The Mask of Troy

16

T he Turkish navy crewman opened the throttle on the outboard and the Zodiac boat roared away, digging a trough in the sea and then rising above it to skim towards the distant grey shape of the minesweeper. Jack grasped the railing and leaned out through the stern of Seaquest II ’s internal docking bay, a hangar-sized space open to the sea below that allowed diving and submersible launch in virtually any conditions. Today the sea had been unusually calm, a sluggish low swell occasionally ruffled by the early-afternoon breeze, and Captain Macalister had kept the stern door open. Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath, relishing the breeze, the tang of salt, the whiff of two-stroke exhaust. These were the smells he had associated with diving all his life, the smells that meant he was in the right place, doing the right thing. He felt a burst of adrenalin. It had been a frustrating morning, as they had negotiated the best way to remove the mine from the shipwreck. But now they were back on course, and he could focus again on what he was about to see on the sea bed, a find that almost beggared belief, the extraordinary remains of a galley from the Trojan War.

Costas came up alongside, wiping his oily hands on a rag, wearing torn working overalls with tools poking out of the pockets. He followed Jack’s gaze, and looked wistfully at the Zodiac as it receded into the distance. ‘It should have been me,’ he said. ‘Defusing that mine. It makes me feel empty inside.’

‘Not as empty as you’d feel if it had gone off while you were hugging it.’

‘Speaking of which.’ Costas pointed out to sea, and Jack saw that the Zodiac had come to a stop, perhaps a mile from the minesweeper. Two men came up behind them, Mustafa Alkozen, the IMU Turkish liaison, and Ben Kershaw, the ship’s security chief. Mustafa, a muscular, bearded man with a deep voice, had a two-way radio receiver clamped to his ear. He took it down. ‘Captain Macalister has just been informed by the captain of Nusbat. One minute.’ The ship’s klaxon sounded to warn the crew to brace for impact. They were well outside the danger zone, but Macalister was taking no chances. Jack looked out into the haze off the bows of the minesweeper, two, maybe two and a half nautical miles distant, Gallipoli just visible in the background, the coast of Troy to the right. Suddenly there was a wobble in the sea and a white ripple that flashed outwards, followed by a geyser of spray. Seconds later he felt something, barely discernible, as if a ghost had passed through them. ‘That was the shock wave, this far away,’ Costas said, shaking his head. ‘Imagine those guys in the Turkish minelayer in 1915, snagging one of those things. They wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

Jack turned to Mustafa, smiled broadly and shook his hand. ‘Thanks again. That was excellent liaison. I’d like to have some of their guys dive with us, once the excavation gets under way.’

‘You have a standing invitation to the Turkish naval academy for dinner, you know that. You and Costas. You’ll be very well looked after.’

‘I know about Turkish hospitality. I’d be delighted. I’ve got some good friends there from my navy days, and now some more. Once we’re up and running.’

Ben nodded at Jack. He was a small, wiry man, with a quiet voice, British ex-special forces. ‘They should have let you take out that mine with the Webley.’

‘You kidding? You should have seen me yesterday. All over the place.’

‘I was watching from the bridge. Not a bad final shot.’

‘Pure fluke. I’d given up trying.’

‘That’s often the key. It’s what I tell Rebecca. Stop trying so hard, relax.’

‘She’s a better shot than me.’

Ben grinned. ‘You better watch it, Jack. She’ll be taking over.’ He stood quietly for a moment, a little awkward. ‘I meant to say. I really would have gone with her to London, you know. You just had to say the word. She’s… a really good kid. Hard to think what it was like on board without her. My guys would do anything for her. You know that.’

‘I know.’ Jack put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘And I appreciate it. Really do. She thinks of you guys, the crew, as an extended family. It’s the best thing for me to see, especially after what she’s gone through.’

Ben nodded. He patted a bulge in his jacket. ‘I’ve done those reloads for you. Took the bullet weight down a notch, two hundred and sixty-five grains. That should do the trick. Wouldn’t mind having a go myself.’

‘See you on the foredeck after dinner?’

‘You’re on.’ Ben waved, and he and Mustafa walked back through the jumble of equipment. Jack turned to Costas. ‘So what’s the story with my Aquapod?’

Costas exhaled forcibly, shaking his head. ‘Can’t work it out.’

Jack looked at him incredulously. ‘I didn’t hear you say that.’

‘Jeremy and I spent half the night on it. He’s got a real knack. Sees things like you do, sees the whole problem first and then deconstructs it. Too many engineers are the other way round, too logical. I can’t really understand what made him leave engineering to study ancient languages, for God’s sake.’

Jack grinned. ‘Same kind of challenges. Just less oily.’

‘The problem’s not a safety issue. It’s the external link on the intercom. We can communicate between the Aquapods, but you can’t link to the outside. We think it might be pressure-related. Only way to find out is to take it down.’

‘Fine by me. I never liked talking much underwater anyway. That’s the problem with all these submersibles. Diving’s about getting away from that. Just you and your breathing.’

