The Mask of Troy

17

J ack snapped off his seat belt as the Toyota four-wheel drive came to a halt, then tapped his fingers impatiently as the driver spoke a few sentences into his cell phone. A moment later the wrought-iron gates to the compound opened, and the driver accelerated inside. He gates to the compound opened, and the driver accelerated inside. He drew up in front of a white building with a head frame above it for the mineshaft winch, and switched off the ignition. Jack opened the door and stepped out. The sky was leaden, and it was cold. He stretched, rising on his toes, extending his arms out with bunched fists, grateful for his fleece. He had not slept more than a few fitful moments since he and Costas had flown out of Turkey the night before. Thank God they had used the Aquapods to dive on the wreck. It had been Costas’ call, and he had been right. Jack had initially wanted to dive using SCUBA with trimix, but that would have meant a twenty-four-hour delay for decompression before they could fly. As it was, two hours after surfacing they had been in the Embraer jet on the way to the IMU facility in Cornwall in England, where the equipment they would need was already being prepared. Costas had flown out with it to Krakow in the early hours of the morning and was already here. Jack had remained in England a few hours longer to confer with the IMU security team. Ben had advised against informing Scotland Yard or the security service. But Ben would pull in every favour to uncover who was behind this. And meanwhile they would scrupulously follow the kidnappers’ demands. Almost.

Jack let his body relax, but the instant of release made him tense up. Rebecca. Where was she? What were they doing to her? He balled his fists again and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, watching it crystallize in the morning mist. Now more than any other time in his life he needed to remain focused. He needed to keep the rage inside him under control. He needed to forget that Rebecca was where she was because of him. Because of his relentless quest, his search for revelations that would pit him against people like this. Ben had told him to put that from his mind. The first reaction to kidnapping was always guilt. What could I have done to prevent this? The kidnappers knew that, knew the weakness of those first hours, would try to exploit it. Jack had to forget that. He remembered how Dillen had been when they had met at the airport in London. They had just embraced, and said nothing. James had already left a long phone message about Hugh’s revelations that afternoon, and Jack had listened to it over and over again on the trip from Turkey, trying to distract himself with the amazing discoveries they now knew Schliemann had made. It was all there, an extraordinary thing, as if he could hear every word of Dillen’s message, hear him speaking, yet it meant nothing, as if he had been staring for hours at a canvas in a gallery, imprinting it in his mind for some time in the future when he might actually be able to see it.

He had to use all his powers of lateral thinking to sidestep them, to stay ahead. He had to work with his team, with Costas, with Ben, the others. They would play the kidnappers’ game for now. The rage, the helplessness must remain in check. Focus on the goal. Focus on when Rebecca would be found. On when the kidnappers would be playing his game.

‘Jack.’ Costas came out of the door to the building and walked quickly up to him. He was unshaven and unkempt, wearing a hooded fleece, but he had a cold determination in his eyes. Jack felt a sudden rush of emotion. Costas was solid as a rock. They had been everywhere together, had looked out for each other. This time, this place, was no different. Just another dive. Costas peered at him. ‘You look how I feel.’ He passed him a bottle, an energy drink. ‘I bet you haven’t had anything to eat or drink. Not good before a dive. Get this down you. Now.’

Jack unscrewed the cap and drank the bottle dry, then tossed it into the Toyota. He swallowed hard, and shook himself. ‘Where the hell have they taken her?’

‘Put it from your mind, Jack. They want you to think that. They want it to consume you. I know what’s inside you. It’s inside me too. There are three guys here now. Focus on them, but keep your cool until the time’s right. We’re a team. We come out of this place alive, we’re one step closer to her.’

‘Right.’ Jack’s voice was hoarse. ‘What have we got?’

‘I’ve just come back up from the mineshaft to wait for you. Everything’s ready. Our three new friends are down there, kitting up. I can barely stand to be near them. You’ve got to stop me from going for them, Jack. Like I said to you on the phone, we’ve got to keep each other in check. Until the time’s right.’

‘Any more heads-up on them?’

‘They’re Russian. Just as Ben guessed. These aren’t the kidnappers, they’re hired heavies. They only speak basic English. I call the leader Chechnya, because that’s what’s tattooed in red across his hands. The European underworld’s awash with ex-military thugs like these, a lot of them Russian veterans of the war in Chechnya who couldn’t get enough of the blood and killing.’

‘Naval tech divers?’ Jack asked.

