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  “This went on another fifty years or so until the late 1420s, when the Triple Alliance among Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan was formed. All the tribes outside the alliance were subjugated as the alliance grew in strength. Then, slowly, over the next century, the Aztecs and Tenochtitlan rose to the top.”“And then Cortes arrived,” Sam said.

  “Right. In the spring of 1519. Within two years, the Aztec Empire was all but destroyed.”

  “What’s the rest of the controversy?” Selma said. “About the Aztecs?”

  “Where they came from-north or south, or from how far away. Many of the classical and pre-classical Mesoamerican cultures-the Toltecs, the Maya, the Olmecs-share similarities with the Aztecs. It’s a chicken-or-egg situation. Was it simply a matter of cultural cross-pollination or was one of these peoples the precursor to all the rest? There are a lot of historians who think the Aztecs were Mesoamerica’s true progenitors.”Sam and Selma took all this in. Then Sam said, “Okay, you were talking about codices . . .”

  “Right,” Remi said. “When Cortes invaded and the Aztec Empire collapsed, there were a lot of codices written, most of them by Jesuit and Franciscan monks, some by soldiers or diplomats, and even a few by Aztecs as dictated to others. Those are fairly rare and usually discounted-or at least they were until the last couple hundred years. Aztec codices tended to stray from the Spanish ‘party line,’ which was that Aztecs were savages and that their conquest was wonderful and dictated by God. You get the idea.”“Again, victors write the history,” Sam said.

  “You got it.”

  Selma said, “You’re talking about the Codex Borbonicus, the Mendoza, the Florentine . . .”

  “Right. There are dozens. Usually they depict Aztec life either before, during, or after the Spanish conquest. Some are just tableaus of routine activities while others are meant as historical accounts of Cortes’s arrival, of battles fought or ceremonies, and so on.”Remi grabbed a magnifying glass from a drawer and bent to examine the codex. She spent ten minutes poring over every square inch, then stood up and sighed.

  “In theme, this one’s a lot like the Boturini Codex. Allegedly, the Boturini was written by an anonymous Aztec author between 1530 and 1541, about ten years after the Aztecs fell. It’s supposed to tell the story of the Aztecs’ journey from Aztlan to present-day Mexico.”“Aztlan?” asked Sam.

  “One of the two mythical ancestral homes of the Nahua peoples, which include the Aztecs. Many historians disagree about whether Aztlan is a legend or an actual physical location.”“You said two homes.”

  “The other one’s called Chicomoztoc, or Place of the Seven Caves. It’s important in Aztec lore and religion. Take a look at our codex. You see the hollowed-out flower shape in the lower right-hand corner?”

  Sam and Selma nodded.“That’s how Chicomoztoc is usually represented. But this one’s a little different, I think. I’ll have to do some comparisons.”

  “If I’m reading this right,” Sam said, “it’s meant to represent a sea voyage. I assume the canoe is a metaphor?”

  “Hard to say. But do you notice the comblike object on the side of it?”

  “I saw it.”

  “That’s the glyph for the Aztec number one hundred.”

  “People or vessels?”

  “Given its placement, I assume the latter.”

  “A hundred ships,” Sam repeated. “Sailing from Chicomoztoc to . . . where?”

  “Wherever that bird and the object below it live?” Selma offered. “What is that? I can’t quite make it out.”

  “Looks like a sword,” Sam offered. “Or a torch, maybe?”

  Selma said, “I don’t know about that, but that bird looks familiar.”

  “It should,” Remi replied. “It’s from Blaylock’s journal. There’s something else you should all recognize, too.”

  Sam tapped the rough-brushed shape occupying the upper half of the codex. “Also from Blaylock’s journal.”

  “A gold star for Mr. Fargo. And one more,” Remi said, handing him the magnifying glass. “The inscription.”

  Sam lifted the glass to his eye and bent closer to the codex. He recited, “My Spanish isn’t the best, but here goes . . . ‘Dado este 12vo dia de Julio, ano de nuestro Senor 1521, por su alteza Cuauhtemotzin. Javier Orizaga, S.J.

  ’” Sam looked up. “Remi?”“Roughly translated it says, ‘Given this twelfth day of July, the year of our Lord 1521, by His Highness Cuauhtemotzin. Javier Orizaga, S.J.’”