‘It’s hard enough getting you to say anything at the best of times when you’ve seen something on the sea bed. Some fishermen holler when they’ve got a fish on. Some go silent, like a dog on a scent. You’re definitely the silent type.’

Jack smiled, then turned back and leaned out, feeling the breeze again, watching the occasional spray of whitecaps on the swell. ‘I was just thinking of Lanowski.’

‘Don’t. Please God, don’t.’

‘Seriously.’

‘You mean out there? The ripple effect from that mine. The shock wave. What he said about earthquakes.’

Jack nodded. ‘If something like that mine can produce a discernible shock wave two miles away, imagine what an earthquake might have done in 1200 BC. I don’t just mean our shipwreck. I mean a huge wave, an actual wave of water, hitting Troy. And watching the Zodiac go made me remember what he said about horses.’

‘When I nearly went to get a straitjacket.’

Jack shook his head. ‘He was right. I knew he was on to something. I just had to let it gel. It’s blindingly obvious. You remember he said the Greek word, ippoi, horses, could be used to mean waves, whitecaps, and also ships?’

‘Sure.’

‘Think of another horse.’ Jack jerked his hand to shore. ‘This place. Troy. Horse.’

‘Well. The Trojan Horse, obviously. But…’ Costas’ jaw dropped. ‘Holy cow.’

Jack turned to him, his eyes blazing. ‘That’s the point. That’s what Lanowski was driving at. The Trojan Horse wasn’t a horse. It was a ship.’

‘But what about Homer?’

‘Homer? The story of the Trojan Horse isn’t even in Homer. It’s only known from those later epic fragments. No way was Homer going to include a story of a wooden horse in the Iliad. He was far too great a poet for that. The story demeans the Trojans, makes Priam look ridiculous. What kind of enemy worth fighting is going to be duped by a gift like that? To make a great epic poem work, the enemy must be equal to yourselves. But that’s not to say the Trojan ippos didn’t happen. It was a terrifying event, truly the linchpin. But it was part of a different story, the story of the fall of Troy, the Ilioupersis. A poem Homer wrote but never revealed.’

‘But you’re saying some fragment survived, with that word, and that we’ve got it wrong.’

Jack nodded. ‘A fragment mentioning a “Trojan Horse”. But those later poets, the ones who compiled the epic fragments, didn’t know the imagery. They didn’t have the imagination. They hadn’t been there, seen what really happened, as I believe Homer had done. To them, ippos meant horse, the four-legged variety, full stop. So the story of the Trojan ship fades from history. And lo, the Trojan Horse.’

‘That might disappoint the site custodian at Troy.’

‘It’s not debunking the myth. It’s just doing what I’ve always done. It’s doing what Heinrich Schliemann did. It’s making it real. Imagine anything more ridiculous than the Trojan Horse. That’s the ancient equivalent of a scene in a dumbed-down thriller. But then imagine anything more mesmerizing, more terrifying, more awful than the Trojan ship, driven up into the walls of Troy, a swirling, howling blackness behind it, disgorging the warriors of Agamemnon into the citadel to do their worst. It’s fantastic. Fantastic.’

Fifteen minutes later they were strapped into the Aquapods, with the Plexiglas domes closed over them, running through the electronics and cross-checking with each other. The Aquapods were hanging from davits on either side of the ship’s internal docking bay, facing towards the stern, and were lashed down to stop them swaying dangerously with the roll and pitch of the ship. Even so, Jack was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, a combination of queasiness and his dislike of being cooped up inside submersibles, especially ones that only just accommodated his tall frame. He knew it would all change once they were in the water, when the small size of the Aquapods made them feel almost like a diving suit. He saw Costas glance over at him, and heard a crackle in the intercom. ‘Hold on, Jack. Only a couple of minutes until the ship’s under way, once the control team have told the bridge we’re secure.’

The Aquapods swayed close together and Jack forgot himself for a moment, as he saw Costas in his full glory. He laughed out loud.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Jack shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’

Costas was still wearing his white overalls, but it was the huge sombrero hat that made him look so garish, sitting in a state-of-the-art submersible about to go a hundred metres to the sea floor, dressed like a gaucho on the range in a very bad Western.

Costas glared at him through his dome. ‘You’ll wish you had one if we have to bob about on the surface in the blazing sun.’

‘Nobody’s going to catch me bobbing about on the surface,’ Jack replied firmly, swallowing hard as the swell made the ship roll again. ‘If Seaquest II misses us, I’ll be waiting on the sea floor. On solid ground.’

The ship’s screws churned under them and the deck began to vibrate. ‘Thank God for that,’ Jack murmured, as the ship stabilized. ‘How long have we got?’

‘The current running from the Dardanelles has strengthened a fraction since Macalister briefed us. It’s between fifty and ninety metres’ depth, like an underwater river. Lanowski’s modelled it, and done a best-fit for where Seaquest II should drop us. When we go, we go down like lead, full ballast. Macalister’s just told me we’ve got about twenty minutes till we’re green-lighted. So relax and enjoy the ride. You think about the treasure we’re going to find. I’m thinking about another one of those excellent cocktails the Turkish cook made me at the excavation house at Troy last night. What I came on holiday for.’

