Peter was holding his breath.
“You look like you disagree?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then what is it?”
Peter said, “It’s just — the map won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?” Dmitri asked.
“Because the map makes reference to a type of measurement never seen anywhere else before.”
“So the stone’s useless. It provides a grid reference based on measurements that don’t exist. Even GPS doesn’t serve a purpose if you don’t know what those numbers mean, right?”
“Right.”
Dmitri smiled. It was creepy and inhuman. Almost serpentine. “But I remember how to read it.”
Chapter Forty-Three — Skeleton Coast, Namibia
The Sea King’s massive rotary blades lifted the huge helicopter and her passengers skyward, as Sam Reilly took off from the Maria Helena, which had taken anchorage roughly three miles out from Terrace Bay, along the fatal coastline. Next to him, Tom studied the copy of the survey map from 1655, which Sam had been given by the Vatican. The map identified a large section between Terrace Bay and Cape Cross, where the sandy coastline had shifted nearly ten miles further out to sea. If the Emerald Star had indeed been sunk while anchored during the sandstorm, it would most likely be somewhere along the long forgotten coastline.
He flew in an easterly direction out to Terrace Bay and then banked south to follow an invisible line from the past, as depicted by the map in John Wallis’s office.
Tom said, “All right, we’re right above the line.”
“Good.” Sam maneuvered the helicopter into a straight and level flight path approximately twenty feet above the first sand dune. “All right, switching it on.”
Tom flicked a few switches and the ground penetrating radar started to work its magic. Ground penetrating radar was designed to use radar pulses to create images of the sandy subsurface. The non-destructive method used electromagnetic radiation in the microwave band, known as UHF and VHF frequencies of the radio spectrum, in order to detect reflected signals from subsurface structures. The plan was to run a grid search along the invisible line of the forgotten coast, as depicted by the map in John Wallis’s office from the same year the Emerald Star was sunk at anchor.
To Sam, the device felt close to cheating in the world of treasure hunting. Using technology people could have only dreamt about twenty years ago, the state of the art equipment was relatively simple to use. It ran a continuous swath. It was then decoded by an on board computer, which then spat out the image of any solid shapes within the subsurface. Tom studied the monitor, but in reality he didn’t have to. The computer would identify any objects, and provide a list at the end of their search, meaning there was little active input during the process.
Tom turned to Sam. “Still no word from Peter Smyth?”
“No.”
“It seems unlikely that the man would disappear right when we were about to discover the truth?”
“I know. I don’t like it. Anything could have happened since we left him in Istanbul. He might have got cold feet and decided to go to ground again — or THEY caught up with him?”
“What do you want to do about it?”
“There’s not much we can do about it. I’ve left Elise running a continuous online search for his image anywhere near Istanbul. If he’s gone to ground, we might still get lucky.”
The computer pinged loudly — they had received their first positive response from the ground penetrating radar. Sam glanced at the monitor. It looked like a ship, but a very small one. If it was along the current coastline, he would have suspected it to be a small motorboat, but given its location, it was more likely to be a skiff. He made a circular search around the object, so that the radar could plot a more precise size and shape of the object.
A few minutes later Sam returned the flight to straight and level, following the imaginary line from the past. He studied the hostile but fascinating coast with a mix of awe and respect. It was no surprise that such a land could be unforgiving. The coast was predominantly soft sand, with the occasional rocky outcrop. To the south were large gravel plains, while this far north, around Terrace Bay, the landscape was dominated by some of the largest sand dunes in the world.
His mind returned to a recent account of the region he’d read, in which the Bushmen of the Namibian interior called the region, The Land God Made in Anger, while Portuguese sailors once referred to it as, The Gates of Hell.
On the coast, the upwelling of the cold Benguela current gave rise to a dense ocean fog for nearly two thirds of the year. There was a constant, heavy surf on the beaches. Here the cold and unpredictable Benguela Current of the Atlantic Ocean clashed with the dune and desert landscape of north-western Namibia. Numerous ships have stranded at the Skeleton Coast thanks to the thick fog, the rough sea, unpredictable currents and stormy winds. The sailors who were able to make it to the land did not stand a chance of survival at this inhospitable coast and died of thirst.
Strangely, it was the same Benguela effect that allowed the region to teem with life. Although less than ten inches of rain fell annually throughout Namibia, the dense ocean fog extended nearly a hundred miles inland. Large wild animals adapted to the arid climate and survived surprisingly well, including desert-adapted elephants, rhinos, desert lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes, seals, oryx, kudus and zebras. The riverbeds further inland were home to baboons, giraffes, lions, black rhinoceros and springbok. The animals got most of their water from wells dug by the baboons or elephants.
By the time they reached Cape Cross, they’d found a total of five ships in the sand’s subsurface. Two were much too small to be the Emerald Star, but the other three were in the vague vicinity of the size and shape expected of the seventeenth century Barquentine.
Sam banked to the right and made a beeline for the Maria Helena.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Orson Scott Card was an eighty-foot dredging vessel. Her futuristic design looked to Sam like a cross between a tank with its massive twin rubber tracks and a conventional battleship. It had a large hydraulic snout, and a massive claw attached to an arm off the rotating bridge, the entire ship looked like it was straight out of science fiction. He guessed her owner was inspired by the ship’s strange impression to pay tribute to the classic science fiction writer of the same name.
Its shallow draft and tank tracks gave her an amphibious capability. Under power from the tank tracks, the vessel drove due east, slowly climbing the monstrous sand dunes of the Skeleton Coast before dipping down their backside. It had cost a small fortune to hire the vessel and her operator for an entire month. The first day was spent just moving the damned ship to the first location.
Sam and Tom rode up high in the main bridge with Max Heinemann, the owner and operator of the dredger — a solid man of roughly sixty, sporting a thick, white beard that to Sam looked very becoming a sea captain. The reddening of his cheeks, and rotund belly suggested he liked his drink perhaps a little too much. He seemed knowledgeable and competent at his job. More importantly still, he was available for hire.
As the heavy tracks dug deep into the upcoming sand dune, Sam asked, “Have you had such an unusual request before?”
“Unusual?” Max changed into a deep low gear, and the vessel slowed to a crawl up the dune. “It’s not even the first time I’ve been asked to dig up an old ship long since buried in the sand.”