Wall of Night

79

Tanner stared at the paddle wheel, his brain slowly connecting lines and angles until he could make out the entire underlying form. A dozen questions jockeyed for position in his head. How long had it been here? Where had it come from? How had this half-jungle island, half-ship hybrid come to be?

As for the first question, the earliest steam paddle wheel had been built in the early 1800s, so if by some quirk of history one of them had found its way here, this vessel could be almost two hundred years old. Tanner doubted that, but it piqued his curiosity all the more.

As for the last question, if he were right and this were a tributary of the Bira, the answer might lie with the history of the river itself. Given that much of the Bira wound through the mountains and was fed by often torrential spring runoff, the river often changed course and depth every spring. From year to year lakes become mere bulges in the river; bulges in the river, deepwater lakes.

Assuming the paddle wheel had been here long enough, it may have simply become a self-evolving part of the ecosystem: Pushed from sandbar to sandbar, with each spring flood depositing onto its decks yet another layer of silt that eventually became soil strong enough to catch and nurture seeds blown by the wind, the paddle wheel became a living island. Grass would have grown, followed by vegetation, then finally small trees.

Tanner could see it in his mind. Just as a sunken ship becomes an ecosystem to the plants and fish beneath the surface, this boat had over time mutated into just another among the hundreds dotting the Bira River.

Whatever its history and origin, Tanner knew this boat meant one thing for them: shelter.

It took only a minute to gather the others and make their way back to the paddleboat. With Soong on Tanner’s back and the pilot on Hsiao’s, they climbed off the ice near the waterwheel and picked their way through the outer ring of vegetation into the interior. The paddle wheel’s once-white hull was now mottled in shades of brown, green, and black. It had sunk so deeply into the sandbar that only the upper edge of its gunwales were visible. The handrail was still intact, albeit thick with vines and creepers.

With some help from Hsiao, Briggs boosted himself onto the gunwale, pried apart the vines, and poked his head through. It was the main deck. He stuck his leg through the opening until his foot found the handrail, then climbed over and dropped to the deck below. His feet sunk two inches into the dirt.

The first thing he noticed was the drastic temperature difference; it was ten degrees warmer here than on the river. The wind had died to a whisper. To his left and right — fore and aft — the main deck stretched into the darkness, a leafy tunnel broken only by overgrown doorways leading into the superstructure. The deck was a carpet of thick ferns and grass.

Tanner poked his head out. “Hsiao, can you and Lian hand me Han and the pilot?”

“Sure.”

They jostled both men through the opening. Tanner laid them onto the deck, then helped Hsiao and Lian over the railing. “Briggs, what is this place?” Lian said.

“It’s an old steam-driven paddle wheel boat.”

“What’s it doing here?” said Soong.

“I have no idea, and right now that doesn’t matter. Let’s find a way inside and get warm.”

At midships they found a passage that led them to a wide alleyway running the length of the boat, with entrances at the forecastle and afterdeck. Like everything else, the alleyway’s bulkheads were splotchy with mildew and moss. Both sides of the passage were lined with closed doors.

Tanner clicked on his flashlight and shined it into the darkness. “Come on,” he whispered.

They started forward, stopping every few feet to rattle doorknobs. Briggs found the sixth door unlocked, but jammed shut by a mound of topsoil. He and Hsiao dropped to their knees and dug until they’d cleared a path, then wrenched open the door.

Inside, they found a well-appointed cabin, with two triple-tier bunk beds, a pair of hardback captain’s chairs, and a small, potbellied stove. The ceiling planks, warped and cracked from untold years of rain, had been infested by root systems from the decks above. The air was thick with the musk of decaying vegetation. Thousands of snakelike tendrils covered every inch of the ceiling as well as the upper reaches of the bulkheads. Briggs felt a shiver on the back of his neck.

He waved Hsiao and Lian into the room. Lian gasped as she saw the ceiling.

“Just roots,” Tanner explained. “Hsiao, let’s get Han and the pilot onto those bunks.”

Once everyone was situated, Tanner made a quick search of the cabin, but found little of use except for an ancient oil lantern. He shook it gently; it was full. After some tinkering and several lighting attempts, the lantern sputtered to life and filled the cabin with a warm, yellow glow.

“Han, how’re you doing?” Tanner asked.

“My legs are beginning to hurt badly.”

“They’re starting to warm up, which is a good sign. Can you manage?”

Soong forced a smile “Of course. Compared to my previous living conditions, this is luxurious.”

“Hsiao, what about him?” Tanner asked, nodding to the pilot.

“He’s got a laceration in his scalp, but the bleeding has stopped. He probably has a concussion. Rest is the best thing, I think.”

