In the December issue of my favorite print magazine Smithsonian, my old friend/Wired editor Michael Behar has a great article about Robert Graf, a treasure hunter seeking a centuries-old pirate's booty. The multimillion-dollar treasure might be hidden in a stone vault now underwater in the Seychelles. Then again, it might not be.
When I arrive on Mahé, it's easy to spot Graf in the crowd at the airport. He's the only guy wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the classic pirate ensign—a skull and crossbones. Tanned and fit, the treasure hunter seems relaxed—hardly what you'd expect from someone who has spent a third of his life obsessed with a long-dead pirate. Yet Graf is no laid-back islander. He's in-your-face intense right from the start. I'd barely heaved my suitcase into the trunk of his rusty compact car when he launched into a breathless retelling of how he'd voyaged some 10,000 miles from his Colorado home, married a Seychellois hotel reservations manager and spent more than $450,000 of his own money looking for a treasure that others have failed to find here for nearly a century.
