The Mask of Troy

19

A t first all Jack could see underwater was a green haze, obscuring the forms of Costas and the other three divers in front of him. He sank to the bottom of the pool, only a few metres below the surface, and angled the headlamps on either side of his helmet, locking them in place once they had reached a convergence point about five metres in front of him. He had never seen water of this hue before. Green usually meant organic matter, algae, that would reflect the light from underwater torches, like using full-beam car headlights in a snowstorm. But here there was no reflection, just haze. He remembered what Wladislaw had said about the copper inclusions that caused the colour, evidently particles of very small size.

He could hear the suck and exhaust of the three Russians, all of them breathing hard on their regulators. The rebreathers he and Costas were wearing only needed to be vented of excess gas build-up every ten minutes or so, so were effectively closed systems most of the time that produced no exhaust. Through the intercom he could hear Costas’ breathing, calm, slow, reassuring. He knew his own breathing would conform to the same rate, a sign of a good buddy pairing. Only he and Costas would be able to talk to each other. Ben had not mentioned this to the phone contact when the arrangements had been made. The three Russians had been too concerned with understanding their own equipment, and they had evidently been briefed that he and Costas would have specialized gear. And each of them had just drunk a third of a litre of neat vodka. They were probably too drunk to care.

He feathered his buoyancy control, injecting air into his e-suit, then looked around and saw a dark smudge where the tunnel descended. He looked at Costas. ‘You read me?’

‘Loud and clear.’

‘Let’s move. They can follow, if they’re able.’

‘One of them’s breathing like a steam engine. No way he’ll last.’

‘Shouldn’t drink and dive.’

‘You getting the map on your screen?’

‘Roger that.’ Jack peered at the lattice of red lines visible in three dimensions inside his helmet, to the left of his visor. ‘Looks like we’ve got about fifty metres ahead where the railway track continues to a vertical shaft. The shaft drops way down, about eighty metres. Then at the bottom there’s another stretch of tunnel angling down at about thirty degrees, evidently the line of the natural fissure. Looks like our target area’s going to be a hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and twenty metres below water level.’

‘My computer gives us about twenty-five minutes no-stop time. If the Russians stick to plan, they’ll go no deeper than eighty metres. That means part-way up that shaft.’

‘You ready?’ Jack said.

‘We’re heading into a sump, completely submerged for a bit and then surfacing again near the head of that shaft. The railway tunnel must have collapsed at some point. I’ll go first.’

‘I’m behind you.’

They ignored the other three and swam down into the gloom, their headlamps reflecting off the walls of green halite, which had been hacked away to widen the tunnel. After about ten metres the salt gave way to bare rock, cracked and jumbled in front of them. ‘Looks like someone got a little ambitious with the pick,’ Costas murmured. ‘Remember what Wlady said, that the miners tried not to dig out all the halite to keep the walls from collapsing.’ He swam down, pulling himself along the rusted metal rails of the track. Jack could see a way ahead, with only a metre or so of clearance below the collapsed rock. He followed Costas, inching along. He heard the three Russians close behind, scraping and clanging their tanks as they hauled themselves along the passage, the exhaust from their breathing cascading along the cracks and fissures above Jack. He swore under his breath. If they caused another rock fall, nobody would be coming out of here alive. He concentrated on looking ahead, and saw that Costas had reached the end of the sump and had knelt up out of the water. Jack came alongside, and broke surface. They had come nearly to the end of the rockfall, and could see the end of the tunnel about ten metres ahead, half submerged.

‘This must be where the vertical shaft begins,’ Costas said. ‘I’m looking at my atmospheric sensor. There’s still oxygen here, but methane as well in pockets against the ceiling. Probably breathable, just.’

‘Won’t be like that below,’ Jack said. ‘From what Wlady said, we’ll have to assume any gas pockets are methane.’

They crawled and waded forward, past a ledge that had once been some kind of loading platform. A massive rusted pulley mechanism hung down from the ceiling where the track ended. It was a winch for a lift, but the metal cable was missing, evidently cut off or rusted away and dropped down the shaft with the lift platform. He looked back and saw the first of the Russians haul himself out of the water, spit out his mouthpiece and wheeze heavily, his hands on his knees. Jack turned back, and saw Costas’ fins sticking up. He pulled himself along, below the winch. The view over the edge was astonishing. Costas was hanging upside down, his headlamps aimed down a vertical shaft lined with timbers. The coppery green had gone, and the water was extraordinarily clear. Jack could see down a phenomenal depth, but still not make out the bottom. It was an awesome sight, spine-tingling, as if he were looking down a shaft into the centre of the earth. Costas craned his head up, looked at him. ‘You good with this?’

