The Mask of Troy

20

J ack crouched low against the bank of the watercourse, training his night-vision scope on the overgrown mound about a kilometre away across the fields. It was the first time for fifteen years that he had seen Troy from this vantage point, only a few hundred yards from the spot where he and Costas had excavated the ancient beach with the galley timbers from the time of the Trojan War. The dykes and marshy fields looked like no-man’s-land, an image of war. There was a hint of a breeze, and Jack remembered imagining Greek warriors standing silently among the rustling reeds, their spears black against the moonlight, waiting for the signal to move forward. Except they now knew it had not been like that. It had been a maelstrom of raging sea and hellfire, a wave of destruction that swept the warriors in their ships from this place up against the battlements, arrows storming down, engulfed in flames.

He never could have imagined being back here again in these circumstances, sighting the best approach route to confront the kidnappers who had taken his daughter. He put down the scope, took a deep drink from his water bottle, zipped up his fleece and slid down close to the river course where he could stand up without being seen from the mound. He had to keep moving. He had not slept while he and Costas had been on the Embraer from Krakow airport in Poland, cooped up for half the flight in the recompression chamber after their dive in the mine. His only thoughts had been of Rebecca. He knew she was out there. He had spoken to her on the cell phone the night before. And it might only be a matter of time before whoever was behind this determined that the palladion had not been in the mine after all, and that what Jack was doing now was a charade. If that happened, all bargaining chips were lost. Rebecca might became irrelevant to the kidnappers, yet too much of a liability to return alive.

He slithered along the mud bank to where Ben and Costas were waiting, just visible in the moonlight. He glanced at his watch. It was five a.m., and the time stipulated by the kidnapper was an hour from now. They had got here as fast as they could, with barely time to get their plan into action. Ben beckoned him over, and Jack and Costas hunched down, listening. ‘I’ve got to get my team in position now,’ Ben said. ‘Here’s the score. The kidnappers have come here because this is our turf. They know we’ve got carte blanche here from the authorities. We can clear the place, which we’ve done. There’s nobody else anywhere near the site tonight. All our personnel, Hiebermeyer, everyone, are back on Seaquest II. And the kidnappers are using us for the getaway. The Lynx is going to land in the car park at 0530. They’re going to leave in it, with Rebecca, once the exchange is made, and go directly to a vessel waiting for them beyond the twelve-mile territorial limit. Except they’re not going to do that. Because Jack doesn’t have what they want, only an empty box. So the only way they’re getting out of here is in a body bag or in cuffs. Am I right?’

‘Roger that,’ Costas muttered.

‘Costas has an iPhone. When he calls, my team goes in. Until then, you’re on your own. Jack, Costas has what I promised you. All clear?’

‘Copy that,’ Costas said. Ben disappeared into the darkness. Costas reached in his bag and took out Macalister’s Webley revolver. ‘Ben said he’s tested the loads. The accuracy’s phenomenal, but aim low and to the right because there’s an almighty kick. Something about a manstopper.’

Jack picked up the heavy revolver, weighing it in his hands, seeing that the chambers were loaded. He opened his khaki bag, took out the black box with the swastika emblem on the lid and put the revolver inside, in the space that had once held the Trojan palladion, with the impressed pocket in the shape of the reverse swastika removed to make space for the pistol. ‘That would be the flat-nosed bullet designed for maximum damage on impact.’

‘Sounds about right.’ Costas pulled out his own Beretta pistol from a shoulder holster and snapped the slide, checking that a round was chambered, then holstered it again. ‘Good to go?’

Jack closed the lid and put the box in his khaki bag, folding the flap over. ‘Good to go.’

Ten minutes later they were at the entrance to the underground watercourse some two hundred metres south-west of the mound. It was a low dell, surrounded by trees and dense undergrowth, where a muddy trickle came through a narrow tunnel that went underground towards Troy. It had been found by the Austrian excavators several years before, and was part of a water supply system that allowed the ancient Trojans to tap into a spring beyond the city walls. Jack followed Costas to the iron grid door, shut but with the lock hanging to one side. He gave a silent prayer of thanks to Hiebermeyer for having left it that way. The two men had spoken on the phone from the Embraer on the way to Istanbul airport. Maurice had come down to this spot the previous morning, while the excavation was still ongoing and before Rebecca had been kidnapped, and had managed to make his way through the tunnel as far as a low portal blocked up with rubble. He had cleared that single-handedly and got into the underground chamber he had reached previously by its other entrance, the passageway Jack would be following shortly. And if Maurice could get through this smaller tunnel, then Costas could make it too.

