The Lost Fleet (9 page)

O
CTOBER
21, 1998
C
ARACAS
, V
ENEZUELA

C
aracas is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. It was once a verdant jungle in a thousand shades of green—until the conquistadors came. Now, five hundred years later, stripped of trees, wildlife, and native vegetation, the landscape has the appearance of well-baked piecrust.

Venezuela is the largest oil-producing country in the Americas and a member of OPEC. It has a New York City skyline—a big money skyline. Beneath it, however, is a scene reminiscent of Calcutta. We were told that there were, on average, a dozen or more murders a week.

The contrast between unimaginable wealth and unimaginable poverty was evident on the drive from the airport to the city. Cardboard houses lined one of the finest roads on which I have ever driven. It is a road built for expensive European cars and military vehicles, a road built with oil money for the rich and powerful.

It is a myth that there is a middle class in Caracas. Either you have money or you are poor, and the vast majority of people in Caracas are desperately poor—and without hope.

I am reminded of a story a Venezuelan fisherman told me about a crab trap teeming with crabs at the bottom of the Venezuelan sea.
One crab manages to escape and sits for a moment on top of the trap. From the tangle of crabs below, his friends call up to him, “Save us, Brother, open the latch!” But the crab does nothing. Again, the trapped crabs scream from below. “Help us, Brother, or we will surely boil in the cook's pot.” Finally, the free crab just scuttles away. “We are doomed; why didn't he open the latch?” asks one of the crabs of another. “There is no reason—this is Venezuela, my friend.”

To have
esperanza,
the Spanish word for “hope,” is now an anachronism in Caracas.

When we arrived, the country was preparing for elections, though not the typical elections where political power is simply circulated within the ruling class at suitable intervals. A new politician, Hugo Chavez, was running for president, and he was different. Chávez is from the barrio, a man who worked his way up and out of poverty. Unlike the old aristocracy, he is dark-skinned. He is a man who said he was serious about changing the order of things, and both his friends and his foes believed him.

It looked as if Chávez would actually be elected. The aristocracy was naturally terrified at the prospect, and the country was tense. Perhaps it was just our American perspective, but chaos seemed to rule the day. We saw a girl run down by a motorcycle, and the driver continued on as if nothing had happened. Police officers seemed to outfit themselves according to their own taste, and the only thing they had in common was that they all dressed like army generals.

Caracas would not have been much of a problem, except that my crew still needed to buy last-minute supplies. I wasn't happy to have them wandering around, but there was no choice. We needed batteries and other gear.

Our only concern was to get that gear together and get out of Caracas as soon as possible. The pending election was not our concern.

 

We were in Caracas a long five days waiting for the different parts of the project to gel. Charles Brewer and Antonio Casado had assured us that our permits were in order, but the BBC needed more assurance, which meant pounding on a few more bureaucrats' doors. It was also our last chance to double-check that we had everything and that everything worked before we left civilization. Las Aves might not have been the end of the earth, but you could see the edge from there. On our first night in Venezuela, Charles invited the entire team to
his house for a grand bash, a buffet dinner and a big party to launch our expedition. “Don't bother to eat,” he told us. He had a big spread planned. We were all more than a little curious to see where Charles Brewer lived.

We drove through the city and then started climbing up into the hills where the wealthier people had homes. We came to a gate through which we had to pass: a dividing line between the haves and the have-nots. We went through and continued on up the hill.

At first, we figured we were heading to a grand home in an affluent subdivision, like the gated communities in America. To our surprise, the driver continued on up, higher and higher, up the mountainside. As the road grew steeper, it turned into a series of switchbacks, zigzagging up the face of the mountain.

The houses became fewer the higher we climbed until, finally, there were no other houses, only the road and the black night. It was surreal. We were all looking out our windows with growing concern. Off the road, it was a straight drop down, and, of course, there were no guardrails.

Charles Brewer's house was at the very top of the mountain. To the east lay the city of Caracas, a great valley of light spread out like phosphorescence in the ocean at night, then cut off in a sharp line where the city met the sea. To the southwest, there was only blackness. The jungle stretched away virtually unbroken for hundreds of miles toward the Guarico, a tributary of the Orinoco River. It was magnificent.

The house itself was worthy of its extraordinary location. It was framed entirely with massive posts of an exotic hardwood such as lignum vitae. The walls were stucco and stone, constructed with the greatest care and craftsmanship. The house looked like a grand hunting lodge in Kenya, something built for wealthy British imperialists of the nineteenth century. Wrapped around the front of the house was a wide veranda, complete with hammocks and wicker furniture, where gentlemen could smoke cigars and socialize. It was everything I would have expected of Charles.

We were very late when we arrived. The path from the car park to the front door was winding and overgrown. The air in Caracas is terribly polluted. But up there, the breeze bore the scent of the jungle, the breath of flowers and new life, mingled with the odor of ancient trees, wood smoke, and decay.

Charles met us at the door. He was tan and fit and dressed neatly in
pressed khakis. He proceeded to show us around the house. Calm and personable; the perfect host.

He had been waiting patiently for us to arrive, and greeted us with the announcement that “Terminator,” his pet killer ant, had escaped its cage. “Be very careful,” he said, “his bite, above all others, is feared by the Yanomami.” This rare species of ant is a nasty character, a solitary creature an inch or so long whose bite, Charles said, is feared by the Amazonian Indians more than the bite of a bushmaster. In fact, Charles told us how he had once attempted to bash his own brains out against the floor after having been bit, and that he had heard stories of Indians roasting a bitten arm or leg to ease the pain.

