by Stuart Gibbs
DON’T MESS WITH MY STUFF.
The policeman who’d been thrown by the blast staggered to his feet. He was startled and the eyebrows had been scorched off his face, but he was otherwise all right.
Ivan was still staring at the propane tank. It was quite large. “That blast should have been much bigger,” he said in Spanish. The fire flickering from the open valve indicated gas was still venting out of it. He walked across the kitchen, the broken plates crunching under his feet, shut off the valve, then lifted the tank. It was heavy, with plenty of propane still sloshing around inside. “Most of the gas is still in here,” he observed, then realized what that meant. “This wasn’t open long. She must have just left.”
The second policeman shook his head dumbly. “We would have seen her leaving.”
“Only if she came through the door, you idiot.” Ivan ran into the bedroom. The rear window was open. In the dirt on the ground outside were two sets of footprints, leading to a path through the swamp.
“This way!” Ivan yelled, then scrambled out the window. He was much bigger than either Charlie or Esmerelda, so it was a tight squeeze. He managed to get through and ran down the path.
Other people with less on their minds might have found the marsh quite beautiful. Hundreds of birds, including a small flock of flamingos, waded in the still pools, surrounded by thickets of mangrove trees. But Ivan Spetz did not have an eye for beauty.
It was quiet in the marsh, so he could easily hear the roar of the airplane engine starting in the distance. Ivan cursed under his breath in Russian. Times like this, when he was really angry, were the only occasions where his facade slipped and he used his native tongue.
He charged onward down the trail, knowing he would be too late, but not willing to give up, either. The trail ended by a squat cement facility in the woods, surrounded by a dozen outdoor pens, each filled with tortoises of varying sizes. A breeding facility. Beyond that was a rocky beach with a floating dock extending out into the ocean.
A seaplane was skimming along the water. As Ivan arrived, it lifted into the air, whisking Charlie Thorne away from him.
Ivan was so angry, he wanted to take out his gun and open fire on the plane. It was far off, but Ivan was a crack shot. He could possibly hit the fuselage and bring the plane down.
But Ivan’s orders weren’t to kill the girl. Russia wanted her alive.
So Ivan willed himself to stay calm and focus. He stared after the plane and memorized the registration numbers on the tail. NC7821. It wouldn’t take long for him to call those in and figure out where the plane was heading. Once he knew that, he could find Charlie Thorne and bring her in.
He wouldn’t underestimate the girl again.
FIVE
In the passenger seat of the seaplane, Charlie Thorne observed the man on the beach, the man who had come looking for her. She couldn’t tell much about him from this distance, but the way he moved indicated he was upset.
Her gaze then shifted to the tortoise breeding facility, the marsh, the tiny town of Puerto Villamil, the sweep of the beach and the crystal water beyond it. Sadness crept over her. She had liked this place, but it appeared she wouldn’t be returning to it anytime soon. Maybe never again.
Someone had found her.
She had known that would happen eventually. That was why she had always kept a packed backpack and booby-trapped her home. Although she had hoped it would take far longer than this. Now she would have to move on and find another place, to try to cover her tracks even better this time. She had made a mistake by choosing to volunteer at the breeding facility. She had feared that might be the case, but the place was doing important work, helping species back from the brink of extinction, and Charlie wanted to do something important. But in working there, she had allowed people to know about her. That was how Esmerelda had found her, which meant that was probably how this stranger had tracked her down too. So the next place she went, she would have to keep her contact with other humans to a bare minimum.
The thought didn’t appeal to her. Charlie missed having friends. She missed being able to tell people the truth about herself. To her surprise, at times she even missed her half brother, Dante. Even though their relationship had been prickly, she often found herself thinking that it would have been nice to get to know him better. Unfortunately, being alone seemed to be the only way to protect Pandora. And protecting Pandora was Charlie’s burden to bear. No one else could be trusted with it.
The town disappeared behind the bulk of the volcano, and Charlie found herself staring down into the gaping crater, several miles of blistered igneous rock that still smoked in spots, surrounded by a green fringe of tropical forest. Beyond it, Charlie could already see Isla Santa Cruz in the distance; none of the Galápagos Islands were very far from one another.
“Mariposa, is something wrong?” Esmerelda asked.
The seaplane was old and loud. Both of them had to wear headsets to block out the roar of the engines; the headsets were fitted with radio-microphones so they could talk to each other.
Charlie turned from the window. “You can call me Charlie.”
“Charlie? But I thought…”
“I like Charlie better than Mariposa,” Charlie said, then quickly changed the subject. “You said you had theories about this treasure of Darwin’s?”
“Yes. Though maybe I misspoke. They’re not really my theories. There’s a story you hear about Darwin when you work at the research station. More of a myth, actually.” Esmerelda stared straight ahead as she spoke, angling the plane over the crater toward Isla Santa Cruz. “For the past two centuries, there have been rumors that Darwin discovered a treasure on his travels in South America. But there hadn’t been any direct evidence for that… until now.”
“What kind of treasure?” Charlie asked.
