Helen’s offices on the Stanford University campus were dark save for the small sanctuary she called home when she wasn’t in the field. The rooms could barely be called an office at all. The outer classroom was taken up with equipment and seating for her students, along with numerous exhibits from her time outside of the university. Her personal space was cluttered with a small lab table, and by maps of every conceivable size that were pinned to every inch of wall space. They all showed regions in South America that were affectionately known as the edge of the world to her many students. A few of them had handwritten legends stating Here there be Dragons, as a joke aimed at her cryptozoology leanings. Henri St. Claire stood looking over Helen’s shoulder at the map laid out on her desk, showing the route she had painstakingly planned.
“So we will enter the basin from the Brazilian side and not follow Padilla’s original route? I would think that you would follow the Spaniard’s trail precisely to make sure nothing is bypassed.”
“Normally I would, but his original trek was through the Andes and many hundreds of miles of rainforest that we can now avoid by going through Brazil rather than Peru. The mixture of jungle and forest is so thick that even space-based photography is unable to penetrate it, and I really don’t relish the thought of boating through that, do you?” She pointed to several color images taken from the U.S. Geological Survey photos. “We know the tributary is there, we have the proof now. Entering the valley and the lagoon from the east is possible; just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean its not there. Besides, getting permission from the Peruvian government to cross their territory has proven in the past to be impossible. Now, as long as we are straightforward, Brazil offers up assistance freely, with only the proviso that their government is represented on the expedition to make sure nothing untoward takes place.”
“That is also a concern not only of mine, but also of our financial backer, Mr. Mendez. We take security very seriously, Helen; after all, he is not exactly using just his own funds for this venture, but the Banco de Juarez also. Strangers should not be allowed to come.”
“Unavoidable, I’m afraid.” She made a show of examining the handwritten route as laid down by Hernando Padilla. “Brazil has had an inordinate amount of antiquities leaving their country. They insist on having a Customs official in attendance on the expedition and, believe me, they will tolerate no change in their policy.” She laid the magnifying glass down and looked Henri in the eye.
He smiled. “Then that is the way it shall be. So that brings the number of team members to forty-six students, professors, and guides.”
Farbeaux looked down once again at the copies of the diary pages that he had methodically examined for himself upon his return from Colombia. He agreed the route Helen proposed was indeed the best one, according to the description laid down by the Spanish captain.
“Very well, Professor Zachary, I approve of the route you have chosen and will relay that approval to Mr. Mendez upon my return to Bogotá for the final payment of the expeditionary funding. Helen, you have done marvelously. All the research, the trail going cold time after time, but your tenacity and your beliefs finally paid off.”
“Thank you. If I didn’t have the free hand you gave me it wouldn’t have been so smooth.” She handed him a glass of champagne. “To a new, or should I say, an old life form we hope to bring to the light of day,” she toasted.
“To history,” he countered, “and lost things,” hoisting his glass.
He sat the glass down, carefully avoiding torching the new maps that Helen had worked so hard on. He rolled up the copy she had made so he could deliver it to Bogotá and their financier.
“So I will see you next in five weeks in Los Angeles.”
“Helen, this is one boat ride I wouldn’t miss for the world,” he said as he tapped the rolled-up map against her shoulder.
Helen watched as Henri climbed into his rented car and drove away. She laughed softly as she turned and walked back into her small office. She sat at the small lab table she used as a desk and looked down at the map they had just studied together. She used her right index finger to lightly trace the flow of the Amazon River she had depicted. Then she used both hands to wad up the copy of the map and toss it into the waste can in the corner. She did the same with the copy of the Padilla diary pages. It had taken her a full three days to plan the misleading route she had given to St. Claire, and another two days of actually drawing it and creating the falsified diary pages. But she knew it had been worth it, as the good Professor St. Claire had taken to heart her grand forgery and fake route.
After she had tossed the forgery into the trash, Helen poured herself another glass of champagne and walked with it to one of her filing cabinets that crowded the office. She sat the glass on top, unlocked the second drawer, and removed a folded chart and a small file folder. She took the chart, the file, and her glass to her table and sat down. She unfolded the real map and then removed from the file the copies she had actually made of the diaries.
Helen smiled and took a sip from her glass. Then she took her cell phone from her pocket and started pushing numbers she had memorized. She had never actually programmed them into her phone, for security reasons.
“This is Robert.”
“Is everything ready in San Pedro?” Helen sipped from her glass again.
“We’re loading the largest of the equipment now, deck space will be kinda tight, but we’ll manage; we should be finished in a few hours.”
