Testament

Epilogue

Three days later, Jack sat on the shore of the island, watching the waves lap the rocks and the evening sunlight cast a rosy hue on the surface of the sea. The last of the naval team who had been working in the U-boat pen had departed half an hour before, leaving one remaining Zodiac for him to drive out with the others when they were ready. Seaquest was holding position half a mile offshore, flanked by warships from the anti-piracy force, one a frigate of the Royal Canadian Navy, the other a US Navy destroyer. They were a reassuring presence, security against any unwanted incursion while the pen was being cleared. Once the uranium had been removed and the Ahnenerbe chamber emptied, the plan was for a naval demolition team to blow the entrance and collapse the cavern. The residual radiation levels in the U-boat were unlikely to pose a long-term hazard, but the site was a war grave, the last resting place of those who had died here in 1945. There was every prospect of the islands becoming the front line in a new war, not against pirates but against Iran and its terrorist affiliates, and the Yemeni and Somali governments had agreed that the archipelago should be a no-go zone until the situation improved.

Jack watched three figures make their way over the rocky ground from the helipad that had been cleared above the cavern entrance. Rebecca and Jeremy had arrived on Seaquest two days before to help with clearing the Ahnenerbe chamber, due to start tomorrow. The Lynx from Seaquest had dropped them on the island a few minutes ago, and had then clattered off back to the ship. Trailing behind them was a third figure in familiar Hawaiian beach gear, his left arm trussed up in a sling and carrying something on his back. Jack smiled when he saw them, and raised his hand in greeting. They came over and sat down around him, Costas dropping his sack on a flat rock beside the sea. “I had the catering people on Seaquest make me up one of those portable barbecues, with real charcoal. This place isn’t exactly a beach, but it’ll do.”

“What are we eating?” Jack said.

Costas reached into the sack, pulled out the foil barbecue tray, and then a wet bag. “Fish,” he said, spilling the contents onto the rock. “Red mullet, wrasse, sea bass. Jeremy speared them this afternoon.”

Rebecca stared at Jeremy in mock disbelief. “I didn’t know about that. No way. Jeremy couldn’t hit a tin can in front of his nose.”

“Yep,” Costas said, pulling out a box of matches and a stack of paper plates. “This afternoon while you and your dad were busy, I drove him around to the reef at the back of the island and showed him the fish identification chart, and an hour later we were on our way back with the cooler full.”

“What was it you said a few days ago?” Jeremy said, eyeing Rebecca. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I still don’t believe it. I challenge you tomorrow. We’ll catch lunch for the entire team.”

“You’re on.”

Jack smiled and turned to Costas, inspecting his swollen eye and the cuts and bruises on his face. “You sure you’re okay being out of sick bay?”

Costas dropped a lit match into the tray, and stirred the charcoal with a stick. “I checked myself out. No way was I staying cooped up in there. How about you?”

“My back hurts from bouncing around in that Zodiac, and my right knee is playing up. Nothing that won’t be fixed as soon as I’m back in the water again.”

“Let’s face it, you two are getting a bit old for this kind of thing,” Rebecca said, taking another stick and poking at the fire. “No offense, but you know what I mean. Maybe it’s time you passed the baton to the younger generation.”

Jack turned and looked at Costas, and they both stared at Rebecca. “Maybe it’s time the younger generation went back and finished school,” Jack said.

“I didn’t mean the diving, I meant all the commando stuff,” Rebecca continued, looking at them deadpan. “You could delegate that to your up-and-coming protégés — Jeremy, for example.”

“Whoa,” Jeremy said. “Spearfishing is one thing, wielding a Kalashnikov is another. I’m an epigrapher, not Indiana Jones.”

“Long may it stay that way,” Jack said. “Without your expertise with the Phoenician inscriptions, we’d be telling a different story.”

Costas put the grill on the tray and sat beside it. “So, Jack. We found our gold after all. We made up for what we lost on Clan Macpherson.”

“What you lost, you mean. I didn’t try to defuse that torpedo.”

“You weren’t ever going to let it fall into the hands of Landor, were you?”

“It’s true. You made it easier for me.”

“So what’s the plan with this new haul?”

