Lost City of the Templars

by Paul Christopher

  Like most of the people in this or any other jungle, she was not the master of her fate. The young women, some as young as twelve, had been gathered up by other Indian tribes and then sold to White Star, who in turn sold them to the company that owned the mine. When they were no longer of any value to the company, White Star paid the original raiding parties to dispose of them.

  Plunkett spotted Kachiri in midafternoon. She had stopped under the shelter of a towering kapok tree, head bowed with exhaustion. Plunkett lifted his rifle. His weapon of choice was usually an Accuracy International AX 50, but today he was carrying a much lighter Dan-Inject projector rifle.

  Putting his eye to the scope sight, Plunkett aimed for the base of the girl’s neck and fired. There was a sharp cracking sound like a branch being snapped in two and then the girl slumped to one side.

  Plunkett crossed the fifty feet separating them and squatted down beside the girl’s motionless figure. He felt her wrist and quickly found a pulse. Pushing back her jet-black hair, he found the tranquilizer dart and removed it. He dropped the spent injector dart into a pouch at his side, then stood up, taking his radio out of its holster.

  “I’ve got her. Come and get me,” he said. Back at the mine they would take his GPS location from the tracer in his pack and send out one of the eight-wheeled Mudd Ox ATVs they used for transportation. At speeds of up to twenty miles per hour, the journey that had taken him more than half a day would take the agile ATV less than a fifth of that time. He and the girl would be back in camp before dark. He sat beside her under the big kapok tree and settled down to wait.

  • • •

  Father Francisco Garibaldi, one of the last remaining Assassini and traveling under the passport of Lord Jonathon Gibbs, late of Cape Town, South Africa, entered Brook’s Club on St. James’s Street in London, proffered his membership card at the registration desk and handed his overcoat to the uniformed porter.

  After eating a meal of roast grouse and buck rabbit with British raspberries in crème fraîche for dessert in the dining room, he went up the broad main staircase to the games room, a large chamber with tall windows covered by heavy drapes and a ceiling of complicated plaster moldings.

  He purchased twenty thousand pounds’ worth of plaques from the cashier, then asked for directions to the vingt-et-un tables. There were three of them clustered at the far end of the room and closest to the bar. Grayle was at the closest one, a heavy crystal scotch glass by his right hand and a cigarette in his left. The tables were semicircular with seating for six players.

  Other than Grayle, there were two other men at the table. Garibaldi chose to sit on the far left. The dealer was using a card shoe with standard Cartamundi green-backed, plastic-covered playing cards exactly like the one in the left-hand pocket of his evening jacket.

  He stayed out of the play for a few minutes watching the exquisitely dressed Grayle work the cards. Grayle was a man of roughly his own age, gray haired and slimly handsome with the arrogant, slightly aloof expression common to the English ruling class. His nails were perfectly manicured with just a hint of artificial gloss, his wedding ring was a simple gold band and the signet ring on his right index finger was the tower and helm crest of the Grayle family. The wristwatch was an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon in gold that looked as thin as a credit card.

  Garibaldi watched Grayle play for a dozen hands, betting steadily but not enormously, splitting or doubling down when he had the chance and rarely taking risks. Grayle had no obvious tells like playing with his ring or blinking too much or running his hand through his hair, but this wasn’t the kind of game where things were obvious. Garibaldi did notice a certain flaring of His Lordship’s nostrils when he had two face cards or a perfect twenty-one, but that was about it.

  He wasn’t counting cards and he wasn’t following any system that the priest could see; a man who gambled for recreation only and not because he was good at it or had it riding on his back like a demon.

  Garibaldi began to play in much the same way but with slightly larger bets. When Grayle got bored and tossed a fifty-pound plaque as a tip to the dealer, Garibaldi did the same.

  “Stand you a drink in the bar, Lord Grayle?” Garibaldi said as they left the table. Garibaldi had always been something of a mimic, and his South African accent was nearly perfect.

  “You know me?” Grayle asked.

  “Only by reputation, Your Lordship, and we are in the same business.”

  “Really?” Grayle said.

