Lost Empire fa-2

by Clive Cussler

  “Someone with deep pockets.” As much as they loved Tanzania and Zanzibar and their people, there was no arguing that corruption was common. The majority of Tanzanians made a few dollars a day; military personnel, only slightly more. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Right now we don’t know anything. Just curious, Remi: Why’d you lie about the coin?”“Gut reaction,” Remi replied. “You think I should have-”

  “No. I had the same instinct. The Tanzanian coast guard has two Yulin gunboats to cover the central coast, the main channel, and Zanzibar. I got the impression they were specifically looking for us.”“Me too.”

  “And as safety checks go, that one was worthless. Didn’t ask about life preservers, the radio, or our dive gear.”

  “And when was the last time we met a Tanzanian official that wasn’t all smiles and geniality?”

  “Never,” Sam replied. “About the Adelise coin-”

  Remi unzipped the side pocket of her dive shorts, withdrew the coin, and held it up with a smile.

  “That’s my girl,” Sam said.

  “You think they’ll search the bungalow?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “So, put it all together and what’s it mean?” Remi pondered.

  “No idea, but we’re going to watch our step from here on out.”

  CHAPTER 5

  ZANZIBAR

  FOR THE NEXT HOUR THEY SAT ON THE AFTERDECK , SIPPING ICE-COLD water and enjoying the gentle rocking of the Andreyale and listening to the waves lapping at the hull. Within the first thirty minutes of the Yulin’s departure, it appeared twice more, a mile out, cruising first north to south, then south to north. It had not returned.“Can’t help but worry the bell’s tumbled over the edge,” Remi said. “I can see it in my mind’s eye.”

  “Me too, but I’d rather risk that than have them come back while we’re in the middle of raising it. Let’s give it another twenty minutes. Worst case, we can probably still get to it.”

  “True, but at a hundred fifty feet, things start getting dicey. Getting down there wouldn’t be so hard. Finding it might be.” As massive as the bell was, after bouncing down a hundred-fifty-foot slope it could end up almost anywhere, like a dropped child’s marble that’s lost in the dining room but ends up under the refrigerator in the kitchen. “And once we find it, getting it up to the surface is a different can of worms altogether. Better dive gear, compressor, lift bags, winch . . .”

  Sam was nodding. There would be no chance of hiding that level of activity from curious or prying eyes. Simply renting the equipment in Stone Town-even anonymously-would set the rumor mill in motion. By day’s end there would be onlookers both on the shoreline and in boats offshore-including, perhaps, the Yulin gunboat and her mysterious passenger.“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said.

  THEY MOVED THE ANDREYALE to within thirty feet of the bell’s location. Sam went over the side and wedged the anchor behind a rock outcropping, and then, back aboard, they uncoiled the hundred feet of solid-braided three-quarter-inch anchor rope they’d purchased earlier in Stone Town. They looped the rope over the port and starboard rear gunwale cleats, then secured the loop in the center with a screw-link D ring. The remainder of the coil they tossed over the stern. Two minutes later they were in their snorkel gear and finning along the surface, dragging the rope behind them.

  To their mutual surprise, they found the bell where they’d left it, perched on the edge of the precipice, but they immediately found the situation was more precarious than they’d anticipated. The sand beneath the bell’s mouth was eroding before their eyes, wisps of sand and chunks of rock being ripped away by the current.Remi fed the end of the rope through the D ring on her dive belt, then handed it to Sam, who did the same, then clamped the rope’s screw-link D ring between his teeth.

  They finned to the surface, grabbed a half dozen lungfuls of air, then dove again. Sam signaled to Remi: Pictures. If the worst came to pass and they lost the bell, pictures would at least give them a chance at identification. As Remi started shooting, Sam finned forward until he could see over the edge. The slope was not quite vertical but rather sixty or sixty-five degrees. Not that it mattered. As Remi had earlier guessed, the bell’s weight surpassed that of the Speaker’s by twenty or thirty pounds. If the bell decided to go over the edge, the slope’s angle would slow its descent only slightly.And then, as if on cue, the sand beneath the bell gave way. The crown tipped upward, hovered for a split second, then the bell began sliding, mouth first, down the slope.

