Lost Empire Read online

  It took little imagination to piece together what had happened: Throughout the night the storm-driven waves had scoured the bank, slowly but steadily eroding the sand around the bell until it tumbled from its resting place. From there the surge had rolled the bell along its mouth, physics, erosion, and time doing their work until the storm passed.

  Sam and Remi turned to each other and nodded excitedly. Where Tanzanian law had forbidden them to use “extraordinary excavation methods,” Mother Nature had come to the rescue.

  They swam toward the bell but had only covered half the distance when Sam reached out a halting hand to Remi’s arm. She had already stopped and was staring ahead. She’d seen what he’d seen.

  The bell had come to a stop at the lip of the precipice, with the waist, shoulder, and crown embedded in the sand and the sound ring and mouth jutting into empty space.

  BACK ON THE SURFACE, they got their breath. Remi said, “It’s too big.”

  “Too big for what? To move?”

  “No, to belong to the Speaker.”

  Sam considered this. “You’re right. I didn’t notice.”

  The Speaker’s displacement was listed as four hundred fifty tons. According to standard measures for the era in question, her bell wouldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds. Their bell was bigger than that.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Sam said. “Back to the boat. We need a plan.”

  THEY WERE TEN FEET from the boat when they heard the rumble of diesel engines approaching from behind. They reached the ladder and turned around to see a Tanzanian coast guard gunboat a hundred yards away. Sam and Remi climbed onto the Andreyale’s afterdeck and shed their gear.

  “Smile and wave,” Sam murmured.

  “Are we in trouble?” Remi whispered through her smile.

  “Don’t know. We’ll soon find out.” Sam continued waving.

  “I’ve heard Tanzanian jails are unpleasant.”

  “Every jail is unpleasant. It’s all relative.”

  Thirty feet away, the gunboat came about and drew parallel to them, bow to stern. Sam now saw it was an upgraded 1960s-era Chinese Yulin-class patrol boat. They saw Yulins several times on each of their trips, and Sam, ever interested, had done his homework: forty feet long, ten tons; three-shaft, two six-hundred-horsepower diesel engines; and a pair of twin 12.7mm deck guns fore and aft.

  Two sailors in jungle fatigues stood on the afterdeck and two more on the forecastle. All bore shoulder-slung AK-47s. A tall black man in crisp whites, clearly the captain, stepped from the cabin and walked to the railing.

  “Ahoy,” he called. Unlike Sam and Remi’s previous encounters with the coast guard, this captain was grim-faced. No welcoming smile or pleasantries.

  “Ahoy,” Sam replied.

  “Routine safety check. We will board you now.”

  “Be our guest.”

  The gunboat’s engines gurgled, and the Yulin angled closer until its bow was ten feet away. The engines went back to idle, and the Yulin glided to a stop beside them. The sailors on the afterdeck tossed tire bumpers over the side, then reached down, grabbed the Andreyale’s railing, and pulled the boats together. The captain vaulted over the railing and landed catlike on the Andreyale’s afterdeck beside Sam and Remi.

  “You are flying the diver flag, I see,” he said.

  “Doing a little snorkeling,” Sam replied.

  “This boat is yours?”

  “No, a rental.”

  “Your papers.”

  “For the boat?”

  “And diving certificates.”

  Remi said, “I’ll get them,” then trotted down the steps into the cabin.

  The captain asked Sam, “What is your purpose here?”

  “On Zanzibar or here specifically?”

  “Both, sir.”

  “Just on vacation. This seemed like a nice spot. We were here yesterday.”

  Remi returned with the documents and handed them to the captain, who first examined the rental agreement, then their diving certificates. He looked up and studied their faces. “You are Sam and Remi Fargo.”

  Sam nodded.

  “The treasure hunters.”

  Remi said, “For lack of a better term.”

  “Are you hunting treasure on Zanzibar?”

  Sam smiled. “That’s not why we came, but we try to keep our eyes open.” Over the captain’s shoulder, behind the tinted windows of the Yulin’s cabin, Sam saw a shadowed figure. It appeared to be staring at them.

