The Aztec Heresy (25 page)

‘‘Perhaps you could start with this Spaniard, ’’ suggested Guido.

‘‘Francisco de Ulloa,’’ said Finn.

‘‘The very fellow,’’ said Billy.

‘‘The one who drew the map, yes?’’ Guido asked.

‘‘That’s him,’’ said Finn. She unrolled a small-scale chart of the Sea of Cortéz and Baja on the rickety card table between them. ‘‘He was a friend of Cortéz. Early on he acted as a courier for him between Cuba and Spain, carrying letters to Cortéz’s wife.

‘‘Anyway, Cortéz realized that King Charles and the Inquisition were plotting to steal his treasure and have him excommunicated, so he commissioned Ulloa to take the gold and jewelry from the hoard he’d seized from Montezuma, the Aztec king he’d conquered in what is now Mexico City, and find a place to hide it well away from prying eyes.

‘‘Nobody is entirely sure, but what is known is that the Spaniard sailed from Acapulco in three small ships built especially for the expedition. They headed north into what we now call the Sea of Cortéz, which Ulloa named in honor of his patron.

‘‘They reached the head of the Baja Peninsula and found what some people think was the original outlet for the Colorado River. He left two of his ships in the mouth of the river, then took the largest ship, the one carrying the treasure itself, and headed upriver looking for a good hiding place.

‘‘Before he could find a good spot there was a serious earthquake—the San Andreas Fault is only a few miles from here—and there was a tidal wave almost forty feet high that rushed in from the Sea of Cortéz.

‘‘The two ships at the mouth of the river rode the wave out easily enough, but the treasure ship was taken inland on the surge. Almost a hundred miles. When the water receded the ship was left high and dry in the middle of a desert—what was then known as the Salton Sink, a salt basin like Salt Lake City but even lower than Death Valley.

‘‘The ship was half buried in the sand. Ulloa finished the job with his men and then walked back to the other two ships. That’s how the Legend of the Lost Ship of the Desert was born. There were a bunch of sightings over the years as the sands shifted. In 1906 a section of the Imperial Irrigation Canal on the Colorado River collapsed and the river flooded into the old Salton Sink for two years. It put almost four hundred square miles underwater before they could stop the flow. It’s been underwater and getting more and more polluted ever since.’’

‘‘I still don’t see the connection to the map you found,’’ said Briney Hanson, lighting one of his spiced clove cigarettes.

‘‘I think Ulloa took one of the Mayan astronomers with him,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s the only theory that fits. There are more than a hundred stars a pilot can use to navigate by; the Mayans knew almost fifty of them, as well as the moon transit, the transit of the sun, and the transit of Venus across the night sky. Given enough reference points, which the map on the wall shows, coming up with the location wasn’t that difficult.’’

‘‘So you matched the plot of the map on the wall of the cave with a computer simulation?’’ Briney asked.

‘‘That’s right.’’ Finn nodded. ‘‘A simulation of the night sky in the Yucatán, the night sky variance with the Sea of Cortéz in 1539, the year Ulloa made his voyage, and a star plot of the same sky now. Thirty-three degrees North by one hundred and fifteen degrees west. Simple.’’

‘‘Easy for you,’’ muttered Billy.

‘‘Which is right here?’’ Guido said.

‘‘Give or take a hundred yards or so,’’ said Briney. ‘‘The portable side-scanning radar shows a heavy metal mass directly below us. The water’s only eighteen feet deep.’’

‘‘You really think it’s the treasure ship?’’ Billy asked skeptically ‘‘You said there were entire towns flooded back in 1906.’’

‘‘It’s worth a look.’’ Finn shrugged.

‘‘Let us not make it too long a look,’’ said Guido, wrinkling his nose. ‘‘I have never smelled anything so bad.’’

The Dutchman was right. The temperature on the lake was well over one hundred degrees and the smell of dead fish and pollution was foul. Almost on cue there was a tug on the signal line that connected down to Eli’s position underwater. Briney Hanson stood up and went to the big compressor they’d bolted to the rear deck and switched it on. There was a grumbling, almost visceral intestinal sound and the heavy plastic vacuum tube began to swell in its wire braces as the pumps began to work, drawing up sand and silt from the bottom. The snout of the tube was fitted over a wire cage that would catch anything sucked up from underwater.

Eli Santoro’s wet-suited figure came to the surface. He pulled off his mask, tossed it onto the deck, and climbed up the short ladder. He stood on the deck, a look of utter revulsion on his face. His wet suit was covered in gray-brown slime. He smelled like an open sewer.

‘‘It’s absolutely disgusting down there,’’ he grunted, breathing hard.

‘‘Find anything?’’ Finn asked.

