"No, this is fine. I've passed through the first layer of trees. Now it looks like I'm coming down through what I'd guess is laurel."
"Yell if you want me to move you around," said Giordino over the cockpit radio.
"Maintain your position," Pitt directed. "Shifting around might snag the descent cable and leave me hanging up here till I'm an old man."
Pitt entered a thicker maze of branches and quickly managed to cut a tunnel with his machete without having to order Gunn to reduce his rate of descent. He was invading a world seldom seen, a world filled with beauty and danger. Immense climbing plants, desperate for light, crawled straight up the taller trees, some clutching their hosts with tendrils and hooks while others twined upward toward the light like corkscrews. Moss draped the trees in great sheets, reminding him of cobwebs in a crypt from a horror movie. But there was beauty too. Vast garlands of orchids circled their way toward the sky as if they were strings of lights on a Christmas tree.
"Can you see the ground?" asked Gunn.
"Not yet. I still have to move through a small tree that looks like some sort of palm with wild peaches growing on it. After that, I have to dodge a snarl of hanging vines."
"I believe they're called lianas."
"Botany wasn't one of my better subjects."
"You could grab one and play Tarzan," said Gunn, injecting some humor into a potentially dangerous situation.
"Only if I saw Jane--"
Gunn tensed at Pitt's sudden pause. "What is it? Are you okay?"
When Pitt answered, his voice was barely louder than a whisper. "I almost grabbed what I took to be a thick vine. But it was a snake the size of a drainpipe with a mouth like an alligator."
"What color?"
"Black with yellowish brown spots."
"A boa constrictor," explained Gunn. "He might give you a big hug, but he's not poisonous. Pet him on the head for me."
"Like hell," Pitt snorted. "If he so much as looks cross-eyed at me, he meets Madame LaFarge.
"Who?"
"My machete."
"What else do you see?"
"Several magnificent butterflies, a number of insects that look like they belong on an alien planet, and a parrot too shy to ask for a cracker. You wouldn't believe the size of the flowers growing out of nooks in the trees. There are violets the size of my head."
Conversation dropped off as Pitt chopped his way through a low tree with dense branches. He was sweating like a prizefighter in the last round of a championship match, and his clothes were soaked through from the heavy moisture clinging to the leaves of the trees. As he raised the machete, his arm brushed a vine armored with thorns that shredded his shirt sleeve and sliced his forearm as neatly as claws on a cat. Luckily, the cuts were not deep or painful, and he disregarded them.
"Stop the winch," he said as he felt firm ground beneath his feet. "I'm down."
"Any sign of the galleon?" Gunn asked anxiously.
Pitt did not immediately answer. He tucked the machete under his arm and turned a complete circle, unclipping the safety harness as he surveyed his surroundings. It was like being at the bottom of a leafy ocean. There was scarcely any light, and what little was available had the same eerie quality a diver would experience at 60 meters (196 feet) beneath the surface of the sea. The dense vegetation blotted out most of the color spectrum from the little sunlight that reached him, leaving only green and blue mixed with gray.
He was pleasantly surprised to find the rain forest was not impassable at ground level. Except for a soft carpet of decomposing leaves and twigs, the floor beneath the canopy of trees was comparatively free of growth, with none of the heaps of moldering vegetation he had expected. Now that he was standing in the sunless depths he could easily understand why plant life that grew close to the ground was scarce.
"I see nothing that resembles the hull of a ship," he said. "No ribs, no beams, no keel."
"A bust," said Gunn, the disillusionment coming through in his voice. "The mag must have read a natural iron deposit."
"No," Pitt replied, striving to keep his voice calm, "I can't say that."
"What are you telling us?"
"Only that the fungi, insects, and bacteria that call this place home have made a meal out of every organic component of the ship. Not too surprising when you figure that they had four hundred years to devour it down to the keel."
Gunn went silent, not quite comprehending. Then it struck him like a lightning bolt.