  “Have your eyes seen anything on this visit?”

  “A coin.”

  “You are aware of Tanzanian law regarding these matters?”

  Remi nodded. “We are.”

  From the Yulin, a knuckle rapped once on the window.

  The captain looked over his shoulder, said to Sam and Remi, “Wait here,” then climbed back over the railing and stepped into the Yulin’s cabin. He reappeared a minute later and jumped back down.

  “The coin you have found—describe it.”

  Without hesitation, Remi said, “Round, copper, about the size of a fifty-shilling piece. It’s badly pitted. We haven’t been able to make anything of it.”

  “Do you have it with you?”

  “No,” said Sam.

  “And you say you are not hunting for any shipwrecks or specific treasure?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Where are you staying on Zanzibar?”

  Sam saw no point in lying. They would double-check the answer. “A bungalow on Kendwa Beach.”

  The captain handed back their papers, then tipped his cap to them. “Good day.”

  And then he was back over the rail and inside the Yulin’s cabin. The gunboat’s engines rumbled, the sailors pushed off, and the gunboat came about and steered west toward the channel. Sam took two long strides, ducked into the cabin, and reemerged with a pair of binoculars. He lifted them to his eyes and trained them on the Yulin. After twenty seconds, he lowered the binoculars.

  “What?” Remi asked.

  “There was someone in the cabin giving orders.”

  “The knock on the window?” Remi said. “Did you get a look at him?”

  Sam nodded. “Not black and not in uniform. He looked Hispanic—maybe Mediterranean. Thin, hawk nose, thick eyebrows.”

  “What kind of non-Tanzanian civilian would have the power to order about a coast guard gunboat and her crew?”

  “Someone with deep pockets.” As much as they loved Tanzania and Zanzibar and their people, there was no arguing that corruption was common. The majority of Tanzanians made a few dollars a day; military personnel, only slightly more. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Right now we don’t know anything. Just curious, Remi: Why’d you lie about the coin?”

  “Gut reaction,” Remi replied. “You think I should have—”

  “No. I had the same instinct. The Tanzanian coast guard has two Yulin gunboats to cover the central coast, the main channel, and Zanzibar. I got the impression they were specifically looking for us.”

  “Me too.”

  “And as safety checks go, that one was worthless. Didn’t ask about life preservers, the radio, or our dive gear.”

  “And when was the last time we met a Tanzanian official that wasn’t all smiles and geniality?”

  “Never,” Sam replied. “About the Adelise coin—”

  Remi unzipped the side pocket of her dive shorts, withdrew the coin, and held it up with a smile.

  “That’s my girl,” Sam said.

  “You think they’ll search the bungalow?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “So, put it all together and what’s it mean?” Remi pondered.

  “No idea, but we’re going to watch our step from here on out.”

  CHAPTER 5

  ZANZIBAR

  FOR THE NEXT HOUR THEY SAT ON THE AFTERDECK , SIPPING ICE-COLD water and enjoying the gentle rocking of the Andreyale and listening to the waves lapping at the hull. Within the first thirty
minutes of the Yulin’s departure, it appeared twice more, a mile out, cruising first north to south, then south to north. It had not returned.

  “Can’t help but worry the bell’s tumbled over the edge,” Remi said. “I can see it in my mind’s eye.”

  “Me too, but I’d rather risk that than have them come back while we’re in the middle of raising it. Let’s give it another twenty minutes. Worst case, we can probably still get to it.”

  “True, but at a hundred fifty feet, things start getting dicey. Getting down there wouldn’t be so hard. Finding it might be.” As massive as the bell was, after bouncing down a hundred-fifty-foot slope it could end up almost anywhere, like a dropped child’s marble that’s lost in the dining room but ends up under the refrigerator in the kitchen. “And once we find it, getting it up to the surface is a different can of worms altogether. Better dive gear, compressor, lift bags, winch . . .”

