When they reached the edge of the site, they stopped.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Libby said.

Andy was nearby and said, “It’s no different than what you were doing before. You were always the brains behind Roth’s success.”

“I don’t know about that,” Libby said, blushing. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for saying that to Roth yesterday. It meant a lot.”

“Just telling the truth.”

As for the other statements Andy had made to Roth—the ones about the ruins not being Paititi—he was starting to have regrets.

Though Cala wasn’t there to hear Andy’s argument against Paititi on the bank of the river, Andy’s remarks had made their way to the Bolivian’s ears.

A day earlier, on their way back to base camp, Cala had taken Andy aside and told him that he disagreed with all of Andy’s statements. The stones of the pyramid were so mismatched because of the high rate of erosion in the rainforest. For six months out of the year, those stones were inundated with rain. After five hundred years, Cala was surprised the stones had retained any of their rectangular shape at all.

In opposition to Andy’s belief that the Incas would never use utilitarian pottery as offerings, Cala said bowls and other vessels had been found at other sites. And while he agreed that most Inca petroglyphs were linear, he’d seen with his own eyes several Inca petroglyphs that were circular.

As for the location of the ruins, he said that, sure, the Incas built lots of cities on the peaks and sides of mountains, but they built plenty on flat ground as well.

Then, much like Bernita had told Andy on her departure, Cala said, “This is Paititi.”

≈

Holland, who after seeing Bernita off in the helicopter, had joined them at T6, was the one to stumble on it.

Literally.

He was trudging through the brush—a short fifty meters from where most of the expedition was congregated near a tall, bus-shaped, earthen mound—when his right foot tangled in thick vegetation. Shaking his foot free, he noticed an opening in the earth. A moment later, he blew his whistle.

Andy and Farah were the first to arrive.

“What is it?” Farah asked.

Holland had cut away some of the overgrowth, but it was still mostly hidden by a web of green.

“It looks like some sort of staircase going down,” Holland said.

Within thirty minutes they had cleared the vegetation away, and three stairs leading into the earth were visible. The stairs were four feet wide and made of cragged yellow stone.

“Do you think it’s a tomb?” Cala asked.

“No,” Farah said. “If anything, I bet it’s another cache.”

Of course, everyone was thinking one thing.

Gold.

This could be the bunker where all the Incan treasure was buried.