‘I meant to tell you,’ Jack said. ‘I was on the phone to James while the mine was being cleared. You remember Hugh, of course, don’t you?’

‘Great guy. I helped him have a go at diving in the IMU test pool. You were away with Maria somewhere. We got on together like a house on fire. You’d think we were chalk and cheese.’

‘A bit like you and Jeremy.’

‘So what’s the score?’

‘Hugh has opened up quite a bit about the Second World War. Very emotional. A bad experience in a concentration camp. James said he kept his cool when Hugh was talking, stiff upper lip and all that, but when he was speaking to me James had a real tremor in his voice, had to stop for a moment. Never heard him like that before. I think it really hit him, all those years he’d spent with Hugh as a boy, not knowing what Hugh was struggling with every minute of every day.’

‘I don’t know how those guys who were there could handle it,’ Costas replied quietly. ‘My uncle, the Monuments Man, said there was quite a lot of killing of SS at those camps after liberation, American and British soldiers encountering guards. Can you blame them? Some of the worst guards were women. Whenever I see those pictures of Belsen and Buchenwald, it makes me wish I could have pulled a trigger. When I was a kid in New York, we used to go up to Canada for holidays, to a forest wilderness where there were some older Germans, ex PoWs who’d gone there to work as loggers after being released by the Soviets in the fifties. A couple of them were unreconstructed Nazis, Waffen SS who’d disguised themselves as Wehrmacht for the Soviets. Looking back on it, I don’t see why they should still have been allowed to live.’

‘If they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have met them. Seen that they were real human beings. Seen how that could happen.’

‘So did Hugh open up about this treasure story?’

‘James was letting him tell it in his own way, in his own time.’ Jack replied. ‘He’s worried about Hugh’s health. Thinks he’s putting on a brave face for Rebecca but is much frailer than last time. He’s calling me again after the dive for an update. I did tell him what Maurice found this morning.’

‘Huh?’

‘You didn’t hear?’

‘Up to my neck in the innards of an Aquapod all morning, I’m afraid.’

‘Another statue. Opposite the one Jeremy and Rebecca found.’

‘ Two statues.’

‘Almost like gate guardians,’ Jack said. ‘And he’s been in another tunnel. Just can’t keep him out of them. This time it’s the one the Austrians working at Troy a few years ago found leading from the citadel out to a spring beyond the walls. He got almost a hundred yards into it. Says he thinks it may lead to the chamber he believes is at the end of the passageway with the statues. He had one of our halogen dive torches with him and said he could see a long way ahead, well under the citadel. He got stuck.’

‘Well, that makes a change.’

‘Said it needs a more lithe, athletic form.’

‘Sounds right up my street.’

‘Thought we might nip over there after the dive for a little recce.’

‘You’re on.’

Jack heard a crackle in his headphone, and turned it down. ‘That was Macalister,’ Costas said. ‘Ten minutes to go.’

‘Roger that.’

‘While we wait. Run me through the Shield of Achilles again. What we’re looking for. The decoration.’

‘Best guess? Wooden-backed, about a metre across, covered in beaten gold. The decoration? Maybe bands of black niello, red carnelian, though whether that survives underwater for three thousand years, who knows. The scenes might show a kind of cosmography, a bit like a medieval mappa mundi. It’s for a hero, for display and swagger and appearance, but like most prestige weapons it’s made as if for real combat, using the best techniques of the smith. So the five layers described by Homer were probably built up one on top of the other, leaving a progressively smaller outer ring visible for the decorative scenes, and the thickest part of the shield in the centre, at the boss. That’s exactly how you’d make a real working shield, strengthening the centre where you fend off the blows, minimizing the weight around the edge. I think Homer had seen a shield like that being made, as he knew what he was talking about. The scenes he describes are plausible, everyday scenes of the world of heroes, the world before the apocalypse, scenes of hunting, contests between champions, the countryside, town life, the unending cycle of life in the Age of Heroes.’

‘And what if the world had moved beyond?’ Costas said. ‘Remember Auden? The thin-lipped armourer, Hephaestos, hobbles away, and Thetis “cried out in dismay at what the god had wrought”. We know the armour won’t protect her son Achilles from death, and maybe Homer’s audience knew that the shield as a metaphor wouldn’t protect history from the rise of Agamemnon, from the destruction of Troy, from total war.’

‘That’s good. Very good. Actually, thinking of Hugh has made me ponder all that too. What he must have seen, at the end of the Second World War. What Auden saw, in the bombed cities of Germany. A kind of truth that no artistry can mask, where no metaphor or simile or symbol can stand in for stark reality. Auden even talks about it, doesn’t he? “Of barbed wire, of weed-choked fields, of rape, of casual murder.” ’

‘The age of heroes, the age of controlled violence, is gone. The age of men has come.’

‘The history of our times. Maybe it all begins at Troy.’

