The Vanishing Tribe

by Alex Archer

Annja snatched the map off the dash and looked it over while trying to keep one eye on the road. Lenny’s wound was a bad one; if she didn’t get him help soon he might bleed out, tourniquet or no tourniquet. They were too far from Maun. She was going to have to find something closer if she wanted to do Lenny any good. The only place for miles around was the clinic they’d been headed toward.

  Dr. Crane’s, it was, then.

  A little wooden sign staked into the dirt at the edge of the road was her only indication that she’d reached the turn. She almost missed it, necessitating a quick slam of the brakes that would have thrown Lenny to the floor if she hadn’t taken the precaution of belting him into his seat. He didn’t notice, though. Still unconsciousness. That, Annja knew, wasn’t a good sign.

  She threw the Nissan into Reverse, backed up a few feet to clear the turn and then took off down the track.

  She only hoped she wasn’t already too late.

  Less than five minutes later she emerged from the trees and spotted a cluster of buildings behind a chain-link fence a few hundred yards ahead of her. She could see people on the other side of the gate and she started honking the horn as she raced forward. They had the gate open and standing wide by the time she reached it. She pulled up next to the main building and slewed to a stop.

  “I’ve got an injured man here!” she yelled as she got out of the car and threw open Lenny’s door.

  With the help of several men, Annja was able to wrestle Lenny out of the Nissan and carry him inside the house. A tall, thin man with round glasses and a head of curly brown hair met them in the foyer, took one look and said, “This way, quickly now!” He led them into the room beyond, which turned out to be the kitchen.

  “Get him up on the table,” he ordered.

  Annja and her helpers didn’t waste any time, just swept the table clear and hefted Lenny’s unconscious form onto it.

  The newcomer, who turned out to be Henry Crane, the doctor in charge of the clinic, took one look at Lenny’s injury and sent his people scurrying for supplies. Including, Annja was relieved to hear, a surgical bag.

  “What happened?” Henry asked as he moved over to the sink and washed his hands.

  “We ran into poachers and they started shooting.”

  Henry shook his head. “Those bastards are getting more dangerous every day.” He dried his hands on a clean towel and returned to the table where he began to examine Lenny’s wound in earnest. “You’re both lucky to be alive,” he said absently.

  Given all she’d been through over the past few years since picking up Joan of Arc’s sword and being drawn into the role of protector of the innocent, getting gunned down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time would have been the height of irony. She didn’t say that, though. Instead, she nodded in Lenny’s direction. “What’s the verdict?”

  Henry winced. “I won’t know for sure until I get in there, but appearances suggest that the bullet struck the femur and started tumbling, which is why you have a much bigger exit than entry wound. No matter what, we have to get in there and stop the bleeding.”

  Annja didn’t see any delicate way to ask her next question, so she just came right out with it. “Do you have any experience with this kind of surgery?”

  He was already going to work on Lenny, cutting away his jeans and washing the wound with water so he could see what he was doing. “I’m a licensed internist, if that helps put your mind at ease, but I won’t lie to you. Aside from a surgical rotation during my residency at Mount Sinai in New York a decade ago, I haven’t had much experience with gunshot wounds.”

  Given that there wasn’t much she could do one way or the other, Annja smiled weakly and said, “Guess I’d better stop pestering you and let you get to work, then, huh?”

  Henry glanced over at her. “If by that you mean getting over here and helping me with this, then, by all means, step to.”

  13

  Porter stood beside the Land Rover and used a pair of binoculars to scan the complex ahead of him. The Creed woman’s Nissan was there all right, just as he’d expected it would be, parked close to the clinic’s main building and currently being watched over by a pair of the doctor’s hired hands. He didn’t see either Creed or her male companion. They were no doubt inside somewhere, regaling their host with the tale of their narrow escape from a band of ruthless poachers.

  Unfortunately, that left Porter with limited options to regaining control of the map. He wasn’t particularly thrilled with any of them.

  The simplest and most direct option would be for his men to storm the compound and take the map back by force. Only a handful of the doctor’s people were armed and those just well enough to scare off wildlife. Ten minutes after Porter gave the order the entire compound would be in his control, he knew.

  But taking such direct action brought troubles of its own. Once the shooting started he’d have to kill them all, from the doctor on down to his lowliest staff member. It wasn’t the idea of shooting innocents that troubled Porter; he had plenty of blood on his hands and had no problem adding to it. No, it wasn’t that at all. The problem was that the doctor was too well connected for an assault on his compound to be ignored or simply brushed off as a consequence of life in war-torn Africa. The authorities were sure to come after him with everything they had. He didn’t know for certain how many individuals were currently inside the doctor’s compound and would therefore be unable to say for certain that he’d managed to get them all.

  A full-on assault on the compound was therefore out of the question.

  He briefly considered waiting to waylay Annja on the road once she left the compound behind, but he was afraid she would try to sneak out under the cover of darkness. And he would lose her as a result. He couldn’t allow that to happen. She was his only link to the Lost City and the Vanished Tribe.

