ROBIN MOORE HQUSASFVN
NHA-TRANG. RVN
ARRIVING TAN SON NHUT 1600 PAN
AM FLIGHT 201 FROM HONG KONG WEDNESDAY 21. HAVE RESERVATION AT
CARAVELLE HOTEL AND GREAT IDEA FOR NEW FIND. JENNINGS.
The sergeant major of
Headquarters United States Army Special Forces Vietnam at
Nha-Trang. Republic of Vietnam. handed me the telegram when I returned
from the Green Beret operation in Tay Ninh. It was the first time
I had been able to smile since the somber experience of seeing
Lieutenant Perkings blown up in front of me when he stepped on a
North Vietnamese mine two days before.
The cable had been waiting for
me for two days, which meant that Howard would be hitting Saigon
the next day. I wondered if he was really coming just to see me. I
knew that the Indians who ran Vietnam's currency black market sent
couriers down from Hong Kong every few days, preferably
Caucasians. They wore vests lined with gold for sale to rich
Vietnamese anxious to convert their wealth into something more
stable than 1964 piastres. And, of course, anything that had to do
with gold would be of interest to Howard.
In Saigon I stopped by the
Special Forces Command Liaison Detachment, wrangled a jeep and
driver from my friend Colonel Lanyard, and headed for Tan Son Nhut
International Airport.
Howard was the first man off the
plane, standing tall and looking heavier than I had ever seen him,
as I had suspected he might. I didn't ask any questions.
"If you can hold out for
half an hour, we’ll be through this damn traffic and at
the Caravelle," I told him in the jeep. "There's a fine
air-conditioned bar on the top floor."
"The stewardess was
generous," Howard said. "I'm sure glad you could get out
to meet me, Robin."
"So am I," I replied.
"When you get out in the boonies, there's no telling when
you'll make it back to Nha- Trang. It's lucky I got your cable. By
the way, have you got time to come up? We've got the most
beautiful beach in Vietnam, and it's covered with girls."
A momentary light showed in his
eyes, and then he shook his head. "I just dropped in to say
hello, and then I'm on my way."
I stole a glance at the
suspiciously full chest and stomach my lean friend was sporting.
He caught my look but said nothing.
At the Caravelle Hotel, Howard
showed his passport and registered.
"You go on up to the
bar," he said. "I'll drop in my room and wash up and
change."
I watched his glance sweep the
lobby of the Caravelle and pause as it fell on the dark- skinned
Indian sitting across from the registration desk. The Indian stood
up and put down the copy of Newsweek he had been
reading.
"I won't be long,
Robin."
"No sweat. The waitresses
are beauties."
We rode up in the elevator and
Howard got off on the fifth floor. I went on to the top and made
for the cocktail lounge. True to his word, Howard showed up in
about fifteen minutes. He had changed clothes, and he looked
considerably slimmer and more relaxed.
We sat for a couple of hours
nursing our drinks while Howard brought me up to date. He filled
me in on his adventures and his troubles with the Batres brothers
in Peru, then, motioning for another round, he filled me in on
Hong Kong. He had arrived there with the remaining Peruvian gold
still in the flight bag he had purchased at the Lima airport. The
manager of the President Hotel in Hong Kong had previously managed
a hotel in Montego Bay, and he and Howard were old acquaintances.
When Howard explained that he had some valuable gold artifacts to
sell, the manager arranged a meeting with a Chinese gentleman who
happened to be connected with the cultural department of the
People's Republic of China.
Howard had been somewhat
reluctant to do business with the Red Chinese, but he knew that
over half the commercial businesses in Hong Kong are owned and
controlled by Chinese Communist representatives and that contact
with them would be inevitable. He met with the man, and with a
minimum of haggling, they agreed on £10,300 sterling for the
remaining pieces.
The next morning he dropped off
the gold and picked up the check, then immediately cashed it for
one thousand English £10 notes. And then he'd sent me the cable.
That night Howard and I went
through one of those all- night bull-sessions, and somewhere
between the first drink and dawn it became clear that Howard was
now totally committed to treasure hunting. He studied, planned,
evaluated, and dedicated himself to the labors, both physical and
mental, with the attitude of a professional.
He told me about his new idea,
born out of study and plain old East Texas horse sense.
"You know what a wealth of
gold there is in northern Peru," he said. " And when I
was in Bogota, looking for the emeralds, I visited the Banco
Republico Gold Museum. It's the largest collection of its kind-
14,000 pieces. All other museum and private collections together
amount to about one-fifth of that figure."
I waited.
He said, "Well, don't you
see?"
"See what?"