Costas shook his head. ‘Not from what I’ve seen. Ben was right about that, too. Our kidnapper has found some heavies who’ve got basic diving skills, but you don’t get ex-naval tech divers working as hit men. If you’ve got that level of skill, there’s far more money to be made doing legit commercial diving on the oil rigs. Our gamble has paid off, so far. They understand the SCUBA gear we’ve given them, but not the rebreathers you and I are using. I’ve made a big show of adjusting and fiddling with those. Lots of doubtful muttering from me. I don’t think they’ll question it. Ben said to play on the macho aspect too. Get into their little world. They’re the tough guys, with the tough old-fashioned gear. The stuff they saw their own navy divers use. We may be able to go deeper, but only by using fancy gear. They’re the real men. The hard men.’

‘Jesus,’ Jack muttered. ‘What a charade.’

‘We’ll use it against them, Jack. At the water’s edge. I’ve got some theatrics planned. Until then, just keep cool.’

‘Anyone else here?’

Costas nodded. ‘Wladislaw’s going to meet us up here, then we go down the shaft in the lift to the lowest level.’

‘Who the hell’s Wladislaw?’

‘Guy I mentioned to you on the phone. Site engineer. I know him – I realized that he and I met at a conference a while back. Trained in America, speaks excellent English. He’s straight up, I’m sure of it. He’s thrilled by this. Doesn’t have a clue about what’s really going on. You’re a star over here. Your book on Atlantis was a number-one best-seller in Poland. When the caller purporting to be IMU got in touch two weeks ago suggesting we wanted to look for Neolithic remains deep in the mine, Wladislaw was overjoyed. They promised to shut off the whole mine from visitors for the day of the dive.’ ‘ Two weeks ago? ’ Jack exclaimed.

‘Two weeks ago. The call came from someone claiming to be you. Whoever it was told him to keep it top secret. Something to do with a clue to the exodus from Atlantis, at the dawn of civilization. Something that would really put Poland on the archaeological map.’

‘Jesus,’ Jack murmured. ‘So they were planning the kidnap as far back as that. They must have been following Rebecca’s every move.’

‘Let’s focus on the here and now.’

‘So what’s the dive profile?’

Costas flipped open a notebook. ‘Lanowski gave me the specs. It’s all relevant stuff. No unnecessary science.’ He paused, looking up. ‘He’s really upset about Rebecca, you know. Distraught. He wanted to come with us.’

‘We don’t need distraught people here,’ Jack said coldly. ‘We need people who can kill.’ He put his hand up to his forehead, and shut his eyes for a moment. ‘You know what I mean. Lanowski’s a sweet man and Rebecca’s made many friends. But we’ve gone to war. That’s the only way I can think of it. The only way I can handle it. Rebecca’s like Helen of Troy. We’re fighting the Trojan War again. And if this goes belly-up, I swear to God those walls will burn. They’ll burn like they’ve never burned before.’

‘We’ll get her back, Jack.’

‘There’ll still be hell to pay.’ Jack’s hands were balled into fists, his knuckles white. ‘ Hell to pay.’

Costas put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, then looked down at his notebook again. ‘The mine. Folded saliferous Miocene deposits. It’s a huge area of salt karst, fissures going deep underground where the salt has dissolved. That’s how Neolithic miners would have got down there. Our kidnappers did their homework on that one. The actual mine workings date from the thirteenth century onwards. It’s huge, unbelievable. Three hundred kilometres of tunnels, going down more than three hundred metres. The section open to tourists is only about one per cent of that. We’re roughly one-forty to one-ninety metres above sea level, and the lower reaches are all flooded.’

‘Is it pumped out?’

Costas nodded. ‘The Nazis apparently pumped it out much deeper, to the depth we’re going. Wladislaw thinks the aquifer has risen dramatically since the war, with renewed mining and those deep tunnels acting like siphons. Where we’re going must have been accessible to the Nazis, but it’s now at least a hundred metres underwater.’

‘Have we got a route?’

‘Wladislaw’s been on it. Apparently, two weeks ago the caller purporting to be you specified a tunnel sequence, evidently something they’d found out about from the war. He has a 3-D CGI of the entire complex, with the fissure we’re following waymarked. I’ve downloaded it into our helmet computers so we can see it on screen. It’s a natural void, descending at about forty to sixty degrees from where we are now. The upper part’s all been mined out, so it looks like man-made caverns where the rock salt has been extracted. Below the pool – our entry point – there are more flooded mine workings, but then as we go deeper it reverts to natural. Up here, it’s all rock salt. Looks a little like grey limestone. Down there, a lot of what we’ll see is natural salt crystals, some of it recrystallized since the original halite was taken out by prehistoric workers. Wladislaw’s very proud of their dating for the salt growth, which shows we’re on the right track for the Neolithic remains he thinks we’ve come here to find.’

