“Whatever. What’s the difference? It’s stone.”
“Right. But some stones are softer than others.”
Spencer regarded the altar. “Softer,” he repeated.
“Right. Do you see any engravings on that side? Pictographs?”
“Well, not really. I mean, yes, but they’re eroded from the weather. Faint. More like bumps.”
“Right. Because the stone’s soft.”
“Uh-huh. So you said. And that’s important because…?”
“Because one of the ways you might make it easier to move from the cave to its present location might be to hollow the biggest pieces out.”
Spencer’s eyes narrowed and he nodded. “Okay…I follow you. You think the columns are hollow?”
Drake tapped the nearest one again. “Hard to tell. But my bet is, yes. It would make sense to do if they had sufficient time. Might cut the weight by half, or more, making it way easier to drag from the cave and assemble.”
“Still thousands of pounds, though. As in tons. Damned thing probably weighs as much as a Chrysler.”
“Right. But what if Palenko had time on his hands and was thinking of an original hiding place? He was a genius. What if he arrived at the same conclusion?”
Spencer grinned. “Then you’re both crazy?”
“Maybe.” Drake got back on his knees and began energetically scraping more dirt from the base of one of the columns. With a roll of his eyes, Spencer reluctantly joined him.
“You really think Uncle Nutty tunneled beneath this to stash his ore? Why not just leave it in the cave?” he asked.
“I don’t believe he left it there.”
Two hours later they’d excavated from beneath the center of the first column sufficiently for Drake to lie in the trench and poke his head under it with his flashlight.
“Well? Anything?”
Drake edged back out and shook his head. “Nope. But I was right. It’s hollow.”
“Great,” Spencer said, his tone dry.
“Let’s do the other one.”
“Sure. My blisters need blisters. They’re getting lonely.”
The heat of the day rose as they worked, and by the time they’d cleared another trench, the air was stifling. Both Spencer and Drake poured sweat, their torsos slick with it. They took a break to rehydrate, and Drake pulled on his filthy T-shirt and grabbed his flashlight.
“Time to see whether this has all been worth it,” he said.
Spencer waved in assent as he swallowed more water.
Drake lowered himself into the depression and slid beneath the column. Spencer set his canteen down and took a couple of steps toward him.
“Anything?”
“This one’s not hollow. No. Wait. It is. There’s something stuck in the cavity.”
Drake unsheathed his knife and began chipping away. A few moments later he pulled his head out just before a loud thump issued from the base.
He looked up at Spencer, dirt and flecks of mortar on his grinning face. “Bingo.”
Spencer got into the ditch with him, and together they manhandled a fiberglass container from under the column, scraping more dirt out of the way so it could clear. Spencer hoisted the box, veins bulging in his forehead as he strained under the weight, and set it on the ground.
“Damn. Must be at least a hundred pounds. Maybe more like one-twenty. I thought you said he made off with only twenty pounds of ore,” Spencer said.
“I did. Twenty-four.”
“So what now? You thinking about opening it, just to take a little peek?”
Drake scraped a coating of moist dirt off the container, where the universal radiation hazard symbol was embossed in yellow, and tapped it with his finger.
“Might be a really bad idea to open it. Pandora’s box and all. Unless you’ve decided you never want to have children and want to join the worms glowing in the dark.”
Spencer nodded in comprehension. “That’s why it’s so heavy. Lead shielding.”
“Yup. And a lot of it. Maybe we should just wait for the experts on this one…?”
“Not a bad idea.”
“I have them every now and then.”
They stared at the container, unsure of how to proceed now that they’d accomplished the impossible. Drake caught Spencer’s eye.
“I’d buy you a drink to celebrate if there was a bar within five hundred miles,” Drake said.
“And I’d let you. But no dancing.”
“Right. Got to establish boundaries.”
“Exactly.”
Drake brushed dirt off his arms. “You going to call the CIA?”
“And Jorge. I’d say we’re ready for the onslaught now, wouldn’t you?”
“Not that I don’t enjoy hanging out in a cave full of ghosts and sleeping in a tent, praying no snakes get me.”
Together they dragged the container into the cave, and Spencer got on the sat phone while Allie examined the box. He gave Jorge the coordinates and they agreed that the first group would arrive the following day. The next call was to Spencer’s contact at the embassy, who passed him to someone who called himself Mr. Smith. Spencer described Drake’s meeting with the three agents in Atalaya, and Mr. Smith acted noncommittal. As the phone ran low on juice, Spencer lost his patience.
“Get on the horn with this Gus guy, and tell him we’ve located Palenko. I’ll call back in two hours. Write that down. Palenko.” Spencer stabbed the off button and looked around the grotto with annoyance. “Idiot. I hate the way these spooks try to say nothing and milk you for information. It’s infuriating.”
“I’d say you handled that well,” Allie said with a smirk.
“Yeah, well, I have a little problem with authority. We all have our crosses to bear.”
Allie retired for her afternoon rest, her energy still low as the heat rose outside the cave. When Spencer called back later, he was immediately patched through to someone different, and Spencer could hear an engine in the background.
