Owl and the Tiger Thieves Page 2
He narrowed his eyes and watched me for a long moment before producing a squat, coffee-cup-sized gold idol inlaid with lines of red and blue dyed stones from his pocket. “What is it and how much is it worth?”
It was an Incan artifact, a relic from a long-dead religion, reminiscent of a female fertility idol; I’d located it at an IAA dig site as part of my master plan to buy myself a ticket through the Albino’s front door and into the warden’s office, as Miguelito’s coveting of rare artifacts was famed in the antiquities community. I suppose it had worked . . . in a roundabout way. The intricacy, the color . . . Not even an idiot like Miguelito would miss that it was magic.
The rusty wheels in my head churned as Miguelito and his guards watched me. Miguelito had asked me about the idol a few times now. It was supposed to imbue weapons with poison—the magic kind that could down anything, including the supernatural. Mr. Kurosawa had wanted it for his armory, part of his arms race with the other side of the supernatural war. Like hell was I telling the warden that thought.
Miguelito could simply call his IAA bosses and ask them what the idol was, but he didn’t want to; they’d take it away. He’d rather sell it on the black market. Meaning if he was desperate enough to confront me about my alias, he probably had a buyer. He needed the details and a price tag, and he needed it now. That’s what this visit was about.
I licked my lips, the dry cracks distracting my sluggish brain. It was still bad but not quite the clusterfuck I’d feared. Miguelito was so distracted by the idol that he hadn’t bothered to wonder how someone good enough to sneak into an IAA dig and find it had managed to get caught. Greed did that to people, made them miss what was right underneath their noses. As Mr. Kurosawa had once said to me, greed was something I could work with. If Miguelito had any inkling of what I was really in here for I’d be talking to black-suited IAA, not a corrupt prison warden.
I shrugged as cavalierly as I could manage. “Beats me. I’m a thief, I just find things. I don’t bother asking questions—oomph!” The punch was to my arm this time—enough to smart but not hard enough to cause any damage. Still I glared at Kujo. No need to advertise that they really did need to hit harder if the goal was to put the fear of St. Albinus into me . . .
“Now let’s try that again,” Miguelito said, holding up the idol. I couldn’t help wincing—the acid on his fingers was destined to damage the inlaid dyes. Idiot . . . “What is it?”
I knew there was a smart answer and a dumb answer to Miguelito’s question . . . “For sacrificing the blood of puppies and kittens to long lost Incan gods— Ow!” Another smack, this time to the back of my head.
“St. Albinus can be a dangerous place,” Miguelito said mildly, and I saw where his eyes darted: to the small table Peruvian thug number two was hovering over.
On it was laid out a variety of barbaric-looking instruments that didn’t belong in the most sadistic dentist’s office. He smiled and fondled one of the sharper-looking instruments, its edge rusted. Like Kujo, Miguelito’s second man-at-arms was a local who had no interest in going about his prison duties in a genial manner, but unlike Kujo, who struck me as taking some form of pride in his work, Bookend wasn’t the type who looked like he was interested in results. He looked like the type who got off being mean.
I glared back at Miguelito. The last smack to my head had set my ears ringing. His upper lip twitched in amusement. “I am being a reasonable man. This is your last chance. Tell me what this artifact does, or you will shortly find out just how dangerous this prison can be.”
There’s a line somewhere about never believing a man who starts negotiations off by telling you that he’s the reasonable one . . . And the novelty of my prison detour had worn off.
“If I tell you the truth and you hit me for it, then really, all I have left are the lies you might believe. You realize that’s why intimidation and torture are so fucking inefficient?”
“What does the idol do? And don’t try telling me it’s not magic. You wouldn’t be after it otherwise. I will not ask you again.”
But he would. Only under the prompting of Kujo and Bookend’s ungentle hands . . .
I chewed my lip as I forced my gray matter out of its self-imposed sabbatical.
