Lost Empire

by Cussler, Clive;Grant Blackwood

  CHAPTER 43

  LAMPUNG BAY, SUMATRA

  SAM EASED BACK ON THE BOAT’S THROTTLES AND BROUGHT THE bow around until they were beam on to the wind. The boat slowed to a stop, then began rocking from side to side. A few hundred yards to port was Mutun, one of the dozens of tiny forested islands that lined both coasts of the bay; to starboard, in the distance, Indah Beach.

  “Okay, one more time,” he said.

  “We’ve been over this, Sam. Several times. The answer’s still no. If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

  “So let’s go home.”

  “You don’t want to go home.”

  “True, but—”

  “You’re starting to make me angry, Fargo.”

  And he knew it. When Remi started using his surname, it was a sign that her patience was wearing thin.

  Following their encounter with Rivera at the museum, they’d caught the next ferry for the Sol Marbella landing, about fifteen miles from the Cartita Beach docks. While they waited for the ferry to get under way, Sam kept his eye on Rivera’s speedboat until finally losing sight of it when it passed behind the Tanjung headland to the southwest.

  Once back on the Javan mainland they hired a taxi to take them back to the Four Seasons, where they quickly packed, headed for the airport, and boarded the next Batavia Air charter across the straits to Lampung. They touched down shortly before nightfall and found a bayside hotel down the coast a few miles, where they called Selma.

  The sooner they reached Pulau Legundi, the better, Sam and Remi reasoned. Though they’d half expected Rivera to turn up, his sudden appearance at the museum, combined with his menacing promise, drove home the point that they needed to move quickly. To that end, Selma worked her magic and arranged for a twenty-four-foot motorized pinisi—a type of narrow, flat-bottomed ketch—and all the necessary supplies to be waiting for them at the docks before sunrise. Now, nearing noon, they’d covered a third of the distance to Pulau Legundi.

  Remi said, “We’ve never let people like Rivera run us off before. Why should we start now?”

  “You know why.”

  She stepped up to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Drive the boat, Sam. Let’s finish this together.”

  Sam sighed, then smiled. “You’re a remarkable woman.”

  “I know. Now, drive the boat.”

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, what had merely been a smudge on the overcast horizon began to resolve into the island’s lush green peaks and craggy coastline. Shaped like a jagged comma, the uninhabited Pulau Legundi was roughly four miles long by two miles wide. Like all the other islands in and around the Sunda Strait, it had once been blanketed by volcanic ash from Krakatoa. A hundred thirty years of wind and rain and an ever-patient Mother Nature had transformed the island into an isolated patch of thriving rain forest.

  JUST OVER TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after leaving Jakarta, with the sun setting over the Legundi’s peaks, Sam turned the pinisi’s bow in to a sheltered cove on the eastern shoreline. He gunned the engine and slid the bow onto a ten-foot-wide strip of white-sand beach, and Remi jumped out. Sam tossed down their packs and followed her. He secured the bowline to a nearby tree.

  Remi unfolded the tourist map they’d purchased at the hotel—the best they could do in a pinch—and laid it on the sand. They crouched down. Before leaving the museum, Sam had studied a few digital maps on the kiosk and mentally marked the ship’s position.

  “From here it’s less than a mile to the western side,” he said. “As best I can tell, the Shenandoah—”

  “Assuming it was her.”

  “I’m praying it was her. My best guess puts her here, in this shallow bay. If we’re using the Berouw’s fate as a model—”

  “Yes, run that by me again.”

  “According to accepted history, the Berouw was the only true ship to be pushed inland. Anything smaller was either driven to the bottom of the strait or instantly destroyed by the final tsunami. My theory is this: What made the Berouw different is that she was anchored at the mouth of a river.”

  “A path of least resistance,” Remi said.

  “Exactly. She was driven inland via a preexisting gouge in the terrain. If you draw a line from Krakatoa through the ship’s anchorage and onto the island, you see a—”

  Leaning closely over the map, Remi finished Sam’s thought. “A ravine.”