The churning of the screws ended, and was replaced by the whirring noise of the ship’s water-jet stabilizers coming on line. A green light flashed above the entrance to the dock. ‘Okay. We’re on,’ Costas said. He gave a thumbs-up to the controller standing on the deck beside him. She raised one arm and pressed her headset against her ear to listen to instructions from the bridge, and then stood back and gave an emphatic thumbs-down. Costas repeated the sign to her and turned to Jack. ‘Good to go?’

Jack took a deep breath. They always treated submersible dives like SCUBA dives, using the same instructions and hand signals, a deliberate reminder that it was people, not machines, that were diving, and that the safety of a submersible dive was dependent on human judgement more than machines and computers. But Costas also knew Jack’s discomfort with submersibles and understood that treating the dive this way gave him a sense of control. Jack exhaled, then closed his eyes for a moment. It felt right. He looked intently at Costas, then put up his left hand and dropped the thumb down. ‘Roger that. Good to go.’

The davits quickly lowered and released them into the water. They were immediately under the waves, plummeting at a rate pre-set by the computer that controlled the buoyancy chambers in the pontoons. Had they lingered for even a moment and been a few metres off, they would have missed the wreck, with nothing to do other than abort the dive and try again. Thirty-five metres down, they entered the current stream with a jerk that pressed Jack back in his seat, but once in the stream he had little sense of it, like being on a high-speed escalator walkway. Dropping out of it, though, was a fairly serious G-force jolt that threw him forward. Below that the readout showed a modest 1.5 knot current, reduced enough for the Aquapods to maintain position at the site using their water-jet propulsion systems. Nevertheless, they had agreed with Macalister that this was not a day to linger, and they would leave in no more than twenty minutes. Officially the dive was a second recce to confirm what they had seen on the first dive and allow an excavation plan to be formulated for the next day.

Five minutes after exiting Seaquest II they had reached the site, perfectly on target. Jack breathed a silent thanks to Lanowski. He scanned the sea bed, remembering the waymarkers of their dive yesterday, distorted slightly through the Plexiglas dome. He activated the magnifier, which brought the image through the thick flat slab of glass at the front of the dome close to his face, as if he were looking through a mask. He immediately felt more comfortable, a diver again. They had come up off the starboard stern side of the wreckage. He saw the stem post of the ancient wreck, still there, the shape of the lion of Mycenae. He had not dreamed it. It was real. In the decaying superstructure of the minelayer he saw the gap where the Turkish navy divers had attached lifting bags and removed the mine. He jetted forward a few metres and angled the Aquapod to peer below the starboard side of the minelayer’s hull, where he had first seen the ancient timbers, some eight metres from the stem post. He was concerned to see how much more exposed the timbers were after only a matter of hours, with the increase in the current and the effect of his own rapid clearance by hand the day before. He could see several square metres of planking and frames on both sides, giving an exact image of the dimensions of the ancient hull as it converged towards the stem post. His pulse quickened. He had been right. It was a war galley, there was no doubt about it.

And there was more. As he sank closer, he saw other objects, close to where he had raised the pottery cup the day before. They were sticking out of the sand in bundles, having been buried in a grey anaerobic layer that was now exposed and being eroded away. Each bundle comprised several dozen wooden rods, with a concreted mass at the end. Jack knew exactly what they were. It was astonishing. He tapped the intercom. ‘Now I know exactly what Agamemnon’s treasure was.’

Costas’ Aquapod was directly in front of him, on the other side of the ancient hull, and had its camera arm extended, angled down at the objects. ‘A bundle of wooden rods coming out of a ferrous concretion. Talk to me, Jack.’

‘A bundle of arrows,’ Jack said excitedly. ‘And that corroded mass? Look closely. It’s not one mass. It’s lots of corroded lumps, joined together. That’s iron, Costas. Iron arrowheads. That’s what Agamemnon’s treasure was. That’s what gave him the edge. It’s exactly what James suspected. The Greeks had discovered iron technology. Look, beside it, there’s another bundle. And another. That’s how Agamemnon won the Trojan War, not by contests of heroes, but with iron, iron for all soldiers, for all weapons, for total war.’

‘Typical archaeologist, riveted on lumps of corroded iron, totally uninterested in the gold.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Between those arrows and the minelayer’s hull.’

Jack looked over and gasped. It was astonishing. The object was circular, perhaps a metre across, buried under the sediment. Around the edges he saw a glint of gold. Beaten gold. He activated the miniature water jet on the Aquapod’s arm and gently sprayed the shape, clearing the sediment from about half of it. It was all gold, shining, uncorroded. He could see a thin layer of darkened wood beneath. ‘It’s a shield,’ he exclaimed, his voice tight with excitement.

‘The one we want?’