‘Okay. Tell me more as we go in.’ Costas took off the bag he had been carrying on his shoulder, then reslung it more securely. Jack jerked his thumb at it. ‘You managed to get that by your three stooges?’

Costas replied in a low voice. ‘That’s the other thing I need to tell you. Before we go in to Wladislaw. I’ve just got off the phone to Lanowski. He didn’t just research the geology. He’s also looked for any connection between salt mines and Nazis. This place was used as an aero engine assembly plant, using Jewish slave labour. It’s all very shady. It was shut down before the Soviets arrived and the Jews were sent to the death camps. We’re only about thirty miles from Auschwitz, you know. He also researched other instances of salt mines being used for storage, and found an account of the Astaussee salt mine in Austria, liberated by the Americans in May 1945. They found thousands of looted paintings and crates of other treasures, belongings stolen from Jews. In April 1945, the local Nazi Gauleiter sent in some more crates, only weeks before the war ended. The Gauleiter was a fanatical Nazi and was carrying out the Fuhrer’s last orders, the Nero Decree. Each crate contained a five-hundred-kilogram bomb. I read the account at IMU before flying out, so I had time to raid my tool kit. I’m fully prepared.’

‘That makes a change from last time.’

‘There’s more at stake here.’

‘These characters security-check you?’

‘They strip-searched me. Had all my tools out. Ham-fisted bunch of bastards. They wouldn’t let me have my diving knife. But I got away with a few metres of detonator cord.’

‘They didn’t recognize it?’

‘It’s hanging from the front of my e-suit, masquerading as a lanyard with hose clips to stop my gear dragging on the cave floor. It’s what you always say. People hide things in the most obvious places.’

‘That was a risk.’

‘What were they going to do if they found it? They need me too. They know we’re a team. And det cord’s not usually an offensive weapon.’

‘Your man, Wladislaw, knows nothing of this?’

Costas shook his head. ‘But how long we’re able to keep it up, I don’t know. I don’t exactly see eye to eye with the Chechnya guy. It’ll become pretty obvious to Wladislaw when we kit up. You make your own judgement about Wladislaw. Maybe there’ll be a chance for a swift word before we dive. He could be our contact with IMU. But if our stooges think he knows what’s going on, Wlady’s dead meat. They’re relying on his ignorance of all this to keep the mine closed off. They’d think he’d contact the police.’

‘He’s probably a marked man anyway. There’s only one reason these guys are here: they’ve been sent to kill us once we’ve got what their paymaster wants.’ Jack paused. ‘What about our own gear?’

‘Still bagged and locked up. I’ll know if it’s been tampered with. I doubt it will be, though. They want us to do the dive and get a result. They’ve been given strict instructions. Payout for them is when they show up with what we’ve found. And there are easier ways than fiddling with our equipment to make sure we don’t come back up. Cruder ways. Come on.’

Jack followed Costas towards the door. He stopped for a moment before going in. Costas had mentioned Auschwitz, how close it was. Jack looked again at the leaden sky. So close you could almost sense it, in the air. It was strange. James had mentioned Auschwitz on the phone the day before, the story of Hugh and the girl who had done the drawing, the girl with the harp. The image of that girl had stayed with Jack, had been with him over the last twelve hours, like a piece of music that would not go out of his head. He knew it was to do with Rebecca, as if that image of the other girl, a girl he had never even seen, was giving him something to hold on to. Something enduring, eternal, from a time of shock and horror, something like an old master painting, like one of those works of art the Nazis so coveted. He looked around. Everything here, the buildings, the ground, was pastel-coloured, washed out, and it was about as landlocked a place as you could find. It seemed inconceivable to be going underwater, let alone doing one of the most dangerous dives they had ever attempted. He took a final deep breath outside and stepped through the door.

Jack followed Costas into an office. A small, balding man was sitting behind the desk, writing. He looked up, smiled broadly and immediately bounded over to Jack. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, and had an open, intelligent face, suffused with excitement. Jack felt a jolt of discomfort as he saw him. Someone else he was going to let down. Someone else he had put in terrible danger . He dismissed the thought. Wladislaw offered his hand, and looked up penetratingly. ‘Dr Howard. A pleasure to meet you. A real pleasure.’ He pumped his hand. ‘Everything is as you wished it. Dr Kazantzakis has seen to that. Anything else I can do, let me know. I’ll accompany you down to the pool. But before we go, this.’ He picked up a piece of paper and handed it to Jack with a flourish. ‘Came through yesterday. The uranium-thorium results. They date the halite recrystallization to the early Neolithic. To exactly the time of the Neolithic exodus.’ He slapped his hands together theatrically. ‘ To exactly the time of Atlantis.’

