Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

“We need to find a telephone,” he told Pedro.

“Si… un telefono.” Pedro was the one who had seen the photograph. He knew what was going on.

Just about every hotel and cafe in Cuzco had telephone and Internet facilities. Matt went into the first one he found, threw down some money and made his demand in English. He wasn’t worrying about his safety any more. He was shown into a creaky, wooden booth where he took out the scrap of torn paper and dialled the number. There was a pause, a dialling tone, then -

“Matthew? Is that you?” It was Fabian speaking. He sounded exhausted and excited at the same time and it occurred to Matt that this was a dedicated telephone line and he must have been sitting beside the receiver, waiting for the call.

“Mr Fabian?”

“Where are you? How are you? Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“I can’t believe it’s you. We’ve all been so worried about you. I nearly went crazy when you and Richard didn’t show up in Lima and then Alberto told me what happened. Is Richard with you?”

“No. He’s not.” Matt felt a sense of relief just talking to Fabian, hearing his voice once again. “I’m OK, but I need your help.”

“Of course. We’ve been waiting for you to ring. You don’t need to worry about anything now, Matt. You just need to tell me where you are and how I can reach you.”

“I’m in Cuzco.”

“Cuzco?” Fabian was astonished. “What are you doing there?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Just tell me. And as soon as I put this phone down, I’m on my way…”

Half an hour later, Susan Ashwood received a telephone call at her home in Manchester, England. It was Fabian, phoning from Lima.

“I’ve spoken to Matthew,” he told her. “You won’t believe the things that have been happening to him but he’s alive and he’s all right. He’s in Cuzco. Don’t ask me how he got there. It’s too long a story. But I’ve already booked a flight and I’ll be there this evening. I’m going to bring him in. And there’s wonderful news, Miss Ashwood. Something you won’t believe. He says he’s found a second Gatekeeper. Another one of the Five…”

The two of them spoke for some time as Fabian filled her in on what Matt had told him. Then he rang off and Susan Ashwood called Nathalie Johnson to pass on the news.

“Matthew is in Cuzco,” she said. “He saw the advertisement and telephoned Fabian…”

The two women spoke for about ten minutes.

And shortly after that, Diego Salamanda received a call at his hacienda near Ica. He barely spoke at all, holding the receiver against his ear. The mouthpiece, of course, came nowhere near his mouth. When he did want to talk, he had to slide the receiver down his face.

Eventually, he smiled and hung up. The caller had told him exactly what he wanted to hear.

Now he knew where Matt was too.

The next available flight from Lima didn’t get in until nine o’clock in the evening and Fabian had arranged to meet Matt and Pedro one hour after that, in front of the cathedral in the main square. That gave them the rest of the day to kill until he arrived.

They spent the time walking around Cuzco, trying to keep out of everyone’s way. It was a weird experience for Matt. Normally someone like him would only come here as a tourist and if he had been dressed differently, that was what people would think he was. He could imagine himself stopping to photograph the long galleries with their stone archways and the bustling shops behind.

But his disguise had put him right at the heart of the city. Matt had become part of it. At one point, as he and Pedro sat on a step outside a museum, he even found himself being photographed by two Americans. For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he was annoyed to see the expensive zoom lens being focused on him. Before the camera had clicked, he sprang to his feet.

“Why don’t you take a picture of someone else?” he snapped at the astonished couple. He knew he wasn’t being fair but he still felt a brief sense of victory as the man and his wife backed away, confused.

Later that afternoon, he and Pedro came upon the temple of Coricancha. In fact, they could hardly have missed it. This was a major tourist attraction, located in the southern part of the city and surrounded by coaches, with a non-stop flow of visitors around the main entrance. Once again there were Inca walls, and a terrace high above, giving panoramic views over the city. There was also a Spanish church on the site. In fact it had been constructed over it – one building on top of another – as if it had been dropped there from outer space.

Why had Micos sent them here? There didn’t seem to be any reason and Matt wasn’t prepared to waste any of their money paying to get in.

Even so, he lingered around the entrance and listened as the tour organizers delivered the same lecture to each group of tourists. Coricancha was the ancient word for “golden courtyard”. There had once been a great temple with four thousand priests living here. Every wall had been lined with plates of solid gold and the rooms had been filled with statues and altars… also gold. It had been used as a religious centre and also a celestial observatory by the Incas. But then the conquistadors had come. They had taken everything. They had melted down the gold, ripped out the altars and built their own church on the ruins that remained.

Would Fabian bring them here on Friday night, Matt wondered? Was there a chance that Richard might turn up? A guard walked out of the entrance and gestured at Matt and Pedro to move away. Pedro muttered something ugly and guttural in Spanish and tugged at Matt’s sleeve. Matt understood. The guard thought they were trying to beg from the tourists. They had no place here. Poor people in Cuzco really had no place anywhere.

As the evening drew in, they walked back to the square and sat on the long step between the cathedral and the fountain. Matt wondered what Pedro was thinking about. He had tried to explain that Fabian was coming, but he wasn’t sure how much the other boy had understood.

At last, the darkness came and with it Cuzco was transformed into something almost magical. Matt had noticed how strange the light was by day. At night, the sky became a luminous blue with the mountains stretching out, deep black, below. Thousands of orange lights sparkled in the outlying suburbs and streetlamps glowed all around the square. After the heat of the day, the evening was cool. The restaurants were filling up, the pavements packed with people in no hurry to go anywhere, like extras on some huge, open-air stage.

The police car entered the square just after nine o’clock. Matt noticed it first: a low, white vehicle with a blue and yellow stripe and a strip light mounted on the roof. There were two men inside. He watched the car as it cruised slowly along the far side and parked in front of one of the money-changing shops. The two men didn’t get out.

He thought nothing of it. There were police everywhere in Cuzco, just as there had been in Lima. It seemed that their main job was to keep the tourists happy. Tourism must be worth millions to the Peruvian economy. They had to feel safe.

But then a second police car joined the first and he began to grow uneasy. They couldn’t be looking for him! Apart from Fabian, nobody knew they were there. Pedro nudged him, glancing in the direction of the second car. The expression on his face was clear. The police in this country were bad news. The two of them had been moved on plenty of times throughout the day and Matt had no doubt that he and Pedro could be arrested just for sitting here. What was the time? Surely it must be getting close to ten o’clock. He wished Pedro hadn’t stolen his watch.