‘Look,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘You can see the bands, as you go from the outer rim to the boss. Five layers, just as Homer described it. You can even see the dark rings, where glass niello is still visible.’ He stared at it, his mind reeling. ‘No decoration. Just an awful lot of dents and bashes. It’s odd. It hasn’t been flattened by the shipwreck. It still has the concave shape. It could be battle damage, but this just isn’t a shield you’d take into battle. It’s a display shield, a prestige object. That much is consistent with Homer. Something a king or a hero mounts beside his tent. But a lot of gold, no ornament. Strange. I feel as if this is Troy yet again, Costas. Fabulous find, but more unanswered questions than we started with.’

‘Take a closer look.’ Costas had extended the video arm to within inches of the shield, and was watching his screen. ‘Jack, I’m sure of it. You can see decoration. Only just. Vine leaves. An animal, maybe. It’s all been beaten out of it, really crudely. Check out your screen. I’ll feed it through.’

Jack clicked on his monitor and immediately saw what Costas meant. ‘Incredible,’ he murmured. ‘Look at that. It’s like a ghostly imprint. But why do it? Why?’ He drummed his fingers, speaking slowly as he thought. ‘The Shield of Achilles. Awarded to the victor in the funeral games. Claimed by Agamemnon. Let’s say he takes it to the armourers on Tenedos, those ones churning out the arrowheads, and they crudely hammer out the decoration. Why would he do that?’

‘Pride?’ Costas said. ‘Agamemnon was always having standoffs with Achilles, right? Didn’t he take Achilles’ girl, and Achilles went off in a sulk? All that prestige display stuff you were talking about. Agamemnon acquires Achilles’ shield, but shows who’s supreme by stamping out the ornamentation people associated with strutting Achilles. Agamemnon’s now the boss, the tough guy, no frills.’

‘But still very odd that it was left this crude.’ Jack stared. There was no time to ponder now. ‘I’m going to take it. We don’t leave this exposed on the sea bed.’ Costas rose above to give him room to slide the two forks of the extractor arm beneath the shield. Jack worked the lever until it seemed to be in the right position, then clicked the intercom to confirm with Costas. ‘You’ve gone quiet. You okay? Let me know how this looks from your angle. Over.’

‘Jack.’ Costas’ voice sounded faltering. ‘About those bumps and dents.’

‘What is it?’

‘My camera is angled directly down on the shield. You need to take a look. I think you’ll agree it’s sometimes good to take a step back.’

Jack clicked on his screen again. The image was fuzzy as the feed came through. He suddenly felt the Aquapod beginning to angle up, and quickly focused on the buoyancy control. He had to remember he was not on autopilot. It was exactly why he disliked using submersibles to excavate. He trusted his own hands more than mechanical extensions. He came level again and engaged the motor to drive the arms slowly under the shield, until he was sure it would lift out and not slip off.

‘Well?’ Costas said.

‘Just let me concentrate on this.’ He lifted the shield inch by inch, injecting water into the rear buoyancy tanks to compensate for the weight, raising a cloud of silt as he did so, watching it quickly settle. It was exactly as Lanowski said, a coarse-grained sediment, overlying the grey anaerobic layer that had preserved the wooden backing of the shield. Slowly Jack reversed the Aquapod until the shield was clear of the sea bed, grey sediment now falling away from it in a cascade. He used another lever to slide a metal basket beneath it, lined with plastic cushioning material like bubble wrap. A cover with cushioning would be extended above it, designed to cocoon artefacts for raising to the surface. He slowly depressed the lifting arm through the basket until it was several centimetres beneath, leaving the shield resting on the wrap, then withdrew the arm into the Aquapod. He exhaled forcibly. ‘Would you look at that?’ he murmured.

‘I think it’s about time you did exactly that, Jack,’ Costas said.

‘My screen. Yes.’ Jack saw a grainy video image of the shield from five metres above. The feed was still not working properly. He looked again. Then he saw it. ‘My God,’ he exclaimed. ‘ My God.’

‘Remember I told you my uncle took me to see that in the Archaeological Museum of Athens as a kid?’ Costas said. ‘Never thought I’d see it this way.’

‘ So that’s what Agamemnon did,’ Jack whispered in astonishment. He was barely able to register what he was seeing. ‘That’s what he had those smiths on Tenedos do. He must have had the golden mask to show them, the mask he later took back to Mycenae, where Schliemann found it.’ He stared. He was gazing at a face. The entire shield was a face. And it was the face of Agamemnon. The bumps and bashes were where the smiths had made an impression, like a ghostly impression of the mask, not crude at all, but executed with enormous artistry, as bold as any art from antiquity Jack had ever seen. In shadow it would have looked extraordinary, the ultimate extension of one man’s sense of his own power, stamped over the shield of the greatest of the heroes.

‘So let me get this right,’ Costas said. ‘Homer saw this, but he must have seen it earlier, before it was remade.’

Jack was sure of it. As sure as he had ever been. ‘Homer’s story was about the contest of heroes. Nobody in that story saw the shield this way. This shield, as we see it here, was an image from after the fall of the heroes, an image of the terrible face of war, of Agamemnon himself. It was being shipped back to the plain of Troy for Agamemnon’s final assault against the citadel when a seismic storm whipped up the sea and sank this ship, and pushed the galleys of Agamemnon from the beach into the very walls of Troy itself.’

