Lost Empire, Page 2

  After fifteen minutes of trolling along the sand, Sam and Remi reached this stiletto break, then turned west until they were ten yards off the beach, then swung north again to resume their search. Now they became more watchful. It was along this stretch of the sandbar that the main channel pushed dangerously close to the beach, a bubble-shaped salient that narrowed their Safe Zone to a mere forty feet. Remi swam inshore and ahead of Sam by a few feet, each of them frequently checking to make sure the other hadn’t drifted toward the precipice.

  In the corner of Sam’s right eye he saw a glint, a fleeting flash of gold. He stopped swimming, settled knees first into the sand, then tapped his dive knife on his tank to get Remi’s attention. She stopped swimming, turned, and finned back to him. He pointed toward the spot. She nodded. With Sam in the lead, they swam toward shore until the sandbanks came into view. A wall of sand nearly twelve feet tall, these banks marked a precipice of sorts where the water depth dropped from chest height to twenty feet. They stopped before the bank and looked around.

  Remi shrugged Where?

  Sam shrugged his shoulders and kept scanning up and down the bank. There. Twenty feet to his right he saw it again, a flash of gold. They swam to it and stopped again. Here the Good-bye Zone precipice was closer still, not eight feet behind their backs. Even at this distance they could feel the surge of the current, like a vortex trying to sweep them into the deep.

  Jutting from the bank at waist height was what appeared to be six or seven inches of a barrel’s hoop. Though tarnished and fuzzy with barnacles, in a few places the hoop had been sandblasted by the current, exposing shiny metal.

  Sam reached out and fanned the area around the hoop. The exposed portion widened to eight inches, then ten inches, before curving back and disappearing into the bank. Sam moved his paddle upward, hoping to uncover some of the barrel’s staves if the wood hadn’t succumbed to rot.

  Sam stopped fanning. He looked to Remi and saw her eyes were wide behind her mask. Above the hoop was not rotted wood but a curved metal facade, mottled green with patina. Sam dropped to his knees and wiggled forward until his chest was nearly touching the bank, then craned his neck and waved his paddle beneath the hoop. After thirty seconds of work a cavity appeared. Gently, slowly, Sam slipped his hand into the hollow and probed the interior with splayed fingers.

  He withdrew his arm and backed away from the object until he was again beside Remi. She looked at him with expectant eyes. He nodded back. There was no doubt: Their barrel wasn’t a barrel but rather a ship’s bell.

  “WELL, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED,” Remi said a few minutes later after surfacing.

  “I’ll say,” Sam replied after removing his mouthpiece. Until now, the biggest artifact they’d ever found was a sterling silver trencher from a torpedoed World War II Liberty Ship.

  She shed her fins and tossed them over the gunwale onto the afterdeck of their rental—a commuter-style twenty-five-foot Andreyale Joubert-Nivelt express cruiser complete with lacquered teak woodwork and retro subway windows—then climbed the ladder, followed by Sam. Once they’d shed the remainder of their gear and tucked it away in the Andreyale’s cabin, Remi fished a pair of water bottles from the ice chest and tossed one to Sam. They sat down on the deck chairs.

  “How long do you think it’s been down there?” Remi asked.

  “Hard to say. Doesn’t take long for patina to set in. We’d have to see the thickness of the growth on the rest of it. The interior felt fairly unblemished.”

  “And the clapper?” Remi asked.

  “Couldn’t feel it.”

  “Looks like we’ve got a decision to make.”

  “That we do.”

  Not only did the Tanzanian government have some unorthodox laws when it came to maritime salvage, Chumbe Island was officially known as Chumbe Island Coral Park, a good portion of which had been partitioned as a Reef Sanctuary and a Closed Forest Reserve. Before Sam and Remi could do anything, they first had to determine whether the bell officially lay within either of these protected areas. If they passed this hurdle, then they could in good conscience proceed to the next step: determining the bell’s provenance and/or pedigree, a requirement should they want to stake a legal claim before alerting local officials to the bell’s presence. It was a tenuous tightrope on which they tread. If they reached the far side, they may have a significant historical find on their hands, but on either side of the tightrope were laws that could lead to, at best, having the find snatched away, or, at worst, criminal charges. By law they could take any found man-made objects that required “no extraordinary excavation methods.” Trinkets such as Remi’s diamond-shaped coin were fine; a ship’s bell was a wholly different matter.