"Dammit, Robin," he
said impatiently. "Struck right in between southern Colombia,
where they've found a lot of gold, and northern Peru, where
they've found a lot of gold, is Ecuador. There has only been one
major dig in Ecuador. That's where I'm heading." He paused.
"I wish to hell you'd come along."
But I couldn't leave Vietnam
then, and he knew it. So, after a few more days looking around
Saigon with me, he boarded Pan Am One, the
"round-the-world" flight that starts on the west coast
of the U.S. and ends up in New York, the hard way.
The next day Howard deplaned in
London for a session with civilization.
Robin knows that my stint in
London was not entirely fun and games. I had work to do.
Sandwiched in between long
sessions at the British Museum and the Royal Geographical Society,
I did enjoy the good food and a couple of months of high living.
But research was my primary objective, and I squeezed my academic
sources until they were wrung dry. I've always felt that what
makes the difference between a professional treasure hunter and a
mere thrill-seeker is the amount of preparation one is willing to
invest. I invest heavily.
Once I had absorbed all the
information available, I headed for Ecuador.
I stopped off in Miami in order
to re-equip myself with the latest metal detection equipment, and
then caught a flight to Quito. The capital of Ecuador sits on a
9,000-foot plateau, and is therefore blessed with a mild
year-round climate even though it is only 15 miles south of the
equator. The city is a hodge-podge of architectural styles, with
ancient Indian adobe buildings sprinkled among early Spanish
churches and starkly modern structures.
The elegant Hotel Quito was my
first stop. I rented a suite for two months, and then decided to
do something sensible about the large amount of cash I was
carrying. Soon I was sitting across a desk from a pretty young
girl who handled gringos for the Banco Popular. By
the time I had opened a checking account, I also had talked the
young lady into having dinner. And by the time dinner was through,
she had agreed to accompany me on a preliminary search for
possible burial areas east of Quito. She had some vacation time
due her, and, she felt sure she could get away. We decided to
leave the next day, as soon as she had called the bank.
Anita was the bright,
emancipated daughter of a well-to-do family, but her parents, who
lived in another town, were never aware that their daughter had
become so liberated as to go flitting off into the back country
with a gringo. But there were practical reasons for
taking her along- in addition to being beautiful, Anita spoke
Spanish, and if I would be venturing into head-hunting territory
it was vital for me to be able to communicate quickly.
I rented a Land Rover and bought
a tent, sleeping bags, and other basic equipment necessary for a
short trip into the rugged high country. We headed east from Quito
into the mountainous area, which is breathtaking both in beauty
and in its lack of oxygen. The snowcapped ranges push up eighteen
or nineteen thousand feet into the clear blue sky. Our first stop
was to be in the small city of Cayambe.
On our first evening in Cayambe,
Anita found an old man who knew many tales and legends about the
area. We met him in the front part of his general store, a setting
typical of so many I had seen in my travels. The shelves were
stocked meagerly with cans of Heinz’s Baked Beans and boxes of
Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, alongside the customary kerosene lamps,
coils of rope, and spools of thread. Behind one counter was an
incredible sight-a dust-covered rack half stocked with a couple of
dozen View Master stereo slides. I’ve often wondered who sold
them to the poor, unsuspecting store owner. I’ve also wondered
who the hell bought the other half of the stock. The sales
abilities of both suppliers and retailers throughout the world
never fail to amaze me.
After the old man attended to my
purchase of three cans of beans, he invited us into his office in
the back of the store. The room was musty and cluttered with eons
of carelessness. We sat down at a rickety old desk, and he pulled
open a drawer. There, neatly organized, were fifteen
tennis-ball-size human heads. The old man handled each offering
with a casualness that made his sales pitch seem even more
ghoulish. I was fascinated by one head, which was topped with red
hair and ringed with a tiny red beard. I remembered that shrunken
heads compress skin pigments so that Indian heads look ebony and
white ones seem brown. I realized I was looking at the head of a
white man. As I held the miniature redhead in my hands, I was
told-on good authority- that the head was that of a treasure
hunter. It seems the poor chap had come from Canada to buy art
antiquities and managed to get himself caught by the notorious
Jivaros Indians, who did their art work on his head.
I found out later that the story
was entirely a figment of the old man's imagination-that the head
had really belonged on the body of a free-lance missionary who had
allowed his Messianic zeal to overrule his prudence. Several
months after I saw the head, it turned up in Quito, in the British
Embassy. The embassy, following the rules, packed up the
"remains" and shipped them off in a diplomatic pouch to
the deceased man's relatives in England- which must have been a
hell of a shock for the family.
I didn't buy any heads, but I
did manage, through Anita, to learn about a route that would take
us near to where I felt there might be burial mounds. After some
joking about how the Jivaros Indians would love working on my head
and especially my long nose, the old man advised us that banditos
were known to be active in the area I was planning to visit.
