Empire of Gold Read online

  ‘Oh yeah, great idea. Remember the nuclear submarine that sank there? Still kind of a sore point with the Russians.’

  ‘Hey, it wasn’t our fault it sank. Well, not entirely . . . ’

  ‘Besides,’ she said, going to a large map of the world on one wall, ‘even if we got another result from Grozevny, I don’t think it would help much.’ A red thread had been strung from a pin placed over Glastonbury, angling southwest across the map to South America. ‘We got the best bearing we could, but it was still only an approximation. And Grozevny,’ she tapped the map on the northern coast of Russia, ‘isn’t that far off the same bearing. Even if we got a triangulation from there, it still wouldn’t be accurate enough. The search area would cover hundreds of square miles.’

  ‘Better than half a continent.’

  ‘I know, but . . . ’ She sighed. ‘We need a break, more information.’

  The phone rang. Nina put the call on speaker; it was Lola. ‘Ankit Jindal from Interpol is here to see you. He says it’s about the statues.’

  Eddie raised his eyebrows. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Send him in!’ Nina said.

  ‘We need a million dollars, an’ all,’ said Eddie with a hopeful glance at the phone. It remained silent. ‘Tchah! Worth a try.’

  A knock, and Ankit Jindal entered. The handsome Indian’s glossy black hair had developed into even more of a quiff since they had last seen him. ‘Hello,’ he said, beaming.

  They shook hands. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Kit,’ said Nina. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were coming to New York?’

  ‘I could have done, but what would be the fun in that? Besides, considering why I’m here, I thought it would be better to discuss it face to face.’

  ‘So why are you here?’ Eddie asked.

  Kit indicated the display case. ‘Your little purple friends. Mr Penrose sent me a copy of your report about what you discovered in England.’

  ‘He did?’ Nina was slightly surprised. Certainly, it was part of Penrose’s job to keep other international bodies like Interpol informed of the UN’s activities, but he didn’t normally do so with such promptness. ‘What’s Interpol’s interest?’

  Kit opened his briefcase, taking out several files. ‘After that business with the Khoils, the Cultural Property Crime Unit tried to track down the owners of the unidentified items found in their vault. Most of them we eventually located, but a few we couldn’t find.’ He opened a file. ‘But we had a breakthrough. Most of the Khoils’ computer records had been wiped or encrypted, but our experts managed to recover a shipping manifest.’

  He handed Nina a copy of a document. Much of it was gibberish to her, the computerised tracking of a container from port to port, but the final destination – Nuuk in Greenland, the country where the Indian billionaires had been preparing to sit out a global collapse – was clear enough. ‘It doesn’t specifically name the container’s contents, although that’s not surprising if it was filled with stolen art treasures. But the shipping agent is based in Singapore.’

  She found a name at the top of the page. ‘Stamford West?’

  ‘Sounds like a Tube station,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Interpol has been watching Mr West for some time,’ Kit told them. ‘He’s been linked to the smuggling of artworks and antiquities from several countries, although there has never been enough evidence against him to make a case.’

  ‘But you’re sure he was involved with the Khoils?’ said Nina. Kit nodded. ‘Which might mean that he knows where the second statue came from originally.’

  ‘He might. But that’s only part of the reason I came here.’ The Indian opened another file. ‘There is also evidence – only circumstantial, unfortunately – linking him to another black market operation. Look at these.’ He laid several glossy photographs on the desk.

  Nina picked one up. ‘Oh, this is beautiful,’ she said, fascinated. The image was of a small statue of a broad-faced man sitting cross-legged, eyes closed as if in meditation. The figure gleamed under the photographer’s lights; it was made of pure gold. ‘Inca?’

  ‘Yes.’ He indicated the other photos, which showed similarly spectacular pieces. ‘Our experts confirmed they’re genuine, dating from no later than the sixteenth century.’

  ‘And these were found on the black market?’

  ‘No, in a drugs raid on a mansion in Mexico a few weeks ago. The man had a taste for ancient art. But his records contained a paper trail that led back to their illegal source.’

  ‘Peru?’

  Kit shook his head. ‘Venezuela.’

  ‘What?’ Nina shook her head. ‘That doesn’t make sense – the Inca empire never extended that far from the Andes. Are you sure they weren’t just smuggled through Venezuela?’

  ‘After these were recovered, we checked with our informants to find out if any other Inca artefacts had come on to the black market. They had, and apparently some were being sold for very large sums, tens of millions of dollars. We didn’t find out who was selling them or exactly where they were coming from, but there are two things we are certain about.’

  ‘Which are?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘They are definitely coming from somewhere in Venezuela, most likely the south of the country. And they are all completely unknown artefacts. Nobody has ever seen them before.’

  The implication of that struck Nina almost physically. ‘Unknown?’ she echoed. ‘But if all these pieces are genuine Inca artefacts, that would mean . . . there’s an undiscovered Inca settlement somewhere in Venezuela!’

  ‘Somebody must’ve discovered it,’ Eddie pointed out, nodding at the photos.

