Lost Empire (Fargo Adventures 2)

“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 channel.”

“Half a dozen of one, six of the other,” Selma replied. “Either way, the coin you found is from the Adelise lot.”

“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 channels of Zanzibar’s outer islands before they reached the bell’s GPS coordinates. Sam went forward and dropped anchor. The air was dead calm and the sky a cloudless blue. As Zanzibar sat just below the equator, July was during winter rather than summer, so the temperature wouldn’t climb above the low eighties. A good day for diving. He hoisted the white-stripe-on-red diver-down flag on the halyard, then joined Remi on the afterdeck.

“Tanks