That was unwelcome news indeed, but I decided to do some exploring
anyway.
The next day, we struck off
toward the mountain pass that led into the interior. The road- if
it could be called that- headed southeast over a twisting,
climbing course that required eleven hours to travel. Some of the
route was so dangerous that I made Anita walk while I drove the
Land Rover with one foot hanging out the door, ready to jump to
safety if the road collapsed. It was nearly dark when we arrived
in the village of Oyacachi.
Anita proved her worth again
when she was able to borrow a small hut for us to sleep in. The
owner was in the hospital, recovering from the loss of an arm in a
machete fight. Oyacachi was situated eleven thousand feet up in
the Andes, so our physical activities were accompanied by a
chest-aching breathlessness.
Anita and I made friends with
the inhabitants, and one afternoon I sketched a rough
representation of a burial mound- a tola or huaca.
Most of the people looked blank, but then Anita showed the
drawing to an old man named Segundo, and I saw nods of
recognition. Yes, there were such structures, but the local
natives considered them to be the work of nature. Yes, they were
accessible, but they were in a valley, three days travel to the
east. Yes, there had been some old pottery seen in the area, and
there was a small river, which had produced gold nuggets.
That night I told Anita I was
going into the area. To my surprise, she said: "You are
wrong, Howard."
"Dammit, I know there's
gold there," I said. "What do you mean, wrong?"
I was mistaken about her
objections. "I know you are right about the gold," she
said seriously. "But you are wrong to take such treasures
from the graves."
One of the disconcerting aspects
of treasure hunting is the constant wrangle you face with people
who think you are defiling holy places.
"Anita," I said,
mustering up my most convincing tone of voice, "the graves I
dig belong to a civilization long gone from this earth. No
semblance of their beliefs or faith exists in the world today. I
do not desecrate the tombs; I honor them by letting posterity know
what kind of men lived back in those days."
"It is wrong to disturb the
sleep of the dead," Anita said doggedly.
Many Latin Americans feel this
way. Perhaps it is because they are the end product of Roman
Catholic missionary efforts to convert the mystical beliefs of a
sophisticated multi-god civilization to an essentially alien
monotheism. The priests of Spain were backed up with a tough army
which felt it was functioning with a mandate from Rome- convert or
kill. The Indians realized they must change in order to survive,
and they cloaked themselves in the thin mantle of Christianity.
But a reverence for the old ways has persisted.
I tried to reason: "Look at
it this way. Those graves were the easiest place for the living to
place the dead in order to expedite their trip to the 'other
world.' That's why they put in treasures, to make the afterlife
rich. We Christians feel we will pass on into a spiritual life
after our soul has gone to God. Material possessions are of no use
in the afterlife."
She listened, then thought about
it. Then she changed her tack. "You have no right to take any
treasure from my country," she said. "My country is
poor, not rich like your almighty United States."
I sighed. " Anita, just
answer me this: What has Ecuador done to explore its national
heritage?"
It was an exercise in rhetoric.
Only Mexico has made any major effort to discover and share its
pre-Columbian ancestry. That's one of the main reasons I've stayed
away from the Aztec ruins; the field is too competitive and the
restrictions too tightly maintained.
"These are our national
treasures," she argued. "These treasures belong to all
mankind. Your government should encourage people like me to
discover these artifacts instead of leaving them buried in the
ground and withholding them from the world."
This was my major point of
contention. I believe that any government that knows there are
relics of the past hidden from view is wrong in not trying to
share those relics.
"What the hell right has
Ecuador or Italy or Turkey or Peru or any other nation to,
withhold such treasures from the world? Dammit, more people visit
the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the British Museum in
London than live in most of the places where
treasure is found. Talk about fair, what the hell do
the Inca or Maya or Aztec civilizations owe to the people who just
happen to live in those countries today? I say nothing."
"You have no right to
decide such a matter."
"Well, then, tell me who
does have the right?" No answer.
"Does the right belong to
your government, which doesn't have the resources to finance
proper programs of excavation?" No reply. "Or does it
belong to your historians, who sit around in your university, not
anxious to get off their fat duffs? Or maybe the pompous
archaeologists, who wrap themselves in academic praise, spending
years writing scholarly papers before sharing the fruits of
efforts financed with other people's money?"
"Well, you still
have no right to make such a decision," she said.
I saw I wasn't going to win this
argument, so clearly it was time to quit. "Look, Anita,"
I said, "would it make you feel better if I worked with your
government?"
She smiled and nodded.
"Okay," I said. "If I find anything, I'll take it
to your government and let them decide what I can keep. They can
pay me for whatever they want."
