Night of the Condor
Sara Craven

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ENDPAGE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

THE view from her hotel bedroom window would have been panoramic, except for the fog.

Leigh could hardly believe it. Only a relatively short time ago, her plane had been circling the Jorge Chavez International Airport in brilliant sunshine. She had looked down in wondering delight at the city beneath her, and the foam-capped breakers of the Pacific Ocean beyond, with the great ridge of the Andes forcing its way to the shore like a giant, clenched fist.

Now, suddenly, it was all gone. The sunshine, the view, even the feeling of excitement and exhilaration which had filled her were all muffled under a damp, dismal blanket of grey mist.

The bell-boy who had carried up her bags had shrugged philosophically. ‘It is the garua, señorita. The curse of Lima. It comes, and when it is the will of God, it goes.’

‘I see,’ Leigh muttered. She wasn’t sure she believed in curses, or that changes in climatic conditions were necessarily the workings of Divine Providence, but at the same time she wished the sun had kept shining a little longer. The garua seemed like a bad omen, she thought, then immediately chided herself for being over-fanciful.

Activity, she told herself briskly. That’s what I need. Something to do.

She unlocked her cases, and started to hang her things away in the generous cupboard space provided. She smiled a little, as her hands touched the fabrics—silk, pure cotton, and the finest, softest wool—all her favourites, and most of them brand-new. Almost a trousseau—but then that was really the idea, she thought, her heart lifting.

This enforced separation from Evan had gone on quite long enough. She wasn’t sure what the rules regarding the marriage of foreigners in Peru were, but Evan, she was certain, would be able to find out.

She had been disappointed when he hadn’t been there to meet her at the airport, although she knew she was being unrealistic. Even supposing all the right messages had been passed along the line at all the right times, and she had been told how unlikely that was, Evan still probably wouldn’t be able to drop everything at Atayahuanco and dash to Lima to see her. She had already resigned herself to the fact that she would have to go to him instead. But if this fog was going to persist, leaving Lima would be no great hardship anyway, she told herself, grimacing.

She looked restlessly round the suite, her unpacking completed. It was comfortable, and well appointed, and she might as well make the most of it, because Atayahuanco would be the total opposite. Evan had mentioned conditions there in his letters many times, jokingly at first, then, later, with increasing bitterness and resentment. And she had felt resentful, on his behalf. Evan hadn’t deserved to be sent halfway round the world to some forgotten valley in the Andes to grub about in dirt and stone.

His only sin had been to fall in love with her, Leigh Frazier, her father’s only daughter, and heiress to Frazier Industries and the network of companies and interests it controlled.

And to Justin Frazier, a self-made man who was proud of his achievements, an intended son-in-law who had neither money nor a steady job was an affront.

‘But that isn’t his fault!’ she had raged, once Evan’s departure for Atayahuanco was inevitable, and only days away.

‘It’s not a question of fault,’ her father had returned. ‘I feel he should be given a chance to prove himself—see what he’s made of.’

‘In South America—as some cross between an archaeologist and a social worker?’ she had protested.

‘It’s a worthwhile project,’ Justin Frazier had replied tersely. ‘Evan’s a history graduate, and he’s always had a lot to say about poverty, and the dignity of labour. Well, Atayahuanco will give him a chance to study both of them at first hand.’ He paused. ‘He wants work. I’ve given it to him.’

‘There are other jobs …’

‘There could be—if this one works out.’ He stood up, a tall man with a craggy face. Evan called him formidable, and she supposed he was. ‘But not yet awhile.’ He put a hand on her shoulder, and his voice gentled. ‘You’re young, Leigh, and so is your man. You need a breathing space, both of you, before embarking on anything as serious as marriage. If you really love each other, and he’s the right man for you, then a year’s wait—eighteen months even—isn’t going to make a radical difference.’ He paused. ‘Unless you doubt him—or yourself.’

Which, of course, was unanswerable, as well as unthinkable, and he knew it.

Evan had been stoically philosophical. ‘It might not be too bad.’ He put his arms around her, drawing her close. ‘And if it convinces your father that I don’t simply see you as a meal-ticket for life, it will be worth any hassle.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Leigh protested hotly. ‘I don’t think my father remembers what it was like to be young.’

Evan grimaced slightly. ‘Perhaps not, but he has the right to apply some pressure if he wants to.’ He sighed. ‘I feel a bit like one of those guys in the old stories who were always being sent off on quests before they could win the princess.’

She had smiled at that, in spite of her unhappiness. She had always loved those stories. ‘What are you going to do—climb a glass mountain, and bring me back a golden apple?’

‘Maybe I will at that. After all, Atayahuanco was once an Inca citadel, and the Incas went in for gold in a big way. Perhaps I’ll find the lost treasure they hid from the Spaniards, and lay it all at your feet.’ He laughed. ‘Your father would really be impressed then.’