‘Good to go.’ They had been in a mineshaft before, just like this, when Jack had run out of air and nearly died. But now was not the time for flashbacks. Survival instinct overrode that. He remembered Rebecca, why they were here, and steeled himself. He watched Costas drop head first down the shaft, and then followed him. The water was so clear that it was as if he were jumping into air, and he instinctively put out his hands and feet to catch himself on the wooden beams, to stop himself from falling headlong. He made himself straighten his legs and hold his hands ahead like an arrow, spiralling down behind Costas. They dropped quickly, twenty metres, thirty, forty. He was grateful for the automated buoyancy control, the computer that sensed their speed of descent and kept it in check. He tilted his head so that he could see directly ahead. Far below them, thirty or forty metres perhaps, he could now see the glimmerings of the base of the shaft, a mass of collapsed metal machinery lit up by their headlamp beams. Two minutes later they were nearly there. ‘Let’s go neutral,’ Costas said. Jack pressed the manual buoyancy override and injected air into his suit, then tucked into a ball and rolled upright so that he came down feet first like a parachutist. He injected more air to stop just short of the coiled pulley cable and iron platform, coming to a halt alongside Costas. They both looked up. A confused mass of bubbles and light beams moving to and fro was visible far above, where the Russians were coming down.

Jack looked at his depth gauge. Ninety-five metres. He turned and aimed his beam horizontally into the passageway they were about to enter, the level that would drop at a thirty-degree slope towards their target area about a hundred metres ahead. Costas came alongside and did the same. An extraordinary vista opened up before them. It was clear that they were following a natural fissure in the rock, just as Wladislaw had predicted, with outcrops of halite crystals visible. The crystals shimmered and sparkled as they panned their headlights over them. The fissure had once formed a series of interconnected caverns, but the narrower spaces between the caverns had been hacked away to create a continuous tunnel wide enough for a narrow-gauge track to be laid, identical to the one they had followed at the higher level. Jack could see the track continuing for about thirty metres and then ending at a point where the rock had been left untouched, a much narrower gap. They swam slowly forward. On either side the indentations formed deep chambers, some crudely hacked into a rectilinear shape, one of them with a half-built wooden door and wall enclosing it. Tools lay strewn around, whitened by salt precipitate growing over them. At the end of the track they saw the railway car, a standard narrow-gauge hopper small enough to be pushed by miners, containing a wooden cradle as if some substantial piece of equipment had been carried in it to this point.

‘This tunnel doesn’t look like salt mining,’ Costas said. ‘It looks like someone was building a storage facility.’

‘And then abandoned it halfway,’ Jack replied. ‘None of the side chambers are finished.’

‘The Nazis?’

‘It’s difficult to see why miners might have come down here. This deep, it may often have been flooded, by changes in the water table like the one that causes the water to be so deep now. The odd thing is, it might make sense for Neolithic miners to have got this far underground when it was dry, making their way down the natural fissure where that shaft is. We know that Stone Age painters could get a long way into cave systems. And they may have been looking for especially prized halite crystals only found this deep. But for later miners with metal tools, there was a lot of salt still to be dug out much closer to the surface.’

They reached the end of the metal tracks. Jack rolled over and looked up, seeing the shimmering surfaces of pools where methane gas had accumulated. He looked back to the end of the shaft, where the first of the Russians had appeared. ‘Christ. They’ve come all the way down. At least fifteen metres beyond the safe depth with trimix. About where nitrogen narcosis will really kick in too.’

‘Drunk, narked and on a one-way ticket to hell,’ Costas said.

‘But dangerous. Did you see their knives?’

‘Roger that. Let’s get this done.’

They swam forward beyond the end of the track, through the crack in the rock. Ahead of them the fissure carried on as far as they could see, with a crudely cut pathway along the floor. On either side were shimmering crystal caverns, some with halite crystals five or six centimetres across. Costas was ahead, and after only a few metres he stopped and sank down to about a metre above the floor, over an area where the crystals seemed to be remarkably uniform in size, as if they had all grown from the same genesis. ‘You remember Wladislaw and his dating of the salt growth to the Neolithic? Take a look at this.’

Jack peered down. Beneath the crystals was a shape, staring up at him. He had seen this before where calcium carbonate, precipitated minerals, formed stalagmites over bones, but never with salt. It was a human skull. He saw a ribcage, leg bones, arms laid over the chest. He could just make out chipped and polished stone tools laid alongside, hand axes and adzes, several still attached to wooden hafts. ‘It’s a burial,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe that’s what these people were doing down here as well, using it as a burial chamber.’ He stared again at the skull. The jaw had dropped, as if it were leering. He remembered the grim sculptures they had seen in the passageway with Wladislaw, the one that had reminded him of Munch’s The Scream. Perhaps this was what those medieval miners had seen. Perhaps it was not their own mortality they feared, but some terrible demon of the depths they had encountered down here – in a place that perhaps was never broached again by the miners, and was only reopened when the Nazis decided to create a top-secret storage facility in these depths.

‘My sensor registers almost zero oxygen in the water,’ Costas said. ‘That’s why it’s so clear. No life here at all.’

‘Ten metres to go, according to my map,’ Jack said, peering into the tunnel. ‘I think I can see something at about that distance, ahead and to the right. A small cavern entrance, maybe. Something blocking it.’

‘Jack, there’s something strange about the floor ahead of us. Odd shapes.’

Jack dumped air from his suit and sank down, staring ahead. Too late he realized that he was going to hit the bottom, and he silently cursed. He prided himself on his buoyancy control. And in caves, silt could be stirred up with barely a touch and completely obscure visibility. He injected a burst of air into his suit and just avoided impact, but watched a pressure wave from his body ripple through the silt ahead. In a fleeting second he realized what Costas had seen. Bodies. Human bodies. Lying on either side of the path. But not solid bodies. As the ripple passed through them they disintegrated and exploded upwards into the water, a great cloud of white particles and flakes that engulfed Costas and wafted towards Jack.

