by Dave Gerard
But for tonight, Vijay had picked out some fresh seafood from the Port Klang market. Using a boiler and a small grill on deck, he cooked us a feast of mackerel, shrimp, and red snapper. He seasoned it with lemongrass, coconut milk, and chili paste, and passed around cans of cold Tiger beer to wash it down, a favorite from nearby Singapore. We ate and drank and were merry under the stars. It was an evening to remember.
Later on, I sat on deck with Ashley, and we talked late into the night. It was dark, and the ship skimmed serenely along the ocean. We watched the black water pass us by, pleasantly drained from the long day in the sun. The coastlines were barely visible, just a mesh of dark mangrove trees from end to end, with little river inlets here and there. Jared sat silently at the helm, guiding us. The rest of the group were below deck, sleeping.
The Strait felt spookier at night. The dark waters and the endless mangrove trees seemed to be hiding secrets that I hadn’t felt in the light of the day. I remembered the dark legend of the SS Ourang Medan and the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370. With sudden disquiet, I realized that Flight 370 had been flying north up the Strait of Malacca when it disappeared just past the island of Sumatra. The very same place we were going.
The next morning, it was time to focus on our destination: the Nicobar Islands. I pulled out the maps and consulted with Schnizzel and Diamond about our progress. The closest of the Nicobar Islands was a thousand kilometers from Kuala Lumpur. They had looked a lot closer on the map, just half an inch away, measured by my fingers. But the ocean was bigger than it looked on Google, and it took us two full days and nights to get there. Thompson and Diamond took turns manning the helm, with whoever was not on duty drinking, playing solitaire, and smoking Benson & Hedges cigarettes, of which we’d procured two cartons.
During the leadup to our voyage, I had read everything I could get my hands on about the Nicobar Islands. There were about one or two dozen islands in the chain, depending on how you counted. The biggest of them were Great Nicobar and Little Nicobar, which were a hundred miles off the northern coast of Sumatra. Both were inhabited. The other islands were much smaller, and many were empty. There was another island chain nearby called the Andaman Islands, one of which had an active volcano on it, making me think of a Bond villain’s secret lair. But I didn’t think Roberto and the Flor de la Mar could have gotten that far.
I had read through Roberto’s account many times. He said that the Flor de la Mar sunk just west of some uncharted islands. Roberto and the others had escaped on a makeshift raft to a “small vegetated island of less than a mile,” he wrote. There, they had been marooned for several days before being rescued by some natives, who took them to a larger, inhabited island to convalesce.
In looking at the Nicobar Islands, there was only one island in the chain that fit that description perfectly: Meroe Island.
Meroe was a tiny island just north of Little Nicobar. Its total area was only half a square mile. It was uninhabited and overgrown with trees and brush. This fit Roberto’s account. Schnizzel and I believed that the Flor de la Mar must have sunk off the coast of Meroe Island. Roberto and the others reached its shores and sheltered there for a few days. Then, the natives had probably taken them to Little Nicobar or Great Nicobar, the larger islands that might have been inhabited in the sixteenth century.
We also had another crucial piece of information, which made this less of a fool’s errand: the depth of the ship. Lloyd Gunthum had recorded the Flor de la Mar at a depth of 668 feet below sea level. Our maps contained detailed depth charts of the ocean, and our equipment would tell us the depth of the ocean floor at any given point. By searching off the west coast of Meroe Island, at a depth of 668 feet, we hoped to find the ship, and find it more quickly than Gunthum had.
My excitement grew by the hour as we made steady progress toward the Nicobar Islands. Finally, late in the afternoon on the third day, we arrived.
“Land ho,” Diamond called laconically. We all ran to the bow and looked ahead. I squinted, trying to make out the coastline.
It took a few moments to come into focus, but then I saw it. “There it is!” I said, pointing excitedly. We could just make out the edge of the southernmost island, Great Nicobar, on the horizon.
