Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead Read Online Free Page A

location?”
    “No, no map,” Mac allowed.
    “So if this item is to be located, we will have to talk with somebody on the island who has some idea of where such a thing might be found. Sooner or later, I must have this information. Better now, I think.”
    “Then you are willing to help us?” Mac asked.
    “Yes. But we must trust each other.”
    The two men exchanged another quick look.
    Indy said, “During the height of the slave trade in the late 1700s, a Central African woman was taken in a raid. The exact location of this is less than clear, but it was probably in the equatorial regions—Ngoyo, Kakongo, Ndongo, or Matamba.
    “This woman was somehow very dear to the ruler of one of the most important kingdoms, a fellow known as the Manikongo. Some accounts have her as the wife; others, a daughter; still others say she was his mother.
    “This ruler sought to buy her back from the slavers, and offered what was a rare and extremely valuable ransom. The item was a large, asymmetrical black pearl, taken from a giant oyster species long extinct. The pearl was the size of a man’s fist and shaped somewhat like a human heart. Legend had it that it had been the centerpiece of some kind of magic practiced by a family of witch doctors on the west coast before it was taken during a tribal conflict. Supposedly imbued with a curse.”
    “Aren’t they all,” Mac said under his breath.
    She either didn’t hear him or affected that she didn’t. She nodded. “Go on.”
    “The slavers agreed to the deal, but when the pearl was delivered, they killed the men who brought it and took the treasure. Kept the woman, too, so the story goes.
    “They sailed to Hispaniola, but during a storm, the vessel—either Spanish or Portuguese, that part is also unclear—was caught and wrecked in a storm off the south coast of Haiti. A result of the curse, so it was said. Most of the crew and cargo drowned, but somehow the pearl—which, by the way, was known as the Heart of Darkness—was saved by a man who managed to swim ashore to an unnamed island.”
    Indy’d had another adventure with a black pearl a few years back—smaller gem, different continent, and Nazis involved, too, complete with a Chinese dragon, or a pretty good illusion of one, but . . .
    “The Heart of Darkness?” Marie asked.
    Indy said, “If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because there’s a Polish writer, Joseph Conrad—he was a boat captain on the Congo River who wrote a story—”
    “Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski,” she said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Conrad’s real name,” she said. “I did read while I was at college, and I do know a bit about history.” Butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth, so cool was her smile.
    Mac gave Indy an I-guess-she-told-you look.
    Indy nodded, properly abashed. “Right. Sorry.” It would be a mistake to underestimate this woman. Smart and beautiful and educated, a powerful combination. He could hardly forget Elsa, and how he had felt about her—right up until he realized she was a Nazi on their trek to find the Grail. Elsa had been gorgeous, sexy, sharp as a tack, and man, what a bad girl and a wrong number that liaison had turned out to be. Though it had had its moments before it went sour, those few hours in Venice . . . But—then he’d found out about her and his father ? Oh, that had been really bad . . .
    Mac took over the lecture, interrupting Indy’s stroll down memory lane: “So, from the descriptions—and these are oral, and passed down among certain tribes in what is today the Belgian Congo and Nigeria—the Heart was put in a place of safety and warded with magic to somehow attenuate the curse. Supposedly, it has rested there for a hundred and sixty years, give or take.”
    “And you want it. To sell?”
    “No,” Indy said, “to put in a museum! To keep treasure hunters from getting it first and peddling it to some gloating rich man who will keep it in a safe in his bedroom, hidden away, to