  “Orizaga . . .That’s another tidbit from Blaylock’s journal: ‘Was Orizaga here?’”

  “Here, where?” Selma asked. “Chicomoztoc?”

  “Anyone’s guess,” Remi replied. “You’re missing the real bombshell, though.”

  Without another word, she walked over to a workstation, brought up the Web browser, and spent five minutes navigating through pages on famsi.org-the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies. Finally, she turned in her seat.

  “Obviously, the S.J. in Orizaga’s name means ‘Society of Jesus.’ He was a Jesuit monk. The date, July 12, 1521, is twelve days after what the Spaniards called La Noche Triste, the ‘Sad Night.’ It marks their emergency withdrawal from the Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan after Cortes and his Conquistadors massacred hundreds of Aztecs-along with their king, Moctezuma II-at the Main Temple, the Templo Mayor. It was a watershed moment for the Aztec Empire. In August of the following year Tenochtitlan was razed to the ground, and the Aztecs’ last king, Cuauhtemotzin, was captured and tortured.”“Cuauhtemotzin,” Sam repeated, then turned back to the codex for a moment. “That’s who Orizaga claims dictated this codex.”

  Selma murmured, “Cuauhtemotzin saw the handwriting on the walls. He knew his people were doomed and he wanted someone to know . . .” Selma’s voice trailed off.

  Remi nodded. “If this codex is genuine, we may be looking at the last will and testament of the Aztec people.”

  CHAPTER 29

  MADAGASCAR, INDIAN OCEAN

  “AFRICA AGAIN,” SAM MUTTERED, PULLING THE RANGE ROVER to a stop off the dirt road. He shut off the engine and set the parking brake. “Had to be Africa.”

  “Don’t let the locals hear you say that,” Remi replied. “We’re three hundred miles off the African coast. As far as these folks are concerned, Madagascar’s a world unto itself.”

  Sam raised his hands in surrender. He knew she was right. Their marathon, San Diego-Atlanta-Johannesburg-Antananarivo route had given them plenty of time to read up on Madagascar.They climbed out, walked to the rear of the Rover, and began gathering their gear.

  The identity of the map inside Blaylock’s walking staff had remained a mystery for only a few hours as Pete and Wendy scoured the vast cartographical databases the Fargos had acquired over the years. As it turned out, the map in question was but a section of a larger chart penned by a French explorer named Moreau in 1873, some twenty-three years after France’s armed annexation of the island. The partial word in the upper left-hand corner was in fact Prunes-French for “plums”-the name given by an explorer to a series of atolls along the coast. From there Pete and Wendy had had little trouble matching up the river names and isolating the section of coastline in question.

  What remained a mystery, however, was why Madagascar had been so important to Blaylock. It was a question Sam and Remi hoped to answer while Selma, the Wonder Twins, and Julianne Severson at the Library of Congress continued to dissect and analyze Blaylock’s journal, his letters to Constance Ashworth, and the newly named Orizaga Codex.

  For their part, aside from a current topographical chart, all Sam and Remi had to go on was a laminated copy of the Moreau map and an enlargement of the area around the miniaturized annotation-which they’d matched to Blaylock’s handwriting-that Pete had discovered penned over a cove in the coastline. Having grown accustomed to Blaylock’s penchant for thought fragments, they’d been unsurprised to find the jot consisted of only seven words:1442 Spans 315°

  Into the Lion’s
Mouth

  The fourth-largest island in the world, Madagascar was in many ways a world apart. For instance, it was home to five percent of the world’s plant and animal species. Of these, eighty percent were found nowhere else on earth: lemurs of every stripe and size, cave-dwelling crocodiles, carnivorous plants and spitting beetles, and giant centipedes, thirty-two species of chameleon, two hundred two species of birds, and an array of baobab trees that seemed plucked from the mind of a science-fiction movie director. And for all that, not a single endemic poisonous snake called the island home.

  Madagascar’s history was no less unique. While the island’s official history began in the seventh century with Bantus using encampments along Madagascar’s northern tip as trading posts for passing Arab merchants, archaeological finds in recent decades had to probe deeper, suggesting Madagascar’s first settlers had arrived from Sulawesi, in Indonesia, between 200 and 500 C.E.

