by WW Mortensen
Of course, like the others, she already knew what had lured Ed here. She recalled that warm July night a few years back, him spilling the beans over beers at their favourite SoHo bar. He’d spoken awkwardly of the times when as a boy his grandfather on his father’s side would regale him with tales of a lost city hidden deep within the jungles of South America… and of an ancient civilisation that possessed an object of strange power. Ed’s grandfather had been obsessed with the topic.
Ed came from a wealthy New England family, flush with ‘old money’ bolstered by a property development empire. Ed’s father, Henry Reardon Jnr, had gained control of the family business at a young age, taking over from his father, Henry Snr, as he had from his own father before him. Henry Snr had happily relinquished control in exchange for an early retirement. He was an avid collector, a kind-hearted yet hard-spoken man who in the years following his wife’s death had found solace in scouring the globe and adding to the dozens of ancient artefacts adorning the family home.
Ed had told her there was one object of special interest to his grandfather. The artefact, a small stone disc covered in grooves and other strange markings, was rumoured to have come from an old and mysterious civilisation located in the foothills of the South American Andes.
Giddy as much with anticipation as beer, Rebecca had thought the story of the lost South American city was one she already knew, albeit in varied form, that she had heard long before she had ever made Ed’s acquaintance. It went that once upon a time, several thousand years ago—in fact, at a time even before the mighty Egyptians—a great continent existed, a land that was now lost to the world, destroyed in a sudden cataclysm of erupting volcanoes and violent earthquakes and great floods that sank it without trace to the bottom of the sea.
This, Rebecca knew, was the story of Atlantis, a legendary civilisation of such wealth and technology as had never been seen before, erased in the blink of an eye. It was said that those who survived the cataclysm spread out across the world, to places ranging from the Mediterranean to Africa, India, and Central and South America, and in time founded many civilizations, the Mayan and the Incan and the Egyptian among them. Atlantis had even been linked to places like Stonehenge and the Nazca lines of Peru.
But Ed’s story was not of Atlantis. What Rebecca hadn’t known was that similar tales existed, rumours of other lost continents that, like Atlantis, now rested on the ocean floor. Atlantis was supposedly located in the Atlantic Ocean—hence its name—but Ed had alluded to a sunken, mid-Pacific land mass. Some referred to this continent as Mu, others T’aeva. According to legend, like the Atlanteans, the people of this continent had also fled a great cataclysm to found colonies in other parts of the world.
The lost city described to Henry Snr was supposedly one of the sites where refugees of the doomed Pacific continent had resettled.
Despite an absence of evidence, Henry Snr was fascinated with the idea that such a city might have existed. Research revealed the sixteenth century explorations of the Spanish conquistadors throughout Central and South America had been spurred by similar tales, with one story suggesting the T’aevans—who, as legend had it, could harness the power of the sun—had founded a metropolis deep in the jungle, and the secret of their power was hidden, along with mountains of gold and other treasures, within the city.
As it had to the conquistadors, the lure proved too great for Henry Snr. Before long, he embarked upon the first of several expeditions he would lead into the South American jungles in search of the colony.
Of course, Ed’s father had been unimpressed—in his opinion, the whole thing was a waste of time and money. But his focus was the family business, and he didn’t interfere as the bond between Ed and Henry Snr strengthened. Ed had told her the two of them would share a cup of tea or hot chocolate out in the garden, or in the library or the kitchen, and Ed’s grandfather would fill his head with boy’s-own stories of adventure and tales from around the world—and of course, of the lost jungle city he would one day uncover.
Years passed, so too seven attempts at finding the city, all of them unsuccessful. But Henry Snr wouldn’t be swayed, and when Ed was still a boy, the family patriarch embarked on his eighth—and last—sojourn into the Amazonian rainforest.
Only a few weeks in, Henry Reardon Snr’s entire expedition, suddenly and without trace, simply vanished.
What had befallen him and the dozen men who had been in his company remained forever unknown. The official explanation was that they’d become lost, run out of supplies, and had perished in the jungle, though no bodies were ever recovered.
