“Yes,” replied the constable. “Our word for them does not translate well.” He thought for a moment, then held up an index finger. “In Mexico, I think, they have something similar — deep ponds — like shafts — with underwater caves.”
“
“Yes, that’s it.
A lightbulb came on in Fisher’s head. The climbing gear in Wondrash’s plane… He’d assumed it was climbing gear, but in what direction? Up or down? According to the legend, Wondrash and Oziri had flown straight into Kisumu then set off for Addis Ababa a few days later.
“No mountain climbing nearby?” Fisher asked.
“Mountain climbing? No, not near the lake. Mount Kenya, perhaps, but that’s closer to Nairobi.”
Once satisfied with his pack’s contents and weight distribution, Fisher set it aside and dialed Grimsdottir. Lambert was also on the line: “What’s going on? What happened?”
Fisher explained, then said, “Jimiyu’s going to be fine. I called the hospital and talked to the doctor personally. As for the police, I’m pretty sure they bought it. I’m due in the Kisumu District headquarters day after tomorrow to write my statement.”
“And you’re sure they were Kyrgyz?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then clearly we’ve touched a nerve. The very fact that he sent his own men rather than hiring locally says something. Grim, what can you give us on topography?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. If there are
“If there’s something there, I’ll find it,” Fisher said.
The path led him away from the WHCP Headquarters building and deeper into the forest, winding northwest toward Lake Victoria. The terrain steadily lost elevation, and the forest slowly turned more junglelike. On either side of the trail, the ground appeared spongy, and soon Fisher heard the croaking of frogs.
After an hour’s walk, he stopped and studied the GPS’s screen. This was the area. He was a quarter mile from the lakeshore. He turned his body, checking each of the cardinal directions, until he was oriented, then pulled Jimiyu’s machete from his belt, stepped off the trail, and started hacking.
Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the trees and found himself facing a craggy rock wall entwined with vines and dotted with pockets of bright red flowers. He craned his neck upward. The wall, only ten feet high, was topped by a berm of shrubs. He climbed to the top, then boosted himself over the lip, wriggled through the foliage, and found himself lying on a narrow stone shelf. Across from him, six feet away, was a matching shelf, and between the two, a ten-foot-wide crevice. Fisher peered over the edge. The crevice dropped away into darkness. He picked up a stone and dropped it in. A second later he heard a faint splash.
Ten minutes later, with a few essential items transferred from his Granite Gear to his waist pack, he secured the rope to a nearby tree, rigged his rappelling harness, and started down the crevice. After twenty feet the light dimmed enough that he flipped on his headlamp. The walls were comprised of jagged, volcanic rock mottled gray brown by lichen and molds. Above, the mouth of the crevice was a sun-filled slash through which Fisher could see overhanging branches. As his hand bumped over the thirty-foot knot in the rope, he stopped and sniffed the air. Water. Stagnant water. Somewhere below he heard dripping, echoing through a larger space. His heart rate increased. Then at fifty feet, with only ten feet of rope remaining, his groping foot plunged into water. Carefully, a few inches at a time, he lowered himself until his feet touched solid stone. The water, surprisingly cold, came up to his knees.
He unraveled the rope from the descender ring, then shined his headlamp left, down the length of the crevice, then right. He saw nothing but darkness.
He tossed a mental coin: heads for right; tails, left. Right.
He set out.
After fifty feet he bumped into a solid wall. The water here was hip-deep. He felt a slight current swirling around his thighs, so he scooted down until he was kneeling, then probed the wall with his right hand. At the bottom of the crevice where it met the wall, he found a jagged plate-size hole through which cold water was gushing.
He reversed course. Ten feet past his dangling rope the crevice walls began narrowing, and soon he was pressed flat against the rock, his face turned to the side as he shuffled along.
He stopped. Ahead, he could hear the distant splattering of water on rock. He pressed on, stepping and sliding, stepping and sliding.
His left foot plunged into open space.
He jerked back and went still, his heart pounding.
He stepped left again, foot probing, until he found the opening again. He probed with the toe of his boot until he’d circumscribed the opening. It was a fissure, two feet wide, beginning just below the surface of the water and dropping vertically through the rock floor. He stepped left until he was straddling the slash and pressed his back against the wall. He had a decision to make. He had no idea how far this main crevice extended or what might lie ahead. He pulled the GPS unit off his belt and checked the screen: According to the extrapolation buffer, he was precisely on top of the coordinates, but with a margin of error of six to eight feet horizontally and who knew how much vertically, this fissure could be what he was looking for, or it could be nothing at all.
Then he saw it. Jutting from a quarter-inch crack in the wall before his eyes was a rock screw — a rock screw identical to the ones he’d seen aboard the
He pulled the twenty-foot coil of emergency 7mm climbing line from his waist pack, looped it through the rock screw’s eyelet, tied it off with a modified clove hitch, then grabbed the rope with both hands and lifted his feet off the ground. The screw held.
Fisher didn’t give himself time to think, didn’t give himself time to fully acknowledge that tingle of fear in his belly, but rather stuck both feet through the fissure and began lowering himself. When the water reached his chin, he took a deep breath, ducked under the surface, and began forcing his way through the opening, wriggling his legs, then his torso, and finally his shoulders until at last he slid through and suddenly found himself hanging in the open air.
He looked up. From this angle the fissure was shaped like a jagged, narrow triangle and through the opening he could see diffused sunlight. Water poured through, crashing over his head and shoulders before plunging into the darkness and spattering against unseen rocks below.
Fisher extended his legs and felt his boots touch rock. He kicked off, swung out from under the waterfall, then glanced down. Ten feet down, his headlamp illuminated a flat shelf of rock off which the water was splashing. He lowered himself to it, then sidestepped left, out from under the waterfall, and looked around. Off the side of the shelf was a natural switchback stone staircase, worn smooth by millennia of water. At the bottom was a pool, roughly oval, and measuring twenty feet by twenty feet, and across from this a gravel beach that backed up to a sheer rock wall.
There was something different about the wall, Fisher realized. Unlike the rest of the cave and the crevice above, this wall was not mottled with brownish gray lichen but covered from top to bottom in a scabrous red growth.
Fisher felt the skin on his arms and on the back of his neck tingle with goose bumps. And then, for reasons he’d never quite be able to explain, four words from Peter’s mystery note popped into his head:
