Lost Empire (41 page)

“Do you see it?” Sam asked.

“I see it.”

In the foreground of the photo against the backdrop of Pulau Legundi was a square-rigged, three-masted clipper ship, her upper hull painted black.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Remi said. “I’m sure there were plenty of ships of that era that looked identical to the
Shenandoah
.”

“I agree.”

“Let’s find out.
Shenandoah
was two hundred thirty feet, twelve hundred tons, and rigged for battle. I guarantee you that a ship like that sails into the Sunda Straits, any captain or officer of the watch worth a damn is going to make note of it.”

 

 

THEY WALKED TO THE KIOSK, played with the touch screen for a few moments, then began searching the museum’s archives, which were organized and cross-referenced by subject, date, and key word. After an hour of trying various word combinations, Sam found an entry made by the captain of a German merchant ship named
Minden
.

He brought the translated text up on the screen:

Sam scrolled through a few more entries, then stopped again:

“Here we go,” Sam murmured. He tapped the touch screen and another log entry filled the screen:

Sam kept scrolling, then stopped. “That’s it. The
Minden
’s last entry. Could be her. The time frame is right; so is the description: eight cannon ports. The same number as the
Shenandoah
.”

“And if it was?” Remi replied. “The
Minden
’s last entry was two hours before Krakatoa’s final eruption. Whatever ship they saw probably made a run for it and either got clear or was overtaken by the tsunami or the pyroclastic flow.”

“There’s one more possibility,” Sam replied.

“Which is?”

“She suffered the same fate as the
Berouw
. She was picked up and carried inland.”

“Wouldn’t she have been found by now?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Sumatra’s a big island, Sam. Where do you propose we start?”

Sam pointed up at the picture again. “The last place she was anchored.”

“Hello, Fargos,” a voice said behind them.

Sam and Remi turned around.

Standing before them was Itzli Rivera.

Sam said, “We keep running into each other. Frankly, it’s something we could do without.”

“I can arrange that.”

“As long as we help you finish what you haven’t been able to on your own.”

“You read my mind.”

“The problem with that plan,” Remi said, “is that it ends with you killing us.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Yes, it does,” replied Sam. “You know it, and we know it. Even now we know enough about Garza’s dirty little secret to topple his government. Compared to your other victims, we’ve got a mountain of information. You murdered a woman in Zanzibar just because she found a sword.”

“And eight others for much less, probably,” Remi added.

Rivera shrugged and spread his hands. “What can I say?”

“How about, ‘Where’s the tallest building I can jump off of?’”

“Here’s a better question: Why don’t you give me all your research, and I’ll tell my boss I killed you?”

Remi said, “After all we’ve been through together, you still think we’re that gullible? You’re a slow learner, Mr. Rivera.”

“You’ve been lucky so far. It won’t happen again.”

Sam said, “Let me see if I’m understanding you correctly: Option one, we give you everything we’ve got and you murder us; option two, we give you nothing and see how much farther our luck takes us.”

“When you put it that way, I can see your point,” Rivera replied. “So let’s change the terms: You give me what I want and I promise to kill you quickly and painlessly. Or we continue to play our cat-and-mouse game, and I will eventually catch you and torture your wife until you give me what I want.”

Sam took a step forward. He stared hard into Rivera’s eyes. “You need to learn some manners.”

Rivera pulled back his jacket a few inches to reveal the butt of a gun. “And you need to learn some discretion.”

“So my wife tells me.”

“You’re stubborn. Both of you. We’re going to leave together right now. If you fight me or try to attract attention, I’ll shoot your wife, then you. Let’s go. I have a boat outside. We’ll walk outside and—”

“No.”

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me.”

“I’m not bluffing, Mr. Fargo. I’ll shoot you both.”

“I believe you’ll try. Don’t think I’ll make it easy.”

“Nobody will stop me; I’ll be gone before the authorities arrive.”

“Then what? Did you really think we’d come here carrying all our proof? You’ve really got a problem with underestimating people. You’ve searched our hotel room and found nothing, correct?”

“Yes.”

“All we’ve got with us is a few pictures, and they’re nothing you haven’t already seen. If you kill us here, everything goes public. By the time you get back to Mexico City, every news channel will be running the story.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you had everything you needed. You don’t have what Blaylock found or what he was after.”

“That makes two of us.”

“What you’re forgetting is, I’ve dedicated myself to keeping this secret for almost a decade. You’ve been involved for a few weeks. Whatever you find, whatever story you tell, we’ll spin it the other way. You know who I work for and you know how powerful he is. Even if you manage to survive, by the time we’re done with you you’ll be a pair of money-hungry, spotlight-seeking treasure hunters who created a fantastic lie for their own personal gain.”

“We’ll still have our health,” Remi said sweetly.

“And our sense of humor,” Sam added. “If you’re so confident, why don’t you go home and let the chips fall where they may?”

“I can’t do that. I’m a soldier. I’ve got my orders.”

“Then we’re at an impasse. Either shoot us or walk away.”

Rivera considered this for a few moments, then nodded. “Have it your way. Remember, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo, I gave you a chance to make this easy. No matter what else happens, I’m going to make sure you die in Indonesia.”

 

 

SAM EASED BACK ON THE BOAT’S THROTTLES AND BROUGHT THE bow around until they were beam on to the wind. The boat slowed to a stop, then began rocking from side to side. A few hundred yards to port was Mutun, one of the dozens of tiny forested islands that lined both coasts of the bay; to starboard, in the distance, Indah Beach.

“Okay, one more time,” he said.

“We’ve been over this, Sam. Several times. The answer’s still no. If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

“So let’s go home.”

“You don’t want to go home.”