  None of this was new to the Fargos. Together and alone, privately and professionally, Sam and Remi had been hunting for treasure, artifacts, and hidden history for most of their adult lives.

  Following in her father’s footsteps, Remi had attended Boston College, emerging with a master’s in anthropology and history, with a focus on ancient trade routes.

  Sam’s father, who’d died a few years earlier, had been one of the lead engineers on NASA’s space programs while Sam’s mother, a vivacious lady, ran a charter dive boat.

  Sam received an engineering degree from Caltech, along with a handful of trophies for lacrosse and soccer.

  While in his final months at Caltech, Sam was approached by a man he would later discover was from DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the government’s research and development arm. The lure of pure creative engineering combined with serving his country made Sam’s choice an easy one.

  After seven years at DARPA Sam returned to California, where Sam and Remi met at the Lighthouse, a jazz club on Hermosa Beach. Sam had wandered into the club for a cold beer, and Remi was there celebrating a successful research trip looking into rumors of a sunken Spanish ship off Abalone Cove.

  Though neither of them had ever called their first meeting a case of love at first sight, they’d both agreed it had certainly been a case of “pretty damned sure at first hour.” Six months later they were married where they’d first met, in a small ceremony at the Lighthouse.

  At Remi’s encouragement Sam dove headfirst into his own business, and they struck pay dirt within a year with an argon laser scanner that could detect and identify at a distance mixed metals and alloys, from gold and silver to platinum and palladium. Treasure hunters, universities, corporations, and mining outfits scrambled to license Sam’s invention, and within two years Fargo Group was seeing an annual net profit of three million dollars. Within four years the deep-pocketed corporations came calling. Sam and Remi took the highest bid, sold the company for enough money to see themselves comfortably through the rest of their lives, and then turned to their true passion: treasure hunting.

  For Sam and Remi, the engine that drove their lives was not money but rather the adventure and the satisfaction of seeing the Fargo Foundation flourish. The foundation, which split its gifting among underprivileged and abused children, animal protection, and nature conservancy, had grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade, the previous year donating almost twenty million dollars to a variety of organizations. A hefty part of that money had come from Sam and Remi personally, and the rest of it from private donations. For better or worse their exploits attracted a fair amount of media attention, which in turn attracted wealthy, high-profile donors.

  The question they now faced was whether this ship’s bell was something they could turn into philanthropic funds or simply a fascinating historical diversion. Not that it mattered, of course. The pursuit of hidden history held its own joys for them. Either way, they knew where they had to start.

  “Time to call Selma,” Remi said.

  “Time to call Selma,” Sam agreed.

  AN HOUR LATER they were back at their rented plantation-style bungalow at Kendwa Beach, on Zanzibar’s northern tip. While Remi prepared a fresh fruit salad, slices of prosciutto and mozzarella, and
iced tea, Sam dialed Selma. Above their heads, a sixty-inch ceiling fan churned the air while through the French doors a cool offshore breeze billowed the gauze curtains.

  Despite it being four A.M. in San Diego, Selma Wondrash picked up on the first ring. Sam and Remi were not surprised, having come to believe Selma slept only four hours a night, save Sundays, when she slept five.

  “The only time you call me when you’re on vacation is when you’re in trouble or about to get into trouble,” Selma said over the speakerphone without preamble.

  “Not true,” Sam replied. “Last year from the Seychelles we called—”

  “Because a troop of baboons had broken into your beach house, destroyed the furniture, and made off with all your worldly goods, and the police thought you were burglars.”

  She’s right, Remi mouthed from across the kitchen island. Using the tip of her knife, she tossed Sam a chunk of fresh pineapple. He caught it in his mouth, and she applauded silently.

  “Okay, that’s true,” Sam told Selma.