  On an impulse he immediately regretted, Sam coiled his legs, gave a sharp dolphin kick, and followed the bell over the edge. He heard, fleetingly, Remi’s muffled scream of “Sam!” and then it was gone, replaced by the rush of the current. Sand peppered his body like a thousand bee stings. Tumbling now head over feet, Sam reached out in what he hoped was the direction of the bank. The outstretched fingers of his right hand struck something hard, and he felt a sharp pain shoot through his pinkie finger. Ignoring the pain, he could feel the bell picking up speed now, the bulldozer-like effect of the mouth losing to the physics of momentum. His eyesight began to swim as his lungs began consuming the last molecules of oxygen. His heart pounded in his head like cannon fire.

  Working from feel alone, he slid his hand up the bell’s waist, then over the head. His fingers found the opening of the crown. He lifted his left hand up to his mouth, grabbed the D ring, and fed it through the crown. He curled it around the line and then, using his thumb, spun the screw link closed.

  The bell jerked to a stop. The rope let out a muffled twang. Sam lost his grip, and he began sliding downward, hands slapping at the bell’s surface, fingers scrabbling for purchase. There was nothing. Then, suddenly, a ridge slid beneath his palm. He felt another stab of pain in his pinkie finger. The bead line, he thought. His curled fingertips had landed on the bead line just above the mouth of the bell. He reached up with his other hand, gripped the line, then chinned himself upward, both legs kicking against the draw of the current until the anchor line came into view, a braid of pure white in the swirl of sand. He grabbed it. He felt fingers touch the back of his hand. Out of the gloom a face appeared. Remi. His eyesight was sparkling now and dimming at the edges. Remi pulled herself down the anchor line, reached down, clamped onto his right wrist, and tugged.Instinctively Sam latched onto rope and began climbing.

  TEN MINUTES LATER he sat in the deck chair, eyes closed and head tilted back into the sun. After two minutes of this he brought his head level again and opened his eyes to find Remi sitting on the gunwale watching him. She leaned forward and handed him a bottle of water.“Feeling better?” she asked gently.

  “Yes. Much. Pinkie finger’s jammed, though. Smarts.” He held it up for inspection; the digit was straight but swollen. He curled it and winced. “It’s not broken. Nothing a little athletic tape won’t cure.”“Nothing else wrong?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Good, glad to hear it,” said Remi. “Sam Fargo, you’re a dummy.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “What were you thinking, going after that thing?”

  “I just reacted. By the time I realized what the hell I was doing it was too late. In for a penny, in for-”

  “A one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean,” Remi countered with a scowling shake of her head. “I swear, Fargo . . .”

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “And thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Dummy,” Remi repeated, then got up, walked over, and kissed him on the cheek. “But you’re my dummy. And you don’t need to thank me-but you’re welcome anyway.”

  “Tell me we still have it,” Sam said, looking around. “Do we still have it?” He was still a tad woozy. Remi pointed off the stern where the anchor line, taut as piano wire, arced down into the water.“While you were taking your catnap, I dragged it off the slope. It should be resting about five feet from the edge.”

  “Nicely done.”

  “Don’t get too excited. We still have to ra
ise it.”

  Sam smiled. “Have no fear, Remi. Physics is our friend.” BEFORE THEY COULD APPLY Sam’s idea, however, they had to exercise some brute force. With Sam’s newly damaged pinkie wrapped in duct tape, he stood in the stern taking up slack in the anchor line while Remi reversed the Andreyale’s engine and followed his hand signals until they were almost directly above the bell. He uncoiled the line from the cleats, took up the remainder of the slack, then looped and locked down again.Sam called, “All ahead slow. Nice and easy.”

  “You got it.”

  Remi eased the throttle forward a quarter inch at a time. Sam, leaning over the stern, his face mask in the water, watched the bell’s progress as it bulldozed through the sand. When it was twenty feet from the edge of the precipice, he called: “All stop.” Remi throttled down.

  Sam settled the mask over his face and dove down to examine their prize. He resurfaced a minute later. “Looks good. Not much barnacle growth, which means it’s probably been embedded in that bank for quite a while.”Remi extended her hand and helped Sam aboard. She asked, “Damage?”

