Inca Gold

    "You might have been wise to remove Amaru too."

    "I considered it. But he knows nothing that could lead international investigators to our doorstep."

    "Would you like another serving of pork?"

    "Yes, please."

    "Still, I don't like having a mad dog loose around the house."

    "Not to worry. Oddly, it was Chaco who gave me the idea of keeping Amaru on the payroll."

    "Why, so he can murder little old ladies whenever the mood strikes him?"

    "Nothing so ludicrous." Sarason smiled. "The man may well prove to be a valuable asset."

    "You mean as a hired killer."

    "I prefer to think of him as someone who eliminates obstacles. Let's face it, brother. I can't continue eliminating our enemies by myself without risk of eventual discovery and capture. The family should consider itself fortunate that I am not the only one who has the capacity to kill if necessary. Amaru makes an ideal executioner. He enjoys it."

    "Just be sure you keep him on a strong leash when he's out of his cage."

    "Not to worry," said Sarason firmly. Then he changed the subject. "Any buyers in mind for our Chachapoyan merchandise?"

    "A drug dealer by the name of Pedro Vincente," replied Zolar. "He hungers after anything that's pre-Columbian. He also pays a cash premium since it's a way for him to launder his drug profits."

    "And you take the cash and use it to finance our underground art and artifact operations."

    "An equitable arrangement for all concerned."

    "How soon before you make the sale?"

    "I'll set up a meeting with Vincente right after Sister Marta has your shipment cleaned up and ready for display. You should have your share of the profits within ten days."

    Sarason nodded and gazed at the bubbles in his beer. "I think you see through me, Joseph. I'm seriously considering retiring from the family business while I'm still healthy."

    Zolar looked at him with a shifty grin. "You do and you'll be throwing away two hundred million dollars."

    "What are you talking about?"

    "Your share of the treasure."

    Sarason paused with a forkful of pork in front of his mouth. "What treasure?"

    "You're the last of the family to learn what ultimate prize is within our grasp."

    "I don't follow you."

    "The object that will lead us to Huascar's treasure." Zolar looked at him slyly for a moment, then smiled. "We have the Golden Body Suit of Tiapollo."

    The fork dropped to the plate as Sarason stared in total incredulity. "You found Naymlap's mummy encased in his suit of gold? It is actually in your hands?"

    "Our hands, little brother. One evening, while searching through our father's old business records, I came upon a ledger itemizing his clandestine transactions. It was he who masterminded the mummy's theft from the museum in Spain."

    "The old fox, he never said a word."

    "He considered it the highlight of his plundering career, but too hot a subject to reveal to his own family."

    "How did you track it down?"

    "Father recorded the sale to a wealthy Sicilian mafioso. I sent our brother Charles to investigate, not expecting him to learn anything from a trail over seventy years old. Charles found the late mobster's villa and met with the son, who said his father had kept the mummy and its suit hidden away until he died in 1984 at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. The son then sold the mummy on the black market through his relatives in New York. The buyer was a rich junk dealer in Chicago by the name of Rummel."

    "I'm surprised the son spoke to Charles. Mafia families are not noted for revealing their involvement with stolen goods."

    "He not only spoke," said Zolar, "but received our brother like a long=lost relative and cooperated wholeheartedly by providing the name of the Chicago purchaser."

    "I underestimated Charles," Sarason said, finishing off his final morsel of braised pork. "I wasn't aware of his talent for obtaining information."

    "A cash payment of three million dollars helped immeasurably."

    Sarason frowned. "A bit generous, weren't we? The suit can't be worth more than half that much to a collector with deep pockets who has to keep it hidden."

    "Not at all. A cheap investment if the engraved images on the suit lead us to Huascar's golden chain."

    "The ultimate prize," Samson repeated his brother's phrase. "No single treasure in world history can match its value."

    "Dessert?" Zolar asked. "A slice of chocolate apricot torte?"

    "A very small slice and coffee, strong," answered Sarason. "How much extra did it cost to buy the suit from the junk dealer?"

    Zolar nodded, and again his serving lady silently complied. "Not a cent. We stole it. As luck would have it, our brother Samuel in New York had sold Rummel most of his collection of illegal pre-Columbian antiquities and knew the location of the concealed gallery that held the suit. He and Charles worked together on the theft."

    "I still can't believe it's in our hands."

    "A near thing too. Charles and Sam barely smuggled it from Rummel's penthouse before Customs agents stormed the place."

    Do you think they were tipped of?"

    Zolar shook his head. "Not by anyone on our end. Our brothers got away clean."

    "Where did they take it?" asked Sarason.

    Zolar smiled, but not with his eyes. "Nowhere. The mummy is still in the building. They rented an apartment six floors below Rummel and hid it there until we can safely move it to Galveston for a proper examination. Both Rummel and the Customs agents think it was already smuggled out of the building by a moving van."

    "A nice touch. But what happens now? The images engraved in the gold body casing have to be deciphered. Not a simple exercise."

    "I've hired the finest authorities on Inca art to decode and interpret the glyphs. A husband and wife team. He's an anthropologist and she's an archaeologist who excels as a decoding analyst with computers."

    "I should have known you'd cover every base," said Sarason, stirring his coffee. "But we'd better hope their version of the text is correct, or we'll be spending a lot of time and money chasing up and down Mexico after ghosts."

    Time is on our side," Zolar assured him confidentially. "Who but us could possibly have a clue to the treasure's burial site?"

    After a fruitless excursion to the archives of the Library of Congress, where he had hoped to find documentary evidence leading to the Concepcion's ultimate fate, Julien Perlmutter sat in the vast reading room. He closed a copy of the diary kept by Francis Drake and later presented to Queen Elizabeth, describing his epic voyage. The diary, lost for centuries, had only recently been discovered in the dusty basement of the royal archives in England.

    He leaned his great bulk back in the chair and sighed. The diary added little to what he already knew. Drake had sent the Concepcion back to England under the command of the Golden Hind's sailing master, Thomas Cuttill. The galleon was never seen again and was presumed lost at sea with all hands.

    Beyond that, the only mention of the fate of the Concepcion was unverified. It came from a book Perlmutter could recall reading on the Amazon River, published in 1939 by journalist/explorer Nicholas Bender, who followed the routes of the early explorers in search of El Dorado. Perlmutter called up the book from the library staff and reexamined it. In the Note section there was a she-t reference to a 1594 Portuguese survey expedition that had come upon an Englishman living with a tribe of local inhabitants beside the river. The Englishman claimed that he had served under the English sea dog, Francis Drake, who placed him in command of a Spanish treasure galleon that was swept into a jungle by an immense tidal wave. The Portuguese thought the man quite mad and continued on their mission, leaving him in the village where they found him.