  “A deep one, bracketed on both sides by five-hundred-foot peaks. If you look closely, the ravine ends below this third peak, a few hundred yards shy of the opposite shoreline. One mile long and a quarter mile wide.”

  “What’s to say she wasn’t crushed into dust or shoved up and over the island and slammed into the seabed?” Remi asked. “We’re twenty-five miles from Krakatoa. The Berouw was fifty miles away and she ended up miles inland.”

  “Two reasons: One, the peaks around our ravine are far steeper than anything around the river; and two, the Shenandoah was at least four times as heavy as the Berouw and iron-framed with double-thick oak and teak hull plates. She was designed to take punishment.”

  “You make a good case.”

  “Let’s hope it translates into reality.”

  “I do, however, have one more nagging detail . . .”

  “Shoot.”

  “How would the Shenandoah have survived the pyroclastic flow?”

  “As it happens, I have a theory about that. Care to hear it?”

  “Hold on to it. If you turn out to be right, you can tell me. If you’re wrong, it won’t matter.”

  WITHIN FIVE MINUTES of breaching the tree line they realized Madagascar’s forests didn’t hold a candle to those of Pulau Legundi. The trees, so densely packed that Sam and Remi frequently had to turn sideways to squeeze between them, were also entwined in skeins of creeper vines that looped from tree trunk to branch to ground. By the time they’d covered a hundred yards, Sam’s shoulder throbbed from swinging the machete.

  They found a closet-sized clearing in the undergrowth and crouched down for a water break. Insects swirled around them, buzzing in their ears and nostrils. Above, the canopy was filled with the squawks of unseen birds. Remi dug a can of bug repellant from her pack and coated Sam’s exposed skin; he did the same for her.

  “This could be a positive for us,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “Do you see how most of the tree trunks are covered in a layer of mold and creepers? It’s like armor. What’s good for the trees could be good for ship planking.”

  He took another sip from the canteen, then handed it to Remi. “The going will get easier the higher we go,” he said.

  “Define easier.”

  “More sunlight means fewer creeper vines.”

  “And higher means steeper,” Remi replied with a game smile. “Life’s a trade-off.”

  Sam checked his watch. “Two hours to sunset. Please tell me you remembered to pack the mosquito hammock . . .”

  “I did. But I forgot the hibachi, the steaks, and the cooler of ice-cold beer.”

  “This one time I’ll forgive you.”

  They pressed on for another ninety minutes, moving slowly but steadily up the western slope of the peak, pulling themselves along using exposed roots and drooping vines, until finally Sam called a halt. They strung their double-wide hammock between two trees, double-checked all the mosquito nets’ seams, then crawled inside and shared a meal of warm water, beef jerky, and dried fruit. Twenty minutes later they fell into a deep sleep.

  THE JUNGLE’S NATURAL SYMPHONY woke them just after sunrise. After a quick breakfast they were on the move again. As Sam had predicted, the higher they climbed, the more the foliage thinned, until they were able to move without the aid of the machete. At 10:15 they broke through the trees and found themselves standing on a ten-foot-wide granite plateau.

  “That’s what I call a view,” Remi said, shrugging off her pack.

  Spread before them were the blue waters of the Sunda Strait. Twenty-five miles away they could see the sheer cliffs
of Krakatoa Island and, beyond that, Java’s west coast. They stepped to the edge of the plateau. Five hundred feet below them, at the bottom of a sixty-degree slope, lay the floor of the ravine. On either side of it were the peaks that formed its northern and southern walls. The ravine itself was more or less straight, with a slight curve as it neared the far shoreline a mile away.

  Sam pointed at the patch of water visible beyond the ravine’s mouth. “That’s almost exactly where she was anchored.”

  “Let me ask you a question: Why didn’t we start over there and just stroll up the ravine?”

  “A couple reasons: One, that’s the windward side of the strait. I might be a tad paranoid, but I’d wanted us to have some cover from prying eyes.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “Better vantage point.”

