The Lost Island

16

The sparse cloud cover around them vanished as the Gulfstream approached its destination. Sitting in a gray leather seat, Gideon gazed out the window at the seascape below. Ahead, as they approached the southern end of the Windwards, he could see the distant coastline of Venezuela, with the ABC islands in the distance: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. All around lay the turquoise Caribbean, speckled with islands, hundreds of them: grains of land set in the turquoise blue, many uninhabited. He wondered which of them, if any, would turn out to be Phorkys.

Garza, coming up the aisle, touched his shoulder lightly. “Gideon? We’re ready for Eli’s transmission.”

He rose and followed Garza to a partitioned area in the rear of the aircraft, where a large blank screen dominated one wall, a small array of seats in front.

The EES employee he had briefly seen at headquarters had come along on the flight; apparently, she would be helping conduct the briefing. Amy, Garza had called her. She was small and slight but quite attractive, Asian looking, with exotic green eyes, glossy short black hair, and a pert, athletic body. He noted in passing the wedding band on her finger. He wondered where the pilot of their vessel was; decided he was probably already on board in Aruba.

The woman drew a curtain over the aisle, and a moment later the lights went out and the screen sprang to life. And there was Eli Glinn, looking back at them from the conference room at EES headquarters.

“Greetings, Gideon,” he said, his voice surprisingly clear over the satellite connection. “Hello, Manuel. And hello, Amy. The pilot tells me you’re somewhere over the Caribbean as we speak.”

“An hour out of Aruba,” said Amy.

“Excellent. You have your briefing folders and all the information we can provide you at this time. During the mission, we’ll stay in contact through sat phone and computer. The yacht we’ve engaged for you is fully equipped with a high-speed satellite uplink, email, Wi-Fi, you name it. And it’s fully stocked with comestibles. Once you’re settled, Garza will return here and we’ll continue our analysis of the Phorkys Map. As we uncover more information, we’ll feed it to you.”

“Very good,” said Gideon.

“We’ll have people standing by at EES headquarters at all times, but Manuel will be your point man. And now, just a couple of parting words, if I may.”

“Shoot,” said Gideon.

“While I wouldn’t characterize this as an easy mission, Gideon, it doesn’t present the kind of challenge your earlier assignments did. For one thing, it’s the Caribbean. If things go wrong, we can always abort, extract you, and try again later. There’s no time limit on the mission beyond our client’s eagerness to see it completed. It’s true that we’re moving into the hurricane season. But with forecasting as powerful as it is today, you should have plenty of advance notice about bad weather.”

“I understand,” said Gideon.

“Now: any questions?”

There were none.

“Well then: good luck, you two.”

There was another brief silence. And then Gideon said: “What?”

Glinn paused, the eyebrow of his one good eye rising.

“What did you mean, ‘you two’?”

“You and Amy, of course. You’re partners.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gideon, “who said anything about a partner?”

“I mentioned you’d be traveling with a licensed captain,” Glinn said, his voice neutral. “That’s Amy. You’ll be making this journey together.”

Gideon stared at her and then back at Glinn. “Is this another of your QBA schemes? Introducing us at the last minute like this?”

“You’ll find her to be a most useful companion. In addition to having a hundred-ton master’s license, Amy has dual PhDs in sociology and classical languages.”

He looked at Amy and found her looking back with a faintly sardonic smile on her face. That she was evidently in on the surprise irritated him even more. “What is this, The Dating Game?”

“In a way, yes,” said Glinn. “You will be posing as a young, well-heeled married couple on a pleasure cruise. Garza has a wedding band for you.”

“Garza?” Gideon turned on him. “You knew about this, too?”

Garza was grinning and holding up a little blue box. He flipped it open to reveal a gold band nestled in silk. “Try it on. Size eleven, right?”

Gideon flushed with annoyance. “And here I thought she was just a glorified stewardess.”

“Funny, and I thought you were the lavatory attendant,” said Amy, eyeing him coolly.

Gideon stared at her and then had to laugh. “Touché. Okay, I deserved that. But I still object to being the only one kept in the dark.”

Amy continued looking at him. The stewardess crack, it seemed, had gotten under her skin. Well, he felt aggrieved, too. She’d known all along they were going to be partners — and had said nothing.

“All right, Manuel, give me the ring,” Gideon said. He slipped it on and held it up. “So we’re married?”

“Don’t think any benefits are going along with that ring,” Amy replied tartly. She had a low voice with just the faintest hint of an accent.

“I do everything with a reason,” said Glinn. His face had become smooth, placid, disinterested. “And there was an excellent reason for this particular partnership. Trust me, you both have skills that will complement each other.”

Gideon looked from Glinn to Amy. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and he doubted she weighed more than ninety pounds. “What if we don’t get along?” he said.