Jack looked at the sheet. It was true. It was fantastic. He looked at Wladislaw, forcing himself to smile broadly, and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Brilliant. Brilliant. Now we know we’re on the right track, let’s get down there.’

‘Of course.’ Wladislaw put the sheet back on the table, picked up a ring of keys and led them out of his door. He pressed an alarm box on the wall beside his office and they heard the door lock behind them. ‘That locks up the entire place, the main gates, everything. Exactly as you wished.’

Jack coughed. ‘Very good.’

Wladislaw looked at Costas. ‘Your three colleagues? They are ready?’

‘Familiarizing themselves with some new gear, and kitting up.’

‘New gear?’ Wladislaw said with interest. They reached the sliding metal door of the lift shaft and he opened it up, then pressed a button on the side.

‘State-of-the-art,’ Costas replied. ‘At IMU, the technology’s always one step ahead of the diver. That’s my department.’

‘You’re using trimix? Rebreathers? It’s going to be too deep for compressed air, yes?’

‘Rebreathers for Jack and me, to give us the safest option for very deep water, if we have to go below a hundred metres. The other three are going to be using nitrox from one tank, and then trimix from the other. They’ll be fine to eighty, ninety metres. It’s state-of-the-art too, but it’s easily used by anyone who has used scuba. The rebreathers are a different matter. Only Jack and I are certified for them.’

‘Got you. So the other three guys are back-up. Logistical support.’

‘You got it,’ Costas said.

Wladislaw nodded sagely. ‘I suppose that’s the reality. In Dr Howard’s books, it always seems to be you two alone.’

‘It usually is.’ Costas looked beyond Wladislaw at Jack. ‘Health and safety, you know. Our board of directors have clamped down on us.’

‘I know the problem. Running a tourist mine? Oh yes.’ The lift light flashed green, and Wladislaw slid open the inner door, motioning them inside. ‘Here in Poland, though, we still take risks.’ He grinned, pulled the door shut behind them and pressed the down button, then pressed another button for level 2A. The floor jerked, and Jack could hear the machinery above straining and whirring as the cable paid out. Lifts were not his favourite places. Flooded mines were not his favourite places. It was something else he needed to forget. The near-death experience years ago in a flooded mine shaft, when Costas had saved his life. He needed to stay focused. The lift creaked to a halt, and Wladislaw opened the mesh door. ‘We’re just below the second level, a hundred and twenty metres deep. This route is normally sealed off. We’ll walk through a series of chambers to the pool. It’s faster this way, and there’s a chamber I want you to see.’

Costas turned to Jack. ‘I went with our friends to the base of the shaft, at a hundred and thirty-five metres. That’s the deepest level of these workings. We carried the diving equipment along a shaft about two hundred metres to our entry point.’

Jack stepped out of the lift, followed by the other two. They were in a small cavern about the size of a car garage. Ahead of them a rusting railway track led to a tunnel, lit by a connected string of light bulbs that extended down the tunnel out of sight. Jack took a few steps inside the chamber and put his hands on the wall, feeling the damp. He could see pick and wedge marks, evidently old workings, though the floor and the walls at the lift entrance had clearly been shaped more recently. He looked around. It was the colour that was most unexpected, a dark grey, like wet concrete, with off-white streaks inside the gouge marks. It was almost sepulchral. He turned to Wladislaw. ‘Presumably the man-made tunnels follow the seams?’

Wladislaw nodded. ‘The grey colour is rock salt darkened by surface oxidation. You also get bronze-coloured salt, with iron, and green-coloured, with copper. And there are some crystal-clear patches, where the rock salt’s been dissolved and reconstituted without mineral inclusions.’

‘Those little stalactites,’ Jack said, pointing up at the ceiling.

‘That’s secondary crystallization, from salt leaching out and then solidifying, in the years since this chamber was dug.’

‘We’re well above the water table here?’

Wladislaw nodded. ‘That begins at the pool.’

Costas leaned against a rock pillar in the centre of the chamber, as if testing it, and then pushed hard against a timber support inletted into the salt. He looked sceptically down the tunnel. ‘What’s the structural stability of this place?’

