The Lost City of Z

13. RANSOM

When I landed in São Paulo, Brazil, I went to see the person who I was sure could assist me on my expedition: James Lynch. He was the Brazilian explorer who, in 1996, had led the last major expedition to uncover evidence of Fawcett’s missing party and who, along with his sixteen-year-old son and ten other explorers, had been abducted by Indians. I had heard that, after Lynch had managed to escape from captivity and returned to São Paulo, he had left his job at Chase Bank and started a financial consulting firm. (Part of its name was, aptly, Phoenix.) When I phoned him, he agreed to meet me at his office, which was situated in a skyscraper downtown. He seemed older and gentler than the figure I had conjured in my imagination. He wore an elegant suit, and his blond hair was neatly combed. He led me into his office, on the ninth floor, and peered out the window. “São Paulo makes New York City seem almost small, doesn’t it?” he said, noting that the metropolitan area had eighteen million people. He shook his head with wonder and sat down at his desk. “So how can I help you?”

I told him about my plans to trace Fawcett’s route.

“You got the Fawcett bug, huh?” he said.

By then, I had it more than I cared to admit, and I said simply, “It seems like an interesting story.”

“Oh, that it is. That it is.”

When I asked how he had escaped from captivity, he stiffened slightly in his chair. He explained that, after he and his group were transported up-river, the Indians had forced them out of the boats and up a massive clay embankment. At the top, the Indians posted guards and set up a makeshift camp. Lynch said that he had tried to make a note of everything and everyone-to find a weak spot-but darkness soon enveloped them, and he could distinguish his captors only by their voices. Strange noises emanated from the forest. “Have you ever heard the sound of a jungle?” Lynch asked. I shook my head. “It’s not what you imagine,” he went on. “It’s not really loud or anything like that. But it’s always talking.”

He recalled how he had told his son, James, Jr., to try to sleep, and how he, too, eventually collapsed from exhaustion. He wasn’t sure how long he had nodded off, he said, when he opened his eyes and saw, in the morning sunlight, the tip of a spear flickering in the forest.

He turned around and saw another gleaming point, as more and more Indian men, all armed, emerged from the forest. There were over a hundred of them. James, Jr., who had also been woken up by the noise, whispered, “They’re everywhere.”

“I told him everything was going to be okay, though I knew it wasn’t,” Lynch recalled.

As the tribesmen formed a circle around Lynch and his son, five older Indians, who appeared to be chiefs, sat down on wooden stumps in front of the group. “That’s when I knew our fate was about to be determined,” Lynch said.

The young Indian who had led the original assault stepped forward and argued angrily before what appeared to be a council; occasionally, after he made a point, several Indians pounded their wooden clubs in assent.

Others addressed the chiefs, and every so often an Indian, who spoke some broken Portuguese, translated for the benefit of Lynch and his group, explaining that they were being accused of trespassing. The negotiations went on for two days. “There would be these endless hours of debate, and we didn’t know what was going on,” Lynch recalled, “and then this translator would sum up everything in a single sentence. It was, like, bam, ‘They will tie you over the river and let the piranhas eat you.’ Or, bam, ‘They shall cover you in honey and let the bees sting you to death.’ ”

Just then the door to Lynch’s office opened and a young man walked in. He had a round, handsome face. “This is my son, James, Jr.,” Lynch said.

He was now twenty-five and engaged to be married. When James, Jr., learned that we were discussing the Fawcett expedition, he said, “You know, I had a lot of romantic notions about the jungle and this kind of finished that.”

Lynch said that the tribe began to target his son, touching and taunting him, and Lynch thought about telling him to bolt into the forest, though death there was no less certain. Then Lynch noticed that four of the chiefs seemed to defer to a fifth one, who appeared to be the least swayed by the violent exhortations. As several Indians indicated that they intended to tie up his son and kill him, Lynch rose anxiously and approached the fifth chief. Relying on the Indian translator, Lynch said that he was sorry if his men had offended his people in any way. Assuming the role of a chief, Lynch said, he began to negotiate directly with him and agreed to hand over his group’s boats and equipment in exchange for the party’s release. The elderly chief turned and spoke to the council for several minutes, and, as he did, the Indians became more riled. Then the council fell quiet, and the commanding chief said something to Lynch in an unflinching voice. Lynch waited for the translator, who seemed to struggle to find the words. Finally, he said, “We accept your gifts.”

Before the council could change its mind, Lynch obtained his radio, which had been confiscated by the tribe, to send an SOS with his coordinates, and a bush plane was dispatched to rescue them. The value of the ransom came to thirty thousand dollars.

Lynch said that he was the last member of the party to be released and that it wasn’t until he boarded the plane and was safely in the air that he thought about Colonel Fawcett again. He wondered if Fawcett and his son had also been taken hostage, and if they had tried and failed to proffer a ransom. Looking out the airplane window, Lynch recalled, he could see the embankment where he and his team had been held for three days. The Indians were gathering their things, and Lynch watched as they faded into the forest.

“I don’t think anyone will ever solve the mystery of Fawcett’s disappearance,” Lynch said. “It’s impossible.”

On a computer on Lynch’s desk, I noticed a satellite image of jagged mountains. To my surprise, it was for Lynch’s next expedition. “I leave in two days. We’re going to the top of the Andes.”

“Not me,” James, Jr., said. “I have a wedding to plan.”

James, Jr., said goodbye to me and left the room, and Lynch talked about his upcoming adventure. “We’re looking for this plane that crashed in the Andes in 1937,” he said. “No one’s ever been able to find the thing.” He sounded excited, when, in the midst of his explanation, he stopped and said, “Don’t tell my son, but I wouldn’t mind tagging along with you. If you find anything about Z, you must tell me. Please.”

I said I would. Before I left, Lynch offered some advice. “First, you need a top-notch guide, someone who has ties to the tribes in the area,” he said. “Second, you need to go in as quietly as possible. Fawcett was right: too big a party only calls attention to itself.” He warned me to be careful. “Remember: My son and I were lucky. Most of these Fawcett expeditions never come back.”