The Solomon Curse (24 page)

The next morning, after breakfast with the crew, Sam and Remi returned to shore accompanied by Leonid, whose relief to be off the
Darwin
was obvious. He trudged up the sand toward the Nissan with the enthusiasm of a prisoner released from death row, and Sam exchanged a smile with Remi.

“Be sure to make plenty of noise, Leonid. Remember the crocodiles,” Sam warned.

Leonid slowed and glanced around. “Are you making jokes again?”

“No, he's serious. It's a well-established fact that crocodiles are sensitive to sound. I usually sing and flap my arms. Better than being eaten alive,” Remi assured him.

“That's right. Remember Benji. He was quiet and paid for it with his leg,” said Sam.

Leonid stopped. “I think you're pulling on mine. My leg, I mean.”

“Did you know a male crocodile can run faster than a racehorse?”
Remi shared. “I don't know where I read that, but they're called land barracudas by the natives.”

Once at the SUV, Sam did his usual inspection of the exterior as Leonid and Remi climbed in. After confirming that there were no new tire tracks or footprints around the vehicle, he slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and pulled onto the rutted track and made for the main road.

Getting Leonid a room at the hotel proved easy. It was almost completely empty now, the news of the assassination and the murder of the aid workers having chilled interest in vacationing on Guadalcanal.

“We got Lazlo's itinerary and confirmation,” Remi said. “He'll be in at eight-ten tomorrow morning.”

“Great. Assuming he's up to it, we can head into the mountains by noon. I'm anxious to see whether we can find that cave.”

“That makes two of us. We can expect to keep news of Leonid's find secret for only so long, and once it becomes public knowledge the island will be swarmed by researchers who'll want to study it. You know the kind of speculation our continued presence here would cause at that point. We'd be followed everywhere by speculators convinced we were in search of treasure.”

“I really hope for Lazlo's sake we find something. Leonid's going to be a rock star for the city discovery. Lazlo could use a win, if only for his reputation's sake.”

“I doubt there's much that could redeem him after his little adventure with his student and the resulting scandal,” Remi said.

“Discovering a lost treasure would go a long way.”

“You don't have to convince me. Now we just need to get to the part where we find it.”

“Always more difficult than it sounds,” Sam agreed.

They spent the afternoon wandering Honiara with Leonid, gathering supplies for their cave expedition. They were able to locate rubber boots and strong rope, as well as LED flashlights, but unsurprisingly
had no luck with carabiners or any specialized hardware. Fortunately, Lazlo was bringing the more obscure elements so that when he arrived they would be ready to hit the ground running.

The mood of the city was apparently back to normal, with none of the brooding menace that had been present earlier in the week. There had been no further violence since the machete attack, and despite lingering tension, life went on. The arrival of the Australian-led civil defense force was largely met with welcome by the locals, although there was still a vocal segment of the population that viewed it as a further subversion of the islands' autonomy.

Sam and Remi were up early the next day, waiting outside the small arrivals terminal at the Honiara Airport while Lazlo cleared customs. When he appeared through a double doorway, followed by a porter with an overloaded cart piled high, he looked every bit the stereotypical Englishman, in a crisp khaki shirt and matching shorts, desert boots below scrawny white calves, and a pith helmet perched precariously on his head.

“There you are! Buggers nearly didn't let me through with all the equipment. I'm fortunate they didn't strip-search me for pitons or whatnot,” he called out as he approached.

Sam grasped his hand and shook it, then released him so Remi could give him a tentative hug.

“Were you planning on auditioning for the local production of
Lawrence of Arabia
?” Sam asked.

Lazlo looked down at his outfit. “What? You've never seen proper tropical wear before? I should think you'd be happy your associates are trying to set a good example for the natives.”

Remi eyed him. “I thought it might be Halloween and nobody told us. It's easy to lose track of time in the islands.”

“The last time I saw one of those hats was on Katharine Hepburn in a film,” Sam added.

Lazlo's face could have been carved from stone. “I'm glad that I'm able to provide amusement for you two.”

Sam clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. “We're just having a little fun, Lazlo. How was the flight?”

“Over twenty hours of white-knuckle flying, stone-cold sober. It was so turbulent from Hawaii on that I was afraid I'd lose a filling. Need I say more?”

