Cyclops Page 8

  "Real name was Johann Wichman," Hope briefed without command. "He was born in Germany and illegally entered the United States when he jumped a merchant ship in San Francisco during the year 1878. How he falsified his records is not known. While commanding the Cyclops, he lived in Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife and daughter."

  "Any possibility he was working for the Germans in 1918?"

  "Nothing was ever proven. Would you like the reports from naval investigations of the tragedy?"

  "Just print them out. I'll study them later."

  "The next photo is of Lieutenant David Forbes, the executive officer," said Hope.

  The camera had caught Forbes in dress uniform standing beside what Pitt guessed to be a 1916

  Cadillac touring car. He had the face of a greyhound, long, narrow nose, pale eyes whose color could not be determined from the black-and-white photograph. His face was clean-shaven, the eyebrows arched, and he had slightly protruding teeth.

  "What sort of man was he?" asked Pitt.

  "His naval record was unblemished until Worley put him under ship's arrest for insubordination."

  "Reason?"

  "Captain Worley altered course from one plotted by Lieutenant Forbes and almost wrecked the ship entering Rio. When Forbes demanded to know why, Worley blew up and confined him to quarters."

  "Was Forbes still under arrest during the last voyage?"

  "Yes."

  "Who's next?"

  "Lieutenant John Church, second officer."

  The photo showed a small, almost frail-looking man in civilian clothes sitting at a table in a restaurant.

  His face wore the tired look of a farmer after a long day in the fields, yet his dark eyes seemed to advertise a humorous disposition. The graying hair above a large forehead was brushed back over small ears.

  "He seems older than the others," observed Pitt.

  "Actually only twenty-nine," said Hope. "Joined the Navy when he was sixteen and worked his way up through the ranks."

  "Did he have problems with Worley?"

  "Nothing in the file."

  The final photograph was of two men standing at attention in a courtroom. There was no sign of apprehension in their faces-- if anything, they appeared sullen and defiant. The one on the left was tall and rangy with heavily muscled arms. The other one had the size and shape of a grizzly bear.

  "This picture was taken at the court-martial of Fireman First Class James Coker and Fireman Second Class Barney DeVoe for the murder of Fireman Third Class Oscar Stewart. All three men were stationed aboard the U.S. cruiser Pittsburgh. Coker, on the left, was sentenced to death by hanging, which was carried out in Brazil. DeVoe, on the right, was sentenced to fifty to ninety-nine years in the naval prison at Portsmouth, New Hampshire."

  "What's their connection with the Cyclops?" Pitt inquired.

  "The Pittsburgh was in Rio de Janeiro when the murder occurred. When Captain Worley reached port, he was instructed to transport DeVoe and four other prisoners in the Cyclops' brig to the United States."

  "And they were on board at the end."

  ` Yes.'

  "No other pictures of the crew?"

  "They are probably available in family albums and other private sources, but this is all I have in my library."

  "Tell me about the events leading to the disappearance."

  "Verbal or print?"

  "Can you print it out and talk at the same time?"

  "Sorry, I can only perform such functions in sequence. Which do you prefer first?"

  "Verbal."

  "Very well. One moment while I assemble the data."

  Pitt was beginning to feel drowsy. It had been a long day. He used the pause to dial Yaeger and ask for a cup of coffee.

  "How are you and Hope getting along?"

  "I'm almost beginning to think she's real," Pitt answered.

  "Just so long you don't start fantasizing about her nonexistent body."

  "I'm not at that stage yet."

  "To know her is to love her."

  "How are you doing on LeBaron?"

  "What I was afraid of," said Yaeger. "He pretty much buried his past. No insight, only statistics up to the time he became the Wall Street whiz."

  "Anything interesting?"

  "Not really. He came from a fairly affluent family. His father owned a chain of hardware stores. I get the idea Raymond and his father didn't get along. There's no mention of his family in any newspaper biographies after he became the financial whiz."

  "Did you find out how he made his first big bucks?"

  "That area is pretty vague. He and a partner by the name of Kronberg had a marine salvage company in the middle nineteen-fifties. Seems they scratched along for a few years and then went broke. Two years later, Raymond launched his publication."

  "The Prosperteer."

  "Right."

  "Is there any mention of where his backing came from?"

  "None," replied Yaeger. "By the way, Jessie is his second wife. His first was named Hillary. She died a few years ago. Nothing on her at all."

