Stoo said:
According to "Lost Journal", when Indy left for Peru, he assumed that Forrestal was still alive. (It'd be interesting to compare this with the info form West End Games "Sourcebook". Hi, Matt.
)
Stoo!
I've quoted the following from the 1994 Lucasfilm authorised, 'Raiders of the Lost Ark Sourcebook', published by West End Games.
This is from Indy's diary and notes:
"Forrestal and I had been competitors since my early days in archaeology. We both went to different universities, we each had out own specialities and we each had different patrons. It wasn't like we were at each other's throats all the time - it's just that he always seemed to mark the better finds, bring back more intriguing artifacts and simply find leads to archaeological sites I never heard about.
Seems he had the same impressions of my work as well.
In fact, Forrestal must have had a virtual intelligence network throughout the world. Most of us archaeologists do. We have our museums and collectors to follow up tips, our colleagues (and competitors) who help us track down finds (or do the work for us), and the seedier underworld figures who seem to know everything ... for the right price. We follow developments in the archaeological journals, watch the newspapers for news of interesting finds, and work off of our own hunches, the history books and whatever the competition is dabbling in.
Which means archaeology can be as dangerous a business as smuggling and espionage.
Forrestal spent a lot more time in Central and South America than I had.He participated in digs at Aztec and Mayan sites, and was fluent in more Indian dialects than I knew existed. I'm sure he had contacts from Lima to Mexico City feeding him information, clues and maps to excavation site all along. So when he disappeared a little over a year ago, I was surprised. I knew he had been working to find an acient temple rumored to have a solid gold statue of the Chachapoyan fertility goddess, and had retrieved a treasure trove of artifacts said to have come from sites near the secret temple. Marcus Brody at the archaeological museum in New York City told me the news of Forrestal's earlier finds, and notified me when he unexpectedly disappeared.
Now all along I had been trying to get a lead on the location of this hidden temple somewhere in the mountain jungles of Peru - at Marcus' request, of course. The idol itself would be the perfect centrepiece for the museums Pre-Columbian collection. But it would take a lot of work before I ever set foot in the South American jungle.
First I contacted Princeton, where Forrestal had been teaching ancient history and archaeology. The history department was keeping his office under lock and key, but after a few months, when it was apparent Forrestal wasn't coming back, they sifted through all the junk and depositied all his papers in the library's archives. A quick trip down to New Jersey and a few hours rummaging through Forrestal's notes in the library revealed a few notes on the ancient Chachapoyan warriors and their fertility goddess cult, as well as the names of two people and a town: Barranca and Satipo in Machete Landing. He also had reference to a volume in the University of Chicago library by a 19th Century American named McHenry who spent most of his life exploring the South American jungles - apparently Forrestal found some sort of map in there. It looked like I was going to Chicago."
...
At the University of Chicago I evaded suspicious librarians and jumped back into the stacks to find the musty old volume on McHenry that Forrestal had consulted. Forrestal had been clumsy, and had dogeared important pages and pencilled notes in the margins. There was one section detailing ancient pictographs from an ancient ruin in the Peruvian jungle highlands which spoke of the Chachapoyan temple. The text also indicated that the floorplan of the temple was described in detail in the pictographs. But Forrestal's notes indicated that the ruin was destroyed in an earthquake several years ago. Apparently the volume originally came with a map insert drawn by the old explorer himself, but the map was missing.
...Jock had learned the general location of the lake where Forrestal landed on an earlier expedition..."
In the same Sourcebook there is an excerpt from Belloq's diary and notes:
"...It was not difficult for me to find the temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors. Doctor Jones led me and my Hovitos ... friends directly to it.
Like Jones, I, too, had been interested in locating the Chachapoyan temple, but my previous efforts years ago had turned up nothing. So I had become very intrigued by Forrestal's apparent excavations near the temple, and by his subsequent disappearance. I had contacted Satipo and Barrance while Forrestal was still alive, and paid them enough to pilfer the map from one of his campsites. But Barranca said the map was incomplete and useless to gain further treasure, so he refused to turn it over to me. Most unfortunate for him.
However, from their foray after Forrestal, I determined the general vicinity in which he was seeking the lost Chachapoyan temple. I knew it was somewhere in a fairly large mountain jungle valley in the Peruvian highlands. Although I didn't have the map to the temple, I knew the general area in which to look. But I needed someone to pinpoint the temple for me, and then brave the deadly traps within to retrieve the sacred and solid gold idol of the Chachapoyan fertility goddess.
When Forrestal disappeared, one of my contacts in the United States informed me of Doctor Jones' interest in retrieving the idol. Through some persuasion and a small bribe, I was able to help foster Jones' research and interest in finding the temple. His first complication was in part my own fabrication. Forrestal's papers were under lock and key at Princeton University. I convinced my contact there that they should be accessible to the academic community - and Jones took the bait, returning to Princeton as soon as Forrestal's notes were made available.
I then dropped a rather innocuous hint to Barranca and Satipo (anonymously, of course) that an American named Doctor Jones was seeking to continue Forrestal's work where he had left off - including the retrieval of the golden fertility goddess."
There may be other references to Forrestal in the book, so I'll check later.
Matt