‘He certainly would!’ She laughed with him, but the glance she sent him was slightly troubled, just the same. ‘Evan, you do realise this isn’t a conventional archaeological dig you’re going on? It might have started out that way, but the emphasis switched a long time ago. As well as trying to build up a picture of how the Incas lived in that particular place, the team’s trying to rehabilitate the Indian families who still live there, but have lost touch with their traditional skills and lifestyle. I don’t think there’s any treasure-seeking going on.’

‘Darling Leigh!’ He kissed her. ‘You sound like a brochure for Peruvian Quest. I do know all that—my God, I should, because it’s been drilled into me ad nauseam. I’m not going to Atayahuanco with any preconceived notions about what I’m going to find there. I’m going to convince your father that I’d make the ideal son-in-law—docile, obedient, and industrious.’

Brave words, thought Leigh, as she relived the conversation, but in reality Evan had been violently shocked by the conditions in the valley. And the desperate jokiness of his early letters, outlining the squalor and hardship on the site, had soon degenerated into angry bewilderment, and a string of complaints.

His most recent letters had suggested he was near the end of his tether, and it was these which had led to her sudden decision to fly out to Peru to join him, in spite of her father’s forcefully stated opposition.

But this time, Leigh had been adamant. ‘We’ve been apart for a year. We’re of age, and we’re in love. We deserve a little happiness.’

She had faltered slightly when she realised Justin Frazier was not prepared to assist in any way with her arrangements.

‘I’m not going to ease your path for you, Leigh,’ he said flatly. ‘This whole idea is madness from start to finish. I can only hope when you get to Lima and realise the problems confronting you, your own common sense will bring you home again.’

His words had lingered uneasily throughout that interminable journey, in spite of her efforts to tell herself that when she got to Peru, happiness would be hers for the taking. But now—with Evan’s failure to show at the airport, the sheer impersonality of this hotel suite, and, most of all, the swirling sea mist outside—all her old doubts had returned.

Leigh gave herself a brief mental shake. She needed some practical stimulation. She supposed she should eat, but she was too strung up to be hungry. On the other hand, some coffee might be good. As she moved to the internal telephone beside the wide bed to call room service, it rang, startling her.

She lifted the receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘Señorita Frazier, there is a gentleman here at reception asking for you. Do you wish to come down and speak to him?’

A smile began to spread across Leigh’s face. Evan, she thought, her depression lifting miraculously. She said, ‘Ask him to come up here, por favor.’

There was a short silence, then the clerk said, ‘You are certain that is what you wish, señorita?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Leigh returned with a trace of impatience. ‘And will you arrange for some coffee to be sent up too.’

‘At once, señorita.’ The phone went down.

She sped to the dressing-table, and tugged a comb through her shoulder-length tawny hair so that it curved elegantly towards her neck. She renewed her lipstick hastily, wishing with irritation that she had changed from the clothes she had been travelling in. But the spare lines of the chic sand-coloured linen dress still looked relatively fresh, she decided, and after their long separation Evan, she hoped, would be too delighted to see her to be over-concerned about the finer details of her appearance.

She put up a hand and touched the gold chain she wore round her throat. She thought, I’m nervous. Nervous of seeing Evan again. But that’s ridiculous. It’s what I want, after all, what I came all this way for.

For one nightmare moment, she tried and failed to remember what Evan looked like, reminding herself, as panic rose inside her, that the same thing was said to happen to brides on their way to the altar.

The brisk rap on the door was a relief, cutting across the blankness in her mind. She took a deep steadying breath, as she walked across the room, and her smile was firmly back in place as she flung open the door.

She said gaily, ‘Darling, you got here at last …’ then stopped dead, because no trick of the mind could ever have turned the complete stranger confronting her into Evan.

Evan was fair, and this man was as dark as midnight—thick black hair springing back from a high forehead, a lean face, with high cheekbones, deeply tanned, the lines of nose, mouth and chin all forcefully, even harshly marked. He was tall, long-legged, and broad-shouldered, dressed in denims, with a worn leather jacket slung carelessly across one shoulder.

Leigh said sharply, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

He gave her an unsmiling look. ‘It might have been wiser to have established that before inviting me to your room, Miss Frazier. Do you usually behave so recklessly in a foreign country?’

She said glacially, ‘I was expecting my fiancé.’

‘My regrets for your disappointment.’ He neither looked nor sounded even slightly regretful. ‘I presume you had some reason to believe he would meet you here?’

Leigh’s chin tilted. ‘May I know what business this is of yours, Mr … er …?’

‘Rourke Martinez,’ he said. ‘And it’s “Doctor”, Miss Frazier.’ He looked at her drily. ‘I see the name is familiar to you.’

Oh, she had heard of him all right, Leigh thought faintly. Most of Evan’s discontent had been centred on this man. ‘Everyone defers to him,’ he had written shortly after his arrival. ‘He stalks round the camp behaving as if he was one of the ancient Incas with the power of life and death over us all. Even Fergus Willard, who’s technically in charge, does as he tells him.’