  Over the next eleven hundred years, Madagascar became the melting pot of Africa, populated mostly by Portuguese, Indian, Arabic, and Somalian settlers, until the Age of Exploration arrived and the scramble for Africa began. European colonial powers and pirates alike rushed to Madagascar, and the island saw a series of ruling dynasties until the late eighteenth century, when the Merina family managed, with the help of the British, to gain control of most of the island in a hegemony that ended almost a century later with France’s invasion in 1883 and what became known as the Franco-Hova War. In 1896 France annexed Madagascar, and the Merina royal family was exiled to Algeria.

  THEY GAVE THEIR GEAR a once-over, then donned their packs before standing back to take in the scenery. The drive from the Antananarivo airport had taken them east on Route 2 and down from the central highlands that ran roughly north to south down the island’s spine to where they stood, the coastal lowlands, a two-mile-wide ribbon of rain forest and ravine-laden terrain buttressed by fifteen-hundred-foot escarpments interlaced with waterfalls. At their back was the Canal des Pangalanes, a five-hundred-mile-long chain of natural and man-made lakes and coves connected by canals.

  It was in this section of the Pangalanes that they hoped to find the spot Blaylock had indicated with his cryptic notation. From there it would be only a matter of pacing off 1,442 “spans” (which they assumed and hoped referred to Blaylock’s staff) on a compass bearing of 315 and looking for a “Lion’s Mouth” into which they could leap or stare or whatever Blaylock had in mind. The problem was, Moreau, the author of the map, had clearly missed Cartography Day in Explorers’ School. His sense of scale and distance was nearly nonexistent. Sam and Remi’s exploration would have to be trial and error.“It never sounded simple,” Remi now said, “but looking at this place . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head in frustration.

  Sam nodded. “The land that time forgot.”

  IN THE LEAD, Sam stepped off the road onto what resembled a game trail, which evaporated after a hundred yards, at which point he unsheathed his machete and began bushwhacking through the head-height brush. With every step, saw-toothed leaves nicked their exposed skin while spiked stems plucked at their clothing, frequently requiring them to stop to free themselves. After thirty minutes they’d covered a quarter mile, when a garage-sized clearing opened before them. Remi took a reading from their handheld GPS, looked around to get her bearings, then pointed. They set off again, Sam hacking a path while Remi navigated. Thirty minutes turned into an hour. Sweat beaded on their pinpricked skin, and their clothes became so saturated they might as well have just stepped from a swimming pool. Despite the blazing sun, each of them felt slightly chilled. After another thirty minutes, Sam stopped suddenly and held up his hand for quiet. He glanced back at Remi and tapped his nose. She nodded. Smoke. Somewhere nearby was a campfire.

  Then, somewhere off to their left, came a rustling sound. Something was moving in the underbrush. They stood stock-still, barely breathing, trying to pinpoint the location. It came again but sounded farther away.Suddenly a male voice called out, “Are you good folks lost, by chance?”

  Sam looked back at Remi, who shrugged. Sam called back, “I wouldn’t so much call it ‘lost’ as ‘serendipitous exploration.’”

  The voice chuckled. “Well, that’s a first. If you feel like a break, I’ve got coffee on.”

  “Sure, why not? Where-”

  “Look to your left.”

  They did so. A moment later the flaming tip of a branch jutted up from the undergrowth thirty feet away. “If you keep going straight for ten or twelve more paces, you’ll run into a game trail. It’ll take you straight in.”“On our way.”

  Five minutes later they pushed their way off the trail into a clearing surrounded by dwarf baobabs. Strung between two of them was a netted hammock. In the center of the clearing, hemmed in by a pair of fallen logs for seating, a small campfire crackled. A mid-seventies man with silver hair and a goatee smiled up at them. His eyes were a mischievous green.“Welcome. Have a seat.”

  Sam and Remi shrugged off their packs and sat down on the log opposite the man. They introduced themselves.

  The man nodded, smiled, and said, “Everybody calls me Kid.”

  Sam nodded at the revolver strapped to the man’s hip. “Because of that?”

  “More or less.” “A Webley?”

