The King's Gold (2 page)

“He was a civil war casualty.”

“The fascists murdered him,” I said bluntly. “He’s one of the disappeared.”

“It
was
sad. Such a loss, a talent like his. Though I hope you don’t mind my saying that perhaps his skill was not irreplaceable—as I mentioned, my associate told me that this Lola de la Rosa lady was supposed to be something of an expert in code-breaking. Who knew how to read in several languages? I’m looking for a girl who has an interest in old texts. Paleography.”

The white parcel shone in the bookstore’s gloom.

“Paleography,” I said.

Behind me, the redheaded fox-faced man and the ox-built blond remained perfectly impassive, only remaining standing by the door like two huge stumps.

“Yes, the interpretation of antique documents,” this Marco went on. “In particular, documents that other people have difficulty deciphering. You’re so modest. You say you went looking for your father in our jungles—but what you
did
find was that relic, no? That Queen Jade hullabaloo that everyone was shrieking about? The jade that turned out to be something or other else…a woman…some sort of mummy, from what I heard. Though…you ran into a bit of trouble, or something. Some loony Colonel Victor Moreno and his Lieutenant…something or other, chased you through the Guatemalan swamps. They wanted blood vengeance for de la Rosa’s war crimes. Yes? Because he killed that boy in ’93? And then these soldiers shot at you like maniacs, from what I hear. But you managed to execute them, rather violently? The colonel was beaten to death, wasn’t he?
Yes,
that’s it—Colonel Moreno was torn to pieces, his chest caved in, his face black, bleeding. His insides hemorrhaging. It left an ugly mess, I hear. They say his son went insane at the funeral…What was his name?” Marco furrowed his brow. “I can’t remember. Anyway, the stories of your derring-do as they’ve come down to me have been quite colorful. From what I understand, despite all that drama, you still kept your head, and stumbled across one of the most remarkable archaeological finds of the century, really.”

“Well, hmmm, bah—” I said, reddening. “Look, the truth is…”

I stammered and gabbled for a second, but the truth
was
that this Marco person had just given me a nearly perfect rendition of my recent family history. I
did
have a heinous jungle adventure two years back. And, unfortunately, it passed much as he described:

In 1998, my mother, the archaeologist Juana Sanchez, disappeared into the Guatemalan rain forest, supposedly on the trail of an archaeological relic known as the Queen Jade, but actually searching for the body of my recently deceased biological, and aforementioned, father, the archaeologist and Marxist rebel Dr. Tomas de la Rosa. Besides achieving fame for his archaeological discoveries, de la Rosa had also for many years operated as a political insurgent, by fighting military dictatorship in Guatemala’s civil war (1960–1996). The nadir of his guerrilla efforts had occurred in the war’s early years, when he crossed into an army camp disguised as an old woman, planting a bomb that killed one Serjei Moreno. This victim had been the nephew of a major architect of military oppression, a genocidal man-monster named Colonel Victor Moreno. Despite this crime, and though my mother had long been the paramour of the museum curator Manuel Alvarez, she had fallen into de la Rosa’s bed in ’68, conceiving me. And even when Tomas dumped her, and Manuel took her back and adopted me, she’d never fallen out of love with that heartbreaker. Multilingual, subversive, and a crack scientist, de la Rosa amounted to a sort of Byronic Che Guevara, with some Louis Leakey mixed in. Thus, when she received word in ’98 that junta forces had killed Tomas and then buried him in the Guatemalan swamps, her lasting obsession with the man led her to embark on a dangerous quest. A devastating hurricane called Mitch tore over Central America in the very days that she set out to find the grave of her old lover—which she never found.