Ed, the boy, had been distraught. At the bar that night Ed, the man, hadn’t been afraid to tell her that. He’d welled with tears and waved to the bartender for two more beers. It had occurred to Rebecca that Ed had made himself a promise that fateful day. He would finish what his grandfather had started. He would prove him correct. He would prove it to his father, to himself, to anyone that doubted him. He would find the city.
Watching him talk, Rebecca had detected a deeper undercurrent, something in the way he went over certain details, the glint in his eye. She’d seen it before, even hints of it in herself.
Obsession.
She’d sought Ed’s hand across the table and he’d given it to her. That night, Ed had needed to talk, and she’d been there for him. He told her about his life as a young man, about how he’d finished school with grades good enough to get him into higher studies at Boston University, where he’d enrolled in a range of subjects focusing on South American archaeology and history. He told her how he’d fallen in with some of the campus environmentalists and had become fascinated with resource exploitation and renewable energy sources. But he’d never been academically inclined, and eventually he quit his studies, to the chagrin of his father. Spurning the family legacy, Ed drifted aimlessly for a couple of years, backpacking around the world, working odd jobs. For a time, he joined Greenpeace.
At twenty-five, Ed came into a great deal of money, courtesy of his grandfather. This was what he’d been sweating on for years.
He’d had plans for his inheritance.
Ed used the money to fund his own trips to South America and the jungle foothills of the Andes in search of the elusive city and the strange object of power his grandfather had himself looked for. And in truth, the object had become his focus. He’d told Rebecca that throughout his time at university, and in the years following, the notion that an ancient civilisation could somehow harness the sun’s energy had been like a seed growing in the back of his mind. His eyes had lit up when he’d said this, and then glowed preternaturally when he relayed a story suggesting the Incas themselves knew of a race with such powers and had named the city of these people ‘Intihuasi’. In Quechan, the language of the Incas, Intihuasi apparently meant ‘House of the Sun’.
But like those of his grandfather, Ed’s trips were unsuccessful.
That mid-summer night in SoHo was not long after Ed had turned thirty-three. Rebecca had recently moved to the States after landing her new job at the museum and they’d already been on a handful of dates. Over the following months she would learn more about his obsession. She’d see, too, the undertow of doubt, anger and confusion, of frustration and impatience. But overriding all of that, she would come to recognise a fierce determination. He wasn’t giving up. She admired that. And while she’d never put any faith in the stories, she’d had faith in him.
They had emerged from the bar in the early hours of the following morning, the sky lightening as arm in arm they walked the short distance to Ed’s apartment. It was an evening Rebecca would remember with great clarity—the night she had realised, for the first time in her life, she was in love…
“Actually, Bec,” Jessy said, and Rebecca spun to her, not realising Jessy had overheard her question to Ed, “it’s not an Easter Island statue, or moai, at all—though I agree it looks like one.” Turning from the statue to take a seat at the fire, Jessy said to Ed, “I believe I’ve
cracked your theory.”
“Oh?”
Jessy smiled knowingly. “Easter Island—Rapa Nui—lies 2,000 miles off the coast of South America, with its closest inhabited neighbour, another island, about 1,400 miles away. It’s perhaps the most isolated of all the inhabited places in the world. While most contend the first people to settle there were Polynesians, some suggest the original inhabitants may have come from the east: South America. Local tradition, however, has it that the natives of Rapa Nui actually arrived from a long-lost, sunken land—the continent of T’aeva.”
“Let me guess,” Rebecca said. “Some of the refugees from the cataclysm that caused the ‘lost’ Pacific continent to sink fled to the jungles of South America—”
“—and others to the island of Rapa Nui,” Jessy finished, “both bearing with them, in different directions, the same knowledge and culture. The arrival of strangers from the sea is a common thread in creation myths throughout the Pacific.”
Rebecca turned to Ed. “So, the descendants of the original inhabitants—and refugees—of T’aeva were responsible for building the moai of Easter Island, and the one looming above us now.”
Ed grinned. “That’s what I’m proposing.”