Come on, brain, don’t fail me now . . . The seconds ticked by—one, two, three, four, five. Metal sang as Bookend began sharpening two of the more conspicuous table knives.
“What do I get out of it?” I blurted out—unintentionally. A little less warning than I would have liked there, brain, but at least you’re back on the job.
To judge from the confused glances I earned, it had worked—at least to derail the conversation on torture. Miguelito seemed to think about that. “Cooperate, and we don’t torture you for hours. I thought the implication was very clear.”
I shrugged as much as I dared under Kujo’s watchful eye. “Say I cooperate and tell you what the idol does. Then what? You let me go? Give me an outstanding inmate door prize?”
Miguelito gave me a terse smile. “I’m afraid the IAA frowns on that sort of thing. But there are things we could do to make your stay more—accommodating.”
I snorted. “In the form of a pine box or just dropping me into a deeper, darker pit headfirst?” I shook my head. “Here’s the thing, Miguelito, if I knew what that idol did—which I’m not saying I do—I have no confidence that you plan on doing anything but kill me. Now, a smart interrogator might say that there’s the chance you might not kill me versus the certainty; the more pessimistic might say that at the very least I’ll be dead faster.” I tsked. “Either way I see it, I end up dead. Only one way ends up with everyone pissed off about it, including you.”
I must have come across as sincere, because Miguelito didn’t immediately yell for Kujo and Bookend to beat me. “What do you want?” he finally spat out.
The keys to the cordoned-off lower levels, idiot. “A bed?” I asked. “The floor doesn’t exactly lend itself to restful sleep. Neither does the lack of a lavatory.”
Miguelito leaned across the table. “You can have all of that and more. All you need to do is tell me what the idol does and what it’s worth. The great Owl does not chase after trinkets, no?”
A fourth golden rule for thieves? No one ever believes you, so don’t bother telling the truth. Lie, and lie well. I shrugged again. “Something really valuable to a buyer interested in South American relics and ancient art. They approached me—oomph!” I was interrupted in midsentence by a heavy jab to the back of my rib cage. I doubled over onto the table, my face planted into the matte photo of myself.
I winced. That felt like it would leave a mark . . .
“No liar survives in St. Albino. And no more warnings.”
“What kind of a lousy deal is— Son of a bitch!” I arched my back as it reeled in pain. It took a moment for the muscles to stop spasming enough for me to sit straight.
Miguelito shrugged, unfazed. “If you give me an answer I like, maybe he won’t hit you again. There is the possibility you won’t be permanently disfigured.” He nodded at Bookend. “If I like what I hear, maybe we don’t give you to Jesús. People he works with often find religion.”
I snorted as I pushed the pain smarting along my spine out of my mind. Jesús was watching me now like a predator waits for prey to stop moving—so it can start eating it alive.
Time to switch my tactics. “Ever heard the phrase ‘Don’t gut the golden goose’ ?” That made Miguelito pause. I licked my lips. “Tu piensas que solo conozco una cámara del tesoro,” I said as clearly as I could. You think I only know about one treasure chamber.
It had the effect I wanted: Despite my poor Spanish Jesús and Kujo exchanged a glance.
Miguelito was unfazed, though. He kept his smile and waved at the room. “Take a good look at your surroundings, mija. This entire prison is a golden goose. Maybe we can afford to let the odd one go. ¿Verdad?” True? Miguelito asked the other two. Jesús and Kujo exchanged a wary glance before nodding.
By accident my eyes fell back on Jesús’s eclectic dental implements. Miguelito saw where I looked and smiled. He flicked his wrist, and I felt Kujo’s callused hands close around my face, prying my neck back. I couldn’t see but heard the clink of metal utensils.
I gagged as gloved fingers were jammed into my mouth, prying my teeth apart, and something cold and metal traced along my jaw before I felt the retractors jammed inside. The smell of rancid sweat was strong now, and I caught a glimpse of a rusted dental pick that looked like an antique for excavating cavities from the 1930s.
Jesús spoke, though I didn’t catch all the words. Miguelito filled me in.
