Mary Dear - Redux Page 13

  They went on board and Emilio got busy with the final preparations for the trip.

  ‘Welcome on board, make yourselves at home,’ Victor said, and took Joe’s suitcase below. Billy followed him with his scuba gear. Victor re-emerged and went to the enclosed pilothouse, climbed up onto his chair and fired up the twin Volvo 159 horsepower diesel engines. Emilio cast off the ropes with Joe’s help. Steering with the five-spoke black and chrome wheel Victor manoeuvred the boat as it surged forward out of the quiet waters near the shore and moved out to the open sea. After consulting his chart, he set a course for Cocos Island. Billy had joined them and was leaning over the rail, looking out to sea with an absent expression on his face.

  Perched on the forward deck and cradling a pair of Bresser prism binoculars, Emilio caught sight of Joe looking at him. He shouted over the noise of the engines, ‘helps to keep a lookout. Don’t want any surprises,’ which left Joe wondering what possible surprises there could be as he looked out onto a clear sea without a boat in sight.

  The Radon was cruising at 30 knots, a comfortable 5 knots inside its top speed. The sea was a little choppy and the wind fresh but that could all change. The crossing from Puntarenas to the Island is not for the faint hearted and Emilio wondered how the two Englishmen would fare if the going got rough. Joe went over to where Victor sat at the controls and asked him if he made the trip out to the island on a regular basis. Victor answered that he took American tourists over and even some Japanese visitors from time to time, but not as often as he’d like.

  ‘How long will it take us?’

  ‘About thirty-six hours or so, if all goes well.’

  Joe went on deck and looked out at the open ocean wishing they were there already. He couldn’t wait to see Tim’s face when he caught up with him.

  The Pacific Dawn was making good time and the fresh sea breeze on his face felt invigorating and so different from the odd weekends spent with friends sailing around Cowes. It got dark, but not before they were treated to a spectacular sunset. After a dinner of arroz y frijoles—the rice and beans dish that is the staple diet of Latin America—washed down with a bottle of Bavaria Gold, Joe decided to turn in and went down below to be met by Emilio, making his way to the pilothouse. Emilio found Victor busy with his charts and listening to ‘Radio Sabrosa’ transmitting from San Jose. Down below, Joe made himself as comfortable as he could in the confined cabin space and tried to get some rest.

  At the helm, Victor kept an eye on the sweeping arm of his Sperry Marine VisionMaster radar. It revealed little luminous dots with every sweep of the arm but all a safe distance away from the Radon. Victor told Emilio to get some rest saying he would take the first watch. Emilio agreed and asked to be woken up in four hours. He went below to the second cabin. In the pilothouse, Victor settled down to his usual routine of checking the radar screen and scanning the horizon for the lights of other boats. He saw nothing.

  About four hours later he checked his watch. The luminous hands told him that it was time to wake Emilio and get some well-earned rest, but first he checked the chart and established they were on course.

  Joe came up on deck a while later just as dawn was breaking. Emilio was seated at the helm and his face glowed green with the light coming from the radar screen. He was twenty-five, same age as Victor and the same colour, but Emilio was a little shorter and stockier than his partner. He had a Popeye the sailor caricature tattooed on his right forearm.

  ‘Good morning, sleep well?’

  ‘Yes thank you; took a bit of time though, to get used to the movement of the boat, but yes I was very tired. Is that coffee I can smell?’

  Emilio pointed to the thermos flask and a cupboard with several odd cups ranged inside. Joe helped himself to the piping hot black coffee.

  ‘Getting light,’ he said, looking out over the ocean. He saw Billy sitting on the forward deck, a cup of coffee in his hand. He wondered how long he’d been up or if he’d slept at all.

  Day had started with a thin radiant red line stretching over the horizon that quickly extended over the ocean painting it red, then orange, finally fading to pale pink and violet. This was simultaneously accompanied by a riot of colour extending up into the sky revealing streaks of crimson, orange and yellow as the sun rose slowly from the sea and brought a glorious day to a sky sparsely dotted by a few stray clouds that would soon be burnt-off with the heat of the day.

