by Alex Archer
Claire bit her lip nervously, then said, “A week.”
Annja sat back, her thoughts churning furiously. A week was a long time to be out of touch. If something had happened, it might already be too late for help to do any good....
“Did he have any other communication equipment with him besides the satellite phone?”
“Richard is a firm believer in redundancy. Besides the two satellite phones, they also had a standard wireless-radio set. They were also testing one of those new solar-powered laptops.”
Annja smiled reassuringly, but inside she wasn’t happy. If Dr. Knowles had followed standard procedure, he would have distributed the communications equipment among several people in the group. That way they wouldn’t lose their ability to communicate with the outside world if one of them were lost to injury or accident. Of course, there was the chance that he hadn’t followed the usual procedures, but everything she’d heard so far made him sound like a very careful man.
“I saw you speaking with the police earlier this afternoon. Was that about Richard?”
“Yes. I have men and equipment lined up and ready to make the trip to Cocos Island, but trying to get official permission to go is like pulling teeth. My permits are all tied up with red tape and it looks like it will be weeks before it gets all sorted out. I thought the police might be able to help me make my case, but they’ve been unwilling to interfere in what they see as a noncriminal matter.”
Bureaucratic red tape was something Annja was intimately familiar with. Claire was right; it could take weeks before it was resolved. If her husband was in danger or, heaven forbid, seriously injured, help would arrive far too late to do him any good. They needed to act now.
“It seems fate has put us together for a reason, Claire,” Annja said. She explained about her background in archaeology, starting with her first dig at Hadrian’s Wall in England, and her history of finding objects and civilizations that most thought to be myth or legend. She told Claire about her work with Chasing History’s Monsters and how that had brought her in touch with quite a few people over the years.
“I’m sure that my contacts in the Costa Rican government can help expedite your paperwork, but it’s likely that one of the requirements of doing so will be my presence as part of the expedition.”
Claire eyed her steadily. “Just what is this going to cost me?”
“Ten percent of the salvage if the treasure is recovered. Basic expenses—food, transportation, any gear I might need—if it isn’t.”
It was a fair deal, Annja thought. International law required them to turn the treasure over to its rightful owners—either the Peruvian government or the Costa Rican government, depending on how you looked at it—in exchange for a 20 percent salvage fee. Treasure hunters had been estimating the value of the loot at something in the neighborhood of sixty million dollars, but Annja knew those estimates were always pure guesswork. More important, she thought, it gives me the chance to take part in one of the biggest treasure hunts of the twenty-first century.
Claire paused, appeared to think it over and then stuck out her hand. “Deal,” she said. “I’ll have my attorney draw up a contract to that effect. With my husband missing, I’ll use my power of attorney to retroactively agree on his behalf. If he’s found the treasure, you’ll be a rich woman.”
Annja took Claire’s hand in her own and shook on their agreement.
“My priority is finding your husband,” she said. “We can worry about the lost Treasure of Lima later.”
She glanced around, spotted a waiter and waved him over.
“It’s not too late to make a few calls this evening, so I’ll do so and get back to you in the morning if I hear anything. Here’s my cell number,” she said, grabbing a paper napkin from the waiter as he arrived and writing her number on it for Claire. “Call me if you hear anything new.”
Claire took the napkin with a bit of a self-deprecatory laugh. “I can’t believe I started to explain to you the role of an antiquities department,” she said. “How ridiculous.”
Annja shrugged it off. “No problem. It’s actually nice not to be recognized for a change,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t worry. We’ll find out what happened to your husband. I promise.”
5
After dinner, Annja returned to her hotel room to make some phone calls. She hadn’t been entirely honest when she’d told Claire that she had contacts in the Costa Rican government. She didn’t; but she bet she knew one or two others who certainly did. She was confident that she could get them to grease the wheels for her and convince those in charge to issue the permits they needed for their rescue mission to Cocos Island. Especially when she told them what else they might find there.
Her first—and only—call, as it turned out, was to Roux.
Annja and Roux had what could only be described as a unique relationship. After all, it wasn’t every day that your sometime partner, sometime mentor was a four-hundred-plus-year-old French knight once charged with defending Joan of Arc from the English!
Annja and Roux had met in the countryside outside Paris several years ago. As usual, Annja was on assignment for Chasing History’s Monsters, doing an episode on the werewolflike creature known as the Beast of Gévaudan, which had once terrorized the French countryside. Roux, on the other hand, had been searching for something even more mystical—the last remaining piece of Joan’s shattered sword. Roux was convinced that it was the sword that was responsible for keeping him and his squire, Garin Braden—also present on the day of Joan’s execution—alive through the centuries, and he’d been working to restore the blade to its original condition. As it turned out, it was Annja who had discovered that final, missing piece—a discovery that would bring them all together and change all three of their lives in unexpected ways.