  “Diamonds,” said the priest.

  • • •

  Holliday stood on the main deck of the SS Amador and stared out into the blinding sheets of rain that pockmarked the river in front of them. The rain was so heavy that the jungle on either side of the ancient sternwheeler was nothing but a dark green blur. Peggy and Rafi were crowded into the pilothouse above him while the two guides, Nenderu and Tanaki, squatted in the stern, protected from the rain by the deck overhang just like Holliday in the bow.

  Even with the pounding rain and the steady chugging rumble of the paddlewheel, a strange silence had settled over everything, and Holliday found his thoughts wandering into strange places he hadn’t been to in many years.

  Another jungle many years ago and his night patrol was moving through the tangled ferns and grass and vines and mud when one of Charlie’s tin pie plate versions of a Claymore went off at waist level, cutting Rusty Smart in half and sending body parts in all directions.

  Rusty had been walking point and Holliday, a corporal then, had been two men back in the line. Rusty’s left forearm, wrist and hand were there in the mud, all blood, shredded flesh and splintered bone, and on his wrist the Timex his dad had given him for graduating from high school. Rusty always had it set on Chicago time, so it was reading seven thirty in the morning.

  All Holliday could think of was that Rusty was dead but his watch was still telling time. “Takes a licking but goes on ticking.” His dad would be sitting down to ham and eggs and home fries at Johnnie’s Grill, and his son was dead and the Timex still worked. It was all there, but none of it fit together.

  And he remembered lying with Fay in her hospital bed that bright sun-filled morning, cradling her in his arms and then feeling the life come out of her in an instant like the crumpled beginnings of a love letter tossed onto the floor. Standing in the bow of the boat, he felt his tears begin to fall for her and for Rusty Smart, who hadn’t been cried for in a very long time, and then he stepped forward out of the protection of the deck overhang and into the rain itself, feeling it hit his upturned face and eyes, the rain like tiny painful flecks of glass on his skin and his tears pouring for all those people he had loved and known and who had died and he felt his heart break into a thousand pieces and wondered if it would ever be whole again.

  “He thinks sad thoughts, that one,” said Tanaki to his grandfather, both of them sitting in the shadows of the stern, their voices low and unheard below the shouting of the rain and the thunder of the paddlewheel.

  “That is because he sees death ahead of him on the river,” replied Nenderu. “Perhaps even his own.”

  “And we lead him to this?” Tanaki asked.

  The old man nodded. “This our fate and his, as well, and this I think cannot be changed.”

  7

  The Mudd Ox from the mine arrived at Plunkett’s GPS coordinates just before sunset, which didn’t please the driver at all because he’d have to drive back in the dark and the nighttime jungle gave him the creeps. His name was Wally Beaman and he was here because he’d spent four years in Iraq and Afghanistan driving Humvees and lived to tell about it. The Mudd Ox was a long way down from a Humvee, but driving the ugly eight-wheeled ATV with the potbellied body paid three times as much.

  Plunkett was sleeping under a kapok tree, but there was no sign of the girl. He’d probably underdosed her and when he was asleep she’d run off. Beaman grinned. Plunkett was never going to live this one down.

  Beaman climbed out from behind
the wheel of Mudd Ox and headed across the clearing to the kapok tree. He stopped dead, his hand going to the MP5 clipped to his Sam Browne. There were two four-inch darts sticking out of Plunkett’s cheek, the end of each dart fletched with a wad of cotton like fiber from the seedpods of the same kind of tree Plunkett was lying under.

  The darts were blowgun projectiles tipped with curare and used for hunting by the local Indians. They were usually only used on small birds and animals, but most tribes also maintained a supply of the toxin from the golden dart frog, a one-milligram dose of which is capable of killing a bull elephant. Plunkett would have been dead before he even felt the darts hit his cheek.

  Beaman listened. As usual at this time of day, the jungle was like an orchestra tuning up before a performance. Tinamous and horned screamers fought it out with piping guans and pale-winged trumpeters. Military macaws tried to outdo platoons of blue-headed parrots, and howler monkeys tried to screech louder than anything. It was like the overture to a nightmare.