“You won’t.”

Amy said to Glinn: “Your QBA program predicted we wouldn’t like each other?”

“It did.”

“Your program works,” she said drily.

“You will, in time, understand why you make good partners. After you land in Aruba, a car will take you to Savaneta, a village on the southwest coast, where your yacht is berthed. It is a port favored by wealthy yachtsmen, quiet, quaint — a good place to begin your cruise while attracting the least amount of attention. Not that we expect any attention; it pays to be cautious. I leave it to you to work out together your marital history. Manuel has arranged everything else. Manuel?”

Garza spoke. “The boat’s a Hinckley T55 MKII motor yacht. The Turquesa. Very elegant. Amy’s familiar with its operation and can fill you in on the details. It has two staterooms, a length of fifty-five feet, and a top speed of thirty-six knots. We’ve hustled to retrofit the craft with some specialized equipment you might need for the journey. Again, Amy has been briefed on the details.”

Gideon turned toward Glinn. “Just the two of us on this boat? What about a wait staff? Cabin steward? Butler? Lavatory attendant?”

“The beauty of the Hinckley is that it requires no crew. It’s a simple boat to operate, dual jet drives, joystick operation. You’ll be cruising in fairly sheltered waters. One thing, Gideon: Amy is the captain. She’s in charge. That’s the way it is on a boat. You follow her orders. Understood?”

Gideon swallowed. “Understood.”

“At the same time, Amy, Gideon has exceptional qualities for this mission. You will seek his counsel.”

Amy nodded silently.

“Now, tomorrow you will cruise due west from Savaneta. Thanks to careful perusal of the latest satellite imagery, Dr. Brock has managed to identify one other location on the Phorkys Map — the sixth clue, neatly bypassing the still-undeciphered images four and five, which we assumed were somewhere in the Cape Verde Islands but because of clue six are now moot. That—clue six — will serve as your starting point.”

A picture flashed up on the screen of a tiny, precise drawing from the map, magnified greatly. It depicted what looked like a black bottle against a white hump. The accompanying Latin phrase read: Nigrum utrem, naviga ad occidentem.

“‘Black bottle, sail west,’” translated Amy.

“Exactly,” said Glinn. “Fifty nautical miles west of Aruba lies a desolate cluster of islands — rocks, really — known as Los Monjes del Sur. The southernmost island has a huge basaltic sea stack in the shape of a leather bottle. That picture on the map reproduces the sea stack against the outline of the island quite remarkably.”

“And how do we find this place?” Gideon asked.

“Amy has the coordinates.”

“And from there?”

“The next clue on the map, image seven, is this.”

A picture flashed on the screen, a tiny, upside-down U with an odd projection on the right side, like a knob. The Latin inscription read: Sequere diaboli vomitum.

Gideon glanced at Amy for a translation.

“‘Follow the Devil’s vomit.’”

“Of course,” said Gideon. “Finally: an obvious clue.”

“That one has us stumped, too,” said Glinn. “It’s our hope the two of you will figure it out when you come across it, and that this will lead you to the next clue, and so on.”

A chart flashed on the screen, and Glinn went on. “As you will see from the charts, if you sail due west from Los Monjes, you will encounter a very remote headland known as La Guajira, part of the coastline of Colombia. This entire section of coastline is harsh desert, uninhabited. We believe the ‘Devil’s vomit’ landmark will be found along this coast somewhere.”

“I take it this is well off the normal cruising routes.”

“Yes. In fact, west of La Guajira, you enter a part of the Caribbean where few ever go. It’s not at all a postcard picture of lush islands and white beaches. This is a remote, untraveled sea of barren, uninhabited islands, with tricky currents and few places to land. The coastline of Colombia is unfriendly. Lot of drug smuggling. And if you continue west, you will eventually hit the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras — not exactly the Côte d’Azur.”

“And you call this a pleasure cruise?” Gideon asked dubiously.

“You just need to exercise common sense — and be careful,” Garza said.

“So what, exactly, is our excuse for cruising in this Caribbean desert?”

“You’re adventure travelers,” Glinn told him. “In your briefing books, you have our analysis of the map so far. You also have copies of the map itself. We’ve devoted a Cray XE6 Opteron 6172 computer to working exclusively at deciphering that map. It is essentially scouring the world’s databases of pictures and map elements for clues. But the pictures and clues in the Phorkys Map are so obscure, so peculiar, it’s quite possible you’ll have to figure some of them out as you go. Now, if there aren’t any more questions, I’ll sign off. May I recommend the Flying Fishbone in Savaneta for dinner? The Bouillabaisse à la Marseille is excellent, paired with a Puligny-Montrachet. That would be a good place to be seen — and for you to establish your cover.”

The screen went blank.