“How about the replacement grad student, the one you found at Berkeley, did she show up?”
There was only a moment’s hesitation, then her assistant Robby answered, “Yes, ma’am, she arrived an hour ago and is already situated. I think you’ll be more than satisfied with her. She’s one of the brightest in her field; she knows animals.”
“Good. Look, I’ll be down in about three hours, I’m flying into LAX. My attorney should be arriving there about the same time my flight is landing, so please make sure he’s shown to the ship’s company office and tell him I’ll be there soon, okay?”
“You got it, Doc. So how did your final meeting with the money man go?”
“It went better than expected. He gave us the second check and left for Bogotá to pick up the third part of our financing. It’s just too bad we didn’t need that part. But it will keep him away and out of our hair until we sail. Have our new benefactors arrived yet?”
“Yeah, they’re here, all six of them, that Dr. Kennedy guy and five others. What do you want us to do with all of Henri St. Claire’s geological stuff, the magnetometers and other mining equipment?”
She took a large swallow of champagne and smiled as it went down. “Leave it on the dock with a note saying, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’ ”
“You got it, Doc, see you in a few.”
Helen closed her cell phone and stopped smiling. She hated screwing over someone like Henri St. Claire, but he never should have misrepresented himself as someone who was in this for the sole reason of discovering one of the mysteries of the ages. He was in this for greed, his own and that of the gangster who called himself a banker.
“There would be no hunting for the mythical El Dorado on this trip, Dr. St. Claire. Where we’re going, you cannot follow,” she said to herself as she placed the real map and Padilla pages in her briefcase, stood, and made her way out into the evening.
The national security advisor sat behind his desk facing his computer monitor that was presently split into four separate pictures. In the far left corner was General Stanton Alford, commanding general of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. On the right top was Rear Admiral Elliott Pierce, U.S. Naval Intelligence; directly below him was the frowning countenance of General Warren Peterson, U.S. Army Intelligence; and to the left of him, U.S. Air Force Intelligence chief General Stan Killkernan. They were there to discuss a file the CIA, and before them the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, had kept under wraps since the days before World War II. The gathered intelligence officers weren’t taking the new development well.
“If the Joint Chiefs or the president even get an inkling of what we’ve done it will be all our asses in a sling, and it all starts with you, Mr. Ambrose. The last I heard, the president wasn’t too fond of his generals around here. I believe the title of the book we opened to the world these past few days is called treason. Not only have we supplied an outlawed material to a foreign nation, but now we are stealing actual weapons for use on the soil of a friendly country. This whole plan is spiraling out of control,” General Peterson said as he glared into the camera on his end at the Pentagon.
“We have no choice but to send the weapon and team down to South America as a precaution. What if the old site is rediscovered? The prewar material could only be traced back to us if a link is found from the old incursion, something that leads to the storage facility where the material was stored. But other than that, the only way it can be linked to us is if one of you loses his nerve. Gentlemen, if that professor brings that area of Brazil out into the light of day, the whole damned mess becomes public,” the national security advisor said angrily.
“I agree,” said Stanton Alford. “After all, we may not even have a site that has to be destroyed. I don’t believe this Professor Zachary will ever find it. Hell, we don’t even know where it is. We only have the material, not the location where it was found. The Corps of Engineers was the only department to document the 1942 incursion, and that report was buried in National Archives files. And since the old material is in Iraq and no longer in this country, it’s untraceable back to us unless this one engineer report from the war years is discovered in the National Archives files, and we’ll have that file tagged and monitored.”
“What about Zachary’s source? We’re not even sure how she got her information.”
Alford was tiring of the debate. “The only other mention of the mine is in rumor and innuendo and a possible diary that’s over five centuries old. My department had control of the army samples for seventy years. It was never turned over to the regulatory commission nor was it ever classified as a weapon by the old War Department. So, I say we err on the side of caution and send our team in with the expedition. As I said, that crazy woman probably won’t find a damned thing. She’s using five-hundred-year-old data from a conquistador, for Christ’s sake! It’s like finding one needle in five thousand haystacks. She could have only come across the description of the location in the National Archives’ database. The diary theory is ridiculous.”
“And if the site is found? You say the answer is to possibly eliminate the entire Zachary expedition with your fail-safe alternative, with a nuke and some SEALs? It’s fucking murder!” General Peterson exclaimed angrily.
“My men won’t let it get that far. I’ve worked with this particular strike team before and they’re very good. No American citizens will be harmed. I can guarantee that,” Rear Admiral Pierce said confidently. “Besides, what if this mine is still in existence, we could never allow a third-world nation to have access to Pandora’s box, now can we? We set the tactical weapon inside the mine and bring it down. Problem solved.”