‘Sound enough, where the salt hasn’t been completely dug out. Generally the miners didn’t do that in case it created chambers that were wider than they were high. They always seemed to be mindful of safety. Must have been some terrible accidents early on. You can see there’s been lots of shoring up with timber too. This particular tunnel follows the line of a natural fissure, which is another reason I wanted to bring you this way. It’s the most likely route that Neolithic miners would have taken to get deep underground, and we know it extends off below the main workings beyond that pool. In the early Neolithic, the water level may have been considerably lower, and the deeper fissures and passageways more accessible.’

Jack breathed in deeply. The air had a distinctive heady smell that seemed to sharpen his senses, to revitalize him. He and Costas followed Wladislaw down the tunnel. They stopped at the entrance to another chamber, much larger. Jack took another deep breath, and Wladislaw watched him approvingly. ‘Sodium, calcium, magnesium chloride. The air’s full of it. Enjoy it while you can.’

‘What do you mean, while you can?’ Costas asked.

Wladislaw pointed up. ‘Look at the roof of the cavern.’

Costas craned his neck. ‘Either those are shadows, or it’s scorched.’

‘Before the development of a ventilation system, methane released from the rock would collect in pockets against the ceiling. The miners went round with torches on long poles and burned it off. We’re all right in the main workings, but where you’re going is a different story. You might encounter what look like pockets of air. Except they’re not.’

Jack glanced at Costas, then turned to Wladislaw. ‘Do the others know about this? Our colleagues?’

‘I’ll warn them when we get there.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Thanks, but let Costas do it. That’s what he’s here for. Part of the safety briefing.’

Wladislaw nodded. ‘Of course. You’re the experts.’ He led them into the next cavern, a space that rose above them like the interior of a cathedral, thirty metres or more in height. ‘This will interest you.’ He grinned. ‘One for Jack Howard. The clue to a treasure.’

‘Tell us as we walk,’ Jack said, glancing at his watch. He had little interest in stories now. He could only focus on Rebecca. On what they had come here to do.

‘Okay.’ Wladislaw clattered down the metal stairs, producing an odd dull echo in the chamber. He gesticulated as he spoke. ‘In 1944, the Nazis established an assembly plant for aircraft parts in this chamber. They used Polish Jews as slave labour. When the Soviets came close, the Nazis dismantled the plant and the Jews were sent to the death camps. But one of the Jews who survived came back here recently, and told me a story. He said they all knew the deeper chambers were used by the Nazis to hide treasures. They all assumed it was gold, stolen from the Jews of Poland. There was always a guard post at the entrance to the deep passageway to prevent anyone entering. Then, the night before the evacuation, several of the fitter prisoners were ordered to go down there, with picks and hammers, evidently to do some kind of manual work. They were accompanied by a couple of the Hungarian SS guards and a Luftwaffe officer, the boss of the factory. Only the officer came back out. He was carrying something in a bag. The survivor saw the officer again, because he accompanied the death march from Auschwitz of the Jewish survivors being sent to work on bomb damage in German cities. The officer remained with them until they entered the concentration camp where the survivor was soon afterwards liberated by the British, somewhere near Belsen.’

Jack suddenly stopped. He had only been half listening. ‘Where did you say?’

‘A camp, near Belsen. In Upper Saxony, Germany. One of many satellite camps, probably.’

Jack turned to Costas, who had also stopped and was staring at him. They both looked at Wladislaw. Jack felt a chill of certainty. It all made sense. An object secreted away here, in a place apparently impregnable from discovery, secure for ever in the heart of the thousand-year Reich. But then the unthinkable happened. The war was being lost. An ultimatum was activated. The object was removed, taken west. It was to be the signal for the worst horrors to be unleashed. Jack remembered the story Dillen had told him from Hugh. The document Hugh had found on the motorcycle courier, with the counterclockwise swastika. The Agamemnon Code. Jack thought hard, staring at the ground, his heart pounding. The people who had kidnapped Rebecca must not hear this story. They must not know that the object might no longer be here. The three men who would be diving with them. At all costs they must not know. He looked at Wladislaw. ‘Did the survivor tell you anything else?’