Moreover, she had been lost in that deluge. Soon after we discovered her disappearance, I; my sister, Yolanda (de la Rosa’s other, legit daughter); Manuel; and my now fiancé, Erik Gomara, had ventured out into the jungle to search for her. Tracking her down required the decipherment of an intricate Mayan text that she had been using as a guide, but before we finally found her, injured in the burial ground of a Maya queen, we were intercepted. Colonel Moreno and his henchman, an insane butcher named Lieutenant Estrada, had chased us through the jungle. Moreno ordered Estrada to kill us in revenge for his nephew, Serjei. This unstable assassin, however, had been made so mad by Colonel Moreno’s military “training” that he wound up bludgeoning his mentor before our eyes—ripping apart the man’s body with his bare hands much as Marco recounted; later, the lieutenant drowned himself in our presence. As might be imagined, this series of catastrophes had taken its toll on my family: a temporary split up of Manuel and Juana, a deepening grief for Yolanda (made worse by her move to suburban L.B.), a rash of nightmares for Erik. For my part, I’d developed a fascination for my dead and vanished father. However, I never mentioned my fixation to anyone—particularly Manuel—and had resolved to quietly deal with this neurosis by stocking those expensive books about mad, bad, and dangerous to know swashbucklers. And that is why, also, I now said to Marco:

“The truth is, I’d rather not talk about all that, if you don’t mind.”

“But you
were
there,” he insisted. “You found the Queen Jade. And had that tiff with Colonel Moreno? That is, the
former
Colonel Moreno.”

I waved off the reference, closing the subject. “I did some deciphering, but my fiancé and my mother did most of the archaeological work—”

“Still, you
are
the one I’m looking for, aren’t you?” His smile turned warmer. “How lucky for me that you’re so…charming.”

“And who are you, exactly?” I asked.

“A playboy, I think, is what most people would call me. Lived in Europe for many years, and have quite recently begun dabbling in politics. And now”—he raised the parcel even higher, so that it was above my eye level—“archaeology, it seems. You see, I was hoping that you might be able to aid in the deciphering of this riddle I’ve brought you—which perhaps is also a map. If the document I’m holding here is authentic, then it is
very valuable:
Supposedly, the thing was written by a member of the Medici family—some scrofulous and suicidal Florentine alchemist named Antonio Beato Cagliostro Medici who went to Mexico with Hernán Cortés—you know, in the sixteenth century—”

“Oh. Yes! I’ve read about him—the Italian conquistatore, soldier of Cortés—”

“Right, old Hernán, who rabbled around the Aztec city Tenochtitlán, with his mercenaries…and then they smashed it all to pieces and took that emperor’s gold.”

“The Emperor Montezuma.”

“Yes,
him.
The big king—the big old failure—probably the most embarrassing figure in all of Latino history! I’m sure you’ve heard the story of how Montezuma handed over all his gold—scads and scads of it—to Cortés, who claimed he was a god or something colossally moronic like that.”

“That’s a fairly simple version—the Europeans were carrying smallpox and syphilis and had these big, sharp, basically omnipotent steel weapons that they were swinging around like Musketeers—”

“And blah blah blah blah blah
blah.
Yes, right. Poor, poor losers. Poor, poor
us
! Crushed to pieces by Whitey. Still, it’s a fascinating story. How a handful of bandy-legged, scurvy little Anglos toppled one of the greatest kingdoms in the world. And, again,
took all that gold
—and no one really knows what happened to it.”

“A huge amount of the treasure just disappeared, according to the histories.”

“The histories that
we’ve
read, that is. But what if there were another, secret story, about what happened to the gold? What if…we could find out where it…was?”

Again, he dangled the package, back and forth, back and forth.

“It may just be a matter of solving a little puzzle, if I’m right,” he went on. “Rather a
nasty
puzzle, though, I’m afraid. Possibly dangerous. In this letter, Antonio Medici claims
he
stole Cortés’s or Montezuma’s gold, brought it to Italy, and after probably spending part of it, hid the remainder in some kind of trap that he’d set for his nephew Cosimo I, the duke of Florence. Cosimo was a disgustingly successful warmonger, empire-builder, destroyer of Siena, abuser of the weak and the stupid—you know the type. He apparently wasn’t very
nice
to Antonio, who I think might have been considered a weakling, or what we’d called disabled. Antonio suffered from a ‘condition,’ it seems.”

“Yes—the Condition—Antonio’s disease. No one really knows what it was, exactly, though there are rumors—”

“Of werewolfism, yes. Whatever it was, he tried to cure it with alchemical potions. It was probably some sort of mental illness, but there were those stories that he turned into some savage black dog, if you can believe it—”

“Certainly, I can—Renaissance Florentines were incredibly superstitious.”