“Good.” Tanner turned to Lian and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “And you?”

She smiled shyly at him. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Hsiao, see what you can do about getting that stove going. I’m going to have a look around.”

Where the alleyway exited onto the forecastle he found a spiral ladder leading upward. Like the main deck’s handrails, the steps and balustrade were snarled with creepers. Rising beside the ladder, sapling rose upward and disappeared into a canopy of green.

He climbed to the next deck, where he found himself in another fore-to-aft alleyway lined with cabin doors. He walked aft, shining his light over the doors and trying to quash the tingle of fear in his belly. The ship was a ghost town, each closed door a potential tomb.

He spotted a vine-encrusted life ring on the bulkhead. He pried away the growth until he could read the stencil: SS PRISCILLA.

Thanks for your hospitality, Priscilla, Briggs thought. Whoever and wherever you are.

He found another ladder and climbed upward until he came to a partially closed hatch. He braced his back against it, then coiled his legs on the steps and heaved. With a grinding of steel, the hatch popped open. A small avalanche of dirt poured onto Tanner’s head. He shook it off and climbed through the opening.

He found himself starting at the ship’s wheel. He was on the bridge. Through the soiled windows he caught a glimpse of the trees and vegetation on the forecastle. Aside from what little sunlight made its way through the canopy, the bridge was otherwise as dark.

Near the port bridge wing door was a raised pedestal chair. With a start, he realized the seat was occupied. Hand resting on the butt of the Makarov, he clicked on his flashlight and shined it over the figure. His beam picked out the glimmer of bone and the black hole of an eye socket.

Could this be the captain? Tanner wondered. Heart pounding, he stepped closer.

The skeleton sat perfectly upright in the chair, fully clothed in thick wool pants, a parka, and a fur cap, all so rotted Briggs could see patches of bone through the material. Clutched in the skeleton’s lap was a square package of what looked to be sealskin.

One eye watching the skeleton’s face, Tanner tentatively reached out and pried the package free. He backed up to the windows for more light. It was in fact sealskin, hemmed at both ends by rawhide stitches. He opened his knife, plucked loose the seam, and unraveled the rest.

Inside was a leather-bound book, roughly the size of a paperback and two inches thick. It was remarkably dry, with only the faintest water damage on the cover. He opened it to the first page. There was an inscription:

Tanner felt his breath catch in his throat. “Dashing Andy. I’ll be damned.”

Like most people, Tanner loved a good mystery, and the disappearance of Andrew Galbreth Hadin was one of the greatest of the twentieth century, along with Amelia Earhart’s and Jimmy Hoffa’s.

Hadin and his crew of forty men had sailed from Lake Baikal in late summer of 1909, ostensibly on a mission for the Smithsonian to collect specimens from the wilds of Siberia. Knowing Hadin’s penchant for the dangerous and outlandish, U.S. newspapers didn’t buy the explanation and soon after his departure rumors began circulating about the true nature of the expedition.

While most modern-day scientists have generally come to agree that the 1908 Tunguska Event had been caused by an asteroid impact, in 1909, less than year after the explosion, whatever had happened in the remote forests of Siberia was still a mystery. Something had flattened half a million acres of trees and created shock waves that had been felt all the way to Belgium, and no one knew why.

Many newspaper editors and fans of Hadin’s surmised that Tunguska was the real driving force behind his voyage, and that he’d taken on the Smithsonian’s mission merely as a way of bypassing Russian bureaucracy and secrecy surrounding the event.

Four months after Hadin’s departure, the Priscilla was officially declared missing. The Russian government sent out search parties along Hadin’s supposed route, but found no sign of the boat or her crew. A handful of Hadin admirers and emulators also attempted mounted searches for the billionaire, but they too failed.

“You’re a long way from home, Andy,” Tanner whispered. As the crow flies, they were 1100 miles from Lake Baikal and probably twice that by water course. “How did you get so lost?”

Briggs opened the diary and thumbed through the pages; every one was filled with Hadin’s precise handwriting. He scanned the entries, reading as he went:

Engrossed, Tanner kept reading, his heart sinking with each entry. Hadin and the Priscilla had kept pushing eastward as autumn descended upon them and his entries reflected his frustration and confusion as they slowly became lost in the expanse of Siberia. Toward the end of October, his location entries became more and more vague until they finally started reading “Location Unknown.”

Despite this, Hadin forged on, still confident they would find their way. In twos and threes the crew began abandoning Priscilla in hopes of reaching civilization before winter swept down on them. Finally only Hadin, his guide Nogoruk, and four loyal men remained behind.

