Rogue Angel 46: Treasure of Lima (4 page)

5

After dinner, Annja returned to her hotel room to make some phone calls. She hadn’t been entirely honest when she’d told Claire that she had contacts in the Costa Rican government. She didn’t; but she bet she knew one or two others who certainly did. She was confident that she could get them to grease the wheels for her and convince those in charge to issue the permits they needed for their rescue mission to Cocos Island. Especially when she told them what else they might find there.

Her first—and only—call, as it turned out, was to Roux.

Annja and Roux had what could only be described as a unique relationship. After all, it wasn’t every day that your sometime partner, sometime mentor was a four-hundred-plus-year-old French knight once charged with defending Joan of Arc from the English!

Annja and Roux had met in the countryside outside Paris several years ago. As usual, Annja was on assignment for
Chasing History’s Monsters,
doing an episode on the werewolflike creature known as the Beast of Gévaudan, which had once terrorized the French countryside. Roux, on the other hand, had been searching for something even more mystical—the last remaining piece of Joan’s shattered sword. Roux was convinced that it was the sword that was responsible for keeping him and his squire, Garin Braden—also present on the day of Joan’s execution—alive through the centuries, and he’d been working to restore the blade to its original condition. As it turned out, it was Annja who had discovered that final, missing piece—a discovery that would bring them all together and change all three of their lives in unexpected ways.

More than a few people, including both Roux and Garin at various times, had tried to take the sword away from her after it had miraculously restored itself, but she refused to allow that to happen; she was as bound to the sword now as the sword was to her.

Over time, Roux had become both a mentor and sometime business partner. She’d used his knowledge to chase down more than one artifact in the past, making them both a tidy bit of money. Not that Roux needed it; more than two hundred years of investments, both in Europe and abroad, had made him a very wealthy man. It wasn’t the money but rather the thrill of the chase that excited Roux, and while he would sometimes accompany Annja on one of her expeditions, for the most part he lived a bit vicariously through her adventures and exploits.

The network of contacts Roux had built up over the years was more than impressive, as well. For a man who disliked the spotlight and did most of his business dealings from behind the protective covering of shell companies and layered corporate connections, he certainly knew a lot of people in a lot of places, something that Annja was counting on now.

It was just after 9:00 p.m. in Costa Rica, which made it just after five in the morning in Paris. Annja knew that Roux was an early riser, however, and so didn’t hesitate to place the call.

The phone was picked up after only two rings.

“Good morning, Miss Creed.”

It was Henshaw, Roux’s majordomo and butler. He took his duties seriously; in all the time she’d known him, she didn’t think he’d ever used her first name.

“Good morning, Henshaw,” she replied in the same formal tone, trying not to laugh as she did it. “Is he in?”

“He is indeed. Shall I get him?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all, Miss Creed.”

Roux was on the line moments later.

“What do you need, my dear?”

Annja frowned. “What makes you think I need anything? Perhaps I just called you up to say hello and chat for a bit.”

Roux chuckled. “I can see your ability to lie hasn’t improved in the slightest. You really need to work on that verbal tic of yours.”

“Verbal tic?” Annja asked, a bit indignant at the suggestion.

Besides artifact hunting, one of Roux’s other major pleasures in life was gambling. He would spend weeks at a time at the high-stakes poker games in places like Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, routinely winning and losing fortunes that would make other people weep.

A “tic” was just gambling slang for an unconscious behavior that a cardplayer displays that gives away knowledge of his hand to the other players. It could be something as obvious as a player wetting their lips when they get a good hand to something more obscure, like that slight twitch of their eye muscles when they are about to bluff. Tics were as varied and as unique as the players themselves, and spotting one wasn’t always easy.

Roux, however, had elevated the process to an art form.

“Yes, a verbal tic. You have a tendency to ask rhetorical questions whenever you’re lying. So I’ll ask again, what do you need?”

