Inca Gold (Dirk Pitt 12)

"Bartholomew Ruiz, Pizarro's pilot, saw large rafts equipped with masts and great square cotton sails.

Other Spanish seamen reported sailing past rafts with hulls of balsa wood, bamboo and reed, carrying sixty people and forty or more large crates of trade goods. Besides sails, the rafts were also propelled by teams of paddlers. Designs found on pre-Columbian clay pottery show twodecker boats sporting raised stem and sternposts with carved serpent heads similar to the dragons gracing Viking longships."

"So there is no doubt they could have transported tons of gold and silver long distances across the sea?"

"No doubt at all, Admiral." Yaeger tapped the pointer on another line that traced the voyage of Naymlap's treasure fleet. "From point of departure, north to their destination, the voyage took eighty-six days. No short cruise for primitive ships."

"Any chance they might have headed south?" asked Giordino.

Yaeger shook his head. "My computer discovered that one coil of knots represented the four basic points of direction, with the knot for north at the top and the knot for south at the bottom. East and west were represented by subordinate strands."

"And their final landfall?" Pitt prodded.

"The tricky part. Never having the opportunity to clock a balsa raft under sail over a measured nautical mile, estimating the fleet's speed through water was strictly guesswork. I won't go into it now, you can read my full report later. But Brunhilda, in calculating the length of the voyage, did a masterful job of projecting the currents and wind during 1533."

Pitt put his hands behind his head and leaned his chair back on two legs. "Let me guess. They came ashore somewhere in the upper reaches of the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, a vast cleft of water separating the Mexican mainland from Baja California."

"On an island as you and I already discussed," Yaeger added. "It took the crews of the ships twelve days to stash the treasure in a cave, a large one according to the dimensions recorded on the quipu. An opening, which I translated as being a tunnel, runs from the highest point of the island down to the treasure cave."

"You can conclude all this from a series of knots?" asked Sandecker, incredulous.

Yaeger nodded. "And much more. A crimson strand represented Huascar, a black knot the day of his execution at the order of Atahualpa, whose attached strand was purple. General Naymlap's is a dark turquoise. Brunhilda and I can also give you a complete tally of the hoard. Believe me when I say the bulk sum is far and away more than what has been salvaged from sunken treasure ships during the last hundred years."

Sandecker looked skeptical. "I hope you're including the Atocha, the Edinburgh, and the Central America in that claim."

"And many more." Yaeger smiled confidently.

Gunn looked puzzled. "An island, you say, somewhere in the Sea of Cortez?"

"So where exactly is the treasure?" said Giordino, cutting to the heart of the lecture.

"Besides in a cavern on an island in the Sea of Cortez," summed up Sandecker.

"Sung to the tune of `My Darlin' Clementine,' " Pitt jested.

"Looks to me," Giordino sighed, "like we've got a hell of a lot of islands to consider. The Gulf is loaded with them."

"We don't have to concern ourselves with any island below the twenty-eighth parallel." Yaeger circled a section of the map with his pointer. "As Dirk guessed, I figure Naymlap's fleet sailed into the Gulf's upper reaches."

Giordino was ever the pragmatist. "You still haven't told us where to dig."

"On an island that rises out of the water like a pinnacle, or as Brunhilda's translation of the quipu suggests, the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco." Yaeger threw on an enlarged slide of the sea between Baja California and the mainland of Mexico on the screen. "A factor that narrows the search zone considerably."

Pitt leaned forward, studying the chart on the screen. "The centr

al islands of Angel de la Guarda and Tiburon stretch between forty and sixty kilometers. They each have several prominent pinnaclelike peaks.

You'll have to cut it even closer, Hiram."

"Any chance Brunhilda missed something?" asked Gunn.

"Or drew the wrong meaning from the knots?" said Giordino, casually pulling one of Sandecker's specially made cigars from his breast pocket and igniting the end.

The admiral glared, but said nothing. He had long ago given up trying to figure out how Giordino got them, certainly not from his private stock. Sandecker kept a tight inventory of his humidor.

"I admit to a knowledge gap," Yaeger conceded. "As I said earlier, the computer and I decoded ninety percent of the quipu's coils and knots. The other ten percent defies clear meaning. Two coils threw us off the mark. One made a vague reference to what Brunhilda interpreted as some kind of god or demon carved from stone. The second made no geological sense. Something about a river running through the treasure cave."

Gunn tapped his ballpoint pen on the table. "I've never heard of a river running under an island."