Inca Gold [Dirk Pitt 12] by Clive Cussler

Author:Clive Cussler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Organized Crime, Action & Adventure, Mexico, Incas, Smuggling, Pitt, General, Dirk (Fictitious Character), Andes, Treasure Troves, Adventure Stories, Fiction, Incas - Antiquities, Antiquities - Collection and Preservation, Espionage, Inca Goldwork
ISBN: 9781416525721
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1994-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Samson's face had a ghoulish grin. His brothers could not see inside his mind, see that he was happily imagining what Tupac Amaru would do to Henry Moore after the treasure was discovered.

"Brunhilda has gone as far as she can go," said Yaeger, referring to his beloved computer terminal.

"Together, we've painstakingly pieced together about ninety percent of the stringed codes. But there are a few permutations we haven't figured out--"

"Permutations?" muttered Pitt, sitting across from Yaeger in the conference room.

"The different arrangements in lineal order and color of the quipu's coiled wire cables."

Pitt shrugged and looked around the room. Four other men were there-- Admiral Sandecker, Al Giordino, Rudi Gunn, and Hiram Yaeger. Everyone's attention was focused on Yaeger, who looked like a coyote who had bayed nonstop all night at a full moon.

"I really must work on my vocabulary," Pitt murmured. He slouched into a comfortable position and stared at the computer genius who stood behind a podium under a large wall screen.

"As I was about to explain," Yaeger continued, "a few of the knots and coils are indecipherable. After applying the most sophisticated and advanced information and data analysis techniques known to man, the best I can offer is a rough account of the story."

"Even a mastermind like you?" asked Gunn, smiling.

"Even Einstein. Unless he'd unearthed an Inca Rosetta Stone or a sixteenth-century how-to book on the art of creating your very own quipu, he'd have worked in a vacuum too."

"If you're going to tell us the show ends with no grand climax," said Giordino, "I'm going to lunch."

"Drake's quipu is a complex representation of numerical data," Yaeger pushed on, undaunted by Giordino's sarcasm, "but it's not strong on blow-by-blow descriptions of events. You can't narrate visual action and drama with strategically placed knots on a few coils of colored wire. The quipu can only offer sketchy accounts of the people who walked on and off this particular stage of history."

"You've made your point," said Sandecker, waving one of his bulbous cigars. "Now why don't you tell us what you sifted from the maze?"

Yaeger nodded and lowered the conference room lights. He switched on a slide projector that threw an early Spanish map of the coast of North and South America on the wall screen. He picked up a metal pointer that telescoped like an automobile radio aerial and casually aimed it in the general direction of the map.

"Without a long-winded history lesson, I'll just say that after Huascar, the legitimate heir to the Inca throne, was defeated and overthrown by his bastard half-brother, Atahualpa, in 1533, he ordered his kingdom's treasury and other royal riches to be hidden high in the Andes. A wise move, as it turned out.

During his imprisonment, Huascar suffered great humiliation and grief. All his friends and kinsmen were executed, and his wives and children were hanged. Then to add insult to injury, the Spanish picked that particular moment to invade the Inca empire. In a situation similar to Cortez in Mexico, Francisco Pizarro's timing couldn't have been more perfect.

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