  There was a faint rustling sound that was out of tune. He pulled the MP5 off its snap clips and raised it, but by then about a dozen Hupdas appeared out of the jungle, the upper part of their faces painted solid black, the lower bloodred.

  “Shit,” Beaman said. He dropped the MP5 to the ground, but it was no good. The six men lifted their blowguns simultaneously and then Beaman knew exactly how quickly Plunkett had taken to die.

  • • •

  São João Joaquin, Fawcett’s last-known contact with civilization, was located on the west bank of the Negro River, but according to the journals the expedition actually began on the east bank at an unnamed village where he purchased canoes for his party and then bearers, seven boats in all.

  The rain, which had ended only a few hours before, had raised the water level of the river substantially, and the rudimentary docking facilities on the east-bank side were almost inundated. Fortunately Eddie had just enough room to moor the old riverboat.

  “Do you really think we’ll find anything?” Peggy asked her husband as they tied up to the rickety dock.

  “Trees and water,” laughed Rafi. “Lots of trees, lots of water.”

  They all disembarked and climbed the half-rotted steps up to the top of the bank. The village was a scattering of buildings, and most of the people squatting outside their entrances looked all or at least part Indian. Eddie began organizing porters to unload their gear and Tanaki approached Holliday.

  “My grandfather says there is a man here who was one of Fawcett’s luggage bearers on the last expedition. Would you like to see him?”

  Holliday laughed. “How old is this guy?”

  “He was sixteen at the time. His name is Palala Santos. Half Indian and half Brazilian. He is very old and has no teeth, but his eyes are bright and his thoughts are clear. He has many things to say, according to my grandfather.”

  “For how much?”

  “He asks for tobacco only. He likes the small cigars, if there is a choice.”

  They found Santos in something more than a hut but less than a shack at the edge of the village. A faint path led into the jungle beside the little structure, and howler monkeys played find-me, catch-me in the boughs of a strangler fig that stood a few feet away. Santos was squatting outside his hovel, a wide plank balanced on two plastic milk cartons in front of him. His face was a mass of wrinkles and creases and his once black hair was almost entirely white, but as Tanaki had said his dark eyes were clear, bright and intelligent. On the plank in front of him was a row of leathery shrunken heads. They looked very old, the skin almost black and as thin as parchment.

  Peggy went white, her eyes wide. “Those aren’t real, are they?”

  “Most Amazon tribes were once headhunters, but that was a very long time ago,” Tanaki said, his tone neutral.

  “They’re probably just howler monkeys for the tourists,” said Rafi.

  “Howler monkeys have big canines,” said Holliday. “These are real enough.”

  Santos mumbled something to Tanaki and gave him a small skin bag from the pocket of his tattered, homemade shorts.

  “He says the heads are from the time of the men who came here on cloud wings.”

  “Cloud wings?” Peggy said.

  Tanaki handed the skin bag to Holliday, who poured the contents into his hand: two gold Byzantine solidi, two Spanish gold doubloons and four gold Portuguese reais from the fifteenth century.

  “Santos found it behind the sewn-up eye sockets of four of the heads,” said Tanaki.

  “Sails,” said Holliday. “The big sails on the Santo Ovidio de Braga and the Santo João de Deus, the other two ships of the flotilla sent out by Pedro de Menezes Portocarrero in 1437.”

  “If they were like the ship they just found at the mouth of the Amazon, it means they were probably full of gold,” Rafi said.

  “So the question is, what were two galleons doing bringing treasure to the middle of nowhere?”

  • • •

  Charles Peace, chairman of the Pallas Group, sat at a rear table at McKeever’s Pub in McLean, Virginia, with his chief analyst, Cornell Desmond. Peace was having the filet mignon; Desmond was having the corned beef and cabbage. The pub was busy with the lunchtime crowd of low-level bureaucrats, and the place was noisy.

  “I hope there’s some reason for being here, Desmond; I must say I prefer the ambience and the menu in the executive dining room.”

  “I know, sir, but I felt the situation required discretion.”

