Charlie Thorne and the Lost City Read online

  In memory of Suzanne, my wonderful wife

  We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.

  —CHARLES DARWIN

  PROLOGUE

  Guayaquil, Ecuador

  August 18, 1835

  12:58 a.m.

  Charles Darwin was late.

  He had already kept the crew of the HMS Beagle in South America for an extra ten months, waiting for him to return from his mysterious journey—and now he had missed their appointed meeting time by three hours.

  Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the Beagle, was furious. He paced the rickety pier of the port like a caged animal, thinking that he should simply leave and strand that fool Darwin in South America once and for all. In fact, he should have done that nearly a year ago, when they had first returned to this dock, expecting to meet Darwin but instead finding only a local boy with a letter from the young naturalist, saying it would be another three months until his return.

  That had happened twice more, and each time the crew had wanted to abandon Darwin and continue on with their journey, but FitzRoy had fought his own instincts and refused. Charles Darwin was a member of the English upper class: His grandfather was a respected philosopher, his father was a wealthy physician, and his mother was the heiress to the Wedgwood pottery fortune. If it were discovered that FitzRoy had abandoned the son of such a family in a lawless territory like Ecuador out of spite… his head would roll.

  And yet he was tempted to do so now.

  Although Darwin had officially been brought on this voyage to help with geological surveys of South America, the true reason for his presence was to provide funding and friendship for FitzRoy, who wanted a fellow gentleman as company on the long voyage. (FitzRoy was a member of the aristocracy himself, whereas the entire crew were from the lower classes of society.) Although Darwin was only twenty-two years old at the time of departure, he had succeeded on both counts: He had plenty of money and was a very fine companion. However, the idea of doing scientific surveying had gone to his head. First he had collected so many specimens that the hold of the Beagle was already crammed full of them, and then he had undertaken this insane adventure to the interior of the continent: an expedition he claimed would take a month at most, but which had now dragged on for over ten times longer.

  The Beagle’s journey had originally been planned for only two years, but they had been gone nearly twice that—and they still had half the world left to circumnavigate. The crew was on the verge of mutiny. FitzRoy himself desperately wanted to go home. He had spent most of the last year surveying the coast of Chile, which was harsh and unforgiving, but still better than Guayaquil, which sat almost directly on the equator and was surrounded by swampland. The humidity was brutal, even in the middle of the night, and the mosquitoes were relentless, hovering in thick, humming clouds. Plus, the inhabitants of Guayaquil were rogues, hucksters, and scoundrels. FitzRoy hated this place. If Darwin didn’t show this time, he would weigh anchor and head for home.…

  There was a shout in the night. FitzRoy stopped his pacing and turned toward land.

  He couldn’t see anything. Thick tendrils of fog had crept in from the ocean, and the feeble glow of the Beagle’s gas lamps barely made a dent in the gloom.

  But the pier was suddenly alive with noise, its rotted planks creaking wildly, as though several people were moving along it toward the Beagle, and moving quickly, too.

  “Hello?” FitzRoy called into the darkness.

  “Robert?” came the response. The voice was familiar, and yet it had changed since the last time FitzRoy had heard it. Hearing it should have filled him with relief, but instead it gave him the sense that something was very wrong.

  “Charles?” FitzRoy asked.

  “Yes!” Charles Darwin raced out of the fog, looking like the devil itself was on his heels. “Wake the crew!” he ordered. “We must get the Beagle to sea at once!”

  Despite the urgency in Darwin’s voice and manner, FitzRoy didn’t react right away. Instead, he stared at the young naturalist in astonishment. Darwin’s brusque attitude and failure to apologize for all the trouble he’d caused were disturbing, but what really unsettled FitzRoy was his friend’s appearance.