  Emilio stretched and stood up after switching off the running lights on the Pacific Dawn.

  Victor joined them a little later and relieved Emilio who set about making some breakfast. There were the occasional schools of dolphins swimming alongside as on the previous day and every so often one or two hammerhead sharks turned up for a closer look. The following day Victor scanned the horizon with the binoculars. Billy kept himself apart from the others, which, as far as they were concerned, was okay. There was something about the big guy Victor did not like, and Emilio had noticed it too.

  ‘Not long to go now, two or three hours maybe, and the island should appear right about there,’ Joe’s gaze followed where Victor pointed in the horizon but there was no sign of land yet, in all directions there was nothing but the ocean.

  ‘It will start as a grey outline above the water but soon you’ll be able to see it quite clearly.’

  Joe was looking forward to seeing La Isla del Coco for the first time. He remembered reading something about it in an old copy of National Geographic years ago but nothing could have prepared him for what he was soon to see. Two hours later, as the Pacific Dawn cut through the waves, Victor handed the helm over to his partner and joined Joe on deck just as the outline of the Island started to appear over the horizon and grew steadily as the boat approached.

  Isolated and untamed, Cocos Island rose majestically from the sea, a mysterious emerald-green oasis some few hundred miles north of the equally famous Galapagos Islands. The sight took Joe’s breath away.

  The island appeared lush, a tropical rainforest densely populated by an abundance of different species of trees, all competing for space on the island floor. Everywhere Joe looked, an impenetrable jungle looked back, a jungle that reached right down to the shore. He couldn’t imagine penetrating it, never mind climbing to the summit.

  Where Cocos Island met the sea, Joe saw mysterious dark caves looking like half submerged eyes staring at him, while above and all around huge waterfalls thundered down in a never ending stream that merged with the sea, a sea so clear that he could see the thousands of colourful fish that lived there. Joe looked up at the sky above and marvelled at the impressive collection of birds of all kinds flying in lazy circles. Where Cocos Island met the sea, Joe saw mysterious dark caves looking like half submerged eyes staring at him. Above and all around huge waterfalls thundered down in a never ending stream that merged with the sea.

  From the deck of the Pacific Dawn, Joe wondered if this was how it would have looked to the buccaneers who sought refuge in its uninhabited shores all those years ago. It was exactly midday when Emilio throttled back. The anchor went down dragging the chain behind it with a thunderous roar. They had come into a dive site known as ‘Dirty Rock’.

  Some two hundred meters away, the Mare Nostrum, an impressive one hundred and twenty foot long craft, with a beam of twenty-six feet and ten comfortable guest cabins lay at anchor. One hundred meters further on slightly nearer the shore, was the Sea Tigress. Victor brought the binoculars up to his eyes, adjusted them and focused on it. There were a few members of the crew on board. The ‘Sandman Hollywood Dreams Inc’ logo, of a film camera and a girl asleep in a hammock, was clearly visible on the side of the boat.

  With Emilio’s help, Victor lowered the small ‘Sea Eagle’ inflatable into the water and started its Mercury outboard engine. Joe boarded and they headed past the Mare Nostrum and on towards where the Sea Tigress lay anchored. Billy stayed behind.

  They came alongside and called out:

  ‘Permission to come aboard?’

&nb
sp; One of the crew called back, pointing to the access ladder. Joe was first on board and introduced himself.

  ‘Good morning, I’m Joe Martin, I think my nephew Tim is with you, is he on board?’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m Mike. Not just now, he’s out with our director and a small team. They went on a dive ‘bout an hour ago to shoot some underwater scenes. Should be back ‘bout now, care to wait?’

  ‘Yes thanks; serious boat you have here,’ he commented, which was a bit of an understatement. The Sea Tigress was full of film equipment and looked very new. There were some Deep Thought scuba diving suits and some strange-looking fins. The crew member followed his gaze.