It was easier to just let it go than argue further. Besides, she
did
need something, verbal tic or not.

“I need some help getting an expedition permit approved by the Costa Rican government.”

She could also feel Roux sitting up straighter in his chair, his interest now piqued.

“And what, might I ask, is this expedition looking for?”

“A missing archaeologist.”

“Oh.” Roux’s enthusiasm audibly deflated.

“That and the Treasure of Lima.”

There was a moment of silence on the line and then Roux asked her to repeat what she’d just said.

“You heard me just fine, Roux.”

She went on to explain what she knew of the situation, how Knowles had gone missing just after he thought he’d found some actual evidence of the treasure and how his wife was being prevented from going to the island due to bureaucratic red tape.

Roux didn’t give two hoots about Dr. Knowles’s situation. Annja knew that. Roux came from another age, when death was common and life was cheap. But being a part of the team that located and salvaged the Treasure of Lima? That was something he would have a hard time passing up, which was precisely why Annja had pitched the problem the way she had.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a few acquaintances in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism,” Roux said. “Let me make a few phone calls and I’ll get right back to you. What hotel are you at?”

Annja gave him the name of the hotel and her room number. Roux had already hung up by the time she got to goodbye. She didn’t take offense; that was just Roux.

While she waited for Roux’s return call, Annja fired up her laptop and dug into some research, wanting to refresh her memory on the history of the treasure.

According to her sources, the majority of South America was under Spanish colonial rule at the start of the nineteenth century and governed via the viceroyalty of Peru in Lima, established back in 1542. At the height of its power, almost all of the goods headed to Spain from the territories of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina were first sent to the port of Callao, just west of Lima, and then sent on to the old country. As a result, the city of Lima became a repository for the wealth collected on behalf of the empire, especially the wealth collected by the church.

The wars for independence broke out in 1810, and by 1820 the republics of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia had all declared their independence from Spanish rule. The rebels then set their sights on Peru and several of them, including the Argentinean general José de San Martín, Chilean naval commander Lord Cochrane and Bolivian leader Simón Bolívar, worked together to pressure the royalists from several sides. By July 1820 it was clear that the city of Lima would fall to the rebels. Before that could happen, Viceroy José de la Serna made plans to protect the treasure until the insurrection had been put to rest.

The viceroy hired William Thompson, captain of the English brig the
Mary Dear,
to transport the treasure to de la Serna’s allies in Mexico, where it could be stored safely until it was either returned to Lima or shipped on to Madrid. Unfortunately for the viceroy and his plans, that much money, equal to something in the neighborhood of sixty million dollars in today’s currency, was too much of a temptation for Captain Thompson. On the first night of their voyage, he and his men slaughtered the six soldiers and two priests that the viceroy had sent along to accompany the treasure and tossed their bodies overboard. They then set sail for Cocos Island, off the coast of Costa Rica, where they planned to bury the treasure and lie low for several months before returning for it.

The best-laid plans of mice and men,
Annja thought.

The
Mary Dear
ran into a British man-of-war and after a brief chase were forced to surrender. Captain and crew were tried for piracy on the high seas, with only Thompson and his first mate managing to avoid the death penalty by agreeing to show the British captain where they had hidden the treasure. The rest of Thompson’s crew were hung from the masts of the British ship before it, in turn, set sail for Cocos.

Historians differed on what happened next, Annja discovered. Some said that Captain Thompson led the British commander to the treasure, at which point it was dug up, loaded aboard the man-of-war and transported to England, where it still sits in the Royal Treasury today. Others that Thompson led the British to the treasure as promised, but killed them all before they could dig up even a single gold coin. In a third version, Thompson never encountered the British at all, ending up marooned on the island for several years with only his first mate for company when his ship was wrecked by a rogue wave in the midst of a tropical storm.