“There are too goddamn many variables, Elliott, sneaking a team in there right under the noses of the Joint Chiefs and the president. I’m not even going to mention how Brazil would react to an intrusion like that. And this tactical weapon you’re sending? I don’t want to think about what security procedures have been violated for that little bit of skullduggery. This is fucking madness and I didn’t sign on to kill American citizens!”
“General Peterson, it’s already been decided. We unanimously agreed, you included, that the location of the Padilla site cannot become public knowledge, ever. As for the material—if it’s discovered in Iraq, only by a long shot can it be traced back here to our doorstep, because it was neither refined nor mined here. The only way for it to come to light is if some reference is found to it. Yes, this lady professor in her maddening zeal to find the Padilla site discovered one link, but it was a fluke. The only other reference to the area is in the old Padilla legends that the scientific community scoffs at and doesn’t take at all seriously. The location of the site and what exactly was mined and brought out of there are buried deep in the memories of the survivors of the initial incursion in the forties, if any are even alive today. Now, you went along with the deployment of the material the same as we did, and the aggression was stopped.”
“As I said, we’ve gotten in over our heads here, we need—”
“You’ll have your position in the government after the next election, just as I will. The mission is a ‘go.’ And that particular weapon you are so concerned about, if it is to be used at all, was entered into the naval inventory as inactive and destroyed, so no one will miss it. Anyway, I doubt very much anyone has to be eliminated. Now, that’s all, just go about your business, and let Rear Admiral Pierce and myself handle the fine print. Good day, gentlemen.”
Ambrose didn’t wait for another concern to be voiced that would lead to splintering; it was always best to commit right away so there would be no going back.
The thin-framed national security advisor turned away from his desk and shook his head as he again picked up the morning intelligence report on the border activity between Iran and Iraq. He smiled as he saw the sentence in italics: As of 0345 this morning eastern daylight time, satellite imagery has verified the total withdrawal ofall Iranian combat divisions from the adjoining border with Iraq.
As he tossed the morning briefing on his desk, he walked over to the coat rack and put on his suit jacket in preparation for the president’s morning intel brief. He couldn’t help but wonder in the end what price one would pay for peace. He picked up his phone and placed a call.
“Yes,” the tired voice said.
“Congratulations on your mission to Iran. How’s your jet lag?”
“I’m too tired to think about it, but we did leave the damned Iranians something to ponder. Iraq may not have the bomb to stop them from invading, but they now have something just as terrifying. Now, what about this expedition you briefed me on, this Professor Zachary?”
“We have it covered; there will be no amazing discoveries coming out of that area of the world. And if anyone else here goes digging into the same files the last person did, we’ll be alerted; it’s been red-flagged and we’ll be able to trace it to the computer terminal that’s being used. Sometimes it’s very advantageous to be partners with the intel chiefs.”
“Good. Is there anything else before we brief the president and the press corps on our diplomatic triumph?”
“No, everything is going well. I will be speaking to our partners in Brazil soon, to finalize our fail-safe positions as far as this expedition is concerned, if our SEAL friend fails to do what was ordered.”
“I know it is distasteful at times to deal with people such as this, but the end will justify the means. Let’s just close up the mine connection for good and move on with the real business at hand.”
“I agree. Enjoy all the accolades for your harrowing diplomacy from our current man in office. If he only knew how he was helping us in the election! Anyway, this latest diplomatic coup should put you right over the top in the polls. Peace in our time, right?” He thought he was being smart, quoting Neville Chamberlain.
“I sometimes wonder if it was all worth it. As they say, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
As the national security advisor hung up the phone he placed the morning report back in the red-bordered file and then he frowned. He knew that the sale of their souls to the Devil was the price all six conspirators had just paid for “peace in our time.”
After Robby Hanson closed the cell phone he looked around and, when he saw no one watching him, he turned to the overhang of the second deck and waved the girl over. She smiled and came out of the shadows.
“What did she say?” the twenty-year-old asked.
“She’s clueless; as long as she’s finally going on her dream cruise down the Amazon, Professor Zachary doesn’t care who’s on this trip. Besides it’s not like we’re lying about your being a grad student from Berkeley, is it?”
The girl smiled and leaned forward to kiss Robby on the lips. “I just had to go. How could I miss the trip of a lifetime?”
“Yeah, but how much trouble am I going to get into? Remember it was me who helped you ditch your protection. Your father’s going to freakin’ flip his gourd.” Robby shook his head, kissed the girl again, then turned her away from him.