‘I think Maurice might owe James that crate of whisky,’ Costas said.

Jack looked back at the bundles of arrows still visible in the background. Those would have to wait. Costas’ Aquapod was fitted with the video and lights array rather than for finds retrieval. They would have to come back down here as soon as possible. He looked at the shield again. He wished he could touch it, hold it to his chest, grasp a spear, feel the tactile power he had felt holding the Webley on the deck the day before. He gazed at that face with its hooded eyes, staring blindly upwards yet all-seeing, as they had done through all the history that had passed this way, through the age of mankind that had been set in motion during those few days at the death-knell of the Bronze Age. He stared at the iron arrowheads, and in a flash he understood. He understood the temptation. The temptation of power, the temptation to swing the murderous pendulum of anger and retribution. War as a condition of life, without reason, beginning or end. The temptation that had driven Agamemnon to take the tablet of war, to cast away the tablet of peace.

‘Jack. Reality check.’

‘Okay. Let’s get this topside. In that current, we’re in for a joyride. I can’t imagine anything worse than dropping this.’

‘Roger that. I’ll advise Seaquest II. Over.’

Jack activated the autopilot to maintain position three metres above the sea bed while he closed the basket down. He could already sense the pull of the current, edging both of the Aquapods beyond the stern of the minelayer wreck. He extended the upper cage over the basket, lowering it until the plastic wrap cushioned the shield on both sides and he could see only a rim of beaten gold sticking out. It was as secure as he could make it. He heard the rumble of ship’s engines in the water and looked up, seeing nothing but a dark blue haze. Costas edged his Aquapod alongside. ‘Okay, Jack. Do you read me?’

‘Loud and clear. Over.’

‘I’ve just spoken to Macalister. Here’s the drill. That current’s becoming more serious, four, maybe five knots. We’re going to move apart, fifteen metres or so, then rise very slowly up into the current where it takes off about eight metres above us, and let it take us. Seaquest II has got us on sonar and they’re going to track us, maintaining position above. Once we rise above the current at about fifty metres’ depth, we’ll assess the situation, but we won’t ascend further until Seaquest II is overhead and the divers are in the water. Copy?’

‘Copy that.’ Jack took one last look at the wreck, staring at the rusting hulk of the minelayer over the ancient war galley, seeing that lion prow rising on the edge of the sand channel. He remembered that it was a war grave. A grave from two wars. He closed his eyes briefly, whispering the words he had spoken at every shipwreck he had excavated since finding a Viking longship in the ice off Greenland three years before: Han til Ragnaroks, ‘Until Ragnaroks’, the Old Norse hymn for passing warriors, that they should meet up again. He had only ever told Rebecca that he did this, and the reason why. His empathy for the past came at a price. He disliked excavating burials because he could feel the emotions of those who had stood by the graveside. And shipwrecks held the emotions of those whose final moments were imprinted here. But now he had said those words. He looked at the finds basket, at that rim of gold, and shook his head with astonishment. He was itching to return. What else would they find?

‘Jack. I’ve just had Macalister on the com again. He’s had a call from Maurice at Troy.’

‘I read you. Over.’

‘Apparently, it was mostly an attack of coughing. Macalister had a hell of a time making it out.’

‘That sounds promising. Sounds like Maurice has been down his hole again.’

‘Well, wait for it. You and Maurice might both be owing James a crate of whisky.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘You’ve found the Shield of Achilles. Kind of. Call it the ghost of the Shield of Achilles. And Maurice, with that palladion thing. It’s not that he’s found it, exactly, but it’s the same kind of thing. A ghost. As you say, that’s Troy for you. Never gives you exactly what you want.’

Jack felt his Aquapod tilt alarmingly, and he quickly pressed the buoyancy control handle to inject compressed air into the forward end of the pontoons, compensating for the extra weight of the finds basket out in front. He felt the submersible level out, and exhaled in relief.

‘Jack. You still with me? Over.’

‘Only just. James nearly lost his crate of whisky from me. The autopilot doesn’t like that weight at the front. I’m ascending on manual. Over.’

‘I never designed these as heavy-lift vehicles. But it’s another problem I can put Jeremy on to.’

‘Just give me a moment.’ Jack held the stick, then feathered the pedals to get as near to level as he could. On manual it was like flying a helicopter, with similar inherent instabilities that needed constant attention. He was having to ascend by bleeding air into the forward chamber in the pontoon, then quickly injecting a blast into the aft chamber to keep the Aquapod from tilting in the other direction, at the same time ensuring that both the port and starboard chambers were balanced. It was taking all of his attention, and his eyes were glued on the gyroscope and depth meter. He glanced out. The sea bed still seemed close, as if they were getting nowhere, but he knew that was an optical illusion, a function of the refraction of light through the Plexiglas that meant that everything outside looked thirty per cent larger. He glanced at the depth gauge. Ninety metres. He had achieved a modicum of stability with the controls. He glanced over and saw Costas in his Aquapod keeping a good distance away, about twenty metres to the north-west and five metres above him. The last thing they wanted was a collision. He pressed the intercom again. ‘Okay. So what’s he found? Over.’