“Who is this?” Spencer demanded.
“Gus. You wanted to talk?”
Spencer handed Drake the phone.
“Hello? Gus?”
“Yes. Mr. Ramsey?”
“Speaking. The battery’s low, so I’ll make this quick. I have what you’re after. We need to do an exchange.”
There was a pause on the line. “You found it?”
“Correct. I have it in my possession. That should be worth a hell of a lot more than fifty million after everything I’ve been through.”
“Name your price.”
Drake covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “He said name your price,” he whispered.
“Damn. Um, tell him a hundred million. And we split it three ways, all right?”
Drake looked at him like he was crazy, but Spencer didn’t flinch, and Drake decided he could learn a thing or two from him.
“Gus?”
“Yes.”
“The number’s a hundred.”
“You have it with you?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Done. Where do you want the funds sent?”
Drake gave him his bank account number and bank name. “It’s the Menlo Park branch.”
“We’ll figure it out. Son, you wouldn’t be pulling a fast one, would you?”
“Do I sound particularly playful right now, Gus? I’ve got a gunshot wound, and one of my group is dead. You want to make it two hundred?” Drake had already learned one lesson from Spencer.
“Slow down. I was just asking. Because you don’t want to screw us over.”
“A deal’s a deal. It’s yours for a hundred. Going once. Going twice…”
“We’ll do the wire today.”
“And I don’t want any tax problems.”
“We’ll handle that.”
“Okay. Once I verify the funds arrived, I’ll tell you where to find the container.”
“You aren’t going to meet me with it?”
“Gus, I’m in the middle o
f the frigging Amazon rainforest. Not that I don’t trust you, but no, I’m not going to stand out in some field while you helicopter in, hoping you don’t take a sniper shot at me. You pay, you get the box, and you do whatever you want with it from there. That’s the deal. And then we’re done. Agreed?”
Gus paused, and when he spoke, Drake could have sworn there was a smile in his voice.
“Done. Here’s a number. Call me once you’ve verified the funds. I’ll arrange for a helicopter. And leave the sniper at home.” He rattled off a U.S. number, and Drake repeated it back to him.
“How long will it take?” Drake asked.
“A few hours.”
“Fair enough. Oh, and forget about triangulating this phone. I’m nowhere near the ore. If the money’s not there by the end of the day, I’ll assume you double-crossed me, and you can spend the rest of your life looking for it.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Make sure it doesn’t.”
Drake shut the phone off, then pulled the battery and put it in his pocket. Spencer looked at him with new respect.
“They went for it?”
“Just like you said. Although I would have given it to them for free.”
“I know. But that’s not how these guys work. If you don’t make them pay, they start thinking maybe you’re holding out on them. That’s just the way they are. They’re slippery, so they assume everyone else has an angle, too. Now they believe yours is money, and they’ll like that, because they understand it, and money’s nothing to them. They make a phone call, a bank somewhere with an operational account does a wire, and that’s it. There’s plenty more where that came from, and a hundred million won’t even get you a decent jet fighter, so in the scheme of things, it’s chump change. You could have asked for a billion, but then they might have had trouble doing the deal quickly.”
“A hundred million’s not chump change to me.”
“Me either. Partner. Remember, thirty-three of it’s mine.”
“Only if you help me drag this thing along the river until we find a clearing.”
“That’s a tough one. Thirty-three mil for an hour’s work…”
“I thought you’d see my side of it.”
Drake and Spencer improvised a sled for the container using two saplings and one of the backpacks, and spent the remainder of the afternoon lugging the ore down the river to a small area of beach a half mile away. It started raining as they arrived, and they slid the box into the backpack and zipped it closed. Drake entered a waypoint into Jack’s portable GPS and they made their way back to Paititi, the rain having already erased most of the sled tracks.
The phone was blinking a low-battery indicator when Spencer called Jorge and gave him the coordinates for the city. The next call to the international operator got the bank’s phone number, and after one minute on hold Drake confirmed that the money had hit.
When Drake called Gus back, the phone was beeping every twenty seconds to alert him that it was about to shut down. He gave Gus the location, wished him well, and then the phone went dead in his hand. Drake tossed it to Spencer, who dropped it into his backpack and grinned at Drake.
“Fish for dinner? It’s on me.”
Chapter Forty-Four
The Sikorsky helicopter’s huge blades beat at the air like a jilted bride as it hovered over the clearing, the surrounding trees shaking from the downdraft. The winch operator leaned out the door as he lowered the final wooden crate through the canopy at the end of a steel cable. The container set down next to five of its twins, and two workers ran to it and disconnected a large hook from the harness. The other fourteen men stood in a loose ring around the boxes, watching the display while Jorge chatted with Spencer and Drake near the cavern mouth.
Six hours later Allie had been airlifted to a military hospital, the area quiet except for the footsteps of the armed men guarding the perimeter. Deep inside the cave, a generator powered oversized work lights in the sinkhole chamber as the first of the divers lowered himself down a rope ladder to the water’s surface, lights on either shoulder mounted to his buoyancy control vest. A second joined him and, after several seconds, dropped into the inky pool. When they slipped beneath the surface, the hush of the surroundings seemed to weigh heavier on the gathered men – Jorge, Spencer and Drake, and four archeologists from Lima who had accompanied the multinational team.