“Go to your cabin and start getting acquainted with your fellow travelers, and stay out of sight until you check your equipment. And by the way, Kelly, your name is Cox. Leanne Cox. God, I’m dead,” he mumbled.
She batted her eyes. Grabbing her brand-new seabag, she started for the hatchway leading belowdecks. Then she stopped and turned. “Don’t tell me my secret fiancé is afraid of my father?”
Robby smiled and started making check marks on his manifest. “Why would I be afraid of one of the most powerful men in the world, surely not I, Ms. Cox?”
Farbeaux decided to drive to Los Angeles from Palo Alto. Taking Highway 1 relaxed him and allowed his mind to absorb the mission and think. He had placed Helen Zachary’s map inside a cylindrical container and placed it in the trunk. As he whistled he removed from his jacket pocket a Spanish cross once owned by Father Corinth. The last time Pizarro’s priest had seen the cross was in 1534. The warmth of it radiated out into his hand as he looked at it. How clever of Corinth to have placed both ore samples together in this most ingenious way. The large cross had inadvertently fallen to Farbeaux over a year earlier when it had been offered as payment by a former employer for services rendered. It had gone through a few changes while handed down through the Corinth family. Jewels had been added, and a thin plating of gold. The surprise he found inside its hidden compartment was an amazing stroke of luck.
Farbeaux knew the riches to be found in that near-forgotten lagoon were now close to being in his possession, partly thanks to this very cross and the secrets it had revealed to him. A five-hundred-year-old myth, an old legend that refused to die, would soon become a reality that was worth more than all the lost treasures ever torn from the earth.
After her arrival at the harbor, Helen was making a final check of the crated equipment strapped down across the deck of the Pacific Voyager. She only hoped that they would have enough room on the river tug Incan Wanderer and the river barge Juanita when they transferred the equipment in Colombia. Kennedy and his team had three more crates than she had allowed them. On her clipboard she made a check mark by each space that indicated the weight of his crates. She frowned when she added it all up.
“Robby, where’s Dr. Kennedy?” she asked her brightest graduate student. He tossed a coiled rope to one of young girls who populated Helen’s expedition and pointed toward the stern of the Pacific Voyager.
She bit her lip and handed him the clipboard with the manifest on it. “Give this to the captain,” she said, as she turned toward the stern. “Tell him we are over by three hundred pounds, but still within his load capacity.”
“You got it, Doc.” He watched her for a moment, wondering if maybe he should accompany her to see Kennedy and his men. But he decided that if anyone could handle these guys, it was Dr. Zachary. His eyes next sought out Kelly. She was on deck, checking her camera equipment. The thick-rimmed glasses and dyed hair didn’t hide her beauty, but they did go a long way toward hiding her identity. He figured everyone on the ship would find it difficult to recognize her.
Helen approached Kennedy and his associates, who were huddled near one of the ships large stern cleats. They were deep into conversation when Kennedy looked up and saw her walking toward them. He nodded and his men turned and walked away, but not before Helen noticed one of them partially raise his hand toward his forehead. Kennedy’s eyes locked on the man in question and he quickly lowered his hand and moved off. She wondered what that was all about.
“Professor Zachary, we about ready to shove off?” Kennedy asked as he straightened and walked over to meet her.
“I have a meeting to attend, but we should be able to depart in about twenty minutes.” She zipped up her dark blue coat. “Doctor, according to the manifest, you have three crates that were not accounted for nor inspected, and the weight of those three crates placed us over our limit. It makes me wonder if you were trying to get these items past me.”
Kennedy, a man of about twenty-six with short cropped blond hair, laughed. “My pharmaceutical company sent us two computers and a fluoride analyzer at the last minute. Nothing earth shattering, quite boring stuff really.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I inspect them?”
“Not at all, I’ll have them opened for you. I don’t think it should delay us more than two hours. It’s a royal pain but they’re packed quite well because of their sensitive components. But we don’t want to break any rules. Mr. Lang, will you unstrap the analyzer and her component computers and break down the crates for the—”
“That won’t be necessary, Doctor,” Helen said, irritated by the possible delay. She was nervous and didn’t trust Henri St. Claire at all. It felt as if he might drive onto the dock at any moment and catch them before they could make their way out to sea. “Your pharmaceutical company picked up the remaining portion of the bill for this trip, but please don’t assume that gives you the right to circumvent my authority.” She turned and strode away.
“I would never think of it,” he said to her retreating form. “We value this opportunity to examine the fauna of this new and unexplored area of the basin for the chance at—” He trailed off, giving up his rehearsed speech when she didn’t slow down. His eyes remained on Helen as she started down the gangplank toward the ship’s offices.