  A former Hungarian citizen who’d never quite lost her accent, Selma Wondrash was the stern but secretly softhearted head of Sam and Remi’s three-person research team behind the Fargo Foundation. Selma was widowed, having lost her husband, an air force test pilot, in a crash ten years earlier.

  After finishing her degree at Georgetown, Selma had managed the Library of Congress’s Special Collections Division until Sam and Remi lured her away. More than a research chief, Selma had proven herself a superb travel agent and logistics guru, getting them to and from destinations with militaristic efficiency. Selma ate, drank, and lived research: the mystery that stubbornly refused solution, the legend that showed the barest spark of truth.

  “So what is it this time?” Selma asked.

  “A ship’s bell,” Remi called.

  They could hear the fluttering of paper as Selma retrieved a fresh legal pad. “Tell me,” she said.

  “West coast of Chumbe Island,” Sam said, then recited the coordinates he’d locked into his GPS unit before heading for the boat. “You’ll have to check—”

  “Boundaries of the reserves and sanctuaries, yes,” Selma said, her pencil rasping on paper. “I’ll have Wendy look into Tanzanian maritime law. Anything else?”

  “A coin. Diamond-shaped, about the size of a U.S. half-dollar. We found it about a hundred twenty yards north of the bell . . .” Sam looked to Remi for confirmation of this and got a nod in return. “We’re going to see if we can clean it up a bit, but the face is obscured right now.”

  “Got it. Next?”

  “There’s no next. That’s it. As soon as possible, Selma. The sooner we can put a hook on that bell, the better. That sandbank didn’t look all that stable.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Selma replied and hung up.

  CHAPTER 2

  MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

  QUAUHTLI GARZA, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED MEXICAN States and the leader of the Mexica (pronounced in the traditional way, Meh-SHEE-kah) Tenochca Party, gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows and down into the Plaza de la Constitución, where the Great Temple had once stood. Now it was nothing more than beautified ruins, a tourist attraction for those who wanted to gawk at the sad remains of the magnificent Aztec city of Tenochtitlán and the great twelve-foot-diameter, twenty-ton Calendar Stone.

  “A mockery,” Quauhtli Garza mumbled, watching the milling crowds.

  A mockery he’d so far been able to correct with only marginal success. True, the Mexican people had since his election gained a better understanding of their lineage—had come to understand the true history of their country that had been all but obliterated by Spanish imperialism. Even the name, the Aztec Party, which so many news reporters used to describe Mexica Tenochca, was an insult, a nod to falsity. Hernán Cortés and his bloodthirsty Spanish conquistadors had named the Mexica peoples Aztecs, bastardized from the name of the legendary home of the Mexica—Aztlán. It was a necessary artifice, however. For now, Aztec was a term the Mexican people both understood and could take to their collective hearts. In time, Garza would educate them.

  It was, in fact, a ground surge of pre-conquest nationalism that had swept Garza and the Mexica Tenochca into power, but Garza’s hopes for Mexico’s widespread and immediate embracement of its history were starting to fade. He’d come to realize they’d won the election partly because of the previous administration’s incompetence and corruption and partly because of Mexica Tenochca’s “Aztecan showmanship,” as one political pundit had termed it.

  Showmanship indeed! It was absurd.

  Hadn’t Garza years ago renounced his Spanish Christian name, Fernando, for a Nahuatl one? Hadn’t his entire cabinet done the same? Hadn’t Garza renamed his own children in the Nahuatl tongue? And more: Literature and images of Spain’s conquest of Mexico were slowly being weeded from school curricula; street and plaza names had been changed in favor of Nahuatl words; schools now taught courses in Nahuatl and the true history of the Mexica people; religious holidays and traditional Mexica festivals were celebrated several times a year. But still, all the polling showed that the Mexican people saw all of it as novelties—excuses to miss work or drink or misbehave in the streets. Even so, that same polling suggested real change could be instituted if they had enough time. Garza and the Mexica Tenochca needed another term, and to get that Garza needed to have the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation more firmly under his thumb. As it stood, the presidency was restricted to a single term of six years. Not long enough to accomplish what Garza had planned, not long enough to accomplish what Mexico needed: a fully realized history of its own, free of the lies of conquest and slaughter.