  "Keep hunting."

  Pitt hung up as Hope said, "I'm ready with the data on the illfated final voyage of the Cyclops."

  "Let's hear it."

  "She put to sea from Rio de Janeiro on 16 February 1918, bound for Baltimore, Maryland. On board were her regular crew of 15 officers and 231 men, 57 men from the cruiser Pittsburgh, who were being rotated to the Norfolk Naval Base for reassignment, the 5 prisoners including DeVoe, and the American consul general at Rio, Alfred L. Morean Gottschalk, who was returning to Washington. Her cargo was 11,000 tons of manganese ore.

  "After a brief call at the port of Bahia to pick up mail, the ship made an unscheduled stop on 4 March, when she entered Carlisle Bay on the island of Barbados and dropped anchor. Here, Worley took on extra coal and provisions, which he claimed were necessary to continue the voyage to Baltimore, but was later considered to be quite excessive. After the ship was lost at sea, the American consul in Barbados reported a number of suspicious rumors regarding Worley's unusual action, strange events on board, and a possible mutiny. The last anyone saw of the Cyclops and the men on board was 4 March 1918, when she steamed away from Barbados."

  "There was no further contact?" asked Pitt.

  "Twenty-four hours later, a lumber freighter called the Crogan Castle reported her bow crushed by an immense freak wave. Her radio signals for assistance were answered by the Cyclops. The final words from the collier were her call number and the message, `We are fifty miles due south of you and coming at full steam.' "

  "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."

  "A true golden man," Pitt speculated. "A statue."

  "You're close," said O'Meara. "Damned close, but you missed on the sex.'

  "Sex?"

  "La mujer dorada, the golden woman," O'Meara replied. "Or more commonly, La Dorada. You see, the name first applied to a man and a ceremony, later to a city, and finally to an empire. Over the years it became a term for any place where riches could be found on the ground. Like so many descriptions the feminists hate, the masculine myth became generic, while the feminine was forgotten. Ready for another drink?"

  "No, thanks. I'll nurse this one."r />
  O'Meara ordered another Jack Daniel's. "Anyway, you know the story behind the Taj Mahal. A Mogul ruler erected the ornate tomb as a monument to his wife. Same with a pre-Columbian, South American king. His name is not recorded, but, so the legend goes, she was the most beloved of the hundreds of women at his court. Then an event occurred in the sky. Probably either an eclipse or Halley's comet. And the priests called on him to sacrifice her to appease the angry gods. Life was no fun in those days. So she was killed, heart torn out in an elaborate ceremony."

  "I thought only the Aztecs went in for heart removal."

  "The Aztecs didn't have a monopoly on human sacrifice. The upshot was the king called together his artisans and ordered them to build a statue of her likeness so he could elevate her to a god."

  "Did the monk describe it?"

  "In vivid detail, if his story can be believed. She stands nude, nearly six feet tall, on a pedestal of rose quartz. Her body is solid gold. God, it must weigh at least a ton. Imbedded in the chest, where the heart should be, is a great ruby, judged to be in the neighborhood of twelve hundred carats."

  "I don't profess to be an expert," said Pitt, "but I know that rubies are the most valuable of all the gemstones, and one of thirty carats is a rarity. Twelve hundred carats is unbelievable."

  "That's not even the half of it," O'Meara continued. "The entire head of the statue is one gigantic carved emerald, deep blue-green and flawless. I can't begin to guess the carat weight, but it would have to hit the scales around thirty pounds."

  "More like forty if you include a likeness of the hair."

  "What's the largest known emerald?"

  Pitt thought a moment. "Certainly no more than ten pounds."

  "Can't you just see her standing under spotlights in the main lobby of Washington's Museum of Natural History," O'Meara said wistfully.

  "I can only wonder at the value on today's market."

  "You could safely say it's priceless."

  "There was another man who saw the statue?" Pitt asked.

  "Colonel Ralph Morehouse Sigler, a real character from the old explorer school. An engineer in the English army, he tramped around the empire, surveying boundaries and building forts throughout Africa and India. He was also a trained geologist and spent his leave time prospecting. He was either damned lucky or damned good, discovering an extensive chromite deposit in South Africa and several precious gemstone veins in Indochina. He became wealthy but didn't have time to enjoy it. The Kaiser marched into France and he was ordered to the Western Front to build fortifications."