More than a few people, including both Roux and Garin at various times, had tried to take the sword away from her after it had miraculously restored itself, but she refused to allow that to happen; she was as bound to the sword now as the sword was to her.
Over time, Roux had become both a mentor and sometime business partner. She’d used his knowledge to chase down more than one artifact in the past, making them both a tidy bit of money. Not that Roux needed it; more than two hundred years of investments, both in Europe and abroad, had made him a very wealthy man. It wasn’t the money but rather the thrill of the chase that excited Roux, and while he would sometimes accompany Annja on one of her expeditions, for the most part he lived a bit vicariously through her adventures and exploits.
The network of contacts Roux had built up over the years was more than impressive, as well. For a man who disliked the spotlight and did most of his business dealings from behind the protective covering of shell companies and layered corporate connections, he certainly knew a lot of people in a lot of places, something that Annja was counting on now.
It was just after 9:00 p.m. in Costa Rica, which made it just after five in the morning in Paris. Annja knew that Roux was an early riser, however, and so didn’t hesitate to place the call.
The phone was picked up after only two rings.
“Good morning, Miss Creed.”
It was Henshaw, Roux’s majordomo and butler. He took his duties seriously; in all the time she’d known him, she didn’t think he’d ever used her first name.
“Good morning, Henshaw,” she replied in the same formal tone, trying not to laugh as she did it. “Is he in?”
“He is indeed. Shall I get him?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all, Miss Creed.”
Roux was on the line moments later.
“What do you need, my dear?”
Annja frowned. “What makes you think I need anything? Perhaps I just called you up to say hello and chat for a bit.”
Roux chuckled.
“I can see your ability to lie hasn’t improved in the slightest. You really need to work on that verbal tic of yours.”
“Verbal tic?” Annja asked, a bit indignant at the suggestion.
Besides artifact hunting, one of Roux’s other major pleasures in life was gambling. He would spend weeks at a time at the high-stakes poker games in places like Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, routinely winning and losing fortunes that would make other people weep.
A “tic” was just gambling slang for an unconscious behavior that a cardplayer displays that gives away knowledge of his hand to the other players. It could be something as obvious as a player wetting their lips when they get a good hand to something more obscure, like that slight twitch of their eye muscles when they are about to bluff. Tics were as varied and as unique as the players themselves, and spotting one wasn’t always easy.
Roux, however, had elevated the process to an art form.
“Yes, a verbal tic. You have a tendency to ask rhetorical questions whenever you’re lying. So I’ll ask again, what do you need?”
It was easier to just let it go than argue further. Besides, she did need something, verbal tic or not.
“I need some help getting an expedition permit approved by the Costa Rican government.”
She could also feel Roux sitting up straighter in his chair, his interest now piqued.
“And what, might I ask, is this expedition looking for?”
“A missing archaeologist.”
“Oh.” Roux’s enthusiasm audibly deflated.
“That and the Treasure of Lima.”
There was a moment of silence on the line and then Roux asked her to repeat what she’d just said.
“You heard me just fine, Roux.”
She went on to explain what she knew of the situation, how Knowles had gone missing just after he thought he’d found some actual evidence of the treasure and how his wife was being prevented from going to the island due to bureaucratic red tape.
Roux didn’t give two hoots about Dr. Knowles’s situation. Annja knew that. Roux came from another age, when death was common and life was cheap. But being a part of the team that located and salvaged the Treasure of Lima? That was something he would have a hard time passing up, which was precisely why Annja had pitched the problem the way she had.
“As a matter of fact, I do have a few acquaintances in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism,” Roux said. “Let me make a few phone calls and I’ll get right back to you. What hotel are you at?”
Annja gave him the name of the hotel and her room number. Roux had already hung up by the time she got to goodbye. She didn’t take offense; that was just Roux.
While she waited for Roux’s return call, Annja fired up her laptop and dug into some research, wanting to refresh her memory on the history of the treasure.
According to her sources, the majority of South America was under Spanish colonial rule at the start of the nineteenth century and governed via the viceroyalty of Peru in Lima, established back in 1542. At the height of its power, almost all of the goods headed to Spain from the territories of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina were first sent to the port of Callao, just west of Lima, and then sent on to the old country. As a result, the city of Lima became a repository for the wealth collected on behalf of the empire, especially the wealth collected by the church.
The wars for independence broke out in 1810, and by 1820 the republics of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia had all declared their independence from Spanish rule. The rebels then set their sights on Peru and several of them, including the Argentinean general José de San Martín, Chilean naval commander Lord Cochrane and Bolivian leader Simón Bolívar, worked together to pressure the royalists from several sides. By July 1820 it was clear that the city of Lima would fall to the rebels. Before that could happen, Viceroy José de la Serna made plans to protect the treasure until the insurrection had been put to rest.