  Darwin barely looked human anymore. His clothes were in tatters, his shirt so filthy it was more dirt than linen, his shoes bound together with twine. And as for his body… Darwin was almost emaciated, at least thirty pounds lighter than he had been before. His skin was baked brown as leather, and his arms, legs, and chest were covered with dozens of sores, many of which appeared to be infected. His once clean-shaven face was consumed by a ragged beard, while his eyes were wild with what looked like madness.

  When Darwin had encountered the native tribes of Tierra del Fuego, he had been shocked that humans could live in such a primitive fashion, referring to them as savages and remarking that he could not believe the difference between them and civilized men. Now, he appeared even more wretched and feral than the natives he had disdained.

  But while Darwin looked deranged, he still had his wits about him. He immediately grew annoyed at FitzRoy’s lack of action. “Robert!” he demanded. “Did you not hear me? We must set sail immediately!”

  His tone startled FitzRoy into a response. “In the middle of the night? This bay is treacherous! It’s far too risky to negotiate its passage without light.…”

  “It would be far riskier to remain here.” Darwin was nervously hopping from foot to foot, like a small boy who needed to go to the bathroom. “I have made some enemies during my travels. And I now have something in my possession that they do not wish the outside world to know of.”

  “What?” FitzRoy asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” Darwin replied. “Once we are underway.”

  Before FitzRoy could press for more information, two other men emerged from the fog. They looked as though they were of Incan descent, shorter than Europeans, with squat, wide bodies that belied their physical strength; FitzRoy had heard tales of Incas running a hundred miles at a stretch through the mountains along the Pacific coast.

  These Incas appeared to have embraced Western culture and even wore European clothes. To FitzRoy’s eyes, they looked far more civilized than Darwin now did. And yet FitzRoy still considered the natives inferior and he knew Darwin did as well. So there must have been something major at stake for Darwin to be relying on them.

  The Incas carried something strange between them. It looked to FitzRoy like a large, handmade wooden chest, hacked from the trunk of a single large tree, although it was rough-hewn and unfinished.

  Darwin shouted to the two men in a language FitzRoy did not understand—the language of the Incas, he presumed. The men dutifully nodded and hauled the chest up the gangplank to the Beagle. Darwin followed them.

  FitzRoy remained rooted to the pier. “Where are the rest of my men who went with you?” he asked.

  “Dead,” Darwin replied.

  FitzRoy gasped, then pursued him up the gangplank. “There were eleven men! How could all of them be dead?”

  “Many ways,” Darwin said quickly. “Disease, savages, vicious beasts. Robert, in the past months, I have seen things you could never even begin to imagine.” He shouted to the Incas in their own language once again, pointing toward the entrance to the hold.

  FitzRoy arrived on the deck. The Beagle was not a particularly large vessel, only ninety feet from stem to stern and thirty feet at the widest. Living space was in such short supply that the seventy-four crew members rotated hammocks and slept in shifts. And yet the boat was finely built and sturdy and had well weathered the turbulent seas and vicious storms it had encountered.

  The c
rewmen on the night shift had gathered around. FitzRoy knew they were angry to have been kept waiting for so many months and had expected them to greet the naturalist with taunts and jeers, if not outright derision. But Darwin’s wild looks and strange behavior had grabbed their attention. They watched his arrival with shock, rather than scorn.

  Angry voices echoed in the distance, carrying across the water from shore.

  FitzRoy turned that way and saw torches through the haze of fog. It seemed a mob might be coming their way.

  Darwin wheeled on FitzRoy. “Robert! They’re coming for us! We need to leave now!”

  FitzRoy shouted orders to his men, who quickly leapt into action, coiling the mooring lines and unfurling the sails.

  While the ship came alive around him, FitzRoy approached Darwin, who was attending to the rough-hewn chest. It was so large, it would need to be lowered into the hold with a winch, but there was no time for that, so Darwin was having the Incas lash it tightly to the rail. “Where are the rest of your specimens?”

  “This is it,” Darwin replied curtly.

  “But you were gone nearly a year! You collected a hundred times this much in mere weeks in the Pampas.”

