The Treasure Hunters: Treasure Hunters, #1

PRESENT DAY

(PART ONE)

Patrick frowned at the sixteenth century cannon perched on top of the sand dune.

Although thickened by rust and encrusted with barnacles, the shape of the Demi-Culverin was too distinctive to mistake.  He had seen enough of them at shipwreck sites in the Caribbean to be able to recognise one instantly.  With its bulbous firing mechanism at one end and flat circular mouth at the other, the iron cylinder looked like a Havana cigar with one end sliced off.

What had prompted him to travel to the little island off the coast of Brazil to view the relic, he couldn't say.  He had seen photographs of it, so he already knew what it was.  He had also read the comments of various local experts who all agreed that it must have come from one of the many Portuguese wrecks in the area.

Perhaps it was the strange story of how it had come to be embedded in a dune in the middle of an island.  Picked up by a tsunami a year ago, it had been deposited there by the massive wave, which had rolled right over the low lying islet.  When it had been found, the nearby Ayuntamiento on the Brazilian mainland had pondered moving it to a museum.  But cannon of that vintage were common, so it was decided that it would be more of a curiosity to leave it where it was.  It wasn't that much of a drawcard, he thought, glancing at the few tourists who had braved the daytrip out from the mainland.

Perhaps it was because he was completely out of ideas and thought that maybe, just maybe, this was the clue that had evaded him for so long.  The clue which would finally lead him to the resting place of the Spanish galleon he had sought for the last seven years.  He didn't really think so, if truth be told.  He was clutching at straws; no Spanish wrecks had ever been found around here.  Logic dictated that the experts were right; the cannon must be from a Portuguese wreck.

But no-one had bothered to identify which wreck it came from and his obtuse Irish psyche prompted him to speculate that there might be an undiscovered Spanish wreck in the vicinity.  Cannon like the one on the dune had been carried by both Spanish and Portuguese galleons and there was nothing to identify its country of origin.  The rust and barnacles had seen to that.

His theory was highly unlikely, of course.  After the treaty of Tordesillas was signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494, not many Spanish galleons had cause to sail along the coast of Brazil.  The treaty allocated the newly discovered lands of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to Spain, while Brazil was assigned to Portugal.  Any exploration by the Spanish off the coast of Brazil would have been a flagrant contravention of the treaty.

Perhaps he just needed a holiday and this was his way of justifying it to himself.  A real holiday, not just another energy sapping, money guzzling treasure hunt for something nobody else believed existed.  He decided that he would spend no more than a few days tracking the path the cannon must have taken.  It couldn't have been carried for more than a few miles and, using satellite imagery of the tsunami, the task shouldn't be too difficult.  At worst, he might be able to identify which Portuguese wreck it was from.  That would at least earn him a footnote in the story.  And if he didn't find anything within a couple of days, he would pack it in and spend a few weeks enjoying the mainland's numerous sandy beaches and seaside taverns.

Perhaps the relaxation and time away from his obsessive search would give him a new perspective.  He needed one after seven years of disappointment.  Despite all of the leads he had followed and the many possibilities he had explored, he had drawn a complete blank.  Lately, he had begun to doubt that the wreck was out there at all.  Perhaps he was searching for a phantom as everyone else seemed to think.  His belief had been draining away for some time now, and he needed it back.  His quest for the wreck of the Christina de la Fuego had become his life, and he couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Thank heavens for his grandfather's trust fund.  Otto Stahl, his mother's father, had moved to Ireland from Germany early in his life.  Returning only to study at the Humboldt University of Berlin during the period between the World Wars, he had met and married Patrick's grandmother and lived in Dublin for the rest of his life.  By the time he died in the late nineteen nineties, he had built up a sizable estate through investments in property developments and the stock market.  In his will, he left his assets to a trust fund for the benefit of his grandchildren.  Fortunately for the latter, there were only three of them.  To the disgust of his cousins, Patrick had ploughed his share of the sizable annual income into what they considered to be the disreputable and ruinous occupation of treasure hunting.

His grandfather was also unwittingly responsible for Patrick's discovery of the somewhat odd piece of information which had triggered his obsession.  One of the conditions of the trust fund was that each beneficiary must successfully complete a degree at the old man's erstwhile university in Berlin.  No funds were payable until the condition was fulfilled, so Patrick had swallowed his indignation at being compelled to leave home for a foreign country and spent four years studying archaeology there.

Although he wouldn't admit it to anyone, he quite enjoyed his sojourn.  University life was intellectually stimulating and pleasantly Bohemian, which was in stark contrast to the overformal schools he had attended in Dublin.  He also found German girls to be extremely friendly and was motivated to quickly learn the language.

In his final year, he was tasked with writing a dissertation on any aspect of German archaeology he wished.  On a whim, he decided that it would be interesting to contrast the rather dubious findings of the Nazi-inspired archaeologists of the nineteen thirties and forties, with those of their more respected successors later in the century.  To do so, he had to delve into the extensive collection of Nazi-era books and documents housed in the university library.