“No one knows. But most people assume that it’s gold. There have always been tales of a lost golden city built by the Incas, or a cache of gold hidden somewhere in the jungle.”
Charlie nodded. She had heard the stories of lost golden cities herself. South American lore was full of them. But she had never heard anything about Darwin finding a treasure. “So why would people think Darwin had found something like this?”
“There are some strange things about the voyage of the Beagle that have never been fully explained. To begin with, it was supposed to only be a two-year journey, but it took nearly five years.…”
“Four of which were spent in South America,” Charlie finished.
Esmerelda turned to Charlie, seeming surprised that she knew this.
“I’ve read The Voyage of the Beagle,” Charlie explained. “And pretty much everything else Darwin wrote.”
“Really?”
“You hang out in these islands, Darwin gets mentioned about a hundred times a day, so I figured I should read his stuff. Plus, half the tourists who come here are reading his books, so they’re not hard to get. Darwin never mentions a treasure in any of them.”
“The prevailing theory is he wanted to keep it a secret. So he altered his journals to hide any mention of it—or the expedition he took to find it. He was traveling for nearly a year after leaving South America. He would have had plenty of time to rewrite his journals during that time.”
“There were almost eighty other people aboard the Beagle,” Charlie said. “None of them mentioned a treasure either.”
“That was my concern about the story too,” Esmerelda admitted. “But there are other strange things that point to a possible cover-up. Darwin and the captain of the Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, had a serious falling-out after the voyage. They started out as friends and ended up not talking to each other.…”
“I’m sure five years on a cramped ship could test anyone’s friendship. And FitzRoy could be a real jerk to the crew.”
“But they could also have had arguments over the treasure. And then Darwin mysteriously cut fifty pages from one of his own notebooks and never explained why.…”
“May
be he spilled wine on it.”
“I know none of this is concrete evidence,” Esmerelda said. “That’s why most people have regarded the stories as rumors. But then, you could argue that the rumors themselves are a sort of evidence. After all, maybe the rumors started because people from the Beagle did talk about the treasure.”
“I suppose that makes sense.”
“Still, I was as dismissive of them as you… until we found that carved shell. Which seems to indicate that the rumors are true after all.”
They were already closing in on Isla Santa Cruz. As Esmerelda had said, the flight wasn’t long. Isla Isabela had fallen behind them, while Isla Santiago, another place Darwin had visited, was to their left.
The islands all looked dramatically different from the air. The geology of each had shaped its ecology, which had led to the great differentiation of species in the Galápagos. Isla Santa Cruz had a good-size mountain in the center, a dormant volcano that caught the clouds, which led to lots of rain at the higher elevations, so it was lush and green. Meanwhile, Santiago was flat and dry. Isabela, with its multiple volcanoes, had dozens of different ecosystems, some with species so rare they were found nowhere else on earth.
Charlie could also see Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz ahead of them. The town was much bigger than Puerto Villamil, far bigger than she had expected to find on an island chain that was supposed to be a nature preserve. It had surprised her when she’d first seen it. The country of Ecuador, it seemed, was having trouble corralling development in Puerto Ayora, and there were many new roads and hotels and homes. To Charlie, it all looked like a scar on the landscape.
To the east of Puerto Ayora was the Charles Darwin Research Center, which Charlie had visited upon arriving in the islands. There was a dock nearby with other seaplanes. Their destination. The town also had a large marina, where dozens of boats were moored: tourist boats and scuba charters and fishing boats and a few speedboats like the one that had brought the man who was looking for her to Puerto Villamil.
Charlie figured the man had rented the boat in Puerto Ayora. There was no other place in the islands to get something like that. So he was probably heading back this way. They were moving much faster than he could, but still, the speedboat was quick enough to make the trip in less than an hour.
Of additional concern was that the seaplane had its registration number clearly marked on its tail. Charlie had noticed it when she climbed aboard. That was standard for all private planes, like license plates were for cars. It wouldn’t be hard to determine that the plane belonged to the research station. The strange man had likely done so already. Which meant it wouldn’t be long before he showed up at the research station looking for her.
“Is there anything important you need in Puerto Ayora?” Charlie asked suddenly.
Esmerelda pulled her attention from piloting the seaplane toward the town. “The plastron is there.…”
“I mean for you. Would you be okay if we left the Galápagos right now? Or do you need any medication or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Then forget about Puerto Ayora. Let’s go right to the airport.”
Esmerelda gave her a confused look. “I thought you wanted to see the plastron.”
“I don’t. I’ve already figured out the code.”
Esmerelda’s eyes went wide in surprise. “Just now?”
“No. The moment I saw it, actually. It wasn’t that complicated.”
In the brief period Esmerelda had known Charlie, she had been caught off guard many times, but now she was so flabbergasted she didn’t quite know what to say. A dozen ideas were tumbling through her mind all at once. “But… How did you…? When…?” She had to take a moment to collect her thoughts. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I’d just met you. I needed to talk to you a bit…”
“… to see if you could trust me,” Esmerelda concluded, understanding. “So what does it say?”