  “This is what’s important.” Darwin knelt to help the Incas with the chest.

  “But if you saw such incredible things, things I couldn’t even imagine, as you said…”

  “I collected them. But I had to leave them behind… for this.” Darwin reverently ran a hand across the wooden chest.

  FitzRoy felt his eyes drawn to it, wondering what could possibly be inside. Darwin cared more for his specimens than any naturalist FitzRoy had ever known. He was an expert at collecting, gathering, and preparing them. He had commissioned the construction of dozens of curio cabinets to hold them, and nearly filled them all. If Darwin had abandoned everything he had discovered on his adventure for this single item, then it must have been something incredible.

  “Please,” he said. “I must know what’s in the chest.”

  “Once we are underway,” Darwin repeated, and ran to retrieve a rifle from the small armory on deck.

  “Charles!” FitzRoy shouted after him. “I am the captain of this ship and I have a right to know what is on board! I am ordering you to open this chest at once!”

  Even as FitzRoy spoke, the Beagle was sliding away from the pier. After nearly four years at sea, his crew was quick and accomplished. The ship was already prepared for sea, the sails furled and the lines stowed.

  The angry mob was now racing down the long pier from land, their torches glowing brighter as they came closer—and their voices growing more agitated as they realized the Beagle was getting away.

  Darwin shouldered his rifle and stared down the barrel at the mob. He had grown up hunting for sport in the English countryside and was one of the finest shots FitzRoy had ever encountered. Now he took several moments to assess the threat on the pier—and ultimately decided the Beagle was well enough underway to be safe. He lowered the rifle and returned his attention to FitzRoy. “Very well, Robert. I’d be happy to oblige you.” His manner had changed dramatically. But it wasn’t merely the relief at having escaped the mob. He seemed to be brimming with excitement, as well. Now that they were out of danger, he was eager to share his discovery.

  “I saw many incredible things on my journey,” he said, striding confidently across the deck. “But they all paled compared to this. Everything I have ever encountered in my life pales compared to this.”

  On the pier behind them, the mob arrived in full. FitzRoy couldn’t see them through the fog and the night, save for their torches, but he could certainly hear them. They shouted in rage, using a language he did not know. Some threw their torches in desperation, as if hoping to set the Beagle ablaze, but they fell far short and harmlessly fizzled out in the bay.

  With each second of distance between them and the dock, Darwin seemed to grow less panicked and more enthusiastic. The wild stare from his eyes was replaced by the thrill of discovery FitzRoy had seen many times before.

  “Prepare yourself for the incredible,” he announced, and then shoved the lid of the chest aside. It thudded to the deck, revealing what Darwin had found.

  FitzRoy gasped.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Darwin asked.

  FitzRoy nodded agreement, but he didn’t reply. He couldn’t bring himself to do so, as he wanted to conceal his true response. While he strained to show Darwin a facade of excitement, deep down, he was horrified. What lay within the chest was an affront to God.

  Robert FitzRoy knew he must get rid of it—and then destroy any evidence that it had ever existed at all.

  PART ONE THE EDGE OF THE EARTH

  Nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist than a journey in distant countries.

  —CHARLES DARWIN,

  Voyage of the Beagle

  ONE

  Puerto Villamil

  Isla Isabela

  The Galápagos Islands, Ecuador

  Present day

  A hammerhead shark slid through the water beneath Charlie Thorne.

  Charlie watched it glide below her feet as her surfboard bobbed in the ocean. It was a big shark, about nine feet long, capable of doing some serious damage. But Charlie’s reaction upon seeing it was excitement, rather than fear. Charlie had seen plenty of hammerheads while surfing in Puerto Villamil. Despite their threatening appearance, statistically, she had little reason for alarm as long as she didn’t do anything stupid around them—and Charlie Thorne was as far from stupid as you could get.