Briggs flipped to the last entry:

​Tanner closed the journal. What a god-awful way to die, he thought. The loneliness must have been overwhelming. And yet, to the very end, Hadin had been optimistic. What of his family? It must have been torturous for them, waiting and praying for news — good or bad — about his fate.

Briggs slipped the diary into his breast pocket. He would make sure it reached Hadin’s family. Though almost a century had passed, they would finally know his fate.

Curious about Hadin’s comment regarding the radio, Tanner wandered around until he found the radio room one deck below the bridge. Inside he found the transceiver missing from its mounts, the cables ripped from the bulkhead.

“Generator contraption …” he murmured. “Engine room.”

He found the engine room a jungle unto itself. Water from the sandbar had seeped through the Priscilla’s rotted hull, creating a swamp. The creepers lining the bulkheads and catwalks joined with the roots poking through the ceiling to form a cave.

Following his flashlight beam, Tanner searched the cat-walks until he was at the very stern of the boat. Below him he could see the giant cogs of the reduction gear; aft of these lay the telephone pole-size shaft leading to the waterwheel.

Sitting on the uppermost catwalk, he found the generator Hadin had mentioned. A makeshift hand crank jutted from the side of the rusted machine. Amid the tangle of electrical cables was an ancient Marconi radio the size of a small steamer trunk.

Hadin’s contraption, Tanner realized. A hand-powered generator.

A pair of cables led upward from the radio, spiraled around the catwalk support, and disappeared through a ragged hole in the ceiling.

He traced the cables to the roof of the bridge. The sun had risen. Aside from a line of scrub bushes and small trees lining the railing, the roof was mostly open. Despite the chill wind, the sun felt good on his face.

The cables ended at a pile of rusted, steel rods, wire mesh, and wire. It took Tanner several minutes of sorting before he realized the mess had been Hadin’s attempt at making an antenna. Where Dashing Andy had gone wrong, Tanner didn’t know, but he realized the idea might be worth a second shot.

He was climbing down the aft ladder well when suddenly a snippet from Hadin’s diary popped into his head: “I’ll come back for you!” It had been Nogoruk’s promise to Hadin. It had also been his promise to Han and Lian twelve years ago. His mind flashed back to his first sight of her at the camp, sitting in the chair, her hands clasped in her lap as she looked up at him …

“He told me you were coming back for us.”

“… were coming back for us,” Tanner murmured.

Were—a certainty. Not “would,” as if repeating an as yet unfulfilled promise, but “were,” as if describing something already happening. Briggs suddenly felt dizzy. He sat down on the steps. Even as half of his brain was putting together the pieces, the other half was arguing against the conclusion.

You’re wrong, Briggs. You’re exhausted and not thinking straight. You’re wrong.

“He told me you were coming back for us …”

He returned to the cabin to find Hsiao sitting beside the stove nursing a small fire. Tanner shivered as the warmth hit him. Soong and Lian were both asleep, Lian curled up on the bunk above the still-unconscious pilot. Tanner stood staring at her face. God, let me be wrong.

“Briggs …” Hsiao whispered. “Briggs …?”

“Yes?”

“What did you find?” Hsiao whispered.

“A way to phone home, I hope. I’ll need your help in a few minutes.”

Tanner knelt beside Soong’s bunk. Hsiao had splinted his legs with slats from the bunk then secured them with duct tape. Briggs gently shook Soong awake. “Sorry to wake you.”

“What is it? Is everything okay?”

“We need to talk. Keep your voice down. Tell me what happened the day you were arrested.”

Soong frowned. “I was taken to Guoanbu headquarters and—”

“What about Miou? She wasn’t arrested at the apartment, was she?” Tanner asked.

“No. One of her friends was sick; she decided to take some soup to her.”

“She hadn’t planned on it?”

“No, it was last minute.”

“What about Lian?”

“I don’t know,” Soong answered. “The last time I saw her was at our apartment that morning.”

“You never saw her again — never spoke to her?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Briggs. Please, what is—”

“Not even by letter or through an intermediary? Last night was the first time you’d seen her or spoken to her since you were arrested? You have to be sure, Han.”

“I am, Briggs. She’s my daughter. I would remember.”

Tanner nodded and forced a smile onto his face. “Okay, thanks.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Nothing — just trying to refresh my own memory. Go back to sleep.”

In a daze, Tanner shuffled out of the cabin and stood in the alleyway, listening to the wind whistle down its length. He pressed his back against the bulkhead and slid down to the deck.

It hadn’t been Fong, after all, Tanner thought. Fong had been just a bit player; a conduit.

It had been Lian from the start. Lian had betrayed her own mother and father to the Guoanbu.

My God …

Briggs hung his head between his knees and wept.