Knowing that her instinctive reaction to his name had given her away too thoroughly to warrant a denial, she gave a slight shrug. ‘I believe Evan has mentioned you, Doctor Martinez, yes.’

‘I’m sure he has.’ He sounded faintly amused. ‘And not in any flattering terms either, unless I miss my guess. Now that my identity has been established, are you going to invite me in? Or would you prefer this interview to be conducted in one of the reception areas downstairs?’

‘Arrogant bastard’ had been another of Evan’s descriptions, and it seemed perfectly justified, Leigh thought, her hackles rising.

Down the corridor, the lift doors opened, and a white-coated waiter emerged, with a tray of coffee. The coffee which she had ordered. And although there was nothing she wanted less than to have to invite Rourke Martinez into her suite, she could see that to object would cause unnecessary complications, and probably make her look foolish into the bargain.

She said abruptly, ‘You’d better come in,’ and turned back into the suite.

The waiter deposited the tray where she indicated on the table by the window, and stood waiting for the inevitable tip. Rourke Martinez provided it with a brief word in Spanish, but not before the waiter sent Leigh an infuriating leer, shared equally between herself, the open door to the inner room, and the big bed which suddenly seemed to dominate it.

She was aware she was flushing angrily, as she pulled forward a chair and sat down. ‘Coffee, Doctor Martinez?’

‘Black, please.’ He took the cup she handed him, with a word of thanks, then leaned back in his own chair, very much at ease. Then he said quietly, ‘What are you doing here, Miss Frazier? Why have you come?’

‘To join my fiancé. I should have thought that was obvious.’ His whole attitude needled her, making her speak more sharply than she would normally have done. ‘Is it any concern of yours?’

‘As he’s employed on the Atayahuanco project, and I happen to be its co-director, then I’d say I was concerned,’ he said grimly. ‘May I ask who authorised you to come here? I certainly didn’t, and nor did Doctor Willard. By the time we received notification of your arrival, it was too late to turn you back.’

‘I wasn’t aware you had any right to do so.’ Leigh was rigid with shock and temper. She set her cup down carefully, to avoid hurling it at him.

‘We have any rights in this that we choose to assume, Miss Frazier,’ Rourke Martinez said almost casually. ‘Our work at Atayahuanco is difficult enough, without deliberately inviting additional problems in the shape of random visitors.’ His eyes skimmed her, indicating silently but unmistakably that the shape of this particular random visitor failed to impress him in any way. He went on, ‘Your arrival seems to indicate one of two things—either you expect Evan Gilchrist to join you here in Lima, or that you expect to go to Atayahuanco to be with him.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid that neither possibility is acceptable.’

Leigh sat up very straight in her chair. She said, ‘Doctor Martinez, I don’t think you realise …’

‘Exactly who I’m talking to?’ he finished for her. ‘Yes, I do, Miss Frazier. I’m well aware that it’s a charitable trust set up by Frazier Industries which provides most of the financing for our project. I’m also aware that you probably consider that gives you carte blanche to do as you wish here.’ He paused again. ‘Well, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong, and to give you some advice.’

She smiled icily, controlling her temper with an heroic effort. ‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’

‘That’s up to you,’ he said. ‘But for what it’s worth, I suggest you get the next available flight back to the United Kingdom. This is no place for you, and I’m surprised your family didn’t tell you so.’ He gave her another assessing look. ‘Or did they?’

‘I happen to be an adult, Doctor Martinez,’ Leigh said loudly and clearly. ‘I do as I want.’

‘Not,’ he said, ‘a particularly adult point of view. But let that pass. Is Gilchrist meeting you here?’

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me,’ she said, heavily sarcastic. ‘You seem to rule the roost at Atayahuanco. Have you graciously given Evan permission to meet me?’

‘No.’

‘No, of course not.’ She stared at him defiantly. ‘And now I’m supposed to confess my fault, and grovel, right?’

He shrugged. ‘It would make little difference if you did. Evan Gilchrist walked off the project some forty-eight hours before we got the radio message announcing your imminent arrival.’ He paused. ‘Indicating that he already knew you were coming, and had gone to meet you. But, for various reasons, I wasn’t convinced.’

Leigh’s mouth was dry. She picked up the cooling coffee, and drank some of it. At last she said, ‘He—he didn’t know I was coming. I didn’t mention it in my last letter. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision …’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Did he give no idea where he was going?’

‘We had no idea he was even leaving,’ Rourke Martinez told her. ‘He took some provisions and a mule, and vanished in the night. There was no need to have done that, no matter how much he hated Atayahuanco and everything connected with it. If he’d given some indication that he wanted out, he could have flown out on the supply helicopter with me yesterday.’ He sent her a lightning glance. ‘He wasn’t that much of an asset.’

