River of Death
Page 15
‘Mr Hamilton?’ he said. ‘Major Ramirez. At your service.’
‘You have already been of more than enough service.’ They shook hands. ‘We are most grateful. That really was efficient.’
‘My men are disappointed,’ Ramirez said. ‘We had expected a rather more—ah—challenging training exercise. You wish to leave now?’
‘An hour, if we may.’ Hamilton pointed to Von Manteuffel. ‘I’d like to speak to that man.’
Von Manteuffel was brought forward between two soldiers. His face was grey and without expression.
Hamilton said: ‘Major, this is Major-General Wolfgang Von Manteuffel of the S.S.’
‘The last of the infamous Nazi war-time criminals, no? I do not have to shake hands?’
‘No.’ Hamilton looked consideringly at Von Manteuffel. ‘You have, of course, murdered Colonel Spaatz. And Hiller. Along, of course, with Dr Huston, his daughter, scores of Muscias and God knows how many others. To every road there is an end. With your permission, Major, there are a couple of things I would like to show Von Manteuffel.’
Accompanied by a group of soldiers armed with shovels, powerful electric torches and two large battery-powered floodlamps, they made their way towards the base of the ziggurat.
‘This ziggurat is unique,’ Hamilton said. ‘Every other known one is solid throughout. This one has been hollowed out and honeycombed like the great Egyptian ones. Please follow me.’
He led them along a winding, crumbling passage-way until they came to a low, vaulted cavern, smooth-walled, with no further passageway leading from it. The floor was deeply covered with broken fragments of rock and a great deal of gravel to a depth of between one and two feet. Hamilton spoke to Ramirez and indicated a particular area: eight soldiers with shovels immediately began to excavate this area. In a short time an area of about six feet by six had been cleared to reveal a square slab of stone with an inset iron ring at either end. Crowbars were inserted into the rings and the slab, not without some considerable difficulty, lifted clear.
A shallow flight of stairs led down from the opening in the cavern floor. They moved down these, along a rough-hewn passage and halted before a heavy wooden door.
Hamilton said: ‘Well, Serrano, this is where you come into your own. As for you, Von Manteuffel, let your last reflections on earth be the most ironic you’ve ever had. You’d have given your heart and your soul—if you ever had one—for what lies beyond that door but you sat atop it all those years and never dreamed it was there.’
He paused, as if deep in thought, then said: ‘It’s a mite dark in there. There are no windows or lights. If you would be so kind, Major, as to have your men switch on all torches and floodlamps. I’m afraid the air will also be a bit musty, but it won’t kill you. Ramon, Navarro, give me a hand with this door.’
The door proved to be reluctant to yield, but with a sepulchral creaking sound, yield it eventually did. Hamilton took one of the floodlights and passed through, the others crowding close behind.
The large square cavern was hewn from the solid rock. All four sides had stepped rock shelves cut into them to a depth of fifteen inches. The spectacle was astonishing, far beyond any belief: the entire cavern gleamed and glittered with thousands upon thousands of artifacts in solid gold.
There were bowls, chalices, plates, all in solid gold. There were helmets, shields, plaques, necklets, busts and figurines, all in solid gold. There were bells, flutes, ocarinas, rope-chains, vases, breastplates, openwork headdresses, filigree masks and knives, all in solid gold. There were monkeys, alligators, snakes, eagles and condors, pelicans and vultures and innumerable jaguars, all in solid gold. And for good measure there were half a dozen open boxes, sparkling and glittering with an untold fortune in precious stones, more than half of them emeralds. It was a treasure house inconceivably far beyond the dreams of avarice.
It seemed as if the awed silence would last for ever. Serrano, at last, was the first to speak.
‘The lost treasure of the Indies. The El Dorado of a million dreams. The Spanish always believed that some vanished tribe had taken with them a huge treasure trove such as this: mankind has believed in the myth ever since and thousands have lost their lives in the search for El Dorado. But it was no myth, no myth.’
Serrano, it was clear, was scarcely capable of believing the evidence of his eyes.
‘It was a myth, all right,’ Hamilton said. ‘But the golden treasure was there all right but everybody looked for it in the wrong place—up in the Guianas. And they all looked for the wrong thing—they thought it was royal Inca gold. But it wasn’t. The people who made these were the Quimbaya of the Cauca valley, the greatest masters of the goldsmith’s art in history. For them gold had no commercial value, it was solely a thing of beauty.’
‘And the Spaniards would have melted the lot and sent it back to Spain in ingot form. Mr Hamilton, you have done the world of art an immeasurable service. And you were the only non-Indian alive who knew of this. You could have been the richest man alive.’
Hamilton shrugged. ‘Once a Quimbaya, always a Quimbaya.’
Ramirez said: ‘What will become of this?’
‘It is to be a national museum. The rightful owners, the Muscias, will return and become the custodians. Few people, I’m afraid, will ever see this—just accredited scholars from all over the world and but a few of those at a time. The Brazilian government—who don’t even know the location of this place yet—is determined that the Muscias, what’s left of them, will not be destroyed by civilisation.’
Hamilton looked at Von Manteuffel who was gazing, trance-like, at the immense fortune that had lain beneath his feet. He was stunned. But then so, too, was everyone else.
Hamilton said: ‘Von Manteuffel.’ Von Manteuffel turned his head slowly and looked at him like a sightless man.
‘Come. I have one last thing to show you.’
Hamilton led the way into another, much smaller cavern. Side by side at the far end lay two stone sarcophagi. Above each was a plain pine board with poker-burnt inscriptions.
Hamilton said: ‘A friend of mine did those, Von Manteuffel. Jim Clinton. Remember Jim Clinton? You should. After all, you murdered him shortly afterwards. Read them. Read them aloud.’
Still in the same odd sightless fashion Von Manteuffel looked slowly around, looked at Hamilton, and read: ‘Dr Hannibal Huston. R.I.P.’
‘And the other?’ Hamilton said.
‘Lucy Huston Hamilton. Beloved wife of John Hamilton. R.I.P.’
Everyone stared at Hamilton. Shocked comprehension came slowly but it came.
Von Manteuffel said: ‘I am a dead man.’
Hamilton, with Ramon and Navarro, Von Manteuffel and the others trudging along closely behind, made their way to a helicopter which was parked at the edge of the courtyard only yards from the rim of the plateau. Suddenly Von Manteuffel, wrists still handcuffed behind his back, ran towards the edge of the cliff. Ramon started after him, but Hamilton caught him by the arm.
‘Let him be. You heard what he said. He’s a dead man.’
About the Author
Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a-half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a schoolmaster. In 1983 he was awarded a D.Litt. from the same university.
By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest-selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra. He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.
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By Alistair MacLean
HMS Ulysses
The Guns of Navarone
South by Java Head
The Last Frontier
Night Without End
Fear is the Key
The Dark Crusader
The Satan Bug
The Golden Rendezvous
Ice Station Zebra
When Eight Bells Toll
Where Eagles Dare
Force 10 from Navarone
Puppet on a Chain
Caravan to Vaccarès
Bear Island
The Way to Dusty Death
Breakheart Pass
Circus
The Golden Gate
Seawitch
Goodbye California
Athabasca
River of Death
Partisans
Floodgate
San Andreas
The Lonely Sea (stories)
Santorini
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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1
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1981 then in paperback by Fontana 1982
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1981
Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © 1981 ISBN: 9780007289387
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