Inca Gold (Dirk Pitt 12)

"I haven't either," agreed Yaeger. "That's why I hesitated to mention it."

"Must be seepage from the water in the Gulf," said Pitt.

Gunn nodded. "The only logical answer."

Pitt looked up at Yaeger. "You couldn't find any reference to landmarks?"

"Sorry, I struck out. For a while there I entertained hopes the demon god might hold a key to the location of the cave," answered Yaeger. "The knots on that particular coil seemed to signify a measurement of distance. I have the impression it indicates a number of paces inside a tunnel leading from the demon to the cave. But the copper strands had deteriorated, and Brunhilda couldn't reconstruct a coherent meaning."

"What sort of demon?" asked Sandecker.

"I don't have the slightest idea."

"A signpost leading to the treasure maybe?" mused Gunn.

"Or a sinister deity to scare off thieves," suggested Pitt.

Sandecker rapped his cigar on the lip of a glass cup, knocking off along ash. "A sound theory if the elements and vandals haven't taken their toll over four hundred years, leaving a sculpture that can't be distinguished from an ordinary rock."

"To sum up," said Pitt, "we're searching for a steep outcropping of rock or pinnacle on an island in the Sea of Cortez with a stone carving of a demon on top of it."

"A generalization," Yaeger said, sitting down at the table. "But that pretty well summarizes what I could glean out of the quipu."

Gunn removed his glasses, held them up to the light and checked for smudges. "Any hope at all that Bill Straight can restore the deteriorated coils?"

"I'll ask him to begin work on them," answered Yaeger.

"He'll be diligently laboring over them within the hour," Sandecker assured him.

"If Straight's conservation experts can reconstruct enough of the knots and strands for Brunhilda to analyze, I think I can promise to add enough data to put you within spitting distance of the tunnel leading to the treasure cave."

"You'd better," Pitt advised, "because I have ambitions in life other thin going around Mexico digging empty holes."

Gunn turned toward Sandecker. "Well, what do you say, Admiral? Is it a go?"

The feisty little chief of NUMA stared at the map on the screen. Finally, he sighed and muttered, "I want a proposal detailing the search project and its cost when I walk in my office tomorrow morning.

Consider yourselves on paid vacation for the next three weeks. And not a word outside this room. If the news media get wind that NUMA is conducting a treasure hunt, I'll catch all kinds of hell from Congress."

"And if we find Huascar's treasure?" asked Pitt.

"Then we'll all be impoverished heroes."

Yaeger missed the point. "Impoverished?"

"What the admiral is implying," said Pitt, "is that the finders will not be the keepers."

Sandecker nodded. "Cry a river, gentlemen, but if you are successful in finding the hoard, every troy ounce of it will probably be turned over to the government of Peru."

Pitt and Giordino exchanged knowing grins, each reading the other's mind, but it was Giordino who spoke first.

"I'm beginning to think there is a lesson somewhere in all this."

Sandecker looked at him uneasily. "What lesson is that?"

Giordino studied his cigar as he answered. "The treasure would probably be better off if we left it where it is."

Gaskill lay stretched out in bed, a cold cup of coffee and a dish with a half-eaten bologna sandwich beside him on the bed stand. The blanket warming his huge bulk was strewn with typewritten pages. He raised the cup and sipped the coffee before reading the next page of a book-length manuscript. The title was The Thief Who Was Never Caught. It was a nonfiction account of the search for the Specter, written by a retired Scotland Yard inspector by the name of Nathan Pembroke. The inspector spent nearly five decades digging through international police archives, tracking down every lead, regardless of its reliability, in his relentless hunt.