Inca Gold dp-12 Page 32

  "Call it a psychological warp," replied Ragsdale. "Gaskill and I can recite any number of cases involving collectors who stash their illegal acquisitions in a secret vault where they sit and view it once a day, or maybe once every ten years. Never mind that none of it is on public display. They get their high by possessing something no one else can own."

  Gaskill nodded in agreement. "Collector addiction can make people carry out macabre schemes. It's bad enough to desecrate and despoil Indian graves by digging up and selling skulls and mummified bodies of women and children, but certain collectors of American Civil War memorabilia have gone so far as to dig up graves in national cemeteries just to retrieve Union and Confederate belt buckles."

  "A sad commentary on avarice," mused Sandecker.

  "The stories of grave plundering for artifacts are endless," said Ragsdale. "Bones of the dead from every culture, beginning with the Neanderthal, are smashed and scattered. The sanctity of the dead means little if there is a profit to be made."

  "Because of the many collectors' insatiable lust for antiquities," said Gaskill, "they're prime candidates for rip-offs. Their seemingly inexhaustible demand creates a lucrative trade in forgeries."

  Ragsdale nodded. "Without proper archaeological study, copied artifacts can pass undetected. Many of the collections in respected museums display forged antiquities and no one realizes. Every curator or collector is unwilling to believe he has been screwed by a forger, and few scholars have the guts to state that the pieces they are examining are suspect."

  "Famous art is not exempt," Gaskill further explained. "Agent Ragsdale and I have both seen cases where an outstanding masterpiece was stolen, copied by experts, and the forgery returned through channels for the finder's fee and insurance. The gallery and its curator happily hang the fake, never realizing they've been had."

  "How are the stolen objects distributed and sold?" queried Sandecker.

  "Tomb looters and art thieves sell through an underground network of crooked dealers who put up the money and supervise the sales from a distance, acting through agents without revealing their identity."

  "Can't they be traced through the network?"

  Gaskill shook his head. "Because the suppliers and their distributors also operate behind closed doors under a heavy veil of secrecy, it is next to impossible for us to penetrate any particular branch of the network with any prospect of following a trail to the top dealers."

  Ragsdale took over. "It's not like tracing a drug user to his street-corner dealer, and then to his suppliers, and then up the ladder to the drug lords, who are mostly uneducated, seldom go to extremes to hide their identities, and are often drug users themselves. Instead, we find ourselves matching wits with men who are well educated and highly connected in the top levels of business and government. They're shrewd, and they're cunning. Except in rare cases, they never deal with their clients on a direct face-to-face basis. Whenever we get close, they pull into their shells and throw up a wall of expensive attorneys to block our investigations."

  "Have you had any luck at all?" asked Sandecker.

  "We've picked off a few of the small dealers who operate on their own," replied Ragsdale. "And both our agencies have recovered substantial numbers of stolen goods. Some during shipment, some from buyers, who almost never do jail time because they claim they didn't know the pieces they bought were stolen. What we've recovered is only a trickle. Without solid evidence we can't stem the main flow of illegal objects."

  "Sounds to me like you fellows are outgunned and outclassed," said Sandecker.

  Ragsdale nodded. "We'd be the first to admit it."

  Sandecker silently rocked back and forth in his swivel chair, mulling over the words of the government agents seated across the desk. At last he said, "How can NUMA help you?"

  Gaskill leaned across the desk. "We think you cracked the door open by unknowingly synchronizing your search for Huascar's treasure with the world's largest dealer of hot art and antiquities."

  "Zolar International."

  "Yes, a family whose tentacles reach into every comer of the trade.

  "FBI and Customs agents," said Ragsdale, "have never before encountered a single group of art forgers, thieves, and artifact smugglers who have operated in so many countries for so many years and have involved such a diverse cast of wealthy celebrities, who have illegally bought literally billions of dollars worth of stolen art and antiques."

  "I'm listening," said Sandecker.