"Oh, my God!" he yelped. "We found it. You're actually standing on the wreck of the galleon."
"Dead center."
"You say all sign of the hull is gone?" Giordino cut in.
"All that remains is covered by moss and humus, but I think I can make out some ceramic pots, a few scattered cannon shot, one anchor, and a small pile of ballast stones. The site reads like an old campsite with trees growing through the middle of it."
"Shall we hang around?" asked Giordino.
"No, get your tails to Manta and refuel. I'll poke around for the jade box until you get back."
"Can we drop you anything?"
"I shouldn't need anything but the machete."
"You still have the smoke canisters?" Giordino asked.
"Two of them clipped to my belt."
"Set one off soon as you hear us return."
"Never fear," Pitt said blithely. "I'm not about to try walking out of here."
"See you in two hours," said Gunn, his spirits brimming.
"Try to be on time."
In a different circumstance, at a different time, Pitt might have experienced a fit of depression as the sound of the McDonnell Douglas Explorer died away, leaving behind the heavy atmosphere of the rain forest. But he was energized at knowing that somewhere within a short distance of where he was standing, buried in the ancient pile of debris, was the key to a vast treasure. He did not throw himself into a frenzy of wild digging. Instead, he slowly walked through the scattered remains of the Concepcion and studied her final position and configuration He could almost trace the original outline by the shape of the broken mounds of debris.
The shaft and one fluke of an anchor that protruded from the humus beneath the more recently fallen leaves indicated the location of the bow. He did not think that sailing master Thomas Cuttill would store the jade box in the cargo hold. The fact that Drake intended it as a gift to the queen suggested that he kept it near him, probably in the great cabin in the stern occupied by the captain of the ship.
As Pitt walked through the debris field, clearing away small areas with the machete, he found relics of the crew but no bones. Most of them had been swept off the ship by the tidal wave. He spied pairs of moldy leather shoes, hardened bone handles on knives whose blades had rusted away, ceramic eating bowls, and a still blackened iron cooking pot. Dread grew inside him as he realized the meagerness of the debris. He began to fear the wreck might have already been found and looted. He removed a plastic packet from inside his shirt, opened one end and pulled out the illustrations and cutaway plans of a standard treasure galleon Perlmutter had faxed. Using the plans as a guide, he carefully measured off his steps until he estimated he was in the area of the hold where the valuable cargo would have been stored.
Pitt went to work clearing what he thought was a heavy layer of compost. It proved to be only 10
centimeters (4 inches) thick. He had only to brush away the decomposing leaves with his hands to reveal several beautifully carved stone heads and full figures of various sizes. He guessed they were religious animal gods. A sigh of relief escaped his lips at discovering that the wreck of the galleon was untouched.
Scraping away a length of rotting vine that had fallen from the trees far above, he discovered twelve more carvings, three that were life-size. In the ghostly light their green coating of mold made them look like corpses arising from the grave. A clutter of clay pots and effigies had not fared as well after the damp of four centuries. Those that were relatively intact crumbled when touc
hed. Of the textiles that had been part of the original treasure trove, all had rotted into a few swatches of black mold.
Pitt eagerly dug deeper, ignoring torn fingernails and the slime that smeared his hands. He found a cache of jade, elegantly ornate and painstakingly carved. There were so many pieces he soon lost count.
They were mingled with mosaics made of mother-of-pearl and turquoise. Pitt paused and wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm. This bonanza was bound to open a can of worms, he reflected. He could already envision the legal battles and diplomatic machinations that would occur between Ecuadorian archaeologists and government officials, who would claim the artifacts belonged to them by right of possession, and their counterparts in Peru, who would claim the trove as their original property.
Whatever the legal entanglements, the one certainty was that none of the masterworks of Inca art would end up on a shelf in Pitt's home.