  She wasn’t listening. ‘That would be an enormous change to what we thought we knew about the Inca empire. They made incursions into the Amazon jungle, but never settled there – they were a mountain people.’ She went to the wall map, holding her thumb and forefinger apart above the scale before moving her hand in steps across the map. ‘Venezuela is a good nine hundred miles from the empire’s outer reaches. Any Inca outpost that far away would be . . . ’ Her eyes widened. ‘Legendary. No, it couldn’t be!’

  ‘What couldn’t be?’ Eddie demanded.

  ‘The Spanish conquered Peru in the 1530s,’ she explained excitedly. ‘Francisco Pizarro, the leader of the Conquistadors, captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa, who tried to make a deal – in return for his freedom, he’d give Pizarro enough gold to fill his cell from floor to ceiling. Pizarro agreed, after demanding that he also get enough silver to fill the neighbouring cell. Atahualpa told him it would take two months to collect the gold and silver from throughout the empire, so Pizarro sent messengers to issue his demands, while keeping Atahualpa as a hostage.’

  ‘How big was the room?’ asked Kit.

  ‘I can’t remember exactly, but quite large. So enough gold to fill it would be worth millions of dollars in today’s money – maybe even billions.’

  Eddie whistled appreciatively. ‘Did this Pizarro get the gold?’

  ‘I don’t know if anyone ever literally tried to fill the room with treasure, but Pizarro certainly became extremely rich. Although that didn’t stop him from putting Atahualpa up before a kangaroo court, forcing him to convert to Christianity, and then executing him.’

  ‘Ungrateful git!’

  ‘Yeah, the Conquistadors weren’t exactly shining beacons of integrity. But the thing was, when Pizarro took control of Cuzco, the capital, the Spanish realised there was much less gold there than they’d expected from previous expeditions. They melted down everything they could get their hands on, tens of tons of it – but they thought they were going to find hundreds of tons. And it didn’t take long before they started thinking that Atahualpa’s message hadn’t only been to send gold for his ransom, but also to warn his people to hide as much treasure as they could from the Spanish.’

  ‘This treasure,’ said Kit, ‘it might have been hidden in Venezuela?’

  Nina looked at the map again. ‘Nobody knows. But there�
�s a legend of a hidden city where the Incas kept their greatest treasures. It’s called—’

  ‘El Dorado!’ Eddie cut in.

  ‘No – you’ve fallen into the same trap as the Spanish,’ she said. ‘That really is a myth, or rather a misinterpretation. The Chibcha Indians in Colombia had a ritual where they covered their king in gold dust and he went out into their sacred lake to wash himself clean. The Spanish, who only heard about it second-hand, thought El Dorado meant a golden city, not a golden man.’

  ‘Huh. And I thought I’d actually learned something from cartoons as a kid!’

  ‘Hey, I loved that show too – it was one of the few cartoons my parents didn’t mind me watching. Even if it was just so they could point out all the historical inaccuracies . . . Anyway, the real legendary city, if that’s not an oxymoron, was called Paititi. The story was that it was somewhere in the jungle, but since we’re talking about the Amazon rainforest, that doesn’t really narrow things down.’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘So much for that, then.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nina with a knowing smile, ‘but there’s more to it. About sixty years after Atahualpa’s execution, Sir Walter Raleigh went to South America in search of El Dorado, which he thought was somewhere along the Orinoco river.’ She indicated the river on the map; the red thread crossed it inland of its massive delta – and again much further to the southwest, along the border between Venezuela and Colombia. ‘He was exploring there because of the story of a Spanish sailor who was set adrift on the river by his men. He claimed that he was rescued by an Indian tribe, the Manoans, who took him to a city deep in the jungle . . . where he met a man who said he was the last heir of the Inca empire.’

  ‘Did Raleigh find the city?’ Kit asked.

  ‘No, he never did. He met the Manoans, though. They were traders, who covered hundreds of miles of rivers and could easily have been in regular contact with the Incas.’

  ‘And maybe told them a good place to hide a city?’ Eddie wondered. ‘Even helped them shift the gold?’

  ‘Maybe. But Paititi could well have been the city Raleigh was searching for. The timescale fits with the fall of the empire.’ She turned to Kit, thoughtful. ‘So, there’s a possible connection between the Khoils’ statue and the Inca artefacts on the black market – this guy West.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The reason I came here is because in your report you said a third statue may be somewhere in South America. Perhaps the second was there too – Stamford West would have been able to smuggle it out of the country without it being found by customs agents.’

  Nina pursed her lips. ‘I’m not sure about that. There’s been nothing to suggest that the second statue came from there.’

  ‘Well, it is just a theory,’ Kit said with a shrug. ‘But the third statue could be in southern Venezuela, and these Inca treasures are coming from southern Venezuela. Perhaps the same place. I think – Interpol thinks – it is worth investigating. Mr West may have some answers.’

  ‘He’s in Singapore, you said?’ Eddie asked. ‘I’ve got a friend in the Singapore police; she’ll be able to help us out when we go and see this bloke.’