  "This is our chance to get in on the ground floor," revealed Gaskill. "Because of the possibility of finding fantastic riches, the Zolars have shed all caution and launched a search to locate the treasure and keep it for themselves. If they are successful, this presents us with a rare window of opportunity to observe their method of shipment and trail it back to their secret storehouse . . ."

  "Where you nab them redhanded with the swag," Sandecker finished.

  Ragsdale grinned. "We don't exactly use those terms anymore, Admiral, but yes, you're on the right track."

  Sandecker was intrigued. "You want me to call off my search team. Is that the message?"

  Gaskill and Ragsdale looked at each other and nodded.

  "Yes, sir," said Gaskill. "That's the message."

  "With your approval, of course," Ragsdale hastily added.

  "Have you boys cleared this with your superiors?"

  Ragsdale nodded solemnly. "Director Moran of the FBI and Director Thomas of the Customs Service have given their approval."

  "You don't mind if I give them a call and confirm?"

  "Not at all," said Gaskill. "I apologize that Agent Ragsdale and I didn't go through the chain of command arid request that they deal with you directly, but we felt it was best to present our case from firsthand knowledge and let the chips fall where they may."

  "I can appreciate that," said Sandecker generously.

  "Then you'll cooperate?" asked Ragsdale. "And call off your search team?"

  Sandecker stared idly at the smoke curling from his cigar for several moments. "NUMA will play ball with the bureau and Customs, but I won't close down our search project."

  Gaskill stared at the admiral, not knowing if he was joking. "I don't think I catch your drift, sir."

  "Have you people ever hunted for something that has been lost for almost five hundred years?"

  Ragsdale glanced at his partner and shrugged. "Speaking for the bureau, our search operations are generally confined to missing persons, fugitives, and bodies. Lost treasure is out of our domain."

  "I don't believe I have to explain what the Customs Service looks for," said Gaskill.

  "I'm quite familiar with your directives," Sandecker said conversationally. "But finding lost treasure is a million-to-one long shot. You can't interview people for leads who have been dead since the fifteen hundreds. All our quipu and your golden mummy have done is given vague references to a mysterious island in the Sea of Cortez. A clue that puts the proverbial needle somewhere within a hundred-and-sixty-thousand-square-kilometer haystack. I'm assuming the Zolars are amateurs at this kind of search game. So the chances of them finding the cavern containing Huascar's golden chain are ten meters this side of nil."

  "You think your people have a better chance?" asked Gaskill testily.

  "My special projects director and his team are the best in the business. If you don't believe me, check our records."

  "How do you plan to play ball with us?" Ragsdale asked, his tone edged with disbelief.

  Sandecker made his thrust. "We conduct our search at the same time as the Zolars, but we hang in the shadows. They have no reason to suspect rivals and will assume any NUMA personnel or aircraft they sight are on an oceanographic research project. If the Zolars are successful in discovering the treasure, my team will simply melt away and return to Washington."

  "And should the Zolars strike out?" demanded Ragsdale.

  "If NUMA can't find the treasure, it doesn't want to be found."

  "And if NUMA
is successful?" Ragsdale pushed forward.

  "We leave a trail of bread crumbs for the to follow, and let them think they discovered the hoard on their own." Sandecker paused, his hard gaze moving from Ragsdale to Gaskill and back. "From then on, gentlemen, the show belongs to you."

  "I keep imagining that Rudolph Valentino is going to ride over the next dune and carry me away to his tent," said Loren sleepily. She was sitting on thee front seat of the Pierce Arrow, her legs curled under her, staring at the ocean of sand dunes that dominated the landscape.

  "Keep looking," said Pitt. "The Coachella Dunes, slightly north of here, are where Hollywood used to shoot many of their desert movies."

  Fifty kilometers (31 miles) after passing through Yuma, Arizona, across the Colorado River into California, Pitt swung the big Pierce Arrow left off Interstate Highway 8 and onto the narrow state road that led to the border towns of Calexico and Mexicali. Drivers and passengers in cars that passed, or those coming from the opposite direction, stared and gawked at the old classic auto and the trailer it pulled.

