SAN PEDRO, CALIFORNIA
After Robby Hanson closed the cell phone he looked around and, when he saw no one watching him, he turned to the overhang of the second deck and waved the girl over. She smiled and came out of the shadows.
“What did she say?” the twenty-year-old asked.
“She’s clueless; as long as she’s finally going on her dream cruise down the Amazon, Professor Zachary doesn’t care who’s on this trip. Besides it’s not like we’re lying about your being a grad student from Berkeley, is it?”
The girl smiled and leaned forward to kiss Robby on the lips. “I just had to go. How could I miss the trip of a lifetime?”
“Yeah, but how much trouble am I going to get into? Remember it was me who helped you ditch your protection. Your father’s going to freakin’ flip his gourd.” Robby shook his head, kissed the girl again, then turned her away from him.
“Go to your cabin and start getting acquainted with your fellow travelers, and stay out of sight until you check your equipment. And by the way, Kelly, your name is Cox. Leanne Cox. God, I’m dead,” he mumbled.
She batted her eyes. Grabbing her brand-new seabag, she started for the hatchway leading belowdecks. Then she stopped and turned. “Don’t tell me my secret fiancé is afraid of my father?”
Robby smiled and started making check marks on his manifest. “Why would I be afraid of one of the most powerful men in the world, surely not I, Ms. Cox?”
Farbeaux decided to drive to Los Angeles from Palo Alto. Taking Highway 1 relaxed him and allowed his mind to absorb the mission and think. He had placed Helen Zachary’s map inside a cylindrical container and placed it in the trunk. As he whistled he removed from his jacket pocket a Spanish cross once owned by Father Corinth. The last time Pizarro’s priest had seen the cross was in 1534. The warmth of it radiated out into his hand as he looked at it. How clever of Corinth to have placed both ore samples together in this most ingenious way. The large cross had inadvertently fallen to Farbeaux over a year earlier when it had been offered as payment by a former employer for services rendered. It had gone through a few changes while handed down through the Corinth family. Jewels had been added, and a thin plating of gold. The surprise he found inside its hidden compartment was an amazing stroke of luck.
Farbeaux knew the riches to be found in that near-forgotten lagoon were now close to being in his possession, partly thanks to this very cross and the secrets it had revealed to him. A five-hundred-year-old myth, an old legend that refused to die, would soon become a reality that was worth more than all the lost treasures ever torn from the earth.