  Sam was nodding. There would be no chance of hiding that level of activity from curious or prying eyes. Simply renting the equipment in Stone Town—even anonymously—would set the rumor mill in motion. By day’s end there would be onlookers both on the shoreline and in boats offshore—including, perhaps, the Yulin gunboat and her mysterious passenger.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said.

  THEY MOVED THE ANDREYALE to within thirty feet of the bell’s location. Sam went over the side and wedged the anchor behind a rock outcropping, and then, back aboard, they uncoiled the hundred feet of solid-braided three-quarter-inch anchor rope they’d purchased earlier in Stone Town. They looped the rope over the port and starboard rear gunwale cleats, then secured the loop in the center with a screw-link D ring. The remainder of the coil they tossed over the stern. Two minutes later they were in their snorkel gear and finning along the surface, dragging the rope behind them.

  To their mutual surprise, they found the bell where they’d left it, perched on the edge of the precipice, but they immediately found the situation was more precarious than they’d anticipated. The sand beneath the bell’s mouth was eroding before their eyes, wisps of sand and chunks of rock being ripped away by the current.

  Remi fed the end of the rope through the D ring on her dive belt, then handed it to Sam, who did the same, then clamped the rope’s screw-link D ring between his teeth.

  They finned to the surface, grabbed a half dozen lungfuls of air, then dove again.

  Sam signaled to Remi: Pictures. If the worst came to pass and they lost the bell, pictures would at least give them a chance at identification. As Remi started shooting, Sam finned forward until he could see over the edge. The slope was not quite vertical but rather sixty or sixty-five degrees. Not that it mattered. As Remi had earlier guessed, the bell’s weight surpassed that of the Speaker’s by twenty or thirty pounds. If the bell decided to go over the edge, the slope’s angle would slow its descent only slightly.

  And then, as if on cue, the sand beneath the bell gave way. The crown tipped upward, hovered for a split second, then the bell began sliding, mouth first, down the slope.

  On an impulse he immediately regretted, Sam coiled his legs, gave a sharp dolphin kick, and followed the bell over the edge. He heard, fleetingly, Remi’s muffled scream of “Sam!” and then it was gone, replaced by the rush of the current. Sand peppered his body like a thousand bee stings. Tumbling now head over feet, Sam reached out in what he hoped was the direction of the bank. The outstretched fingers of his right hand struck something hard, and he felt a sharp pain shoot through his pinkie finger. Ignoring the pain, he could feel the bell picking up speed now, the bulldozer-like effect of the mouth losing to the physics of momentum. His eyesight began to swim as his lungs began consuming the last molecules of oxygen. His heart pounded in his head like cannon fire.

  Working from feel alone, he slid his hand up the bell’s waist, then over the head. His fingers found the opening of the crown. He lifted his left hand up to his mouth, grabbed the D ring, and fed it through the crown. He curled it around the line and then, using his thumb, spun the screw link closed.

  The bell jerked to a stop. The rope let out a muffled twang. Sam lost his grip, and he began sliding downward, hands slapping at the bell’s surface, fingers scrabbling for purchase. There was nothing. Then, suddenly, a ridge slid beneath his palm. He felt another stab of pain in his pinkie finger. The bead line, he thought. His curled fingertips had landed on the bead line just above the mouth of the bell. He reached up with his other hand, gripped the line, then chinned himself upward, both legs kicking against the draw of the current until the anchor line came into view, a braid of pure white in the swirl of sand. He grabbed it. He felt fingers touch the back of his hand. Out of the gloom a face appeared. Remi. His eyesight was sparkling now and dimming at the edges. Remi pulled herself down the anchor line, reached down, clamped onto his right wrist, and tugged.

  Instinctively Sam latched onto rope and began climbing.

  TEN MINUTES LATER he sat in the deck chair, eyes closed and head tilted back into the sun. After two minutes of this he brought his head level again and opened his eyes to find Remi sitting on the gunwale watching him. She leaned forward and handed him a bottle of water.

  “Feeling better?” she asked gently.