  Garza stepped away from the window, strode to his desk, and pressed a button on the remote. Shades descended from the ceiling, muting the noonday sun; in the ceiling, recessed lighting glowed to life, illuminating the burgundy carpet and heavy wooden furniture. Like the rest of Garza’s life, his office reflected his Mexica heritage. Tapestries and paintings depicting Aztec history lined the walls. Here, a twelve-foot-long, hand-painted codex detailing the founding of Tenochtitlán on a marshy island in Lake Texcoco; over there, a painting of the Aztec goddess of the moon, Coyolxauhqui; across the room above the fireplace, a floor-to-ceiling tapestry showing Huitzilopochtli, the “Hummingbird Wizard,” and Tezcatlipoca, the “Smoking Mirror,” in union, watching over their people. On the wall above his desk was an oil painting of Chicomoztoc—“the Place of Seven Caves”—the legendary source of all Nahuatl-speaking peoples.

  None of these, however, kept him awake at night. That honor belonged to the artifact standing in the corner of the room. Perched atop a crystal pedestal in a cube of half-inch-thick glass was Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs. Of course, depictions of Quetzalcoatl were commonplace—on pottery and tapestries and in a multitude of codices—but this representation was unique. A statuette. The only one of its kind. At four inches tall and seven inches long, it was a masterwork carved by unknown hands a millennium ago from a chunk of nearly translucent jade.

  Garza walked around his desk and sat in the chair before the pedestal. Quetzalcoatl’s surface, lit from above by an inset halogen bulb, seemed to swirl, forming mesmerizing shapes and pools of color that were at once there and not there. Garza’s eyes drifted back along Quetzalcoatl’s plumes and scales until coming to rest on the tail—or where the tail should have been, he corrected himself. Instead of tapering to a traditional serpent’s tail, the statuette widened for a few inches before ending abruptly in a jagged vertical line, as though it had been cleaved from a larger artifact. This was, in fact, the theory Garza’s scientists had put forth. And a theory he had worked hard to suppress.

  This Quetzalcoatl statuette, this symbol of the Mexica Tenochca, was incomplete. Garza knew what was missing—or, more accurately, he knew the missing piece would not resemble anything in the Aztec pantheon. It was this thought that kept him awake at night. As th
e symbol of the Mexica Tenochca movement since the day Garza had founded it, this statuette had become a rallying cry for the wave of nationalism that had swept him into office. Should its credibility be called into doubt . . . It was a question Garza didn’t dare entertain. The thought that a lost nineteenth-century warship could destroy everything that he’d built was unacceptable. All of it gone because of a trinket or artifact found by a random snorkeler, who in turn shows it to someone with a passing interest in history, who then asks an expert. A falling domino that destroys a nation’s restored pride.

  THE BUZZ OF THE INTERCOM on Garza’s desk shook him from his reverie. He turned off the case’s halogen light and returned to his desk.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “He is here, Mr. President.”

  “Send him in,” Garza said, then turned and sat down behind his desk.

  The double doors opened a moment later and in strode Itzli Rivera. At six feet tall and one hundred fifty pounds, Itzli Rivera appeared unsubstantial from a distance—gaunt in the extreme, his narrow face of angles and planes dominated by a hawk nose—but as he came closer Garza reminded himself how deceptive Rivera’s appearance was. It showed in the hard set of his eyes and mouth, in his steady, purposeful gait, and in the taut muscles and the tendons of his bare forearms. Even without knowing the man, an astute observer could easily see Itzli Rivera was no stranger to hardship. Of course, Garza knew this to be true. His chief operative had indeed visited hardship upon many poor souls, so far most of them political opponents who didn’t share Garza’s vision for Mexico. Luckily, it was easier to find a virgin in a brothel than it was to find an incorrupt member of the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, and Rivera had a knack for finding a man’s weakness, then shoving the dagger home. Rivera was himself a true believer, having rejected his Spanish name, Hector, in favor of Itzli, which in Nahuatl meant “obsidian.” A fitting name, Garza thought.