Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo (26 page)

Sleeping accommodations were austere. Allan, as owner, had the only stateroom. Two of the team slept in bunks in the wheelhouse. Two slept on the deck outside. Jean Claude and I shared the main cabin, me on a small foldout couch, he on the bench of the dining table.

We were both outcasts from the others because we snored. Jean Claude began from ten to two, while I took up the trumpet calls from two to six. Now I know what my poor wife goes through.

But our seven-man crew was tough. No one ever suffered seasickness or complained, except me.

We anchored for the night on the northwest tip of Haiti. The next morning, we sailed around Gonâve Island and reached Rochelais Reef by midmorning. As we approached, I was peering through binoculars into the distance where the reef was supposed to rise. An image materialized, and I adjusted the focus.

I turned to Allan and John and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say there is a village with huts sitting on the reef.”

Forty-five minutes later, we reached Rochelais Reef and anchored a hundred yards offshore. This place was an anthropologist’s dream. The story is that about eighty years ago, two brothers decided to take up residence on the reef to hunt conch. Over the decades, more native Haitians moved onto the reef, until now it is an island four feet above the water, built from more than a million conch shells. There are about fifty shacks erected from every scrap of flotsam you can imagine. We estimated the population at about two hundred. There wasn’t a tree or a bush to be seen. The sun beat down unmercifully on the conch-shell landscape. The nearest land was twelve miles away, and all the food and water had to be brought in by dugout canoes. We could not believe human beings could survive in such harsh conditions, much less spend their entire lives there.

John and his film crew, along with Jean Claude, took the thirteen-foot Boston Whaler over to the man-made island sitting atop the shallow reef. Naturally, the natives were curious about our presence. Jean Claude did not tell them we were looking for a shipwreck. They might have mistaken our intent and thought we were after treasure, which could have caused problems. He simply told them we were making a movie and pacified them about our intrusion by giving them ten gallons of gas for their outboard motors and a case of Coca-Cola.

We had studied the oldest accurate chart of the reef dating to 1910 and laid it over a modem chart. The reef had not changed. According to both charts, there was a pinnacle labeled “Vandalia Rock” on the southern end of the reef, but the natives assured us that no such rock existed. This would cause extra time in research later, exploring the possibility that a ship named
Vandalia
had also grounded on the reef.

The wind picked up, and Allan took the boat into a small bay on Gonâve Island, where we settled in for the night. With an early start the next morning, Allan dropped his cesium marine magnetometer over the side and began circling the reef for any magnetic anomalies. From fifty yards offshore, only one ten-gamma reading showed on his computer monitor. It came from the dead center of Rochelais Reef, where
Mary Celeste
was reported to have crushed her hull on the coral. The site also perfectly matched the direction a ship sailing from the southwest would have met the reef.

My demon must have taken a break.

Mike Fletcher suited up and dropped over the side, followed by Robert Guertin with his underwater video camera. The rest of us sat on the stem of the boat, soaking up the tropical breeze, wondering if Mike had found anything. Half an hour later, he returned to the boat and threw some copper sheathing, ballast rocks, and old wood with brass spikes driven through them onto the deck.

We had a shipwreck right where
Mary Celeste
was supposed to lie. But without finding the bell, which was no doubt salvaged, with the ship’s name in raised letters in bronze or inscribed ceramics, or some other artifact to identify her, we could only speculate. Everyone dove and retrieved what pitifully few artifacts we could find. The coral was some of the most beautiful I’ve seen in fifty years of diving, but I wished I weren’t there. What remained of the ship’s timbers was deeply buried in the calcareous growth that had rapidly buried the ship. After 116 years, the ship was entombed in an impenetrable burial shroud.

We found part of the anchor chain and an anchor. I tried to remove a bar from the coral, but it was stuck fast. Jean Claude and Mike brought up enough wood to fill a fair-sized bucket. And we removed some loose artifacts that were embedded in the sand. Every item was videotaped in position, tagged, and catalogued. Once the team returned home, the wood would be sent to laboratories to determine a date and source. It’s incredible how science and technology can tell you how old the wood is within years, as well as what part of the world it originally came from.

The ballast stones would also show characteristic mineralogy and texture that can identify the location from which they were extracted. They had to come from either the Palisades above the Hudson River, where
Mary Celeste
was rebuilt during the summer of 1872 in New York, or the mountains or shores of Nova Scotia, where she was originally constructed and then launched under the name
Amazon.
The brass spikes might give only an approximate age, but a clue might come from the copper sheathing. Whatever the case, it would take time to find the answers we sought.

Satisfied we could do no more, the anchor was pulled, and we bid a fond farewell to Rochelais Reef, now affectionately known as Conch Island, then set a course back to the Cormier Plage Hotel. We had a few rough hours battling choppy seas, but it actually became relaxing after a while. I was transfixed, staring at the color of the water in this part of the Caribbean. It was not the blue-green turquoise of shallow water around the reefs and islands. This was deep water, the fathometer showing three thousand feet to the bottom, and the color was a deep violet, almost purple.

Two days later, we docked near the hotel, amused at having the land seeming to sway around us after seven days without stepping foot off the boat. Everyone relaxed on the beach and in the hotel bar and talked long into the night about what we had found. The following morning, the whole team departed for Fort Lauderdale by boat while I made arrangements to fly out later that afternoon. We said our good-byes and I took a shower, packed my bags, and breathed a sigh of relief that I was escaping Haiti without being bitten by a ring-necked fuzz-wort or infected with Haitian jungle fever.

I sallied forth, expecting a car to carry me to the airport, but the local police thought Jean Claude had failed to pay his license fee and confiscated his Land Rover. I was pointed to a battered, dust-laden little Nissan pickup.

Any port in a storm.

One of the workers at Jean Claude’s hotel drove me over the obstacle course road to Cape Haitian, picking up hitchhikers along the way and then throwing them all around the bed of the truck before they would pound on the roof to be let out. Once we reached the city, I noticed it was the same filthy mess, with nonexistent pavement, traffic surging nowhere, and pollution that would have sent an environmentalist into cardiac arrest. My only apprehension now was whether my fax passport would get me passed through immigration.

We arrived at the Lynx Airlines boarding shack. If I’ve ever made a wise move in my life, it was when I told the driver to wait just in case the flight was canceled. I entered the shack, counting the minutes until I would be in the wild blue yonder to the U.S. of A.

“You’re too late,” said the attendant behind a counter I didn’t dare lean on or touch with my bare hands.

“What do you mean I’m late?” I replied indignantly, naively thinking she was kidding me. I pointed at the time printed on my ticket. “This says departure time is twelve-thirty. It is now only eleven-twenty. I have an hour and ten minutes.”

She glanced at the ticket and shrugged. “That’s Miami time.”

“You don’t print your tickets with local arrival or departure time?” I was beginning to panic.

“No, you should have been here an hour ago. Now it’s too late. The plane is taking off in five minutes.”

“Let me talk to the pilots,” I pleaded in desperation.

She nodded and accompanied me out through a weed-covered field to the airplane, where the pilots were standing with hands in their pockets. I pleaded my case to no avail.

The chief pilot shrugged. “You’ll never get through immigration in time.”

“Let me try?” I begged.

Then the pilot and copilot grinned like the Artful Dodger and Oliver, after having adroitly picked a pocket. “Not a chance. We’re about to take off.”

There I stood, like a kid who’d had his bicycle stolen. My only salvation came from the airline attendant, who promised me a seat on the next day’s flight. “You get here two hours early” she admonished me. “You hear?”

I heard.

Never in my life have I felt so miserable. Thank God I had the foresight to ask the driver to wait for me. If he had driven off and left me stranded in the mob at the airport, I’d probably have been torn limb from limb for my Nike sneakers.