Annja knew the truth probably lay somewhere in the middle, in that place where all the stories intersected with one another. It was this approach that had allowed her to find other ancient sites and artifacts when most believed they were no more than myth or legend. She intended to do the same thing here. First she’d find out what had happened to Dr. Knowles and then she’d find the treasure, she told herself with a smile.

Pleased with what she’d accomplished so far, she picked up the phone and ordered a snack and a cup of hot chocolate from room service. She’d just replaced the phone in the receiver when it rang beneath her hand.

It was Roux.

“That didn’t take long,” she said after they’d exchanged hellos.

“No reason it should. The tourism minister owed me a favor. I persuaded him to put a little pressure on the bureaucrat who was holding up the paperwork and, wouldn’t you know it, the permits were suddenly pushed through with alacrity.”

Annja breathed a sigh of relief. If the permits hadn’t been forthcoming, she’d planned to go without them—after all, a man’s life might be at stake—but having them would make things much easier in the long run.

Roux, however, wasn’t finished.

“There is, however, a small price attached.”

Annja tensed. If there was money involved, Roux wouldn’t have even mentioned it to her; he’d have simply paid it and taken it out of their share when they recovered the treasure. Which meant it was something else.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“In the course of our conversation, I happened to mention you to my friend César. Turns out he’s a big fan of the infamous Annja Creed and he requested that you have dinner with him as the price for his assistance.”

Great,
she thought.
Guy can’t get a date on his own so he has to bribe Roux into making one for him.

“This is the tourism minister, right?”

“That’s correct.”

She pulled her computer closer so she could reach the keyboard. “What’s his name again?”

Roux told her.

She quickly searched for him. The picture that came up on the screen was a surprise. She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been expecting, maybe an elderly Hispanic man with a leer in his eye, but what she got was an image of a well-dressed man in his early thirties, with a neatly trimmed goatee and dark hair.

Maybe dinner wouldn’t be so bad after all, she thought. Still, she had her priorities.

“I don’t have time to be gallivanting about on dinner dates when Dr. Knowles might be in serious danger,” she said sharply, hoping that might settle it.

Roux, however, was prepared for just such a response.

“I quite agree. Which is why I agreed that you’d have dinner with him when you returned from Cocos Island. The permits will be waiting for you at the front desk in the morning. Au revoir, my dear.”

Annja opened her mouth to protest, only to find herself talking to the dial tone.

She glanced once more at César’s picture, sighed in resignation and went back to her research. There was a lot she needed to familiarize herself with if they were going to head out in the morning.

6

Annja was waiting in the lobby the next day when the official courier arrived at the hotel with their expedition permits. She checked them over to be certain they were correct and then signed in receipt of them. The permits allowed them to travel to the island and spend a week searching for Dr. Knowles and the rest of his team, noting that the island was a World Heritage site and that care should be taken to have as little negative impact on the local ecology as possible.

That was fine with Annja; she wasn’t there to excavate anything, anyway. At least, not unless they found the treasure, she thought with a grin. She used the housephone to call Claire, give her the good news and suggest they meet on the patio for breakfast to go over the remaining details. Claire agreed.

By the time the other woman arrived twenty minutes later with a burly, tattooed man with a thick handlebar mustache in tow, Annja was halfway through her breakfast. The newcomer was introduced as Marcos Rivera, leader of the four men who had been hired to help Claire get to the island and assist with the search once they’d arrived.

Rivera was in his mid-thirties and said very little during their meeting, but Annja didn’t miss the way the man’s eyes were constantly moving, taking in their surroundings and storing away the information for later reference. She’d been around enough soldiers to recognize such behavior and there was no doubt in her mind that Marcos had served at some time in the past, perhaps even recently. That meant the men under him were apt to be ex-military, as well. Annja didn’t have any problems with that; soldiers were generally good at taking orders. She just needed to be sure to make it clear who was the one with the authority to give them and they should get along just fine.