‘He saw the Luftwaffe officer when they entered the camp near Belsen, and said that he still had the bag with him. He never saw him again after that. He thought the bag must contain some great treasure stolen from a museum in Poland, hidden to begin with in this mine. They all thought that was what the Nazis stored down here. By telling me the story, he thought he was doing a service to Poland. There might be a chance of recovering the treasure, somewhere, somehow, and bringing it back home. ’

Jack tensed up. ‘Does anyone else know this? Anyone? ’

‘The man told me he’d never told anyone else. He spoke to me in my office, where you met me. He insisted on locking the door. He told me he was old and dying. He’d come back to this place for the first time since 1945, had seen that we had a memorial to the Jewish prisoners. He’d asked to see me. I was very busy that day, but I remembered the story a few days later and phoned the place that looked after him. They said he’d died the day after coming here. Just slipped away.’

‘Who else have you told? Your friends? Your family?’

Wladislaw shook his head. ‘Nobody. It was the day we took that phone call from you, from IMU headquarters. When you said you wanted to come here to search for the Neolithic remains. I thought I’d save this story until you came. Icing on the cake for you.’

Jack looked intently at Costas, then at Wladislaw. ‘A pact, just the three of us, right? We tell nobody about this. Not until we can take it further. Nobody. Not even our three friends waiting below.’

‘Done,’ Costas said. Wladislaw stared at Jack. ‘Of course. You have my word.’

Jack slapped his back. ‘Good man. Now let’s move.’

‘We should get you over to the IMU campus in Cornwall, Wlady,’ Costas said as they clattered down. ‘I invited you when we met at that conference, remember? I didn’t know there was an archaeologist in you then. We need an IMU representative in Poland. What do you think, Jack?’

‘Excellent idea,’ Jack said.

‘You really think so?’ Wladislaw said. ‘You would not be disappointed in me, I assure you.’

‘Take it as a done deal,’ Jack said. ‘But for now, news blackout.’

‘Total secrecy,’ Wladislaw agreed.

Jack glanced at Costas as they followed Wladislaw off the metal walkway and on to a platform of wooden duckboards. They had reached the end of the complex that was open to the public, barred off with a mesh barrier but with a little door that Wladislaw swung open. It was cooler now, and damper. They crouched through and carried on. The way ahead was a narrowing void, the timber vaulting fitted into the wall becoming sporadic and then finishing altogether. The duckboards ended, and Jack could see where the boards had lain over a narrow-gauge railway line that carried on ahead down the tunnel. The ceiling was just high enough for the tunnel to have been used for pushing carts up from the deepest mine workings. After a few more metres the passage widened into a chamber the size of a small room, also lit by a single bulb. On the sides Jack could just make out shadowy forms, half-finished sculptures in salt that seemed to leer out of the walls, inchoate. It was a macabre place, like a catacomb. Wladislaw pointed his torch at one of the figures. ‘St Clement, patron saint of miners,’ he said, his voice sounding strangely dull again, without any echo. ‘This is not like the sculptures you see on the tourist route. These ones are the real deal. They were done long ago, hundreds of years ago, by the miners, not for visitors but for themselves. They show what the miners really felt, the terrible fear, the pact with God they made to come down here, the bargain they made to survive.’

Jack stared at the sculpted face in the torchlight. It looked like Munch’s The Scream. Secondary recrystallization had clouded the features, obscuring the sculpted lines, as if the salt in the walls were reclaiming the figure, absorbing it back into a world of stone where humans were never meant to pass. Wladislaw went forward and they carried on. The passageway was now only just tall enough for Jack. It dropped at a steeper angle, dipping to follow the salt seam, the walls shadowy and deathly grey. He felt a tiny lurch, a tightness of the breath, then steeled himself. If you feel fear, it is fear that you will let Rebecca down. It is not fear of this place. He saw light ahead, another chamber. The light reflected off a pool of water, green and iridescent, as if it were full of algae. ‘The colour’s from copper,’ Wladislaw said. ‘The water might be like that ahead. Nobody’s explored it for years, since it flooded.’

They entered the chamber. It was the very last one before the tunnel disappeared underwater. Above the pool was a string of suspended light bulbs, trailed down on the cord they had followed from the upper chambers. On the left side three men sat kitted up in diving suits and SCUBA twin-sets, filled with the oxygen, helium and nitrogen mix tailored for their dive by Costas at IMU the night before. They had their hoods on, so Jack saw only three constricted faces, barely distinguishable from one another. He made out the red letters tattooed on the hands of one of the men: Chechnya. He remembered what had happened in the war in Chechnya, to the children, and he felt physically repulsed. These men, others like them, were holding Rebecca. There would be a price to pay. He stared at them, and then followed Costas a few steps to the right, where their own equipment was bagged and locked. Costas gave the bags a quick inspection, then unlocked them. They quickly pulled out their gear and silently kitted up. Jack stripped down to his underwear and T-shirt and pulled on his e-suit, turning to let Costas zip up the neck seal, then he did the same for Costas in return. They helped each other don the rebreathers and yellow Kevlar helmets, each with a sealable visor instead of the conventional face masks the other three men were using. They hooked in the intake and exhaust tubes to the base of the helmets and then sat down by the water’s edge, pulling on their fins and letting their legs dangle in the water. Jack looked into the green haze. He could barely see his legs. At least they had the 3-D navigation system, following the route Wladislaw had mapped in.