“There are some formalities to get through with the Yemeni and Somali authorities, but nobody’s going to claim ownership or stand in the way of the plan I’d envisaged for the Clan Macpherson gold. The South African government has agreed to take the bars and rebrand them under UN ownership, and our UN rep has already secured approval for a new agency specifically to disburse the funds. We’re looking at half going to West Africa, to alleviate child poverty and for disease prevention, and half going to the Horn of Africa, to the coastal communities of Somalia, for development aid. How does that sound?”

“Pretty amazing, Dad,” Rebecca said. “I’d like to be part of that.”

“That kind of aid in Somalia might help to wean young men away from piracy,” Costas said.

“Not just piracy, but the lure of the extremists,” Jack replied. “This coast is a prime recruiting ground, with so many young men unemployed and directionless. I had a long discussion about it with the naval force commander yesterday. It’ll be a challenge to get the balance right, but we envisage a combination of poverty alleviation, funding schools and educational programs, and seeding economic initiatives, especially those focused on rebooting traditional subsistence activities. None of it will work without effective policing of the offshore territorial zone to exclude the foreign trawlers that have nearly destroyed the local fish stocks, the main factor that has driven the men to piracy. We want to see the patrol boats policing against outsiders, not against the Somalis themselves. That gold will help to extinguish piracy along the coast.”

“Amen to that,” Costas said, wincing as he held his arm. “And a big finger to the Nazis and their schemes. Whoever once might have owned that gold, this is the best place for it.”

“So what about the Ark of the Covenant?” Rebecca said.

Jack said nothing. He was staring out to sea, looking south toward the huge stretch of coast that the ancients called the Runs of Azania, toward the island of Madagascar and the very extremity of Africa, to the cape where a Phoenician adventurer had put up a bronze plaque with an extraordinary message to posterity more than two and a half thousand years ago. In his mind’s eye he imagined the scene, saw Hanno tapping in that final symbol as the wind howled and the sea churned against the rocky headland below; for a moment, gazing out to sea, he saw not Seaquest and the two warships but a lone Phoenician vessel battling its way up the coast, carrying a cargo to a secret destination in a covenant with a people who knew they might not see their most sacred treasure for many generations to come. He was convinced that what he was imagining was real, not just a flight of fancy; he had seen the plaque with his own eyes, as real as the flecks of gold on the animal hide that Maurice had excavated in Carthage. And he remembered standing with Zaheed in front of the Chapel of the Tablet at Axum, sensing with sudden clarity why it was that the ancient prophets of Israel had wanted their treasure concealed, and why the time was not yet right to reveal it, even though their descendants ruled once again in the Holy Land and might need the strength of their covenant more than ever.

Costas laid the first of the fillets on the grill, and they watched as the steam rose above them into the darkening sky. “Another one of those biblical passages I can remember,” Costas said, staring into the embers. “Jeremiah, chapter three, verses sixteen and seventeen. ‘And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the Lord, they shall say no more the ark of the covenant of the Lord; neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it.’”

“What does it mean?” Rebecca asked.

“There’s another passage in Second Maccabees, chapter two,” Costas continued. “You won’t find it in the King James version, but it’s considered canonical by the Greek Orthodox Church. After the Ark is sealed up in its cave, the prophet Jeremiah reprimands his followers for leaving waymarkers to it. He tells them that the place shall remain unknown until God finally gathers his people together and shows mercy to them. ‘The Lord will bring these things to light again, and the glory of the Lord will appear with the cloud.’”

“I’m just a dirt archaeologist,” Jack said, “but I do believe in the power of artifacts for their symbolism, for maintaining hope and strength in times of adversity. And sometimes that’s best maintained when an artifact is just beyond our reach, a hidden treasure that forever fires up our imagination. It’s the yearning for it, the quest, that keeps us going, not the thought of actually holding it in our hands.”

“And the world of peace the prophets hoped for, the time for the revelation, has not yet come about,” Rebecca said.

Jack nodded grimly. “The Middle East is a cauldron, worse than it ever has been before, worse even than at the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of the Temple, when the Ark was spirited away. All the peoples of the Holy Land, whatever their beliefs, need symbols of hope to sustain them. The Ark is where it should be.”

“So what’s going to happen to Landor?”