  What he needed was a way to keep track of her without letting her know.

  A smile crossed Porter’s face as he realized he had just the thing.

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER Henry stepped out onto the back porch and sat on the step next to Annja. He handed her a glass of iced tea and then took a long swallow from his own glass.

  When he was finished, he said, “The surgery went well. I was able to tie off the blood vessels to keep him from losing any more blood. Thank you for your help in there. He’s resting quietly for now, but he’s going to need constant care over the next few days and I don’t have the facility here for that.”

  Annja nodded. “When can he travel?”

  Henry grimaced. “Hard to say. These rough roads will bounce him all over the place in that vehicle of yours and that’s not good for his leg. He could tear open that wound of his and undo all the work I just did. On the other hand, I’ll run out of the antibiotics he needs to prevent infection in about forty-eight hours. It’s six on the one hand, half a dozen on the other.”

  Annja was silent for a moment. “If I could arrange for a helicopter to pick him up, could you see to it that he gets aboard?”

  Henry turned to face her with a frown. “And where will you be?”

  “Our producer has only given us a week to get this story together and I’m already behind as it is. If I can’t pull it together in time, we’ll both lose our jobs.”

  It wasn’t entirely the truth, but she didn’t want to tell him the real reason she was afraid to stay in one place too long. Porter would come after her the minute he figured out she’d left Maun. He might already be on her tail. Staying here for two more days would give him all the time he needed to catch up with her and she had no idea what would happen when he did. She didn’t want to risk putting Henry or any of his staff in danger.

  If Henry was surprised by her willingness to leave her companion behind he didn’t show it. He sipped his iced tea and then asked, “Television, huh?”

  “That’s right.” She took a minute to give him a rough idea of what the show was about and then said, “We were actually on our way to see you when we r
an into the poachers.”

  “Coming to see me?” He put his glass on the step. “Good heavens, why?”

  “Three years ago explorer and adventurer Robert Humphrey set off to find what he called the Lost City of the Kalahari and was never seen again. We’ve recently come across information that might help us discover what happened to him and are doing what we can to retrace his final route.”

  Annja didn’t miss that the doctor had stiffened when she mentioned Humphrey’s name.

  He knows something.

  Henry glanced down at his drink, then smiled at her disarmingly. “I’d be happy to help, Ms. Creed, but I honestly don’t know what I can do for you.”

  Annja knew better. His reaction had confirmed what she’d been able to figure out on her own. It was time to put her cards on the table and see how he responded. She unbuttoned the pocket of the fresh shirt she’d dug out of her pack and pulled out the copy she’d made of Humphrey’s original drawing with its cryptic clue. Unfolding it, she laid it on the step between them.

  Annja quoted from memory.

  “The tulip stands amid the wild beasts,

  Within its walls, the first of the answers you seek.

  Find the gray crown that watches over the flock,

  To receive a piece of the puzzle you hope to unlock.”

  Henry made no move to pick up the paper. He didn’t even glance at it.

  Gotcha.

  “Once you realize you’re looking for a building,” Annja continued, “it doesn’t take more than a few minutes on the internet to learn that this compound was originally built by a Dutch missionary back in 1865. Given that the building we’re now in stands in the middle of the world’s second-largest game reserve, I don’t think I’m mistaken that this is the ‘tulip’ referred to in the verse.”

  The doctor steepled his fingers together pensively but still didn’t say anything.

  “That was all I’d managed to figure out when I left Maun this morning. When you introduced yourself the rest of the puzzle fell into place. Given the number of gray-crowned cranes we’ve seen since entering the reserve, I’m disappointed I didn’t figure it out sooner.”

  Henry chuckled, finally looking her way. “Nothing to be disappointed about,” he told her. “I certainly wouldn’t have figured it out.”

  Annja felt her pulse quicken at the confirmation that she’d been correct. “Did Robert leave this puzzle piece with you?”

  “I don’t know about a puzzle piece, but he did leave me a letter. Asked me to give it to the one who came asking about that riddle. Come and I’ll get it for you.”

  He led her back into the house and down the hall to the last room on the left. Bookshelves lined one wall, a collection of photographs another. A pair of armchairs with a lamp between them turned one corner of the room into a reading nook. A solid wooden desk, its top lost in papers and files, occupied much of the rest of the space. Henry went directly to it and began hunting for Humphrey’s letter.

  Annja stepped over to the photographs. There were a few wildlife shots—elephants, zebras, that kind of thing—but most of the photographs showed Henry involved in one project or another. A photograph of him helping a pair of what looked like San tribesmen deliver a baby goat hung next to a shot of Henry talking with the mayor of Maun, according to a caption under the image. A picture of him digging a well was paired with an oversize shot of him playing in a group of giggling schoolchildren. It was a collision of the old and the new, ancient and modern, and to Annja it seemed to sum up life in southern Africa pretty well.