“There will be another dozen divers arriving tomorrow. The military’s flying them in. Sorry about the soldiers everywhere, but it’s a necessity. We don’t want one of the cartels thinking about grabbing an easy payday,” Jorge said, explaining the two dozen heavily armed Peruvian Special Forces commandos, who had arrived shortly after the scientists and immediately mounted armed patrols.
“That seems prudent. Better them than the alternative,” Drake said, thinking about the CIA.
“The mass burial site is stunning. This is an unprecedented opportunity to study every aspect of a functioning Inca city’s society. So much was eradicated by the Spanish that almost all of our understanding of Inca civilization is based on fragments and hearsay. And of course, the reports that the clergy created – the codices that purport to tell about the Inca Empire.”
Spencer shook his head. “As you said earlier, those are highly questionable. Likely a great deal of distortion based on bias and inaccuracies.”
“Yes, but now we have thousands of skeletons, and each is a kind of historical record that will offer invaluable information on everything from diet, to medicine, to life expectancy…and that’s not even counting what we could encounter once we begin excavation of the ruins.” Jorge paused. “This is the most important single find in our history, for that reason alone. Never mind the Inca treasure, although that will certainly also afford unique insights into the culture.”
Drake shook his head as if to clear it. “It was my father’s dream to find Paititi. I’m humbled I could fulfill his ambition.”
Jorge nodded. “I’d say you more than did so. You’ll be quite famous before long. I’m green with envy, actually. And thrilled to be working with you.”
A radio crackled, and one of the scientists lowered a huge steel basket into the water, suspended on a cable hanging from a portable crane that had been assembled and secured in place on the rim after the archeologists had photographed the stunning emerald ring and painstakingly cleared a section for the workers, laying down plywood for protection. The radio emitted a burst of static and the crane operator engaged a lever. The high-pitched whine of an electric motor filled the chamber, and the conversation ebbed as everyone waited to see what would emerge from the depths.
The cage broke the surface and the lights glinted off a huge gold ornamental headdress, easily four feet tall by six wide, ornately crafted and stunning. Emeralds the size of tennis balls adorned the crest, and Drake could hear a collective gasp from the assembly.
“My…God…it’s incredible,” Jorge whispered as the crane swung slowly and three men reached out to guide the basket to a position on the cave floor. Cameras flashed, memorializing the amazing find, and it took all three of them to remove it.
Spencer, Drake, and Jorge approached the relic as the crane operator moved the basket back over the pool and lowered it back into the water. Jorge reached out with a tentative hand and touched the glistening surface of an emerald in obvious awe.
The archeologist with the radio walked over as more pictures were taken and leaned into Jorge. After a brief discussion, Jorge nodded and returned his attention to Drake and Spencer.
“The divers say that the entire bottom is filled with artifacts, and that we’ll need more equipment to get some of it out. They spotted part of the legendary Lost Chain of Huayna Capac, and that alone will require a larger crane. This…I can’t describe to you what this means to our country,” Jorge said, his eyes gleaming in the bright glare of the work lights. Unable to contain himself, he hugged Drake, who looked at Spencer out of the corner of his eye as he endured the embrace, obvi
ously uncomfortable.
Spencer smiled and turned away. When Drake joined him, Spencer whispered to him as the crane began whining again, “Dude, you’re a hero. And this goes with the territory.”
“My head still hurts. They didn’t warn me about that in hero school.”
“Yeah, they probably left out some parts. Don’t worry. You’ll adapt.”
They watched the steel cable vibrating as the winch reeled it back in, and Spencer shook his head. “Who woulda thunk, huh?”
“It’s pretty surreal.”
“Wait until the parade.”
Drake gave him a look of alarm. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Only a little. They take this kind of thing seriously. You and Allie are now national treasures. You don’t get to just slip away with a fat check. You’re a celebrity. The man of the hour.”
“Well, so are you. You helped discover it, too. You’re a partner, remember?”
Spencer shook his head. “I’m just the hired sidekick. This one’s all yours. Although I still want my cut…”
“I figured.”
~ ~ ~
Two weeks later the last of the treasure had been raised, and a conservative estimation had established the value at in excess of twenty billion dollars. Paititi now had more than a hundred workers and double that many soldiers guarding it as word of the find had spread. News crews had descended on the area in spite of the best efforts of the administration, and Drake had been hounded for interviews, finally limiting his public contact to an hour every morning. Allie, now fully healed and back at Paititi, seemed more fascinated by the archeological aspects of the find than the prospect of becoming rich, which surprised neither Spencer nor Drake.
Confirmation had come from the Peruvian president that they would receive two billion dollars as a finder’s fee for the discovery, and that additionally, a new museum would be built to house the incredible riches on land near the presidential headquarters in Lima. That morning, Drake had been informed that they would all be honored at a groundbreaking ceremony at the end of the week, where they would be awarded Peru’s highest honor before a crowd of thousands.
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