Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

Nobody saw them. Nobody shouted. Matt stopped, breathless, his back against the wall just below the veranda. Pedro was next to him. The Peruvian boy wasn’t looking happy. He shook his head as if to say, “This is a crazy idea and I don’t want any part of it.” But at the same time, he was still sticking by him and Matt was grateful that right now he wasn’t alone.

Where would Richard be and how could they possibly find him in a house crawling with guards? There was no obvious prison in the complex, no windows covered with bars. A basement or cellar perhaps? That would be the most likely place. But first they had to get in.

At least that wasn’t going to be too difficult. Now he was closer, Matt could see that the veranda continued all the way around the back. On one side was a handrail, separating the house from the garden and the courtyard. The house had tall, elegant windows standing at regular intervals, about five metres apart. The windows reached down almost to the floor and all of them were open. Matt glanced at Pedro, giving him one last chance to back out.

Pedro nodded, as if to say, “I’m with you.”

Matt reached up and used the handrail to pull himself onto the veranda. Now he was as good as inside the house. The roof with its heavy, red tiles stretched over him. Matt waited until Pedro had joined him, then crept round the side.

Almost at once, he heard voices. There was a meeting going on in one of the rooms but in the stillness of the evening the sounds carried. Matt gestured and the two of them crept along the veranda past more sofas and some terracotta pots. They came to an open French window. A man was speaking on the other side. Carefully, inching his way, Matt peered round the corner and looked in.

It was a dining room with a vast wooden table that seemed to have been cut from a single tree. The floor was also made of polished wood and there were wooden panels set into the walls. An iron chandelier – it must have weighed a ton – hung down, illuminating the room not with electric bulbs but with about a hundred candles, each one in its own holder.

There were three men and a woman sitting around the table. Matt recognized one of them instantly and stopped dead, feeling the ground might open beneath him. It was Rodriguez, the police captain who had beaten him up at the hotel in Miraflores. He was in uniform. The other two men wore suits. The woman wore a simple black dress. All of them were listening attentively as they were given their instructions.

The man who was speaking was sitting in a tall wicker chair with his back to the window. Matt could see nothing of him apart from one arm and a hand, resting on one of the chair arms. He had long fingers and seemed to be wearing a linen suit. He was speaking quickly, in good English, only stumbling occasionally over the odd word. Matt whistled very softly to Pedro and nodded his head towards the room. Why were they using his own language? If he listened long enough, he might find out.

“I do not care what is a possibility and what is not,” the man was saying. “I give you the instructions and you will obey. The silver swan must be… en la posicion… in position, five days from now. At midnight exactly. You will have the responsibility for this. You understand, Miss Klein?”

The woman nodded. “It will all be done,” she said. Her English was worse than his, and heavily accented. “But I am needing soon the…” It took her a minute to find the word. “I must have the co-ordinates,” she said.

Now Matt understood. The woman was German and spoke no Spanish. The man was Spanish and spoke no German. They were using English as a common language.

“You will have the co-ordinates as soon as I have them myself,” the man went on. “My agents have been into the Nazca Desert but they have still failed to find the platform.”

“The diary did not give you the position?”

“It gave me the approximate position and it is possible that we now know enough to place the swan exactly where it is meant to be. But I prefer to leave nothing to chance. We have to be careful, but the search continues. Just so long as everything is ready at your end.”

“Of course, Herr Salamanda. Everything will be as you ask…”

That was the end of it. Matt was listening in with his head pressed against the wall, right next to the French window. Pedro was slightly behind him. So he was the one who heard the clunk of boots on wood and realized that at least two guards were making their way towards them, patrolling the full length of the veranda. They were still out of sight, round the front of the house, but in a few seconds they would turn the corner and the two boys would be discovered.

There was only one thing to do. Pedro pushed Matt and the two of them flitted across the open doorway, past the dining room. Matt hoped they wouldn’t be seen in the growing darkness – or if they were, that none of the people in the room would realize they weren’t meant to be there. He heard the woman talking as he went past and wished he could have stayed longer to hear more. But he and Pedro had moved only just in time. A second later, the guards appeared, both of them dressed in loose-fitting khaki overalls and armed with rifles hanging from their shoulders. The veranda was empty.

Matt and Pedro didn’t stop moving until they had reached the back of the house, where they came upon an inner courtyard, immaculately laid out with antique benches surrounding a well and a single, dark-green molle tree in the very centre. There were two more wings to the house, one on each side. Matt noticed that here, some of the windows on the upper floor were barred. Perhaps these were the cells he had been imagining. Could Richard Cole be sitting in one of them right now?

He needed a way up – and saw one, on the opposite side of the yard. An open staircase with a series of arches over a wooden banister, running up to a gallery. But before he could move, a third guard appeared, coming through a doorway on the first floor and making as if to come down. Matt cursed himself. Had he really thought he could just walk in here, find his friend and walk out with him? Was it likely that one of the richest and most powerful men in Peru wouldn’t make sure he had plenty of protection? Sebastian had been right. This was stupid. Worse than that, it was suicide. He and Pedro were going to get caught. They would be handed back to Captain Rodriguez. And neither of them would ever be seen – in Ayacucho or anywhere else – again.

Pedro had obviously had the same thought. Coming here had been a bad idea. He glanced at Matt, who nodded. They would get out of the house and wait. Maybe later, in the middle of the night, it would be safer to take a look around.

Together, they crept round the side of the courtyard, keeping well into the shadows. There were lights on inside the rooms and they could see moths dancing in the doorways, but fortunately no lamps had yet been turned on outside. There was a door leading into the study that they had already seen from the front. They could pass through here and out the other side.

They entered the study.

Matt quickly took in his surroundings. This must be where Diego Salamanda worked. There was a grandeur about the room, the rich tapestries on the walls, the expensive rugs on the floor. A sudden thought occurred to him. If this was Salamanda’s private office, perhaps the diary of St Joseph of Cordoba might be here. He hadn’t thought about the diary since Richard had disappeared. His entire mind had been focused on finding his friend. But suppose he did stumble across it? If he could get his hands on it, perhaps he could use it as a bargaining tool. The diary for Richard. The Nexus would love that – but he didn’t care. Salamanda and the Old Ones could do what they liked. All he wanted was to get out of Peru.