Lost Empire (29 page)

“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 kicked 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.”

Sam smiled and held up his canteen. “Cheers to that.”

They clicked canteens.

“Why don’t you two take a break. I’m going to do some scouting. I think we’re close, but I need to do some checking around.”

The Kid dropped his pack and walked off through the knee-high grass. Sam and Remi plopped down on the ground and listened to the waves crashing on the beach. A cluster of rainbow-hued butterflies drifted across the tops of the grass, fluttered above their heads for a few moments, then continued on. From a nearby baobab a ring-tailed lemur hung upside down staring at them. After two minutes of this, he slowly climbed up and out of view.

Without a sound, the Kid reappeared behind them. “Eureka,” he simply said.

 

 

IT WAS A FIVE-MINUTE WALK away. As they topped a small, steep-sided hillock, the Kid stopped and spread his hands.

“Here?” Sam asked.

“Here. After the earthquake the cove closed up and the water evaporated, leaving just the upper part of the island exposed. Eighty years of ocean silt and storms filled in the depression.”

Sam and Remi looked around. Thankfully, the hillock measured no more than four hundred square feet.

Remi said, “I suppose we find the center point and start walking.”

The Kid asked, “How many spans did Blaylock indicate?”

“Fourteen hundred forty-two. A little under two miles.”

The Kid checked the sky. “In Madagascar time, that’s three or four hours, most of it back in the rain forest. My recommendation: We settle in for the night.”

 

 

THEY WERE UP SHORTLY AFTER DAWN. AT THE KID’S INSISTENCE, Sam and Remi wandered down to a tidal pool for a rinse off while he threw together a meal of truffles and cassava hash browns. They returned to camp just as the percolator was beginning to boil. Remi poured three cups while Sam helped the Kid serve.

“Probably should ask you,” the Kid said between forkfuls, “how much do you know about the situation here?”

“You mean politically?” Sam replied. “Not much, aside from what we read in the papers—a coup, a new president, and an angry ex-president in exile.”

“That’s the short of it. What you don’t know is the ex-president is back from exile. Rumor is he’s back and has set up shop in Maroantsetra, up the coast. If he manages to put together enough men and guns, there’ll probably be a civil war; if he doesn’t, it’ll be a massacre. Either way, it’s not the best time to be a white face on the island. Around the cities you’re okay, but out here . . .” The Kid shrugged. “Might want to keep a sharp eye out.”

“For what?” asked Remi.

“Mostly guys with AK-47s riding around in pickup trucks.”

“So we should hope we see them before they see us.”

“That would be the idea. Even if not, if you look like you’re more trouble than you’re worth, they might move on. Whenever politics get stirred up like this, the underdogs sometimes look at kidnapping as an income-and-leverage opportunity.”

Sam said, “With luck we’ll be back in Antananarivo before nightfall.”

The Kid smiled. “After you’ve found whatever there is to find.”

“Or find that there’s nothing to find,” Remi added.

 

 

SHORTLY BEFORE EIGHT they packed up their gear, trudged up the hillock, took a bearing on 315, then set out single file across the savanna with the Kid in the lead, Remi in the middle, and Sam bringing up the rear with his handheld GPS, which he’d calibrated to bearing/ countdown mode: 1,442 spans of Blaylock’s 7-foot-tall walking staff, which would equal 10,094 feet or 1.91 miles.

“Here’s hoping Blaylock’s staff hasn’t shrunk or expanded in the last hundred thirty years,” Sam called.

“Or that he was no good with a tape measure,” Remi added.

They hadn’t crossed half the savanna before their boots and pant legs were soaked with dew. By the time they reached the edge of the rain forest, the sun’s lower rim had broken free of the eastern horizon; they felt its heat on their backs.

The Kid stopped before the wall of jungle, said, “Wait a moment,” then walked the tree line, first north for fifty yards, then south. “This way,” he called. Sam and Remi joined him. Not surprisingly, he’d found a trail.

Ten feet inside the trees the sun dimmed behind them, leaving only faint stripes and splotches on the foliage around them.

“Fifty-five hundred feet down, forty-six hundred to go,” Sam announced.

They walked on. Soon the grade increased as the terrain began its climb toward the highlands. The trail narrowed, first to shoulder width, then to a foot, forcing them to sidestep and duck in places. The razor-sharp leaves and prickly stalks returned with a vengeance.

The Kid called a halt. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “A stream. Somewhere to the left.”

“I’ll be right back.” The Kid ducked off the trail and was swallowed by the forest. He returned ten minutes later. “It’s about thirty yards south. I think it’ll roughly parallel your course. How far to go?”

Sam checked the GPS. “Three thousand feet.”

“Nine thousand on the Madagascar scale,” Remi added with a game smile.

“The stream will be easier going. Just watch out for crocs.”