  ‘Wait, “we”?’ said Nina. ‘We are not going anywhere – there’s too much to do here.’

  Eddie waved dismissively at the piles of books and papers on her desk. ‘That’s not exactly my kind of reading. If I go to Singapore with Kit, at least I’ll be doing what I’m good at.’

  Kit looked between them, noting Nina’s glare at her husband. ‘A personal connection with the Singapore police could be very useful.’ The glare turned on him. ‘But I will, er . . . let you both decide what you want to do. I’ll be in New York until tomorrow, so call me. Good to see you again.’ He gathered up his files and left the office.

  Nina rounded on Eddie. ‘So you’re going to Singapore, huh?’

  ‘Oh, so it’s all right for you to jet off round the world whenever you feel like you need a break, but not me?’

  ‘You think you need a break?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it in a Ross and Rachel sense,’ Eddie said irritably. ‘You heard Kit. I can help him out.’

  ‘But you still meant it in an “I don’t want to deal with my issues, so I’m going to run off to the other side of the world” sense, right?’

  ‘What bloody issues?’ Eddie protested. ‘You got a bit embarrassed in front of two people, neither of who you’re ever going to see again—’

  ‘So you’ve decided that, have you?’

  ‘Why, do you want to see them again?’

  ‘They’re my family now, so maybe I might.’

  ‘Oh, might you? Just don’t expect me to go with you. Anyway, the only issue is that you’ve blown everything totally out of proportion.’

  ‘Oh, for—’ Nina dropped heavily into her chair. ‘I sometimes wonder why I married you. Fine, okay, go to Singapore. Try not to get arrested for chewing gum.’

  Eddie gave her a sarcastic look. ‘I’ll go and pack.’ He departed, leaving Nina to knead her forehead in frustration.

  Once outside the UN building, Kit made a phone call. ‘It’s Jindal. I’ve just left the IHA.’

  ‘And?’ said a terse male voice.

  ‘It took a while to convince Dr Wilde that the Venezuelan connection is our best lead to the third statue, but she seems to have accepted it. And Eddie has offered to help with West.’

  ‘Eddie?’

  ‘Mr Chase.’

  ‘Don’t get too involved with these people, Jindal,’ came the disapproving response. ‘Once the Group has all three statues we will still need Dr Wilde, but Chase is irrelevant. Just make sure you maintain your cover at Interpol until we have them.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll report again when I’ve found out if West has the information we need.’

  A sound of confirmation from the other end of the line, then the abrupt click of disconnection without a further word. Not that Kit had expected anything more. He pocketed the phone and walked away into New York.

  6

  Singapore

  The port of Singapore was one of the busiest in the world, its sprawling docks occupying several square miles of the island state’s limited land. Tens of thousands of shipping containers were stacked throughout the great concrete expanse, huge long-legged gantry cranes trundling back and forth from the moored globetrotting megaships in an intricate computer-directed ballet, gripping the steel boxes in their cable-mounted ‘spreader’ mechanisms.

  On the port’s fringes, the walls of containers gave way to warehouses and offices. One in particular was the subject of Eddie’s attention as he waited with Kit and several officers from Singapore’s police and customs forces, sheltered from the rain beneath an awning. Across a wide road leading deeper into the metal maze was a two-storey cabin with a sign reading S Q West Import-Export, the upper floor’s windows illuminated behind Venetian blinds. ‘He’s working late,’ he said, looking at his watch. It was after nine p.m.

  ‘Many nights, Mr West doesn’t leave until almost midnight - and some nights he doesn’t leave at all,’ said Go Ayu. The Singapore Police Force staff sergeant was in her early thirties, of mixed Japanese and Thai descent, prim and formal in her dark blue uniform despite the humidity and the rain.

  ‘Can’t have much of a social life, then.’

  ‘He has enough to keep good friends with some of Singapore’s most important people. He is a very well-connected man.’

  ‘Connected enough to keep him out of trouble?’ Kit asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosman Jefri, one of the customs agents. ‘Three years ago, Mr West was suspected of involvement in smuggling. His office and home were raided, but nothing was found – and he sued the government. Not only did he win, but the officer in charge was demoted.’

  ‘But now Interpol is involved, it will be harder for West to get his friends to apply pressure,’ said Ayu. ‘And it gives us another advantage. We have thought about trying to entrap him by asking him to transport an illegal cargo
, but he is a clever man and will spot undercover agents.’

  Eddie cocked his head, puzzled. ‘Wouldn’t that get chucked right out of court?’

  ‘Entrapment is legal here,’ Kit explained. ‘So if a stranger asks if you want to buy drugs . . . don’t.’

  ‘Good job I forgot my crack pipe. So, if we use someone from outside Singapore, you reckon that’ll make West more likely to do something dodgy?’

  Rosman nodded. ‘If he agrees to an illegal act, that gives us the pretext we need to arrest him and seize his records.’

  ‘Before he can destroy them, we hope,’ added Ayu.