The Lost Island by Douglas Preston Page B

follow her orders. Understood?”
    Gideon swallowed. “Understood.”
    “At the same time, Amy, Gideon has exceptional qualities for this mission. You will seek his counsel.”
    Amy nodded silently.
    “Now, tomorrow you will cruise due west from Savaneta. Thanks to careful perusal of the latest satellite imagery, Dr. Brock has managed to identify one other location on the Phorkys Map—the sixth clue, neatly bypassing the still-undeciphered images four and five, which we assumed were somewhere in the Cape Verde Islands but because of clue six are now moot. That —clue six—will serve as your starting point.”
    A picture flashed up on the screen of a tiny, precise drawing from the map, magnified greatly. It depicted what looked like a black bottle against a white hump. The accompanying Latin phrase read: Nigrum utrem, naviga ad occidentem.
    “‘Black bottle, sail west,’” translated Amy.
    “Exactly,” said Glinn. “Fifty nautical miles west of Aruba lies a desolate cluster of islands—rocks, really—known as Los Monjes del Sur. The southernmost island has a huge basaltic sea stack in the shape of a leather bottle. That picture on the map reproduces the sea stack against the outline of the island quite remarkably.”
    “And how do we find this place?” Gideon asked.
    “Amy has the coordinates.”
    “And from there?”
    “The next clue on the map, image seven, is this.”
    A picture flashed on the screen, a tiny, upside-down U with an odd projection on the right side, like a knob. The Latin inscription read: Sequere diaboli vomitum .
    Gideon glanced at Amy for a translation.
    “‘Follow the Devil’s vomit.’”
    “Of course,” said Gideon. “Finally: an obvious clue.”
    “That one has us stumped, too,” said Glinn. “It’s our hope the two of you will figure it out when you come across it, and that this will lead you to the next clue, and so on.”
    A chart flashed on the screen, and Glinn went on. “As you will see from the charts, if you sail due west from Los Monjes, you will encounter a very remote headland known as La Guajira, part of the coastline of Colombia. This entire section of coastline is harsh desert, uninhabited. We believe the ‘Devil’s vomit’ landmark will be found along this coast somewhere.”
    “I take it this is well off the normal cruising routes.”
    “Yes. In fact, west of La Guajira, you enter a part of the Caribbean where few ever go. It’s not at all a postcard picture of lush islands and white beaches. This is a remote, untraveled sea of barren, uninhabited islands, with tricky currents and few places to land. The coastline of Colombia is unfriendly. Lot of drug smuggling. And if you continue west, you will eventually hit the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras—not exactly the Côte d’Azur.”
    “And you call this a pleasure cruise?” Gideon asked dubiously.
    “You just need to exercise common sense—and be careful,” Garza said.
    “So what, exactly, is our excuse for cruising in this Caribbean desert?”
    “You’re adventure travelers,” Glinn told him. “In your briefing books, you have our analysis of the map so far. You also have copies of the map itself. We’ve devoted a Cray XE6 Opteron 6172 computer to working exclusively at deciphering that map. It is essentially scouring the world’s databases of pictures and map elements for clues. But the pictures and clues in the Phorkys Map are so obscure, so peculiar, it’s quite possible you’ll have to figure some of them out as you go. Now, if there aren’t any more questions, I’ll sign off. May I recommend the Flying Fishbone in Savaneta for dinner? The Bouillabaisse à la Marseille is excellent, paired with a Puligny-Montrachet. That would be a good place to be seen—and for you to establish your cover.”
    The screen went blank.

17
    T HE DINNER HAD been excellent and the half bottle of Montrachet had improved Gideon’s outlook, tempered only slightly by Amy’s announcement that