They pushed on as Sarason lagged behind and ordered the engineers to place a charge of explosives under the demon. 'Be careful,' he warned them in Spanish. 'Use a small charge. We don't want to cause a cave-in.'
Zolar was amazed at the Moores' vast energy and enthusiasm after they encountered the crypt of the treasure guardians. If left on their own, they would have spent a week studying the mummies and the burial ornaments before pushing on to the treasure chamber.
'Let's keep going,' said Zolar impatiently. 'You can nose around the dead later.'
Reluctantly, the Moores continued into the guardians' living quarters, lingering only a few minutes before Sarason rejoined his brother and urged them onward.
The sudden sight of the guardian encased in calcite crystals shocked and stunned all of them, as it had Pitt and his group. Henry Moore peered intently through the translucent sarcophagus.
'An ancient Chachapoya,' he murmured as if standing before a crucifix. 'Preserved as he died. This is an unbelievable discovery.'
'He must have been a noble warrior of very high status,' said Micki in awe.
'A logical conclusion, my dear. This man had to be very powerful to bear the responsibility of guarding an immense royal treasure.'
'What do you think he's worth?' asked Sarason.
Moore turned and scowled at him. 'You can't set a price on such an extraordinary object. As a window to the past, he is priceless.'
'I know a collector who would give five million dollars for him,' said Zolar, as if he were appraising a Ming vase.
'The Chachapoya warrior belongs to science,' Moore lashed back, his anger choking him. 'He is a visible link to the past and belongs in a museum, not in the living room of some morally corrupt gatherer of stolen artifacts.'
Zolar threw Moore an insidious look. 'All right, Professor, he's yours for your share of the gold.'
Moore looked agonized. His professional training as a scientist fought a war with his greed. He felt dirtied and ashamed now that he realized that Huascar's legacy went beyond mere wealth. He was overcome with regret that he was dealing with unscrupulous scum. He gripped his wife's hand, knowing without doubt she felt the same. 'If that's what it takes. You've got yourself a deal.'
Zolar laughed. 'Now that's settled. Can we please proceed and find what we came here for?'
A few minutes later, they stood in a shoulder-to-shoulder line on the edge of the subterranean riverbank and stared mesmerized at the array of gold, highlighted by the portable fluorescent lamps carried by the military engineers. All they saw was the treasure. The sight of a river flowing through the bowels of the earth seemed insignificant.
'Spectacular,' whispered Zolar. 'I can't believe I'm looking at so much gold.'
'This easily exceeds the treasures of King Tut's tomb,' said Moore.
'How magnificent,' said Micki, clutching her husband's arm. 'This has to be the richest cache in all the Americas.'
Sarason's amazement quickly wore off. 'Very clever of those ancient bastards,' he charged. 'Storing the treasure on an island surrounded by a strong current makes recovery doubly complicated.'
'Yes, but we've got cables and winches,' said Moore.
INCA GOLD
'Think of the difficulty they had in moving all that gold over there with nothing but hemp rope and muscle.'
Micki spied a golden monkey crouched on a pedestal. 'That's odd.'
Zolar looked at her. 'What's odd?'
She stepped closer to the monkey and its pedestal which was lying on its side. 'Why would this piece still be on this bank of the river?'
'Yes, it does seem strange this object wasn't placed with the others,' said Moore. 'It almost looks as if it was thrown here.'
Sarason pointed to gouges in the sand and calcium crystals beside the riverbank. 'I'd say it was dragged off the island.'
'It has writing scratched on it,' said Moore.
'Can you decipher anything?' asked Zolar.
'Doesn't need deciphering. The markings are in English.'
Sarason and Zolar stared at him with the expressions of Wall Street bankers walking along the sidewalk and being asked by a homeless derelict if they could spare fifty thousand dollars. 'No jokes, Professor,' said Zolar.
'I'm dead serious. Somebody engraved a message into the soft gold on the bottom of the pedestal, quite recently by the looks of it.'
'What does it say?'
Moore motioned for an engineer to aim his lamp at the monkey's pedestal, adjusted his glasses and began reading aloud.
There was a moment of sober realization, and then Zolar snarled at his brother. 'What in hell is going on here? What kind of foolish trick is this?'
Sarason's mouth was pinched in a bitter line. 'Pitt admitted leading us to the demon,' he answered reluctantly, 'but he said nothing of entering the mountain and laying eyes on the treasure.'
'Generous with his information, wasn't he? Why didn't you tell me this?'
Sarason shrugged. 'He's dead. I didn't think it mattered.'
Micki turned to her husband. 'I know Dr. Kelsey. I met her at an archaeology conference in San Antonio. She has a splendid reputation as an expert on Andean cultures.'
Moore nodded. 'Yes, I'm familiar with her work.' He stared at Sarason. 'You led us to believe Congresswoman Smith and the men from NUMA were merely on a treasure hunt. You said nothing of involvement by professional archaeologists.'
'Does it make any difference?'
'Something is going on beyond your control,' warned Moore. He looked as if he was enjoying the Zolars' confusion. 'If I were you, I'd get the gold out of here as fast as possible.'
His words were punctuated by a muffled explosion far up into the passageway.
'We have nothing to fear so long as Pitt is dead,' Sarason kept insisting. 'What you see here was done before Amaru put a stop to him.' But he was damp with cold sweat. Pitt's mocking words rang in his ears, 'You've been set up, pal.'
Zolar's features slowly altered. The mouth tightened and the set of the jaw seemed to recede, the eyes became apprehensive. 'Nobody discovers a treasure on the magnitude of this one, leaves behind a ridiculous message, and then walks away from it. These people have a method to their madness, and I for one would like to know their plan.'
'Any man who stands in our way before the treasure is safely off the mountain will be destroyed,' Sarason shouted at his brother. 'That is a promise.'
The words came forcefully, with the ring of a bullet resistant threat. They all believed him. Except Micki Moore.
She was the only one standing close enough to see his lips quiver.
Bureaucrats from around the world looked the same, Pitt thought. The fabricated meaningless smile betrayed by the patronizing look in the eyes. They must have all gone to the same school and memorized the same canned speech of evasive phrases. This one was bald, wore thick hornrimmed glasses, and had a black moustache
