Evil Star

windows covered with bars. A basement or cellar, perhaps. That would be the most likely place. But first they had to get in.
    At least that wasn't going to be too difficult. Now that he was closer, Matt could see that the veranda continued all the way around the back. On one side, there was a hand-rail, separating the house from the garden and the courtyard. The main body of the house made up the other side with tall, elegant windows standing at intervals about five meters apart. The windows reached down almost to the floor and all of them were open. Matt glanced at Pedro, giving him one last chance to back out. Pedro nodded. I'm with you. Matt reached up and used the handrail to pull himself onto the veranda. Now he was as good as inside the house. The roof with its heavy red tiles stretched out over him. Matt waited until Pedro had joined him, then crept round the side.
    Almost at once, he heard voices. There was a meeting going on in one of the rooms, but in the stillness of the evening the sounds were carrying out. Matt gestured and the two of them crept along the veranda past more sofas and some terra-cotta pots. They came to an open French window. A man was speaking on the other side.
    Carefully, an inch at a time, Matt peered round the corner and looked in.
    It was a dining room with a vast wooden table that seemed to have been cut from a single tree. The floor was also made of polished Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star wood, and there were wooden pan-els set into the walls. An iron chandelier — it must have weighed a ton — hung down, illuminating the room not with electric bulbs but with about a hundred candles, each one in its own holder. Matt wondered when they had been lit. A servant or someone must have come in while the meeting was in progress.
    There were three men and a woman sitting around the table. Matt recognized one of them instantly and stopped dead, feeling as if the ground was opening up beneath him. It was Rodriguez, the police captain who had beaten him up at the hotel in Miraflores. He was in uniform. The other two men wore suits. The woman had a simple black dress. All of them were listening attentively as they were given their instructions.
    The man who was talking to them was sitting in a tall wicker chair with his back to the window. Matt could see nothing of him apart from one arm and a hand, resting on one of the arms. He had long fingers and seemed to be wearing a linen suit. He was speaking quickly, in good English, only occasionally stumbling over some of the words. Matt whistled very softly at Pedro and swung his head over toward the room. Why were they using his own language? If he listened long enough, he might find out.
    "I do not care what is a possibility and what is not," the man was saying. "I give you the instructions and you will obey. The swan must be ... en la position ... in position, five days from now. At midnight exactly. You understand, Miss Klein?"
    The woman nodded. "It will all be done," she said. Her English was worse than his, and heavily accented. "But I am needed soon the ..."
    It took her a minute to find the word. "I must have the coordinates,"
    she said.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Now Matt understood. The woman was German and spoke no Spanish. The man was Spanish and spoke no German. They were using English as a common language.
    “You will have the coordinates as soon as I have them myself," the man went on. "My agents have been into the Nazca desert but they have still failed to find the platform."
    "The diary did not give you the position?"
    "It gave me the approximate position, and it is possible that we now know enough to place the swan exactly where , it is meant to be. But I prefer to leave nothing to chance. We have to be careful, but the search continues. Just so long as everything is ready at your end."
    "Of course, Herr Salamanda. Everything will be as you ask. ..."
    That was the end of it. Matt was listening in with his head pressed against the wall, right next to the window. Pedro was slightly behind him. So he was the one who heard the clunk of boots on wood and realized that at least two guards were making their way toward them, patrolling the full length of the veranda. They were still out of sight, around the front of the house, but in a few seconds they would turn the cor-ner and the two boys would be discovered.
    There was only one thing to do. Matt pushed Pedro, and the two of them flitted