“Jesús says people tend to scream his name when he works on their smiles—he says to try not to, the tongue gets in the way and there is a shake in his right hand.”
The retractors were opened wider.
I’d made a mistake. I’d tried to take away Miguelito’s muscle. And now it just might cost me. I didn’t have to pretend I was desperate. I was.
“¡Espera!” Wait! I shouted, though it came out muffled and garbled. Another piece of wisdom? Don’t wait until the damage starts to beg. Seems counterintuitive, but people are funny. Add in the right mix of adrenaline, and the rush that comes from screams of pain that aren’t your own—
The rusted dental pick halted centimeters from my mouth, and a satisfied smile parted Miguelito’s thin lips, making his features look even more rabbitlike. “See? I knew we would come to an understanding.” The metal was removed from my mouth.
Greed and ego. Men like Miguelito were servants to them.
“Look, I have no idea what the idol does—seriously!” I added as Jesús turned back to the dental implements. “But there’s more back in the temple—a lot more. Caches of them.”
Miguelito leaned back in the chair, steepling his fingers over the idol. “Tell me about these caches. More magical trinkets? Like this?”
I nodded—slowly. Fun fact: I had no idea if there were any more caches of magic treasure. There couldn’t be many—not after a few hundred years of conquest. But what I believed didn’t matter, because the three of them certainly did. More important, if Jesús got a chance to start in on me, I’d tell them everything I didn’t want them to know—and then some.
“Even the IAA can’t uncover every nook and cranny,” I continued. “Grave robbing isn’t exactly a new pastime—the Incans hid their burial valuables well.”
Miguelito eyed me. He wasn’t an idiot, and he probably knew that if it sounded too good to be true, it probably was. But even as the skepticism wove its way through his mind, his greed took over. “Where are these caches? Exactly?”
Lying, don’t betray me now . . . There were no maps—I’d had one, the one Mr. Kurosawa had given me to find the idol, but I hadn’t brought it here. I shrugged. “There isn’t one book of maps. Random notes from various grave robbers and archaeologists over the years—mostly, left for themselves to find the caches once again. You need to know what to look for.”
Miguelito’s lips curled up. I could practically taste the greed ebbing off of him. Incan gold: the downfall of many a man. “Which I suppose is where you come in? Is that it?”
I shook my head. “That’s the thing about trust, Miguelito. It goes both ways.” I thought about giving him a freebie, telling him where one of the other caches I knew about was located, one I’d come across. But I decided against it. Despite his protests to the contrary, he really did strike me as the type to gut the golden goose to see what was inside.
“We could torture it out of you,” he said with the kind of offhand casualness that could only come from a sickening level of familiarity.
I licked my lips and gambled. “You could. But do you really want to bet a few millions’ worth of Incan gold caches that I won’t be able to hold out and lie? Trust me, I’m petty enough to do just that.”
I glanced at the other two, who were exchanging looks. Incan gold was a universally understandable term—and they were as greed driven as Miguelito—more so, maybe, considering their casual and curious disposition towards torture.
Miguelito weighed his options. He wanted to know what the idol’s significance was, but the treasure was a tempting consolation prize. “Where?” he finally demanded, pulling out a map of the ruins and tapping it. There was a fingerprint stain on the page the color of iodine. “A location, Charity,” he added, emphasizing my alias in a warning that promised violence.
I tried to not think about where the stain had come from.
What to give them? Not an actual cache—a clue then? Which one?
I stared at the map. There were a number of side tunnels leading off the main excavation site. Most of them had been thoroughly mapped. If they knew much about the site, they’d know those were empty—or had been emptied over the past fifty years. The lower levels? As tempting as it was, I didn’t think they’d fall for the traps that lined the old sacrificial chambers . . .
A shove from behind, followed by “Rápido” and something less than complimentary in the local dialect, I imagined.