Jessy couldn’t resist a smile of her own. “I’m not sure how your theory might go down with academia—”
Ed opened his mouth, perhaps to let her know what they could do with their opinions, but Rebecca cut him off. “What led you to finding it here?” she asked. “We’re a long way from the Andes, where you originally started your search.”
“I’ve got Owen to thank for that,” Ed said.
Rebecca felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find Owen juggling disposable trays of food. “Bon appétit,” he said.
Famished, Rebecca gratefully took her tray and forked a portion of the MRE field ration into her mouth. It tasted like chicken. It wasn’t that bad.
Ed took his own meal and patted his friend on the back. “Three months ago, Owen uncovered the last piece of the puzzle.”
Owen took a seat at the fire. “Here’s the thing—I didn’t do anything. I received an anonymous package and simply passed it on to Ed.”
Rebecca looked from one man to the other. As she did, something brushed her leg, and she glanced down as Priscilla leapt into her lap, almost upending her dinner.
“I told you she would get used to you!” Enrique said, laughing.
“Why, hello there, young lady,” Rebecca said, steadying her tray. She gave the monkey a rigorous pat before looking back at Owen. “You were saying?”
“It’s convoluted,” Owen said. “But this is what we know. About eighteen months ago, while I was off in the eastern Pindare, a former colleague of mine, Irving Rosenlund, won government backing to contact a lost tribe thought to be living in the unexplored north-west. Rarely do we do this: FUNAI’s policy is to demarcate these remote areas and leave the tribe alone. But Rosenlund was a glory-hound with high-level connections, and he’d managed to convince the right people there was value in such an excursion. He entered the jungle with a team of local tribespeople who would help him communicate, as neighbouring tribes usually have similar dialects. After several weeks of searching, the bastard found what he was looking for.” Owen shook his head, his voice tinged with begrudging respect.
He went on. “Bearing gifts—axes, cooking implements, stuff like that—Rosenlund earned the tribe’s trust. He referred to them as the Yuguruppu, and spent several months living as one of them, learning their ways, living off the land as they did.”
Owen’s expression darkened. “But something happened. Rosenlund went missing. How or why is a mystery—perhaps he’d offended the Yuguruppu somehow and they turned on him. No-one knows for sure. But with him went his diaries, his maps, all his research.”
Rebecca frowned. “So how do you know all this?”
Owen held up a finger. “The package. Months after his disappearance, this old military map with handwritten markings shows up in my mailbox, bundled together with the tattered pages of several field diaries.”
“Rosenlund’s research?” Rebecca asked.
Owen nodded. “I’m guessing most of it was missing, but there were pages of handwritten notes.”
“Handwritten? That’s old-school,” Jessy said.
“No internet, no power, remember?” Owen said. “Anyway, his notes recount an interesting story. The Yuguruppu told Rosenlund that long ago, their ancestors had encountered another tribe—a group of tall people with intimidating physiques who had come from across a great, distant river, to settle in a place that was sacred to the Yuguruppu. There, they built great huts, the likes of which the Yuguruppu had never seen. The newcomers seemed friendly, but the Yuguruppu were offended they’d built their huts on revered ground. They’d tried to stop this, but the tall people had strange and special powers which the Yuguruppu feared. In the end, it didn’t matter. In settling there, the newcomers had woken the gods from their peaceful slumber. They were so outraged they banished this new tribe—and the Yuguruppu—from the sacred place.”
“Gods? What kind of gods?”
“I don’t know,” Owen said. “Nothing about their nature or identity is revealed in Rosenlund’s notes. Maybe he didn’t know, or maybe that information was missing. But Rosenlund formed a theory. Understanding the Yuguruppu had no concept of the sea or the ocean, he speculated the ‘great river’ may have been the Pacific, and the new tribe had crossed it to settle in the Amazon basin of north-western Brazil. He wondered if the ‘great huts’ described by the Yuguruppu were in fact buildings.”
“You mean a city?” Jessy asked.