She flushed again. ‘Of course, you would say that. I’m sorry Evan’s best was never good enough for your exacting standards, Doctor Martinez.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ He sounded amused again. ‘I wasn’t aware we’d ever seen his best, but it was difficult to look beyond the outsize chip he had on his shoulder.’

She glared at him. Other phrases of Evan’s were coming back to her: ‘Intolerant swine’ and ‘a real slave-driver’. She could believe all of them. ‘Have you made any attempt to find him? Sent out a search-party?’

‘He’s not a child, Miss Frazier.’ What curious eyes he had, she thought irrelevantly. Deeply set beneath strongly arched black brows, they were a strange colour between brown and gold almost like topaz. Eyes like a jungle cat’s, she thought with a little inward shiver.

Rourke Martinez went on, ‘He knows what the dangers are, or he should do by now. He’s been warned often enough—about all kinds of things.’

She looked at him incredulously. ‘And on the strength of that, you’re prepared just to—write him off?’

‘Your fiancé seems to have a strong sense of self-preservation,’ he said rather drily. ‘I suspect he’ll need it. In the mean time the best thing you can do is get back to the U.K. and wait for the eventual happy reunion there.’

The coffee tasted bitter, and she slammed her cup back into its saucer.

‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said grittily. ‘Evan is missing, and I’ve no intention of going tamely back to Britain while such a situation continues. Even if you’re not sufficiently concerned about your staff to worry about his safety, I am, and I’m coming up to Atayahuanco right away to instigate some kind of search. Please be good enough to make the necessary arrangements.’

He actually had the gall to laugh.

‘Thus speaks the autocrat,’ he said mockingly. ‘I expect you’re a riot on your home ground, Miss Frazier, keeping everyone on the run. But not here. Here, you have no authority.’ He paused. ‘Short of marching you to the airport, and actually putting you on the plane, I can’t force you out, of course.’

‘I’m glad you appreciate that!’

‘But I’m wondering what you appreciate.’ The topaz eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘I have to warn you, Miss Frazier, for your family’s sake, if not your own, that Lima is not a safe city for a girl on her own, especially when the girl’s a spectacular-looking gringa like yourself.’ His gaze rested on the small gold hoops in her ears, the heavy links of her necklace, her watch on its slender bracelet. ‘And one so evidently blessed with this world’s goods too.’

‘I don’t need your warnings,’ Leigh flashed. ‘And if your peculiar remarks were intended as some kind of compliment, I can do without that too!’

‘No compliment, merely an observation.’ Shrugging, he pushed back his chair, and got to his feet. ‘Well, stay here in Lima, if you’re really so determined, but remain in the vicinity of the hotel, if you have any sense. No doubt Daddy will send some minion to bail you out, if you really get into trouble. You’re not my responsibility, thank God.’

‘You utter bastard,’ Leigh said unevenly.

‘And harsh words don’t impress me either,’ he said coolly. ‘Did no one ever wash your mouth out with soap when you were a child, Miss Frazier, because if not they missed a golden opportunity. And a sound hiding applied to your pampered backside wouldn’t come amiss either. What a pity Gilchrist isn’t man enough to administer it!’

‘How dare you,’ Leigh was almost choking, ‘speak to me—speak about Evan like that …’

He laughed. ‘Why, are you going to tell me I’m not fit to lick his shoes, or some other cliché like that? Well, keep your illusions, Miss Frazier. If your wandering boy should wander back in our direction, I promise I’ll scoop him up and deliver him to you here. You’re entirely welcome to each other.’

She was trembling, her hands balled into impotents fists at her sides.

‘Get out of here! Get out of here now!’

‘Gladly,’ he said. ‘Now that I’ve made the situation clear to you once and for all.’

‘Oh, you have,’ she said icily. ‘And now I’ll make something clear to you—Doctor Martinez. When I get back to England, I’m going to tell my father every detail of your behaviour—raisesome questions about whether you’re a fit person to be in charge of the Atayahuanco project at all, in fact. You seem to be totally lacking in consideration and—and compassion!’

Rourke Martinez shrugged. ‘Try it,’ he advised shortly, ‘and see how far it gets you. Your father’s no fool, and in spite of your brave, independent words, it’s my guess that you’re out here against his wishes also. So don’t blame me if he doesn’t share your sense of outrage. Here, Miss Frazier, you are not the centre of the universe, and your father might even be grateful that someone’s pointed this out to you at last.’

The topaz eyes travelled over her in one last searing look, then he walked to the door and went out.

She wanted to scream, Leigh realised incredulously. She wanted to lie down and drum her heels on the carpet, and yell until she was hoarse.

She couldn’t believe what had happened. This man—a stranger—had treated her as if she were of no account.

And it was infuriating that he had homed in on her battle of wills with her father. She found herself wondering if Justin had contacted Peruvian Quest, the umbrella organisation under which the Atayahuanco project was sheltered, and requested they make things as difficult as possible for her. He was quite capable of it, she thought furiously.

She walked into the bedroom and threw herself across the bed, staring into space.