‘He made his way along the tunnel. His team had dug out where the entrance collapsed yesterday and they’d shored it up with timber. Aysha’s arrived, by the way. She banned him from going anywhere near it, but he snuck back by himself over lunchtime.’

‘That’s my man,’ Jack said, eyeing his screen. He had no sense of lateral movement, of their horizontal speed. He looked down and caught his last glimpse of the shipwreck, a black smudge in the gloom far off to the right. Currents were always disconcerting, barely discernible without waymarkers unless you tried to fight against them, but sometimes alarmingly apparent if you veered away from your dive partner in a separate stream. They were rarely uniform, more like a swirl of tendrils weaving around each other, and this one was no exception. At any moment the two Aquapods might be drawn towards each other by forces they could never hope to counter with the water-jet engines. He could see that Costas sensed the danger too and had edged further off, at least thirty metres distant now. Jack looked up, and saw the dark form of Seaquest II ’s hull above. That was a relief. Macalister was a damned good captain. He remembered Lanowski’s model for the current, suggesting that they should be out of the main flow at about fifty metres’ depth. He glanced at the gauge. Sixty metres. Another ten to go. He tapped the intercom. ‘I’m listening. Over.’

‘Okay. Didn’t want to distract you. So anyway, Maurice goes down the tunnel, and reaches this mass of ancient masonry that’s fallen in such a way that it leaves a passage ahead. He sees those hieroglyphics on the wall. Other inscriptions. Different languages. That linear thing James was on about.’

‘Linear B,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘Fantastic.’

‘He says they’re like dedications. He says it’s like walking into UN Headquarters, as if lots of different countries have put in a plaque.’

Jack felt a lurch, like flying over a thermal in a light aircraft. He remembered Lanowski’s warning that the sea here would be like that, with different water density and temperature caused by the outflow from the Dardanelles, little patches of the Black Sea expelled from the strait that continued outwards into the Aegean, eventually to meld with the more salty Mediterranean. He looked at the gauge. Fifty-one metres. He suddenly lurched again, this time more alarmingly, the back of the Aquapod lifting up, followed by a violent juddering. He saw only a yellow blur in the direction of Costas’ Aquapod. He compensated for the tilt but could do nothing about the juddering. They had reached the top of the fast-moving current and were breaking into the calmer water above. The juddering was caused as they bounced and skidded along the top of the faster current, while being slowed down by the water above. He saw the basket in front of him shaking, and decided to gamble on a big blast into the buoyancy tank. The Aquapod jumped upwards, leaving his stomach somewhere below, and then he was free, coming quickly back to the level. The basket was still there. Costas’ Aquapod appeared close alongside him. ‘Everything okay? Over.’

‘Bit of a rollercoaster ride.’

‘See? Submersibles are fun.’ Costas grinned at him, then pulled on the sombrero he’d pushed off behind his back at the wreck site. ‘Macalister’s just been on again. They know we’re ahead of them but into safer water, so we’re to maintain this depth until they come overhead again. You copy?’

‘Copy that. Maintaining depth. So, back to Maurice. He’s got more inscriptions. Amazing. I think it’s some kind of ancient meeting chamber. That UN analogy might not be so far off.’

‘Wait for it. There’s more. So Maurice crawls further along. He says somebody’s been there before. He said it was the strangest thing. He found tools, neatly arranged. A couple of trowels, a mattock. Almost as if someone had left them.’

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Jack murmured.

‘Then at the end, there’s a door, metal. Made out of bronze. A door into a chamber. He thinks it’s slightly ajar, but blocked up with debris. He’s going to get his guys in there tomorrow and try to open it.’

‘Incredible. I’ve got to be there.’

‘There was one other thing. The thing that might save him a crate of whisky. Or that means he owes one too. In the door. A kind of keyhole. He really wanted you to know. He thinks it’s the palladion. Well, not exactly. More like the impression of it. But he thinks that counts.’

‘What did he say about it exactly? What was it?’

‘That’s what baffles me. He says it’s in the shape of a swastika.’

Jack was stunned. He tried to think, talking as he did so. A swastika. A keyhole. The palladion in the shape of a swastika. ‘Okay. Incredible, but not as bizarre as you might think. That’s where the Nazis got the swastika from, a symbol used across the Indo-European area. It’s found stamped on pottery at Troy. Schliemann even had it put as decoration on the house he had built in Athens. It didn’t have a sinister meaning then, not until Aryan nationalists hijacked it a few decades later.’ He paused. ‘One question. Did he tell you which way around it was?’

‘Reverse. Counterclockwise.’

