- Inca Gold -
by Clive Cussler
Simon
& Schuster, 1994
Price on dust jacket $24.00)
First Printing Number line: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN # 0-671-68156-7
Dirk Pitt® is back, in a adventure that is perhaps
the most inventive and most exciting of his career
- a classic treasure hunt involving an ancient hoard
of gold, the secrets of a lost civilization, and an
international ring of smugglers, all brought together
in a plot that only Clive Cussler could devise. Inca
Gold begins in 1532, when a fleet of ships sails in
secret to an island in the middle of an inland sea.
There they hide a magnificent treasure more vast than
that of any pharaoh. Then they disappear, leaving
only a great stone demon to guard their hoard. In
1578 the legendary Sir Francis Drake captures a Spanish
galleon filled with Inca gold and silver and the key
to the lost treasure, which included a gigantic chain
of gold that belonged to the last Inca king, a masterpiece
of ancient technology so huge that it requires two
hundred men to lift it. As the galleon is sailed by
Drake's crew back to England, an underwater earthquake
causes a massive tidal wave that sweeps it into the
jungle. Only one man survives to tell the tale...
In 1998 a group of archaeologists is nearly drowned
while diving into the depths of a sacrificial pool
high in the Andes of Peru. They are saved by the timely
arrival of Dirk Pitt, who is in the area on a marine
expedition. Pitt soon finds out that his life has
been placed in jeopardy as well by smugglers intent
on uncovering the lost ancient Incan treasure. Soon,
he, his faithful companions, and Dr. Shannon Kelsey,
a beautiful young archaeologist, are plunged into
a vicious, no-hold-barred struggle to survive. From
then on it becomes a battle of wits in a race against
time and danger to find the golden chain, as Pitt
finds himself caught up in a struggle with a sinister
international family syndicate that deal in stolen
works of art, the smuggling of ancient artifacts,
and art forgery worth many millions of dollars. The
clash between the art thieves, the FBI and the Customs
Service, a tribe of local Indians, and Pitt, along
with his friends from NUMA, two of whom are captured
and threatened with execution, rushes toward a wild
climax in a subterranean world of darkness and death
- for the real key to the mystery, as it turns out,
is a previously unknown, unexplored underground river
that runs through the ancient treasure chamber. Inca
Gold is Clive Cussler - and Dirk Pitt - at their very
best."