  Loren had sweet-talked Pitt into driving the old auto cross-country, camping in the trailer, and then joining a tour around southern Arizona sponsored by the Classic Car Club of America. The tour was scheduled to begin in two weeks. Pitt doubted that they could wrap up the treasure hunt in such a short time but went along with Loren because he enjoyed driving his old cars on extended tours.

  "How much farther to the border?" Loren asked.

  "Another forty-two kilometers will put us into Mexico," he answered. "Then a hundred and sixty-five klicks to San Felipe. We should arrive at the dock, where Al and Rudi have tied up the ferry, by dinnertime."

  "Speaking of edibles and liquids," she said lazily, "the refrigerator is empty and the cupboards are bare. Except for breakfast cereal and coffee this morning, we cleaned out the food stock at that campground in Sedona last night."

  He took his right hand from the steering wheel, squeezed her knee and smiled. "1 suppose I have to keep the passengers happy by filling their bellies."

  "How about that truck stop up ahead?" She straightened and pointed through the flat, narrow windshield of the Pierce.

  Pitt gazed over the ornate radiator cap, a crouched archer poised to fire an arrow. He saw a sign by the side of the road, dried and bleached by the desert sun, and on the verge of collapsing into the sand at any moment. The lettering was so old and faded he could hardly read the words.

  Ice-cold beer and food a mother would love. Only 2 more minutes to the Box Car Cafe.

  He laughed. "The cold beer sounds good, but I'm leery of the cuisine. When I was a boy, my mother loved to make dishes that turned me green."

  "Shame on you. Your mother is a good cook."

  "She is now, but twenty-five years ago, even the starving homeless wouldn't come near our doorstep."

  "You're terrible." Loren turned the dial of the old tube-type radio, trying to tune in a Mexicali station. She finally found one, playing Mexican music, that came in clear. "I don't care if the chef has the black plague, I'm starved."

  Take a woman on a long trip, Pitt mused miserably, and they're always hungry or demanding to stop at a bathroom.

  "And besides," she threw in, "you need gas."

  Pitt glanced at the fuel gauge. The needle stood steady at a quarter tank. "I guess it won't hurt to fill up before we cross the border."

  "It doesn't seem as if we've driven very far since the last gas stop."

  "A big car that was built sixty years ago, with a twelve cylinder engine and pulling a house trailer, won't win any awards for fuel economy."

  The roadside restaurant and gas station came into view. All Pitt saw as they drove closer was a dilapidated pair of old railroad freight cars joined together, with two gas pumps out front and a neon EAT sign barely flickering in the shadow of the Box Car Cafe. A cluster of battered old house trailers was parked in the rear, abandoned and empty. Out front in the dirt parking lot, eighteen to twenty bikers were milling around a small fleet of Harley-Davidsons, drinking beer and enjoying a cool breeze that was blowing in from the Gulf.

  "Boy, you sure can pick 'em," said Pitt drolly.

  "Maybe we'd better go on," Loren murmured, having second thoughts.

  "You afraid of the bikers? They're probably weary travelers just like you and me."

  "They certainly don't dress like us." She nodded at the assembly, divided equally between men and women, all wearing black riding gear festooned with badges, patches, and embroidered messages touting America's most famous motorcycle.

  Pitt turned the outsize steering wheel and the Pierce rolled off the blacktop up to the gas pumps. The big V-12 engine was so whisper-quiet it was hard to tell it had stopped when he turned off the ignition. He opened the suicide door that swung outward from the front, put a foot on the high running board and stepped down. " Hi there," he greeted the nearest biker, a bleached blond female with a ponytail, wearing black leather pants and jacket. "How's the food here?"

  "Not quite up to the standards of Spago's or Chasen's," she said pleasantly. "But if you're hungry, it's not half bad."

  A metal sign liberally peppered with bullet holes said Self Service, so Pitt inserted the nozzle of the gas pump inside the Pierce Arrow's tank filler and squeezed the handle. When he had the engine rebuilt, the machine shop modified the valves to burn unleaded gas without problems.

  Loren warily hunched down in her seat as the bikers all walked over and admired the old car and trailer. After answering a barrage of questions, Pitt lifted the hood and showed them the engine. Then he pulled Loren from the car.

