by Carrie Regan
Moe accompanied them through the airport, his family connections whisking them past security and customs. After a long embrace, he bid them farewell, insisting that they visit again.
Settled into their cozy seats, surrounded by well-dressed diplomats and businesspeople, their evening with Thompson seemed a distant dream.
“To friends lost, and friends and lessons gained,” AJ toasted as they clinked glasses.
Liz took a long sip, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “I could sleep for a month.”
“But we’ve got so much to do when we get back! A whole show to edit. Our media tour!”
Liz opened an eye and looked at him sideways. “I’m kidding,” he said, patting her knee.
“What should we do with the tapes?” Liz asked.
AJ pulled out his rucksack and peered at the neat collection of cassette boxes. “I don’t know. I don’t want the tapes. Not much anyone could do with them, either, I imagine,” he said. He went to place the pack back under the seat and felt a slight bulge in the pocket that held the pack’s little-used rain cover. “What the…?” he asked, unzipping it.
To his surprise, the rain cover had been removed. In its place, AJ found a pint-sized crude leather drawstring bag. Liz searched and found an identical bag in her own pack. They recalled their walk in the jungle with Thompson, when he had encouraged them to leave their belongings behind.
Quickly, they pushed their packs aside in favor of the small leather sacks, and slowly unraveled the drawstrings. Peering inside, the dim light from the plane’s overhead lights reflected on the sparkling surfaces of hundreds of dazzling gemstones. Liz poked through the generous scoop of precious stones – diamonds, rubies, and emeralds – unable to believe her eyes.
“There must be a fortune here. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth,” AJ whispered.
“They can’t be real,” Liz gasped.
“Look real enough to me,” AJ said, discreetly withdrawing a stone and examining it.
Liz paused, then looked at AJ. “’You’ll carry the gifts of the Bambada with you forever’,” she quoted.
“Excuse me?”
“It was one of the last things Thompson said to me that last night. ‘You’ll carry the gifts of the Bambada with you forever. They’ll change your life,’ he said.”
AJ burst out in a long, hearty laugh and Liz joined him as they continued to sift through the bag, admiring the stones. He went silent just as suddenly when his hand struck something unusual at the bottom of the sack.
Withdrawing his hand, he opened it to reveal a smaller leather pouch. Liz leaned forward, curious. They exchanged glances, and Liz slowly unwrapped the strap of leather that held it shut. She peered into the pouch, then tipped it so that its contents tumbled into AJ’s open palm. It was a familiar, round brown chestnut-like orb: a nut from the Nburu tree.
CHAPTER 56
The package arrived just as the Adventure Channel hate mail had begun to taper off. Behind his desk in the cluttered, windowless office, Ned eyed it suspiciously, wondering if it wasn’t too late for some fanatical viewer to exact revenge by letter bomb. It didn’t have a return address, and had simply been sent to “The Channel Formerly Known as Adventure.”
In his role at World Expeditions, a new Saturday afternoon program NBC was developing, Ned was in charge of cleaning up the mess at the now-defunct Adventure Channel. They’d described the associate producer position as a great opportunity, but he quickly realized what an exaggeration that had been. The job required him to sort through and log hours upon hours of old Adventure programs in order to find the best footage to reedit and air. He was also required to read and respond to all correspondence about the “Adventure affair.” The situation needed to be managed carefully. NBC had to maintain its image as a respectable player, the only respectable player in the whole mess. Then, when the uproar died down, and the public turned its claws on the next scandal, NBC could quietly resume feeding the public’s demand for tales of death-defying exploration and adventure, all at a discount price, thanks to Graham’s brilliant deal with Lee.
After eyeing and avoiding the package for several days, Ned gave it a good shake in a last attempt to identify its contents. When nothing appeared ready to detonate, he finally opened it, and was immediately taken aback. It contained a stack of videotapes, clearly labeled “Max Carrington’s Nburu Expedition.”
He quickly pushed all other videos off his desk and, hands trembling, plugged the first of three dozen tapes into a player. Twenty-four hours later, still at the desk, surrounded by half-empty cartons of Chinese takeout, his bloodshot eyes remained glued to the screen. It was all there – their expectations, fears, the journey in, the visit with the missionaries and discovery of Thompson’s pack, the gruesome scene of human skins drying on racks in the jungle, footage of Carrington and crew hacking through the jungle, and finally, the disappearance of Buddy, the arrival of Alex, and the tragic scene of Carrington in front of Troy’s remains. The tape flickered off, and Ned hastily grabbed the box, eager to see how the story ended. He could already imagine the documentary he’d make, a program that would fill in the missing pieces and provide the public with the details they still desperately desired. NBC’s primetime special had included only the little that was known about the expedition from the team’s dispatches. These tapes chronicled the team’s dramatic rise and fall, moment by moment. It would be the story of his career, he naïvely thought, unaware that once the executive producer found out about the tapes, they’d be taken from him, the project handed off to a seasoned producer.
Ned lifted the box and found it unexpectedly light. It was empty. He shuffled through the tapes once again to ensure he’d watched every one. He had. There was simply nothing more to see.
He whipped the box across the room angrily, and knocked an empty food carton off the desk. How could he make a story without an ending? Was this somebody’s idea of a sick joke? Suddenly, he realized: one person could tell him what happened after the tapes ended, could fill in the empty holes in the story.
He got up slowly, curiously, from his chair, and crossed the room. Picking up the box, he turned it over gently, looking for clues about its sender. A splash of color – strange stamps – adorned the torn paper, and Ned examined the postmark. Honduras?
EPILOGUE
Six months later, somewhere in Central America…
Liz looked out the window and smiled as AJ, tan, fit, and bare-chested, raced along the beach, kicking a soccer ball to a group of giggling children who competed for control of it. Several small feet made haphazard contact, then sent the ball sailing into the surf. AJ rushed after them, growling, as they scattered with squeals of delight. He managed to scoop up the smallest of the children, who laughed all the harder as AJ spun him around.
AJ noticed Liz watching from inside their modest beachfront bungalow. Shooing the children off to their dormitory to prepare for dinner, he motioned for Liz to join him for their regular evening stroll.
She pulled on her sneakers, reflecting on how far they’d come in a year. After months of construction, their camp, nestled in a secluded section of rainforest along the Caribbean coast, was finally up and running, receiving groups of disadvantaged children and teens from cities throughout the Americas for two-week stints at a time. After months of interviews, they’d assembled a crack team of teachers and counselors who dealt with everything from drug abuse to psychological problems, all the while teaching the youngsters about the value of the rainforest and injecting them with an appreciation for the natural world. The program was an enormous success, life altering in some cases, and Liz and AJ struggled to decide which of their star campers they’d invite back to be peer counselors the following year.
Occasionally, Liz and AJ taught documentary production classes to some of the teenagers, but their staff was large enough to afford them a casual, caretaker’s lifestyle. For the moment, they enjoyed it. They had dreams, though, of leaving the camp in the hands of their capable st
aff and starting another for urban African children in the continent’s remote central jungle. Perhaps in a few years, they thought, when a certain friend was appointed Minister of Finance…
Liz walked to the windowsill and watered the plants. The bloom in the center, she noted on her way out, was still growing rapidly, and would probably need to be repotted again soon. Before long they’d be able to plant it outside their bungalow, and within a few years it would offer them shade and shelter. Its aromatic violet flowers had already started to sprout, and if you looked closely, you could see tiny beads that would grow to become those round, brown chestnut-like orbs that held so much mystery, so much power, and so much potential…
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Chapter Fifty Five
Chapter Fifty Six
Epilogue