Diamond took the speed of the ship down a notch, and we cruised along the western coast of Great Nicobar and past Little Nicobar. Then, just as the sun was setting, I got my first glimpse of Meroe Island.
I stared at it, fascinated. Great Nicobar and Little Nicobar were real islands, measuring three hundred square miles and fifty square miles, respectively. They were substantial pieces of land, inhabited by people with all sorts of businesses and lives and families.
Meroe was different. It was deserted, the type of island you imagine yourself getting stranded on. It was less than a mile long, and only half a mile wide. It seemed a mysterious, miniature tropical paradise in the remotest part of the ocean. I was reminded of Rockweiller’s man-made island off the coast of Cartagena. Over the past few days, I had stared at maps and satellite images of Meroe Island so many times that I felt like I knew the place. Last night I had even dreamed of it, although I couldn’t remember what the dream was about.
Meroe Island had three beaches: Anuradha to the north, Taranga to the east, and Serene to the west. I imagined Manuel Roberto crawling ashore on the shifting sands of Serene Beach, over five hundred years ago, in the teeth of a lashing storm, far from civilization. Then, against all odds, he had been saved, and lived to tell the tale.
The next morning, we rose at dawn and began our search. Schnizzel’s plan called for us to “mow the lawn” in the area to find the ship. This was a basic technique used by treasure hunters. We would methodically sweep a predetermined area in stripes until all of it had been covered. It looked a little like mowing the lawn, hence the name. Often, this type of search could take weeks or months, depending on the area plotted. But we had an advantage in knowing the depth and the location of nearby Meroe Island. This was good, since we didn’t have weeks or months to spare. Schnizzel had calculated our search parameters, and expanded the area to cover possible discrepancies in Roberto’s account. All told, we expected to cover the search area within a few days.
The tools we used were the side-scan sonar and the magnetometer. The sonar was attached to the ship, and the magnetometer was towed behind, on a long cable that stretched all the way down to the ocean floor, trailing just a few dozen feet above the bottom. That way it would pick up whatever was down there clearly. Once or twice we had some trouble with its positioning, and Vijay and I had to jump into the water to rejigger it. I wondered uneasily if there were any sharks in the area. But we didn’t see any, and I have to say I enjoyed the swimming.
Thompson and Diamond moved us slowly along the search area, watching the displays for any signs of a shipwreck. We were looking for anything metal, ideally the cannon that so often marked a wreck to the treasure hunter’s enhanced eye. Thompson, Diamond, and Schnizzel all took turns monitoring the equipment, looking for the slightest pings that could indicate the presence of metal below the surface.
Sometimes, when the equipment registered something, we would stop to get a better look. Once we even sent the small ROV down to the bottom. We found an old ship’s anchor that way, which caused tremendous excitement for a few minutes until we realized it was of modern design, not more than a few decades old. We also found scraps of metal and pieces of what might have been ships, or anything else, as we searched the depths.
The excitement aboard for the first few days was palpable. We were far from civilization, out in the open ocean, seeking fame and fortune and a treasure that had been lost for centuries. It felt like high adventure, and there was a certain romance about it that was hard to come by in modern life. Everything in today’s world had already been discovered, indexed, and catalogued ad nauseum. It felt like there was no more to explore on this planet, except perhaps the depths of the oc
eans.
But the excitement started to fade as the days passed and we didn’t find anything. We had covered almost the entire search area already. The sea west of Meroe Island, at the right depth, wasn’t that big, and we had combed it thoroughly. In another half day, we would be done. Sometimes, I caught myself gazing at Meroe Island as if it were alive, willing it to reveal its secrets.
But it did not. The third day came and went, and still there was nothing. I looked at Schnizzel. He shrugged at my unasked question, not having any answers.
I was at a loss as to what to do. I had been sure that the Flor de la Mar was here. From the account, we knew that the ship had wrecked a few hundred kilometers off the coast of Sumatra. And we knew that Roberto and the others had been stranded on a tiny, uncharted island, and were later taken to a larger, inhabited one. This was the only place in the sea that perfectly matched that description. What were we missing? Was there a broken link in our logic? Was there a problem with our search? I didn’t know.
