After the tribesmen thrust their spears into the ground, Martin walked forward to speak with the aging shaman. A few of the children ran up to Gina and the others and began touching them and speaking in their native language.

A small boy, probably the same age as Miguel from her village, waved to Gina. He had shiny black hair, but his skin was a few shades lighter than Miguel’s. In fact, on closer examination, all the villagers’ skin was bronze as opposed to the darker cocoa of most indigenous groups.

A few moments later, the villagers and warriors disbanded, and Martin returned from his conversation with the shaman.

Gina asked, “So they’re not headhunters?”

“No,” Martin said. “They’re quite peaceful actually.”

“So you lied about that,” said Patrick. “Why? And why were you so reluctant to bring us here? Even when I offered you five million dollars? Even after I told you what was at stake?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Shorten it,” Patrick said.

Martin said, “Thirty years ago, much like they just surrounded us, I was surrounded by a tribal hunting party and marched to this village at spearpoint. It didn’t take me long to realize their language was one of the six that I spoke.

“I spent three months living with them and apprenticing with their shaman, Yapunqui. Over those months, I came to learn that the villagers were rarely sick, and that they didn’t even have a word for cancer. I learned a lot about their history and as much about their medicines as I could. When I returned to the States, I knew that if anyone found out the true location of the tribe, their way of life would be destroyed.”

Patrick shook his head. “But think of all the people in the world who could have been helped.”

“I considered that, but on my departure, I made Yapunqui a promise that I would never reveal their location. A promise I intended to keep. So in my book, I made them out to be cannibals, said they were the Nsé-Eja from the South American myth, and that I hardly escaped with my life.”

Bill, who had been silent up to that point, asked, “If you didn’t want anyone to try to contact them, then why did you put in the part about how they had no history of cancer in your book?”

“In hindsight, I shouldn’t have. But my ego got in the way. To be honest, I wanted to sell books. And by including their apparent immunity to cancer, plus my riveting tale of escape, I did just that. Everyone in the scientific community was talking, and it became an international bestseller.”

Patrick asked, “Why include the picture of the golden jaguar and the compass heading to the pyramid?”