That seemed to pacify her. I
knew I couldn't do any such thing, but I would have to continue
her education another time.
The next day Anita helped me
negotiate with Segundo. I arranged for him to be my guide and
foreman for the expedition, and we worked out a financial deal for
the hiring of twenty workers, along with a few horses and enough
pack mules to carry provisions for two months. The men hired on
for forty cents a day, but the animals cost me fifty cents a day-
a commentary on the state of values in that part of the world.
We spent another two days buying
provisions, then I drove Anita back to Quito and purchased the
additional equipment I felt would be needed: medical supplies,
digging tools, and a large quantity of canvas to use for making
tents and packs. Because old Segundo had delivered such a stern
warning about banditos, I picked up a used Winchester
.30.30 lever-action rifle and enough ammunition to carry on a
private war. The manager of the Hotel Quito agreed to store my
"city clothes" while I was in the bush. Finally, I said
goodbye to Anita and headed back to join up with Segundo at
Oyacachi.
Segundo was ready with the men,
animals, and food. I transferred my heavy load of metal detectors
and personal supplies from the Land Rover to mule packs, and we
set off the next morning in a drizzling rain, with the temperature
near the freezing mark. The dampness promoted a heavy, slick
growth of grass right up to the snow line, which made the footing
treacherous for man and beast.
The second day out two of our
pack mules slipped on the slick grass, then rolled five hundred
feet down the side of the mountain to their death. I left four
Indians and two mules behind to recover those grain sacks that had
not split open. The rest of us moved on, climbing higher and
higher into a weird world of snowcapped mountaintops blanketed in
cold, wet, silent clouds.
On the third day we crested the
mountain range at sixteen thousand feet, and suddenly we were on
the east flank of the Andes, with an incredible view. Segundo was
in the lead, and he halted the march a few hours later. Calling me
to his side, he pointed in the direction of several valleys
stretching away to the east.
"Tolas," he
said.
I strained to see. Either
Segundo had a vivid imagination or damned good eyes: I could see
no sign. I lifted my binoculars from the horn of the saddle. Then
I saw them. Columbus may have erred when he identified the North
American natives as Indians, and Balboa was certainly wrong when
he tagged the Pacific Ocean as "peaceful." But as I
studied the shape of the mounds off in the distant valley, I felt
pretty safe in concluding that I was indeed looking at
pre-Columbian tolas. There were seven mounds of
various sizes, all situated along a fast-running river, and all in
the classical shape of the tola, with smooth sides
and flattened tops. There had to be gold there.
Using a combination of broken
Spanish and sign language, I asked, "How long to get
there?"
"Three, four hours,"
Segundo replied in Spanish.
"Then let's get
moving."
We arrived at the first mound
about an hour before nightfall. I spurred my tired horse to the
river bank, looking for the telltale signs of ancient habitation.
Suddenly I was no longer weary. Hundreds of pieces of broken
pottery littered the edge of the river.
That first night was miserable.
There had been no time to construct a solid camp, so I joined the
Indians, who were huddled on the ground, wrapped in blankets or
pieces of canvas. I used a poncho to keep out the wetness, and by
morning, a thin covering of ice sparkled on the ground and on
everyone's bedding.
I supervised breakfast for the
workers, and then assigned all of them to begin digging into the
bases of two of the mounds. It was vital to prove that they really
were man-made mounds before pitching a permanent base camp. Within
an hour, there was a pile of highly polished potsherds in front of
the camp-fire. Convinced, I asked Segundo to assign half of the
workers to building adequate semi-permanent shelters. This was
going to be our home for the next two months.
When the conquistadors came to
South America in the 1500's, the god-emperor Atahualpa ruled a
realm that ran three thousand miles along the Andes-the Kingdom of
Quito. There was enormous wealth here, but Pizarro's brutality
resulted in Atahualpa's death by the most hideous form of
execution that the Spanish had devised, the garrote
which is still in use today.
During my research in London I
had come to realize that Ecuador holds no major niche in the
annals of Inca history. At the time of Pizarro's conquest, Ecuador
had been occupied by the Inca for only about fifty years, and was
a poorer out-post of the empire. Pizarro first landed on the coast
of Ecuador, but he soon determined that the center of the
sprawling Inca Empire lay to the south, in Peru. After Atahualpa's
capture, great treasures were sent from all parts of the realm to
form part of his ransom- the famous "room full of gold as
high as a man could reach"- and one such shipment, out of the
northern city of Quito, was supposedly lost in the rugged
Llanganati Mountain region. But as far as the Spanish were
concerned, the great centers of Inca wealth, and of Spanish
plunder, were not in Ecuador. And this view has been held ever
since.
