SAM’S EYES SCANNED THE GAUGES, CHECKING AIRSPEED, ALTITUDE, oil pressure, fuel . . . As was everything else aboard the airplane, the few dashboard labels that hadn’t worn off completely were in Serbian.
The Ikarus Kurir seaplane, painted an ugly shade of gray-blue, was sixty years old, a castoff from the Yugoslavian air force. The windows leaked, the engine knocked, the wheeled pontoons were badly dented, and the controls were so soft there was a two-second delay between the time he pushed the pedals and the plane responded.
He’d never been happier with a plane in his life.
A thousand miles east of Jakarta, the Ikarus had been the only seaplane available for rent, purchase, or theft—and, provided he didn’t crash in the next hour, it would take him to Remi. Whether they stayed alive over the next few hours or days would depend largely on the credibility of the Hail Mary pass he and Selma had assembled.
AS SOON AS Rivera
’s speedboat had disappeared from view, Sam had retrieved the maleo statuette, grabbed his pack, and sorted through their belongings, taking only the essentials. Blaylock’s letters went into a Ziploc baggie. The swim back to the pinisi took just under seven minutes; the boat ride to the nearest civilization on the eastern coast of Lampung Bay, an excruciating ninety minutes. Once ashore and off the beach, he jogged a mile down a dirt road to a collection of Quonset huts on the outskirts of an industrial farm. He talked his way into the plant office and to a phone and called Selma, who listened, then said, “It’s not enough time.”
“I know that. It’s all we have.”
“Should we call Rube?”
“No. There’s nothing he can do in time. Have Pete and Wendy get me back to Jakarta.”
“On it.”
“Now, tell me where things stand. What do we know?”
“Virtually nothing.”
FIVE HOURS AFTER he left Pulau Legundi, Sam touched down in Jakarta. He checked into the closest hotel with a Wi-Fi connection and a laptop to rent, then resumed his call with Selma.
“I don’t care if we’re right about the location,” Sam said. “I just need to be able to sell it to Rivera and convince him we have to meet.”
“I could create evidence. Wendy could Photoshop something—”
“As a last resort.” Sam checked his watch. “We’re going to take six hours and work every angle we have. If we don’t get anywhere, we’ll go with your plan. Let’s run through it: Orizaga wandered off, presumably looking for Chicomoztoc. Did he stay on Sumatra?”
“We don’t know.”
“Both he and Blaylock were focused on the maleo. Orizaga said he’d know Chicomoztoc when he found a ‘hatchery of great birds.’ He had to have meant the maleo, agreed?”
“It seems likely.”
“Where are they found?”
“They’re on the endangered species list. They’re limited to Sulawesi and Buton islands.”
“How about five hundred years ago?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have Pete and Wendy put together a list of maleo experts.”
“We don’t even know if there is such a thing.”
“There are experts for everything. Ask about hatcheries, concentrations, migration . . . Okay, back to Sulawesi: It’s where the Malagasy lived prior to migrating to Madagascar, and we found Blaylock’s outrigger on Madagascar. That’s two votes for Sulawesi. What do we know about Sulawesi prior to the sixth century?”
Sam heard the rustling of paper. Selma said, “Human settlements as far back as thirty thousand years B.C. Believed to have been part of a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea—”
“More recent,” Sam said.
“As deep as I’ve been able to dig in the past few days, I’ve found very little until the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese arrived.”
“What about the language or the art? Any similarities to either the Aztecs or Blaylock’s Proto-Aztecs?”