Текст книги "Inca Gold"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 34 страниц)

    "Why Guaymas?" asked Micki Moore.

    "Two reasons. It's centrally located in the Gulf, and a good friend and client has an open invitation for my use of his hacienda just north of the port. The estate has a private airstrip, which makes it an ideal headquarters for conducting the search."

    "Aren't you coming?" asked Oxley.

    "I'll meet you in two days. I have a business meeting in Wichita, Kansas."

    Zolar turned to Sarason, leery that his brother might launch another rampage against Moore. But he need not have worried.

    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. With the Inca armies divided by factions and decimated by civil war, the disorder played right into his hands. After Pizarro's small force of soldiers and adventurers slaughtered a few thousand of Atahualpa's imperial retainers and bureaucrats in the square at the ancient city of Caxanarca, he won the Inca empire on a technical foul."

    "Strange that the Inca simply didn't attack and overwhelm the Spanish," said Gunn. "They must have outnumbered Pizarro's troops by a hundred to one.

    "Closer to a thousand to one," said Yaeger. "But again, as with Cortez and the Aztecs, the sight of fierce bearded men wearing iron clothes no arrow or rock could penetrate, riding ironclad horses, previously unknown to the Incas, while slashing with swords and shooting matchlock guns and cannons, was too much for them. Thoroughly demoralized, Atahualpa's generals failed to take the initiative by ordering determined mass attacks."

    "What of Huascar's armies?" asked Pitt. "Surely they were still in the field."

    "Yes, but they were leaderless." Yaeger nodded. "History can only look back on a what-if situation. What if the two Inca kings had buried the hatchet and merged their two armies in a do-or-die campaign to rid the empire of the dreaded foreigners? An interesting hypothesis. With the defeat of the Spanish, God only knows where the political boundaries and governments of South America might be today."

    "They'd certainly be speaking a language other than Spanish," commented Giordino.

    "Where was Huascar during Atahualpa's confrontation with Pizarro?" asked Sandecker, finally lighting his cigar.

    Imprisoned in Cuzco, the capital city of the empire, twelve hundred kilometers south of Caxanarca."

    Without looking up from the notations he was making on a legal pad, Pitt asked, "What happened next?"

    "To buy his liberty, Atahualpa contracted with Pizarro to cram a room with gold as high as he could reach," answered Yaeger. "A room, I might add, slightly larger than this one."

    "Did he fulfill the contract?"

    "He did. But Atahualpa was afraid that Huascar might offer Pizarro more gold, silver, and gems than he could. So he ordered that his brother be put to death, which was carried out by drowning, but not before Huascar ordered the royal treasures to be hidden."

    Sandecker stared at Yaeger through a cloud of blue smoke. "With the king dead, who carried out his wish?"

    "A general called Naymlap," replied Yaeger. He paused and used the pointer to trace a red line on the map that ran from the Andes down to the coast. "He was not of royal Inca blood, but rather a Chachapoyan warrior who rose through the ranks to become Huascar's most trusted advisor. It was Naymlap who organized the movement of the treasury down from the mountains to the seashore, where he had assembled a fleet of fifty-five ships. Then, according to the quipu, after a journey of twenty-four days, it took another eighteen days just to load the immense treasure on board."

    "I had no idea the Incas were seafaring people," said Gunn.

    "So were the Mayans, and like the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans before them, the Incas were coastal sailors. They were not afraid of open water, but they wisely beached their boats on moonless nights and during stormy weather. They navigated by the sun and stars and sailed with prevailing winds and currents up and down the shoreline, conducting trade with the Mesoamericans in Panama and perhaps beyond. An Inca legend tells of an early king who heard a tale about an island rich in gold and intelligent people, that lay far out beyond the horizon of the sea. With loot and slaves in mind, he built and rigged a fleet of ships, and then sailed off with a company of his soldiers acting as marines to what is thought to be the Galapagos Islands. Nine months later he returned with scores of black prisoners and much gold."