Yet all research and logic
pointed to a pre-Columbian Ecuador as rich as the more famous
areas, and it still seemed possible to me that I might discover
something that had been over-looked by the rapacious Spanish.
After all, the trip from Quito had been arduous and dangerous. It
seemed possible that the natural barriers of the snowcapped
mountains would have been enough to prevent the Castilian plunder
of the area.
"Work. ..work.
..work," I silently urged the men who were hacking at the
grass at the base of one of the mounds. I was eager to see the
foliage trimmed back, anxious to start my search.
In the camp, Segundo was guiding
the construction of sod houses. I decided a hut would be warmer
and less confining than my tent, so I marked out a twelve-foot
square for myself. In a few hours the workers had dug down into
the mushy soil, erected four walls made from squares of sod, and
covered the top with sticks and more sod. Pieces of burlap sacking
were hung as a door, and a kerosene lantern provided sufficient
light, although the smoke from the wick stung my eyes and
nostrils. By the end of the day the base camp was fully in
operation, and the digging party had recovered quite a few more
potsherds. After a few shots of whisky, I crawled into my sleeping
bag in peaceful contentment.
The next day the heavy digging
began. After much explanation and instruction to Segundo, I
divided the crew. Picks and shovels went into action at two of the
mounds, one more than 30 feet high and the second about 25 feet. I
wanted an exploratory trench cut through all the way to the ground
level, which meant the removal of literally tons of earth. This
would take many days, so I took off on my horse to hunt for some
game, which would provide fresh meat for the camp.
During the journey into the
valley I had noticed plenty of deer, and sure enough I spotted a
large herd of deer less than a mile east of the camp. I picked out
a dry doe and dropped her with one shot from the .30.30
Winchester. (A dry doe is a deer that is not suckling its young.
It tastes a lot less gamey than a mother and is more tender than a
buck. Some hunters will come across a herd and blast away at the
biggest buck they can see, but they'd better have teeth like a
shark.) I spotted a second dry doe and dropped her with another
shot, then dressed the carcasses and slung them across the rear
end of my horse. The workers, who had heard only the two shots
fired, seemed to be impressed as much with my marksmanship as they
were with the venison.
The first grave was uncovered
late that first morning. There was no gold in the grave, and the
pottery arranged ritualistically around the skeleton was rather
crude. It did not, alas, represent a wealthy community or advanced
culture. By nightfall more graves were exposed, and the quality of
pottery was improving, but we discovered only one very plain gold
nose ring. Nevertheless, I still had faith in my theory. I ordered
two more trenches cut into the mounds, hoping that the quality of
the graves would improve as the digging went deeper.
The next morning I left Segundo
in charge of the dig and took a shovel and large frying pan to the
nearby river. The day was cold, and a freezing drizzle added to my
discomfort as I began the back-breaking work of washing a pan of
sand and gravel.
"Panning" falls into
the category known as "placer mining" and is primarily a
process called "sifting"; that is, using gravity to
separate the heavier metal from the surrounding matter . In 1848
the old sourdough panners discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill,
California, and the resultant rush created a city out of the tiny
village of San Francisco. Colorado’s "Pikes Peak or
Bust" rush happened two decades later, and the famous
Klondike finds occurred at the turn of the century. Gold panning
made men rich overnight and produced instant inflation: Eggs sold
for $1 apiece and a shack rented for $100 a week.
It takes a lot of practice and a
hell of a strong back to pan for gold. First, the material to be
panned must be obtained from as deep as possible- down to bedrock,
if you can manage it- because the heavy particles of gold settle
downward during movement of the sand and gravel. Normally, a large
pan specially designed for the purpose is shoveled brimful of the
material to be panned; then, squatting in the shallow water near
the bank, one begins the tedious job of washing the forty or so
pounds of mud and gravel, holding the pan between the knees. After
first pulverizing any clods of clay, the pan is dipped into the
water and a swirling motion is commenced that gradually washes
clean the material at the top. As the water in the pan absorbs the
clay, dirty water is carefully spilled out and clean water dipped
in. This is repeated until the water remains clean, even after the
material is swirled and scrubbed with one's hands. Then the larger
rocks are removed, and a sloshing, side-to-side motion replaces
the swirling, allowing the lighter material to "float"
to the top and be spilled over the side- gradually and very
carefully. The water is replenished and the sloshing is repeated
over and over again, until finally nothing will be left in the pan
but a crescent-shaped residue of black material around the edge.