  Even though she was only twelve, Charlie had an IQ that rivaled that of anyone who had ever lived. In a situation like this, she couldn’t help but analyze the numbers. She knew that out of the billions of people on earth, fewer than twenty died each year from shark attacks; far more humans were killed annually by falling coconuts. But then, few people actively went surfing in shark-infested waters, where the chances of getting attacked were much greater. Most shark attacks were thought to be mistakes; from underneath, a human on a surfboard had a silhouette similar to that of a sea lion, the preferred food of many sharks. So Charlie was always careful; she didn’t surf while she was bleeding, or wear shiny jewelry that a shark might mistake for the flash of fish scales, or thrash around in the water like a wounded animal. Now, watching the hammerhead, she stayed calm and still.

  The shark didn’t seem to care about her at all. It certainly knew she was there, but it continued onward as though the thought of consuming her had never even entered its mind. It was paralleling the coastline of Isla Isabela, heading toward a rocky outcropping where the sea lion rookeries were. Why sharks would pass up an easy meal like a human in favor of harder-to-catch prey like a sea lion was unexplained, but most scientists presumed that sharks simply thought humans didn’t taste very good.

  Another hammerhead passed beneath Charlie, and another after that. They were both smaller than the first, but not by much.

  This didn’t surprise Charlie: Hammerheads often swam in schools, sometimes numbering up to a hundred. She turned on her board to look behind her. Sure enough, more sharks were coming, their large dorsal fins poking above the surface.

  Charlie figured it was time to get out of the water. The odds of an accidental attack were rising by the second.

  Fortunately, a good-size wave was coming her way, a bulge in the ocean building as it approached the shore. Charlie watched it—and the numbers came to her.

  They simply appeared in her mind, as usual: instant calculations of the speed of the wave, the most likely cresting point, and how fast she would need to paddle to put herself there. Puerto Villamil wasn’t home to many other surfers—or many other people, period—but Charlie had already become legendary among the few who lived there. Even surfers with decades of experience mistimed a wave on occasion, but Charlie never did. Somehow, she was always exactly where she needed to be.

  Whenever anyone tried to talk to Charlie about how she read the waves so well, she
dodged the question. “Tuve suerte” was all she would say. “I was lucky.”

  The others surfers knew that no one could be that lucky, but Charlie wouldn’t say anything else. Charlie had barely spoken to anyone in Puerto Villamil since arriving four weeks earlier. No one knew where she was from or why she had come to such a far-flung place—and they certainly didn’t know her age. Since Charlie looked and behaved much older than her years, everyone assumed she was at least eighteen. The only information she had volunteered was that her name was “Mariposa Espina,” which wasn’t true.

  Charlie could pass herself off as a native of almost any place on earth, because ethnically, she was a mix of different races—although she didn’t look like one more than any other. Plus, she spoke over a dozen languages and could understand many more. In a single day, while en route to the Galápagos, she had told different people that she was Thai, Greek, Kenyan, Guatemalan, and aboriginal Australian, and no one had questioned her at all.

  Fewer than two thousand people lived in Puerto Villamil, so the arrival of one more was of interest to the locals. There were many rumors as to who Charlie really was and why she had ended up there. Many of them were bizarre and outlandish. Although none were anywhere near as bizarre and outlandish as the truth.

  Now Charlie lay flat on the board and paddled with her arms, taking care to do so with smooth, strong strokes that wouldn’t startle the hammerheads below her. She headed directly to the spot where she had calculated the wave would break. Sure enough, the swell rose behind her, exactly as she had predicted, and grew into a ten-foot wall of water. Charlie quickly leapt to her feet upon the board, caught the front slope of the wave, and expertly rode down it. As the wave broke, she surfed right through the curl. She stayed upright all the way to shore, even as the wave collapsed upon itself behind her, then slid into the shallow water and calmly stepped off the board and onto the beach as casually as though she were stepping off a bus onto the curb.