‘Thanks, Jack. A swim through disintegrated human flesh. That rounds off this little excursion nicely.’

Jack swam forward, dropping down into the haze. He saw skeletons, two, three along one side, picks and crowbars strewn haphazardly around, the bones wearing the remains of clothing. ‘This looks a little more recent than our Neolithic friend,’ he murmured. ‘The shoes look pretty modern.’

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘The story from Wladislaw? German officer goes in with Jews and guards, only German officer comes out?’

‘They’ve all been shot in the head, execution style,’ Jack said. ‘You can see the holes, the shattered skulls.’

‘Not these two.’ Costas’ fins were poking out of the cloud of white ahead, and Jack went alongside. The two skeletons below were more contorted, and had fragmented sternums and ribcages as well as holes in their skulls. ‘Different clothing. Look.’ Costas reached down and pulled up a collar. He rubbed it, and Jack saw the SS death’s-head insignia. ‘These must be the two Hungarian SS guards. Remember, the officer came out alone? He must have shot them too. Looks as if he had to catch them unawares, presumably after they’d executed all the Jews.’

Jack stared at the obstruction in the small cavern ahead. ‘I think I know why the officer had to bring them down here. They were carrying something for him.’ He swam closer, and his heart sank. The entrance to the chamber, carved out of the rock salt, was about a metre square, wide enough for a person to crouch inside. He could see a dark cavity beyond. But wedged into the entrance was an unmistakable shape.

It was a bomb.

He was looking at the tail piece of an aerial bomb, four sheet-steel vanes welded to a cone, reinforced with box-shaped struts of bar steel. The cone was striped red and blue, and the rest had been painted green, now streaked with rust. Beyond the cone he could see the extension cylinder with a fuse head, and beyond that the main body of the bomb, but the nose was out of sight inside the cavity. The bomb seemed to be about a metre and a half in length, maybe a little more. It was precariously wedged on the rim of the entrance, with nothing else obvious holding it up beyond.

‘German SD-250, thick-cased fragmentation bomb,’ Costas said, coming alongside. ‘Seventy-nine kilograms of TNT, series five and eight fuses, usually. Huh. Never seen one of these live before.’

Jack shut his eyes. This time, it was going to have to happen.

Costas eyed him. ‘Looks like we don’t have any Turkish navy ordnance disposal divers around to help with this one.’

‘I noticed.’

Costas pulled open a Velcro flap on his leg and extracted a hammer.

‘What are you doing with that?’

‘Well, I have to get at the fuse.’

‘It’s there, look.’

Costas shook his helmet. ‘No. That’s the dummy fuse. The actual fuse is further forward in the main casing, just beyond that rock lip, I reckon. It looks as if the bomb’s been deliberately wedged that far forward to conceal the fuse head, yet left balanced on the rim so it could fall into the cavity or into the cavern where we are now.’

‘Either way wouldn’t make any difference, would it?’

‘Boom.’

‘ Boom.’ Jack shut his eyes. ‘Okay. What next?’

‘The guy was a Luftwaffe officer, right?’

‘That’s what Wladislaw said.’

‘That makes sense. He knew what he was doing. This bomb’s clearly been put here as a booby trap. In which case, there’ll be anti-handling devices.’

‘ Anti-handling devices. This gets better every moment.’

‘The Luftwaffe had used them since the 1940 London Blitz, for delayed-action bombs. But we’re talking 1945 here. All the sinister genius of Nazi engineering designed to kill anyone trying to defuse this bomb.’

‘That means us.’

‘Okay,’ Costas murmured, both hands on the bomb casing, leaning forward to see as far as he could into the chamber. ‘Delayedaction bombs had a clockwork fuse. So you take that out, fine. The problem’s what’s underneath. The standard early anti-handling fuse was the ZUS-40. The jolt of impact would release a ball bearing, which would arm a spring-loaded firing pin. Or unscrewing the outer fuse would have the same effect, cocking the firing pin underneath. Or there could be another device entirely, a type 50 fuse with a mercury tilt switch that would arm itself when the bomb hit the ground, and then complete an electrical circuit if anyone tried to move it. Or there could be both devices.’

‘Okay. Okay. Just what do we do?’

‘Hold the tail unit.’

Jack backed off, then approached the bomb from behind and reached his arms carefully around the metal fins. He tried to stand on the base of the passageway, but the salt precipitate on the floor was viscous, slippery. He found a rock protrusion with his left fin and wedged it in. ‘Okay.’

Costas lifted the hammer and hit the edge of the rock cavity. Fragments came tumbling down around Jack. He hit it again, harder. Jack was barely breathing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Russian who had come down the passageway, watching them, hanging in the water just beyond the white haze about ten metres back, his exhaust streaming up into the gas pocket in the ceiling above.

There was a sudden jolt, and Jack flinched. He thought he felt the bomb move. If it slipped in his direction, there was no way he was going to be able to stop 250 kilograms of steel and high explosive from falling to the floor of the tunnel, pinning him down. But if that happened, they were finished. Costas hammered again, producing a shower of fragments, and then slipped his hammer back in his pocket and took out a tool like a socket wrench. ‘Okay. I’ve exposed the fuse pocket.’

‘What do I do?’

‘Watch our friend. I’ve seen him. He’s as likely to blow as this thing.’

‘How long?’

There was a ringing sound of metal on metal. Costas had taken out another tool. He was straining as he spoke, pulling the wrench. ‘Guy who taught the bomb disposal course I did once defused one of these in Portsmouth Harbour. Took him twenty hours to clear the rust around the fuses.’

Jack looked at his gauge. ‘We have ten minutes. Max.’

‘I think I need my hammer again for this.’

Jack cautiously released the tail unit, then let himself drift back, staring at the Russian. He was coming down, approaching the haze of human decay in the water. ‘Okay, Costas. I’m going to take him out.’

‘Just keep him away from me. Any disturbance and this thing could blow. Above those first bodies the fissure rises into a chamber, and I saw a surface. Must be a gas pocket. I saw a couple of miners’ picks on a ledge.’

‘Okay. I’ll be back.’

‘You better be.’ Costas’ eyes were glued to the bomb, inspecting the surface minutely, selecting tools by touch from his pockets. Jack remained still. The other two Russians were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they were sticking to plan, waiting further up until he and Costas returned. The man coming for them might have no method, no rationale. His mission was suicidal, but could still be murderous. Jack saw the glint of a wicked-looking blade in the man’s hand. He steadied himself. He heard the tap-tap-tap of Costas trying to free the fuse. He tried to remember Rebecca’s face, but it was not there. What he was about to do now was pure instinct, survival. He felt the adrenalin course through him. Not just survival. Rage.

He suddenly swam towards the Russian as fast as he could, grabbed the man’s jacket inflator and pulled it, sending them both rocketing upwards. He seized the man’s neck in a half-nelson with his left arm and clamped his wrist with his right hand to keep the knife away. The man’s eyes were wild, but his wrist was rock-hard and Jack knew there was no way he was going to move it. The tip of the knife was inches from his intake hose. They surfaced together inside the cavity in a welter of bubbles, creating a wave that sucked them down and then pushed them against the side of the chamber, ripping the left arm of Jack’s e-suit down to the Kevlar mesh. They bounced down again underwater, then up. Jack’s wrist began to shake, his grip loosening. The man had short, thick arms, massively muscled, and Jack’s longer arm could not hold against him, requiring far more leverage than he could muster. He felt a spasm of pain go down his back as he put every muscle in his body into holding the knife away. It was no use. He had only one option. He kicked with his fins as hard as he could, driving them both upwards. The instant he felt they had risen as far as they could go, he let go of the man’s neck with his left hand, reached up and pushed hard against the ceiling, forcing them back down deep underwater. He pulled the emergency inflate on the man’s jacket and it ballooned outwards, forcing them both upwards again and slamming the man’s head against the ceiling. Jack grabbed the head again with his left hand, let go of the wrist with his right and instantly balled his fist, ramming it upwards into the man’s face. It was the killer blow Ben had taught him, a massive upwards punch at the base of the nose that would splinter the bone and drive the fragments into the brain.

The Russian went limp in Jack’s hands. His mask quickly filled up with blood, his eyes still open behind it, like some ghastly avant-garde artwork. Jack ripped off the man’s mask and hood, spraying dollops of blood everywhere. His nose was a mess of blood and mucus and protruding bone fragments, and his eyes were covered in a film of red. Suddenly they flickered and he bellowed, pushing back from Jack and scrabbling to the far side of the chamber. He still had the knife in his hand and he leapt forward, swinging. Jack swerved sideways and caught the man’s head in a massive swipe with the flat of his hand, pushing it sideways into the wall. He had wedged his feet against the rock, and as he held the man, who seemed to hang there, limp again, he realized that the razor-sharp halite crystals on the cavern wall had driven into the Russian’s head. The man lurched again, snorting blood, his eyes crazed, and dragged his head backwards as Jack pressed on it, leaving a smear of blood and skin along the wall of the chamber.

Jack let go, and drew back, panting. The man would not go down. The Russian heaved himself half out of the water and stood there, panting, his head a blood-soaked mess, still holding the knife. Jack remembered the miners’ tools Costas had mentioned, on the ledge. He dropped down underwater, reaching blindly, and felt a handle. He wrapped his hand around it and pulled, releasing it from the salt accretion. It was a pick, with a flat, adze-like blade on one side, and a long, flat-ended spike on the other. He reared upwards out of the water, lurching sideways to give himself enough room to swing the pick in both hands. The man lunged again with the knife, missing and staggering back to the ledge. Jack swung the flat end of the pick, catching the man below the left ear, sinking it into his neck. He pulled the blade out and flipped the pick to the spike, bringing it back and swinging again, as hard as he could. The spike caught the man in the same place and went through his neck, protruding out of the other side in a geyser of blood. The man’s tongue lolled out, dripping blood, and he made a terrible gurgling noise, his eyes rolling upwards in their sockets.

Jack shook and shook until the pick came free, the man’s body flopping like a rag doll. He staggered sideways, finding a better foothold, and then drove the pick again into the Russian’s head. This time it came away easily as the man’s head split open. Jack was bellowing with rage. He struck again and again, until the head was unrecognizable pulp. You bastard. You bastard. Nobody messes with my daughter. He realized he was yelling himself hoarse, bringing the pick down again and again, slower now, his visor flecked with blood. He stopped, and dropped back into the water, panting. He felt sick to the stomach, exhausted beyond belief, but as if a terrible burden of guilt and anger had been released from him. The adrenalin was pumping through him like a massive painkiller. It felt good.

He sank back into the water, tensing his arms to stop them from shaking, and forced himself to concentrate on his equipment. He had to stay focused. He checked his hoses and helmet. The only damage was the scrape on his suit, and that had not punctured. He was panting hard, too hard, and he tried to calm himself. He looked at his helmet readout, and realized that a red warning light had been flashing, hardly visible with the blood all round. It was telling him that it was time to surface. The rebreather tanks were running low, and they were only a few minutes from crossing the decompression threshold. He checked his wrist computer, and did a swift calculation. Five minutes more would take him to the limit of the safety margin. He dropped back down, looking up to see the smudge of the body on the surface and a darkness in the water that seemed to follow him, swirling tendrils of blood that hit the rocky base of the tunnel and slowly pooled in cracks and fissures. He reached Costas, who was still entirely focused on the bomb, and came up slowly beside him, trying to control his breathing, to calm himself, to slow the sound of his heart, which was still pounding in his ears.

‘Problem solved?’ Costas said, without looking round.

‘One down, two to go,’ Jack said hoarsely.

‘I heard it all,’ Costas said distractedly. Jack saw what Costas was doing, and suddenly forgot about what had just happened. Costas had pocketed his tools and was in the final stages of unscrewing the fuse from the bomb. He released it, held it up and then pocketed it, keeping one hand pressed into the fuse pocket. ‘For my collection.’ He moved his head to get his lamp beam angled correctly, and peered into the socket. ‘Yep, ZUS-40. God damn it. I knew it.’

‘Three minutes, Costas.’

Keeping his fingers in the fuse pocket, Costas whipped out a handful of threaded plugs from his pocket, dropped several until there was only one in his hand, handed it to Jack, pulled out a socket wrench, took the plug back from Jack and leaned over, quickly screwing the plug into the fuse hole. ‘Okay. What happens is this. When I push the bomb out of the hole, it hits the floor of the cavern and arms itself. If it moves again after that, if it’s jolted, it goes off. It’s the only way we’re going to get it out of the entrance to the chamber.’ Without waiting for a reply, he finned back and then upside down, wedging his feet against the ceiling of the tunnel and pressing on the tail fins of the bomb. It tilted, and then slid out of the opening, clanging sickeningly on the floor of the tunnel and coming to rest about five metres down the slope, sliding part of the way.

‘That floor’s slippery as hell,’ Jack said. ‘Anything could move it.’

‘Okay. You’re in, Jack, then we go.’

Jack pulled himself into the aperture where the mine had been. The chamber was roughly square, about three by three metres. He looked quickly round. There it was. In the centre of the floor was a black metal box the size of a small suitcase. He reached down to the handle, and pulled. It was unlocked. Someone had opened it. Inside, he saw another metal case, about twenty centimetres across, with a Nazi swastika emblem on the top. He opened it, and stared, his heart pounding like a jackhammer.

It was there. But it wasn’t. He saw the shape, but only the impression, where the metal case had been formed to fit it. The reverse swastika. The palladion had been there, but it had been removed. The German officer. The story was right. But the Russians, their controller, must not know. He shut the smaller case, unrolled the mesh bag on his waist belt and shoved the case inside, then twisted around and powered out of the chamber, nodding at Costas and swimming hard alongside him away from the chamber, up the passage towards the lift shaft. Ahead of them he could see one of the other Russians, hanging in the water.

‘Well?’ Costas said, breathing hard.

‘Not there. But it once was. I’ve got the case, which will look convincing. The Luftwaffe officer must have come down here to get it, using the prisoners to shift the bomb, then armed it, maybe to look convincing to the guards, before they executed the Jews and he killed them. He probably dumped the lift cable from the top of the shaft.’ They were more than halfway back to the shaft now. Jack twisted on his back, still finning hard, and looked down to where they had been. The white haze in the water had mingled with the blood from the Russian. He twisted back, then realized he had seen something and turned again, stopping finning. ‘Come on,’ Costas said, pulling him. ‘We have to keep going up.’

‘Costas, something awful is happening.’

Costas stopped too, and they both stared. The body of the Russian was slowly sinking from the air pocket above, a dark shape in the dead man’s float, arms and legs hanging down, a haze of blood where the head had been. It hit the floor, bounced upwards in a macabre slow-motion dance, and then stopped. ‘Forget it,’ Costas exclaimed. ‘Now let’s go.’

‘No. Look.’ Jack’s eyes were glued to the body. To his horror an arm lifted up, as if the Russian had come alive again, and then very slowly flopped back. The body began sliding, barely perceptibly. Sliding towards the bomb.

Jack glanced at his gauges. ‘We can go back. We can wedge it.’