    "The Galapagos?" wondered Pitt.

    "As good a guess as any."

    "Do we have any records of their ship construction?" Sandecker queried.

    "Bartholomew Ruiz, Pizarro's pilot, saw large rafts equipped with masts and great square cotton sails. Other Spanish seamen reported sailing past rafts with hulls of balsa wood, bamboo and reed, carrying sixty people and forty or more large crates of trade goods. Besides sails, the rafts were also propelled by teams of paddlers. Designs found on pre-Columbian clay pottery show twodecker boats sporting raised stem and sternposts with carved serpent heads similar to the dragons gracing Viking longships."

    "So there is no doubt they could have transported tons of gold and silver long distances across the sea?"

    "No doubt at all, Admiral." Yaeger tapped the pointer on another line that traced the voyage of Naymlap's treasure fleet. "From point of departure, north to their destination, the voyage took eighty-six days. No short cruise for primitive ships."

    "Any chance they might have headed south?" asked Giordino.

    Yaeger shook his head. "My computer discovered that one coil of knots represented the four basic points of direction, with the knot for north at the top and the knot for south at the bottom. East and west were represented by subordinate strands."

    "And their final landfall?" Pitt prodded.

    "The tricky part. Never having the opportunity to clock a balsa raft under sail over a measured nautical mile, estimating the fleet's speed through water was strictly guesswork. I won't go into it now, you can read my full report later. But Brunhilda, in calculating the length of the voyage, did a masterful job of projecting the currents and wind during 1533."

    Pitt put his hands behind his head and leaned his chair back on two legs. "Let me guess. They came ashore somewhere in the upper reaches of the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, a vast cleft of water separating the Mexican mainland from Baja California."

    "On an island as you and I already discussed," Yaeger added. "It took the crews of the ships twelve days to stash the treasure in a cave, a large one according to the dimensions recorded on the quipu. An opening, which I translated as being a tunnel, runs from the highest point of the island down to the treasure cave."

    "You can conclude all this from a series of knots?" asked Sandecker, incredulous.

    Yaeger nodded. "And much more. A crimson strand represented Huascar, a black knot the day of his execution at the order of Atahualpa, whose attached strand was purple. General Naymlap's is a dark turquoise. Brunhilda and I can also give you a complete tally of the hoard. Believe me when I say the bulk sum is far and away more than what has been salvaged from sunken treasure ships during the last hundred years."

    Sandecker looked skeptical. "I hope you're including the Atocha, the Edinburgh, and the Central America in that claim."

    "And many more." Yaeger smiled confidently.

    Gunn looked puzzled. "An island, you say, somewhere in the Sea of Cortez?"

    "So where exactly is the treasure?" said Giordino, cutting to the heart of the lecture.

    "Besides in a cavern on an island in the Sea of Cortez," summed up Sandecker.

    "Sung to the tune of `My Darlin' Clementine,' " Pitt jested.

    "Looks to me," Giordino sighed, "like we've got a hell of a lot of islands to consider. The Gulf is loaded with them."

    "We don't have to concern ourselves with any island below the twenty-eighth parallel." Yaeger circled a section of the map with his pointer. "As Dirk guessed, I figure Naymlap's fleet sailed into the Gulf's upper reaches."

    Giordino was ever the pragmatist. "You still haven't told us where to dig."

    "On an island that rises out of the water like a pinnacle, or as Brunhilda's translation of the quipu suggests, the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco." Yaeger threw on an enlarged slide of the sea between Baja California and the mainland of Mexico on the screen. "A factor that narrows the search zone considerably."

    Pitt leaned forward, studying the chart on the screen. "The central islands of Angel de la Guarda and Tiburon stretch between forty and sixty kilometers. They each have several prominent pinnaclelike peaks. You'll have to cut it even closer, Hiram."

    "Any chance Brunhilda missed something?" asked Gunn.

    "Or drew the wrong meaning from the knots?" said Giordino, casually pulling one of Sandecker's specially made cigars from his breast pocket and igniting the end.