There was one other possibility that Schnizzel and I had considered: that the Flor de la Mar had actually sunk near one of northern Nicobar Islands. Up until now, I had assumed that Roberto must have been talking about Meroe Island, because Meroe was the right size, it was on the Goa route, and it was close to Great Nicobar and Little Nicobar.
But there were also some bigger islands in the northern part of the Nicobar archipelago. Two in particular, Katchall and Camorta, just might have been inhabited in the sixteenth century. A narrow waterway ran between them, almost like a miniature version of the Strait of Malacca. Both islands had people living on them today. North of Katchall and Camorta was Teressa Island, and then north of that was a small island called Chowra. Like Meroe, Chowra was tiny, just larger than a mile in area, and uninhabited. Perhaps Chowra was the island that Roberto had swam to, later to be taken to Katchall or Camorta. The chances of this were small, but it was possible.
Schnizzel had prepared a contingency search plan for the northern islands just in case. After some discussion amongst the team, and lacking any alternatives, we decided to go for it. We raised anchor and headed north. Before long, we reached the western coast of Chowra Island, and began another search.
But one day wore into two, and we found nothing. The cloudless sky, reflected in the calm blue waters, seemed to mock us, staring down from above without a care in the world. The sky had been there when the Flor de la Mar sank five hundred years ago, and it would be there five hundred years from now, when all of us were long dead and gone. My efforts felt somehow futile beneath it, and I wondered what I was doing scrambling for treasure at the edge of the world for a dead man I’d never met. The only thing we saw during those days were a few fishing boats, whose occupants stared at us with mild curiosity. Once I thought that one of them might be following us, but it disappeared soon after.
By the end of the second day at Chowra, our enthusiasm was gone. As the search wore into its sixth day, the mood darkened, and tempers began to fray. I had warned everyone that searches usually took weeks or months, and even with our more precise measurements, it could take longer than anticipated. But it didn’t help.
I had read books about deep-sea expeditions. In all of them, mutinous grumblings by the crew were part of the game. Although this was far from the months-long voyages that the early navigators had endured, it seemed that the same principles applied.
Thompson started blaming Schnizzel for our failure, calling him an armchair archaeologist who’d never got his dick wet. Schnizzel retorted that Thompson was an incompetent buffoon who couldn’t work a magnetometer to save his life. They almost came to blows one day, and Vijay had to step in and calm them down. We were also running low on good food, and started eating the pemmican. It didn’t help.
“Damn fool of a search plan, if you ask me,” muttered Trevor Thompson for at least the fifth time that day. Schnizzel glared at him.
“If you have a better idea, be my guest,” he snapped. “I’d love to hear you double check my calculations.”
“Shut up!” I told them both. “This is my plan. And we’re sticking with it.”
They sullenly obeyed, and Thompson got back to steering the ship.
But although I tried to project confidence to the team (which I have no doubt they all saw right through), I was beginning to feel the edge of desperation. We were running out of time. I had only rented the ship for a week, and we were already going beyond that. There was no money for anything more. We also faced diminishing returns. The longer we stayed, the less likely we were to find anything. Most of the probable spots had been searched by now.
We hadn’t had internet reception in days. Back home, I imagined the case was moving on without us. I wondered what was happening in Judge Graves’ court. In the world. It all felt so remote here, far out in the Indian Ocean.
Thompson, Diamond, and Schnizzel were no longer optimistic about finding anything. I could see it in their faces. Vijay appeared to have given up too. He just spent the time larking around, taking shirtless selfies when he thought no one was looking. It was no skin off his back if we didn’t succeed. Only Ashley and I remained committed.
Maybe the Flor de la Mar wasn’t here. Maybe this had all been a fool’s errand. But if we went back emptyhanded, I didn’t know what we would do. During the past few days, I had resolved to reveal the truth of the death memo and throw myself on Judge Graves’ mercy if it came to that. I might lose my legal license, or even face jail time.
