Michael Cordy - The Source

'You can't be serious,' said Hackett.

'Drop your guns. Now.'

Hackett and Ross did as they were told. Mendoza stepped closer and kicked the guns behind him. 'I don't understand,' said Ross.

'You will.' Mendoza raised his voice. 'Father General, can you hear me?'

A pause. 'Is that you, Marco?'

'Yes. They're here, all accounted for. I'm sending them out.'

'Marco?' said a stunned Zeb. 'I thought your name was Osvaldo.'

He ignored her. 'Raise your hands and step out of the cave.'

'You made a vow,' said Sister Chantal, stunned.

After the initial shock, nausea swirled in Ross's gut. He couldn't believe what was happening. He had allowed this man, who had pretended to be his friend, to undermine his already impossible quest to save Lauren. Now, when against all the odds he had found what he sought, he was to be denied. All the anger, frustration and grief he had suppressed since the night of her injury erupted within him. He had never known rage like it. He leapt at Mendoza, lunging for the rifle, taking him by surprise.

'What have you done?' he roared, as he flung the man to the ground and wrestled him for the rifle. 'What the fuck have you done?' In his rage, he had no idea how long they fought, but when he had finally wrested the gun off Mendoza and pointed it at the man who had betrayed them, his whole body was trembling.

Then he glanced at Mendoza's right leg and froze.

Mendoza's jeans had ridden up over his boots, revealing a transmitter strapped to his shin. But it was the thick scar above his right ankle that stunned Ross and revealed the full extent of Mendoza and Torino's duplicity. He had seen that scar once before, through a haze of blood on the night Lauren had been injured, moments before she had been thrown from the landing and broken her neck.

Ross had never wanted to kill anyone before but in that instant, as he looked down at the man who had destroyed Lauren's life, he wanted to kill Mendoza – or whatever the bastard's name was. As his finger tightened on the trigger, a soldier rushed in behind him, rifle butt raised, and bludgeoned him across the head. Ross collapsed, the pain so intense he clamped his eyes shut to dull its white glare. A second blow turned the white to black.

As Feldwebel Fleischer and his soldiers dragged Kelly away and led his companions out of the caves at gunpoint, Torino smiled at the man who, for the last few weeks, had used the name Osvaldo Mendoza. At that moment, in the euphoria of triumph, he felt genuine affection for his half-brother. 'You did well, Marco.'

'Who are the soldiers, Father General?'

Torino waved a hand dismissively. 'Swiss Guard. The Holy Father sent them to protect me in the jungle. Now, tell me everything, Marco. What happened on the river before Iquitos? I was worried until I got your satellite text warning about La Boca del Inferno.'

'Things didn't go as planned. The three men I hired to frighten Kelly's party were supposed to flee when I fired a warning shot. Make me look a hero. But they were amateurs and got greedy.'

'Greedy?'

'Their leader, Raul, heard Kelly talking about the priest's book and assumed it led to treasure. He and the other two tried to get it for themselves.'

Torino frowned at his half-brother. 'You killed them?'

'I had no choice. Raul was going to shoot the nun and you said she might be valuable.' Bazin shrugged. 'In the end it made me more credible with Kelly and the others. And I had contingencies in place.'

Torino nodded. 'They worked well, Marco. Both the GPS transmitter on the boat and the one on your ankle worked like a charm. I was a little concerned, though, when the satellite signal began to break up. One of the soldiers had to track you over the last few days. But he says you left a good trail, especially through the sulphur caves.'

'Did you find the lost city?'

'What? No.' Torino had no interest in lost cities.

'There's gold there.'

Torino shook his head. 'This is more valuable than gold.' He turned back to Kelly and the others, who were being corralled by the soldiers into an area enclosed by rocks and trees. 'What can you tell me about this place? What have you learnt?'

'It's incredible. Just drinking the lake water and eating the plants can cure you.' Bazin paused for a moment, as if overcome. 'When we got to Iquitos I was getting excruciating headaches, one of the symptoms the clinic told me to watch for if the cancer spread to the brain. They were the worst I've known, even with powerful painkillers. I had them all day every day. Then I drank the water here and the next morning the pain had gone. I've never felt better. I'm cured. I know it.' He lowered his voice. 'Even the testicle the surgeons removed is growing back. The scar has virtually disappeared. It's like God laid his hand on me, washed away my sins and gave me a second chance. And it's not just me.' Torino listened as Bazin told him how the garden had healed Kelly's broken wrist and corrected Nigel Hackett's and Zeb Quinn's eyesight. 'Drink the water. Eat the fruit. See for yourself.'

'I will,' Torino said. 'What else?'

'Speak to the nun. She knows most about this place. According to her, any living thing dies when it's taken out. Even the water goes stale.'

'It loses its power to heal outside the garden?'

'So she says.'

'How was Kelly going to heal his wife, then?'

'Last night I heard him and Zeb talking together. He showed her a strange rock that Sister Chantal gave him. It's in his backpack.' Bazin pointed into the caves. 'She got it from in there.'

Torino walked into the damp cave and his excitement increased. The pools, the waterfall and the tunnel of blood were exactly as they were in the Voynich. He peered into the gloom and saw white shapes flitting in the shadows. The Eves that Falcon spoke of in his manuscript and his testimony, he thought. As he had feared, this place presented problems for the Church as well as opportunities. He turned to the glowing tunnel and remembered the passage that described how the conquistadors had died.

Bazin pointed to the tunnel. 'When I came in here this morning Ross was up there.'

Torino didn't disguise his surprise. 'Up there? Are you sure?'

'I saw him climbing down. Said I wouldn't believe what he'd seen up there.'

Torino's eyes followed the glittering path until it disappeared and anticipation coursed through him. He approached the tunnel and studied the crystals encrusting the entrance. Then he bent down and put his hand into the rushing stream, noting the crystal rocks on its bed, the shards in the pools and the phosphorescent water flowing out of the cave into the lake. 'What did Dr Kelly see up there?'

'There wasn't time to ask him. But he said he was trying to find out what was behind this place's miraculous powers.'

'We know what's behind the garden's miraculous powers. God.' Torino thought of the mysterious radix in Father Orlando's testimony to the Inquisition. 'But it won't do any harm to understand the agent God might be using. I must talk with Dr Kelly and Sister Chantal. But first I want to make a few observations of my own.'

The next morning 'If we're trespassing, why don't they just kick us out?' Zeb demanded.

'I know,' said Hackett. 'They've no right to keep us here.'

'The Father General can't let us leave,' said Sister Chantal, bitterly. 'Not until he's decided what to do with this place – and us.'

Ross had slept fitfully, drifting into and out of consciousness. When he finally woke, the excruciating pain in his head had gone. The soldiers had corralled them within a copse of trees near to where Father Orlando's remains were buried. The trees and four boulders formed a natural enclosure, over which the soldiers had erected a tarpaulin. Within this makeshift pen, each had been laid out on the mossy ground, their ankles and wrists secured with plastic ties. The soldiers had fed them and allowed them to use the latrines they had dug in the corner of the garden, but there was no doubt that they were prisoners. When he opened his eyes Ross saw two soldiers unpacking and stacking an arsenal of weapons beneath another tarpaulin shelter.