Schäfer then succumbs to his wounds and dies. The two locate a mortally wounded Schäfer, who tells Nate that he must destroy the Cintamani Stone. They then track Lazarevic's convoy to an abandoned monastery. After securing the village, Nate and Elena find out that Schäfer has been kidnapped along with the phurba. They return to find Lazarevic's men attacking the village.
Traveling through a series of caves to an ancient temple filled with yeti-like creatures, Nate and Tenzin discover that Schäfer's men were SS members on an Ahnenerbe expedition, and that he had killed them to protect the world from the power of the stone. To convince him otherwise, Schäfer sends Nate and the village leader, Tenzin (Robin Atkin Downes), to find the remains of the men in his expedition, who were looking for Shambhala and the stone 70 years earlier.
Schäfer tells Nate that the phurba is the key to finding Shambhala, but Nate tells him he is no longer interested. He awakens in a Tibetan village, where he is reunited with Elena and is introduced to a German man named Karl Schäfer (Rene Auberjonois).
Returning to where the game began, Nate escapes the train and travels through a snow storm, recovering the phurba among the wreckage before falling unconscious. With no other option, Nate shoots a pile of propane tanks, killing Flynn's men and sending Nate's half of the train over a steep cliff. As the two argue, Flynn arrives and shoots Nate in the abdomen. Nate boards the train and finds Chloe, who is upset about Nate having taken Elena and Jeff along earlier and refuses to leave with him. The couple manages to catch up with Lazarevic's train on a stolen jeep. While Lazarevic and Chloe leave for the train yard, Nate and Elena manage to escape just as Flynn is about to kill them. Chloe reluctantly pulls her gun on Nate to protect her "cover", while Lazarevic executes Jeff. Despite Chloe's insistence to leave Jeff behind, the group pushes on until they are caught. As they are about to leave, the group is ambushed, and Jeff is shot by one of Lazarevic's men. The four reach the temple and discover that the stone and Shambhala are in the Himalayas. After surmising that the temple they are looking for is adorned with one of the symbols on the phurba, the couple survey the area from the rooftop of a local hotel, finding its location.Įn route to the temple, the pair runs into Elena Fisher (Emily Rose) and her cameraman Jeff (Gregory Myhre), who are tracking down Lazarevic to prove he is still alive. While Sullivan decides that the quest is too risky, Nate and Chloe head to Nepal, finding conflict as Lazarevic's mercenary army ravages the city looking for the right temple.
Flynn and his men appear in the tomb soon after and take the letter, while Nate and Sully escape by jumping off a cliff into a river. They locate a tomb containing the bodies of Polo's passengers, as well as a Tibetan phurba and a letter from Polo saying that the next clue is in Kathmandu, Nepal in a temple. With the help of Chloe working within Lazarevic's camp as a mole, they discover that the lost fleet never actually possessed the Cintamani Stone. Nate and Sully follow Flynn and his boss Zoran Lazarevic (Graham McTavish), a Serbian war criminal who is widely thought to be dead, to Borneo. Chloe, who claims to have had no knowledge of Flynn's treachery, asks for the help of Drake's friend Victor "Sully" Sullivan (Richard McGonagle) to secure his release. Taking the map, Flynn double-crosses Drake, who is arrested and imprisoned for three months. Harry and Drake acquire the lamp, which contains a map showing that the lost fleet had been transporting the Cintamani Stone from the mythical city of Shambhala (better known as Shangri-La) before being thrown ashore in Borneo by a tsunami. Nate accepts the job when he learns that the lamp may lead to the treasure of Marco Polo's lost fleet. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that former associate Harry Flynn (Steve Valentine) and old girlfriend Chloe Frazer (Claudia Black) approached him with a job to steal a Mongolian oil lamp from an Istanbul museum. The story begins in medias res, with a wounded Nathan "Nate" Drake (Nolan North) waking up to find himself in a train hanging off a cliff. Polo never revealed what had happened to the lost ships. After spending almost 20 years in the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, Marco Polo departed with fourteen ships and over six hundred passengers – but when he arrived at Persia a year and a half later, only one ship and eighteen passengers remained. The narrative opens with a quote attributed to Marco Polo, "I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed." The plot revolves around the doomed voyage home of Marco Polo from China in 1292.