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As entertaining as my museum tour might have been, the point was that if I
were asked the question, Can you tell late Moche from Lambayeque? the answer
quite clearly was no.
The question Neal posed took me completely by surprise.
 I don t suppose you know anything about running a business, he said,
speaking in Spanish.  Paying bills, wages, dealing with government
authorities, that sort of thing? The point is, I m an archaeologist, not a
businessman, and all the organizational stuff I have to do is getting me down.
I ve got some really good lab people, good workers on the site, but no one to
keep the whole show running smoothly.
Did I know something about running a business? Of course I did. I d been
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running my antiques and design business for about fifteen years, with only one
interruption. I needed to approach this with a certain amount of caution, of
course. I d decided that the only way to survive as Rebecca MacCrimmon was to
keep her background as close as possible to my own. That way, I would be less
likely to get caught out in a contradiction. Rebecca was from Kansas; her
driver s license said so, and I had only passed through Kansas once. That one
I would have to be very careful about. But running a business? Who was to say
Rebecca MacCrimmon didn t have business experience?
 I have a fair amount of business experience, I replied carefully in my best
Spanish.  I had my own business for a number of years. Retail. I sold
furniture. I didn t have a lot of staff, but I had some, and they always got
paid. The bills did too. I am also accustomed to dealing with customs
officials and agents, bankers, tax people, accountants, and shippers. I can
honestly say that I never missed a shipping deadline through a fault of my
own. I paused.  Although I ll admit it was close a few times. I laughed.
 You re hired, he said.
 I am? I replied in surprise.
 Sure, he said.  Your Spanish is good, Lucas says you can be trusted trusted
absolutely, actually and you can take the work I hate off my hands. That s
good enough for me. He laughed.  Lucas says in his letter he is asking me for
a favor. Don t tell him, but I think he may have been doing me one!
 You know the terms transportation to the site, room and board once you get
to the site. I know it s not much. Will you do it? Do we have a deal? he
said, extending his hand across the table. I took it.
 We have a deal. When do I start?
He spread a map out on the table.  We re working at a site here, he said,
pointing to what appeared to be a blank spot on the map,  between Trujillo and
Chiclayo. Early to middle Moche site. Showing a lot of promise. The closest
town is Campina Vieja.
Good old Lucas, I thought: right to Campina Vieja. I must have started,
though, because Neal hesitated for a few seconds before continuing.  You can
fly to Trujillo, and then you ll have to find the Vulkano bus station and take
the Trujillo/Chiclayo bus. The buses run almost hourly, and they ll stop at
Campina Vieja if you ask them.
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 I m flying back to Trujillo tonight, so why don t you fly out tomorrow
sometime and have a look around Trujillo there s some interesting Moche and
Chimu sites to see there then take the bus the following morning. I ll be in
town for much of the day and I ll keep an eye on the bus stop. Just sit
yourself down on the bench if I m not there when you arrive: I ll be along and
drive you out to the site. We ve taken over an old hacienda and set up
operations there. You can meet the rest of the team, including the boss,
Hilda, when you get there.
 Now let s go and see about getting you an airline ticket, he grinned,
 before you change your mind. What do you prefer to be called, by the way?
I almost made a mistake, I felt so relaxed in his presence, but I caught
myself in time. As I hesitated he said,  Do you prefer Rebecca or something
like Becky?
 Rebecca, I said.  Definitely Rebecca. After Neal and I had parted company,
as the sun began its rapid descent into darkness, as it does this close to the
equator, I paid a final visit to the place where, according to Rob Luczka, the
man I had called Lizard, Ramon Cervantes, had lived. It had not been all that
difficult tracking the place down, there being only one Ramon Cervantes listed
in Callao. As I had on two previous occasions, I hailed acolectivo, that
particularly Peruvian mode of public transit, a private minibus or van that
plies a regular route, a sign in its front and side windows indicating its
destination. In addition to the driver, there is an assistant who opens the
sliding door and signals the number of empty seats with his fingers. The van
barely stops to pick you up and drop you off, but it s cheap, and it gets you
there, weaving its way through Lima s appalling traffic, pollution, and noise.
Ramon Cervantes, I was now certain, was not a wealthy man, living as he had
on a dark little street in a part of Lima out near the airport that I would
characterize as decidedly modest, a neighborhood that reeked of rancid cooking
oil and thwarted aspirations. The streets, unlike many of the streets in the
old part of central Lima, were paved, although badly rutted and potholed.
Ramon had lived in a flat that one reached by going up a dark and dirty
staircase running between a malodorous restaurant and an engine repair shop.
At street level, the visitor was overwhelmed by the dinginess of the location,
but if one stepped back, across the street, one could see, on the second
floor, vestiges of Lima s colonial past in the large windows fronted by
wrought iron railings, and the swirling plaster wreaths and garlands along the
roofline above them. The shutters on the apartment to the left of the
staircase were closed tight.
On my first visit, shortly after my arrival in Lima, I had climbed the dark
steps to a second-floor landing. There were two apartments, one on either side [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]