“Well, you're here on terra firma now. Are you adequately rested to go spelunking?” Remi asked.

“It's been a long time since a woman made me an offer like that,” Lazlo quipped, but then his expression grew serious. “I'm sure I can muster some energy. I trust that my directions meant something to you?”

“That remains to be seen. We think we know the starting village Kumasaka refers to as his orientation marker, but there's no way of confirming it other than going for a hike,” Sam said.

“Lovely day for it. What is it, about a hundred degrees and ninety percent humidity?”

“I thought the Brits used
Celsius
,” Remi corrected.

“Just tell me it gets more comfortable inland,” Lazlo said.

“Oh, between the mosquitoes, the crocodiles, the rebel forces, and the giants, it feels positively breezy,” Sam assured him.

“I don't suppose there's a chance you're joking about any of that lot?”

“Maybe the bit about the giants. But the rest . . . haven't you been following the news about the area?”

“Now that you mention it, Selma did say something about rebels, but I thought she was just trying to dissuade me from a cracking good adventure.” He paused and lowered his voice. “The woman's mad about me. I don't think she can bear for me to be away, you know. But don't let on I said anything. I'd hate to embarrass her.”

Remi rolled her eyes as Sam led the way to the parking area. Lazlo's
luggage occupied the entire cargo area and much of the backseat, and he looked cramped in the rear, with barely enough room for his helmet, his knobby knees pressed nearly to his chest.

“I hope the air-conditioning works in this relic,” he said as Sam and Remi climbed in.

“Like a charm. This is the fourth vehicle we've gone through since we arrived and easily the hardiest,” Remi said.

“Really? Dare I ask what happened to the others?”

Remi and Sam exchanged a glance and she eyed Lazlo in the rearview mirror. “You don't want to know.”

“Ah. Quite. I'll just content myself with swatting at insects, then. Carry on.”

Remi perked up. “Oh, you don't know Leonid, do you?”

“Haven't had the pleasure.”

“Then you're really in for a treat. He makes you look like a starry-eyed optimist.”

“Given the line of work I've taken up, a deluded dreamer might be more accurate,” Lazlo said. “Laos was a bust, and I'm not confident that the letter purported to be from Cooke is genuine. So right now my prospects aren't stellar.”

“That's all going to change, Lazlo. Without your decrypting the diary, we wouldn't have anything, so if we find a treasure at the end of this rainbow, it will be credited to you.”

Lazlo frowned as they hit another rut and he was jarred sideways in his seat. “Well, then. I'm practically already rich, aren't I?”

Remi couldn't help but laugh. “That's what we like about you, Lazlo. Ever the optimist.”

At the hotel, Sam introduced Leonid and Lazlo. They loaded the equipment into the Pathfinder as storm clouds darkened the sky.

“How do you know where to start the search?” Leonid asked as they rolled past the first police roadblock.

“We know that the Japanese moved the treasure from the bay and we know where we met with the only living survivor. We're hoping we can enlist someone in that village to show us where the old deserted village site was,” Remi said.

“And if not?”

“Then it gets harder,” Sam said.

“What about the language issue?” Leonid pressed. “I thought you said that none of the villagers spoke English or even pidgin.”

“That was our impression, but my suspicion is that some of the older villagers must,” Remi reasoned. “Even if they don't have a lot of contact with the outside world, they have to have some, and if they
want to do business, they have to speak something in common. Probably pidgin. In which case, we can wing it. Plus, we have the mighty Lazlo with us—master of a thousand dialects.”

Remi pointed at the opening to the trail that led to the bay as they passed it. “There's the bay road. The village is about three miles down the coast. According to the survivor, it took them a full day to haul the treasure to the cave.”

Leonid did a quick calculation. “What, exactly, are the directions that Lazlo found hidden in the diary?”

Sam glanced at Lazlo in the rearview mirror. “Care to demonstrate your photographic memory?”

“Ahem. It said ‘Toward the rising sun from the last hut, to the goat's head, then into enemy territory to the small waterfall. The way lies beyond the falls.'”

Leonid shook his head. “Seriously? That's what we're going on?”

“He obviously intended it to be a reminder to himself, not a series of directions to be followed. But it should be enough,” Remi said. “We've worked from more obscure clues than this.”