“It says we need to be heading toward the airport.”
“All right.” Esmerelda quickly twisted the steering column, and the plane banked away from Puerto Ayora, heading north.
The most direct route to the airport on Isla Baltra took them straight over Isla Santa Cruz. Below them, Charlie could see the sprawl of Puerto Ayora give way to farmland on the lush green slopes of the island’s dormant volcano.
She asked, “It won’t be a problem, taking this plane to the airport?”
“No,” Esmerelda replied. “There’s a dock near the runway for seaplanes, so landing there isn’t an issue.”
“I meant, will it be a problem taking this plane, since it belongs to the Darwin Institute?”
“Oh.” Esmerelda thought a beat, and then shook her head. “No. I’ll let them know what’s going on once we land. The airport isn’t really that far from the station. If they need the plane, they’ll be able to come get it.”
Charlie nodded, watching the landscape beneath her. As the small plane banked around the volcano, it was low enough that Charlie could see individual tortoises below, roaming freely across the farms and ranches. The giant reptiles looked like stones strewn across the emerald-green grass. “The tortoise you found lived up here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Charlie briefly wondered why Charles Darwin would have gone through so much trouble to conceal a treasure he had found but then leave a clue on a tortoise shell. But she didn’t mention that. There were other things to discuss.
She reached into her backpack, dug out a notebook and a pen, and quickly jotted down what had been carved into the plastron of the tortoise from memory, making a few extra marks. When she was done, she held up the page so that Esmerelda could read it.
If in death, Eros
and evil shall rest on earth.
Minds quit obeying.
—C. Darwin
Esmerelda read only what Charlie had underlined with amazement. “Find the devil’s stone in Quito.” Then she looked to Charlie and smiled. “Apparently, I came to the right person. You figured that out immediately when an entire team of scientists couldn’t do it in two days!”
“Maybe it helps to speak English as your primary language,” Charlie said humbly.
“I suppose so.” Esmerelda’s smile suddenly became a frown as something occurred to her. “In Quito,” she repeated. “But Darwin was never in Quito. Or any part of mainland Ecuador.”
“If he could fudge his journals to hide the existence of a huge treasure, he could certainly hide the fact that he’d been to Quito.”
They passed through a curtain of clouds, and the small island to the north where the airport was came into view.
Esmerelda nodded agreement at what Charlie had said, but the frown stayed on her face. “What on earth is a devil’s stone? And how are we supposed to find one in a city as big as Quito?”
“Leave that to me,” Charlie said confidently. “I think I know where it is.”
SIX
Charles Darwin Research Station
Isla Santa Cruz, Ecuador
The Darwin Research Station at Puerto Ayora was much nicer than the Tupiza Tortoise Breeding Center in Puerto Villamil. The breeding facility at Darwin was state-of-the-art, and part of a larger complex of modern buildings that included a museum, a public library, and several research facilities, all surrounded by well-tended landscaping and sited along a beautiful stretch of beach.
A young docent named Luis was giving a tour of the grounds to a group of American tourists when Ivan Spetz arrived. “If it weren’t for our breeding programs, the famous tortoises of these islands would have gone extinct,” Luis was saying. “Their populations were already being decimated by the time Darwin visited here. Sailors were devouring them by the thousands.”
A few younger children made faces of disgust at the thought of eating a tortoise.
“They might not look tasty to you,” Luis said. “But imagine you had been at sea for weeks with only weevil-infested hardtack to eat. And
then you get here and suddenly there’s fresh meat everywhere. Plus, these tortoises can live for months without food or water, so sailors would fill their holds with hundreds of them and continue to eat them over the course of their travels. Darwin ate plenty of them himself, as well as some of the iguanas.”
While the tourists considered the idea of eating a marine iguana, Ivan pushed through the crowd, grabbed Luis by the arm, and dragged him away. “Your guide will be right back,” he informed the crowd pleasantly. “There’s a small problem he needs to deal with.”
“What problem?” Luis asked, wondering who this man was.
“I need to know where your seaplane is going.” While Ivan spoke in a casual, almost friendly tone, there was still an air of menace to it. He continued gripping Luis’s arm firmly as he dragged the young docent along.
Luis sensed this man was dangerous and looked back toward the tourists, like he was thinking about calling for help.
“Cause me any trouble and I’ll break your arm,” Ivan said. “All I want is the destination of the plane.”
“I… I don’t know,” Luis stammered. “I swear. I don’t have anything to do with the plane.”
“Then you’d better find someone who does.” Ivan tightened his grip on Luis’s arm, making the young man wince in pain.
Ivan was in a foul mood. As Charlie had suspected, it hadn’t taken him long to use the plane’s registration number and discover it belonged to the Darwin Research Station. So he had returned to Puerto Ayora as quickly as possible, racing over choppy seas that had made him heave his breakfast over the side; there were still flecks of vomit on his shirt. But when he had finally arrived at the research station, the seaplane wasn’t docked there.
Ivan had ditched the police he’d been working with so he could handle things his own way, thinking that might be frowned upon by law enforcement.