Book Review – Clive Cussler’s “Treasure”
Clive Cussler’s Treasure, the ninth book in Cussler’s famous Dirk Pitt series of adventure books, takes readers from the days of the Romans in Egypt to a conspiracy today designed to overthrow two countries’ governments.
Treasure‘s story begins in A.D. 391 as a Roman named Julius Venator is tasked with overseeing a very important, and even more secretive mission. That year, Pope Theophilus allegedly ordered the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as its vast collection of artwork and information was created under a different religion than the Catholic Church. Julius Venator was hired to secretly remove as much of the scrolls, artwork and other museum pieces as possible and relocate them, hiding them for future generations. Venator used a small fleet of ships to transport a great deal of the library’s contents to a far away country, a place never seen before by anybody from Europe. It would be a place that would guarantee the safety of the library’s artifacts.
Out in that unknown land, Venator’s team of slaves dug a massive underground chamber in one of the hills, and the items from the Library of Alexandria were successfully stored in the new location. Along with the slaves, a team of legionaries led by a man named Severus also made the long journey from Rome and Egypt.
The day before the completion of moving the library’s artifacts into the chamber, some of the legionaries attacked the local barbarians, killing some of them and kidnapping a few young women. Word of the attack spread among the local populations, and the next day a massive swarm of thousands of barbarians attacked the Romans. The legionaries tried to fight their way to the ships, but upon arrival at the coast all but one of the ships were burning. One ship managed to sail away as the rest of the Romans, the slaves, the legionaries, Severus, and even Venator were all killed by the barbarians.
Fast forward to today.
An envoy to the U.S. President is sent on a secret mission to speak with the leader of the growing Aztec movement in Mexico, a man named Topiltzin. Topiltzin has plans of leading the movement and overthrowing the Mexican government, restoring it to its former self before the arrival of Europeans hundreds of years ago. This includes seizing the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, returning them to Mexican control. If the states are not returned, then Topiltzin plans on sending millions of Mexicans pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border and taking the land that way.
The envoy tries telling Topiltzin that the president will never give in to those demands. Topiltzin has his men kill the envoy in a sacrificial ritual once used by the ancient Aztecs. The envoy’s body is then butchered and his entire skin is sent back to Washington, D.C. as a stern message to the president.
Over in London, England, a special flight by the UN leaves for New York City. On board the flight is Hala Kamil, an Egyptian woman who was selected to become the next UN Secretary General. It’s a bold move as she’s a woman from a country that does not approve of women holding such positions of power. Hala is well aware that her country may recall her at any point, and there are death threats against her as well.
The flight leaves London, but halfway across the northern Atlantic Ocean, the pilot kills the co-pilot and navigator, and he sets the aircraft on a crash course towards Greenland. The assassin successfully bails from the aircraft, but one of the other crew members realizes the problem and prevents the aircraft from crashing into a mountain. The plane is still doomed as the pilot dumped most of the fuel, and the aircraft makes a hard landing on the frozen coast of Greenland.
The crash landing was witnessed by a team of archaeologists who were excavating the remains of an ancient settlement near the coastline. One of the archaeologists, Dr. Lily Sharp, discovered a Roman gold coin, something that definitely did not belong in that location for that time period. If it’s true then it opens the door to the possibility that Roman explorers may have reached America well before Christopher Columbus or Lief Ericson.
Another witness to the crash is Dirk Pitt. He was on a NUMA ship near Greenland and conducting an underwater survey in search of a sunken Russian submarine. He and Al Giordino successfully located the submarine. The problem resorts in raising the sub without the Russian government and their eavesdropping ships noticing the salvage operation. That salvage operation is placed on hold as Pitt and Giordino fly a helicopter to the coast of Greenland to help search for survivors. Hala Kamil and two other people are rescued from the crashed airliner.
