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of an Incan prince who, during the height
of the siege of Cuzco, spirited the Incas' most venerated idol out
of the walled city and fled with it into the jungles of eastern
Peru.'

Nash swivelled in his seat. 'Walter,' he said, nodding to the
bespectacled, balding mart sitting on the other side of the centre
aisle, 'help me out here. I'm telling Professor Race about the
idol.”

Walter Chambers got up from his seat and sat down opposite Race.
Chambers was a mousy little man, three- quarters bald and bookish,
the kind of guy who'd wear a bow tie to work.

35

'William Race. Walter Chambers,' Nash said. 'Waiter's an
anthropologist from Stanford. Expert on Central and South American
cultures—Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs and, espe cially, the Lncas.'

Chambers smiled. 'So you want to know about the idol?'

'It would seem so,' Race said.

'The Incas called it “the Spirit of the People”,' Chambers said.
'It was a stone idol, but one that was carved out of a strange kind
of stone, a shiny black stone that had very fine veins of purple
running through it.

'It was the Incan people's most prized possession. Indeed, they saw
it as their very heart and soul. And when I say that, I mean it
literally. They saw the Spirit of the People as more than a mere
symbol of their power. They saw it as the actual, literal, source
of that power. And indeed, there were stories about its magical
powers—how it could calm the most vicious of animals, or how, when
dipped in water, the idol would sing.'

'Sing?' Race said.

'That's right,' Chambers said, 'sing.'

'O-kay. So what does this idol look like.'

'The idol's actual appearance has been described in many places,
including the two most comprehensive works on the conquest of Peru,
J6rez's Relaci6n and de la Vega's Royal Commentaries. But
descriptions vary. Some say it was a foot hgh, others only six
inches; some say it was beautifully carved and smooth to the touch,
others say it had rough, sharp edges. One feature, however, is
common to all descriptions of the idol—the Spirit of the People was
carved in the shape of a snarling jaguar's head.'

Chambers leaned forward in his seat. 'From the moment he heard
about that idol, Hernando Pizarro wanted it. And all the more so
after the attendants at the idol's shrine at Pachacimac whisked it
away from under his nose. See, Hernando Pizarro was probably the
most ruthless of all the Pizarro brothers to come to Peru. I
imagine today we would call him a psychopath. According to some
reports, he would torture whole villages on a whim—just for the
sport

it. And his hunt for the idol became an obsession. Village

village, town after town, wherever he went he

to know the location of the idol. But no matter many natives he
tortured, no matter how many vil-

he burned, the Incas wouldn't tell him where their

idol was.

'But then—somehow—in 1535 Hernando discovered

the idol was being kept. It was being kept inside a

stone vault inside the Coricancha, the famous Tern- lle of the Sun,
situated in the centre of the besieged city of

Cuzco.

'Unfortunately for Hernando, he got to Cuzco just in time to see a
young Incan prince named Renco Capac make off with the idol in a
daring ride through the Spanish and Incan lines. According to those
medieval monks who read it, the Santiago Manuscript details
Hernando's pursuit of Renco following the young prince's escape
from Cuzco—-a daz zling chase that wound its way through the Andes
and out into the Amazon rainforest.'

'What the manuscript also allegedly does,' Nash said, 'is

reveal the final resting place of the Spirit of the People.'

So they were after the idol, Race thought.

He didn't say anything, though. Mainly, because it just didn't make
sense.

Why was the U.S. Army sending a team of nuclear physi cists down to
South America to find a lost Incan idol? And on the basis of a
four-hundred-year-old Latin manuscript.

They might as well have been following a pirate's treasure
map.

'I know what you're