If the material is very rich or
the gold in the stream very coarse, it is possible that gold might
now be visible, when the black material is spread out on the
bottom. Since most methods of separating the "color"
from the black residue are rather complicated, most miners collect
the material at this point and save it up for reworking later,
back at camp. I'm told that a practiced hand can wash a pan to
this point in twenty to thirty minutes. It takes me about an hour,
and after two pans I am usually done for the day, with half the
muscles in my body complaining.
But this time all I wanted was
confirmation that there was gold in the region. It came within an
hour, as I washed the first pan down to the black residue. As I
swirled the pan, dots of gold gradually began to appear. I had
seen gold panned in Colorado and Wyoming by professionals, but I
had never before seen so much "color" in a pan. The
river was rich in gold.
Of course, that didn't really
prove that the natives had used the plentiful gold for their own
jewelry or ceremonial objects. In fact, my research in London had
indicated a strong probability that the mountain Indians had
bartered gold with the tribes along the coast, who used it to
produce the artifacts found in tombs throughout the coastal plains
areas of Colombia and Peru. Still, it was encouraging to find the
raw material available in such abundance- surely some of it would
have remained in the area.
From six laborious pans I netted
nearly two ounces of high-grade gold. I was tempted to call off
the burial digging and put my work force to the task of panning,
but there were not enough pans, and there were no trees around
from which to make sluice boxes. I went back to the mound and
waited for graves to be uncovered.
My anxious and frustrating wait
ended on the sixth day. One trench had been deepened, and I moved
in for a sweep with my detector. A strong signal indicated a
substantial amount of metal. The grave was cleared in three hours,
and my patience was rewarded. We had removed two ceremonial gold
knives and several animal figures representing monkeys and
jaguars. But the major find was a beautifully crafted gold statue
of a little man wearing an elaborate headdress and sporting an
erect penis. My theory was solidly confirmed, and I ordered the
dig to go forward.
Over the next four weeks the
Indians cut trenches through four of the seven mounds. It was
heavy work: The mounds ranged in height from fifteen to thirty
feet, and a lot of earth had to be moved to cut a trench from top
to ground level.
After a trench was dug, I always
set the Indians to digging a trench in a new mound while I
investigated the one at hand privately. The graves were widely
scattered in the mound, and I was increasingly disappointed by the
artifacts I recovered. There was gold, but not nearly as much as I
had hoped. Except for the horny little gold Indian, the artifacts
were crudely made and far between. I had recovered a total of
eighteen gold objects, including discs, animal figures, and two
plain ceremonial knives. Not bad, but I'd hoped for more.
I was prepared to continue
excavating new digs until food supplies made it necessary to
leave, but our activities had be- gun to draw a crowd. For several
days, Indians had been appearing on the hills overlooking the
valley, and although my people told me they were probably the
head-hunting Jivaros, I wasn't particularly concerned. They had
blow guns and spears, but I had a Winchester .30.30. However, a
second crowd had come from downstream, setting up camp about two
miles below us. Through the binoculars, I counted at least thirty
armed men.
"Qui estan los
hombres?" I
asked Segundo. He looked down into the valley. " Banditos,
senor," he said without expression.
Bandits were a different
proposition. Although they had no way of knowing what we were
doing, from what I had heard and read I knew they would kill us
merely for our camping equipment. I had a strong hunch they
intended to raid us, so I decided we would leave the next morning
before dawn.
Right after our evening meal we
buried the picks and shovels. I knew where to find them in case I
should return, and I didn't want our animals to have to carry
anything unnecessary. We were going to have to travel light and
fast.
We were on our way before
daybreak, and by the time it was light we were climbing the
mountain. The Indians were grumbling about not having a good
night's sleep, and I began to wonder if my concern had been
unwarranted. None of the Indians seemed at all worried about the banditos.
Then the morning mist cleared.
We were about a thousand feet above the camp and some four miles
away, but I could easily see men on horseback milling about our
sod houses. As we watched, smoke spiraled up into the sky from the
grass roofs. At last the Indians seemed to realize that their
lives might be in danger, and they quickly picked up the pace,
heading westward up into the Andes. I stayed behind for a few
minutes and watched through my binoculars as the bandits formed
around their leader, who was pointing up into the hills, directly
at me. Then, kicking their horses into action, they galloped
across the valley after us.
I waited until they were only a
mile from my vantage point, and then rattled off a fusillade of
shots with the .30.30. The bandits pulled to a sudden halt as I
reloaded and fired another volley; then I jumped on my horse and
followed after the Indians. The bullets were not intended to hit
the banditos, but hopefully the shots would cause them to
slow down out of respect for my rifle.
The journey into the valley had
taken three days, but we made the trip back to Oyacachi in two. If
the banditos did follow us, they never caught up. In Oyacachi
I paid off the crew, adding a bonus of two weeks' salary. I said
goodbye to Segundo, telling him I would be back in a year or so
for another dig.