“Right,” Leonid snorted. “So we have to find a village that's no longer there, which may or may not be the only one in the area, then locate whatever a goat's head is, then find a waterfall. Assuming it's still there. Somewhere beyond that, which could be ten meters or ten kilometers, there's a cave. Which may or may not be visible and could well be crawling with murderous rebels. Did I get this right?”

A deafening roar of thunder exploded overhead and moments later the road darkened with gray rain, reducing visibility to no more than twenty feet.

“You left out where we're going to probably have to camp out at least one night, and possibly several nights,” Sam said. “But don't worry. We got a couple of tents and some supplies.”

“And plenty of bug spray,” Remi added.

“In this soup?” Lazlo asked. “I say, nobody said anything about camping. I'd rather hoped to try the blackened ahi for dinner tonight. Looked smashing on the menu.”

“Then there's an incentive to work fast,” Sam said. He glanced off to his left and slowed. “I think this is the trail to the village. Remi?”

She peered through the rain at an unmarked gap in the jungle. “Could be. It's hard to tell.”

“Well, we've got nothing but time. Might as well give it a go,” Sam said, slowing further as golf-ball-sized raindrops hammered the Nissan. He engaged the four-wheel drive and they lurched off the pavement, the tires slipping in the mud before gripping sufficiently to propel them forward.

The rain stopped just as they arrived at the stream that had proved such a challenge to Rubo on their last trip. Sam slowed and gazed at it. “Now, was it across the stream or up the hill?”

“Are you kidding?” Leonid muttered.

“I think it was across the stream,” Sam said, goosing the gas. The overloaded vehicle splashed through the stream. The jungle closed in around them as they climbed the bank.

When they rounded the bend and the village appeared, Remi exhaled a silent breath of relief—they'd taken the right trail from the road. The SUV coasted to a stop in the clearing at the base of the first cluster of huts, and several curious villagers stared at them as they disembarked. Sam led them up the hill to the group, where he recognized the shaman from the prior trip. The man nodded to them and pointed to the hut far up the hill where they'd interviewed Nauru and shook his head. Sam nodded and fished in his pocket and then extracted a fifty-dollar bill and handed it to the man.

“Rubo,” he said, then shook his head as well. The old man's eyes widened in understanding and he hesitantly took the bill. “You speak English?” Sam asked.

The man shrugged in denial and then pointed at one of the youths sitting nearby. The young man rose and approached. Sam repeated his question and the youth nodded.

“Little speak,” he said.

“We're looking for an old village. Abandoned,” Sam said. The youth's eyes were confused. Sam tried again. “A village. Where Nauru used to live. We need to find it.”

This time, it appeared that the message got through because the youth turned to the elder villager and a short discussion ensued. After some back-and-forth, the youth squared his shoulders and addressed Sam.

“Nothing there. Bad.”

“We know. But we need to go,” Remi said, stepping forward.

More discussion between the youth and the old shaman and then the same impassive stare from the young man.

“No road.”

“Right. We can walk.” Remi paused. “Can you show us where it is?”

Sam withdrew a twenty-dollar bill, deciding the matter as the youth's eyes lit up at the windfall. He had another brief exchange with the old man and then snatched the money from Sam's hand like he was afraid it would disappear into thin air.

“Now?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “Yes.”

They returned to the SUV, unloaded the backpacks and sacks containing the camping gear and spelunking equipment, and divided it among themselves. When everyone had a pack and a sack, they set off into the brush, following the barefoot youth as he marched into the rain forest with the ease of an antelope. Lazlo exchanged a troubled glance with Leonid, who looked even more glum than usual, and they followed, struggling under the weight of their burdens, as Sam and Remi strode effortlessly up the faint game trail.

The trek took a solid hour. The last vestige of the squall intermittently drizzled on them, making the slippery ground more treacherous.
The sun was just breaking through the clouds as they entered a clearing at the base of another hill, the area soundless except for the cries of birds in the surrounding jungle. The boy gestured toward a brook running along the far side of the clearing, near several crude, man-made stone formations, almost completely overgrown but still distinct from the landscape.

They took a break in the shade of the trees and the youth nodded at the structures.

“Tables.”

Remi nodded. The only things left of the hapless village were the worktables used for cleaning fish and laundry and built using indigenous limestone carved from the nearby hill.