  Remi smiled. “You were half hoping we’d find a mast jutting out from the canopy down there, weren’t you?”

  Sam smiled back. “More than half hoping. I don’t see anything, though. You?”

  “No. Now might be the right time to tell me your theory: How would the Shenandoah have survived the pyroclastic flow?”

  “Well, you probably know the scientific term for it, but I’m thinking of the Pompeii Effect.”

  Pompeii, Italy, famous for having fallen victim to another volcano, Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., was also renowned for its “mummies,” still-life casts of Pompeii’s inhabitants in the final moments of life. Like Krakatoa, Vesuvius had unleashed an avalanche of blistering ash and pumice that rolled over the village, both charring and entombing virtually everything before it. Humans and animals unlucky enough to be caught in the open were instantly broiled alive and buried. As the bodies decomposed, the resulting fluids and gasses hardened the interior of the shell.

  “I think that’s the term for it, actually. The principle is a little different here, though.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on. Assuming the Shenandoah was driven here, she would have been waterlogged from the tsunami and blanketed in thousands of tons of soaked vegetation and trees. When the pyroclastic flow came, all the moisture would have flashed into steam and, hopefully, the blanket of foliage would have been charred instead of the ship.”

  Remi was nodding. “Then all of it was buried in several feet of ash and pumice.”

  “That’s my theory.”

  “Why hasn’t it been found already?”

  Sam shrugged. “Nobody’s been looking for it. How many artifacts are eventually found just feet from where everyone’s been excavating for years?”

  “Too many to count.”

  “Plus, the Shenandoah was only two hundred thirty feet long and thirty-two feet wide. That ravine is”—Sam did the calculation in his head—“twenty-five times longer and forty times wider.”

  “You’re no dummy, Sam Fargo.” Remi looked down the slope before them. “What do you think?” she asked. “Straight down?”

  Sam nodded. “I think we can manage it.”

  THE GOING WAS SLOW but not particularly treacherous. Using the trunks of diagonally growing trees as makeshift steps, they picked their way down the slope and back into deeper jungle. The sun dimmed through the canopy, leaving them in twilight.

  Sam called a halt for a water break. After a few gulps he wandered off along the hillside with a “Be right back” over his shoulder. He returned a minute later with a pair of heavy straight sticks and handed the shorter of the two to Remi.

  “A poker?” she asked.

  “Yes. If she’s here, the only way we’re going to find her is legwork. Likewise, if she’s covered in a layer of petrified vegetation and ash, there are going to be gaps and voids. If we probe enough ground, we’re sure to find something.”

  “Assuming—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  FOR THE NEXT SIX HOURS, as the afternoon wore toward evening, they marched side by side across the ravine floor and up and down hillocks, poking with their sticks and doing their best to keep to a north/south-oriented, switchback pattern.

  “Six o’clock,” Sam said, glancing at his watch. “We’ll finish this line, then call it a night.”

  Remi laughed wearily. “And retreat to the lovely confines of our hammock—” She stumbled forward and landed with an “Umph!”

  Sam strode over and knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”

  She rolled over, pursed her lips, and puffed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I’m fine. Getting clumsy with exhaustion.” Sam stood up and helped her to her feet. Remi looked around. “Where’s my stick?”

  “At your feet.”

  “What? Where?”

  Sam pointed down. Jutting two inches from the loam was the tip of Remi’s stick. Sam said, “Either that’s a fantastic magic trick or you’ve found a void.”

  CHAPTER 44

  PULAU LEGUNDI, SUNDA STRAIT

  STEPPING CAREFULLY, THEY BACKED UP A FEW FEET AND SCANNED the ground nearby. “Anything?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  “Hop onto that tree.”

  “If we haven’t fallen through yet, we probably won’t.”

  “Just humor me.”