  “Yes. Much. Pinkie finger’s jammed, though. Smarts.” He held it up for inspection; the digit was straight but swollen. He curled it and winced. “It’s not broken. Nothing a little athletic tape won’t cure.”

  “Nothing else wrong?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Good, glad to hear it,” said Remi. “Sam Fargo, you’re a dummy.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “What were you thinking, going after that thing?”

  “I just reacted. By the time I realized what the hell I was doing it was too late. In for a penny, in for—”

  “A one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean,” Remi countered with a scowling shake of her head. “I swear, Fargo . . .”

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “And thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Dummy,” Remi repeated, then got up, walked over, and kissed him on the cheek. “But you’re my dummy. And you don’t need to thank me—but you’re welcome anyway.”

  “Tell me we still have it,” Sam said, looking around. “Do we still have it?” He was still a tad woozy. Remi pointed off the stern where the anchor line, taut as piano wire, arced down into the water.

  “While you were taking your catnap, I dragged it off the slope. It should be resting about five feet from the edge.”

  “Nicely done.”

  “Don’t get too excited. We still have to raise it.”

  Sam smiled. “Have no fear, Remi. Physics is our friend.”

  BEFORE THEY COULD APPLY Sam’s idea, however, they had to exercise some brute force. With Sam’s newly damaged pinkie wrapped in duct tape, he stood in the stern taking up slack in the anchor line while Remi reversed the Andreyale’s engine and followed his hand signals until they were almost directly above the bell. He uncoiled the line from the cleats, took up the remainder of the slack, then looped and locked down again.

  Sam called, “All ahead slow. Nice and easy.”

  “You got it.”

  Remi eased the throttle forward a quarter inch at a time. Sam, leaning over the stern, his face mask in the water, watched the bell’s progress as it bulldozed through the sand. When it was twenty feet from the edge of the precipice, he called: “All stop.” Remi throttled down.

  Sam settled the mask over his face and dove down to examine their prize. He resurfaced a minute later. “Looks good. Not much barnacle growth, which means it’s probably been embedded in that bank for quite a while.”

  Remi extended her hand and helped Sam aboard. She asked, “Damage?”

  “None that I could see. It’s thick, Remi—probably closer to eighty pounds.”

  She whistled softly. “Big boy. Okay, by standard measure that’d make the ship . . . what, a thousand tons displacement?”

  “
Between that and twelve hundred. Much bigger than the Speaker. The proximity of the Adelise coin and the bell is pure coincidence.”

  WITH THE BELL no longer in danger of dropping into the channel, they disconnected and steered the Andreyale north a hundred yards, then eased their way through the inlet at the island’s ankle and emerged in the stiletto lagoon.

  Only a half mile wide and long, the lagoon was actually a mangrove swamp. Jutting from the water were a couple dozen “floating islands”: mushroom caps of earth sitting atop buttresses of exposed, gnarled mangrove roots. Ranging in size from standing-room-only to a double garage, all were covered in thick weeds, and most supported miniature forests of scrub trees and bushes. At the southern end of the swamp was a narrow beach, and beyond that a copse of coconut palms. It was eerily quiet, the air dead still.

  “Now, this isn’t something you see every day,” Remi murmured.

  “Any sign of the Mad Hatter or Alice?”

  “No, knock wood.”

  “Let’s get moving. Daylight’s burning.”

  The made their way through the floating islands, dropped anchor just off the beach, and waded ashore.

  “How many are we going to need?” Remi asked. With one hand she deftly curled her auburn hair off her neck and snapped a rubber band around it, making a neat topknot.

  Sam smiled. “It’s like magic, how you do that.”

  “We are a wondrous species,” Remi agreed with a smile and wrung the water from her shirttails. “So, how many?”

  “Six. No, five.”

  “And you’re sure we couldn’t get what we need in Stone Town and sneak back here?”

  “You want to risk it? Something tells me that gunboat captain would be only too happy to arrest us. If he thinks we were lying to him . . .”