Indiana Jones and the White Witch Page 12

  Treadwell sighed. No, he knew where the men's room was and he didn't need to leave the room. But the near-mummified scientist before him was in prime form. That was good. He'd need full understanding and cooperation from Pencroft before this meeting ended.

  "I have something of extreme importance to discuss with you," Treadwell offered.

  Pencroft turned to Indy. "I see what you mean, Professor Jones. Our friend from Scotland Yard does have a Grecian tinge to his appearance."

  "What the devil are you two mumbling about!" Treadwell said with sudden impatience.

  Pencroft smiled. "Impertinent, isn't he?"

  "Well, you know the old saw, Sir William," Indy added, keeping a straight face. "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

  Treadwell could have hugged Indy. He had brought this moment off beautifully, easing their way to discussing what Pencroft would regard as interference with his university routine. The expression on Pencroft's face—interest that something of value to the university might come from, of all places, that bastion of official nosiness, Scotland Yard—was everything Treadwell had hoped for. He lost not a moment in seizing the opportunity Indy had provided.

  "The gift may come wrapped in a mystery, Sir William," he said quickly to Pencroft.

  "That is a talent of yours, Thomas," Pencroft replied, but with a warmer tone to his voice.

  "Gold."

  Bushy white eyebrows raised a notch. "I presume you refer to the metal?"

  "Yes." Treadwell had to let Pencroft carry this in his own way. What mattered now was that he was interested. He'd never let the matter slip away without knowing more.

  "In what form, may I ask?" Pencroft said easily.

  "Quantity unknown, but believed to be considerable." Treadwell was again in his element as a Yard inspector. "Originally in bars. Original value, um, specifics questionable, but about sixty to eighty years past, in excess of eighty million pounds."

  A low whistle escaped Indy. "You're sure, Tom? That's four hundred million dollars. Say, that was just the value sixty or seventy years ago. Better than a half billion today."

  "That is only the bullion," Treadwell continued in his matter-of-fact manner. He opened his briefcase, placed a folder before him, tapped it gently. "There is also coinage. Pure gold according to a number of sources, all of questionable veracity. But definitely coins from ancient Rome. That would increase the value to where the money figures become meaningless and the historical value comes under the heading of irreplaceable and priceless."

  "That is quite a speech," Pencroft said quietly. "It has all the flavor of historical fiction."

  "It is not," came Treadwell's reply. "Indeed, a map has been unearthed that reveals certain geographic details reputed to lead to where the gold may be found, and recovered."

  Pencroft snorted with disdain. "I don't believe a word of it. And this map of yours. A copy, you say? Leather and parchment, indeed! Feathers and bat droppings with a pinch of dragon's scale next, I imagine. A map without any names on it. Blindman's buff sounds more like it. Pin the tail on the donkey you can't see. You, of all people, Thomas, can come up with a better story than that!"

  Gale was half out of her seat, her face flushing with anger at Pencraft's unexpected assault not only on Treadwell, but on the map, its existence, what it meant. Which, to Gale, was a slur on the St. Brendan family as well. Before she could speak, Indy grasped her arm. She turned to him. He motioned with his eyes for her to sit down and not to speak. For that extra moment she studied his face. So he did have something up his sleeve! That, or—she almost laughed aloud—Sir William Pencroft was putting on a show that belied his age and rumored senility.

  Roberto Di Palma leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. His cheek muscle had twitched the entire time Pencroft was cutting down Treadwell. "May I speak?" he said with extreme civility to Pencroft.

  "It seems you already have," Pencroft said icily.

  This didn't faze the Italian agent. "I am here as a representative of His Holiness. I speak for the Vatican."

  "As did Castilano before you," Pencroft observed. "And from what I have been informed, he no longer speaks. Unless he can do so from the grave."

  "He speaks, but not from the grave," Di Palma said smoothly, "and he does so with difficulty, for the gentleman is still undergoing skin transplants and other surgery."

  Treadwell spun about in his seat. "Filipo... alive?"