  One photo of Henry and a heavyset man with curly hair and an infectious grin in particular caught her eye. The two men stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling at the camera like high school chums, the plains of the Kalahari stretching away behind them.

  The other man in the photo with Henry was Robert Humphrey.

  “Ah! Here it is.”

  She turned to find Henry holding an envelope out to her. It was creased and faded, but other than that, not too worse for wear.

  Annja stepped forward eagerly.

  14

  Annja’s heart was racing as she took the envelope from Henry. If she was right, it contained another clue to where Humphrey had gone.

  She turned it over in her hands, studying it. There was no writing on the outside. It wasn’t thick. It probably held a single piece of paper, two at the most.

  Annja looked up to find Henry watching her curiously.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” he asked.

  “In a moment. What did he say to you, when he gave you this?” she asked, holding the envelope up.

  Henry shrugged. “Nothing much, really. ‘Give this to the one who comes asking about the tulips and the crane,’ or something like that.”

  “That’s it? Nothing about what it was for or why he wanted you to hold on to it?”

  “That’s it. Robert wasn’t one for long explanations.”

  “I’ll say,” Annja muttered under her breath as she turned the envelope over in her hands. It was just an ordinary envelope, like millions before it, the kind you could buy in any stationery store.

  “Please, sit down,” Henry said, indicating the nearby armchair, “and I’ll try to explain.”

  Once they both found a seat, Henry went on. “Robert and I have known each other for years. High school chums and all that. He’d visited a time or two in the past, but was never enamored with Africa the way I was and as a result never stayed for long. Then all that business about bigfoot or whatever the hell it was he was chasing came out in the press and he wanted a place to get out of the limelight for a while, somewhere remote enough that the paparazzi couldn’t be bothered to hunt him down. Can’t get much more remote than this without the temperatures being below freezing.”

  Annja laughed. That was certainly true. “So you saw him a lot before that last expedition?”

  “Oh, no,” Henry replied. “If there’s one fact I’ve learned about Robert in all the years I’ve known him it’s that he can’t sit still for more than ten minutes at a time. He wasn’t in Botswana a week before he was off again on one of his quests.”

  She held up the still-unopened envelope. “And this? When did he give you this?”

  Henry sighed. “He stopped here on his way out into the bush that last time. We shared a meal and he left the next morning. He was always asking me to watch over something or other, so I didn’t give it any thought at the time. Now I wish I had.”

  Annja could hear the regret plainly in his voice.

  “Over wine that night he gave me the envelope along with those crazy instructions of his. Tulips and crane? I had no idea what he was talking about until you read that verse to me earlier. To be honest, I’d forgotten I even had it until that moment.”

  “Time we find out what it’s all about, then, don’t you think?”

  Henry nodded.

  Annja carefully broke the seal on the envelope and looked inside. Just as she’d suspected, there was a single folded piece of paper.

  She took it out, unfolded it and began to read aloud.

  If you’re reading this, it no doubt means that things haven’t gone as well as I’d hoped they would on my search for the Vanished Tribe and their Lost City. That’s too bad; it would have been nice to return home a victor one last time.

  I have little doubt that I have, in fact, unearthed the location of that ancient city and, like Mallory before me, perished on my return trip before I could prove my success to the world. While unfortunate, I’m apparently not in a position to complain about it at this point. That’s where you come in, my dear reader.

  I’ve left clues to the location of the Lost City. If you’re reading this, you’ve found the first of them. At the end of this letter you’ll find the second. I hope you’re like me—intrigued by the mysteries of the past and driven to solve them—and that you’ll eagerly take up the search on my behalf.

  Tell that old windbag Crane I’ll miss
him; he’s a far better man than most.

  Good luck and godspeed.

  R. Humphrey.

  In the place where Tantor goes to die,

  Ahab’s bane trumpets his call.

  They say that music soothes the savage heart,

  And makes allies of us all.

  Annja looked over at Henry. “Windbag?”

  The doctor lifted his hands and grinned. “He used to tell me I talked too much.”

  Annja laughed. She knew just the type; a particular producer back in New York came to mind.

  “So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

  This time it was her turn to shrug. “Try to solve the puzzle, I guess.”

  That was a given. The idea of turning back because Lenny had been injured frankly wasn’t even something she’d considered. Forward, that was the direction Annja liked to take whenever possible.

  “And the clue? Do you know what it means?”

  The clue. Annja couldn’t help but smile. Humphrey had been a clever man.

  “Not all of it, no. But I’ve got a good start on it.”

  “Really?”

  Henry’s tone clearly showed he had no clue what it was referring to and Annja decided to take some pity on him. “In the first clue your friend Robert used plants and animals to represent the key components of the clue, namely the tulip and the gray-crowned crane. In the second clue, he’s making literary references.”

  Henry looked at her in confusion. “I understand the Ahab reference, but Tantor? Is that an author’s name?”

  “Nope,” Annja answered with a grin. “It’s the name of an elephant, actually. From Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan novels.”