“Looks like the same rock the king used for his islets and temples,” Leonid said.

“Makes sense. Relatively easy to cut and plenty of it,” Sam agreed.

Lazlo gazed around the clearing. “Nothing else here. Bloody amazing it can all disappear—if this fine lad hadn't shown us the way, we'd have never known what we were looking at.”

Remi nodded. “According to Nauru's account, everyone was slaughtered. So there was nobody left to keep the elements at bay.”

Sam moved to the brook. He eyed the sun overhead and pulled a compass from his shirt pocket. After glancing at it, he returned to the group and regarded the youth.

“Thank you. We stay here now,” he said. The young man seemed puzzled and Sam repeated his statement, augmented with some simple sign language. Understanding played across the youth's face and he shrugged. If the crazy foreigners wanted to camp in the middle of the Guadalcanal jungle, it was none of his business—he already had his prize. “You go back,” Sam said, pointing at the trail.

Their escort nodded and with a wave disappeared into the rain forest, leaving them alone in the clearing. Sam pulled a portable GPS unit from his pack and turned it on, then entered a waypoint for the village
site so they'd have coordinates to return to if they had to retrace their steps. After ten minutes in the shade, he glanced at his watch and shouldered his gear. “Might as well get going. East is over there. ‘Toward the rising sun from the last hut.' That says east to me.”

“What about the goat head?” Lazlo asked.

“That's a little more problematic. I'm hoping we'll know it when we see it.”

“What if it was referring to something that's long since been blown or washed away?” Lazlo pressed.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Leonid gave them a dark look and waved away a mosquito. “Goats' heads. Villages that are no longer there.”

Sam took the lead and led the group across the brook to where he'd spotted a faint game trail leading in the desired direction. Once they were back in the brush, the heat quickly rose to a stifling level, the faint ocean breeze stopped dead by the vegetation. Sam slowed every few minutes and cocked his head, listening for any hint of followers—he didn't think they had anything to fear from the youth or the villagers, but he wasn't taking any chances.

The slope steepened as they worked their way east, and the trail eventually veered off in a northern direction, rendering it useless. Sam and Remi unsheathed their machetes and hacked a way through the thick underbrush, their progress slowed to a crawl as they fought the jungle and the terrain.

The afternoon wore on, the swelter almost unbearable, and when they reached another opening near a larger stream, they took a break beneath the spread of a banyan tree, all four panting from exertion.

“How far do you think we've come?” Remi asked, blotting her brow with a bandanna soaked in lukewarm river water.

“Maybe half a mile. No more.” Sam retrieved the GPS, waited until it acquired a signal, and peered at the screen. “Actually, a little more than a half mile, but not much.”

“And we have no idea how much farther until we're in goat head neighborhood,” Leonid muttered.

“All part of the challenge,” Sam said.

“Don't forget that we have no idea what the goat head refers to,” Lazlo chimed in. “Lest anyone think we're doing this the easy way.”

Remi cleared her throat. “The reason I ask is because it seems like this stream, assuming it's been here for a while—which, judging by the erosion, it looks like it has—would be a natural place to rest, just as we have. And while taking a break, it might also be a good spot to memorialize somehow as a marker.”

“Yes, well, that's all very good, but I'm afraid the diary didn't say anything about any stream. And I don't see a waterfall,” Lazlo said.

“And no goats,” Leonid grumbled.

“Sometimes the answer is right in front of your face,” Remi said. Sam followed her gaze to a rock outcropping.

After a few moments, he grinned broadly. “Have I bragged about how perceptive and smart my wife is today?” he asked, his tone nonchalant. He rose slowly and pointed at the boulders. “What does that look like to you, Lazlo?”

Lazlo peered at the outcropping. “Like a bunch of bloody rocks.”

Remi smiled. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Lazlo turned to her. “That's as may be, but—” He stopped dead and stared again at the rocks.

They sat quietly for several moments and then Leonid broke the silence. “Forgive me, but are you all talking in code? Because I don't understand any of this . . .”

Sam shook his head and gestured to the rocks. “The boulders look like a goat's head, Leonid.”

Leonid gaped at the outcropping. “Well, I'll be . . .”

Lazlo nodded. “Quite likely, we all may be, old chap, but apparently not just yet.”