She had handled that confrontation badly, she knew, but learning of Evan’s disappearance like that had thrown her completely.

Her heart ached for Evan. She realised she hadn’t fully comprehended the problems and difficulties he had encountered at Atayahuanco, or the depth of his wretchedness, but meeting Rourke Martinez had made a great deal clear to her.

He had obviously realised that Evan was less than wholehearted about the project, and resented having him foisted on to it. But that wasn’t Evan’s fault, she thought angrily. If anyone was to blame, it was her father, who should have known he was asking the impossible.

And now Evan was heaven knows where with a mule and a few supplies. He could be lost. He could be injured, she thought, biting her lip savagely, as a pang of fear tore through her. He must have been really desperate to have taken such a risk, because none of his letters had expressed the slightest interest in exploring the hostile terrain around him.

That was, of course, if Evan had really gone off at all. She sat up abruptly. After all, she only had that abominable swine’s word for it, and who was to say he wasn’t simply following her father’s instructions to deter her.

Well, if her father thought she was going tamely back to Britain with her tail between her legs, he was mistaken. Come hell or high water, she was going to get to Atayahuanco somehow. She was going to check primarily whether Evan had really disappeared, and if so, to insist on a full-scale effort to find him.

Her lips curved in a brief cat-like smile. After all, Rourke Martinez was not the only arbiter on the project. There was Fergus Willard too. The Frazier name was bound to count for something with him. And if she managed to get his permission to make the trip to Atayahuanco, there would be nothing the Martinez man could do about it.

Or she could simply arrive there, she thought. It wouldn’t be an easy trip, but she couldn’t imagine she would be turned away once she had managed the journey.

She gave a determined nod. Tomorrow she would go to the Peruvian Quest offices and make radio contact with Fergus Willard. Once she had won him over, it would just be a question of hiring the best guide, and the best transport her money could obtain.

She squared her shoulders. But if she had to fight every battle alone, then she would do so. And Rourke Martinez—or anyone else for that matter—would not defeat her.

She swallowed suddenly, remembering with painful clarity those last contemptuous words he had flung at her.

I’ll make him sorry, she vowed silently. I’ll make him sorry he was ever born!

CHAPTER TWO

THE Peruvian Quest offices lay in a quiet side street.

Leigh stood for a moment, watching the cab which had brought her there drive off. She was sure she had been overcharged for such a comparatively modest journey, but there had been no meter in the cab for her to check with. No meter, and very little else that worked either, she thought with a kind of desperate hilarity, but most of the cabs she had seen cruising around had been in the same ramshackle state.

She wished she had taken up the hotel’s offer to hire a car for her. It would surely have been in better condition, and maybe the driver wouldn’t have looked like a brigand either, she thought with a slight shiver.

More than once, she had caught him staring insolently at her in his mirror, and he had tossed a couple of remarks at her which she hadn’t been able to understand, but which instinct warned her were of a frankly sexual nature.

Last night, in the hotel dining-room, she had been openly stared at as she tried to eat her meal, and one man from a party of four near the door had tried to accost her as she left. She had shaken him off with a blazing look, and gone straight to her room, abandoning any notion of seeing what facilities the hotel had to offer during the evenings.

Under the circumstances, she had slept quite well, but today she was aware of a slight persistent headache, no doubt a legacy from her long plane trip.

The garua still held the city in its clammy grip too, which was disappointing, and although it was very humid, she was beginning to wish she had brought some warmer clothes.

Leigh walked across the uneven paving-stones and tried the heavy outer door of the building. It opened at once, and she found herself in a narrow passage facing an old-fashioned lift. On her right was a rudimentary reception counter surmounted by a grille with an ornate bellpush. She rang and waited, but no one came, and after a brief hesitation, she decided to trust herself to the lift.

Gingerly, she closed the gate and pressed the button. The lift seemed to stir and shake itself like a grumpy animal being poked with a stick, then with a heart-stopping lurch it began its upward journey.

It stopped equally abruptly, nearly throwing her off balance, but she seemed to have arrived at the first floor, so she supposed she had to be grateful for small mercies.

The narrow passage seemed a facsimile of the one downstairs, except that the reception area had been replaced by a pair of double doors. It was plainly the sole option, so she knocked briefly and walked in.

She stopped dead. Just for a moment, it seemed as if the door led nowhere, and she had fallen off the edge of the world. Then she realised that what was confronting her was a gigantic aerial photograph of part of the Andes range. She caught her breath as she studied it. Savagely sculpted peaks reared towards the pale sky, intersected by gorges, and swooping down to the unimaginable depths of chasms where slender rivers ran. Some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth, she had heard it said, and Evan—her Evan—was out there somewhere—alone.

She supposed Atayahuanco was somewhere in the photograph, hidden in the indigo shade of one of those deep valleys, and the realisation of what was facing her made her feel suddenly nauseated.