    The admiral glared, but said nothing. He had long ago given up trying to figure out how Giordino got them, certainly not from his private stock. Sandecker kept a tight inventory of his humidor.

    "I admit to a knowledge gap," Yaeger conceded. "As I said earlier, the computer and I decoded ninety percent of the quipu's coils and knots. The other ten percent defies clear meaning. Two coils threw us off the mark. One made a vague reference to what Brunhilda interpreted as some kind of god or demon carved from stone. The second made no geological sense. Something about a river running through the treasure cave."

    Gunn tapped his ballpoint pen on the table. "I've never heard of a river running under an island."

    "I haven't either," agreed Yaeger. "That's why I hesitated to mention it."

    "Must be seepage from the water in the Gulf," said Pitt.

    Gunn nodded. "The only logical answer."

    Pitt looked up at Yaeger. "You couldn't find any reference to landmarks?"

    "Sorry, I struck out. For a while there I entertained hopes the demon god might hold a key to the location of the cave," answered Yaeger. "The knots on that particular coil seemed to signify a measurement of distance. I have the impression it indicates a number of paces inside a tunnel leading from the demon to the cave. But the copper strands had deteriorated, and Brunhilda couldn't reconstruct a coherent meaning."

    "What sort of demon?" asked Sandecker.

    "I don't have the slightest idea."

    "A signpost leading to the treasure maybe?" mused Gunn.

    "Or a sinister deity to scare off thieves," suggested Pitt.

    Sandecker rapped his cigar on the lip of a glass cup, knocking off along ash. "A sound theory if the elements and vandals haven't taken their toll over four hundred years, leaving a sculpture that can't be distinguished from an ordinary rock."

    "To sum up," said Pitt, "we're searching for a steep outcropping of rock or pinnacle on an island in the Sea of Cortez with a stone carving of a demon on top of it."

    "A generalization," Yaeger said, sitting down at the table. "But that pretty well summarizes what I could glean out of the quipu."

    Gunn removed his glasses, held them up to the light and checked for smudges. "Any hope at all that Bill Straight can restore the deteriorated coils?"

    "I'll ask him to begin work on them," answered Yaeger.

    "He'll be diligently laboring over them within the hour," Sandecker assured him.

    "If Straight's conservation experts can reconstruct enough of the knots and strands for Brunhilda to analyze, I think I can promise to add enough data to put you within spitting distance of the tunnel leading to the treasure cave."

    "You'd better," Pitt advised, "because I have ambitions in life other thin going around Mexico digging empty holes."

    Gunn turned toward Sandecker. "Well, what do you say, Admiral? Is it a go?"

    The feisty little chief of NUMA stared at the map on the screen. Finally, he sighed and muttered, "I want a proposal detailing the search project and its cost when I walk in my office tomorrow morning. Consider yourselves on paid vacation for the next three weeks. And not a word outside this room. If the news media get wind that NUMA is conducting a treasure hunt, I'll catch all kinds of hell from Congress."

    "And if we find Huascar's treasure?" asked Pitt.

    "Then we'll all be impoverished heroes."

    Yaeger missed the point. "Impoverished?"

    "What the admiral is implying," said Pitt, "is that the finders will not be the keepers."

    Sandecker nodded. "Cry a river, gentlemen, but if you are successful in finding the hoard, every troy ounce of it will probably be turned over to the government of Peru."

    Pitt and Giordino exchanged knowing grins, each reading the other's mind, but it was Giordino who spoke first.

    "I'm beginning to think there is a lesson somewhere in all this."

    Sandecker looked at him uneasily. "What lesson is that?"

    Giordino studied his cigar as he answered. "The treasure would probably be better off if we left it where it is."

