Lost Empire (10 page)

“Miracle of miracles,” Rube said. “You two be careful. I’ll call you when I have info.” He hung up.

Remi said to Sam, “We’re going to have to get him something extraspecial for Christmas.”

“Right about now I can guess what he’s wishing for.”

“What’s that?”

“A new, unlisted phone number.”

 

 

THEY TOOK THE ANDREYALE south to Uroa Village, found a ramshackle hardware store, gathered what few supplies they needed, and were back at the villa before noon. Remi left Sam with his hammer and nails and wooden planks and went inside to check on Yaotl, who was sound asleep. She found a couple cans of clam chowder, heated them up, and took the bowls out to the patio. Sam was nailing the last two planks into place.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“As a box, Sam, it’s wonderful.”

“It’s supposed to be a crate.”

“Crate, box, whatever. Sit down and eat.”

 

 

HALF A MILE FROM THE END of Chukwani Point Road, Itzli Rivera pulled the rented Range Rover onto the shoulder, then down into the ditch and up the other side into the trees. The terrain was rugged and heavily choked with scrub brush, but the Rover’s four-wheel drive handled it easily. He turned southwest toward the clearing on Chukwani Point.

“Time?” he asked Nochtli.

“Just after one.”

An hour before the Fargos were set to meet the truck from Mnazi Freight & Haul. Plenty of time to find a vantage point that provided not only a good line of sight but also an easily accessible route to cut off any escape attempt.

“I see the clearing,” Nochtli said, binoculars lifted to his eyes.

“There’s something there.”

“What?”

“See for yourself.”

He handed the binoculars to Itzli, who focused them on the clearing. Sitting in the middle of the dirt road was a wooden crate. Tacked to the side of the crate was a cardboard sign. “There’s something written on it,” he said, then zoomed in. After a moment he muttered,
“¿Qué madres . . . ?”

“What?” asked Nochtli. “What does it say?”

“‘Merry Christmas.’”

 

 

ITZLI DROVE through the trees, down into the ditch, and back up the side into the clearing. He stopped the Rover and walked over to the crate. He nudged it with his toe. It was empty. He ripped off the cardboard sign and flipped it over. Written in block letters was a message:

 

 

SAM SAW ITZLI RIVERA APPEAR AT THE NORTHERN SIDE OF THE cricket grounds, walking through the trees bordering the parking lot. Behind him, another man was walking east through the lot, but Sam could not make out his face. The purposefulness of his stride made him stand out. This would be Nochtli, Sam thought.

In the middle of the field, a pickup cricket match of teenagers was under way. Their laughter and shouts echoed across the park. Rivera strolled down the sidewalk on the west side of the grounds and stopped before the bench on which Sam sat.

“You came alone,” Rivera said.

Seeing Rivera up close and in daylight immediately altered Sam’s measure of the man. While Sam had never doubted Rivera’s prowess, his chiseled face and sinewy build suggested a rawhide-like toughness. His black eyes regarded Sam impassively—an expression Sam suspected rarely changed, whether Rivera was eating a sandwich or murdering another human being.

“Have a seat,” Sam said amiably despite the flutter of fear in his belly. He felt like he was hand-feeding a great white shark.

Rivera did so. “This is your meeting,” he said.

Sam didn’t reply. He watched the cricket match. A minute passed. Rivera broke the silence. “Your prank with the crate—amusing.”

“Something tells me you didn’t laugh, though.”

“No. Where is your wife, Mr. Fargo?”

“Running an errand. You can signal your friend to stop circling the grounds. He won’t find her.”

Rivera considered this for a few moments, then lifted his hand off the back of the bench and made a fist. Across the park, Nochtli stopped walking.

“Let’s talk about our problem,” Sam said.

“And what do you imagine that problem is?”

“You think we have something you want.”

“Tell me exactly: What do you think you have?”

Abruptly, Sam stood up. “I enjoy the occasional verbal joust as much as the next man, but not today.”

“All right, all right. Sit down, please.”

Sam did so. Rivera said, “The people I work for have been looking for a shipwreck. We believe it was lost in this area.”

“Which ship?”

“The
Ophelia
.”

“Tell me about it.”

“A steam-sail passenger ship. It was believed to be sunk in these waters in the 1870s.”

“That’s all you know about her?”

“More or less.”

“How long have you been looking for her?”

“Seven years.”

“Actively?”

“Yes, actively.”

“In and around Zanzibar?”

“Of course.”

“I’m assuming you have salvage experience or else they wouldn’t have hired you.”

“I have experience.”

“The people you work for . . . what’s their specific interest?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Something of monetary value, I assume?” Sam asked. “Something the
Ophelia
carried in her hold when she went down?”

“That would be a safe assumption.”

“And you think whatever we may have found belongs to the
Ophelia
.”

“It’s a possibility my employers would like to explore.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. For the past few minutes Sam had been trying to get Rivera to commit himself, to make statements he and Remi could then use in doing their own research.

Sam said, “This must be one hell of a prize you’re after. You bribe the captain of a Tanzanian gunboat to first intimidate, then surveil us; then, when night falls, you sneak into the lagoon and board our boat with knives drawn.”

This caught Rivera off guard. He took a deep breath and let it out with a frustrated sigh.

Sam said, “We watched the whole thing.”

“From where?”

“Does that really matter?”

“No, I suppose not. Please accept my apologies. My friends are ex-soldiers. Some habits are hard to break. The excitement of the job got the better of them. I’ve already chastised them.”

“All three of them.”

“Yes.”

Of course, Sam didn’t buy Rivera’s mea culpa, but he said, “Fair enough. What was your plan? To steal whatever you think we found?”

“At that point we didn’t know what you’d found.”

Sam paused for a long ten seconds, then said, “I can’t decide if you think we’re idiots or if you’ve got a short-term-memory problem.”