He glanced at his watch. Over an hour had passed since he dropped through the trees. He left the mass of jumbled antiquities and continued moving toward what had once been the captain's cabin on the stern of the galleon. He was swinging the blade of the machete back and forth to sweep the dead vegetation away from a debris mound when the blade suddenly clanged on a solid metal object. Kicking the leaves to the side he found that he had stumbled on one of the ship's two cannons. The bronze barrel had long since been coated by a thick green patina and the muzzle was filled with compost accumulated through the centuries.
Pitt could no longer tell where his perspiration left of and the humid moisture from the forest began. It was like working in a steam bath, with the added annoyance of tiny gnatlike insects that swarmed around his unprotected head and face. Fallen vines wrapped around his ankles, and twice he slipped on the wet plant growth and fell. A layer of clay soil and decayed leaves adhered to his body, giving him the look of some swamp creature from a haunted bog. The steamy atmosphere was slowly sapping his strength, and he fought back an overwhelming urge to lie down on a soft pile of leaves and take a nap, an urge that abruptly vanished at the repulsive sight of a bushmaster slithering across a nearby heap of ballast stones.
The largest poisonous snake in the Americas, 3 meters (10 feet) long, pink and tan with dark diamond shaped blotches, the notorious pit viper was extremely lethal. Pitt gave it a wide berth and kept a wary eye for its relatives.
He knew he was in the right area when he uncovered the big pintles and gudgeons, now badly rusted, that once held and pivoted the rudder. His foot accidentally kicked something buried in the ground, an unidentifiable circular band of ornate iron. When he bent down for a closer inspection he saw shards of glass. He checked Perlmutter's illustrations and recognized the object as the stern running light. The rudder fittings and the lamp told him that he was standing over what had been the captain's cabin. Now his search for the jade box began in earnest.
In forty minutes of searching on his hands and knees, he found an inkwell, two goblets, and the remains of several oil lamps. Without stopping to rest, he carefully brushed away a small heap of leaves and found himself looking into a green eye that stared back through the dank humus. He wiped his wet hands on his pants, took a bandanna from his pocket, and lightly cleaned the features around the eye. A human face became visible, one that had been artistically carved with great care from a solid piece of jade. Pitt held his breath.
Keeping his enthusiasm in check, he painstakingly dug four small trenches around the unblinking face, deep enough to see that it was the lid to a box about the size of a twelve-volt car battery. When the box was totally uncovered, he lifted it from the moist soil where it had rested since 1578 and set it between his legs.
Pitt sat in wondrous awe for the better part of ten minutes, afraid to pry off the lid and find nothing but damp rot inside. With great trepidation he took a small Swiss army knife from one pocket, swung out the thinnest blade and began to jimmy the lid. The box was so tightly sealed he had to constantly shift the knife blade around the box, prying each side a fraction of a millimeter before moving on to the next.
Twice he paused to wipe away the sweat that trickled into his eyes. Finally, the lid popped free. Then, irreverently, he clenched the face by the nose, lifted the lid and peeked inside.
The interior of the box was lined with cedar and contained what looked to him to be a folded mass of multicolored knotted string. Several of the strands had faded but they were intact and their colors could still be distinguished. Pitt couldn't believe the remarkable state of preservation, until he closely studied the antiquity and realized it was made, not from cotton or wool, but twisted coils of tinted metal.
"That's it!" he shouted, startling a tree full of macaws, who winged into the depths of the rain forest amid a chorus of shrieking chatter. "The Drake quipu."
Clutching the box with the tenacity of an Ebenezer Scrooge refusing to donate to a Christmas charity, Pitt found a reasonably dry fallen tree to sit on. He stared into the jade face and wondered if the quipu's secret could somehow be unriddled. According to Dr. Ortiz, the last person who might have read the knotted strands had died four hundred years ago. He fervently hoped that Yaeger's state-of-the-art computer could cut through time and solve the mystery.
He was still sitting there amid the ghosts of the English and Spanish seamen, oblivious to a swarm of biting insects, the stabbing pain from his gashed arm, and the clammy dampness, when the returning helicopter came within earshot from somewhere in the shrouded sky.