He activated his rebreather and helmet computer system, testing the mouthpiece and cross-checking with Costas, then strapped on the wrist computer he always carried as a back-up. He still liked to see his dive time and depth on his wrist, as he had been trained to do before the advent of dive computers and all the technology they were using today. He glanced at the time. There was no way of knowing how long the dive would last. If they were going to a hundred metres’ depth, it would be twenty minutes, twenty-five maximum. The rebreather would minimize nitrogen intake and decompression problems, but they had no safety margin.

Costas glanced at him, then put up his hand. ‘And now for the best part,’ he bellowed. ‘For the real men.’ He sat heavily by the water’s edge, then reached back ostentatiously to his bag, clanging together some glass bottles. He pulled one out, and held it up to the light. It was a half-bottle of vodka. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed loudly, smacking his lips. ‘Krepkaya. The best.’ The three Russians watched in amazement as Costas knocked the cap off on a rock and put the bottle to his lips, gulping down half of it. He let out a long gasp, then passed the bottle to Jack, who put it to his lips, tasted it with relish, then drained it. He gasped, nodded appreciatively, then tossed the bottle into the pool, before turning back and checking his equipment. The Russian with the tattoo got up and took a few steps over to them, lumbering in all his gear. He pushed Costas’ shoulder roughly. ‘So,’ he said, his English guttural and heavily accented. ‘A little drink for the nerves, no?’ He jerked his head towards the pool, then turned back to the other two Russians, smirking. ‘A little too much fear, eh?’

Costas stopped adjusting his helmet and slowly gazed up at the man, a look of utter contempt on his face. He suddenly erupted in laughter, and turned to Jack, barely able to control his mirth. ‘This moron thinks we’re afraid of that little puddle.’ Jack shook his head, snorting in derision. Costas turned back to the man. ‘You idiot. We always drink alcohol before a deep dive. It dilates the blood vessels. Stops us getting the bends. Learned it from the old French navy divers. Really tough guys. They’d break a Spetsnaz like a matchstick.’

The man leaned heavily over and took Costas’ chin in his hand, twisting it. ‘I’ll fucking break you before today is over.’

Costas pushed him away. ‘So that’s what your boss ordered? At least we know where we stand.’

The man reached back to Costas’ bag, where two more bottles were visible. Costas shot out his arm and put it over them. ‘Only one bottle for the three of you. Dr Howard and I are used to it. It’s extra proof Krepkaya. You won’t have the stomach for it.’

‘Fuck you. We’re Russian.’ The man pushed Costas’ arm aside, and yanked out the two bottles. He broke open the lids with his teeth, first one, then the other, and passed one to the nearest of the other two men. Then he tipped up the other bottle himself, drinking deeply. As he wiped his lips, gasping, Costas spat on the rocks beside him. ‘Hey. Chechnya. Don’t drink too much. I don’t want to swim in your vomit.’ The man snarled at Costas, then tipped up the bottle again, nearly draining it. He gasped, then passed the remainder to the second man, who finished it, then did the same with the bottle from the other man. The air stank of alcohol. The Russians donned their face masks and put in their regulators, then followed the tattooed man into the pool, staggering and slipping on the salt. Costas shouted at them, ‘Test your regulators. Go under the surface for three minutes.’

They all disappeared under the surface, leaving only a maelstrom of bubbles. Wladislaw came up quickly and knelt down between Jack and Costas, whispering urgently. ‘What the hell was that all about? Sure alcohol dilates the blood vessels, but it also dehydrates. That causes the bends. What were you doing?’

Costas peered at him. ‘What we were doing, Jack and I, was keeping hydrated.’

Wladislaw knitted his brows. He suddenly understood. ‘You mean your bottle was water.’

Costas nodded. Wladislaw stared at him. He stared at the bubbles. ‘So who the hell are these guys? What’s going on here?’