Jack ducked his head away from the wasps that were swarming around the entrance. He flicked on Costas’ headlamp and gave him a Maglite for back-up. They heard the helicopter approaching, clattering loudly over the citadel mound towards the far side, where it landed and powered down. ‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘That’s the cue. It’s 0535. I’m due to be in there at 0600. According to the time it took Maurice, you should be in position by then. Your entrance to the chamber will be on my right as I enter from the main passageway, and I’ll be looking for you. I’ll leave my bag outside and then return for it once I’ve made contact with the kidnappers. When you see me come back in and put the black box down, you might be taking a shot. I’ll try to make eye contact with Rebecca, warn her something is about to happen. We’ll have to play this as it comes.’

‘I’m moving now. Good luck, Jack.’

‘Good luck.’ Jack watched Costas slosh down the tunnel and disappear around a corner, then turned and made his way back towards the mound, walking openly once he had reached the main path, where anyone watching might have assumed he had come from the helicopter. He entered the deep trench where Hiebermeyer had been excavating, where they now knew Schliemann had worked as well. He passed the two gate guardians, the statues of ancient kings of Troy, and then went into the tunnel through the rubble, enlarged to over his height and shored up now with timber. He found a place to hide his bag. Maurice had told him on the phone what they had found, but nothing could have prepared him for it. There was a great bronze door, half ajar. He remembered how Gladstone had argued that the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae once had a beaten bronze door. And there in the middle was the symbol, the impression of the reverse swastika in a roundel, exactly as Dillen had told him, from the story recounted by the old foreman to Hugh and Peter. There were columns of green stone on either side, with meander pattern decoration, again exactly as in the Treasury of Atreus. He stepped through into a cavernous chamber, and switched on his diving torch, flashing it round. There was no noise, only a slight hollow echo, but he knew he was not alone.

‘Rebecca?’ he said. ‘Are you there?’

Still nothing. He could only wait. He looked around. It was an astonishing sight. Just as in the Treasury of Atreus, the chamber rose in a beehive shape, with corbelled masonry, but it was what was on the floor in front of him that was so astonishing. It was a circle of stone seats, set halfway to the centre of the chamber, a dozen of them, all identical. They were like seats he had seen in Bronze Age palaces before, in Knossos on Crete, in Egypt, in the citadels of the Near East. The thrones of kings. He panned his light over them. Each chair had an inscription on the back. He saw hieroglyphs on one, cuneiform on another, Hittite, Linear B. A council chamber of kings. He glimpsed something lustrous behind the seats, around the base of the chamber, as if the lower courses of masonry had been gilded. He panned his light sideways, to the wall nearest him, and stared in amazement.

Ingots. Metal ingots. There were hundreds of them, stacked to his height and higher, row upon row, surrounding the entire circular wall of the chamber. They were copper, dull green in his torchlight. And there were ingots of tin, absolutely distinctive, their silvery surface covered in a fine white corrosion dust. Each ingot was about a metre long, with arms at the corners like flayed oxhides, just as he had seen them on shipwrecks of the Bronze Age. Ingots being brought to the great palaces of the Aegean, copper from Cyprus, from the Levant, from the west. He stared at a tin ingot on top of the stack beside him. It had a stamp that he recognized. A stamp of the Cornovii, the prehistoric tribe inhabiting south-west Cornwall. So it was true. The Trojans were importing tin from the Cassiterides, the British Isles.

He stared back at the thrones, his mind in a turmoil. A council chamber of kings. Kings who had kept the peace. Kings who controlled the supply of metals for weapons, who doled it out among themselves, keeping the balance of power. Until one came along whose ambition, whose lust for power, could not be contained within these walls. One who had found a new, more deadly weapon, a better metal, harder, which made all of this stockpile of copper and tin redundant. Agamemnon, king of kings.

A light shone blindingly in his face, and someone grabbed his neck in a lock, twisting his arm behind his back. He had been expecting this, and did not resist. He was pushed and kicked forward, and then his neck was released and he was frisked. A voice came from the other side of the circle of stone seats, somewhere near the light. ‘Dr Howard.’

‘Where’s my daughter?’ Jack snarled. The man behind him yanked his head back, and Jack strained against him. ‘I want to see my daughter.’ The man got his hand over Jack’s eyes, then pushed him forward roughly, releasing him. Jack blinked hard, and saw three figures against the stack of ingots on the back wall. One of them was Rebecca. A man was holding a pistol to her head. The figure on her other side stepped forward, put his torch on one of the seats with the beam angled upwards and stopped a few feet in front of Jack.