Owen nodded. “He asked the Yuguruppu for its location. They trusted him enough to tell him of two places: one, a signpost that marked the borders of the new tribe’s territory—they knew of others, but this was the nearest—as well as the site of the city itself.”
“And Rosenlund marked this information on the map,” Rebecca said.
Owen nodded. “A lost jungle city! Obviously, I thought of Ed. I knew he’d been looking much farther west, in the Peruvian lowlands, and north of there, in the Colombian lowlands, and had even searched northern Brazil near the border of Colombia and Venezuela. But he’d never ventured so far south—or so far inland. It was a long shot, but I figured he’d want a look.”
“And so here we are!” Ed said excitedly. “Talk about luck!”
“After all these years, you deserved some,” Rebecca said. She felt a sudden sting of tears—joy, relief and wonder all mixed together, and would have hugged him had Jessy not beaten her to it.
“And you’re sure it’s the right city?” Jessy asked, pulling back.
“There’s no doubt,” Ed said. His eyes glistened, and Rebecca sensed he, too, was on the verge of tears. “Tomorrow when we get to S2, I’ll prove it.”
Rebecca turned to Owen. “So, who sent you the map?”
“I have no idea,” Owen shrugged, perplexed. “I had told a few people at the Foundation about Ed’s search, you know, in general conversation. I presume that’s the connection, but it may have gone through several sets of hands before reaching mine. Beats me how any of his research was uncovered in the first place.”
Rebecca stroked Priscilla’s head absently and wondered why anyone would send the information anonymously. It didn’t make sense. She looked down at her lap. Priscilla had curled into a ball and fallen asleep. Her tiny chest rose and fell rhythmically as she dozed.
Ed smiled at the two of them. “I’m bushed, too. I think I’ll get some shuteye myself.” He glanced at Sanchez. “Three watches, three hours each.”
Sanchez handed Ed the rifle as the group determined the start and finish times of each watch. Rebecca and Owen were teamed together and would take the third shift. Rebecca checked the time. It was almost eight o’clock.
Gently passing Priscilla to Enrique, Rebecca stood and said to Ed, “I guess I’ll see you at the change of watch.”
“Before you go,�
� Ed said, “I need to show you something. Know how to use one of these?” He held up the rifle.
“No. Do I need to?”
“As a precaution… yes.” He ran through the basics of how to load, cock, aim and fire the weapon. It was a .340 Weatherby Mark V Deluxe, complete with telescopic sight. “Magazine capacity is three, plus one in the chamber. Make sure your aim is true before you squeeze the trigger.”
He passed it to her. Rebecca had never held a rifle and took it tentatively. Following his instructions, she loaded and cocked the weapon several times. Feeling no safer than before, she passed it back.
“If you have any questions, Owen knows what to do, anyway. I’ll see you in a few hours.” With that, he handed the rifle back to Sanchez and disappeared—into Jessy’s tent.
Ah. That’s why she’d counted only five tents earlier.
She headed for hers, bidding Sanchez and Enrique goodnight as she went. She could hear Owen in his tent, already snoring.
She was dead-tired and fell asleep quickly, her last waking thoughts of SoHo.
12
It seemed like only a few minutes later when Rebecca woke to the soft call of her name. It was Owen, outside the door to her tent. Groaning, she checked her watch and saw it was just after two. Struggling from her sleeping bag, she joined him at the fire.
The jungle was quiet. In the background, the ultrasonic devices hummed. A breath of wind—which, in the rainforest, was unusual—whistled though the canopy. All around, leaves rippled in gentle surging waves in the faint orange glow of the fire.
“Here, this will help,” Owen said. He passed her a mug of coffee.
Still half-asleep, she took it gratefully. As she sipped, Owen dumped chunks of dead wood onto the fire, sending reddish-yellow sparks skyward. Like her, he sat on one of the now empty crates that had stored the tents and other equipment. Beside him rested the rifle that Enrique had carried from Base Camp. Next to her was Sanchez’s rifle. She was surprised he’d let it out of his sight—he seemed the type of man who considered his weapon an extension of his body.