It wouldn’t have taken much to persuade her to forget the whole thing, she thought with a shudder. She was no climber. In fact she was hardly the outdoor type at all. And neither was Evan, she reminded herself.

She closed her eyes momentarily, taking a grip on herself. She loved Evan. She had endured their separation, and it would take more than a little physical hardship to keep him from her now.

She heard a polite cough, and opened her eyes to find a young woman neatly dressed in a dark skirt and white blouse standing looking at her enquiringly.

Leigh marshalled one of her few Spanish phrases. ‘Habla usted Inglés?’ she asked hopefully, and was rewarded by a nod and a smile.

‘I speak it well. How may I help you, señorita?’

Leigh decided not to beat about the bush. She said, ‘I understand you’re in radio contact with the camp at Atayahuanco. I was wondering if I could send a message through.’

The girl looked puzzled. ‘There is no radio here, señorita. We have another office in Cuzco, and all messages go from there. But the use of the radio is—restricted, I think.’

‘I’m sure it is.’ Leigh’s own smile didn’t slip. ‘But you see, I need to contact Doctor Willard urgently, and I don’t know any other way of doing it.’

The girl’s face cleared. ‘Doctor Willard? Ah, but that is not possible, señorita. Doctor Willard is ill with a fever. The camp is under the direction of Doctor Martinez, and he is here in Lima at this time. You may speak with him directly.’

Leigh groaned inwardly. ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any need for that,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘Actually, I was hoping to go to the camp, and I just wanted to warn someone that I was on my way, that’s all.’

The girl gaped at her. ‘Go—up to Atayahuanco?’ She shook her head. ‘Impossible.’

‘Hardly,’ said Leigh with determined amiability. ‘This—Doctor Martinez seems to manage it.’ She remembered something he’d said. ‘How do supplies go in? Isn’t there a helicopter, or something?’

‘Sí,señorita. But this month it has already made its trip.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’ Leigh asked.

The girl shrugged. ‘Me, I would not go,’ she said with total seriousness.

Leigh held on to her temper. ‘Doctor Martinez—how will he travel?’

The girl moved her shoulders again with growing reluctance. ‘From Cuzco, señorita, he goes by jeep, and later by mule. But then,’ she added, a disturbingly dreamy expression crossing her face, ‘Doctor Martinez is a man, and very strong, and altogether unafraid.’

‘And when he needs to cross a river, I suppose he walks on water,’ muttered Leigh. She saw the other girl looked astonished, and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, let it pass.’ Her mind was moving rapidly, weighing the various possibilities, and realising with increasing foreboding that the most direct route to Atayahuanco, little though she might relish it, lay in the company of the loathsome Martinez man.

And, of course, he’s so likely to welcome me as a travelling companion, she thought despondently. If I’d known, I might have been nicer to the pig.

As it was, she seemed to have burned her boats pretty comprehensively where he was concerned.

Or had she?

She gritted her teeth. ‘Is Doctor Martinez here?’

The girl glanced at her watch. ‘He is expected, señorita, but when it is impossible to say, you understand.’

‘Well, I’ll wait for a while, if that’s all right.’

‘As you wish.’ The girl indicated a high-backed chair near the window, and offered coffee which Leigh declined. She withdrew then to some inner office, and Leigh could hear the sound of a typewriter through the closed door.

By the time an hour and a half had passed, she felt she could have drawn the aerial photograph from memory, and answered questions on it too.

But she had had time to plan the next stage in her campaign.

Bitter as gall though it was, she was going to have to make some kind of peace with Rourke Martinez.

She shouldn’t have allowed his overt hostility to get to her, she thought. She should have realised he could be useful and set out to charm him from the outset. She knew, without particular vanity, that she could have done it. She had been helping her shy mother to entertain important business clients for years, and they had not always been easy to deal with either. Yet she had invariably managed, and more than managed.

‘Leigh could charm birds from trees,’ Justin Frazier was wont to say proudly.

Well, she would just have to charm Rourke Martinez, she thought calmly. It could be done. Even while he had been slagging her off, he had been aware of her as a woman. She knew that, and at the time it had simply fuelled her resentment of him, but now, she acknowledged, she could turn it to her advantage maybe.

She would have to apologise sweetly, she thought, grinding her teeth. Tell him helplessly that jet-lag always affected her temper. She would have to flatter him, of course. No man with his brand of dynamic good looks could be without his share of sexual vanity. It might even be—amusing to let him fancy her a little. To let him think she could be—interested herself.

She had done it before, she thought with a little inward giggle. There wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t be conned into thinking he was irresistible.

She would have to be discreet about it, of course. The journey to Atayahuanco would be fraught enough without having to fight off unwanted advances from her guide.

With new determination, she knocked at the door of the inner office. It opened almost at once, and the girl looked at her enquiringly.

‘Sí,señorita? You are having a long wait, I think.’

‘I think so too,’ Leigh said briskly. ‘It might be better to leave Doctor Martinez a note, if you can give me a sheet of paper and an envelope.’

