Sam and Remi had rented a four-wheel-drive Toyota van from a different agency and the men loaded their gear in the cargo area before wordlessly taking their seats. The drive to the site took an hour longer than the day before. They were stopped three times by uncomfortable-looking policemen at makeshift roadblocks, who, after searching the van, cautioned them against proceeding any farther into an area of the island that was out of official control. Sam and Remi remained courteous, but firm, and each time the lead officer shook his head when he waved them past as though he were directing them through the gates of hell.
Sam looked over at Remi from the driver’s seat. “They seem pretty wound up, don’t they?”
“Sounds like we were lucky we didn’t meet the aid workers’ fate on our little drive the other day,” she said.
“That occurred to me. But it wasn’t for wont of the bad guys trying.”
When they arrived at the bay, Greg’s team moved quietly and efficiently to set their equipment out on the sand as they awaited the arrival of the skiff. Remi fished a two-way radio out of her bag and called the ship. She was rewarded by a burst of static and then Captain Des’s cheerful voice.
“Good morning to you both,” he said. “Ready for a ride?”
“We are. Six of us, and enough gear to sink the boat.”
“We’ll make room. Be there in a jiffy.”
Once they were on board, Simms showed the men to the guest quarters while Sam and Remi joined Des and Leonid on the bridge.
Leonid looked up from a photograph he was studying when they entered and grunted before returning to his project. “About time,” he grumbled.
“I hope you were able to get something accomplished without us,” Sam said, ignoring the Russian’s barb.
Des nodded. “Two dives so far. We’ve got the layout nicely mapped now. Leonid here was just going over the images so we could work on each building in a systematic fashion.”
Leonid tapped a finger on the glossy printout. “This is by far the largest ruin. We should start there. It’s easily double the size of any of the others, which indicates it was the most important.”
Remi inched closer. “That would make sense, given the orientation.”
Sam nodded. “It’s east of the one we were looking at.”
“It looks to be in better shape than many of the others. Next dive, we’ll go over it carefully and see what’s under all the sea life,” Leonid said.
Kent Warren, the dive master, tromped up the steel steps and entered the pilothouse. “G’day. Just met the new lot. Serious gents, they are,” he announced.
Leonid pushed the underwater image away and stood. “I want to clear as much of the surface area of this large structure as possible by nightfall. The more bodies in the water, the faster it will go.”
“Too right. Let me run the calcs on bottom time and I’ll put together some dive schedules,” Warren explained.
“How many surface supplied air rigs do we have?”
“Only two,” Warren said. “We’re usually in shallower water and don’t use ’em much. But this seems ideal, so we’ll keep two men down for as long as feasible. Between them and the scuba, we should be able to make short work of clearing the worst of the clutter.”
“We don’t want to damage anything. And every step needs to be captured on film so we have a record,” Leonid reminded.
“Absolutely.”
Half an hour later, the on-deck compressor was clattering away as a member of Warren’s crew fed out hoses carrying air to the divers below. They were accompanied at the bottom by a pair of the recently arrived American divers in scuba gear and their slow approach to the sunken ruin flickered on the bridge monitor, where Leonid, Sam, Remi, and Des watched.
The image was high-res, creating the illusion they, too, were peering through dive masks as the swimmers approached the mound. Light filtering from the surface lent the scene a spectral quality. They watched as the lead diver moved near the closest surface and twisted the valve on a hose, directing a blast of high-pressure air at the crust of barnacles and seaweed.
The camera distorted in a cloud of debris as the water instantly turned opaque from centuries of accumulation being blasted off. Leonid had researched the best way to clean the structures with the least chance of damage and had hit on the idea with Des — use the compressor’s power to clean them.
The downside was that visibility was only a foot, and the divers had to give it a rest so the sediment could settle. The camera feeds flickered in the brownish cloud, and after a few minutes everyone could begin to make out the unmistakable shape of large limestone blocks.
Two hours later, enough of the wall had been cleared so they could appreciate the scope of the ruin — the wall measured at least one hundred feet long.
“It’s huge. Hard to believe that was built by the islanders,” Leonid said, his voice hushed. “Nothing hints at them having the means to construct anything like it.”
Remi peered at the screen and turned to Des. “Can you communicate with the divers?”
“Yes. The surface breathers have a comm line.”
“Ask them to zoom in on the area to the far right of what they’ve cleared.”
Des lifted a microphone to his lips and gave the instruction, and they waited as a diver moved in slow motion to the section that interested Remi. As the camera closed in on the block, Sam and Remi smiled and Leonid nodded.
Remi was the first to break the silence. “Looks like glyphs, and, if I’m not mistaken, that’s a totem of a sea god,” she said. “And look there. Looks like a depiction of a column of men. Hauling cases.”
Leonid squinted and Des cleared his throat. “What do you make of that?”
Remi sat back and smiled.
“Unless I’m completely garbling the glyph, it’s a group of warriors carrying something into a temple.”
“Something?” Leonid said.
When Remi spoke, it was almost a whisper. “Treasure. An offering to the gods.”
CHAPTER 19
By the end of the afternoon, much of the top section of the large structure had been partially scrubbed clean. The uppermost portion of the roof had collapsed, but enough of the edges remained to be able to make out the rough shape of the building. The divers continued working even as Sam and Remi climbed into the skiff to return to shore. The plan was to continue until ten that night, using underwater floodlights, switching out the surface-breathing divers every few hours to avoid fatigue.
Once back in the van, Sam eyed the Darwin, floating serenely at anchor.
“What are you thinking?” Remi asked.
“What it must have been like to watch your entire civilization disappear without a trace. Imagine how that had to feel.”
“I’m pretty sure that in an earthquake large enough to do that, nobody had time to feel much of anything.”
“You’re probably right. But I can understand why the survivors would think the place was cursed. How else could you explain that kind of devastation?”
“What do you make of the glyphs?”
“It appears to suggest the legend of a treasure, at any rate. We’ll soon know for sure.”
Remi gave him a doubtful look. “It’s a lot of area to explore. It’ll take years just to clean the ruins and then they’ll have to contend with all the rubble. It might be a long time before there’s a chance to hunt for any treasure.”
“Well, Mrs. Fargo, I’m enjoying the Solomons’ charms, but not enough to spend years here. Even in company as delightful as yours.”
“Leonid seems to have it under control now. Maybe we can leave this one to him?”
The sun was sinking into the sea when they turned onto the paved road, and they hadn’t been driving for ten minutes before they came to a roadblock where six grim-faced police officers were standing by their cars in the middle of nowhere. Sam coasted to a stop. Four of the policemen made a big show of making them get out of the van and checking their identification while the other two did a cursory inspection of the interior.