  “None that I could see. It’s thick, Remi-probably closer to eighty pounds.”

  She whistled softly. “Big boy. Okay, by standard measure that’d make the ship . . . what, a thousand tons displacement?”

  “Between that and twelve hundred. Much bigger than the Speaker . The proximity of the Adelise coin and the bell is pure coincidence.”

  WITH THE BELL no longer in danger of dropping into the channel, they disconnected and steered the Andreyale north a hundred yards, then eased their way through the inlet at the island’s ankle and emerged in the stiletto lagoon.

  Only a half mile wide and long, the lagoon was actually a mangrove swamp. Jutting from the water were a couple dozen “floating islands”: mushroom caps of earth sitting atop buttresses of exposed, gnarled mangrove roots. Ranging in size from standing-room-only to a double garage, all were covered in thick weeds, and most supported miniature forests of scrub trees and bushes. At the southern end of the swamp was a narrow beach, and beyond that a copse of coconut palms. It was eerily quiet, the air dead still.“Now, this isn’t something you see every day,” Remi murmured.

  “Any sign of the Mad Hatter or Alice?”

  “No, knock wood.”

  “Let’s get moving. Daylight’s burning.”

  The made their way through the floating islands, dropped anchor just off the beach, and waded ashore.

  “How many are we going to need?” Remi asked. With one hand she deftly curled her auburn hair off her neck and snapped a rubber band around it, making a neat topknot.

  Sam smiled. “It’s like magic, how you do that.”

  “We are a wondrous species,” Remi agreed with a smile and wrung the water from her shirttails. “So, how many?”

  “Six. No, five.”

  “And you’re sure we couldn’t get what we need in Stone Town and sneak back here?”

  “You want to risk it? Something tells me that gunboat captain would be only too happy to arrest us. If he thinks we were lying to him . . .”

  “True. Okay, Gilligan, let’s make your raft.”

  THEY HAD NO TROUBLE finding plenty of downed trees but a harder time finding ones of a manageable size. Sam identified five candidates, all roughly eight feet long and about as big around as a telephone pole. He and Remi dragged each log down to the beach, where they arranged them in a row.

  SAM WENT TO WORK. The construction was simple enough, Sam explained. He grabbed a nearby piece of driftwood and inscribed the plan in the sand:

  “Not exactly the Queen Mary,” Remi observed with a smile.“For that,” Sam replied, “I’d need at least four more logs.”

  “Why the protruding ends?”

  “Two reasons: stability and leverage.”

  “For what?”

  “You’ll see. Right now I need some line-a few dozen six-foot lengths.”

  Remi saluted. “As you command.”

  AFTER AN HOUR’S WORK, Sam straightened up and stared at his creation. His narrowed eyes told Remi her husband was running equations in his head. After a minute of this, Sam nodded. “Okay. Should be buoyant enough,” he proclaimed. “With about twenty percent in reserve.”

  WITH THE RAFT in tow, they slipped back through the inlet to the island’s western side and headed south along the coast until they were again over the bell’s resting place. Using the gaff hook, Sam maneuvered the raft around to the landward side of the Andreyale and secured it to the cleats.

  “My gut tells me we’re due for another drive-by,” Sam said, sitting down in a deck chair. Remi joined him, and together they drank water and watched the water until, thirty minutes later, the Yulin appeared to the north, a half mile out.

  “Good call,” Remi said.

  The Yulin slowed to a walking pace, and from their afterdeck Sam and Remi could see a figure in a white uniform standing on its afterdeck. Sun glinted off binocular lenses.“Smile and wave,” Sam said.

  Together they did just that until the figure lowered its binoculars and disappeared into the cabin. The Yulin came about and began heading north. Sam and Remi waited until it disappeared around the curve of the island, then went back to work.

  With the already prepped anchor in one hand, Sam donned his fins and mask and rolled over the side. After a bit of wrangling, he centered the raft over the bell. He knotted the end of the anchor line to the far side of the raft, dove at an angle until the line was taut, then jammed the anchor’s flukes into the sand.