  ‘Yes, we’re pretty much state-of-the-art here, even have a small projection room where we can see the rushes, do a bit of editing...’ he trailed off as he became aware of the sound of an outboard motor. Joe had heard it too and was searching the sea.

  ‘There they are now,’ Mike said, pointing at the Zodiac that was heading their way.

  Trevor Hewitt, the director, was first up the ladder followed by the rest of the diving team, while the crew of the Sea Tigress helped them get their gear onboard. Joe saw Tim first and when he saw his uncle his jaw dropped.

  ‘Uncle Joe what the...what are you doing here? How’d you manage to find me?’ Tim’s head was swimming with questions. ‘Oh my God, it’s Mum isn’t it? Is she okay?’

  ‘She’s fine. Absolutely fine. It’s just...well, you know your mother, she doesn’t hear from her precious boy and starts having panic attacks; she called the cavalry, that’s me by the way, so here I am,’ he said smiling.

  Trevor and the diving team had been standing around mystified and when Tim realized it he explained who the tall Englishman was and they all shook hands before going off to the editing room below deck leaving Tim with his uncle to get on with their reunion.

  ‘You’d better call your Mum right now if you can, it won’t be too late in England. She’s really been worried-sick.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said grinning, ‘don’t go away’, and set off to use the satellite phone leaving his uncle on deck.

  Chapter Nine

  2007

  Elliott had known he would have to go to Ecuador and pick up the trail where Edward Hannah had left off. It was an indispensable part to solving the puzzle of the lost treasure, so he got a temporary personal loan to cover the cost of the journey and without further ado prepared his travel plans and set off on his voyage.

  On arrival in Guayaquil, he hired an interpreter and went to Chachapoyas in search of those who would have been of an age to remember what had happened even though, over fifty years ago, many would have been children. He found an old man who remembered a plane crash. He’d heard later, when he was a bit older, that the plane had taken off from Guayaquil airport bound for Lima but that it had crashed in Chachapoyas and no one had survived.

  That part of the story, at least, Elliott knew because of his conversation with Miss Edwina, but he needed to know more, so he sought newspaper stories from that time. He visited the offices of El Universo, a local daily newspaper, and spoke to the editor who was happy to help a fellow journalist from so distinguished a place as the BBC. He gave him access to their archive where he found an article that spoke of the discovery of the C-47 in 1955. With the help of his interpreter he learned that the paper mentioned an Englishman, identified by what remained of his passport, who was amongst the dead, and that a local farmer and his son had discovered the airplane. El Universo even gave the farmer and his boy their fifteen minutes of fame by naming them in their article: They were Ernesto Ortega and his seven-year-old son Julio.

  Elliott travelled to Chachapoyas, a remote village in northeastern Peru, shrouded in mystery and lying 2,335 metres above sea level. His interpreter told him that the name derives from the native word ‘Chachapoyacuno’, meaning ‘forest or mountain of mist’.

  He managed to trace the family, which was not too difficult as communities in remote areas do not move far and everyone knows everyone else. Ernesto and his wife had died but their son Julio, now fifty-nine, was still alive. He had married and moved his family to Kuelap, a citadel found near the village of Tingo, in Luya province. Like his father before him, he still toiled the land helped by his own child. Elliott turned up with his interpreter to help him with his poor Spanish. He said that he was a friend of the unfortunate Englishman’s family and wanted to know everything that Julio could tell him about the day he and his father had found the plane. Elliott turned to his interpreter.

  ‘Ask him if he remembers that day?’

  The interpreter asked Julio who replied.

  ‘Si, lo recuerdo muy bien...’

  ‘Yes Señor Elliott, he says he remembers it well.’