  Desmond had the brain power of Harry Potter on a bad day. It had to be serious. “What situation?”

  “The Hupda.”

  “What about them?”

  “RAID-Three shows a large number of them heading north into the Itaqui reserve perimeter.”

  RAID stood for Resource Access and Intelligence Device. Four of the satellites had been launched between 2005 and 2010 using Arianespace S.A., a private facility in France. The satellites were in geostationary orbit over a variety of “hot spots” Pallas dealt with on a regular basis. Supposedly used for remote sensing of possible natural resources, they were actually equipped with the latest American “Misty” technology and were as good as any surveillance satellite in space. RAID came courtesy of several American senators and congressmen who were sympathetic to their efforts.

  “What’s a large number?” Peace asked.

  “At the moment it would appear to be something over two thousand.”

  “Are they heading for the mine or the dam?”

  “Neither, sir. They’re heading almost due north into the deep jungle.”

  “Shit,” Peace said. “They’re heading for Jurassic Park.”

  “It would seem that way, sir,” said Desmond.

  • • •

  Cardinal Arturo Ruffino, Vatican secretary of state, walked through the gloomy vaulted stacks of the Vatican Library, his longtime friend and now head of the Holy See’s Secret Service, Vittorio Monti, at his side.

  “So, exactly what is this document you are about to show me?” Monti asked.

  “One of the few documents in the Vatican Secret Archives that really is secret,” Ruffino said. “And that’s mostly because few men have ever had the wit to look for it.” Contrary to conspiracy theories and popular fiction, the Secret Archives are not temperature and humidity controlled or secured by laser beams in a vault buried deep beneath the Vatican. Contained in an annex to the Main Vatican Library, the archives are secret because they contain documents owned personally by the pope. The only men other than the Holy Father who have free access to the archives are the archive prefect and his minions. All others must ask for a particular volume or document, which will be brought to them in a reading room adjacent to the archive entrance.

  They reached the Porta Angelica, passed through it to the Porta di Santa Anna and paused to show their credentials to the two Swiss Guards there. One the archive prefects took them to a small reading room and locked them in. On the table in front of them was a box of
surgical gloves and a large leather-and wood-bound volume, the Latin title still faintly legible in gold leaf on the cover:

  Record of Ship Arrival and Departure Fees,

  Port of Lisbon, 1347–1348

  “Follow the money, Vittorio.” The cardinal smiled as he sat down at the table and snapped on a pair of the surgical gloves. “Always follow the money.”

  8

  Eddie spent the next day and a half going up the Rio Negro, then swinging carefully onto the much narrower and much muddier Rio Xeruini. Both sides of the river were covered with dense jungle that reached the banks.

  “According to Fawcett the river was full of fish,” said Holliday, standing on the bridge with Eddie as the SS Amador steamed slowly upriver heading north, the paddlewheel throwing up a brown-black wake of mud and ooze.

  “Our Indian friends seemed to have discovered this already,” Eddie replied, nodding his chin down toward the main deck. Tanaki and Nenderu, his grandfather, were gutting an enormous fish that must have been six or seven feet long before the two men starting slicing it up.

  “What the hell is it?” Holliday said.

  “Tanaki said it’s an arapaima,” answered Rafi, stepping through the bridge doorway carrying a string bag full of dripping cans of Caracu and Brahma beer. “It’s a living fossil. Nenderu says he’s seen them ten feet long.”

  “How did they catch it?”

  “Tanaki speared it. He’s says there’s enough for everyone on board with leftovers for breakfast tomorrow.”

  They stood, drinking beer and watching the muddy river and the jungle-choked banks moving slowly by.

  Rafi took one of the volumes of the photocopied journals out of one of the innumerable pockets in his old Israeli Army fatigue jacket and flipped through it. “This must be the greatest case of misdirection in history. All three of his previous expeditions went south, but the fourth one goes north even though everyone thinks she’s going south again.”

  “Initially I don’t think it was misdirection. I think he found something else other than the three ships sent west full of treasure,” said Holliday, taking a healthy sip of the cold beer.