Jack paused again, pursing his lips. “Captain Ibrahim assures me that he’ll be put on trial for conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, and aiding and abetting piracy. They hold him responsible for the deaths of Zaheed and the two marines killed during the kidnapping shoot-out, as well as the casualties here.”

“Do you think it will stick?”

“I doubt it. With the Badass Boys history now, the Somalis may be unable to find anyone who can testify that Landor ordered the kidnapping. He’s a wily customer, very experienced at covering his back, no paperwork or emails, everything done by word of mouth and payments in cash. Deep Explorer Incorporated may go under, but not Landor. He’ll probably never walk again, but he can do what he does just as well from a wheelchair. He’ll spend some unpleasant months under guard in a Mogadishu hospital, then his lawyers will get him bail on a technicality and he’ll be out of the country before you can say treasure wreck. He did the same thing in Colombia early in his career, and will doubtless do it again before he gets on the wrong side of someone really big-time — the Russian or Chinese mafia perhaps — and someone puts a bullet in the back of his head.”

“And Deep Explorer?”

“That’s a happier outcome. I don’t think there’s any chance the investment consortium are going to try to reclaim their ship. They’ve cut their losses before and moved on under a different name, and they’ll do the same now. This morning Ibrahim and I had a teleconference with the British ambassador in Mogadishu to discuss the possibility of UK aid funding to convert her to a fisheries patrol and research vessel, run by the Somali navy but with a scientific role as well. She’d be modeled on Seaquest and Sea Venture, and we could do the conversion in our own yard. I think we’ll get the go-ahead.”

“The situation with fishing remains the critical factor out here,” Costas said.

Jack nodded. “I talked about that with the ambassador just before the gun attack that killed Zaheed. We agreed to work up a strong case for an aid package that would see surplus UK equipment go to the Somali navy, as well as more personnel secondments and training initiatives. The UK has put a big commitment into Somalia with the new embassy, and the ambassador thinks there’s a good chance of our package being approved. She thinks the US will come on board as well, once they re-establish their presence in Mogadishu.”

“Have you been in touch with Zaheed’s wife yet?” Rebecca asked.

Jack stared into the embers. “I’ll be visiting her in Mogadishu as soon as we’re out of here. The embassy people have been with her and her daughter round the clock. They know that IMU will look after them financially for as long as is necessary, including her daughter’s education and their relocation to the West, if that’s what they want. We’ll provide for them as Zaheed would have done had he lived.”

“Zaheed talked to Lieutenant Ahmed, you know,” Costas said. “Outside the naval headquarters before we took our fateful drive. They were planning to present you with a proposal for a beefed-up IMU presence in Somalia, with Ahmed’s club providing the divers.”

“Ahmed’s spoken to me about it, and it’s already green-lit,” Jack said. “That’s part of the plan for Deep Explorer as well, to serve as an operational base for wreck investigation. It allows us to make use of quite a lot of the existing equipment in the ship, redirecting its purpose from salvage to archaeology. I’ve invited Ahmed to spend his next leave with us in Cornwall. If only Zaheed had been able to come with him. But it’s great to see something good emerging from all this.”

“Ahmed’s still on the island and is coming up here shortly,” Costas said. “Apparently he’s got something to show you. He’s pretty excited.”

“Where are you going next?” Rebecca said to Jack, resting her head on her knees and hugging her legs.

Jack looked again at Seaquest, and then around to the north, following a dark streak of cloud that seemed to envelop the horizon. Somewhere up there, somewhere beyond the Arabian shore, a black hole of destruction was threatening to swallow the cradle of civilization itself, sucking into it the very essence of history. Ever since returning from the clutches of extremism in Egypt, Jack had known that his destiny was to return, not to Egypt but to the very maw of the hole itself, to the place where history was being wiped clean. Nothing else he could do now, no other quest, was as important as trying to protect the treasures of the oldest civilizations from desecration, a task he could no longer stand by and watch others fail to achieve while knowing that he might have the ability and resources to make a difference.

“You’re going back there, aren’t you?” Rebecca said quietly. “Into the cauldron.”

Jack stared into the fire, watching Costas turn the fish. “I don’t know. But I can’t just ignore it. None of us can.” He exhaled forcefully, then looked at her. “What about you?”