The Quito Hotel-now called the
Hotel Intercontinental Quito, is a plush hostelry with a casino, a
ballroom, three bars, two good restaurants, and a large swimming
pool. After those cold, wet weeks in the Andes, these creature
comforts drew me like El Dorado. I arrived in the lobby unshaven,
filthy with road dust, and followed by a couple of bellboys
carrying my muddy gear. If the manager disapproved, he was kind
enough never to indicate it. In fact, we later became good
friends, and he was always interested in hearing about my trips.
Shortly after I arrived, I
learned that another friend, who was also interested in my
treasure-hunting trips, was practically on his way to Quito to
meet me. Beauregard Morton from Atlanta was just waiting for the
cable to hop onto a jet and join an expedition. Ever since Beau
had helped me sell the gold artifacts from the Batres brothers
adventure, he had been cajoling me to take him out after Inca
gold.
It was against my better
judgment, but I sent off a cable inviting Beauregard to join me.
Everybody thinks treasure hunting is romantic until they get out
in the bush. Still, Beau might be useful to me in disposing of
gold artifacts. I decided I would give him as uneventful a
treasure hunt as possible, just to get it out of his system.
In fact, there was someplace I
wanted to go. Two Oyacachi Indians had told me of some ruins in
another valley on the Amazon side of the Andes. Each of them,
independently, had described the ruins of a very large stone
building constructed against a cliff. They were afraid to go near
it, but they spoke of huge round stone columns that had fallen to
the ground. I had never heard or read of any pre-Columbian
architecture with round columns, so the ruins fascinated me, and I
was determined to have a look.
Beau finally arrived, eager to
find and share treasure.
"I’m an excellent
horseman, Howard," he assured me.
"But have you ever ridden
steep mountain trails? This kind of riding is pretty dangerous.
You can fall down a mountain and break your
neck."
"Don’t worry, it won’t
happen."
We bought supplies, rented
another Land Rover, and left the next morning for Oyacachi. There
I hired twenty-five Indians and rented
about thirty horses and mules. With provisions for a two-month
stay, we set out on a trail leading southeast into the Andes.
Three days out, as we were
entering the high mountains, Beau’s nervousness began to
increase. "Would you like me to carry the rifle,
Howard?" he asked.
"Something wrong with your
revolver?" "No..." He paused a minute and then
said, "But I should have bought a rifle back in Quito."
He stopped his horse to let me come alongside.
"You’d better go on,
Beau, the trail isn’t wide enough here." He started on
again and talked over his shoulder. "Did you hear those cats
almost in our camp last night? Must have been a bunch of jaguars
or pumas." He looked around worriedly.
"You know, they could jump
us anywhere along the trail here."
"They won't attack people
unless it's an old animal and can't hunt, or unless it's a female
with a cub she's protecting."
"Just the same," Beau
said nervously, "I'd feel better with a gun in my hand."
A few minutes later I noticed he
was carrying his revolver in his right hand. He would jerk it up
to sight and aim at almost any noise he heard, and spent more time
peering into the trees alongside the trail than he did watching
the path ahead.
At last, the inevitable
happened. Rounding a bend in the narrow trail, Beau heard a noise
in the bush and spun to point his gun. The sudden motion startled
the horse, which sidestepped off the trail, slipped, and went down
heavily. Beau was thrown clear, but he crashed into the dense
undergrowth and disappeared.
I slid down from my horse and
ran to where Beau had fallen. His horse was up and stamping
around, so I quieted the animal and tied it to a tree. Then I ran
to Beau, who was pulling himself up out of a tangle of growth,
cursing and groaning.
I couldn't find much wrong on
examination, but Beau complained of sore ligaments in one leg, and
he worried about possible internal injuries. So we turned back. It
had been a mistake to let him come, I knew, but what really hurt
was that we were within one day's ride of those strange columned
ruins.
I left all of my gear with
Segundo in Oyacachi, intending to return. By the time we reached
Quito, Beau had made a miraculous recovery and decided he would
wait until he got back to Atlanta to see a doctor. He took the
evening flight out. 1 suspect he is still telling the story of his
narrow escapes in the wild Andes.
After seeing Beau off I returned
to the hotel and asked for my key at the desk.
"Senor Jennings," the
clerk said, "the manager would like to see you as soon as
possible."
I went directly to the manager's
office, and found him there.
He asked if I had a good trip,
and we talked about generalities for a minute or two. Then he
said, "I am somewhat concerned about a Peruvian who checked
into the hotel a few days ago. He has questioned several members
of the staff about you and asked when you would return to Quito.
He has been sitting in the lobby every day, waiting. Wait a moment
and I'll check."