‘Dr Howard.’

Jack stared at him. ‘Professor Raitz.’

‘Fortunately Rebecca had her passport on her and we were able to fly to Istanbul first class, a distinguished architectural historian and his new girlfriend. I told her we would kill you and Costas if she didn’t behave.’

‘Why are you doing all this?’

‘Because you have something I want.’ His voice was suddenly shrill. ‘Where is it?’

‘You can keep the Goebbels impression for the bathroom mirror, Raitz. It really doesn’t work.’

Raitz clicked his fingers, and Jack was suddenly winded, on his knees on the floor, unable to breathe. He gasped, then struggled up, staggering forward, feeling the throbbing pain in his back where the man behind had slammed into him. As he got up, he scanned the other side of the chamber, facing south-west. He could see another opening in the wall, with rubble in front. That must be it. The entrance to the tunnel. Costas should be there by now. Jack would stall for another few minutes. Then he had to take a gamble.

‘Now. Again,’ Raitz said, bringing his face close to Jack. ‘Where is it?’

‘Why do you want it, Raitz? Your own private collection?’

‘For the Fuhrermuseum,’ Raitz said quietly.

Jack pretended to stifle a laugh. ‘The Trojan swastika? The palladion? What does that have to do with the very dead little Austrian?’

‘It is the key to the greatest hidden art treasures in the world. I will find them, and they will be the centrepiece of my museum, to perpetuate the memory and vision of the Fuhrer for all time.’

‘And your colleague? The one I spoke to on the phone?’

Raitz looked nonplussed for a moment. ‘Of course. He has his own interests. Family interests. Gold, antiquities, not art.’

‘You and I need to talk about that.’

Raitz snapped his fingers again, and the man in the shadows beside Rebecca grabbed her arm and shoved the pistol closer. Raitz took out his own pistol from his overcoat pocket, a small Walther that he fumbled with and cocked. ‘Now. You tell me or Rebecca dies.’

‘You’re getting better at this, Raitz.’ Jack gestured back to the entrance. ‘You didn’t think I was going to come in here with it, did you? I needed to see that Rebecca was here. I’ve hidden it outside. I’ll go and get it. It’s in the black box, as we discovered it in the mine.’

Raitz snapped again. The man behind Jack grabbed him by the neck and pulled him roughly back. ‘Get it,’ Raitz said.

‘By myself. This man stays in here.’

Raitz gestured impatiently. The man let go of Jack, and then moved around in front of him. He was another Russian, like the ones in the mine, a thug. Rebecca had said there were two. The second one was holding the pistol to her head. Jack had seen no others. He turned back towards the entrance, making a show of staggering, still being in pain. He reached the edge of the rubble and pulled out the black box, and then turned and went back, holding it in front of him, displaying the Nazi swastika emblem. As he walked slowly toward the centre of the chamber, he saw out of the corner of his eye something in the dark entrance to the right. It was Costas. Jack looked hard at Rebecca, who stared at him, then he nodded his head, almost imperceptibly. She lowered herself to the ground until she was squatting on her haunches, hands pressed against her ears, head bent over and eyes closed, and began sobbing, loudly. Raitz stepped back towards her, waving his pistol. ‘Shut up, Rebecca.’ She kept sobbing and wailing. ‘Shut up!’ he yelled.

At that moment Jack saw Costas’ Beretta aimed out over the stack of ingots towards the man beside Rebecca. He would have a perfect head shot, with no risk of hitting her as long as she remained crouched, hidden from Costas’ viewpoint. They just needed to divert the man’s attention, to get him to take his aim away from Rebecca, even momentarily. Suddenly Costas bellowed, ‘Hey! Where’s Chechnya!’ The two men and Raitz spun round, and the man beside Rebecca instinctively raised his pistol, aiming it into the darkness. There was a deafening crack from Costas’ Beretta and the man’s head disintegrated, leaving his body slumping over the ingots, his pistol falling from his hand. In the same instant Jack slammed backwards, sending the man behind him reeling. He fell forward, kicked open the box and took out the Webley, rolling over and aiming at the Russian’s chest, low and right as Ben had said. He pulled the trigger and the revolver kicked up, the massive report echoing through the chamber. The man remained upright, staring, a dark patch spreading over the front of his shirt, the hole where the bullet had gone through his sternum clearly visible. Jack saw that he had a Spetznaz tattoo on his wrist. The man suddenly dropped like a stone, leaving a spatter of blood all over the stack of ingots behind him. Jack turned, and saw Raitz staring like a scared rabbit, the Walther dangling from his hand. In one lightning movement Rebecca kicked upwards, catching Raitz full in the crotch. He howled in pain, doubled over and dropped the Walther, which Rebecca snatched up and trained on him. Costas was already there, aiming the Beretta at Raitz’s head. He rolled on the ground, groaning, and then slowly raised himself. Rebecca had come round beside Jack, who took the Walther and lowered the smoking Webley. He hugged her briefly, then pointed her to the entrance Costas had come in through, away from any further bullets. As she went towards it, Raitz raised himself up on his knees. ‘Don’t shoot. Please. Please.’