“Me?” Rebecca took off the headscarf she had been wearing, and gave him a brazen look. Instead of the long, dark hair he was so used to, he saw that she had shorn it almost completely, to above the ears. He stared, flabbergasted, and then slowly smiled. Suddenly she was no longer a girl but a young woman, tough and ready for anything.

“I had no idea,” he said. “That looks great.”

“I didn’t do it for the look of it. I did it because it’s more practical in this heat, for what Jeremy and I have planned.”

“Which is?”

“We talked it through with Captain Macleod on Seaquest. He has to stay on station for another five days at least, while they finish clearing the pen. The warships will be here as well for our protection, and the Yemeni official in charge of Socotra has given us the go-ahead.”

“You planning to invade the island? Costas said.

“Intensive archaeological survey off the south coast. We can put four Zodiacs in the water from Seaquest. The diving units on both warships are excited about it too, an excellent training opportunity for them. With the possibility of war looming, when are we ever going to get another opportunity like this? These islands were bang in the middle of one of the most incredible trade routes of the ancient world, between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea on the one hand and the Indian Ocean and the world beyond on the other. We could get anything: medieval Arab traders, Chinese junks, Greek and Roman merchant ships, you name it. My hope is for an ancient Egyptian ship coming back from India laden with treasures of the East. Maurice thought that would be really cool.”

“You’ve discussed this with him?” Jack said.

“It was his idea, actually. Apparently he’s always wanted to explore Socotra. Something about Egyptian Middle Kingdom artifacts dug up here years ago by a British adventurer, in the mid-nineteenth century, I think.”

“Ah, yes,” Jack said. “That would be Captain Peter Hall of the Bengal Sappers, one of the men on the 1868 Abyssinia expedition. I found out about his Socotra excursion in one of my great-great-grandfather’s letters, and made the mistake of telling Maurice about it.”

“Actually, he’s itching to get out here,” Rebecca said.

“Maurice is coming?”

Rebecca looked at her watch. “Should be in the air in a couple of hours. Almost all finished at Carthage. He just needs to clean up in his trench and get it backfilled.”

“Good of you to keep me in the loop.”

“You and Costas are welcome to join us. That is,” she said, eyeing Jack mischievously, “if you’re not too old for that kind of thing.”

“That reminds me,” Jack said, suddenly remembering something. “Louise, the Bletchley girl back in England. I owe her an update.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jeremy said. “I’ve kept her posted since the get-go. She seems to have taken a particular shine to me.”

“Still, I’ll Skype her tomorrow,” Jack said. “She opened up to us about the war, about her work at Bletchley, and I owe it to her. Finding the gold helps to bring the story of Clan Macpherson and that whole secret operation to a kind of resolution, something she’s been wanting for more than seventy years.”

“She’ll love to hear what you’re planning to do with it,” Jeremy said. “One up on the Nazis. A lot of people like her who put their all into it back then are still fighting the war, you know.”

Twenty minutes later, Lieutenant Ahmed came along the rocks from the direction of the inlet, wearing Somali navy fatigues and carrying a plastic bag. “A few more for the barbecue,” he said, handing the bag to Costas. “My men did some spearfishing after their final inspection of the inlet.”

“How goes it?” Jack said.

Ahmed sat down on a rock and accepted a bottle of water from Costas. “All the radioactive material is now in the frigate, destined for disposal. We’ve got everything set up for the team from the museum who are arriving tomorrow to begin clearing that treasure chamber. Are your people still good with that?”

Jack nodded. “The IMU conservators are due this evening at Mogadishu and will be brought out by the Lynx from Seaquest in the morning. With any luck we’ll have all the artifacts flown out and in a secure laboratory by the end of the week.”

“This is going to cause a huge stir,” Ahmed said. “It looks as if those Ahnenerbe men were quietly stealing everything they could find of value in the places they explored in Africa. One of my friends who works for the museum has had a look at the records, and there were items that disappeared mysteriously while this place was under Mussolini’s control in the late 1930s, most of it gold from the ancient Axum civilization. Restoring those artifacts to their rightful place will give a big boost to the sense of identity and pride among the people here, something much needed after the past couple of decades.”

“IMU will do everything it can to help,” Jack said.

“There is one other thing.” Ahmed took a swaddled package from his pocket and leaned forward, eyeing Jack intently. “Do you remember I told you my plan to enlist local fishermen in our search for wrecks, a way of getting a program of maritime archaeological research on a proper footing in Somalia?”

