Lost Empire

“Here’s where truth gets mixed up with legend,” Selma replied. “You’ve heard of George Booth, I assume?”

“English pirate,” Sam said.

“Right. Spent most of his time in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Started as a gu

“You said the Dolphin was cornered near Reunion Island,” Sam repeated. “How close to the Sainte Marie commune?”“A few miles offshore,” Selma replied. “Legend says Booth and his crew had just finished raiding the commune.”

“Having made off with the Adelise coins,” Remi finished.

“So says the legend. And so said Demont Molyneux in an official letter of complaint to

Louis XIV, the king of France.”

“So let’s play this out,” Sam said. “Booth and the other escapees from the Dolphin take with them the Adelise coins, then meet up with Bowen. They then hijack the Speaker and head for Zanzibar, where they . . . what? Bury their booty on Chumbe Island? Dump it in shallow water for later recovery?”

“Or maybe the Speaker never got away,” Remi added. “Maybe the stories are wrong. Maybe she was sunk in the cha

“The question is,” Sam said, “does our bell belong to the Speaker ?”

CHAPTER 4

ZANZIBAR

THE STORM THAT HAD CLOSED OVER THE ISLAND IN THE EARLY-MORNING hours had moved on by dawn, leaving the air crisp and the foliage around their bungalow glistening with dew. Sam and Remi sat on the rear porch overlooking the beach and shared a meal of fruit, bread, cheese, and strong black coffee. In the trees around them, hidden birds squawked.Suddenly a pinkie-sized gecko scaled the leg of Remi’s chair and skittered across her lap and onto the table, where it navigated the dishes before retreating down Sam’s chair.

“Wrong turn, I guess,” Sam remarked.

“I have a way with reptiles,” Remi said.

They shared one more cup of coffee, then cleaned up, packed their backpacks, and walked down to the beach, where they’d grounded the cabin cruiser. Sam tossed their backpacks over the railing, then gave Remi a boost.“Anchor?” she called.

“Coming.”

Sam squatted beside the auger-shaped beach anchor, wriggled it free, then handed it up to Remi. She disappeared, and he could hear her feet padding along the deck, and then a few seconds later the engines growled to life and settled into a sputtering idle.“Slow back,” Sam called.

“Slow back, aye,” Remi replied.

When Sam heard the propeller begin to churn, he leaned hard against the hull, dug his feet into the wet sand, coiled his legs, and shoved. The boat eased back a foot, then another, then floated free. He reached up, snagged the lowermost railing with his hands, then swung his legs up, hooked his heel on the gunwale, and climbed aboard.“Chumbe Island?” Remi called through the open pilothouse window.

“Chumbe Island,” Sam confirmed. “Got a mystery to solve.”

THEY WERE A FEW MILES northwest of Prison Island when Sam’s satellite phone trilled. Sitting on the afterdeck, sorting through their gear, Sam picked up the phone and pressed Talk. It was Selma. “Good news, not so good news,” she said.“Good news first,” Sam said.

“According to Tanzania’s Ministry of Natural Resources regulations, the spot where you found the bell is outside sanctuary boundaries. There’s no reef there, so no protection necessary.”“And the not so good news?”

“Tanzanian maritime salvage law still applies-‘No extraordinary excavation methods.’ It’s a gray area, but it sounds like you’re going to need more than Ping-Pong paddles to free that bell. I’ve got both Pete and Wendy looking into the permit process-discreetly, of course.”

Boyfriend and girlfriend Pete Jeffcoat and Wendy Corden-tan and fit blond Californians with degrees in archaeology and social sciences, respectively-worked as Selma’s apprentices.“Good,” Sam said. “Keep us posted.”

AFTER A BRIEF STOP at the Stone Town docks to refuel and gather the days’ provisions, it took another leisurely ninety minutes’ cruising down the coast and picking their way through the cha

“Let’s start with snorkel.” The bell was sitting in ten feet of water. “Let’s get a good look at what we’re up against, then regroup.”

AS IT HAD BEEN the day before and was ninety percent of the time in Zanzibar, the water was stu

Ahead they could see the edge of the Good-bye Zone. The previous night’s storm had not only ramped up the current in the main cha

They fi

“You feel that?” Sam asked.

Remi nodded. “Felt like an invisible hand was trying to grab us.”

“Stick close to the bank.”

“Got it.”

They dove again. On the bottom, Sam checked the readout on his GPS unit, oriented himself, then pointed south down the bank and signed to Remi: 30 feet . Resurfacing, they swam that way in single file, Sam in the lead, one eye on the GPS, one eye on his position. He stopped again and pointed an index finger down.

Where the bell had jutted from the bank there was now nothing but a barrel-shaped crater. Anxiously they sca

It took little imagination to piece together what had happened: Throughout the night the storm-driven waves had scoured the bank, slowly but steadily eroding the sand around the bell until it tumbled from its resting place. From there the surge had rolled the bell along its mouth, physics, erosion, and time doing their work until the storm passed.

Sam and Remi turned to each other and nodded excitedly. Where Tanzanian law had forbidden them to use “extraordinary excavation methods,” Mother Nature had come to the rescue.