‘‘About six feet of muck, a layer of dead, rotting fish.’’ He paused and reached into the small net pouch on his belt. ‘‘And this.’’ He grinned. He tossed the object down onto the center of the old card table. The vacuum pump made a gurgling sound as though something was stuck in its throat. The object from Eli’s pouch gleamed dully on the table. It was roughly oval, a quarter of an inch thick, and about as big as a small dinner plate. In the center was a roughly stamped Spanish cross and an equally rough date stamp: 1521. The plate was solid gold. A thousand years before the date stamped on it, the gold had been a sculpted image of Kukulcan, the winged god of creation the Maya had worshipped while the Spanish people were Iberian hunter-gatherers lurking in caves.

‘‘The treasure of Cortéz.’’

At seven p.m. Atlantic time the following evening, a Cessna Mustang business jet registered to Noble Pharmaceutical disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico. According to the manifest the only passenger was James Jonas Noble, head of the giant pharmaceutical corporation and father of Harrison Noble, the play-boy adventurer who had recently disappeared while leading an archaeological expedition in the Yucatán. Foul play was not ruled out in the disappearance of the drug tycoon’s jet. There was some thought that it might have accidentally wandered into Cuban airspace and been shot down. Cuban authorities refused to comment.

Two hours after the disappearance of James Jonas Noble, Cardinal Enrico Rossi of the Vatican secretary of state’s office and one of the senior directors of the Banco Venizia, an arm of the Vatican Bank in Rome, died at his desk, apparently of a massive heart attack. He was seventy-seven years old and was known to have smoked two packages of Marlboro cigarettes per day. The Pope, an old friend of Rossi’s, had ordered a high requiem mass to be said for Rossi three days later. In an allied story, Claudio Succi, an investigative reporter for the Italian newspaper
Il Tempo Roma,
was the victim of a hit and run in the early hours of the evening. Succi was known to have been working on a story about corruption at the Vatican Bank with Cardinal Rossi as its central focus. Succi’s laptop computer was demolished as a result of the accident. No trace of the driver or the vehicle was found.

Two days after the death of Cardinal Rossi and the unfortunate journalist, Claudio Succi, Francis Xavier Sears, the professional serial killer for hire, met with Max Kessler, the information provider and blackmailer, on one of the benches close to the Smithsonian. It was another gorgeous day in Washington, D.C., although a little too humid for Max Kessler’s taste. While he waited for Sears he nibbled a chocolate biscotti and sipped his Ethiopian blend coffee from the Farragut Square Starbucks. Sears, wearing a plain dark suit and cheap shoes, appeared at exactly noon; right on time, as usual. He was carrying a copy of the
Washington Times
folded in one hand, their agreed-upon signal that the coast was clear. Kessler smiled as Sears sat down on the bench beside him. He appreciated punctuality almost above all other things.

‘‘Things went well, I assume.’’

‘‘That they did.’’ Sears nodded.

‘‘No trouble with the cardinal?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Or the journalist? Bit of a snag there.’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Nice touch with Noble’s plane, the Cuban involvement.’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘Biscotti?’’ Kessler inquired, offering Sears a brown paper bag. He’d purchased two of the crunchy morsels to celebrate.

‘‘No, thanks,’’ murmured Sears.

‘‘I read about Ms. Ryan’s find in the Salton Sink in the
Post
today. Quite a coup.’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘No sign of the Celatropamine sample?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘How soon before the news about the drug leaks?’’

‘‘Less than a month.’’

‘‘Plenty of time to sell the stock short.’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘This will make us both extremely wealthy. A coup for us as well as Ms. Ryan and her friends.’’ Kessler smiled. ‘‘All the loose ends dealt with.’’

‘‘Almost,’’ said Sears.

‘‘Almost?’’

‘‘One more,’’ murmured Sears. Without haste, he unfolded the newspaper in his lap, brought out the six-inch undertaker’s trocar hypodermic and jammed it unerringly into Kessler’s left ear hole. The needle went in fully and Sears pushed the plunger fully inward before withdrawing the slim needle. Kessler died instantly, his eyes bugging out ever so briefly. The barrel of the syringe had been loaded with fresh blood Sears had drawn from his own veins less than an hour before. He laid the empty syringe down in his lap and folded the newspaper over it again. The entire operation, performed in public, had taken seventeen seconds. No one had paid the slightest attention.

A cursory autopsy would show that Kessler had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, a stroke not being an untoward death for a man who had consumed as much artery-clogging cholesterol as the nasty little German. A more careful forensically inclined examination would show the path of the trocar needle into Kessler’s ear, but who cared? Kessler had enough enemies to keep an FBI task force in business for the next century. Just his legendary file cards would keep them busy for decades.

Sears thought about the file cards for a moment, wondering if Kessler had kept one on him. Almost certainly. He stared at the man’s cooling corpse beside him, then reached into Kessler’s pocket and found a set of keys. He’d do the world and himself a favor. Arson wasn’t a specialty of his, but he could put together a decent fire in a pinch.

‘‘One last loose end,’’ he said. He pocketed the keys and stood up. He paused, then reached into the bag on the bench beside the dead man. ‘‘Maybe I’ll have that biscotti after all,’’ he said, then turned and walked away.