    Gaskill lay stretched out in bed, a cold cup of coffee and a dish with a half-eaten bologna sandwich beside him on the bed stand. The blanket warming his huge bulk was strewn with typewritten pages. He raised the cup and sipped the coffee before reading the next page of a book-length manuscript. The title was The Thief Who Was Never Caught. It was a nonfiction account of the search for the Specter, written by a retired Scotland Yard inspector by the name of Nathan Pembroke. The inspector spent nearly five decades digging through international police archives, tracking down every lead, regardless of its reliability, in his relentless hunt.

    Pembroke, hearing of Gaskill's interest in the elusive art thief from the nineteen twenties and thirties, sent him the yellowed, dog-eared pages of the manuscript he had painstakingly compiled, one that had been rejected by over thirty editors in as many years. Gaskill could not put it down. He was totally absorbed in the masterful investigative work by Pembroke, who was now in his late eighties. The Englishman had been the lead investigator on the Specter's last known heist, which took place in London in 1939. The stolen art consisted of a Joshua Reynolds, a pair of Constables, and three Turners. Like all the other brilliantly executed thefts by the Specter, the case was never solved and none of the art was recovered. Pembroke, stubbornly insisting there was no such thing as a perfect crime, became obsessed with discovering the Specter's identity.

    For half a century his obsession never dimmed, and he refused to give up the chase. Only a few months before his health failed, and he was forced to enter a nursing home, did he make a breakthrough that enabled him to write the end to his superbly narrated account.

    A great pity, Gaskill thought, that no editor thought it worth publishing. He could think of at least ten famous art thefts that might have been solved if The Thief Who Was Never Caught had been printed and distributed.

    Gaskill finished the last page an hour before dawn. He lay back on his pillow staring at the ceiling, fitting the pieces into neat little slots, until the sun's rays crept above the windowsill of his bedroom in the town of Cicero just outside Chicago. Suddenly, he felt as if a logjam had broken free and was rushing into open water.

    Gaskill smiled like a man who held a winning lottery ticket as he reached for the phone. He dialed a number from memory and fluffed the pillows so he could sit up while waiting for an answer.

    A very sleepy voice croaked, "Francis Ragsdale here."

    "Gaskill."

    "Jesus, Dave. Why so early?"

    "Who's that?" came the slurred voice of Ragsdale's wife over the receiver.

    "Dave Gaskill."

    "Doesn't he know it's Sunday?"

    "Sorry to wake you," said Gaskill, "but I have good news that couldn't wait."

    "All right," Ragsdale mumbled through a yawn. "Let's hear it."

    "I can tell you the name of the Specter."

    "Who?"

    "Our favorite art thief."

    Ragsdale came fully awake. "The Specter? You made an I.D.?"

    "Not me. A retired inspector from Scotland Yard."

    "A limey made him?"

    "He spent a lifetime writing an entire book on the Specter. Some of it's conjecture but he's compiled some pretty convincing evidence."

    "What does he have?"

    Gaskill cleared his throat for effect. "The name of the greatest art thief in history was Mansfield Zolar."

    "Say again?"

    "Mansfield Zolar. Mean anything to you?"

    "You're running me around the park."

    "Swear on my badge."

    "I'm afraid to ask–"

    "Don't bother," Gaskill interrupted. "I know what you're thinking. He was the father."

    "Good lord, Zolar International. This is like finding the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle that fell on matching carpet. The Zolars, or whatever cockamamie names they call themselves. It all begins to fit."

    "Like bread crumbs to the front door."

    "You were right during lunch the other day. The Specter did sire a dynasty of rotten apples who carried on the tradition."

    "We've had Zolar International under surveillance on at least four occasions that I can recall, but it always came up clean. I never guessed a connection to the legendary Specter."

    "Same with the bureau," said Ragsdale. "We've always suspected they were behind just about every seven figure art and artifact theft that goes down, but we've been unable to find enough evidence to indict any one of them."

    "You have my sympathy. No evidence of stolen goods, no search warrant or arrest."

    "Little short of a miracle how an underground business as vast as the Zolars' can operate on such a widespread scale and never leave a clue."

    "They don't make mistakes," said Gaskill.

    "Have you tried to get an undercover agent inside?" asked Ragsdale.