Helen entered the office and removed her coat while her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the interior. She finally saw the man sitting in the corner with one of his long legs crossed over the other.
“I honestly thought you were going to keep me waiting all night long in this smelly place,” he said as he stood.
“I imagine you’ve been in worse places.” She greeted him with a hug.
“As a matter of record, my dear, your father and I shipped out of this very harbor a million years ago bound for that paradise we know as Korea.” He released her and looked her over. “You, young lady, look exhausted.”
“Goes with the territory.” She patted him on the chest and then sat on the edge of a desk that occupied the center of the office.
“So, you finally got the grant you always wanted for this mysterious field trip. Are you excited?”
“I will be if we ever get out of here,” she answered as she looked at her father’s oldest friend and family attorney. She was sorry for having to lie to him about where the money came from. She managed to force the guilty thought from her mind. “I’ve got a secret mission for you, Stan.”
“Ooh, sounds mysterious,” he said jokingly.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she said, thinking, If he only knew. “You’re the only one I can trust to do what I ask, and not ask a bunch of silly questions.”
“At my age, I’ve learned to only ask pertinent questions, never silly ones. What do you want me to do?”
Helen stood and walked to the door. She bent down and retrieved the aluminum case that contained the fossil. She held out the case to the attorney.
“If for some reason I don’t make it back by September first, or call you by that date on the satellite phone, I need you to take this sample to Las Vegas and give it to a friend.”
Stan took the case and looked at his friend’s daughter.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Helen reached into her pocket and placed an envelope of the top of the container.
“The address is in here, along with my friend’s name. There’s also a brief on the expedition. My friend has the resources to know how to track me, so for security reasons and your safety, I didn’t leave him directions on how to find me. Stanley, will you do this for me?”
He didn’t say anything at first, as he made his way to the desk and placed the container on it. Then, “What have you gotten yourself into, Helen? Just where in the hell are you going and why do you need to leave me with such a cryptic list of instructions?”
She smiled and once again patted him on the left lapel. “You worry too much; it’s just a competitive type thing, the race for the prize.”
“And what prize is that?”
“A big one, Stanley.” She rose on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s dangerous only because the place is so remote. I have fifty people coming with me, so I’m not in this alone. Will you do this for me?”
He was about to respond when the ship’s horn sounded and drowned out his answer. He grimaced. When the horn stopped blaring there was a quick rapping at the office door and Kimberly Denning, a third-year student, poked her head through.
“Captain said he has to get this tide or you can forget about sailing until morning,” Kimberly said, then vanished.
Helen grabbed her coat and put it on. “Wish me luck?” she asked Stan.
“I do. I just wish I knew what it was you were up to.”
She smiled and turned for the door, raising her hand in good-bye. “All I’ll tell you is that, when I get back, no one will look at the world the same way again.”
The door opened and Helen was gone. Stan took the white business envelope from the top of the container as he made his way to the window. Helen turned when she reached the top of the gangplank and waved at him, and he held the envelope up and waved back. Her students were lining the rails and waving at family who were in the parking lot. To Helen’s right, standing away from her and her students, was a group of men who were watching from the railing. They weren’t waving, just leaning against the steel gunwale as the ship’s crew cast off her thick rope lines. Stan watched as the ship drifted away from the pier with her horn sounding. There was an explosion at her stern when the engines began turning her screws and the Pacific Voyager started making for the open sea.
Stan turned from the window and looked down at the envelope he held in his hand. He squinted and moved to stand by the desk lamp. Helen’s womanly scrawl was written across the white paper in flowing lines. Stan looked up through the window at the receding lights of the blue-painted Pacific Voyager and then back at the name and address on the envelope. He read it aloud to himself: “Dr. Niles Compton, c/o the Gold City Pawnshop, 2120 Desert Palm Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada.
“A pawnshop?” he said wonderingly.
He placed the envelope in his overcoat and looked out the window again, now taking in the few family members and friends of Helen’s students as they started their cars and moved out of the small parking lot. Then Stan, for no reason that he knew of, got goose bumps down his arms as the vehicles departed. He didn’t believe in premonitions or any of the other strange sciences that occupied the newspapers these days, yet had a distinct feeling that he would indeed deliver this envelope to that pawnshop in Las Vegas. And that the families that had watched their loved ones sail into the night would never again see them alive.
Stan picked up the aluminum container and made for the door. He allowed himself one last look out into the harbor, but the ship’s running lights had vanished into the dark Pacific waters.