With the pleasantries out of the way, the trio got down to business. Supply lists were reviewed and adjusted slightly where necessary; Claire had a good eye for the kinds of goods that were needed for the expedition, but had a tendency to underestimate what they were going to need to get through the week. Cocos might be a tropical paradise from an environmentalist’s perspective, but to the unwary it could be particularly deadly. Without access to local towns where they could replenish their supplies on a regular basis, Annja and her team were going to have to carry in everything they needed on their backs. Food, water, shelter, medical supplies—the list went on. To make matters worse, they had no idea what condition Dr. Knowles and his team would be in when they found them, so they had to plan for that, as well. In the end, Annja was glad for the extra bodies; there were a lot of supplies to bring with them.

A boat had been chartered to take them to the island and most of the supplies had already been loaded aboard. The rest, including those things that Annja had just added to their list, could be secured in the next few hours and packed at departure time. If all went according to plan, they could depart for Cocos later that morning.

* * *

A
NNJA
HAD
BEEN
expecting a tired old fishing trawler with just enough space on the deck to accommodate them and their equipment, so she was pleasantly surprised, delighted even, to discover that the
Neptune’s Pride
was a much more substantial vessel.

The captain, a portly man in his mid-fifties with a jovial smile but the hard gleam of a businessman in his eyes, caught her expression and smiled in return as she came up the boarding ramp.

“You like, yes?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” she said, and meant it, too.

“Excellent!” He was practically beaming as he extended an arm. “May I give you the tour?”

Annja slipped her arm through his. “By all means, please do!”

As it turned out, the
Neptune’s Pride
had been built in 1993 for the Japanese government as a fisheries training vessel, Annja learned. She had put in fifteen hard years of training work before running aground during a storm. Not wanting the expense of repairing an older vessel, the Japanese government had auctioned her off to a refitting company, who refurbished the vessel and then leased it out on a regular basis for short-term expeditions. Claire had hired the boat and had then gone in search of a captain with the skill to handle that size boat and knowledge of the area surrounding Cocos Island, eventually settling on Captain Vargas as her man.

Vargas had taken to the boat like a mother hen to a newborn chick and Annja quickly understood why. She was a marvelous ship—one hundred and twenty feet in length and boasting three full-size decks, two above and one below. Her hull was made of modern steel, providing both the durability and sleekness necessary for long-range cruising, and her single diesel engine could deliver a steady twelve knots. Best yet, the entire ship could be operated by a crew of less than five, a situation Vargas liked as much as Claire.

The captain was rightfully proud of his new command and was more than happy to talk a person’s ear off about it if they let him. Which Annja did. She wanted to know as much about the vessel as she could, for you never knew what little piece of information might save your life when you were in a bind. She received the full tour, top to bottom, and when it was over she had to admit the refitting company had done a marvelous job. The guest staterooms were wide and spacious, with so many modern amenities that Annja felt as if she was aboard a cruise ship rather than an expeditionary vessel.

Along with the usual pair of motorized skiffs, the ship was also equipped with a high-powered winch capable of moving several hundred tons and a small helicopter pad on the rear portion of the upper deck.

“Alas, no helicopter, though,” Vargas told her. “Someday.”

Annja knew how he felt. The things she could do with a ship like this at her disposal...

Her tour ended at the galley on the lower deck, where she found Claire and the rest of her team on a coffee break. They’d arrived after their morning meeting with Annja to supervise the loading of their supplies. Annja had already met the mustachioed Marcos Rivera. Joining him was a short, wiry fellow named Hugo Morales and a young, athletic-looking man they called Michael Reyes. Cursory introductions were made and then the men got back to work, leaving the women to coordinate their next steps.

“Why don’t we go up to the bridge and I’ll bring you up to speed on what I know about my husband’s movements before he lost contact?” Claire said to Annja.

“Sounds like a plan.”

The decks were connected by short, ladderlike stairways, and the two women quickly made their way up two levels to the bridge. Vargas and his crew were busy elsewhere, but that didn’t stop Claire from walking over to the plot table in the center of the room. Once there, she opened a drawer, removed a map and spread it out in front of her for Annja to see.