“Putting out an APB,” Costas said, taking Ahmed’s fish and laying them beside the grill. “It’s always the best way. Use local knowledge first.”

Ahmed nodded. “Well, we’ve already come up with something very interesting. One of the fishermen, a grandson of the man who led us to this island, regularly goes along the northern Somali coast into the Red Sea as far as Eritrea, to Annesley Bay. One of his favorite spots is not far from the town of Zula, near ancient Adulis, the port of Axum.”

“Where the British landed during the 1868 Abyssinia expedition,” Jack said.

“Right. It’s a big area of salt flats, and there’s still some evidence of the British engineering works: piles for jetties and the remains of wooden causeways. At one of those places our man came ashore and saw the remains of an old hull poking out of the mud, with strange-looking markings on the bow. He took a picture of it on his phone and forwarded it to me.”

Ahmed tapped his phone and passed it over to Jack, who enlarged the picture and stared at it, swiping from side to side to get a full view. “That’s old all right,” he murmured. “Very old. Ancient mortice-and-tenon construction.”

“Could be Egyptian,” Rebecca said, peering over his shoulder. “The ancient Egyptians sailed down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt, and they were the originators of that construction technique. At least that’s what Maurice says.”

“Not with this on the bow.” Jack passed her the phone, and Jeremy and Costas leaned over to see. “Good Lord,” Jeremy said. “It’s a painted eye. An apotropaic eye.”

“You don’t see those on Egyptian boats,” Jack said. “But you do see them on ancient ships of the Mediterranean, where the eye is still used today to ward off bad luck.”

“Specifically, you might see it on a Phoenician ship,” Jeremy said, taking the phone and swiping the screen to get maximum magnification. “Definitely on a Phoenician ship.”

“What else can you see?” Jack asked.

Jeremy handed the phone back, pointing. “That.”

Jack stared at the image. It was a section of planking just below the bow, half buried in mud, with a symbol faintly visible on one of the planks. “It’s a carpenter’s mark,” he said. “The letters alpha and gamma.”

“The letter A is toppled over on one side,” Jeremy said. “That’s the Phoenician letter A. Can you see it?”

“What could a Phoenician ship possibly be doing in the southern Red Sea?” Costas said, looking at Jack with a half-smile on his face.

“Pharaoh Necho’s expedition?” Rebecca said. “Didn’t he employ Phoenicians to sail south down the Red Sea on their expedition to circumnavigate Africa?”

“Phoenicians came in the other direction too, didn’t they?” Ahmed said. “Circumnavigating Africa from the west. You told me your theory about Hanno.”

Jack nodded slowly, his mind racing, staring at the photo. “He may not have sailed the entire route back into the Mediterranean, but he made it back to Carthage, and I’m convinced it was from this side of Africa.”

“Then you’ll be very intrigued with the other thing the fisherman found.” Ahmed unwrapped the package, carefully taking out an encrusted potsherd. “This was in the shallows just beyond the hull. It looks like an amphora sherd to me. I’ve been following the blog on your Phoenician wreck off Cornwall over the past few weeks, so I’m pretty sure I can recognize Phoenician letters when I see them. I think I can read that first word.”

He passed the sherd to Jack, who held it so the others could see it. One side, the interior, was covered with worm castings and accretion, with some of the pitch lining of the amphora still visible. The other side had the faint lines of letters scratched on it, clearly done in antiquity. Jack stared, astonished. Two words; two brothers. One was the man he had followed on his venture around the coast of Africa, an extraordinary expedition with an extraordinary cargo; the other was a man who had gone to the far side of the known world, whose final moments they had charted in the waters of the cove in England where Jack had been diving less than a week before, where Costas had found the sherd inscribed in the last moments of duress, when that man too could only think of his brother.

“Hanno and Himilco,” Rebecca said quietly. “Hanno thinking of his brother when he leaves his ship, wondering if he’ll see him again.”

Jeremy took out a pocket magnifier and scrutinized the sherd, angling it against the firelight. He snapped the magnifier shut and handed the sherd back to Jack. “I thought so,” he said.

“What is it?” Jack said.

“Between the names. You can barely see it, but it’s there. That pictogram.”