The viceroy hired William Thompson, captain of the English brig the Mary Dear, to transport the treasure to de la Serna’s allies in Mexico, where it could be stored safely until it was either returned to Lima or shipped on to Madrid. Unfortunately for the viceroy and his plans, that much money, equal to something in the neighborhood of sixty million dollars in today’s currency, was too much of a temptation for Captain Thompson. On the first night of their voyage, he and his men slaughtered the six soldiers and two priests that the viceroy had sent along to accompany the treasure and tossed their bodies overboard. They then set sail for Cocos Island, off the coast of Costa Rica, where they planned to bury the treasure and lie low for several months before returning for it.
The best-laid plans of mice and men, Annja thought.
The Mary Dear ran into a British man-of-war and after a brief chase were forced to surrender. Captain and crew were tried for piracy on the high seas, with only Thompson and his first mate managing to avoid the death penalty by agreeing to show the British captain where they had hidden the treasure. The rest of Thompson’s crew were hung from the masts of the British ship before it, in turn, set sail for Cocos.
Historians differed on what happened next, Annja discovered. Some said that Captain Thompson led the British commander to the treasure, at which point it was dug up, loaded aboard the man-of-war and transported to England, where it still sits in the Royal Treasury today. Others that Thompson led the British to the treasure as promised, but killed them all before they could dig up even a single gold coin. In a third version, Thompson never encountered the British at all, ending up marooned on the island for several years with only his first mate for company when his ship was wrecked by a rogue wave in the midst of a tropical storm.
Annja knew the truth probably lay somewhere in the middle, in that place where all the stories intersected with one another. It was this approach that had allowed her to find other ancient sites and artifacts when most believed they were no more than myth or legend. She intended to do the same thing here. First she’d find out what had happened to Dr. Knowles and then she’d find the treasure, she told herself with a smile.
Pleased with what she’d accomplished so far, she picked up the phone and ordered a snack and a cup of hot chocolate from room service. She’d just replaced the phone in the receiver when it rang beneath her hand.
It was Roux.
“That didn’t take long,” she said after they’d exchanged hellos.
“No reason it should. The tourism minister owed me a favor. I persuaded him to put a little pressure on the bureaucrat who was holding up the paperwork and, wouldn’t you know it, the permits were suddenly pushed through with alacrity.”
Annja breathed a sigh of relief. If the permits hadn’t been forthcoming, she’d planned to go without them—after all, a man’s life might be at stake—but having them would make things much easier in the long run.
Roux, however, wasn’t finished.
“There is, however, a small price attached.”
Annja tensed. If there was money involved, Roux wouldn’t have even mentioned it to her; he’d have simply paid it and taken it out of their share when they recovered the treasure. Which meant it was something else.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“In the course of our conversation, I happened to mention you to my friend César. Turns out he’s a big fan of the infamous Annja Creed and he requested that you have dinner with him as the price for his assistance.”
Great, she thought. Guy can’t get a date on his own so he has to bribe Roux into making one for him.
“This is the tourism minister, right?”
“That’s correct.”
She pulled her computer closer so she could reach the keyboard. “What’s his name again?”
Roux told her.
She quickly searched for him. The picture that came up on the screen was a surprise. She wasn’t exactly sure what
she’d been expecting, maybe an elderly Hispanic man with a leer in his eye, but what she got was an image of a well-dressed man in his early thirties, with a neatly trimmed goatee and dark hair.
Maybe dinner wouldn’t be so bad after all, she thought. Still, she had her priorities.
“I don’t have time to be gallivanting about on dinner dates when Dr. Knowles might be in serious danger,” she said sharply, hoping that might settle it.
Roux, however, was prepared for just such a response.
“I quite agree. Which is why I agreed that you’d have dinner with him when you returned from Cocos Island. The permits will be waiting for you at the front desk in the morning. Au revoir, my dear.”
Annja opened her mouth to protest, only to find herself talking to the dial tone.
She glanced once more at César’s picture, sighed in resignation and went back to her research. There was a lot she needed to familiarize herself with if they were going to head out in the morning.
6
Annja was waiting in the lobby the next day when the official courier arrived at the hotel with their expedition permits. She checked them over to be certain they were correct and then signed in receipt of them. The permits allowed them to travel to the island and spend a week searching for Dr. Knowles and the rest of his team, noting that the island was a World Heritage site and that care should be taken to have as little negative impact on the local ecology as possible.
That was fine with Annja; she wasn’t there to excavate anything, anyway. At least, not unless they found the treasure, she thought with a grin. She used the housephone to call Claire, give her the good news and suggest they meet on the patio for breakfast to go over the remaining details. Claire agreed.
By the time the other woman arrived twenty minutes later with a burly, tattooed man with a thick handlebar mustache in tow, Annja was halfway through her breakfast. The newcomer was introduced as Marcos Rivera, leader of the four men who had been hired to help Claire get to the island and assist with the search once they’d arrived.