Inca Gold

    "You're wasting your time," said Moore. "I did not allow my wife to work on the final translation with me. She has no idea of the key to the treasure's location."

    "The hell you say?"

    "He's telling the truth," Micki said, unruffled. "Henry wouldn't allow me to see the end results."

    "We're still left with a wi

    "Understood," said Oxley. "You work over Mrs. Moore as proposed until he cooperates,"

    "Either way, we get answers."

    Zolar stared at Moore. "Well, Doctor, it's your call."

    Moore looked at them in cold calculation. "Do with her what you will. It won't make any difference."

    A strange silence came over the Zolar brothers. Sarason, the grittiest of them all, stood open-mouthed, disbelieving. What sort of man could calmly, without the slightest hint of shame or fear, toss his wife to the wolves?

    "You can stand by while your wife is beaten and raped and murdered, and not say one word to stop it?" Zolar asked, studying Moore's reaction.

    Moore's expression remained unchanged. "Barbaric stupidity will gain you nothing."

    "He's bluffing." Moore needed an acid bath after the look Sarason gave him. "He'll crumble as soon as he hears her scream."

    Zolar shook his head. "I don't think so."

    "I agree," said Oxley. "We've underestimated his monumental greed and his ruthless mania for becoming a big star in the academic world. Am I right, Doctor?"

    Moore was unmoved by their contempt. Then he said, "Fifty percent of something beats a hundred percent of nothing, gentlemen."

    Zolar glanced at his brothers. Oxley gave a barely perceptible nod. Sarason clenched his fists so tightly they went ivory-he turned away but the expression on his face gave every indication of wanting to tear Moore's lungs out.

    "I think we can avoid further threats and settle this is an orderly ma

    "I have deciphered the description of the landmark that leads to the entrance of the cavern," said Moore, speaking slowly and distinctly. "There is no probability of error. I know the dimensions and its shape. I can recognize it from the air."

    His confident assertion was met with silence. Zolar walked over to the golden mummy and looked down at the glyphs etched in the gold covering. "Thirty percent. You'll have to make do with that."

    "Forty or nothing." Moore said resolutely.

    "Do you want it in writing?"

    "Would it stand up in a court of law?"

    "Probably not."

    "Then we'll just have to take each other at our word." Moore turned to his wife. "Sorry, my dear, I hope you didn't find this too upsetting. But you must understand. Some things are more important than marriage vows."

    What a strange woman, Zolar thought. She should have looked frightened and humiliated, but she showed no indication of it. "It's settled then," he said. "Since we're now working partners, I see no need to continue wearing our ski masks." He pulled it over his head and ran his hands through his hair. "Everyone try to get a good night's sleep. You will all fly to Guaymas, Mexico, on our company jet first thing in the morning."

    "Why Guaymas?" asked Micki Moore.

    "Two reasons. It's centrally located in the Gulf, and a good friend and client has an open invitation for my use of his hacienda just north of the port. The estate has a private airstrip, which makes it an ideal headquarters for conducting the search."

    "Aren't you coming?" asked Oxley.

    "I'll meet you in two days. I have a business meeting in Wichita, Kansas."

    Zolar turned to Sarason, leery that his brother might launch another rampage against Moore. But he need not have worried.

    Samson's face had a ghoulish grin. His brothers could not see inside his mind, see that he was happily imagining what Tupac Amaru would do to Henry Moore after the treasure was discovered.

    "Brunhilda has gone as far as she can go," said Yaeger, referring to his beloved computer terminal. "Together, we've painstakingly pieced together about ninety percent of the stringed codes. But there are a few permutations we haven't figured out--"

    "Permutations?" muttered Pitt, sitting across from Yaeger in the conference room.

    "The different arrangements in lineal order and color of the quipu's coiled wire cables."

    Pitt shrugged and looked around the room. Four other men were there-- Admiral Sandecker, Al Giordino, Rudi Gu

    "I really must work on my vocabulary," Pitt murmured. He slouched into a comfortable position and stared at the computer genius who stood behind a podium under a large wall screen.

    "As I was about to explain," Yaeger continued, "a few of the knots and coils are indecipherable. After applying the most sophisticated and advanced information and data analysis techniques known to man, the best I can offer is a rough account of the story."

    "Even a mastermind like you?" asked Gu

    "Even Einstein. Unless he'd unearthed an Inca Rosetta Stone or a sixteenth-century how-to book on the art of creating your very own quipu, he'd have worked in a vacuum too."

    "If you're going to tell us the show ends with no grand climax," said Giordino, "I'm going to lunch."

    "Drake's quipu is a complex representation of numerical data," Yaeger pushed on, undaunted by Giordino's sarcasm, "but it's not strong on blow-by-blow descriptions of events. You can't narrate visual action and drama with strategically placed knots on a few coils of colored wire. The quipu can only offer sketchy accounts of the people who walked on and off this particular stage of history."

    "You've made your point," said Sandecker, waving one of his bulbous cigars. "Now why don't you tell us what you sifted from the maze?"

    Yaeger nodded and lowered the conference room lights. He switched on a slide projector that threw an early Spanish map of the coast of North and South America on the wall screen. He picked up a metal pointer that telescoped like an automobile radio aerial and casually aimed it in the general direction of the map.

    "Without a long-winded history lesson, I'll just say that after Huascar, the legitimate heir to the Inca throne, was defeated and overthrown by his bastard half-brother, Atahualpa, in 1533, he ordered his kingdom's treasury and other royal riches to be hidden high in the Andes. A wise move, as it turned out. During his imprisonment, Huascar suffered great humiliation and grief. All his friends and kinsmen were executed, and his wives and children were hanged. Then to add insult to injury, the Spanish picked that particular moment to invade the Inca empire. In a situation similar to Cortez in Mexico, Francisco Pizarro's timing couldn't have been more perfect. With the Inca armies divided by factions and decimated by civil war, the disorder played right into his hands. After Pizarro's small force of soldiers and adventurers slaughtered a few thousand of Atahualpa's imperial retainers and bureaucrats in the square at the ancient city of Caxanarca, he won the Inca empire on a technical foul."