  Julio and his father had found the plane while out hunting for rabbits. It was lying in several pieces: The cabin was jammed between two trees with its wings severed, looking like a dead bird. The fuselage had broken in half and the door at the rear of the plane was missing completely. They had approached it carefully as the forest had all but swallowed up the plane. The passengers were in a pitiful state, just skeletons with the ragged remains of clothes. Elliott asked Julio if they had found any possessions and he said that there were a few cases but mostly there was nothing to be found as time, scavengers and the constant rain had destroyed almost everything. His father had called the authorities to the site and the bodies had been given a Christian service and buried in the town’s graveyard. Elliott pressed Julio saying that there were things that were of sentimental value to his friend’s family and that he would gladly pay to have them back.

  Hearing this, Julio said that the only thing they had been able to salvage was a suitcase that had, somehow, not opened during the plane crash. They had taken it home but had only found a few photographs, an old envelope, a book and some glasses. There was no money or anything valuable and, as they could not read, they had taken the book to the local schoolteacher who recognized a few words and said he thought it was written in English, but that he could not read it, so he had returned the book to them. Elliott thought it was a long shot but asked through his interpreter if Julio still had the case. Julio said that, after his father died, he had thought about throwing it away but his father had always insisted on keeping it in case somebody showed up one day to claim it and pay a reward. Julio had put it away in a safe place and there it had remained to this day, just the way they had found it. Elliott said that he would like to claim it and that the dead man’s family had empowered him to pay a large reward. Julio fetched the suitcase and Elliott saw, from the faded initials ‘E.H.’ on one corner of the case that this was what he had been praying for. He gave Julio one thousand Soles leaving him astonished and with more money than he’d seen in his entire life.

  The first thing Elliott did when he got his hands on Edward Hanna’s suitcase was take it to his room in the cheap guesthouse where he was staying during his short visit to Chachapoyas. He went through the contents and found some letters from Miss Edwina to her brother and one in a stamped and sealed envelope addressed to his sister that Hannah had not got around to posting. His sister would be glad to have that.

  He looked in the elasticised side pocket of the suitcase and found a small brown hardcover notebook, he opened it and a folded sheet of paper fell out. Elliott picked it up, opened it, and there they were, the now familiar list and coordinates, an exact match of the book in his possession. Elliott felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling him. He sat down to read a series of Hannah’s notes.

  Elliott discovered the origins of the book there and then.

  There was a page and a half on Dieter Klein, in a sort of shorthand but very easy to interpret. A letter from Julian Keating to his brother had been clipped to the next page. He read it and whistled softly, taking in the information.

  He now took a rolled-up chart, and stretched it out using his knee and both hands to pin it down to the bed. It was from Stanfords and it had a posit
ion plotted on it in red ink. The same position Charlie had plotted on his map.

  This was one more piece of the puzzle: Nobody goes to the trouble of plotting a position on a chart just for the hell of it. There was something there and from all he knew, it had to be the looted contents of the missing carriage.

  The Gold Virgin and the Gold Train, a chance to kill two very precious birds with one stone, thought Elliott, but there was a choice to be made, Julian’s map of Our Lady of Lima, or the Gold Train...treasure maps were the stuff of boy’s books whereas the coordinates were much more scientific; then he thought that the Gold Virgin had waited so long to be rescued, she could wait a little longer.

  Elliott’s trip to Ecuador had been a success and the time had finally arrived to put all his plans into action. As soon as he returned he had lunch with Tina and brought her up to speed, saying he needed a month to get things sorted. He’d kept in touch on the telephone and had given her a week to get ready. The day for the long awaited trip had finally arrived and he could not wait to get going. Elliott had booked a taxi to take him to Trowbridge railway station where he took a South West train to Waterloo and on arrival in London travelled by taxi to The Sloane Club where he spent the night. The following morning he awoke early, the two suitcases he’d packed the night before were waiting by the door. He left the club in a cab and stopped to collect Tina from her London flat and they continued to Gatwick together. They went to the BA desk in the North Terminal to collect their tickets. Tina had a card for the VIP lounge and, as they still had some time before their flight was called, they decided to spend the time in comfort.

  Victor had been standing with Emilio while Joe had been tied up with his reunion with his nephew. He tapped Joe on the shoulder to ask if he intended to stay or head back to Puntarenas.