Jack turned to him, speaking low, quickly. ‘We didn’t want to tell you. In case they realized that you knew. Your life would be in danger.’

‘Knew what?’

Jack clicked on his visor monitor and paused. He saw that Costas was ready. He made the ‘okay’ sign, and Costas repeated it. Jack kept his visor open and turned to Wladislaw. ‘Do you have children?’

‘Three.’

‘My daughter’s been kidnapped. Whoever’s running these three guys is extorting us. There’s something down there they want.’

‘ Your daughter. My God.’ Wladislow looked stunned. He spoke in a whisper. ‘So this has all been a set-up? It wasn’t IMU who contacted us after all. You’re not searching for Neolithic remains.’

‘Not this time.’

‘This has something to do with the Nazis.’

Jack nodded.

‘I knew it,’ Wladislaw exclaimed. ‘ I knew it. From what the old Jewish survivor told me, I knew something sinister had gone on down here.’

Jack spoke urgently. ‘I was given instructions by phone yesterday after my daughter was abducted. They’re using us to find a hidden Nazi treasure because they think it’s down at the very base of the fissure, more than a hundred metres below water level. We’re expert divers and know how to find treasure. They got hold of some old Nazi document. Their leader, the one with the Chechnya tattoo, knows the details. We’re supposed to follow him, and he’ll point the way. Costas thinks he knows where it is already, from his talk with the man earlier and from your plan of the mine he’s programmed into our helmet computers, which shows only one possible route beyond this pool. Then they stay at the maximum safe depth for their breathing gear, and wait. We find what they want, then they dispose of us on the way back up.’

The head of a diver bobbed up on the surface, breathing noisily from a regulator, staring at them. Costas shut his visor and gave the thumbs-down sign, moving to the edge of the water and pushing off. The diver who had surfaced descended beside him. Wladislaw turned to Jack, helping him with his helmet. ‘Quickly. Tell me anything I can do. I’ve got a pistol in my office.’

‘Too late for that.’

‘Do you have any weapons?’

‘Costas has tools for bomb disposal. He thinks that whatever’s down there might have been booby-trapped by the Nazis.’

Wladislaw nodded. ‘The Nazis did that when they concealed stolen treasures, works of art.’ He paused. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

‘I’ll tell you. When we surface. Here’s what I want you to do now. Take my phone. It’s in my fleece pocket. Don’t answer it if anyone rings. But there’s a text message ready to send to our security chief. It says Das Agamemnon-Code. It means we’ve gone under, and everything is as planned. Go back to the surface, send it, then leave this place immediately. Don’t call the police. Go home, collect your family and take them away somewhere safe, somewhere far away. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. A sudden little holiday while the mine is shut. Then call IMU. They’ll look after you. Use your own phone, not mine. Leave mine on your desk, where I can find it. It’s my only contact with the kidnapper. If we escape this he’ll know about it, and I’ll need to speak to him.’

Wladislaw put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Understood.’ He paused. ‘Your daughter.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s her name?’

‘It’s…’ Jack swallowed hard. The enormity of it suddenly hit him. What were they doing to her, right now, at this very moment? His voice was hoarse, a whisper. ‘It’s Rebecca.’

‘Rebecca.’ Wladislaw knelt up. ‘Good. For Rebecca. You can rely on me.’

Jack reached up and squeezed Wladislaw’s hand, then flipped down his visor, sealed it and clicked on the intercom. He heard Costas’ breathing, a measured, reassuring sound. ‘Costas. You read me?’

‘Loud and clear. You okay?’

‘Roger that.’ He slipped into the water, feeling the pressure against his e-suit, his cocoon against the water. He made himself remember how much he enjoyed that sensation, how relaxed it made him feel, the beginning of a dive. He took a few deep breaths from his rebreather, and glanced at the readout inside his visor. Everything was good. He just had to stay in control. To forget about the tunnel, the walls. To stem his anger, his terrible fear for Rebecca, to let the adrenalin work for him, not against him. He would pay back those who had done this. He would relish it. But not yet. He took another deep breath, and clicked on the screen display inside his helmet, showing a 3-D lattice map of the labyrinth ahead of them, their route marked out in red. He dropped below the surface, watching the green water rise up his visor, seeing Costas’ face in front of him. The forms of the other three divers were visible in the gloom beyond, the beams from their headlamps wavering in the water. He switched on his own headlamp, keeping it angled down to avoid it shining directly in Costas’ eyes. Costas put out his right hand and turned his thumb down. ‘Good to go?’

‘Good to go.’