At the archaeological camp, Dirk Pitt makes friends with Dr. Sharp, and she shows him the Roman coin. Dirk reveals that he also discovered ancient Roman artifacts on the sea floor while they were searching for the Russian submarine. This leads to the discovery of the Serapis, an ancient Roman ship underwater and partially trapped in a giant block of ice. Dirk Pitt makes a dive into the frigid water and is able to enter the ship. Inside he discovers a few of the crew members, frozen solid and still looking like they did some 1,600 years ago. He also finds an ancient scroll that tells some of the ship’s journey.
That scroll is analyzed, and the archaeologists believe that the ship was one of several on a journey that carried artifacts from the lost Library of Alexandria. Included with the scroll is a rough map showing the location of the secret chamber.
Pitt and Giordino are recalled back to Washington, D.C., and Dr. Sharp joins them. She wants to be included in the search for the items from the Library of Alexandria. Hala Kamil had already been flown to the U.S., though her arrival is kept a secret for fear of future attacks. It’s still not known who exactly wanted her dead.
Hala Kamil is placed under protection and sent to live in Senator George Pitt’s cabin in Colorado. At NUMA headquarters, Dirk Pitt hands the information from the Serapis to Hiram Yaeger and tasks him with analyzing the data and finding the site of the underground chamber. It’s not an easy task and Hiram is running against a tight deadline.
Another attempt is made on Hala Kamil’s life when she’s out in Colorado. Gunmen launch an attack against Senator Pitt’s cabin and kill the security force. Kamil flees into the woods and she’s rescued again by Dirk Pitt. He was in Colorado and was stopping by his father’s cabins for his ski gear despite a stern warning against doing so by his father. Pitt rescues Kamil, and he, Giordino and Dr. Sharp flee from the terrorists through the snowy mountains. They barely escape when Dirk drives his car down a ski slope and finally evades their attackers.
The attacks against Hala Kamil have been ordered by Akhmad Yazid, a radical who’s trying to overthrow the Egyptian government and seize control of it. If he can eliminate Hala Kamil, then his supporters can sweep him into office.
Treasure‘s story shifts down to the South American country of Uruguay and the port of Punta del Este. A large meeting with several government leaders is scheduled to take place in the South American country. Dozens of ships fill the harbor, many of them providing accommodations to the government leaders and dignitaries.
One of the ships is the Lady Flamborough. It’s not a coincidence that two of her VIP passengers are the current president of Mexico along with Hala Kamil. The night that both dignitaries arrive, Akhmad Yazid’s men eliminate the security teams and seize control of the ship, taking everybody else hostage. Just before the ship leaves port, Senator George Pitt arrives and is also taken hostage. The Lady Flamborough silently leaves port that night and slips into the Atlantic Ocean.
Dirk Pitt helps lead the hunt for the missing ship. They use satellite images along with deductive reasoning to determine the ship’s location. Word has it that the ship sunk, but he’s not willing to take that as an answer, especially with his father being one of the potential victims. They locate a sunken ship near the spot of the Lady Flamborough’s last known position, but when diving on the wreck, Pitt notices that it’s actually a freighter registered from Mexico. The Mexican ship is a cover-up designed to throw off the pursuers of the Lady Flamborough.
It turns out that after meeting the Mexican ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the Lady Flamborough was disguised and the ship changed course. The terrorists made the hostages work tirelessly and help change the exterior of the ship, first making it look like a container ship and then like an iceberg. The Lady Flamborough had sailed south and supposedly hidden itself amongst the thousands of rogue icebergs floating in the frigid southern waters.
But the ship really isn’t down by the southern pole. Satellite images don’t show any heat signatures from the ship, and Pitt knows that the terrorists need to keep the hostages alive. Since the ship is keeping its engines silent to help disguise it from thermal images, Pitt deduces that the Lady Flamborough is really further north and next to a massive glacier just off the southern tip of South America in the Straits of Magellan.
Sure enough, the disguised Lady Flamborough is discovered sitting in a fjord off the coast of Santa Ines Island. She’s moored right next to a massive glacier, position so that if the glacier were to crack and fall apart, the massive chunks of ice would easily sink the ship.