‘No way. Going back down there means going beyond our no-stop deco time. And if we had to do a ten-minute stop on the way up, we’d run out of air.’

‘The shock wave from the explosion would kill everyone in the water anyway, right the way up to the top of the shaft.’

‘At least by carrying on and getting out we have a chance. Our Russian might take a breather from his dance of death and stay put. Now come on.’

They turned and powered back up the tunnel. Jack felt that every pulse of water from his fins was pushing a current back to the corpse, edging it ever closer to the bomb. He dared not look back again. But now there was another problem. The second Russian was barring their way. Jack pointed towards the shape in the bag at his waist, and did a thumbs-up sign. The man took out his knife. Not again. This time there was something wrong. It was the one who had been breathing heavily near the surface. Jack had noticed that he was a terrible diver, useless at maintaining his buoyancy. The man kicked upwards and began to sink, and then injected too much air into his buoyancy compensator, rising up in front of them. He flailed and kicked, nearly hitting Jack, and then pressed his exhaust valve and bled off air from his jacket, sinking down between them again, hyperventilating. Jack glanced down and saw that the man’s tank pressure gauge was less than 200 psi. That meant that his tanks were nearly empty. He glanced at Costas, pointing at the man’s gauge. ‘We may be about to lose another one of our valued colleagues.’

Costas craned his head up at the ceiling of the chamber, a good eight metres above them. It looked like quicksilver, a shimmering pool in reverse, reflecting his headlamp beam. The Russian’s exhaust bubbles cascaded against it. The man stopped and swivelled round to look at them. He seemed to be staring past Jack, his eyes wide. Jack had seen that look in divers many times before, the look of hypoxia, of someone struggling to breathe, in this case compounded by narcosis and alcohol. Normally he would be unhooking his safety regulator to allow the man to buddy-breathe, but even if he had wished to do so, the rebreather system only had a back-up hose that could be hooked into another helmet, without a mouthpiece. The Russian suddenly turned towards Costas, grasping his arm, then began fumbling for Costas’ hoses. Costas held the man like a vice, staring at him, then pushed him away forcefully, pointed at his depth gauge, then drew a hand across his throat. He pointed up. The man looked, realized there was what appeared to be an air pocket at the top of the chamber and began to fin for it. Jack saw him press the inflator to bleed air into his jacket, buoying him up to the surface but emptying his tank completely of breathing gas. He watched him hit the surface in an explosion of bubbles, and then bob about. The Russian threw off his mask, which came tumbling through the water beside them to the floor of the cavern. He seemed to be struggling with his arms, and was kicking spasmodically.

‘How was it the miners cleared methane?’ Costas said. He had unravelled a length of detonation cord and crimped a blasting cap on to it. ‘Should be just enough oxygen from his exhaust up there to give this a good helping hand.’ He activated the time delay and let the cord loose in the water, then ducked under it and pressed the purge valve on his rebreather, sending the length of cord writhing like a snake towards the surface beside the man. ‘Fire in the hole,’ he said. There was a ripple of light and a crack as the cord detonated, and then a flash of orange as the gas in the chamber ignited. The man’s legs trembled for a moment, and then went still. His arms slowly dropped down, hanging lifeless.

Costas glanced at Jack. ‘Two down.’ They swam to the base of the shaft, and looked up. The third Russian, the one with the Chechnya tattoo, was where he was supposed to be, clinging to the wood on the edge of the shaft about fifteen metres above them. ‘I saw him down here at the base of the shaft to begin with,’ Costas said. ‘Bad idea. He’ll be way beyond his no-stop time. And all that alcohol should help to give him some nice little cramps as he goes up.’

They began to rise, letting their computers take over and adjust their buoyancy to maintain the optimal ascent rate. Another minute down there and they would have been doing a ten-minute stop on the way up, impossible with the tank pressure they had left. Jack calmed his breathing, taking strong, deep breaths, sensing the change as the rebreather increased the proportion of oxygen in the gas mix, feeling it cleanse his blood. The last ten metres would be on pure oxygen, the critical time to avoid the bends. He looked up. The Russian was rising way above them, far too fast, close to the surface. ‘He must have decided to take us out at the entry point,’ Jack said.

‘He won’t be able to move, if he’s still alive.’

Three minutes later they reached the ten metres mark, where the computer halted them for two minutes. Jack’s mind had been blank for the ascent, as if he knew that contemplating what might happen at any moment with the bomb was simply a waste of effort, when his whole system, body and mind, needed to focus on the battle to keep him from succumbing to the effects of pressure and nitrogen build-up. But now, floating still in the water and seeing the shimmering pool of the surface above, he suddenly, desperately wanted to get out. The shock wave from the explosion would be virtually instantaneous, and they would die here as quickly as they would have done with the bomb beside them. He saw Rebecca’s face again. He had to survive.

Costas signalled him, and they began to rise, coming out of the shaft into the pool in the chamber. Jack saw the man’s fins where he had pulled himself out and was lying on the edge, one leg drawn up. They both rose out of the water, cautiously. The man was on his side, his tanks still on but his mask and hood pulled off. He was moaning, saying something in Russian. He tried to move, and groaned. Costas crawled up out of the water, snapped up his visor and leaned over the man’s face. He was drooling, one side of his face collapsed, and he stared at Costas in desperation. Costas picked up the man’s regulator mouthpiece, and sniffed it. He crinkled his nose and dropped the regulator, looking at Jack. ‘This man’s been drinking. Should never have gone diving.’