“You’re kidding,” Remi said.

“Nope. You’ve heard of the Madagascar cave crocodiles?”

“We weren’t sure if they were a wives’ tale or not,” Sam replied.

“Not. Madagascar’s the only place on earth that has them. See, alligators and crocodiles are ectothermic: They rely on the environment to regulate their body temperatures—sun for warmth, water and shade for cool. Our crocs don’t need that.
National Geographic
was out here a few years ago to look into them, but it’s still a mystery. Anyway, sometimes in the morning they’ll use underground streams to come out to hunt before the sun gets too hot.”

“And we’ll spot them how, exactly?” Remi asked.

“Look for logs floating in the water. If the log’s got eyeballs, it’s not a log. Make a lot of noise, look big. They’ll take off.”

 

 

THE STREAM WAS CALF DEEP and sand bottomed, so they made rapid progress, slowly winding down the GPS’s screen until it read 400 feet. The stream curved first south, then back north, then west again, before broadening out into a boulder-lined lagoon. On the west side of the pool a forty-foot-wide waterfall crashed onto a rock shelf, sending up a cloud of spray.

Sam checked the GPS. “Two hundred feet.”

“Bearing?” Remi asked.

In answer, Sam pointed at the waterfall.

 

 

AFTER A FEW MOMENTS of silence, Remi said, “Do you see it?”

“What?” replied Sam.

“The lion’s head.” She pointed at the point where the water tumbled off the rock ledge. “The two outcrops are the eyes. Below them, the mouth. And the water . . . If you watch it long enough, some of the streamers look like fangs.”

The Kid was nodding. “I’ll be darned. She’s right, Sam.”

Sam chuckled. “She usually is.”

“Maybe your Blaylock isn’t crazy after all.”

“We’ll see.”

Sam dropped his pack, stripped to the waist, and donned a waterproof headlamp. He clicked it on, pointed the beam at his palm, and clicked it off.

“Just an exploratory probe, right?” said Remi.

“Right. Five minutes, no more.”

“Hold on a second,” the Kid said. He dug into his pack and came out first with a marine flare—“Crocs hate these”—then another revolver, this one similar to his own Webley. “Crocs hate these even more.”

Sam hefted the weapon, studied it. “I don’t recognize it. Another Webley?”

“The Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver. One of the first and only wheel-gun semiautomatics. Break-top design, .455 caliber, six rounds. Not much good past fifty yards, but whatever you hit goes down.”

“Thanks,” Sam said. “Exactly how many Webleys do you have?”

“Last count, eighteen. Kind of a hobby.”

“Antique revolvers and rare truffles,” Remi replied. “You are an interesting man.”

Sam shoved the flare into one of his shorts’ cargo pockets, the Webley into the other, then began picking his way around the lagoon’s edge, hopping from boulder to boulder and doing his best to avoid wet patches, a task that became harder the closer he came to the waterfall. When he was within arm’s length of the cascade, he turned, gave a short wave to Remi and the Kid, then ducked into the deluge and disappeared.

Four minutes later he reappeared, hopped onto a nearby boulder, shook the water from his hair, then made his way back to the beach.

“There’s a shallow grotto behind the falls,” he announced. “It’s about twenty feet deep and fifteen wide. It’s clogged with backwash—branches, rotting logs, heaps of grass that’ve formed into a loose dam—but behind all that I found an opening. It’s a horizontal gap, really, like a stone garage door that didn’t close all the way.”

“There goes our streak,” Remi replied with a smile.

“Pardon me?” asked the Kid.

Sam said, “So far on this particular adventure, we haven’t had to go subterranean, which is rare, given what we do. Before there were barable doors and lockable vaults, if you wanted to keep something safe or a secret you had only two reliable choices: bury it or hide it in a cave.”

Remi added, “Still pretty common today. Might have something to do with genetic memory: When in doubt, burrow.”

“So you’ve never had a completely aboveground adventure?”

Sam shook his head. Remi said, “It’s why we stay current on our climbing and spelunking skills.”

“Well, caves are far down my list of favorite places,” the Kid said. “So if you don’t mind, I’m going to let you two have all the fun. I’ll mind the fort.”

Ten minutes later, armed with the appropriate gear, Sam and Remi returned to the waterfall and ducked behind it into the grotto. The sunlight dimmed behind the curtain of water. They clicked on their headlamps.

Sam stepped close to Remi and said over the rush, “Stand to one side. I’m going to see if we’ve got any company. Be ready with a flare.”

Remi stepped to the other side of the grotto while Sam selected a long branch from the dam pile and pulled it free. Systematically, he began probing the debris, jamming the branch’s tip into holes and gaps and wiggling it about. He got no reaction; nothing moved. He spent another two minutes heel-kicking the larger logs, trying to illicit a response, but fared no better.

“I think we’re okay,” Sam called.