It’s a race against time as special forces commandos sneak their way to the Lady Flamborough and launch a rescue operation. Some commandos use small boats to attack the ship while other parachute onto the island and launch an attack from the glacier. Pitt, Giordino and Rudi Gunn are allowed to participate in the raid, but the special forces commander wants to keep them restricted to the island. This move actually saves the whole rescue operation as the terrorists were using the island as their base of operations, and they even had a helicopter ready for their escape.
Pitt, Giordino and Gunn launch their own attack against the terrorists and a massive battle takes place. Gunn is able to sneak away and rescue Senator Pitt, Hala Kamil and the president of Mexico while Pitt and Giordino face impossible odds against the rest of the terrorists. They all survive and the rescue operation is a success.
After the rescue operation, Pitt and Giordino, both of them battered and in need of rest, are flown back to Washington, D.C. Hiram Yaeger has located the secret chamber noted in the records on board the Serapis. The hidden location is in southern Texas just outside the town of Roma. Roma happens to sit on the Rio Grande River, a body of water that connects to the Gulf of Mexico and all points beyond. 1,600 years ago the river was significantly higher and could have easily provided enough water to sail a fleet of ancient ships.
Sure enough, some of the hills around Roma, Texas fit the description of the scrolls on the Serapis. Allegedly the town was named Roma because of the terrain’s similarity to that of Rome, Italy. Legend states that ancient Roman artifacts have been found in the area. Pitt, Giordino and Dr. Sharp investigate the area and locate what looks like the correct hill that hides one of the biggest treasures in the history of mankind.
The problem though is that the media let out the secret location of the chamber, and just across the Rio Grande, Topiltzin is assembling his civilian army to seize it. Thousands and thousands of people across the country have answered his call to invade the U.S., and they’re preparing for just the right moment. The U.S. Army arrives and is assigned the task of protecting the border from the invaders, even if that means firing upon unarmed women and children.
Topiltzin rallies his troops and the civilians are sent across the river. Sure enough the first wave is mostly women and children. The army does not fire and the people are allowed to cross into the country. Topiltzin and his armed men also cross, and they meet with Dirk Pitt near the site of an excavation.
Inside the small chamber is a casket believed to belong to Alexander the Great. Topiltzin thinks it’s a trick and he fires into the casket. He’s shocked when the dead body in the casket is not that of the legendary conquerer but rather Akhmad Yazid —- Topiltzin’s brother.
It turns out that Akhmad Yazid is also known as Paul Capesterre. His brother is Robert Capesterre, also known as Topiltzin. When they were just young children, both brothers were sent to live in different countries to learn the languages and customs and one day seize power.
Topiltzin tries to kill Dirk Pitt in the chamber, but he fails and Pitt escapes with the help of Giordino. They then detonate explosives in the fake chamber and kill Topiltzin and his armed guards. Without their leader, the human invasion stops and many people turn around and return home. Most of those who entered the country were located by immigration and in the process of being returned to Mexico.
Clive Cussler’s Treasure ends with the U.S. government locating the correct chamber and starting the recovery process for the thousands of previously lost scrolls and artwork that originally resided in the Library of Alexandria.
So is Treasure a good story?
As a whole, Treasure is a good read and fits perfectly with the rest of the Dirk Pitt novels.
The primary driving force in this novel is not the lost treasure from the Library of Alexandria, but that of the grand conspiracy to overthrow the governments of Mexico and Egypt. It feels a little bit misleading to call the book Treasure when that aspect of the novel is secondary until the very end of the story. This isn’t a major problem though as the basis for the lost treasure is quite fascinating, and it’s great the way that both story lines connect smoothly in the final chapters of this book.
Fans of the Dirk Pitt series of books will find themselves right at home with Treasure. This book has plenty of action on land along with an ancient shipwreck, underwater exploration, Muslim terrorists, and a grand conspiracy to overthrow not one but two governments. Some of the scenarios and solutions are just a little bit too easy and convenient, but the remainder of the story outshines those flaws.