The man feebly raised one arm. He spoke in heavily accented English. ‘My arm. I can’t feel it. Help me.’

Costas leaned over him again, took his chin in his hand and twisted it savagely, raising the man’s face close to his own. ‘Remember what you said to me before we went in? I’ll fucking break you before today is over. I remember that. I remember that well.’ He jabbed his other hand at the water, wrenching the Russian’s head so he could see it. ‘Well, Chechnya. This is my world. That’s why I’m walking out of here, and you’re not. You trespass in my world, you die.’ He let go of the man’s head, backed into the water and made a show of wiping his hand on his suit.

‘My leg. I can’t straighten it,’ the man continued.

‘That’s why they call it the bends.’

‘Help me. Please. Help me.’

Costas paused. ‘Well, Chechnya, you have a choice. With all that nitrogen fizzing in your bloodstream, another bubble will form, a big one, and go to your brain. Maybe it will kill you straight away, maybe not. Maybe you’ll live for hours, screaming in pain, insane. And then you will die. Or you can go back down and join your friends. Going deep, the pressure will ease your pain. And you will drown, an easier death.’

The man pathetically waved his right hand as if to reach for his regulator, and flapped one fin. ‘Help me get in. I can’t move.’

Costas sighed. ‘It seems you’ve made your choice.’ He turned to go, wading towards the entrance to the sump, behind Jack. They both crouched through the hole created by the rockfall, and knelt in the water on the other side. They could see a glimmer of light through the water from the pool where they had entered, where they had left Wladislaw only forty minutes before. Costas felt the rock, peering at it, then looked at the man still visible in the background, groaning. He unhooked the remainder of the detonation cord from his gear, coiled it into a crack at the top of the rockfall and crimped a blasting cap on to it. Then he glanced at Jack. ‘Ready?’ Jack nodded. Costas kept one hand on the cap, and stared back through the jagged hole. The man was moaning, his eyes pointing in different directions, sightless.

‘Hey, Chechnya,’ Costas bellowed. ‘Happy hangover.’ He clicked the cap, snapped shut his visor and dropped down into the sump, quickly finning behind Jack up into the green pool. There was a thump and a rumble of falling rock. Costas came up alongside Jack, visor to visor, and they rose to the surface. ‘Three down,’ Jack said.

‘Not for a little while yet, I hope,’ Costas said grimly.

They broke surface. The light bulb was still on. Jack quickly scanned the tunnel up the line of the train track. There was no one to be seen. Wladislaw must have followed his instructions. Good. He dragged himself on to the edge of the pool, then quickly unhooked his hoses and his rebreather unit, slipping it off. He unhooked his helmet and dumped it beside him, and took a deep breath. Costas did the same, then sniffed loudly. ‘It smells better here than when we left. That vodka breath. Phew.’

‘How’s your deco?’

Costas glanced at his gauge. ‘Fine. You?’

‘Three minutes margin.’

‘My guess is we’re going to go flying. We’ll have to go in the recompression chamber on the Embraer.’

Jack stood while Costas unzipped the back of his e-suit. He remembered claustrophic hours spent in that chamber, a long metal tube with barely enough room to kneel in.

‘At least we can lie down,’ Costas said, yanking on the zipper.

Jack grunted. He bent down and drew the neck seal over his head, then pulled out his arms. He saw that the suit was still covered in blood. ‘Hard stuff to get off, blood,’ he murmured, turning to unzip Costas.

‘Forget it. What you did, you had to do.’

‘I don’t have a problem with that. I just mean a ruined e-suit.’

Costas pulled his own suit over his head and stepped out of the legs, and Jack did the same with his. They both quickly went to Costas’ bag and got dressed, zipping up their fleeces. Jack went back and took the bag with the swastika box from his e-suit belt and tucked it under his arm. Costas delved in his bag and pulled out two small bottles of water and two energy drinks, and they both squatted on their haunches, drinking. Jack finished the water, then uncapped the other drink. ‘I couldn’t help noticing. Some good archaeology down there.’

‘Jesus, Jack.’

‘You had your fix. The bomb.’

‘Jack, for all the Neolithic hand axes and little statues in the world, I wouldn’t go back in there again.’

Jack took a deep swig, then stood up, nodding. ‘Roger that.’ He dropped the bottle in the bag. ‘Right. We have to get cracking. Got everything we need?’ He patted his pockets, feeling for his things. Costas did the same, then looked at him, and put his hand on his shoulder. Costas’ hair was matted and his face lined with exhaustion, but his eyes were cold and determined. ‘We can leave all this here. All we need is your phone.’

‘I know where that is. We need to get in touch with the kidnappers and convince them that we’ve got what they want. They’ll have been expecting Chechnya to have it, having disposed of us. But if they’ve got any intelligence, what’s happened won’t come as a complete surprise. Not the desired outcome, but it doesn’t change the balance of power. They’ve still got what we want, and we’ve got what they want. We have to keep them thinking that.’