  "Yes."

  "But... every report we received was that he was blown to bits when—"

  Di Palma held up a hand. "He is as alive as Cordas. But he will be in hospital for at least another year."

  "Just a moment." They turned to Pencroft, staring intently at Di Palma. "You mentioned that name. Cordas. How did he get into all this? He's supposed to be dead." Pencroft leaned back, cupping his hands beneath his chin. He answered his own question. "But if Filipo Castilano survived, then..." He shrugged. "How is Cordas involved in this?"

  "Let me," Treadwell broke in. He described the attack on St. Brendan's Glen, the wild killing, the seizing of the map. And how Caitlin St. Brendan was sworn to hunt down the killer of her mother.

  Strange emotions played across Pencroft's face. He looked to Gale. "Caitlin... her father is Kerrie. Then you must be—of course. The sacred sisterhood. You and Caitlin."

  Gale sat straight in her chair. "Sir William, you amaze me with what you know."

  "Don't give me more credit than I deserve. Kerrie St. Brendan and I were in the Royal Marines together. Six years, in fact. After I was wounded, the best doctors in England said I would never walk again. Bullet in the spine; that sort of nonsense. And I could not walk. Kerrie took me to the Glen in the New Forest. Two years I spent there while they filled me with all manner of herbs and forced me to do strange exercises. Then, when I could stand, but barely stagger about, they gave me this great sword."

  His eyes seemed vacant as he rushed with his memories back to years before. Then it was Indy's turn to put together pieces of the puzzle he'd had dumped in his lap. "Sir William," he said quickly. "Would you allow me?"

  "Allow you to what?" came the caustic response.

  Indy smiled. "To tell you, and everyone here, what happened to you. How you regained your ability to walk."

  "Professor Jones, you are either crazy or a mind reader. Perhaps both, but I'm more inclined to go with insanity. How could you possibly—" He shook his head.

  Indy looked about the room. Every pair of eyes was glued to him. "You said you could barely walk. That means you were able to stand."

  "Obvious," Pencroft snapped.

  "You exercised with the sword. Against wood, straw dummies, other people in swordplay. Slowly at first."

  Pencroft sat with his mouth open. He started to speak, then waited.

  "The scabbard for the sword. You wore the scabbard." Indy was intense, keeping his remarks brief. "The scabbard... you are right-handed. The scabbard hung from a belt on your left. You regained full use of your left leg."

  Pencroft stared in amazement at Indy. "Go on, go on," he whispered.

  "They increased the practice. They told you to strengthen all your muscles. To use your left arm more. So you shifted the scabbard to your right side in order to draw the sword with your left hand. And when you did that, changed the scabbard from one side to the other, you regained full use of your right leg."

  Indy took a deep breath. "That day you walked as well as you ever did in your life. In fact, you could run again."

  Silence hung in the room.

  Finally Pencroft spoke again. His mood made it clear Indy would not again discuss the sword and the miraculous recovery of Sir William Pencroft. But the old man had ceased to dismiss the reports of a gold hoard and a map that could lead someone to its long-lost hiding place. Pencroft, without further exchange between Indy and himself, now understood that the secret of Caliburn and its scabbard, which as a university professor he could never mention without fear of being branded a lunatic, was known both to Indy
and Gale Parker. He wanted no other eye to read that page from his past.

  It was high time to move on to the reason that had brought these people here. Pencroft again studied the strangers. He was familiar with Roberto Di Palma. Simple enough. A secret agent in high circles of the Italian government and a member of the notorious Six Hundred of the Vatican, a select group of men and women who functioned as the church's special agents, emissaries, and if need be, mercenaries. No one admitted to the existence of the Six Hundred, but then, the world was awash with secret societies and fanatical bands. One more or less made little difference.

  Looking at the Haitian was like rubbing an open wound, but for the life of him Pencroft couldn't understand—

  There it was. He caught sight of a portion of the snake-skeleton necklace. Long before age and bone weariness had restricted him to the halls of the university, Pencroft had been an earlier edition of Professor Jones, plumbing the depths of the hidden and secret societies of the world. Not only had he witnessed secret tribal rites and ceremonies, but wherever possible he had joined in with the indigenous groups.