The note took a lot of thinking about. She wanted it to sound reasonably enticing, without actually grovelling to the creature.

‘Dear Doctor Martinez,’ she wrote at last, ‘I feel we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. May I make amends by inviting you to have dinner with me at my hotel either tonight or tomorrow? I expect to be out for the rest of the day, but a message left at reception will be quite sufficient.’ She added, ‘Sincerely yours’ and her signature, and looked at her handiwork with satisfaction. That should bring him, if only out of curiosity.

And by the time dinner was over, she would have him eating out of her hand, she thought, smiling to herself, sealing the envelope as if she were sealing his fate with it.

Leigh could not have said she thoroughly enjoyed her sightseeing that day. Armed with a guide book, she dutifully toured the Plaza de Armes, stared into the swirling waters of the Rimac from the Bridge of Stones, and recoiled, shuddering, from the mummified remains of the great conquistador Francisco Pizarro, preserved ghoulishly in a glass case in the Cathedral.

She wasn’t sure she approved of Pizarro. Everything she had ever read about the Inca civilisation suggested it had worked perfectly well without outside interference. But the gold which they took so much for granted had lured the conquerors and plunderers from the Old World, and the Spaniards had overthrown the Inca Atahualpa by a trick, then held him to ransom. But the riches of his kingdom, which his bewildered people had brought in load after weary load, were not enough to save him. Pizarro, having sworn not one drop of his blood should be spilled, kept his word by having the Inca strangled.

It was not, Leigh thought with distaste, an uplifting story, and it seemed only fitting that a few years later Pizarro should have been betrayed and murdered by his own men.

But her mind wasn’t really on Peru’s savage history. Over and over again, she found herself thinking about Rourke Martinez, trying to gauge his reaction to her note.

She supposed his most likely response would be to ignore her completely. But I’ll worry about that when it happens, she thought.

And much as she hated to admit it, she was beginning to realise that Lima might not be a safe city for a woman on her own. She was attracting all kinds of unwelcome attention. She could deal with the normal range of wolf whistles and goodhumoured sexual innuendo, but the kind of macho aggression her slender fairness seemed to be inciting was altogether outside her scope. Over-loud remarks accompanied by blatantly lecherous gestures, made her face burn, and she decided to abandon her plan to visit some of the city’s museums, almost running the remaining blocks back to her hotel.

To her amazement, when she asked without much hope if there were any messages, the clerk handed her a folded paper.

‘Dear Miss Frazier,’ his letter read, ‘Your olive branch is accepted. I’m afraid tonight is the only night I can manage, as my time in Lima is strictly limited. Shall we say eight o’clock?’ His signature was as uncompromising as the man himself, she noted ruefully.

But she could feel glee welling up inside her just the same.

As simple as that, she thought in self-congratulation. She said to the reception clerk, ‘Would you send the maître d’hotel to my suite right away, please. I wish to entertain a guest privately there to dinner tonight.’

The clerk stared at her. ‘But our dining-room is excellent, señorita, and tonight there will be a musical show with folk dancing which you and your guest will enjoy.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Leigh in a tone which brooked no argument. ‘My—guest and I have business to discuss which requires peace and privacy, so please do as I have asked.’

As she rode up in the lift, she re-read his note. So his time in Lima was limited. Did that mean he was going back to Atayahuanco very soon? It seemed more than likely.

But what he didn’t realise, she told herself pleasurably, her nails curling into the palms of her hands, was that she would be going with him.

She devoted the rest of the afternoon to relaxing and getting ready, smoothing away any ragged edges with a leisurely session with the hairdresser and manicurist in the hotel’s beauty salon.

Dressing that evening, she subjected her wardrobe to minute scrutiny before deciding what to wear. She felt rather like a general planning some spring offensive. And it was, she thought, definitely time for the big guns!

Her silky black dress relied for its effect on the chic and daring of its cut. It moulded itself lovingly to her slim figure before breaking out into a brief swirl of a skirt, and the halternecked bodice, although reasonably demure at the front, plunged well below her waist at the back.

She fixed delicate gold spirals in her ears, and added a discreet misting of Hermès, before deciding she would do.

Rourke Martinez, she thought smiling, would not know what had hit him.

The telephone rang promptly at eight.

‘Your guest is here, señorita,’ an expressionless voice told her.

‘I’ll come down,’ said Leigh. ‘Ask him to wait for me in the bar, por favor.’

She took a deep breath, as she gave herself a final considering survey in the long mirror. Black shoes with slender, spiked heels and pale stockings with embroidered seams completed her ensemble, and her hair gleamed like silk.

She thought, I look like a woman going to meet her lover, and the realisation stopped her in her tracks. For the first time, she felt a qualm about her plans for the evening, then she squared her slender shoulders, lifting her chin defiantly. However loathsome she might find it having to play up to a man like Rourke Martinez, it would be worth it, if it meant she found Evan at last.