I hoped that Graves would agree to hear the evidence, and that we would have a shot at proving our case. But if Bock persuaded him that it was all fabricated, we would lose everything. Without that memo, we still had no evidence that Gunthum killed David Marcum. And without the contract, or the wreck itself, we had no evidence that Marcum played any part in finding the Flor de la Mar. Maybe Remington could have come up with some genius plan to save the day. But Remington wasn’t here, and I didn’t have one.
That evening, over some pemmican and the last of our boxed wine, we had a candid discussion about our options. There was one last possibility left: Batti Malv Island.
Batti Malv was a tiny island, one of the northernmost in the Nicobar chain. Like Meroe, it was less than one square mile in size. No one lived there, and the only structure on the island was an old lighthouse that rose two hundred feet above the sea.
Batti Malv was fifty miles north of Chowra, and even farther from the bigger islands. We had excluded it early on because we didn’t see how the Flor de la Mar could have gone that far north on the way to Goa, or how Roberto could have been rescued so far from the bigger islands. But we decided to try anyway. Perhaps the storm had blown them off course. Or the maps were off. We had nothing to lose. If we didn’t find anything, we would give it up and go home.
The team reluctantly agreed to give Batti Malv a shot. Thompson and Diamond didn’t mind another day or two per diem, and Vijay didn’t much care either way. Professor Schnizzel was interested, but even he didn’t seem to think we would find anything. He dutifully took out his maps and charts and began plotting out search parameters for Batti Malv, which would only take one day. Diamond took the helm, and said he would get us there by morning.
In the deepest part of the night, I awoke to the insistent voices of Trevor Thompson and Jared Diamond. They were whispering excitedly about something. I sat up in bed. I felt lucid and wide-awake despite the hour. I got up made my way on deck. I checked the clock. It said 2 a.m. The weather was as clear and balmy as ever.
The tone of Jared’s voice alone made me think that something was up. He wasn’t an excitable guy, and I’d never heard this much vigor from him before. I made my way toward the steering wheel where they were sitting.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Look here,” said Diamond. There was a cigarette hanging from his mouth, half-lit and smoking. He pointed toward a large blip on one of the displ
ays.
“There’s something there,” said Thompson. By the tension in his voice, I knew he meant something real. We had been through enough fakes by now to know the difference.
I went inside and roused Schnizzel. He groaned and cursed at me in what I thought was Yiddish. Then he got up and joined us on deck, blearily rubbing the sleep from his eyes. But when he saw the reading on the magnetometer, his eyes snapped open at once, and all traces of tiredness disappeared.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
“What is it?” I asked impatiently. Schnizzel leaned forward and examined the readouts more closely. He fiddled with a few dials as Thompson and Diamond watched intently.
“It’s consistent,” he muttered. “Let’s make a bigger circuit of the area,” he said. Thompson agreed, and in a nod to the gravity of the moment, he didn’t even bother to take offense at the instruction. Diamond held the wheel as we slowly moved the ship forward. On the surface, the ocean looked the same as it did every night. The moonlight shined down on us placidly.
I checked our location on the GPS. I frowned in puzzlement when I saw it. We weren’t near Batti Malv Island yet. In fact, we were only halfway there, somewhere in the open ocean. But we were on the 668-foot depth line. We had decided to straddle it on the way there, just in case. I looked around, but didn’t see any land in sight. It was dark, though, with only the moon and our small headlight shining against the vast darkness.
We trawled around the area for about thirty minutes, carefully taking readings. By this time it was 3 a.m., and Ashley and Vijay had joined us on deck. Vijay made hot coffee for everyone. We drank it together, our eyes glued to the images.
I had always had my doubts about Thompson and Diamond, and whether they were keeping track of whatever floated across the sonar and the magnetometer. But now, as Diamond softly pointed out what he was seeing to Schnizzel, who was viewing it with increasing excitement, I realized that all of them knew exactly what they were doing.
