'Hard facts?' Indy took a tight grip on himself not to offer a sharp retort to Franck. 'What happened in South Africa, the train wrecks and slaughter . . . those are facts. The flying boat, the Empress Kali, those are facts.'
Castilano gestured for attention. 'There is more, Doctor Franck. We are still trying to sort out the details, but two more ships have been raided and sunk.
There was an assault deep within Russia and a collection, priceless, of crown jewels stolen. But the strangest of all is that a member of our group has been contacted by a source that remains, for now at least, nameless. They want to sell us that mysterious artifact that was stolen in the flying boat attack.'
'A question, please?' Indy said quickly.
'Of course.'
'How did this unidentified source know that we were a group?' Indy smiled.
'Before you answer, would I be wrong in assuming they're asking a very high price for the cube? Letting this group believe that the artifact is not from this world?'
Franck eased into a more personal exchange with Indy by dropping his formal title. 'Indy, if this artifact is as described, then it is beyond any price.'
'Does anyone here have a number?' Indy pressed.
'One billion dollars,' Franck said tersely.
'Would you pay it?' Indy asked.
Franck never hesitated. 'Absolutely.' Sitting to his right, Gale Parker was more confused than she'd been since this meeting started. She already knew that Indy had set up the mock artifact in the Milledgeville train robbery, and now he was acting as if he believed the artifacts were real! Shut up and listen, she told herself.
Indy knows what he's doing.
'All the money this group is amassing,' Indy said. 'What do they do with it?'
Matsuda motioned to the others that he would reply. 'Such funds buy weapons. Tanks, bombers, submarines and so on. But weapons are not enough. With enough money you can buy loyalty. You establish your own power factions within governments. You control the press, you wield great propaganda, and you move into controlling industry. Control the food supply of a country and you control the country. I am of the opinion that this group is determined to wield control over international commerce as well as military power.'
'The old benevolent emperor routine,' Indy responded.
'Perhaps not so benevolent,' Matsuda said.
'Am I right in judging that all the people in the consortium behind us are not necessarily in agreement with each other?' Indy asked.
'That is to be expected,' Castilano said stiffly. 'We are fighting both great power and shadows.'
'And you're seriously considering paying as much as a billion dollars for that socalled extraterrestrial artifact?'
'That is my position,' Franck confirmed.
Indy's smile almost had the touch of canary feathers. 'Let me save you a billion dollars.' He reached into a pocket of his jacket. 'In fact, make that two billion dollars.' He tossed a 'pyramid artifact' onto the table where it bounced to a stop, and then produced a double of the 'cube artifact' that had created such a furor.
They were stunned. They passed the two objects about the table, handling them with unabashed reverence.
Finally Merlyn Franck returned to the moment. 'How . . . how could you possibly have obtained these? And forgive me, Indy, but you seem cavalier about something for which men have died!'
'There aren't any artifacts from outer space,' Indy said quietly. 'Well, not these, anyway.'
'Could they be from some ancient culture on our world?' Castilano queried.
'Not a chance.'
'But . . . but how did you get these!' Marcia Mason burst out.
Indy studied her carefully, but not to any greater extent than the others in the room. Somewhere in this group there was a traitor. He'd been warned long before about that by Treadwell, but up to this moment no one had been able to point a finger with any confidence at anyone else. The woman's surprise as to his possession of the artifacts could be genuine, if she was faithful to the group. Or it could he surprise as to how I got these if she isn't, Indy mused. I'm not getting anywhere fast. . . .
Castilano was openly agitated. 'Indy, tell us. How did you get these?'
'I'm not going to tell you anything that our opponents don't already know,'
Indy said quickly. 'Keep that in mind, please. First, I have a contract with the De Beers diamond mines. It is their custom always to place something in their jewel shipments that is easier to trace than diamonds, which can be recut to any size or shape. In this case, we used the cube artifact. The cuneiform markings simply gave it more authenticity. Or led people to believe that. But the cube, and this pyramid, were manufactured in England. I don't know the alloys involved; that's out of my field. But it's very much a homegrown product. My contribution was the markings. Someone who gets hold of this, and also believes in its rarity and value, must try to use or sell it in some way. So it acts as a beacon.'
'Are you telling us that this group, whoever and whatever they are,' Marcia Mason asked slowly and deliberately, 'are trying to sell us a fake that our own group, yourself, created?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'But how could you . . . I mean, why would you have us believe these things were of such tremendous value!'
'I never said they were of any monetary or historical value,' Indy told the group, but looking at Mason. 'Just about everybody else did that. Including the people who have committed the crimes we're trying to solve. The stories about these artifacts were so effective that the people who robbed De Beers and the others figured the artifacts were the most valuable of all.'