  "I thought you'd like to meet these nice people," he said. "They all belong to a bike riding club from West Hollywood."

  She thought Pitt was joking and was embarrassed half to death as he made introductions. Then she was astounded to discover they were attorneys with their wives on a weekend ride around the Southern California desert. She was also impressed and flattered that they recognized her when Pitt gave them her name.

  After a congenial conversation, the Hollywood barristers and their spouses bid goodbye, climbed aboard their beloved hogs and roared off, exhaust stacks reverberating in chorus, toward the Imperial Valley. Pitt and Loren waved, then turned and faced the freight cars.

  The rails beneath the rusting wheel-trucks were buried in the sand. The weathered wooden walls had once been painted a reddish tan, and the lettering above the long row of crudely installed windows read Southern Pacific Lines. Thanks to the dry air, the body shells of the antique boxcars had survived the ravages of constant exposure and appeared in relatively good condition.

  Pitt owned a piece of railroad history, a Pullman car. It was part of the collection housed inside his hangar in Washington. The once-luxurious rail car had been pulled by the famed Manhattan Limited out of New York in the years prior to World War I. He judged these freight cars to have been built sometime around 1915.

  He and Loren climbed a makeshift stairway and entered a door cut into the end of one car. The interior was timeworn but neat and clean. There were no tables, only a long counter with stools that stretched the length of the two attached cars. The open kitchen was situated on the opposite side of the counter and looked as if it was constructed from used lumber that had lain in the sun for several decades. Pictures on the walls showed early engines, smoke spouting from their stacks, pulling passenger and freight trains across the desert sands. The list of records on a Wurlitzer jukebox was a mix of favorite pop music from the forties and fifties and the sounds of steam locomotives. Two plays for twenty-five cents.

  Pitt put a quarter in the slot and made his selections. One was Frankie Carle playing "Sweet Lorraine." The other was the clamor of a Norfolk & Western single expansion articulated steam locomotive leaving a station and coming to speed.

  A tall man, in his early sixties, with gray hair and white beard, was wiping the oak counter top. He looked up and smiled, his blue-green eyes filled with warmth and congeniality. "G
reetings, folks. Welcome to the Box Car Cafe. Travel far?"

  "Not far," Pitt answered, throwing Loren a rakish grin. "We didn't leave Sedona as early as I planned."

  "Don't blame me," she said loftily. "You're the one who woke up with carnal passions."

  "What can I get you?" said the man behind the bar. He was wearing cowboy boots, denim pants, and a plaid shirt that was badly faded from too many washings.

  "Your advertised ice-cold beer would be nice," replied Loren, opening a menu.

  "Mexican or domestic?"

  "Corona?"

  "One Corona coming up. And you, sir?"

  "What do you have on tap?" asked Pitt.

  "Olympia, Coors, and Budweiser."

  "I'd like an Oly."

  "Anything to eat?" inquired the man behind the counter.

  "Your mesquite chiliburger," said Loren. "And coleslaw."

  "I'm not real hungry," said Pitt. "I'll just have the coleslaw. Do you own this place?"

  "Bought it from the original owner when I gave up prospecting." He set their beer on the bar and turned to his stove.

  "The box cars are interesting relics of railroad history. Were they moved here, or did the railroad run through at one time?"

  "We're actually sitting on the siding of the old main line," answered the diner's owner. "The tracks used to run from Yuma to El Centro. The line was abandoned in 1947 for lack of business. The rise of truck lines did it in. These cars were bought by an old fella who used to be an engineer for the Southern Pacific. He and his wife made a restaurant and gas station out of them. With the main interstate going north of here and all, we don't see too much traffic anymore."

  The bartender/cook looked as if he might have been a fixture of the desert even before the rails were laid. He had the worn look of a man who had seen more than he should and heard a thousand stories that remained in his head, classified and indexed as drama, humor, or horror. There was also an unmistakable aura of style about him, a sophistication that said he didn't belong in a godforsaken roadside tavern on a remote and seldom-traveled road through the desert.