Shannon and Stewart both stared at him. Pitt's gaze turned skyward as a sea gull circled the ship and then winged toward land. There was a look of utter certainty in his eyes as he faced them again, a crooked smile curving his lips, the wavy strands of his ebony hair restless in the breeze.
'Why do you say that?' Shannon asked hesitantly.
'Because I'm going to find the jade box.'
'You're putting us on.' Stewart laughed.
'Not in the least.' The distant expression on Pitt's craggy face had changed to staunch resolve.
For a moment Shannon was stunned. The sudden change from his previous mocking skepticism was totally unexpected. 'You sound like you're on the lunatic fringe.'
Pitt tilted his head back and laughed heartily. 'That's the best part about being crazy. You see things nobody else can see.'
St. Julien Perlmutter was a classic gourmand and bon vivant. Excessively fond of fine food and drink, he reveled in sociable tastes, possessing an incredible file of recipes from the renowned chefs of the world and a cellar with more than 4000 bottles of vintage wine. A host with an admirable reputation for throwing gourmet dinners at elegant restaurants, he paid a heavy price. St. Julien Perlmutter weighed in at close to 181 kilograms (400 pounds). Scoffing at physical workouts and diet foods, his fondest wish was to enter the great beyond while savoring a 100- year-old brandy after a sumptuous meal.
Besides eating, his other burning passion was ships and shipwrecks. He had accumulated what was acknowledged by archival experts as the world's most complete collection of literature and records on historic ships. Maritime museums around the world counted the days until overindulgence did him in, so they could pounce like vultures and absorb the collection into their own libraries.
There was a reason Perlmutter always entertained in restaurants instead of at his spacious carriage house in Georgetown outside the nation's capital. A gigantic mass of books was stacked on the floor, on sagging shelves, and in every nook and cranny of his bedroom, the living and dining rooms, and even in the kitchen cabinets. They were piled head-high beside the commode in his bathroom and were scattered like chaff on the king-size waterbed. Archival experts would have required a full year to sort out and catalogue the thousands of books stuffed in the carriage house. But not Perlmutter. He knew precisely where any particular volume was stashed and could pick it out within seconds.
He was dressed in his standard uniform of the day, purple pajamas under a red and gold paisley robe, standing in front of a mirror salvaged from a stateroom on the Lusitania, trimming a magnificent gray beard, when his private line gave off a ring like a ship's bell.
'St. Julien Perlmutter here. State your business in a brief manner.'
'Hello, you old derelict.'
'Dirk!' he boomed, recognizing the voice, his blue eyes twinkling from a round crimson face. 'Where's that recipe for apricot sauteed prawns you promised me?'
'In an envelope on my desk. I forgot to mail it to you before I left the country. My apologies.'
'Where are you calling from?'
'A ship off the coast of Peru.'
'I'm afraid to ask what you're doing down there.'
'A long story.'
'Aren't they all?'
'I need a favor.'
Perlmutter sighed. 'What ship is it this time?'
'The Golden Hind.'
'Francis Drake's Golden Hind?'
'The same.'
'Sic parvis magna,' Perlmutter quoted. 'Great things have small beginnings. That was Drake's motto. Did you know that?'
'Somehow it escaped me,' Pitt admitted. 'Drake captured a Spanish galleon--'
'The Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion,'' ' Perlmutter interrupted. 'Captained by Juan de Anton, bound for Panama City from Callao de Lima with a cargo of bullion and precious Inca artifacts. As I recall, it was in March of 1578.'
There was a moment of silence at the other end of the line. 'Why is it when I talk to you, Julien, you always make me feel as if you took away my bicycle?'
'I thought you'd like a bit of knowledge to cheer you up.' Perlmutter laughed. 'What precisely do you wish to know?'
'When Drake seized the Concepcion, how did he handle the cargo?'
'The event was quite well recorded. He loaded the gold and silver bullion, including a hoard of precious gems and pearls, on board the Golden Hind. The amount was enormous. His ship was dangerously overloaded, so he dumped several tons of the silver into the water by Cano Island off the coast of Ecuador before continuing on his voyage around the world.'
'What about the Inca treasures?'
'They were left in the cargo holds of the Concepcion. Drake then put a prize crew on board to sail her back through the Magellan Strait and across the Atlantic to England.'
'Did the galleon reach port?'
'No,' answered Perlmutter thoughtfully. 'It went missing and was presumed lost with all hands.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Pitt, disappointment in his voice. 'I had hopes it might have somehow survived.'
'Come to think of it,' recalled Perlmutter, 'a myth did arise concerning the Concepcion's disappearance.'
'What was the gist of it?'
'A fanciful story, little more than rumor, said the galleon was caught in a tidal wave that carried it far inland. Never verified or documented, of course.'
'Do you have a source for the rumor?'
'Further research will be needed to verify details, but if my memory serves me correctly, the tale came from a mad Englishman the Portuguese reported finding in a village along the Amazon River. Sorry, that's about all I can give you on the spur of the moment.'
'I'd be grateful if you dug a little deeper,' said Pitt.
'I can give you the dimensions and tonnage of the Concepcion, how much sail she carried, when and where she was built. But a crazy person wandering around a rain forest calls for a source outside my collection.'
'If anyone can track down a sea mystery, you can.'
'I have an utter lack of willpower when it comes to delving into one of your enigmas, especially after we found old Abe Lincoln on a Confederate ironclad in the middle of the Sahara Desert together.'
'I leave it to you, Julien.'
'Ironclads in a desert, Noah's Ark on a mountain, Spanish galleons in a jungle. Why don't ships stay on the sea where they belong?'
'That's why you and I are incurable lost shipwreck hunters,' said Pitt cheerfully.
'What's your interest in this one?' Perlmutter asked warily.
'A jade box containing a knotted cord that gives directions to an immense Inca treasure.'
Perlmutter mulled over Pitt's brief answer for several seconds before he finally said,
'Well, I guess that's as good a reason as any.'
Hiram Yaeger looked as if he should have been pushing a shopping cart full of shabby belongings down a back alley. He was attired in a Levi's jacket and pants, his long blond hair tied in a loose ponytail, and his boyish face half-hidden by a scraggly beard. The only shopping cart Yaeger ever pushed, however, was down the delicatessen aisle of a supermarket. A stranger would have been hard-pressed to imagine him living in a fashionable residential area of Maryland with a lovely artist wife and two pretty, smart teenage girls in private school, and driving a top-of-the-line BMW.
Nor would someone who didn't know him guess that he was chief of NUMA's communications and