A small van, marked with the name of a well known express package company, drove up a ramp and stopped at the shipping and receiving door of a sizable one-story concrete building. The structure covered one city block of a huge warehouse complex near Galveston, Texas. There was no company sign on the roof or walls. The only evidence that it was occupied came from a small brass plaque beside the door that read Logan Storage Company. It was just after six o'clock in the evening. Too late for employees to be working on the job but still early enough not to arouse the suspicion of the patrolling security guards.
Without exiting the van, the driver punched in a code on a remote control box that deactivated the security alarm and raised the big door. As it rose to the ceiling, it revealed the interior of a vast storehouse filled to the roof support girders with seemingly endless racks packed with furniture and ordinary household goods. There was no hint of life anywhere on the spacious concrete floor. Now assured that all employees had left for home, the driver moved the van inside and waited for the door to close. Then he drove onto a platform scale large enough to hold an eighteen-wheel truck and trailer.
He stepped from the vehicle and walked over to a small instrument panel on a pedestal and pressed a code into a switch labeled Engage Weighin. The platform vibrated and then began to sink beneath the floor, revealing itself to be a huge freight elevator. After it settled onto the basement floor, the driver eased the van into a large tunnel while behind him the elevator automatically returned to the upper storage floor.
The tunnel stretched for nearly a full kilometer before ending deep beneath the main floor of another huge warehouse. Here in a vast subterranean complex the Zolar family conducted their criminal operations, while operating as a legitimate business on the main floor.
On the honest business level, regular employees entered a glass entrance to administration offices that ran along one entire wall of the building. The rest of the spacious floor housed thousands of valuable paintings, sculptures, and a great variety of antiques. All had impeccably bona fide origins and were legally purchased and sold on the open market. A separate department at the rear housed the preservation department, where a small team of master craftsmen worked to restore damaged art and ancient artifacts to their original splendor. None of the employees of Zolar International or Logan Storage Company, even those with twenty years of service or more, remotely suspected the great clandestine operation that took place beneath their feet.
The driver exited the tunnel and entered an enormous sprawlin
g secret sub-basement whose interior floor space was even larger than the main surface level 20 meters (66 feet) above. About two-thirds of the area was devoted to the accumulation, storage, and eventual sale of stolen and smuggled artworks.
The remaining third was set aside for the Zolar family's thriving artifact forgery and fabrication program.
This subterranean level was known only to the immediate members of the Zolar family, a few loyal copartners in the operation, and the original construction crew, who were brought in from Russia and then returned when the subterranean rooms were completed, so no outsiders could reveal the facility's existence.
The driver slipped from behind the steering wheel, walked around to the rear of the van and pulled a long metal cylinder from inside that was attached to a cart whose wheels automatically unfolded once it was pulled free, like an ambulance gurney. When all four wheels were extended, he rolled the cart and cylinder across the huge basement toward a closed room.
As he pushed, the van driver stared at his reflection in the polished metal of the cylinder. He was of average height with a well-rounded stomach. He looked heavier than his actual weight because of a tight-fitting pair of white coveralls. His medium brown hair was clipped short in a military crew cut, and his cheeks and chin were closely shaven. He found it amusing that his shamrock green eyes took on a silver tint from the aluminum container. Now deceptively dreamy, they could turn as hard as flint when he was angry or tense. A police detective, good at providing accurate descriptions, would have described Charles Zolar, legal name Charles Oxley, as a con man who did not look like a con man.
His brothers, Joseph Zolar and Cyrus Sarason, opened the door and stepped from the room to affectionately embrace him.
"Congratulations," said Sarason, "a remarkable triumph of subterfuge."
Zolar nodded. "Our father couldn't have planned a smoother theft. You've done the family proud."
"Praise indeed," Oxley said, smiling. "You don't know how happy I am to finally deliver the mummy to a safe place."