Unfortunately, after the novelty of what he was studying had worn off, he found the twisted Nazi ideology tedious, and began to regret his choice.  But it was too late in the year to start something new, so he persevered and eventually bashed out a paper which earned him a pass, although only just.

The only saving grace of the episode came late one evening when he was about to finish up for the day and go home.  Ensconced in the beautifully furnished and well-heated library building, he was in no hurry to return to his chilly dormitory room.  Flipping idly through the old text he had been studying, a handwritten note in the margin of one of the pages caught his eye.  Most of the old books in the library were immaculately kept and it was unusual to see them defaced in any way.

The writing was on the first page of a lengthy chapter about ships of the Spanish treasure fleet; an annual convoy which had carried the riches of South and Central America to Spain during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  It seemed that the author of the book, one of the leading German archaeologists of the day, had made a detailed study of Spanish naval archives.  In the book, he recorded the name, description and eventual fate of many of the galleons which had been part of the fleet over the years.  He concentrated mainly on those which were known to have been sunk at sea, and described the whereabouts of wrecks which had been found.  He also speculated at length about the possible whereabouts of wrecks yet to be discovered.

Curious, Patrick examined the handwriting more closely.  There were two distinct notes, each written by a different hand.  Both appeared to be in blue fountain-pen ink and the second note was even signed.  The first note was the shorter of the two and he typed it into the English-German translator on his tablet.  What the translation said was terse, but intriguing;

Since the publication of this work, I must add the Christina de la Fuego, a galleon which disappeared in 1603.  Sources indicate that this ship was carrying a treasure of the utmost value.  Include in next edition.

Patrick, by then engrossed in the mystery, translated the second note.  It was less dramatic, but no less interesting; a commentary on the contents of the first note.  It said;

This annotation has been verified to be that of the author, believed to have been made during 1943.  His sources are unknown, but he appears to have been convinced of their reliability.  In 1944 he met twice with Bormann in an attempt to convince him to send an expedition to find the ship. Unfortunately the author, who died a few years later, did not publish any further editions of this work, so nothing more is known of this matter.

Patrick squinted at the scribbled signature at the end of the second note and tried to make out the name.  He entered it into the internet search engine of his tablet and, after trying two or three variations, came up with the name of the senior librarian of the university during the late forties and early fifties.  That raised his eyebrows.  It meant that the second note was an authoritative verification that the first note was the work of the author himself.

The significance of the second note went further than that.  If the Bormann referred to by the librarian was Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler's private secretary and right-hand man, it revealed how reliable the author had believed his information to be.  Bormann was the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany.  No archaeologist, no matter how eminent, would have dared approach him with information which had not been thoroughly verified.

Proud of his own intuitive reasoning, Patrick showed the entries to one of his professors, who scoffed at them.  None of the Nazi-inspired archaeologists could be taken seriously, he said, and the author's account of a long lost treasure ship had long ago been dismissed as the ramblings of a deluded old man.

So, no-one has ever looked for this ship? Patrick asked.

The professor shook his head.  I didn't say that.  Many have searched, but no one has ever found any trace of her.

Although disillusioned by the professor's reaction, Patrick couldn't get the peculiar conundrum out of his mind.  An internet search for the ship's name yielded no results so, the following year, he took a trip to Seville to research old naval records.  There he found that there had indeed been a galleon by the name of Christina de la Fuego, and that she had joined the Spanish treasure fleet in 1599.  On its expedition to the Spanish Main in 1603, the fleet put in at the South American port of Cartagena.  The Christina left the fleet to explore the coast of Venezuela, and was never seen again.

Gazing at the cannon on the dune, Patrick imagined the vessel heading east from Cartagena in what was now Columbia, sailing along the Venezuelan coastline, and then turning south-east to follow the coast of Brazil.  But why would she have done that?  She would have risked discovery by the Portuguese who would have had little hesitation in sinking her.  One possible answer, of course, was that she was looking for treasure.  Maybe even treasure of the utmost value, as the German archaeologist had described it.  It would also explain why Patrick, and many treasure hunters before him, had never found any trace of the galleon.  Maybe they had not been looking in the right place.

Patrick, stop day-dreaming and have an ice-cream.

Molly trudged up the side of the dune behind him, carrying two large ice-cream cones she had bought at a kiosk they had passed earlier.  He turned and gave her a grin, registering suddenly how hot, hungry, and thirsty he was.  It had been a long trip from the mainland to the island and, on arrival, he had wanted to see the cannon straight away.  Taking no time to rest or freshen up, he had insisted on marching the mile and a half from the landing jetty to the cannon site in the hot midday sun.

Molly, as always, had shrugged her shoulders and followed him.  Unflappable and uncomplaining, the tall, dark-haired girl from County Cork was the perfect foil for the moody, obsessive Dubliner.  He had met her on his third trip to the Caribbean.  His first two trips were diving tours of some of the more accessible, and well-trampled, wreck sites in the area.  His goal had been two-fold; to learn to dive and to see what a real wreck site looked like.  The third trip was to buy his first boat; a dilapidated thirty-foot