Jack stared. Suddenly he could see it, the image on the plaque from Clan Macpherson that had been on the sherd from the Cornwall wreck. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said, passing it to Rebecca, pointing at the symbol of the two men carrying the box. “That’s incredible. It’s exactly the same.”

Costas reached over and shook his hand. “Well, you didn’t find the Ark of the Covenant, but then neither did those Nazi bastards. But when it comes down to it, there’s nothing like a potsherd to keep an archaeologist happy.”

“Oh, but I did find it,” Jack said, taking the sherd again and holding it up. “And you’re right. This sherd is my gold, all the gold I need.” He grinned at Ahmed. “I think I owe you a place on our next big wreck excavation, your duties permitting, of course.”

“I’d love that.”

“Right, grub’s up,” Costas said. “There’s beer and water in the bag for everyone. Plates, please.”

Jack took a bottle of water and uncapped it. He picked up a plate, waiting his turn, and took a deep drink, looking at the stars that were just becoming visible above the horizon. He thought of all those he seemed to have been shadowing: Hanno and the Phoenicians, the soldiers who had scaled Magdala in 1868, the men of Clan Macpherson, and those in Bletchley Park who had decided their fate. For a moment he imagined himself looking down from far above, seeing only the red speck of the fire, the bare rock and the great expanse of the sea around them, imagining those lives that had gone before, all of them navigating routes that seemed to have converged at this place.

He took another swig and watched Rebecca sit down on the same rock as Jeremy with her plateful. He looked back at the sea again, thinking about diving. Macleod had told him about Rebecca’s project as soon as she had introduced it, but he had let her take it forward. They would need to sit down tomorrow with the Admiralty charts to talk about currents and reefs. He had already scoped out the island for the most likely places for wreckage, the places nearest to the sailing routes where ships might have been blown ashore. They would have to take account of the variegation of the seabed he had seen on their hurried dive from the doomed trawler. A few hundred meters of easy-looking coastal water on the surface could be a jumble of rocks and gullies underwater, hard to navigate and impossible to survey systematically. It would be Rebecca’s project, but he would make sure they did not come away empty-handed. And she might well be right. There could be a great treasure lurking under these waves in front of them, something to add to IMU’s rich bank of projects for the future.

Rebecca passed her phone over to Jack. “Maurice just sent me this. He wanted you to see it.”

Jack stared at the image, a selfie of Maurice holding a small Egyptian statue of a god and beaming at the camera. “Huh,” he said. “A shabti, a funerary figurine. That looks like the one he found when we excavated the Roman villa as schoolboys, the find that really turned him on to Egyptology. Good to see him looking happy again.”

“No,” Rebecca said. “That’s one he’s just found in Carthage. That’s why he’s so happy.”

Jack smiled broadly. “Well I’ll be damned. Good on you, Maurice.”

“It was at the bottom of the harbor entrance channel, below the bronze of Ba’al and the gorilla skin. He says he knows it doesn’t prove anything, that it could have been dropped overboard by a passing ship, but he does say that it’s the right date — ninth century BC — for an Egyptian presence in the early trading post at Carthage. He says finding it makes him feel as if he’s come full circle. He says from now on he’s not going to hold back on telling you what he’s found. From now on he’s going to tell you everything.”

“That sounds like the old Maurice. I knew he’d be back.”

Costas slapped a fish on Jack’s plate and sat down beside him, grunting with satisfaction as he contemplated the pile on his own plate. He nudged Jack along on his rock to make more space, and peered at him. “You’ve got that look again.”

“You always say that. I’ve just been thinking, that’s all.”

Costas picked up a fish by the tail and pulled the flesh off the bone, then cracked open a beer. “Is there something you want to ask me?”

“About what?”

He took a swig. “You know. The usual. About my plans.”

“About your arm.”

“My arm? What about it?”

“Salt water would do it good. Clean up the wound.”

Costas stuffed some fish into his mouth and waved dismissively. “It’s only a scratch. I can take this thing off tonight.”

“It’s just that I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“You ready to dive tomorrow?”

Costas took another huge swig of beer, swallowed noisily, and slapped Jack on the back, grinning broadly. “What do you think? Those are the best words I’ve heard all day. I can’t wait.”