  That's how he had seen the fer de lance necklace. In Haiti, decades past. A witch doctor had placed one about his neck. Before the night ended, walking along a jungle trail, he felt the vibration begin along his neck muscles and tendons. Abruptly the skeleton necklace tightened painfully, a physical shock that jerked him backward. Just in time to see a snake striking where his foot would have touched the path before him.

  So if this LeDuc fellow was part of Treadwell's private entourage, then he would prove invaluable in warning of certain dangers. And if the search for gold led them into dangerous territory, LeDuc could well be their ticket to survival.

  Strange, Pencroft judged, a smile coming unbidden to his creased and wrinkled features. I have played the game myself. I am the one who knows more about the gold than all of them put together.

  The old man motioned to his attendant. "Level Four," he told her, loud enough for the others to hear. "Sublevel Four." He looked around to the group. "Follow me," he announced, and his nurse began the long descent down four ramps to Sublevel Four.

  Many years before, a different age and a different time, when that strange land of America was shooting, burning, cutting, and killing its own flesh and blood, hundreds of millions of pounds of gold and jewels had been secreted where they were now headed.

  They watched in silence as Pencroft leaned forward from his wheelchair to work the combination lock on a huge safe. They heard the tumblers fall and the sharp click of the steel rods sliding away to release the safe door. But it was too heavy for Pencroft to move from his wheelchair.

  He turned to Indy. "Professor Jones, if you would, please? The steel box on the middle shelf. On that table behind me." He wheeled around to face the others. "Kindly take seats at the table. Martha," he asked of his nurse, "lock the door to this room."

  At the table, they watched Pencroft remove yellowed documents from the steel box. He arranged them neatly before him, rested one hand on the papers, and took the time to look at each person in turn.

  "Gentlemen, Miss Parker, I must request that what you are about to learn not be discussed with anyone outside this room. Mr. Di Palma, Mr. LeDuc, although I am poorly acquainted with your backgrounds, the fact that Mr. Treadwell speaks for you is acceptable to me."

  Both men nodded their agreement.

  Pencroft took a long breath. "Then I shall get right to the crux of the matter. The stories you have heard about the missing gold are true." His hand patted the papers gently. "This is the documentation, the complete records of the gold bars, and"—he looked directly at Di Palma—"the coins in which the Vatican has so intense an interest. For your further edification, that gold, bars and coins, was stored in this very chamber."

  Except for Pencraft's explanations, the only sound heard in the sealed room was the breathing of his audience, hanging on to every word.

  "The gold bars were the property of two major groups, one of them being the Museum Council of Great Britain, which shared it with our government. Obviously, the Bank of England was involved as an adviser and as our representative with the international banking system. All that is of little consequence at this moment, but it is my feeling that you should have this information to round out the background and to establish where the gold and coins were located when they were, ah, stolen is the most appropriate term."

  "Stolen?" Di Palma echoed.

  "In the broadest sense," Pencroft replied.

  "I'm not sure I understand," Treadwell said.

  "To be specific, then, the gold was pirated. A popular term would be shanghaied, although I find that a bit fanciful."

  "Was if from here?" Treadwell continued. "I mean, from this room, or from a museum display?"

  Pencroft shook his head slowly. He began to cough; they waited as his nurse administered a syrup to clear his throat. He dabbed lightly at his lips. "Forgive me. Age takes its toll. I must be as brief as possible.

  "By the year 1863, some sixty-seven years ago, England was suffering severely because of the war being fought in the United States." He smiled at Indy. "You will forgive my use of the term 'civil war,' so often referred to as the War Between the States."

  "Or," Indy commented, "Yankee aggression."