“Ah, you can be sure he is watching us at this very moment.” Then, with the composure of a great white hunter, Charles took control of the situation. “Follow me,” he said, as he led his anxious dinner guests about the house in search of the little killer. We passed deadly snakes in cages, spiders in shadow boxes, case after case of mounted butterflies, and the skeletal remains of countless creatures—a macabre museum of natural history, all placed with the deliberation and care of a Hollywood set designer.

This was Charles at his finest. In control of a group of potential investors and media people whom he was directing through a maze of psychological traps, which he had baited and set. “Ah, there you are.” Indeed, pinned to the back of a shadow box was the horror of the Amazon rain forest. Charles was the first to laugh. “It is a great joke, is it not?”

We retired to the sitting room, where there happened to be a boa constrictor hiding under our couch. “Come here, Imperator,” he called, giving it its scientific name, as he picked the reptile up and looped it around his neck.

I was thoroughly amused. Though, like the sales pitch of a used-car salesman that had worn thin, Charles's shtick had lost its spontaneity. Indeed, this was not the first time “Terminator” had come back to life.

But what I saw next startled me more than if Terminator had been sitting on my lap. There, on the mantel, as conspicuous as John Wayne in a tutu, was the pot that had been found on the first expedition. The one that Charles had said he would turn over to the Minister of Culture.

Perhaps he noticed me staring at it. He quickly asked Margot if
we'd like to see the grounds. We followed him beyond the lawn down a path through low, scrubby bushes. Charles explained he had been having trouble with wild dogs killing his pet deer. We arrived at the spot where he had caught and killed one of the dogs the day before.

Going into careful detail, as if we were grad students and he were the instructor, he described how he went about catching the wild dog.

“You must first determine the paths he uses. Then take a big strong fishhook, like the kind used to catch tuna. Bait it carefully to hide the hook, but not too much that the hook won't set quickly. Then suspend the hook from a tree, high enough that when the dog snatches it, he will hook himself and dangle off the ground.” The thought of a dog with a hook through its mouth, jerking in anguish, was intended to let me know that Charles was a cunning and careful trapper. That he knew tricks I had never dreamed of…I got the message.

If I still had any illusions about going into the jungle with Charles, he had just removed them. I needed to get back to my element, the sea. The sea can work against you, but it can work with you as well. The Navy SEALs know this. While the sea is powerful enough to tear ships in half, it can also afford protection, if you know its ways.

When we returned to the big, open living room we found that the “banquet” consisted of cheese, crackers, and local wine. “This is one hell of a banquet,” Mike Rossiter muttered to himself.

“Bloody hell,” I said to Pedro Mezquita with my best British accent, “this is going to be a long voyage!”

The “buffet dinner” didn't bother me. I just ate a lot of cheese, but Mike was really upset. I could see why it would bother him—it was his job to look after his crew—but I thought he was overreacting. He was spitting mad. Worse, his camerawoman had fallen off the porch and twisted her ankle and might be out of the game. Mike blamed Charles for the porch being unsafe. Mike was predisposed to finding fault with Charles after all the problems Charles had given him about preparations for the expedition. Charles made it easy.

Charles was never more than two steps away from a loaded gun. There were guns propped up in every corner, like the scene in the blockhouse in
Treasure Island.
With someone like Charles, it is hard to know how much is sensible precaution, how much is paranoia, and how much is showmanship. He referred to the trackless jungle beyond his house as his “backyard” and his “escape route.” When “they” came for him, as he put it, he intended to disappear into the jungle.
Indeed: “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.”

This was Caracas. Charles had a wife and children to protect. Paranoid or not, I too would have armed myself.

It was after the party got rolling that Charles took me aside. “Barry, I must talk to you. We have a slight problem.”

“Really? We have the permit, right, Charles?”

“I am not sure we have the permit. Don't tell Mike.”

To say I was stunned is an understatement; I did
not
want to hear this.

“Charles, we have the BBC and the Discovery Channel here. I have spent a fortune. I have my team with me, and we've hauled all this gear down here.”

“Don't worry, everything will be fine. We'll get the permits tomorrow, or the next day,” he assured me—which I did not find reassuring. In all the phone calls with Mike and me, all the e-mails he'd sent, he had minimized any possibility that all was not in order.

To be fair, Charles did have
some
permits. In fact, before we headed out to Las Aves, Mike Rossiter and his crew videotaped Charles going from one government office to the next, talking with the officials there and getting permits. Some of those meetings even ended up in the documentary. But the officials with whom Charles talked might not have been the ones whose permission was most needed. In a country like Venezuela, we could not be sure who had the ultimate authority. Was it the admiral, or the general? Or the general's nephew?

Pedro Mezquita told me that the Minister of Defense would not issue a permit because he felt “left out.” But after Pedro invited him out to the site for a visit, he felt much better about our project and agreed to issue the permit.

Another part of the problem might have been the competing group that also had permits, issued by the navy, to work Las Aves. There was circumstantial evidence to suggest that whoever had issued the navy permits did not want to see us with permits as well. It was like competing travel agencies had sold two people a ticket for the same seat on a flight.

This was an area where Mike's experience paid off. Before going to film in a foreign country, Mike makes a point of establishing a relationship with an official from that country, generally its ambassador in London. He considers it part of the courtesy one should extend to a host country.

It is also a safety issue. As he put it, “We were going to be on a boat on an atoll quite a long way from anywhere, with limited resources, particularly limited medical resources. If you suddenly want to call in an emergency and get a helicopter from the army or navy, I always think it is helpful if you have already made contact with that government's representatives.”

He was right, and that forethought would prove useful. The Venezuelan ambassador took a personal interest in the project. Though Mike went to the embassy expecting only to speak with one of his assistants, the ambassador himself called Mike into his office to discuss our plans. He was very interested and enthusiastic—a good man to have on our side. We had no idea then just how important that contact would be.