He looked into the lobby, and
then returned and described where the man was sitting. I asked if
he knew the man's name and was surprised it was not Batres. I
assured him it was nothing important, but thanked him for his
concern.
I only glanced at the man on the
way to the elevator to avoid letting him know that I had been
tipped off. After I had showered and changed, I returned to the
lobby and bought an American newspaper, then sat down to have a
closer look at this Peruvian. He was quite a large man for a South
American. His clothes were cheap and rumpled, and he looked out of
place here in the hotel, but he also looked dangerous. I had the
distinct feeling that I was in trouble.
The man was apparently unaware
that I had been tipped off because, though he ignored me during
the day, he followed me everywhere I went that night. I guessed he
was trying to catch me in the right circumstance, at night, when I
would be easy to take. I decided it was time that we met.
In those days the old Hotel
Colon had one of the best restaurants in the city. The hotel faced
onto a well-lighted street, but the side streets beside it were
dark, and on one side of the hotel was an L-shaped alleyway
leading to the service en- trance. This alleyway, I thought, was
as good a place as any for our confrontation.
That night I parked my car on
the dark side of the street, and I noticed he was not far behind.
I waited in the Land Rover for a few moments to give him time to
catch up, then I walked casually into the unlighted alleyway. As
soon as I was out of his line of sight, I hurried around the
corner, stopping with my back against the wall and my gun in hand.
He didn't appear. After a few minutes I walked back out to the
street. I didn't see him anywhere, so I had dinner and returned to
the hotel.
The next night I did exactly as
I had done the night before, and this time as I stopped around the
corner I heard him running up the alley. He slowed as he came
around the corner. In the dim light I could just see the gun in
his hand. He didn't see me until my gun smashed down on his arm.
He cursed in pain and anger as his gun clattered on the pavement.
In spite of his pain, he grabbed
for me with his left hand. I whipped my gun hand up and caught him
across the jaw. He yelped once, and then dropped to the pavement.
He was obviously stunned, and I decided not to wait around to find
out what he would do when he recovered his senses.
I drove straight back to the
hotel and telephoned a lawyer I knew in Quito. I told him the
whole story, and ended by asking him to send an ambulance for the
Peruvian. He came to the hotel later with an affidavit he had
prepared for my signature, but he also advised me to leave the
country immediately, before I got caught up in the ponderous
Ecuadorian legal system.
There would be no outbound
flights until late the next morning, so I took my gold from the
hotel safe, loaded up the Land Rover, and drove off for Cali,
Colombia, four hundred miles to the north. I had no trouble
crossing the border at Tulcan, and checked into the Bolivar Hotel
in Cali with the intention of relaxing for a few days.
I was now faced with the
inevitable problem of how to smuggle Ecuadorian gold artifacts out
of antiquities-conscious Colombia. This was back in the days
before the rash of skyjackings, so the use of electronic devices
for baggage inspection was not a problem. I finally came up with a
technique I was to use many times. I tied the pieces of gold from
different lengths of cord to the top of my plastic suit bag,
making sure they were evenly distributed from top to bottom. Since
most of the pieces were flat, there were no major bulges when the
bag was packed with my suits, and I could carry the bag over my
arm onto the airplane and hang it in a coat rack that was easily
visible from the seat.
I passed through Colombian
customs unchallenged and connected with a BOAC flight from Panama
to London. The day after my arrival, I took eighteen artifacts to
the prestigious Bond Street auction gallery, Sotheby's. Their
pre-Columbian expert selected ten pieces, including my small man
with the out-sized erection, paying a total of £3,700. The little
man brought £1,500 all by himself, enough to offset all of the
expenses for the Ecuadorian adventure. Through a friend associated
with the gallery, I met a pre-Columbian art buyer from Cologne,
Germany, and he paid $4,200 U.S. for another eight pieces.
I had telephoned my lawyer
friend in Quito to have the Land Rover picked up where I had left
it in Cali. Later, in a letter, he informed me that during the
Peruvian's first day in the hospital the police had persuaded him
to confess that he had entered Ecuador for a criminal purpose-
which meant that my testimony would not be necessary at any time.
The Peruvian was in the hospital for two weeks before his trial,
at which he was sentenced to prison for three years. He would not
admit his intent to kill me, but claimed that the Batres family
had paid him $200 plus expenses to work me over- just short of
killing.
So, for my effort in Ecuador I
realized a healthy profit, the natives of Oyacachi made a pretty
good wage, and a sleazy thug hired by the Batres brothers ended up
in prison, with a face bent badly out of shape. It had been a
satisfying venture, though I still wondered about that ruined
building with the round columns.
Someday...
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