There was a sudden rumble, a deep vibration that sent a shimmer across the pool of water, a pulse of energy that coursed through the rock. They both stood silently for a moment, watching dust shake off the walls of the chamber. The rumble stopped. The tunnel ahead was still clear.

Costas coughed. ‘Remote detonation. Always the safest way. I timed that perfectly, don’t you think?’

Jack narrowed his eyes. ‘Let’s move.’

Ten minutes later they left the lift shaft and went straight into the office where they had first met Wladislaw. Jack found his phone on the desk pad, exactly as he had instructed. Good man. He picked it up and switched it on, tapping his fingers impatiently while it connected, and then he pressed the code for the IMU secure channel. It was picked up immediately. ‘Jack.’

‘Ben.’

‘Status.’

‘The Lions are at the Gate.’ It was a code they had prearranged in case anyone might be eavesdropping on the line. ‘I repeat, The Lions are at the Gate.’

‘Copy that. Now switch off your phone and put it down.’ Jack did as instructed. Seconds later there was a muffled ringing sound. He went round to the front of the desk and pulled open a drawer. It was another phone, evidently Wladislaw’s personal phone he had left there. Jack picked it up. ‘Yes?’

‘Okay, Jack.’ It was Ben again. ‘Wladislaw called us when he returned to the office and I told him to leave his phone there. I’m using a disposable. We can’t be too careful. In about two minutes you’ll be answering your phone again. It’s a pre-recorded message that will only come through once. It’s essential that you listen to what I’m about to say now.’

‘Copy that.’ Jack did as instructed, staring hard at the ground as Ben spoke. After less than a minute he lowered the phone and clicked it off. Almost immediately his iPhone rang, and he answered it. There was a crackle, and then he heard a voice, educated English but with a hint of an accent. ‘Dr Howard. This message presupposes that you have found what I want but your diving companions are unable to bring it to me. As you will know by now, your people have been given our instructions. You will wish to speak to your daughter.’ The crackle ended, there was a click and then a uniform hissing sound. He heard sounds of movement, a scuffle, then breathing close to the phone.

‘Dad?’

‘Rebecca.’ Thank God. ‘Are you all right?’ Jack’s mind raced. ‘You must be tired.’

‘Yes, but nice to stand here and imagine Orion.’

Jack’s mind raced. Night sky. A time zone ahead of where they were now. And the constellation Orion. She and Jack had stood on the battlements looking for it two nights ago, then realized it was still below the horizon. He had told her that he had always thought of Orion as his guardian, ever since he was a boy. So that was it. She really was there.

‘Orion’s looking after you, even if you can’t see him,’ Jack said carefully. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

‘It’s kind of, um, creepy, though. I could really do with a double vodka.’

Jack remembered what she had called Raitz. A creep. And what the US Marines she had befriended in Kyrgyzstan called a Russian male. A shot of vodka. Professor Raitz, and two Russian thugs. ‘You need to keep warm,’ Jack said slowly. ‘You should be inside.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad. We’re going back in now. I found us a place. It’s only just opened. You’d be amazed, Dad. It’s so cool.’ There was a sudden scuffling sound, then a guttural snarl, Russian, and another man’s voice in English. ‘Give it back to her,’ the voice said. Rebecca came on the line again. She was panting. ‘Sorry, Dad. I have to go. I love you. I just want to know. On the shipwreck. Did you find it?’

Jack was stunned. It seemed an age ago. A lifetime. He flashed back to the moment the day before when he had been carrying the shield upwards, imagining Rebecca looking down and seeing it. He swallowed hard. ‘We found it, Rebecca. Costas and I found it. You’ll be amazed.’

‘When do I get to see it?’

‘Tomor-’ The phone was snatched away, and went dead. He hoped Rebecca had heard the word. He turned to Costas, who had gone out of the room and now returned. Jack clenched his hands, felt the energy course through him. He was beyond tired, but those few words with Rebecca had kept the adrenalin pumping. ‘Okay. Here’s the plan. Ben’s got in touch with Wladislaw and he’s coming to pick us up. The Embraer’s fuelled and ready to go at Krakow airport. At Istanbul we transfer to the helicopter and then to Seaquest II. If all goes to plan, we should be there by about three a.m. Ben’s going to have a security team ready, as well as a section of Turkish navy commandos from the minesweeper.’

‘He’s told the authorities?’ Costas asked.

Jack shook his head. ‘Too risky. The kidnappers want the Lynx to fly to international waters, where they’re going to drop Rebecca in a Zodiac. They must have a vessel offshore. There’s obviously big money behind this. We don’t want an overzealous policeman jeopardizing the whole thing. But Ben’s told the minesweeper captain we suspect we’re being shadowed. Has to be kept top secret. The Turkish navy guys are fully prepped on the illegal antiquities trade and this is just what they’d love to get their teeth into. Officially it’s a covert training exercise. Ben will tell them about the kidnapping once they’re in position and you and I are inside.’ He heard a car draw up outside. ‘Here’s our ride. We’ve got to move, now.’

‘Where are we going?’

Jack looked at his hands. There was still blood in the cracks, under his fingernails. He thought of what he had just done, in the mine. He felt nothing. Nothing. He looked up, and gave Costas a steely look. ‘We’re going to Troy.’