  Back on the surface, he caught the line Remi tossed to him, then looped it over the raft’s center beam, dove down, and clamped the D ring onto the bell’s crown. A minute later he was back on the afterdeck, where he secured Remi’s line to both cleats.Hands on his hips, he appraised the setup.

  Remi smiled sideways at him. “You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “You should be. My intrepid engineer.”

  Sam clapped his hands together once. “Let’s do this.”

  WITH REMI at the wheel, Sam called, “Slow ahead.”

  “Slow ahead,” Remi repeated.

  The water beneath the stern turned to froth, and the Andreyale eased forward a foot, then two. The cleated line began rising from the water. With a muffled squelch-pop, the rope cinched down on the raft’s crossbeam.“Looking good,” Sam called. “Keep going.”

  The raft began moving, closing the distance to the stern.

  “Come on,” Sam muttered. “Come on . . .”

  On the far side of the raft the anchor line quivered with tension as it negated the Andreyale’s drag on the raft. Sam donned his mask, bent over the side, and stuck his face in the water. Twelve feet below, the bell was hovering a few inches off the bottom.Remi called, “How’re we doing?”

  “A thing of beauty. Keep going.”

  One careful foot at a time they lifted the bell until finally the crown broke the surface and thunked into the crossbeam.

  “Slow to idle!” Sam ordered. “Just enough to hold position.”

  “Idling!” Remi replied.

  Sam grabbed the six-foot length of line from the deck and dove over the side. Three strokes brought him to the raft. Five loops through the bell’s crown and a bowline knot over the crossbeam, and the bell was secure. Sam lifted his hands triumphantly, like a cowboy who’d just roped a calf.“Done!” he called.

  The Andreyale’s engines sputtered and went silent. Remi walked onto the afterdeck, smiled, and returned her husband’s thumbs-up.

  “Congratulations, Fargo,” she called. “Now what?”

  Sam’s smile dropped away. “Not sure. Still working it out.”

  “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  CHAPTER 6

  ZANZIBAR

  IN TRUTH, THERE WAS NOTHING TO WORK OUT. THEY DIDN’T DARE tow the bell back up the coast to their bungalow. The needed a safe place to stash it while they made some decisions and arra
ngements.

  While they both recognized their encounter with the Yulin might be a molehill they’d built into a mountain, they’d also come to trust their instincts, and on this issue Sam’s and Remi’s gut reactions were in agreement: Neither the Yulin’s initial visit nor its repeated appearances were happenstance. Also, her captain’s questions were variations on a theme: Were the Fargos looking for something specific? This suggested someone-perhaps the shadowy figure hiding in the Yulin’s cabin-was concerned that something of note was at risk of discovery. Was it the bell or the Adelise coin, or something else entirely?“The question is,” Sam said, “do we want to wait and see what they do or shake the tree a little bit?”

  “I’m not fond of sitting on my hands.”

  “I know. Me neither.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Behave like we’re people with something to hide.”

  “We are people with something to hide,” Remi replied. “A two-hundred-pound ship’s bell suspended from a homemade raft.”

  At this, Sam laughed. His wife had a knack for cutting to the heart of a matter. “If we’re not blowing all of this out of proportion, they-whoever they are-have probably already searched the bungalow.”“And found nothing.”

  “Right. So they’ll watch and wait for us to come home.”

  Remi was nodding, smiling. “We don’t come home.”

  “Right. If they come looking for us, we’ve got confirmation the game’s afoot.”

  “Did you say ‘the game’s afoot’? Really?”

  Sam shrugged. “Thought I’d try it out, see how it plays.”

  “Oh, Sherlock . . .” Remi said, rolling her eyes.

  WITH THE BELL and raft in tow, they retraced their course through ankle inlet and to the mangrove lagoon. Nightfall was only a couple hours away. They spent an hour of this time tooling around the lagoon’s perimeter looking for a suitable hiding spot for the raft, which they found along the eastern shoreline where a cluster of cypress trees were growing diagonally from the bank. Using the gaff, they eased the raft beneath the overhanging branches, then Sam dove in and tied it off to one of the trunks. “How’s it look?” Sam called from behind the screen.“Can’t see a thing. They’d have to get in there to find it.”