“Yes. Well. Whatever he was, man or superman, he was
smart.
In these papers, Antonio claims that he drew a map to the gold’s Italian location, a map that I would very much like to study…though I can’t find it. And there are clues in this letter, as well—it’s some sort of suicidal treasure hunt—but I can’t seem to figure them out. I wonder if
you
could—after authenticating the letter first, that is. You see, there’s so much work to be done.” He turned and called out: “Do you think she could help us, Blasej?”

“If you think so, sir,” the sinewy redhead replied in Czech-flavored Spanish, as he still stood by the door.

“And you, Domenico?”

“He thinks the same, sir,” the redhead answered.

“Christ, he can speak for himself, can’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about it, Marco,” the blond answered brusquely.

“Mmmm. It would be too bad if she weren’t up to the task that’s in here.” Again, he slightly crumpled the papers, making a delicious sound.

I touched my engagement ring, a little anxiously, but took a step forward, closer to him.

“Oh, here she comes—it looks like she wants to give it a try.” Marco retreated a step as he put the package behind his back. He drew back another step. “I think we’ve got her attention, boys.”

I stood right in front of him, peering around his body to see the bait. Reaching across his ribs, I grasped it, though he held on tight, smiling down at me.

“Let me see,” I said. “Oh—come on, ha, ha—no,
give it here
.”

“Gotcha,” he murmured.

Pulling the package from him, I ripped slightly at the envelope, which was wrinkled and fragile, like a cocoon. The papers crackled under my touch. I saw a papery glitter within.

Inspired by the Wonka-like shimmer of the text in the envelope, and the stranger’s stories, I began to claw the thing open.

Inside, concealed in layers of pearl-colored tissue and tucked within two hard cardboard squares, I found a small cache of folded papers. One thick new cream sheet doubled over an enclosure of pale onionskin papers that looked very old and delicate. I spread these out.

A short note had been printed by laser jet on the cream paper. The black ink characters sunk into the plush stock. The writing on it was in Spanish.

The translucent onionskin papers bore a message handwritten with a whorled, jewel-cutter’s perfection that marked them as antique. The letter also was affixed with a broken gold wax seal that bore the heraldic mark of a wolf rampant.

The ink on these opened pages, once ebony, had faded to dove gray, and the letters were formed in the enduring and beautiful Roman italic. Here, the writing was in Italian, but I am fluent in that language and have some facility in translating it.

A hot excitement rushed through me as I held onto that jewel, whose hand-ductus, or penmanship, revealed the care I have seen only from the hands of Renaissance calligraphy masters.

Even as those strangers stared down at me, I was snared, just by that inkling, just by the sight of that ancient and mysterious text.

“I had a feeling you’d find this interesting,” the man said, laughing in a low voice as my eyes ravished the letter.

Señor Sam Soto-Relada

Dealer in Used Goods

11 Avenue and 11 Calle, Zona 1, Via Corona

Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala,

502–2–82–20–099

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please enjoy this
rare letter
in fine health.

Having any problems with the item? Any questions? Feel generally befuddled or confused? Feel free to call at ANY TIME. And remember that Soto-Relada is your go-to guy for any and all “hard to obtain” goods!

Yours truly,
Sam Soto-Relada

[Translated from old Italian by Lola Sanchez, with a smidgen of poetic license.]

June 1, 1554
Venezia

My dear nephew Cosimo, Duke of Florence,

I write this missive in response to your call for funds, on the eve of your quite stupid battle against Siena. Your appetite for shaking spears baffles me, as this is a war I have told you I find in bad taste. Or I would have told you so, if you had ever deigned to allow me an audience. When did we last meet, before you Exiled my wife, Sofia the Dragon, and me? It was in the 1520s, I believe, just after I returned from America, in the few months when I was still allowed to feast at our family’s palazzo. The dining hall was so lovely, I remember, full of mysteries and hints of treasure—with its friezes of golden girls, its secret passageways, its fresco of
The Rape of Proserpine,
and that gew-gaw I commissioned, namely Pontormo’s gorgeous map of Italy. On those evenings, after dining in your grudging company, I was permitted the indulgence of retreating to my laboratory, to conduct my Experimental searches for the Cure to the Condition—all such small familial pleasures denied to me since I have become your outcast!