That was it, then. The Trojan swastika. The symbol of Troy. The key to a chamber beneath Troy. Jack thought of that face again, the face that Schliemann had lifted from the tomb at Mycenae, the face that lay concealed in the basket in front of him, staring upwards, seeing yet not seeing. The face of Agamemnon. Had he, too, stood before those bronze doors? Had he locked that door seemingly for ever, and taken away the key? Had Schliemann found the key, and gone there himself? What had he seen? Jack had thought that the day before had been the most extraordinary day of discoveries in his life, yet today there was more, much more. It was incredible. Yet over it all still hung that elusiveness, that uncertainty, that particular quality of Troy, as if it were all just beyond their grasp; it was as if the mask of Agamemnon lay over the whole site, and to lift it might reveal untold treasures, or merely a void. The mask of Agamemnon. The mask of Troy.

‘Jack. Are you getting Seaquest II yet?’

Jack pressed the com, but heard only crackles. ‘Nothing. Another fifteen metres and I’ll try the other channel. Over.’

‘Okay. Ben’s talking to me. Stand by.’

Jack looked up. He could see the safety divers in the water now, ready to attach the cables that would draw the two Aquapods into the docking bay. He would go up first, with the shield. They would be taking no chances with that. He craned his neck, seeing the entire form of the hull above him, distorted through the Plexiglas dome. He remembered the last time he had peered up from underwater like that, in the lake of Issyk-Gul in Kyrgyzstan six months before. Rebecca had been there then, waiting for him, and he had seen her long hair falling down as she peered over at him from the Zodiac, framing her face. Then, he had been yearning to tell her about the most extraordinary discovery in the lake bed, an ancient tomb glimpsed and then vanished beneath tons of silt. This time, he had something tangible, something she could see and touch. One of the greatest treasures he had ever found. He wished she were here now, looking down on him. He wanted to show it to her before anyone else. He took a deep breath. Next time.

‘Jack. We’re holding position here while they manoeuvre the cables into position.’

‘Roger that.’

‘Jack, there may be some worrying news. Rebecca seems to have disappeared.’

Jack forgot the shield. ‘What do you mean, disappeared?’

‘From her hotel in London. About an hour ago. Our security guy called Ben at once.’

‘The County Hall Marriott? Have they checked the swimming pool?’

‘Apparently there was some guy in the lobby she knew. He’d been at a meeting in the hotel. Happened to have something in his car she might like to see, something he’d just been doing a presentation on. She told the security guy it was really important, that you’d want her to have a look. She said she wasn’t going beyond the hotel entrance. Our guy wouldn’t let her go until he called Ben to check this man out. Someone from the Courtauld Institute, a professor.’

‘You mean Raitz? Hans Raitz?’

‘That’s the one. Ben said they’d checked him out when Rebecca went to see him before. A Nazi specialist.’

‘A Nazi, full stop,’ Jack replied. ‘Got the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects a couple of weeks ago, probably in line for a knighthood. But I don’t trust anyone with a Nazi family background who specialized in Nazi art. To me it looks as if he’s furthering the cause.’

‘At least he’s legit,’ Costas said. ‘Whatever his views, he’s hardly a gangster.’

‘Rebecca would never willingly get into a car with him. She told me she thought he was a creep. Her words. I think he might have tried it on with her. I was going to drop into the Courtauld next time I was in London and have a quiet word.’

‘Probably best let Rebecca handle that. He’d be on the receiving end of one of those karate chops Ben’s been teaching her.’

‘She’s probably just gone out for a walk,’ Jack replied, trying to keep calm. He could feel his hands going cold. ‘Like any seventeen year old in London. Maybe we’re wrong to put her on such a tight leash.’

‘Ben’s taking it seriously, Jack. I think he feels he should have flown with her to London. He’s got four of his guys there combing the South Bank and Westminster, and he’s prepped an old special forces buddy of his who runs a private security company in London, got him to put another half a dozen guys on to it. I just hope that when Rebecca comes back from her stroll, she’s grateful.’

Jack tensed. They both knew Ben never overreacted. There must be legitimate cause for concern. Jack looked across and saw Costas peering up towards the divers. ‘Okay,’ Costas said. ‘Cables ready. We’re good to go.’

‘Roger that.’

The Aquapods rose together, side by side, and soon passed the twenty-metre depth mark. Jack pressed the com, heard another crackle and then it was clear. ‘I think I’ve got the external link at last,’ he said. Ben’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Jack, was that you? Do you read me?’

‘Loud and clear. Fill me in.’

‘There’s been an ultimatum. Relayed to Macalister from IMU just minutes ago. You and Costas have to be ready to move. I’ve alerted the Embraer crew and the equipment team at IMU HQ. The ultimatum’s very specific. It doesn’t leave us any leeway. You’re in the helicopter ten minutes after you step out of the Aquapod.’

Jack stared ahead. Suddenly his breathing, each breath he took, was his entire focus. Nothing else mattered. Everything fell away, the wreck, the shield, as if it had all disintegrated into sand. He sensed his hands. They felt heavy, leaden. He stopped breathing. He was utterly still.

He had felt like this before. It was like the final moment before a free dive. His body was in survival mode. He clicked on the com. His voice sounded different, distant. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Brace yourself, Jack. Rebecca’s been kidnapped.’