‘Nobody aims a gun at my daughter,’ Jack said coldly.

‘I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. I never would have harmed her.’

‘Well then, I think we might have to let him live, Costas.’

‘Right-oh.’ Costas kept the Beretta trained.

‘Let me see,’ Jack said. ‘Attempted murder, extortion, kidnapping. On Turkish territory. That means a Turkish prison.’

‘No,’ Raitz whispered. ‘Not that. I’d rather die.’

Costas levelled the Beretta at his eyes, holding it with two hands and sighting it. ‘You’d rather die? Really? Have you got the guts to die?’

‘No, please.’ Raitz fell forward on his knees, sobbing. ‘Don’t shoot.’

Jack held the Webley ready. ‘Better still. We’re in a military zone. That means you come under the jurisdiction of the Turkish military. At least it’ll save you the public humiliation of a trial by jury. You’ll get a tribunal of Turkish officers. They’re good men. I know plenty of them personally. But I don’t need to call in any favours. They’ll see that justice is done.’

‘Just outside Diyarbakir, isn’t it?’ Costas said.

Jack nodded. ‘In the desert on the way to the Armenian border. Just about the worst place in the world. A sweathole in summer, freezing in winter. Maximum-security military prison. Murderers, psychopaths, homosexual rapists, that kind of thing. No human rights there, because the inmates barely count as human. You go in there, you don’t come out. Throw away the key. Simple as that.’

‘We can do a deal,’ Raitz said hoarsely, craning his head up, his eyes desperate. ‘I’ve got original documents, maps. Treasure maps.’

‘Das Agamemnon-Code?’ Jack said.

‘I know nothing about that.’

Costas waved his pistol. ‘We may as well kill him, Jack. This is getting us nowhere. Rebecca, block your ears.’

‘No!’ Raitz begged. ‘Please. I’ll tell you. In a safe in my house. Under the floorboards in the cellar. At the bottom of the stairs.’

Jack kept aiming. ‘Only the one document?’

‘Only one with those words. But there are more. Many more. Photos. Maps to bunkers. A treasure trove. Just don’t hand me over to the Turks. Please God. I can give you the key to untold riches. All the lost treasures of the Nazis.’

‘You mean in the other safe in the study? Or the one behind the bookcase in your office in the Courtauld? Our security guys are pretty adept lock-breakers, wouldn’t you say, Costas? Both safes empty now, I’m afraid.’

‘ Sheisse,’ Raitz muttered, staring at the ground. ‘Sheisse.’ He looked up at Jack again, suddenly defiant, tapping his head. ‘In here. Much more in here. I’ll do a deal with the Turks. Just like Schliemann did.’

‘Schliemann didn’t mess around with the Turks. They were the ones who were using him. Anyway, they won’t believe you, without documentation. And they won’t listen to you where you’re going. Just another insane Westerner babbling away in solitary confinement in a hellhole Eastern prison.’

‘For the rest of his life,’ Costas said.

‘Not a very long life, I would imagine, especially if they ever let him out of solitary and the other prisoners get their hands on him.’

‘What can I do?’ Raitz sobbed.

Jack put the Webley in his fleece pocket, took out a small notebook and pencil, walked over and knelt in front of Raitz. ‘Here’s the deal. You’ll do time, but I can keep you out of that place. I can even put in a word for repatriation to a British prison. And you know how lenient judges are in Britain. You’re still a young man. You could remake your career. Even argue that you were forced to do this against your will. A British court would probably believe you. You have lots of influential friends, former students and colleagues, politicians.’ Jack pushed the notebook towards him. ‘All you have to do is write down one name. The name of the person who’s been controlling you.’

‘He’ll find me and kill me. Whatever it is he wants in that bunker is too precious to him. He’s got more of these thugs. Russians, mostly, but they call themselves Totenkopfe. Ironic, isn’t it? I’m the one with the Nazi background, not…’

‘Not who?’ Jack demanded.

