Clive Cussler - Cyclops

"Nothing else?"

"That was it."

"Did the Crogan Castle give her position?"

"Yes, it was reported as latitude twenty-three degrees, thirty minutes north by longitude seventy-nine degrees, twenty-one minutes west, which put her about twenty miles southeast from a bank of shallow reefs called the Anguilla Cays."

"Was the Crogan Castle lost also?"

"No, the records say she limped into Havana."

"Any wreckage of the Cyclops turn up?"

"An extensive search by the Navy found nothing."

Pitt hesitated as Yaeger entered the viewing room, set a cup of coffee by the console, and silently retreated. He took a few sips and asked Hope to reshow the photo of the Cyclops. The ship materialized on the monitor's screen and he stared at it thoughtfully.

He picked up the phone, punched a number, and waited. A digital clock on the console read 11:55, but the voice that answered sounded bright and cheerful.

"Dirk!" boomed Dr. Raphael O'Meara. "What the hell is going down? You caught me at a good time. I just came home this morning from a dig in Costa Rica."

"Find another truckload of potsherds?"

"Only the richest cache of pre-Columbian art discovered to date. Amazing pieces, some dating back to three hundred B.C."

"Too bad you can't keep them."

"All my finds go to the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica."

"You're a generous man, Raphael."

"I don't donate them, Dirk. The governments where my finds are made preserve the artifacts as part of their national heritage. But why bore an old waterlogged relic like you. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?"

"I need your expertise on a piece of treasure."

"You know, of course," O'Meara said, his tone edged with a touch of seriousness, "treasure is an unspeakable word to a respected archeologist."

"We all carry an albatross," said Pitt. "Can you meet me for a drink?"

"Now? Do you realize what time it is?"

"I happen to know you're a night owl. Make it easy on yourself. Someplace close to your house."

"How about the Old Angler's Inn on MacArthur Boulevard? Say in half an hour."

"Sounds good."

"Can you tell me what treasure you're interested in?"

"The one everyone dreams about."

"Oh? And which one is that?"

"Tell you when I see you."

Pitt hung up and gazed at the Cyclops. There was an eerie loneliness about her. He could not help wondering what secrets she took with her to a watery grave.

"Can I provide any further data?" asked Hope, interrupting his morbid reverie. "Or do you wish to terminate?"

"I think we can call it quits," he replied. "Thank you, Hope. I wish I could give you a big kiss."

"I am grateful for the compliment, Dirk. But I am not physiologically capable of receiving a kiss."

"You're still a sweetheart in my book."

"Come up and use me anytime."

Pitt laughed. "Goodnight, Hope."

"Goodnight, Dirk."

If only she was real, he thought with a dreamy sigh.

<<10>>

"Jack Daniel's neat," Raphael O'Meara said cheerfully. "Make that a double. Best medicine I know to clear the brain of jungle rot."

"How long were you in Costa Rica?" asked Pitt.

"Three months. Rained the whole time."

"Bombay gin on the rocks with a twist," Pitt said to the barmaid.

"So you're joining the greedy ranks of the sea scavengers," O'Meara said, the words emanating through a thick Gabby Hayes beard that hid his face from the nose down. "Dirk Pitt a treasure hunter. I never thought I'd see the day."

"My interest is purely academic."

"Sure, that's what they all say. Take my advice and forget it. More loot has been poured into underwater treasure hunts than was ever found. I can count on one hand the number of lucky discoveries that paid a profit in the last eighty years. The adventure, excitement, and riches, nothing but hype and all myth."

"I agree."

O'Meara's barbed-wire eyebrows narrowed. "So what is it you want to know?"

"You familiar with Raymond LeBaron?"

"Old rich and reckless Raymond, the financial genius who publishes the Prosperteer?"

"The same. He disappeared a couple of weeks ago on a blimp flight near the Bahamas."

"How could anybody disappear in a blimp?"

"Somehow he managed. You must have heard or read something about it."

O'Meara shook his head. "I haven't watched TV or seen a newspaper in ninety days."

The drinks were brought, and Pitt briefly explained the strange circumstances surrounding the mystery. The crowd was beginning to thin and they had the bar mostly to themselves.

"And you think LeBaron was flying around in an old gas bag looking for a shipwreck loaded to the gills with the mother lode."

"According to his wife, Jessie."

"What ship?"

"The Cyclops."

"I know about the Cyclops. A Navy collier that vanished seventy-one years ago. I don't recall any report of riches on board."

"Apparently LeBaron thought so."

"What sort of treasure?"

"The El Dorado."

"You've got to be kidding."

"I'm only repeating what I was told."

O'Meara went quiet for a long moment, his eyes taking on a faraway look. "El hombre dorado," he said at last. "Spanish for the golden man or the gilded one. The legend-- some call it a curse-- has fired imaginations for four hundred and fifty years."

"Is there any truth to it?" asked Pitt.

"Every legend is based on fact, but like all the others before and since, this one has been distorted and embellished into a fairy tale. El Dorado has inspired the longest continuing treasure hunt on record. Thousands of men have died searching for a glimpse of it."

"Tell me how the tale originated."

Another Jack Daniel's and Bombay gin arrived. Pitt laughed as O'Meara downed the water chaser first. Then the archeologist made himself comfortable and stared into another time.

"The Spanish conquistadores were the first to hear of a gilded man who ruled an incredibly wealthy kingdom somewhere in the mountainous jungles east of the Andes. Rumors described him as living in a secluded city built of gold with streets paved in emeralds and guarded by a fierce army of beautiful Amazons. Made Oz sound like a slum. Extremely overvalued, of course. But in reality there were a number of El Dorados-- a long line of kings who worshiped a demon god who lived in Lake Guatavita, Colombia. When a new monarch took command of the tribal empire, his body was painted with resinous gums and then coated with gold dust, thus the gilded man. Then he was placed on a ceremonial raft, piled high with gold and precious stones, and rowed into the middle of the lake, where he proceeded to pitch the riches into the water as an offering to the god, whose name escapes me."

"Was the treasure ever raised?"

"There were any number of attempts to drain the lake, but they all failed. In 1965 the government of Colombia declared Guatavita an area of cultural interest and banned all salvage operations. A pity, when you consider that estimates of the wealth on the bottom of the lake run between one hundred and three hundred million dollars."

"And the golden city?"

"Never found," said O'Meara, signaling the barmaid for another round. "Many looked and many died. Nikolaus Federmann, Ambrosius Dalfinger, Sebastian de Belalcazar, Gonzalo and Herman Jimenez de Quesada, all sought El Dorado but only found the curse. So did Sir Walter Raleigh. After his second fruitless expedition, King James put his head on the block, literally. The fabulous city of El Dorado and the greatest treasure of them all remained lost."

"Let's back up a minute," said Pitt. "The treasure at the bottom of the lake is not lost."

"That's in scattered pieces," explained O'Meara. "The second one, the grand prize, the bonanza at the end of the rainbow, remains hidden to this day. With maybe two exceptions, no outsider has ever laid eyes on it. The only description came from a monk who wandered out of the jungle into a Spanish settlement on the Orinoco River in 1675. Before dying a week later, he told of being on a Portuguese expedition looking for diamond mines. Out of eighty men, he was the only survivor. He claimed they'd stumbled into a deserted city surrounded by high cliffs and guarded by a tribe who called themselves Zanonas. The party lived in the city for three months, but one by one the men began to die off. Too late they discovered the Zanonas were not as friendly as they made out, but were cannibals, poisoning the Portuguese and eating them. The monk alone managed to escape. He described massive temples and buildings, strange inscriptions, and the legendary treasure that sent so many of its hunters to their graves."