a
bank robbery.

'Quick,' said Marco. 'There's someone at
the front door of the hacienda. We mustn't
let anyone see the map or the amulet.' Beck
quickly folded the parchment and slid it
into his back pocket, then hung the amulet
of the toad around his neck and tucked it
under his shirt as Marco and Christina
replaced Gonzalo's portrait on the wall.

Marco led the way back across the
courtyard and along the corridor towards the
main entrance of the house. Through
the stained glass of the front door they could
see the flashing blue lights of police cars and
the familiar outline of the peaked cap of an
officer of the Colombian police force. Señora
Cordova was already at the door.

Ramirez was in no mood for pleasantries
as he strode past Marco into the hall. The
harsh
click-clack
of his leather boots on
the flagstones echoed loudly around the
walls. He was greeted by a screech and the
sound of flapping wings. Beck looked up to
the balcony, where the family's pet parakeet
was hopping from leg to leg on the banister,
cocking a nervous eye at this unwelcome
intruder.

Ramirez stared up at the bird with an
expression of ill-disguised malice. Señora
Ramirez was an expert cook and would
surely know a tasty recipe for stuffed roast
parakeet.

He spun round to address the three
teenagers. '
Buenos días, amigos
,' he said,
before launching into a volley of quick-fire
Spanish. Gone was the oily mask of concern
of the previous evening, when he had
escorted them back to the hacienda. Today
it had been replaced by impatience verging
on rudeness.

Expressions of disbelief and anger flitted
like dark shadows across the faces of the
twins. Beck recognized only one word of the
policeman's speech. But it was enough to
make his heart freeze. The horrified look on
the twins' faces confirmed his worst fears.
Señora Cordova gasped.

There was a brief silence as Ramirez let
the impact of his words sink in. When he
continued, it was in short bursts, as if
he were giving orders. Marco nodded
sullenly and shot brief glances at his sister,
who was still staring at Ramirez in disbelief.

And then, as suddenly as he had arrived,
Ramirez was gone. Outside, a flunky
saluted and opened the door of a police car
bearing the crest of the Chief of Police of
Cartagena. Ramirez sank into the comfortable
leather seat before barking an
instruction at the driver. In the distance
Beck saw the electric gates swing open and
a pair of armed guards saluted and stood to
attention.

The single word still echoed in his brain.

'
Narcotráficantes
,' repeated Marco, reading
Beck's mind. 'Drug traffickers.'

'Ramirez says he thinks Dad and
Professor Granger have been kidnapped by
one of the drug cartels,' explained Christina
in a stunned monotone. She let out a long
groan and put her head in her hands. 'I'm
just so worried about them.'

Marco shook his head and took a deep
breath. 'Ramirez says it's more important
than ever that we don't leave the hacienda.
He says it's for our own safety. All calls to
the hacienda have been diverted to police
HQ. There's an armed guard on the gate.
Basically, we're prisoners too.'

The horrified silence was broken only by
the eerie cawing of birds in the palm trees
outside the window. After what felt like an
age, Beck broke the spell. 'We've got to do
something. We can't just sit on our butts
and let this happen to Uncle Al and Mayor
Rafael. What if Ramirez is wrong and the
gang
are
more interested in looting the gold
from the Lost City? Why don't we just give
Ramirez the map? Then the police can get
there first and ambush the gang when they
arrive.'

'It's too risky,' Christina insisted with a
toss of her curls. 'And anyway, Dad hates
Ramirez. He says he's a trigger-happy fool.
No one trusts him. He'd probably end up
killing them, not saving them.'

'But now that we have the map,
we
must
at least try,' said Beck. 'We owe it to Uncle
Al and your father. If we can't trust the
police, then we'll just have to find the Lost
City ourselves. Surely there must be some
way out of here?'

'There's chain-mail fencing all the way
round the grounds on three sides, right the
way down to the sea,' replied Christina. 'We
could always fly. Got any other good ideas?'
Her eyes were turning red and watery.
Marco stretched out an arm to comfort her
but was brushed irritably aside.

Beck was too wrapped up in his own
thoughts to pay attention. 'I'm telling you,
we can get away from here without Ramirez
noticing. He's a goon, Christina. You know
that better than anyone.' He paused. 'Come
with me, guys,' he said after a while. 'I've
got an idea . . .'

Beck led the way into the formal dining
room at the front of the house. Early morning
sunlight was streaming through the
French windows that opened out onto a
terrace, from where steps led down to a
manicured lawn. Beck walked over to a glass
display case. 'It was one of the first things I
noticed when we arrived,' he said. 'I just
couldn't keep my eyes off it. I think it's one
of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
It's also given me an idea.'

'It's gold filigree work,' said Christina,
opening the top of the glass case. Inside lay
a delicate gold object on a bed of blue
velvet. 'Dad forbids us ever to touch it
because it's so valuable.'

In front of them lay a miniature model of
a raft. Matchstick men stood on a square
platform of logs lashed together with rope.
One held a tiller while another brandished a
spear and gazed over the side into the sea of
blue velvet. On the mast a rectangular sail
was operated by two gold braids.

'It's like a spider's web made with gold
fibres,' said Christina. 'It belonged to
Gonzalo. We think it was made by the
Indians who lived in the Lost City. The
Kogi people we told you about who still live
in the jungle. Remember?' She paused.
'Like the Indian man you thought you saw
in the square last night.'

A flicker of pain passed over Beck's face as
the memory returned. The man's eyes still
burned brightly in his memory, but now
even he was beginning to think he had just
imagined the Indian in the heat and the
chaos. And anyway, his mind was on other
things now. The garden of the hacienda was
surrounded by a fence all the way down to
the
sea
. . . Surely Ramirez's men would not
look for them there.

Marco's voice broke through his
thoughts. 'When Gonzalo arrived in South
America, the first time they saw the Indians
was on the sea. The Spanish
cronistas
–
historians – made drawings of the rafts they
used. They looked almost identical to this
one.'

Beck studied the raft closely, screwing up
his eyes as he inspected the delicate gold
web. 'Time for a walk,' he said suddenly.

The twins followed as Beck led the way
onto the terrace. The scent of ripe peaches
hung in the morning air like perfume. On
the far side of the lawn, the jungle that
surrounded the hacienda on three sides
closed in again – the fence that ran around
the grounds was out of sight from here,
buried in the undergrowth. As they made
their way along a path skirting the jungle,
tendrils hanging from the branches of
the huge trees brushed past them like the
tentacles of giant jellyfish.

They soon found themselves in a grove of
tall palm trees, where the undergrowth gave
way to sand, and saw that they had reached
a small bay. White spume seethed and
bubbled on the shore, where a steady stream
of rollers was breaking.

'There's only one way out of here without
being noticed,' said Beck as they stared out
towards the horizon. 'And that's by sea. If
we can build a raft like the one the Indians
used, we can sail down the coast. That's how
Gonzalo found the Lost City, so why
shouldn't we?

'You can see on the map that it's in the
mountains not far from the coast. If we're
lucky, we'll find it before the kidnappers.
Then we'll have the element of surprise. If
we sail tonight after it gets dark, by the time
Ramirez works out we've gone we'll be miles
away down the coast.'

Beck had only just stopped speaking
when, from somewhere behind them, there
was a rustle of leaves in the bushes. For the
second time that morning, his blood ran
cold.

A familiar voice broke the silence.

'
Buenos días, amigos
,' said Ramirez.