“Pardon me?”

“You’re sitting here because of the sign I left on the crate. You found that crate because of the notations we left next to a diagram of a bell you found on our boat. You think we found a ship’s bell. Why not just come out and say it?”

“Consider it said, then.”

“I can tell you this: The bell we found doesn’t belong to the
Ophelia
.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”

“Will I?” Sam asked.

“I’d like to inspect the bell myself.”

“The same bell you and your men would have killed us for had we been aboard our boat? I’m going to have to decline.”

“I’ve been authorized to offer you a finder’s fee should the bell turn out to be the one we’re looking for.”

“No, thanks. We’ve got all the money we can use.”

“Take me to the bell, let me inspect it, and my employer will donate fifty thousand dollars to a charity of your choosing.”

“No.”

Rivera’s eyes turned cold, and he let out muffled growl. “Mr. Fargo, you’re making me angry.”

“They have pills for that.”

“I prefer a different approach.” Rivera lifted his shirttail to expose the butt of a pistol, a Heckler & Koch P30—just like the one they took off Yaotl, Sam saw.

“We’re leaving now,” Rivera muttered. “Don’t make a scene or I’ll shoot you dead. We’ll be gone before the police are even notified.”

“The police,” Sam repeated. “As in the police in that station house across the road behind us?”

Rivera glanced over Sam’s shoulder. His mouth tightened, the muscles of his jaw pulsated.

Sam said, “You should have done your homework. I realize it’s an old schoolhouse, but how hard would it have been to check? I’m sure this is embarrassing for you.”

Sam’s grasp of Spanish slang was slim, but he suspected Rivera had just called his parentage into question. He said, “If you look a little closer, you’ll see a man and woman sitting on a bench near the station’s steps.”

“I see them.”

Sam pulled out his phone, hit Speed Dial, let it ring twice, then hung up. A moment later Remi Fargo turned on the bench, faced the cricket grounds, and gave a single wave.

“The man she’s talking to is a Tanzanian police superintendent from Dar es Salaam.”

“Police can be bought. Just as naval officers can be bought.”

“Not this one. He happens to be a close personal friend of the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.S. Embassy.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Right now my wife may or may not be telling the superintendent about a man named Yaotl who tried to break into our vacation home last night. He was armed with a gun identical to the one you’re carrying and had no passport.”

Rivera’s brows knitted together. “The accident . . . the raft. That wasn’t Yaotl.”

Sam shook his head.

“How did you do it?”

“I took a few theater classes in college.”

“It doesn’t matter. He won’t talk. Even if he does, he knows nothing.”

“Just your name and appearance.”

“Both of those can be changed. Give me the bell and return my man to me, and you’ll never be troubled again.”

“Let me think about it. I’ll call you by day’s end tomorrow. If you bother us before then, I’ll call our superintendent friend. Care to tell me where you’re staying?”

Rivera smiled grimly and shook his head. “No, I would not.” He recited his phone number. “I expect to hear good news.”

Sam stood up. “You can expect anything you like.”

He turned and walked away.

 

 

SAM WALKED across the street to the police station. Remi wrapped up her conversation with the superintendent with a warm handshake and a thank-you. The man gave Sam a nod and a smile, then strode away.

“Lovely man, Huru,” Remi said. “Told us to give his regards to Rube.”

“What did you tell him?” Sam asked, sitting down beside her.

“That we thought someone had tried to break into our house last night. He said to call him personally if we have any more trouble. How did your chat with the human skeleton go?”

“As can be expected. He claims he’s been working for some deep pockets who’ve been looking for the
Ophelia
for years. Problem is, he claims to know almost nothing about her pedigree.”

“He tried to wing it,” Remi said. “He thought he could bluff you.”

Anyone who spends even a modicum of time chasing shipwrecks finds themselves well versed in every facet of a vessel’s history. That Rivera feigned ignorance about the
Ophelia
told Sam and Remi that the ship was vitally important to Rivera and his employer.

“Did he mention the hidden engraving?”

“No. That could be telling. It’s another thing an experienced hunter would know. He didn’t mention it because he’s hoping we missed it.”

“Any hint as to what specifically they’re after?”

“He implied it was something in the
Ophelia
’s hold. Treasure of some kind. Even offered us a finder’s fee.”

“How very kind of him. Where does this leave us?”

“Rivera claimed he had salvage experience, which may or may not be true, but he also claimed his patrons have been actively looking for the
Ophelia
.”

In the world of treasure hunting, an active search is a specific beast that involves mounting expeditions—getting wet and dirty while laying out grids, doing magnetometer passes, picking through muck and slime. Not to mention the dry but no less daunting research work: interviewing relatives, scouting locations, and sitting in dusty old libraries looking for the slightest clue as to the target’s possible location.

“If Rivera’s been at it that long,” Remi said, “there’ll be public records, news stories, permits . . .”

“My thought exactly. We find those, we get a better idea of what Rivera and his people are really after.”

 

 

THEY SAT UNDER the shade trees outside the police station for ten minutes as Sam watched Rivera and his partner leave the cricket grounds parking lot, then overtly make a circuit around the police station. Sam and Remi gave them a parting wave on the last pass.

Once sure they weren’t returning, Sam and Remi walked east to an open-air market, where they gathered food and necessities and walked the labyrinthine alleys while watching for signs of pursuit. Finding none, they walked three blocks north to a rental-car agency. Their reservation, a 2007 Toyota Land Cruiser, was waiting for them. Forty minutes later they were back at their Uroa beach villa.

Sam’s phone trilled as they were walking up the driveway. Remi gestured for the bag of groceries he was carrying and continued into the villa. Sam checked the caller ID: Rube.

“Morning, Rube.”

“Early, early morning. How did your meeting go?”