Lost Empire

CHAPTER 40

JAKARTA, INDONESIA

“HOW SURE ARE YOU ABOUT THIS, SELMA? ” SAID SAM.

He and Remi were sitting on their bed in their suite at the Four Seasons. The day before, shortly after leaving Dumadi’s house and parting company with Robert Marcott, they’d boarded a Batavia Air charter at Palembang’s Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Airport for the two-hundred-fifty-mile hop across the Java Sea to Jakarta. The Four Seasons seemed a decent place for a base of operations.Selma said over the speakerphone, “I confronted him. He admitted it.”

“That crafty SOB. I wonder if he’s even got grandkids in London going to college.”

“Or if he’s truly dying,” Remi added.

“Both are true. I checked. He’s still a con man, in my book.”

Of the many unanswered questions and curiosities surrounding Sam and Remi’s adventure, one had been plaguing Selma in particular: How had Rivera and his boss, President Garza, known the Fargos would be in Madagascar? What had prompted the note-and-notify bribe? Selma believed there were only two possibilities: Cynthia Ashworth, keeper of Constance Ashworth’s letters, or Morton, proprietor of the Blaylock Museum and Curiosity Shop. These had been Sam and Remi’s greatest sources for research material. Somewhere along the line, had Rivera and Garza tapped these sources as well?

Cloaked in her best “bad cop” impression, Selma started with Morton, claiming she knew he’d sold Blaylock material to others and that if Morton didn’t come clean she was going to take him to court. Morton broke down within two minutes, Selma said.

“He didn’t know Rivera’s name or how he’d come to know about the museum, but about five years ago he and a few of his goons showed up, asking questions about Blaylock and the Shenandoah. Morton says he didn’t particularly trust Rivera, and he suspected they’d get rough with him if he didn’t cooperate, so that night he moved all the important material out of the museum’s storeroom and hid it in his home. Sure enough, the next morning he arrived at the museum to find it had been ransacked.

“Rivera showed up a few hours later, pleasant as can be. During the night Morton had scrounged up some of Blaylock’s papers-pages from his journal, the original manuscript of the biography, random drawings and maps-”“The Moreau Madagascar map,” Remi predicted.

“Yes. He’d seen the tiny writing on it and tore away that section and gave the bigger piece to Rivera. Morton says that seemed to satisfy Rivera. They completed the transaction, and Rivera left. Morton, being the clever fellow he is, figured Rivera wasn’t quite done, so he moved the Blaylock material again, out of his home to another location.”“And that night his house was burglarized,” Sam said.

“Right. Morton made it a point to stay out all night with friends. The ruse worked, he said. Rivera never returned.”

“And then we show up five years later, asking the same questions.”

“Why didn’t he pull the same trick on us?”

“He said he liked you. And he wanted to retire and take care of his grandkids. When you offered sixty thousand instead of twenty, he decided to throw it all in and hold nothing back.”“Then we don’t know what Rivera knows, do we?” asked Remi.

“No,” Sam replied. “By dumb luck, Morton sold him enough to send him down some paths and make some progress, but not enough to finish it. Now with us in the picture, Rivera and Garza can tag along to the end. We have to expect they’re going to show up-if they haven’t already.”“Which brings me to my next point,” said Selma. “We finished decoding the rest of Blaylock’s letters to Constance. Care to guess the date of his last letter?”

“No,” replied Sam.

“Even the year?”

“Selma.” “Eighteen eighty-three.”

Remi replied, “That means he was out here chasing his treasure for eleven years. My God.”

“What about the letters in between?” Sam asked.

“There were only a few a year after Blaylock captured the Shenandoah II . As was his habit, the plain text part of the letters was mostly travelogue . . . the rakish man of adventure. In the letters, he duplicates almost all the tall tales from Morton’s biography. They were window dressing. One of his coded messages to Constance suggests he was convinced Dudley and the others had discovered his lie about the Shenandoah II and were after him.”“Were they?”

“Not as far as I can tell. And if they did know, they probably wouldn’t have cared. The Shenandoah II was gone. She was no longer a threat. Blaylock had done his job.”“Back to his last letter,” Sam prompted.

“Right. It’s dated August 3, 1883, and was posted from Bagamoyo. I’ll quote the relevant part directly:

“Have at last discovered the clue for which I’ve been praying. With God’s help I will discover the fountainhead of my great green jeweled bird and collect my long-delayed reward. Sailing tomorrow for Sunda Strait. Expect 23-25 day voyage. Will write again as possible.“Yours,

“W.”

“You said the Sunda Strait, correct?” Sam asked.

“Yes.”

Sam paused. He closed his eyes for a moment, a half smile on his face. Remi asked, “What is it?”

“Blaylock left Bagamoyo on August 3, 1883. Based on his estimated transit time, he would have arrived in the Sunda within a day or two of August twenty-seventh.”“Okay . . .”

“The Sunda Strait was where the Krakatoa volcano was. August twenty-seventh was the day it exploded.”