  "The point is that with the Union establishing a powerful blockade of Southern ports, as well as the stress and the losses of various battles, the Confederacy was unable to ship its cotton across the Atlantic to the textile mills of this country. England went through a devastating economic loss. Mills were shutting down for lack of raw materials. Recession loomed heavily upon all of us.

  "At that time, representatives of President Jefferson Davis managed to elude the Union blockade to reach our shores. They met secretly with our government and struck a deal of the greatest value both to England and to the American Confederacy. England agreed to finance the war. It is that simple. We would provide the Confederacy not only with badly needed supplies and armaments, but also with enough money for Davis and his people to buy from other governments what they needed to win against the North.

  "You understand, of course, Confederate currency was hardly acceptable on the world market. The only tender that would guarantee the Confederacy what they needed was gold. In return, once the South had bulwarked its military structure—evened the odds, as it is said—Great Britain would send a fleet of warships and transports to the southern ports of the United States to begin a massive transfer of the cotton we needed so badly. The arrangements called for exclusive rights of this country to continue to receive cotton from America once the Confederacy had prevailed. The United States would be split into two nations, and we, in turn, would clearly dominate the world textile market.

  "So the gold, the bullion and the coins"—Pencroft looked directly at Di Palma—"were moved secretly from this museum to a port on our west coast, in an area generally inaccessible to the public and certainly guarded most heavily. Indeed, the government made certain it was closed off. All roads were sealed, teams of armed guards with dogs covered the hills, and small fast warships patrolled off the coast."

  "Sir." Indy made the attempt to break into Pencraft's narration. He knew all too well the danger of the elderly man taxing his weakened lnngs. Pencroft turned to him.

  "Was there any indication that the Union, Mr. Lincoln's agents, suspected what was going on?" Indy asked.

  Pencroft smiled. "If nothing else, the Yankees were thorough, and ingenious, in their spy systems. They knew something was afoot, of course—"

  "Wait! I remember something now," Treadwell said suddenly. "It's in the reports of the Admiralty. A ship, flying the Dutch flag, suffered a fire when it was off that port that was so heavily guarded. They sent up distress signals. Rockets and all that."

  Di Palma laughed, harshly and without humor. "And the British, no doubt, leaped to the rescue. We also are aware of some of these events."

  "What was so unusual about a Dutch ship in trou
ble?" Gale asked.

  "Ah, madam!" Di Palma rolled his eyes. "The flag was Dutch, all right. But when the rescuers, all so eager to save lives and perhaps to claim a prize as salvage, reached the ship, why, you may guess what they discovered! A Dutch flag, to be certain. But"—he gestured theatrically—"I am sure they discovered the crew was American, and the smoke issued forth from a huge caldron burning oily rags to make great smoke but endanger no one." He sighed and leaned back in his seat. "We have done the same many times to the French and the Spaniards. It is an old game."

  "But in this case," Treadwell added, "our people gave themselves away. An isolated port on our Atlantic coastline, and from this port there emerges a force of such a size that, well"—he shrugged—"it certainly, as the Americans are so fond of saying, blew our cover."

  Pencroft chuckled as he looked back to Indy. "Question answered?"

  Indy nodded. "So before the gold ever left England—"

  "In a warship surrounded by warships," Pencroft finished for him, "surrounded by smaller, swift vessels, all of which had the added protection of another ring of ships in a great circular pattern about the main force."

  "Because by then," Indy mused aloud, "the Union navy could have struck directly against the British force."

  Pencroft demurred. "We do not believe that would have happened."

  "Why not?" Gale asked.

  "An attack against so formidable a force," Pencroft said slowly, "would require just as powerful a force on the part of the North. It would be an act of open warfare. Too many government leaders in London desired such an eventuality. Defeat the North by an alliance with the Confederacy, assure a continued supply of materials for the textile industry, and help the Confederacy occupy the North and seize industry and raw materials."

  He coughed again, pausing once more to dab at red flecks on his lips. "History has its own sense of humor. We lost the colonies to the rebels under Washington, and now we were trying to seduce the North into a battle in which we were allied with the Rebels of the South."