  Remi backed up until her butt bumped into the trunk, then turned and climbed onto the lowermost branch. Sam shrugged off his pack and laid it on the ground. Next, holding his stick parallel to the ground at waist height like a tightrope walker, he crept forward until he was standing over the tip of Remi’s stick. He knelt down, placed his stick in front of his knees, then pulled Remi’s free. He dug his headlamp from the thigh pocket of his cargo pants and shone the beam into the hole.

  “It’s deep,” he said. “Can’t see the bottom.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “What I want to do is widen it and crawl down there, but it’s almost dark. Let’s set up camp and wait for daylight.”

  THEY SLEPT FITFULLY, passing the hours dozing and talking, their minds imagining what might lay only feet away from their hammock. Having both metaphorically and literally traced the same course Winston Blaylock followed during his quest, Sam and Remi felt as though they’d been hunting for the Shenandoah for years.

  They waited until enough morning sun was filtering through the canopy to partially light their work, then ate a quick breakfast and climbed back up the hillock to the hole left by Remi’s stick, this time equipped with a thirty-foot coil of nylon boating rope that had come with the pinisi.

  Remi looped one end of the line twice around the nearest tree; the opposite end of the line Sam formed into a makeshift horse collar that he slipped over his shoulders and tucked under his armpits.

  “Luck,” said Remi.

  Sam paced over to the hole and knelt down. Carefully, he began jabbing with the stick, knocking chunks of loam and congealed ash into the unseen voids below, backing away on his knees as the hole widened. After five minutes’ work, it was the size of a manhole.

  Sam stood up and called over his shoulder, “Have you got me?”

  Remi grabbed the line tighter, took in the slack, and braced her feet against the trunk. “I’ve got you.”

  Sam coiled his knees and jumped a few inches off the ground. He did it again, a little higher. He paused and looked around.

  “See any cracks?”

  “All clear.”

  Sam stomped on the ground once, then again, then six times in quick succession. “I think we’re okay.”

  Remi tied off her end of the line and joined Sam at the hole. He unraveled the horse collar and knotted it around the strap on his headlamp, then clicked the lamp on and started lowering it into the hole, counting forearm lengths as he went. The line went slack. At the bottom of the hole, the headlamp lay on its side. They leaned forward and peered into the gloom.

  After a moment Remi said, “Is that a . . . No, can’t be.”

  “A skeleton foot? Yes, it can be.” He looked up at her. “Tell you what: Why don’t I go first?”

  “Great idea.”

  AFTER RETRIEVING THE HEADLAMP, th
ey spent a few minutes tying climbing knots in the rope, then dropped it back into the hole. Sam slid his feet into the opening, wiggled forward, and began lowering himself hand over hand.

  Like a geologist examining an exposed cliff face, Sam felt as though he were descending through history. The first layer of material was regular soil, but passing two more feet the color changed, first to light brown, then a muddy gray.

  “I’m into the ash layer,” he called.

  Clumps and veins of what appeared to be petrified wood and vegetation began appearing in the ash.

  His feet touched the bottom of the shaft he’d excavated from above. He kicked toeholds into the sides of the shaft and slowly transferred his weight to his legs until he was certain he was steady. Jutting from the side of the shaft was what they’d thought was a skeletal foot.

  “It’s a tree root,” he called.

  “Thank God.”

  “Next one will probably be the real thing.”

  “I know.”

  “Stick, please.”

  Remi lowered it down to him. Using both hands, he worked the stick first like a posthole digger, then like a pot stirrer, knocking and scraping at the shaft until he was satisfied with the width. Plumes of ash swirled around him. He waited for the cloud to settle, then squatted on his haunches and repeated the process until he’d opened four more feet of shaft.

  “How deep so far?” Remi called.

  “Eight feet, give or take.” Sam lifted the stick up and slid it into his belt. “We’re going to have to evacuate this debris.”

  “Hold on.”

  A moment later, Remi called, “Bag coming down.”

  One of their nylon stuff sacks landed on his head; knotted to the drawstring was some paracord. Sam squatted down, filled the bag with the debris, and Remi hauled it up. Two more times cleared the shaft.