    "Twice. They were wise almost immediately. If I wasn't certain my people are solid, I'd have sworn they were tipped off."

    "We've never been able to penetrate them either. And the collectors who buy the hot art are just as tight-lipped and cautious."

    "And yet we both know the Zolars launder stolen artifacts like drug dealers launder money."

    Ragsdale was silent for a few moments. Finally he said, "I think it's about time we stop meeting for lunch to exchange notes and start working together on a full-time basis."

    "I like your style," Gaskill acknowledged. "I'll start the ball rolling on my end by submitting a proposal for a joint task force to my superior as soon as I hit the office."

    "I'll do likewise on my end."

    "Why don't we set up a combined meeting with our teams, say Thursday morning?"

    "Sounds like a winner," agreed Ragsdale.

    "That should give us time to lay the initial groundwork."

    "Speaking of the Specter, did you track down the stolen Diego Riveras? You mentioned over lunch that you might have a lead on them."

    "Still working on the case," Gaskill replied. "But it's beginning to look like the Riveras went to Japan and ended up in a private collection."

    "What do you want to bet the Zolars set up the buy?"

    "If they did, there will be no trail. They use too many front organizations and intermediaries to handle the sale. We're talking the superstars of crime. Since old Mansfield Zolar pulled off his first heist, no one in the family has ever been touched by you, by me, by any other law enforcement agency in the world. They've never seen the inside of a courtroom. They're so lily white it's disgusting."

    "We'll take them down this time," Ragsdale said encouragingly.

    "They're not the type to make mistakes we can use to our advantage," said Gaskill.

    "Maybe, maybe not. But I've always had the feeling that an outsider, someone not directly connected with you, me, or the Zolars, will come along and short-circuit their system."

    "Whoever he is, I hope he shows up quick. I'd hate to see the Zolars retire to Brazil before we can drop the axe on their necks."

    "Now that we know Papa was the founder of the operation, and how he operated, we'll have a better idea of what to look for."

    "Before we ring off," said Ragsdale, "tell me, did you ever tie an expert translator to the golden mummy suit that slipped through your hands?"

    Gaskill winced. He didn't like to be reminded. "All known experts on such glyphs have been accounted for except two. A pair of anthropologists from Harvard, Dr. Henry Moore and his wife. They've dropped from sight. None of their fellow professors or neighbors have a clue to their whereabouts."

    Ragsdale laughed. "Be nice to catch them playing cozy with one of the Zolars."

    "I'm working on it."

    "Good luck."

    "Talk to you soon," said Gaskill.

    "I'll call you later this morning."

    "Make it this afternoon. I have an interrogation beginning at nine o'clock."

    "Better yet," said Ragsdale, "you call me when you have something in the works for a joint conference."

    "I'll do that."

    Gaskill hung up smiling. He had no intention of going into the office this morning. Getting agency sanction for a joint task force with the FBI would be more complicated on Ragsdale's end than Gaskill's. After reading all night, he was going to enjoy a nice, mind-settling sleep.

    He loved it when a case that died from lack of evidence one minute abruptly popped back to life again. He began to see things more clearly. It was a nice feeling to be in control. Motivation stimulated by incentive was a wonderful thing.

    Where had he heard that, he wondered. A Dale Carnegie class? A Customs Service policy instructor? Before it came back to him, he was sound asleep.

    Pedro Vincente set down his beautifully restored DC-3 transport onto the runway of the airport at Harlingen, Texas. He taxied the fifty-five-year-old aircraft down to the front of the U.S. Customs Service hangar and shut down the two 1200-horsepower, Pratt & Whitney engines.

    Two uniformed Customs agents were waiting when Vincente opened the passenger door and stepped to the ground. The taller of the two, with red hair mussed by a breeze and a face full of freckles, held a clipboard above his eyes to shield them from the bright Texas sun. The other was holding a beagle by a leash.

    "Mr. Vincente?" the agent asked politely. "Pedro Vincente?"