Come on, Owl, fast. I spotted the side tunnel off the main chute, near the bottom. It was in a section of the temple that had been used to house slaves—not the ones destined for hard labor but the ones destined for sacrifice. The historical records were vague on the details, but during the heyday of the temple’s reign, the popular thought had been that if you managed to sacrifice enough people to the temple and gods, you’d earn yourself the Incan version of a sainthood . . . brings new meaning to the idea “We only ask for your heart” . . . no wonder the culture had been on its way out a hundred years before the conquistadors showed up.
It was also one of the least excavated sections of the ruins. I mean, even the IAA figured the slaves didn’t know anything useful, particularly the ones who were destined to end up living sacrifices. Ironic, considering that was about how the IAA treated its army of graduate students and postdocs . . .
The point was, what better place to hide clues to treasure?
I heard the scrape of metal on stone and hazarded a glance to where it was coming from—Jesús was sharpening another utensil from his table, bigger, pointier than before . . . A gold tooth glinted back at me in the lantern light as he smiled.
“Marco and Jesús are impatient men, particularly when it comes to the gold of their forebears—and with foreigner women who lie,” Miguelito offered.
Hunh, Kujo was Marco. Wouldn’t have guessed that one. And if Marco and Jesús were Incan descendants, I’d eat my cat. My eyes found a plausible place, and my fingers followed.
“There,” I said, pointing at a series of passages that wove around the burial chamber. If memory served, the entire wing of the temple had been written off as looted by early conquistadors.
“The slave quarters?” Miguelito said, sounding surprised—which was better than accusatory.
“Empty!” came the angry reply from Kujo, who was staring at the map from behind me.
“No.” I tapped the spot again. “Hidden. Probably another compartment the Incans hid behind the wall.” They’d had a talent for that—hiding entire wings of temples from everyone, from kings to archaeologists.
“A passage the IAA has yet to uncover?” Miguelito asked, arching a thin eyebrow at me. The skepticism was still there, but under it I could hear he was willing to buy the lie. So was Kujo.
Jesús, however, proved to be not so gullible. Torture implement in hand, he checked the map and the location the other two were now discussing in low Spanish, before leveling a skeptical stare at me.
“And you believe it, so all we need is a door?” he asked, in surprisingly passable English. “The Incans didn’t suffer thieves.”
Point to him for intelligence.
But here’s the thing—thieves don’t trust one another. Even if they figu
red I was bluffing, they’d still chase after it.
I leveled a stare at Miguelito, not the hired help. Always go up the chain of command. “No. You’re supposed to believe that you need me alive and cooperative,” I said, and held Miguelito’s gaze as I waited for him to make his call.
He stared greedily back down at the map while Jesús and Marco argued quietly amongst themselves. Seeing my chance, and not daring to breathe, I slipped the black ring of keys off the desk and tucked them under the sleeve of my shirt.
Miguelito turned his eyes back on me. “How do we get inside?”
Greed. It brings people together and keeps the world turning around, and around, and around . . .
“Let me go, and I’ll make sure you get out alive. I’ll even walk you through the tunnel myself.”
Miguelito’s mouth twitched. “You’ll do it from the cell.”
“No faith in the word of thieves?”
Miguelito leaned across the table. “No faith you won’t try to kill me the first chance you get.”
I reached for the map and just as quickly retracted my manacled hands. “Hey, hey, now!” I said as Kujo’s knife came down on the parchment. “Remember what I said about trust being a two-way street, Miguelito.”
“And you’ll be begging Jesús for a new religious experience if you don’t tell me.” I waited until they’d relaxed their various sharp instruments before taking the map and sinking back into the chair. “Ah—pen? Pencil?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Miguelito rolled me a pencil. Freshly sharpened. I quieted my mind as to what I could do with it, Miguelito sitting just across from me. I had a much, much better way . . .
“Here,” I said, making an X with the pencil on one of the temple holding cells, paying particular attention to Jesús’s ominous-looking nail spear.
Miguelito and Jesús studied the map while Kujo intimidated me.