“True, but—”

“You’re starting to make me angry, Fargo.”

And he knew it. When Remi started using his surname, it was a sign that her patience was wearing thin.

Following their encounter with Rivera at the museum, they’d caught the next ferry for the Sol Marbella landing, about fifteen miles from the Cartita Beach docks. While they waited for the ferry to get under way, Sam kept his eye on Rivera’s speedboat until finally losing sight of it when it passed behind the Tanjung headland to the southwest.

Once back on the Javan mainland they hired a taxi to take them back to the Four Seasons, where they quickly packed, headed for the airport, and boarded the next Batavia Air charter across the straits to Lampung. They touched down shortly before nightfall and found a bayside hotel down the coast a few miles, where they called Selma.

The sooner they reached Pulau Legundi, the better, Sam and Remi reasoned. Though they’d half expected Rivera to turn up, his sudden appearance at the museum, combined with his menacing promise, drove home the point that they needed to move quickly. To that end, Selma worked her magic and arranged for a twenty-four-foot motorized
pinisi
—a type of narrow, flat-bottomed ketch—and all the necessary supplies to be waiting for them at the docks before sunrise. Now, nearing noon, they’d covered a third of the distance to Pulau Legundi.

Remi said, “We’ve never let people like Rivera run us off before. Why should we start now?”

“You know why.”

She stepped up to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Drive the boat, Sam. Let’s finish this together.”

Sam sighed, then smiled. “You’re a remarkable woman.”

“I know. Now, drive the boat.”

 

 

BY LATE AFTERNOON, what had merely been a smudge on the overcast horizon began to resolve into the island’s lush green peaks and craggy coastline. Shaped like a jagged comma, the uninhabited Pulau Legundi was roughly four miles long by two miles wide. Like all the other islands in and around the Sunda Strait, it had once been blanketed by volcanic ash from Krakatoa. A hundred thirty years of wind and rain and an ever-patient Mother Nature had transformed the island into an isolated patch of thriving rain forest.

 

 

JUST OVER TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after leaving Jakarta, with the sun setting over the Legundi’s peaks, Sam turned the
pinisi
’s bow in to a sheltered cove on the eastern shoreline. He gunned the engine and slid the bow onto a ten-foot-wide strip of white-sand beach, and Remi jumped out. Sam tossed down their packs and followed her. He secured the bowline to a nearby tree.

Remi unfolded the tourist map they’d purchased at the hotel—the best they could do in a pinch—and laid it on the sand. They crouched down. Before leaving the museum, Sam had studied a few digital maps on the kiosk and mentally marked the ship’s position.

“From here it’s less than a mile to the western side,” he said. “As best I can tell, the
Shenandoah
—”

“Assuming it was her.”

“I’m praying it was her. My best guess puts her here, in this shallow bay. If we’re using the
Berouw
’s fate as a model—”

“Yes, run that by me again.”

“According to accepted history, the
Berouw
was the only true ship to be pushed inland. Anything smaller was either driven to the bottom of the strait or instantly destroyed by the final tsunami. My theory is this: What made the
Berouw
different is that she was anchored at the mouth of a river.”

“A path of least resistance,” Remi said.

“Exactly. She was driven inland via a preexisting gouge in the terrain. If you draw a line from Krakatoa through the ship’s anchorage and onto the island, you see a—”

Leaning closely over the map, Remi finished Sam’s thought. “A ravine.”

“A deep one, bracketed on both sides by five-hundred-foot peaks. If you look closely, the ravine ends below this third peak, a few hundred yards shy of the opposite shoreline. One mile long and a quarter mile wide.”

“What’s to say she wasn’t crushed into dust or shoved up and over the island and slammed into the seabed?” Remi asked. “We’re twenty-five miles from Krakatoa. The
Berouw
was fifty miles away and she ended up miles inland.”

“Two reasons: One, the peaks around our ravine are far steeper than anything around the river; and two, the
Shenandoah
was at least four times as heavy as the
Berouw
and iron-framed with double-thick oak and teak hull plates. She was designed to take punishment.”

“You make a good case.”

“Let’s hope it translates into reality.”

“I do, however, have one more nagging detail . . .”

“Shoot.”

“How would the
Shenandoah
have survived the pyroclastic flow?”

“As it happens, I have a theory about that. Care to hear it?”

“Hold on to it. If you turn out to be right, you can tell me. If you’re wrong, it won’t matter.”

 

 

WITHIN FIVE MINUTES of breaching the tree line they realized Madagascar’s forests didn’t hold a candle to those of Pulau Legundi. The trees, so densely packed that Sam and Remi frequently had to turn sideways to squeeze between them, were also entwined in skeins of creeper vines that looped from tree trunk to branch to ground. By the time they’d covered a hundred yards, Sam’s shoulder throbbed from swinging the machete.

They found a closet-sized clearing in the undergrowth and crouched down for a water break. Insects swirled around them, buzzing in their ears and nostrils. Above, the canopy was filled with the squawks of unseen birds. Remi dug a can of bug repellant from her pack and coated Sam’s exposed skin; he did the same for her.

“This could be a positive for us,” Sam said.

“What?”

“Do you see how most of the tree trunks are covered in a layer of mold and creepers? It’s like armor. What’s good for the trees could be good for ship planking.”

He took another sip from the canteen, then handed it to Remi. “The going will get easier the higher we go,” he said.

“Define easier.”

“More sunlight means fewer creeper vines.”

“And higher means steeper,” Remi replied with a game smile. “Life’s a trade-off.”

Sam checked his watch. “Two hours to sunset. Please tell me you remembered to pack the mosquito hammock . . .”

“I did. But I forgot the hibachi, the steaks, and the cooler of ice-cold beer.”