  “Good eye. Model Mark VI, .455 caliber. Circa 1915.”

  “Enough gun talk, boys,” Remi said. “We appreciate the invitation. It feels like we’ve been out there for two days.”

  “In Madagascar time, that’s about two hours.”

  Sam checked his watch. “You’re right.” Sam noticed what looked like a two-foot-high pyramid of dirt clods lying at the man’s feet. “May I ask . . .”

  “Ah, these. Madagascar truffles. Finest in the world.”

  “Never heard of them,” Remi replied.

  “Most of them get sold to Japan. A thousand dollars a pound.”

  Sam said, “Looks like you’ve got a few thousand dollars sitting beside your boots.”

  “Give or take.”

  “How do you find them?” asked Remi.

  “Smell, location, animal tracks. After ten years, it’s more a feeling than anything else.”

  “Ten years? Not out here the whole time, I hope.”

  The Kid chuckled. “No. Truffle season’s only five weeks long. The other forty-seven weeks I’ve got a little place on the beach near Andevoranto. Do a little fishing, a little diving, a little hiking, and a lot of staring at sunsets.”“Sounds wonderful.”

  “It is indeed, madam. What’s not wonderful, however, is the nice collection of scratches there.”

  Sam and Remi glanced at the red crisscrosses on their arms and legs. The man reached into an old canvas backpack leaning against the log, rummaged around, and came out with an unmarked glass tube. He tossed it across to Remi.

  “Local recipe,” the Kid said. “Works miracles. Just don’t ask what’s in it.” Sam and Remi dabbed the greenish, foul-smelling ointment on their scratches. Immediately the sting disappeared. Sam said, “Smells a lot like animal urine and-”

  The Kid smiled. “I told you not to ask.” He poured them each a cup of coffee from the soot-burnished percolator sitting at the edge of the fire. “So if you don’t mind me asking, what’re you folks doing out here?”“We’re looking for a spot that may or may not exist,” Sam replied.

  “Ah, the siren song of lost lands. As it happens, imaginary places are one of my specialties.”

  Sam reached into the side pocket of his pack, withdrew the Moreau map, and handed it across. The Kid studied it for thirty seconds, then handed it back. “Good news, bad news. Pick your poison.”“Bad news,” Remi replied.

  “You’re about eighty years too late. That area of the Pangalanes was swallowed up after an earthquake in 1932.”

  “And the good news?”

  “It’s dry land now. And I can probably get you to within a few yards of the spot you seek.”

  THEY FINISHED THEIR COFFEE, then the Kid kic
ked dirt over his fire and packed his gear, and the three of them set out with the Kid in the lead, Remi in the middle, and Sam trailing. The Kid required neither machete nor compass as he headed northeast, following trails that at first glance seemed like nothing more than gaps in the foliage. Despite his years, he moved at a steady, economical pace that told Sam and Remi their guide had spent more of his life out-of-doors than in.After forty minutes of walking in companionable silence, the Kid called over his shoulder, “This place you’re looking for . . . What’s so special about it?”

  Remi glanced back at Sam with a questioning look on her face. Sam gave it a moment’s thought, then replied, “You strike me as an honest man, Kid. Am I wrong about that?”

  The Kid stopped walking and turned around. He smiled.

  “You’re not wrong. I’ve kept more confidences than steps I’ve taken.” Sam held his gaze for a few moments, then nodded. “Lead on, and we’ll tell you a story.”The Kid turned around and started walking again.

  Sam said, “Have you ever heard of the CSS Shenandoah ?”

  AFTER ANOTHER HOUR the underbrush began to thin out, and they soon found themselves surrounded by savanna dotted with clusters of baobab. A mile to their left, the grassland again gave way to rain forest that rose to meet the escarpment, while to their right they could see the Canal des Pangalanes; beyond that, the blue of the Indian Ocean.They stopped walking and took a water break. After a gulp from his canteen, the Kid said, “So this Blaylock fella . . . He sounds like quite a character.”

  Remi nodded. “The problem is, we still don’t know how much of his story is real and how much is malaria- and grief-induced fantasy.”

  “That’s the blessing and the curse of adventure,” the Kid replied.

  “As far as I’m concerned, one should never miss the chance to take the road less traveled.”