    "Yes, I'm Vincente."

    "We appreciate your alerting us of your arrival into the United States."

    "Always happy to cooperate with your government," Vincente said. He would have offered to shake hands, but he knew from previous border crossings the agents steered clear of bodily contact. He handed the redheaded agent a copy of his flight plan.

    The agent slipped the paper onto his clipboard and examined the entries while his partner lifted the beagle into the aircraft to sniff for drugs. "Your departure point was Nicoya, Costa Rica?"

    "That is correct."

    "And your destination is Wichita, Kansas?"

    "My ex-wife and my children live there."

    "And the purpose of your visit?"

    Vincente shrugged. "I fly from my home once a month to see my children. I'll be flying home the day after tomorrow."

    "Your occupation is `farmer'?"

    "Yes, I grow coffee beans."

    "I hope that's all you grow," said the agent with a tight-lipped grin.

    "Coffee is the only crop I need to make a comfortable living," said Vincente indignantly.

    "May I see your passport, please?"

    The routine never varied. Though Vincente often drew the same two agents, they always acted as if he were a tourist on his first visit to the States. The agent eyeballed the photo inside, comparing the straight, slicked back black hair, partridge brown eyes, smooth olive complexion, and sharp nose. The height and weight showed a short man on the thin side whose age was forty-four.

    Vincente was a fastidious dresser. His clothes looked as if they came right out of GQ– designer shirt, slacks, and green alpaca sport coat with a silk bandanna tied around his neck. The Customs agent thought he looked like a fancy mambo dancer.

    Finally the agent finished his appraisal of the passport and smiled officially. "Would you mind waiting in our office, Mr. Vincente, while we search your aircraft? I believe you're familiar with the procedure."

    "Of course." He held up a pair of Spanish magazines. "I always come prepared to spend some time."

    The agent stared admiringly at the DC-3. "It's a pleasure to examine such a great old aircraft. I bet she flies as good as she looks."

    "She began life as a commercial airliner for TWA shortly before the war. I found her hauling cargo for a mining company in Guatemala. Bought her on the spot and spent a goodly sum having her restored."

    He was halfway to the office when he suddenly turned and shouted to the agent, "May I borrow your phone to call the fuel truck? I don't have enough in my tanks to make Wichita."

    "Sure, just check with the agent behind the desk."

    An hour later, Vincente was winging across Texas on his way to Wichita. Beside him in the copilot's seat were four briefcases stuffed with over six million dollars, smuggled on board just prior to takeoff by one of the two men who drove the refueling truck.

    After a thorough search of the plane, and not finding the slightest trace of drugs or other illegal contraband, the Customs agents concluded Vincente was clean. They had investigated him years before and were satisfied he was a respected Costa Rican businessman who made a vast fortune growing coffee beans. It was true that Pedro Vincente owned the second largest coffee plantation in Costa Rica. It was also true he had amassed ten times what his coffee plantation made him as he was also the genius behind a highly successful drug smuggling operation known as Julio Juan Carlos.

    Like the Zolars and their criminal empire, Vincente directed his smuggling operation from a distance. Day-to-day activities were left to his lieutenants, none of whom had a clue to his real identity.

    Vincente actually had a former wife who was living with his four children on a large farm outside of Wichita. The farm was a gift from him after she begged for a divorce. An airstrip was built on the farm so he could fly in and out from Costa Rica to visit the children while purchasing stolen art and illegal antiquities from the Zolar family. Customs and Drug Enforcement agents were more concerned about what came into the country rather than what went out.

    It was late afternoon when Vincente touched down on the narrow strip in the middle of a corn field. A golden-tan jet aircraft with a purple stripe running along its side was parked at one end. A large blue tent with an awning extending from the front had been erected beside the jet. A man in a white linen suit was seated under the awning beside a table set with a picnic lunch. Vincente waved from the cockpit, quickly ran through his postflight checklist, and exited the DC-3. He carried three of the briefcases, leaving one behind.