“Our destination,” she said with a smile. “Isla del Coco.”

Annja studied the map, letting the details sink in slowly. The island was roughly rectangular in shape, but a rectangle that had been partially canted to one side. It was divided into two general regions—the southernmost portion comprised of the area surrounding Mount Yglesias and the northernmost portion around an unnamed ridgeline that stretched perpendicularly across the island.

Much of the shoreline was nothing more than cliffs rising practically right out of the water, but on the north and northeast face of the island were two bays that would provide access. The first, Wafer Bay, was protected by a long isthmus that ran east-west and provided shelter from the waves that crashed against the northern shore. The second and smaller of the two, Chatham Bay, was on the northeast face of the island and was supposedly the place where Captain Thompson and his pirate crew had come ashore to hide the treasure.

A glance at the legend and some quick mental calculations told Annja that the island was roughly eighteen square miles, which made it roughly fourteen times larger than Central Park in Manhattan. Most of the land area was covered with dense tropical forest, and the lack of human habitation, with the exception of a single park ranger stationed there year-round, kept it in pristine condition. Pristine, in this case, meaning very difficult to navigate through, and the order not to damage the local environment would only increase that difficulty tenfold. Add to that the varied nature of the wildlife sure to be present under that forest canopy and you ended up with a formidable environment in which to operate. Sure, it didn’t hold the same degree of outright danger as the heights of Everest or the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, but help was a bit more than a phone call away, and that might mean the difference between life and death if it came to it.

“The charter Richard hired to carry his team to the island docked here, in Chatham Bay,” Claire told her, pointing out the location on the map even though Annja had already seen it for herself. “The expedition had permission to be there for two weeks but couldn’t afford to keep the boat on station for that long. So the captain waited overnight, giving the team time to unload their gear and establish a camp on the beach, and then he headed back to the mainland the next day.”

“Did Dr. Knowles have a prearranged time that he expected the boat to return or was there some means by which he was going to contact the captain?”

Claire reached into the pocket of her cargo shorts and pulled out a satellite phone. “Richard carried a sat phone just like this one. The plan was for him to call Captain Swanson two days before Richard and his team broke camp, so that the boat would be waiting by the time they needed it.”

Annja knew that it was roughly a thirty-hour journey by boat from Puntarenas, where they were now and from where Richard’s expedition had set out, as well, to Cocos Island. Two days before breaking camp was more than enough time for the boat to arrive.

“Was that call ever made?” she asked.

Claire shook her head. “Richard only made a few calls from the island and all of them were either to our home number in Baltimore or to my cell phone.”

“You know that for certain?”

This time the other woman nodded. “I’m listed on the same account, so it was easy enough to check,” she explained. “The last call on record was the one he made to me prior to trying to excavate the chest they’d found.”

In Annja’s view, it seemed likely that Dr. Knowles had suffered some kind of injury while the team was investigating the find, but it could be a simple matter of equipment failure.

“Was there a backup plan in case the satellite phone was lost or damaged?”

“Yes. Richard’s second in command, David Mathers, also had a satellite phone. I tried calling that line as well, but it goes straight to voice mail. I’ve left several messages and now all I get is a ‘mailbox full’ reply when I try to do so.”

That didn’t bode well, Annja knew. The chance that both phones were malfunctioning at the same time were minimal, particularly since they were specifically designed to work anytime and anywhere, be it the backyard or from a remote corner of the world. Geographic interference was unlikely; Mount Yglesias was barely twenty-five hundred feet, after all.

Something must have shown on her face because Claire said, “I know. It’s not a good sign, is it?”

Annja tried to smile reassuringly. “We could come up with a thousand different scenarios and still not even come close to the truth, so speculating doesn’t do anyone any good. Try to relax. We’ll be there soon enough.”

She just hoped they were in time to help.