And after the way Rourke Martinez had treated her, it would be amusing to see if she could make him grovel, even for a short while.

She caused a minor sensation as she entered the bar, but she would have enjoyed it more if she hadn’t been working so hard to conceal her own nervousness.

She saw him at once, of course. He was head and shoulders taller than anyone else around, standing at the bar, with his back to her. Then as if alerted by the sudden hush which had descended at her entrance, he wheeled slowly, glass in hand, and looked at her.

He looked—arrested anyway, Leigh thought as she pinned on a cordial smile, and crossed the space which separated them.

‘Doctor Martinez.’ Her voice was warm to match her smile. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’

‘If you did,’ he said slowly, ‘you are undeniably worth waiting for, Miss Frazier. Is this solely in my honour, or are you expecting other company?’

‘But I don’t know anyone else in Lima.’ Leigh lowered darkened lashes demurely.

‘Of course,’ he drawled. ‘I was forgetting. May I get you a drink?’

She shrugged. ‘Whatever you’re having will be fine.’

His brows rose faintly. ‘I’m having a pisco sour, but I should warn you, they can be potent.’

‘When in Rome,’ Leigh said lightly. ‘Shall we sit down?’

It was working, she thought, as she reached into her bag for a tissue she didn’t need. The stark uncovered blackness of the dress against her pale skin was a surefire winner. He could hardly take his eyes off her. Obviously blondes in model gowns were in short supply in the wilds of Atayahuanco. Well, let him eat his heart out.

Although she had to admit, as he brought the drinks to their table, that he didn’t look like a man who would ever go short of female company, except through his own choice.

He was more formally dressed this evening, in a pale, lightweight suit with a dark blue silk shirt. And if she was the cynosure of all the masculine eyes in the bar, she could not deny that he was being surveyed with discreet avidity by the women.

Not that she could altogether blame them, she thought unwillingly. However much she might dislike him, she had to acknowledge that he was an attractive devil, and magnetically virile as well. And not lacking in charm either, she supposed, when he chose to exert it.

Smilingly, she lifted her glass to him. ‘To our better understanding, Doctor Martinez.’

His expression was enigmatic as he returned the toast. ‘Salud, Miss Frazier.’

Leigh tasted her drink with a certain amount of caution. There was a tang of lemon, she recognised, and underneath it all, a kick like a mule. One, she thought, would undoubtedly be enough.

‘So—how are you enjoying Lima?’ he asked.

Polite conversation, it seemed, was the order of the day, and Leigh obediently picked up her cue.

‘Interesting, but it has its drawbacks,’ she said lightly. ‘This constant mist, for one thing.’

‘Ah, the garua.’ He grinned slightly. ‘Legend has it that when the Spaniards asked the conquered Incas where was the best place to build their city, the Incas recommended Lima with deliberate malice.’

She laughed. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. But, after all, it wasn’t Lima I came to see.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said smoothly, but across the table, the topaz eyes met hers in a clash like the ring of swords between two duellists. Leigh had to smother a slight gasp, but she forced herself to go on smiling.

‘I feel I haven’t had a chance to see the real Peru,’ she went on.

‘Lima is real enough,’ he said. ‘You’d be well advised to use your return ticket, Miss Frazier. Juanita at Peruvian Quest will help if there’s any problem over the flight.’

Leigh sipped her drink, smiling coolly. ‘Oh, I’m not ready to cut short my trip yet awhile. This dreadful mist can’t last for ever, and I haven’t seen Cuzco yet—or Machu Picchu. I hear that’s really spectacular.’

He finished his drink, and set down the glass. ‘Well, as long as you stick to the recognised tourist trails with an organised party, you won’t come to too much harm. Now, would you like another drink, or shall we have dinner? There’s a good place on the Carretera Central I thought I’d show you.’

Leigh put down her own empty glass. ‘It sounds fascinating, but I’ve already arranged dinner, here in my suite.’ She watched him digest this, then added sweetly, ‘After all, I invited you—remember?’

His eyes swept over her in a lingering, frankly disturbing appraisal. ‘I’m not likely to forget,’ he said. ‘And I’m still wondering why.’

‘To make amends—build bridges,’ Leigh said calmly. She gave him a brilliant smile. ‘After all, there’s no need for us to be bad friends, Doctor Martinez. We’re on the same side.’

‘Are we, Miss Frazier?’ he asked softly. ‘I think I might need some convincing of that.’

‘Well, the night is young.’ Leigh rose to her feet. ‘So—shall we go up and eat?’

Her face was serene as she led the way to the lift, but at the same time she was aware of a distinct frisson of uneasiness. Rourke Martinez, she thought, was still proving a formidable opponent, although she thought she might be ahead on points—just.

She shook herself. She couldn’t start losing her nerve now. He was a man, and capable of being manipulated like any other. And she had been adept at that kind of manipulation since her cradle.

There was no reason, no reason at all to think that this time she might have met her match.

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