Now it was time for another ride through the wretchedness and over the road to hell. I felt like Roy Scheider transporting nitroglycerin through the jungles in the movie
Wages of Fear.
Distress turned into rage at having been abandoned in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. If I had known that while I was in Haiti an American businessman had been shot and killed and two others taken hostage, I would have really been depressed.

Back to my room, where I lay in bed that afternoon, staring at the whirling blades of the overhead fans. A lonely meal, and then I headed for the bar, where I was lucky enough to join the company of some young Americans who worked for Carnival Cruise Lines over in the cove where the big ships docked. I enjoyed the conversation and several beers before retiring for the night with visions of my own bed dancing in my head.

No fooling around this time. I hauled the driver, who spoke almost no English, to the truck and gestured at the steering wheel. He got the drift from the devil expression on my face. By now you know the routine to reach the airport. This time, however, there was no stopping and picking up hitchhikers. If the driver even thought about stopping, I stomped my foot on his foot and mashed the gas pedal to the floor. We jolted over the road like a race car in an endurance rally.

By now, with lots of practice, I was immune to the misery and poverty. Watching people taking home garbage no longer offended me. That was simply their life and the way they had to live it. Perhaps someday, when their internal struggles are over, the country will return to the lovely paradise it once was.

I burst into the Lynx shack two hours early. The attendant smiled and gave me a boarding pass. One hurdle down, immigration to go. There I sat in an unventilated shack in the middle of the day with eighteen Haitians, mostly women and children. They do like perfume and cologne. I passed the time reading a book on the battle of Gettysburg and realized I didn’t have it so bad after all.

The scary part was coming up. I had been told the night before that if you didn’t have a valid passport, the airline pilots would not allow you to board. It seems they’re none too happy if American immigration officials won’t let you into the country. Not only were they liable for a hefty fine, but they had to transport you back to Haiti at their expense. I began to hope that being a hotshot author might carry an ounce of weight.

At twelve noon on the dot, the plane’s engines could be heard through the cracks in the walls as it landed and taxied toward the shack. After a few minutes, a blond-haired pilot opened the door and stepped into the waiting room. He walked right up to me and handed me an envelope.

“I hope to enjoy your book,” he said, smiling.

I stared at the envelope and looked up questioningly. “Book?”

“Yes, your friend gave me one of your books in Fort Lauderdale. He figured I’d know you by the author’s photo on the book jacket.”

Craig Dirgo, bless his heart, had driven to the airport and given my passport to the pilot to give to me. The sun burst through the clouds. Then came the sound of trumpets, a drum-roll, and harp music. Home was just over the horizon at last.

Haitian immigration whisked me through, and I ran, not walked, out to the airplane. Then there was a wait, while an official riffled through every passenger’s luggage. I’m sure he wished he had a different job when it came to my bag. It was filled with two-week-old laundry. We guys are like that. Why do laundry when you have someone waiting to do it at home?

I don’t know if I was ever happier than when the wheels left the ground. For the next hour, I listened to the beat of the engines, making sure they were hitting on all cylinders. I couldn’t conceive of a mechanical problem that would force us to return to the bedlam of Cape Haitian.

After a short hop, we landed on Caicos Island to refuel and were asked to leave the airplane and wait in the terminal as a safety precaution. Simple Simon Cussler, of course, walks through the wrong door into the heart of the terminal, finds the bar, and has a cold beer. Figuring it’s time to go back, I walked toward the exit door and was promptly stopped by a security guard the size of a redwood tree.

“Can’t go out there,” he said sternly.

“I have to get back to my airplane.”

“You’ll have to go through immigration and customs.”

The bile rose in my throat. Things just couldn’t go wrong now. Not after I’d been over the streets and roads of hell. My demon was a stubborn rascal. I was considering making a break for it, when the blond pilot walked by. A few words and he talked the guard into letting me accompany him to the plane. I wondered if my ordeal would ever end.

I feel sorry for the people who never know the feeling of joy and bliss that comes from returning to the United States. You truly have to travel outside our borders to appreciate the advantages we all too often take for granted. We landed, and I smiled.