“No reason why they sank,” Sanchez added, looking as alive and enthusiastic as Nina. “They could find no cause of accident and no account of anything unusual by vessels in the same vicinity that night.”
“Don’t fuck with the golden woman,” Sam said plainly. Purdue nodded in agreement with his eyes wide. “Is the prayer stick still here? I suppose they made off with the golden woman?”
“Aye, there is nothing on board but some creepy fucking corpses in a bunch of secured crates!” Nina grimaced. Sam laughed and looked at Purdue in humorous reprimand. He pointed a thumb at Purdue. “Those are his.”
Nina stared at Purdue in disgust. “Really, Purdue?”
He shrugged. “Look, if we can analyze the tissue and the uniform fabric, we’ll know more about what caused their mummification. That, in turn, could link us into the local legends about seemingly groundless incidents of catastrophe. Think about it. Nothing just occurs by happenstance. Old mariners were superstitious. I am a scientist. I needed to find out how ships appeared to have just run aground, how men trampled each other into hot, dry areas where their skins turned to paper.”
“Um, that’s another thing,” Nina told them. “Our suspect’s brother suffered the same inexplicable fate.”
“How?” Purdue asked, hoping that it would explain his find.
“He wants a scientific explanation, Dr. Gould,” Capt. Sanchez reminded her, but she had to tell Purdue the truth. From what she and Capt. Sanchez had been hearing through the bug transmission, it was not science as much as psychology.
“He was compelled to self-mummification by a practitioner of Santería black magic?” she said timidly.
“Oh Jesus, Nina,” Purdue exclaimed, looking away.
Sanchez thought to lend some support down on the middle ground. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss that just because it sounds superstitious, Mr. Purdue. I am a very steadfast man. I’m not even religious, but I can tell you what we heard. This man, Dr. Sabian, is a psychologist who has used his professional therapy to brainwash, no, to hypnotically suggest to this young man’s brain that he was being emaciated and dehydrated. And from what we heard, he finally succumbed to the horrific spell.”
“Okay, say we buy that,” Sam said, “and he could do this, why would he do it? Are you of the opinion that this is what happened to the men on the ships?”
“Could very well be,” Sanchez answered. “You said it yourself, Mr. Purdue. Things don’t just happen without some explanation. Now we know, at least, that your Barnard and our Sabian are involved in the same twisted conspiracy to kill this little boy by the time of the next solar eclipse over the Incan city of Macchu Picchu.”
“We recorded the last transmission from the bug,” Nina explained, “where the Inca prophecy was recited. We know where they are and where they are going. We know when they are planning to kill the boy and the lady who has been protecting him. So I am afraid your analysis will have to take a backseat to this child’s life, Purdue.”
“Absolutely,” Purdue agreed. “We have to pursue them anyway, because they have the only two relics that can avoid El Dorado opening.”
“The golden woman statue?” Nina asked.
“And the prayer stick,” Sam added. “We have to melt down the statue to find something inside her chest to work in conjunction with the prayer stick, otherwise we can’t stop them from getting what they want.”
“How many days until the eclipse?” Purdue asked.
Nina looked stressed and Sanchez cleared his throat. “We have two days, gentlemen.”
30
The Cóncord and the Eagle
The Spanish Coast Guard and local authorities took possession of the Cóncord in order to investigate a mass murder aboard the trawler, but they were not aware of true events. Captain Sanchez knew that the Málaga Police’s lengthy investigation into Barnard and his cohorts would severely compromise his mission and perturb his ability to successfully pursue Madalina and Raul. To disclose the identities of the culprits and to divulge Purdue and Cleave’s involvement would destroy all chances of arresting Dr. Sabian and his nefarious financial partner, Basil Barnard.
Therefore, the freelance task force operatives he and Dr. Gould procured to locate the trawler agreed to bend the truth in order for them to go after Barnard before the Black Sun killed the child. For Nina it was no problem to persuade the men who helped chase off the British swine to omit all details pertaining to Capt. Sanchez, herself, David Purdue, and Sam Cleave. In exchange, they could take all the credit for any arrests made and for reporting the appalling incident as a suspected drug bust gone sour.
It had come to the point where Sanchez had become so personally invested in Madalina and Raul’s plight that it did not matter who got the praise. Already, scarcely an hour after the task force leader had called in their so-called discovery on the trawler to the authorities, the story spread like wildfire all over the usual news channels. What made it especially juicy to the palates of reporters was, of course, the fact that this latest sea-bound tragedy had taken place practically at the same spot where the Purdue-crash had occurred less than a week before.
Once again, the locals had reason to speculate, and again tales of a cursed sea flared up across the broader region of the coastal towns and cities from Alicante to the Strait of Gibraltar. Tourism would flourish with accounts from locals interviewed on television with hands on hearts, bringing up old legends and long forgotten stories reputed to have happened. The police had their hands full with the families of the crewmen who had enlisted for the Cóncord excursion, inquiring about their brothers, fathers and husbands, all missing.
Of course, the bodies of the crew were nowhere to be found after they had been disposed of by Barnard’s men, but it only led to more superstitious rants about ghost ships and entire crews disappearing into thin air. Vincent Nazquez’s body was discovered inside a shipwreck at the bottom of the Alboran Sea, where he’d apparently died while scouting the wreckage on a dive for gold, of which there was no trace. And such were the misguided conjectures of the misinformed reporters that finally became the new truth for those who were not there.
In a hangar office in Málaga, Capt. Sanchez and his Scottish friends prepared for Raul’s liberation. Purdue had contacted his personnel in Edinburgh. After orders to keep his status under wraps, he had his assistant urgently charter a plane from Málaga to Lima via an independent charter company, so that his own affiliates would remain oblivious for the time being.
“Everyone ready to be chased by the biggest creepy crawlies in the world?” Sam asked in general, as he hid his collar camera under the foam rubber of his hard case.
He was met with a resounding negation voiced in groans from the other three. Barnard’s people had come for the relics, yet they’d neglected to remember that not all important historical artifacts were made from gold and gems. Sam’s collar-mounted camera that had been hidden in the steel post held ruinous evidence of the slaughter, not to mention the entire event of Vincent Nazquez’ murder in real time.
It was invaluable, and had Barnard known that it existed, Sam would have had no footage to edit a damning report — a report that was to be spliced together as soon as they’d finished saving the boy and preventing the Inca prophecy from being perverted.
In the meantime, between their trip back to land and their departure to Peru, the party had shared all of their experiences and information pertaining to the purpose of the trip. Sam and Purdue had been given copies of the prophecy as read over the transmission, just to keep everyone aware of what Barnard and Sabian might have planned. In turn, Nina and Sanchez had viewed the whole ugly scenario from the feed of Sam’s collar camera so that they could learn the importance of the golden woman statue and what its purpose was.