Golden Relic. Lindy Cameron

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      This edition published by: Clan Destine Press in 2017

      PO Box 121, Bittern Victoria 3918 Australia

      First published by HarperCollins Australia 1998

      Copyright © Lindy Cameron 1997

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including internet search engines and retailers, electronic or mechanical, photocopying (except under the statuary exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data: Cameron, Lindy

      Golden Relic

      ISBN: 978-0-9954394-9-8 (paperback)

      ISBN: 978-0-9924925-2-6 (eBook)

      Cover Design © Willsin Rowe

      Design & Typesetting: Clan Destine Press

      Clan Destine Press

       www.clandestinepress.com.au

      For Chele

      Always and Forever

      Chapter One

      Melbourne, Wednesday September 16, 1998

      The hands tore at Lloyd Marsden’s flesh with a surprising savagery. It was hardly fair, he thought, that in his last moments of life he was being tormented by a gathering of avenging gods.

      He stared, unblinking, at the carved stone feet of Toltac, noticing for the first time how disproportionate the toenails were. They were all he could see from where he was sprawled on his workroom floor; the feet, surrounded by little dust balls that rolled slightly with each laboured breath he took.

      He was going to die, a relic among relics. The fingers of monsters scraped at his throat while the Furies flapped and screeched in the darkness at the edge of his life. It occurred to Lloyd, however, that at least one of the hands striking at him had been human. Was this the price for refusing to accept that things must change; the punishment for not going quietly into the future?

      No, this was history. This was ‘punishment for all the desecrations’ – that’s what the chanting, spiteful voices were saying. Anubis, curling his jackal-lips into a snarl, poked at Lloyd’s chest; the three-jawed hound of hell drooled and clawed at his paralysed feet; and Quetzalcoatl, crouching behind, removed Lloyd’s spine with his fingernails.

      When the ‘destroyer’ in his necklace of skulls hovered above him, Lloyd recognised the poisonous hallucinations for what they were – this Hindu apparition was proof of that. “I’ve never even been to India!” his mind screamed. Shiva vanished, to be replaced by the Sun God who smiled sadly down on Professor Lloyd Marsden, waved his tormentors away, then melted into the dark and dust.

      Desecrations indeed. How ridiculous. He made a curse of his own – on a dead old friend and his bloody curse and visions. Lloyd still had the pen in his hand but couldn’t remember whether he’d written the words, or whether he cared anymore.

      Charon stood over him, offering his hand.

      That’s more like it. An experienced guide to the next world was what he needed right now. In his mind he fumbled for a coin, hoping Muu-Muu would take care of things here for him.

      Paris, Wednesday September 16, 1998

      Pablo Escobar was seething. It was making him sweat and causing a severe irritation in his left armpit that he could not attend to in this polite company. Polite? He glanced around the negotiating table. Nobody had been listening to him; nobody ever listened to him. Hell, half the time nobody even noticed him. He could swing from the light fitting and these people wouldn’t even acknowledge that he’d moved from his chair. Still, he didn’t scratch; that would have been bad manners. He banged on the table instead.

      ‘Excuse me, but I am losing my patience over this issue.’

      ‘Dr Escobar,’ said the dragon lady on his left, ‘I think if you were to consult a dictionary for the precise definition of that word you would find that you can’t lose what you’ve never been known to have.’

      Escobar stared at the so-called mediator for a moment, while he replayed her statement in his mind to make sure it had in fact been an insult, before he insulted her in return.

      ‘Dr Tremaine,’ he stated softly, ‘the only reason you are here is because the right man for the job is sadly no longer with us.’

      ‘Dr Escobar, the only reason I am here is because I’m being paid, and not nearly enough as it turns out, to help you, Professor Jorge and your respective museums sort this mess out once and for all. And we all know that had Dr Mercier been alive to deal with this situation, he wouldn’t put up with your nonsense any more than I plan to. And would you please stop scratching. It’s very hard to hold a serious conversation with someone who can’t sit still.’

      Escobar, mortified, sat on his hands and didn’t say a word for ten minutes.

      Dr Maggie Tremaine glared at Pierre Dessalines, the man who had talked her into this job, and silently swore that she would never again allow money to influence her better judgement; she should have stayed at home.

      Professor Benjamin Jorge, Director of the Archaeological Museum in Santiago, Chile, sat forward eagerly and made the most of Escobar’s silence to reiterate his position and that of his institution, and indeed his government, on the rightful ownership of the famous Tahuantinsuyu Bracelet.

      ‘Would you agree,’ Maggie interrupted him, ‘that it is only famous because of the dispute between your governments?’

      ‘I don’t follow,’ Jorge stated.

      Escobar snorted.

      ‘The artefact in dispute is a bracelet, quite beautiful and valuable in its own right, but just a bracelet,’ Maggie said. ‘Melt down the gold and sell the gems, you might be able to put a down-payment on a new car. As a cultural artefact, however, it is priceless. But famous? I don’t think so. Everybody knows about it because of your dispute, but even you, and I’m talking to both of you now, cannot agree on when or where or even why it was made. The only thing you do agree on is that it is genuine Inca jewellery. But it is still just a bracelet.’ Maggie gave a palms-up shrug as she looked from one man to the other. ‘It has no other significance, does it?’ she added.

      Jorge and Escobar exchanged guarded glances before returning their puzzled attention to Maggie.

      ‘If it has no significance, why are we here?’ Maggie asked.

      ‘We are here, Dr Tremaine, because that Peruvian weasel over there,’ Jorge said, waving dismissively at Escobar, ‘thinks he can use against us our generosity in lending the Tahuantinsuyu Bracelet to the exhibition of Monsieur Dessalines here at the Paris Museum. Escobar believes that because our bracelet is about to go on display in neutral territory that he can make a case in this international arena to steal it from us – with your blessing. When it sits at home in its glass case in Santiago he can deal with no one but me, my institution and my government. In Paris he thinks he has the chance to create an incident.’

      ‘Create an incident?’ Maggie repeated. ‘Don’t you mean open a debate?’

      Professor Jorge ran his fingers through his moustache thoughtfully. ‘It depends on where you are sitting.’

      ‘Would you like to comment on this, Dr Escobar?’ Maggie asked.

      Escobar cleared his throat. He would like to have used his hands for emphasis but he was still sitting on them. ‘The one fact that my esteemed colleague