‘He’ll kill me. They’ll hunt me down.’

‘I don’t think that should be a concern where you’re going.’

Raitz was still for a moment, then put his hand on the notebook. He let it rest there, then picked up the pencil and scrawled a name. Jack quickly took the pad, stared at it, thought hard for a moment, then pocketed it. ‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘Why? You wanted your absurd Fuhrermuseum. What on earth did a man like that want?’

‘Gold,’ Raitz said. ‘Gold, and works of art. Everyone knows he has Marseille gangsters in his background. The press love it. He’s used it to his advantage. A charming Algerian intellectual, with a bit of rogue in his genes. The truth is, that wasn’t just in the past. He’s secretly in charge of the family crime syndicate. No longer just small-time gangsters. One of the biggest in Europe. Worth hundreds, hundreds of millions.’

‘So he was interested in all your leads? All the material on hidden art you’d collected?’

Raitz shook his head. ‘No. Only the Agamemnon Code. Only that one bunker in the forest.’

‘He was playing you,’ Costas said.

‘You’ve been a fool,’ Jack said to Raitz angrily. ‘A bloody fool, duped into going along with someone who had no interest in your cause, let alone antiquities or art.’

‘You’re wrong. He said-’

‘I don’t care what he said. You’re a naive academic, Raitz. You’ve forgotten what real people are like.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look around you,’ Jack said. ‘All this bronze, all this raw material for weapons, enough to equip all the armies of the ancient Aegean world: the Mycenaeans, the Trojans, every one of them. Yet all of it redundant. It’s because a new metal had been forged, iron. And then think of today. People are always on the search for the new weapon. Or the weapon that may already have been devised and then been hidden away. Think of the underworld since the fall of the Soviet Union. First they were on the hunt for nuclear weapons, components for dirty bombs. Then, with the revelation of what the Russians had taken from Nazi Germany, the lost treasure of Priam, and all the revived interest over the past few years in hidden Nazi art, their ears pricked up. They’d forgotten about the Nazis, about what might still be hidden. About the dreadful weapons that probably still lie in those bunkers today.’

‘I know nothing of weapons,’ Raitz mumbled. ‘This is nothing to do with me.’

Jack picked up the empty black box and tapped it. ‘In 1945, a Luftwaffe officer took the Trojan palladion from the salt mine in Poland to the bunker near Belsen you know about. He was a fanatic. He was one of those who had been activated, to be there, poised ready to fulfil Hitler’s final decree. Not the Nero Decree, the destruction of the Reich. No. The Agamemnon Code. Armageddon. There were others activated, too. We believe at least one of them was there, in the forest, waiting, because of what happened. The officer took the palladion into the bunker, but a few days later, while he was waiting for the final order, he was shot by British soldiers. Then the SS guards at the nearby camp took a girl into the bunker and raped her. She saw the palladion. It was her drawing of it that gave us the clue. We knew it was there all along, not in the salt mine. We knew that two officers, one British and one American, were told about it, and went to investigate. Nobody knows what happened to them. But it is possible that the other fanatic was there, waiting for the final activation signal from Berlin, and they died together in a fight. Whatever was in there that was so lethal is still there today.’

‘But the palladion was the key to opening a storeroom of art,’ Raitz said weakly.

Jack waved his hand dismissively. ‘Is that the story Saumerre sold you? Why have a special key for that, some sacred symbol? No. It was the key to something completely different, much more sinister. I believe the palladion may have been partly meteoritic, according to an ancient Trojan myth about its origins. The reverse swastika itself is hardly a unique key, but there could have been a unique magnetic signature that made it the only way of opening the door.’

‘The door to what?’ Raitz said.

‘We can only guess. The worst the Nazis could come up with. Not nuclear, which they were never close to achieving. Perhaps not chemical, which might be difficult to propagate widely without aircraft or missiles. That leaves biological. And that’s the worst. Typhus. Plague. Look what happened to the world with the flu epidemic in 1918. That would have been fresh in the minds of the Nazi scientists. They might even have had access to diseased bodies. They certainly had access to plenty of live humans for experimentation, in that camp. They could have reawakened the Spanish influenza virus, and even mutated it. If that’s still in the bunker, if it was released, it could kill hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions. It could wipe out civilization as we know it. Is that part of your Nazi dream?’

‘My God,’ Raitz said. ‘My God. What have I done? ’

‘What you can do,’ Jack said, kneeling down in front of him, ‘is help us. We need to know whether Saumerre was operating solely for his own business interests. Such a weapon could be worth millions. Billions. We need to know whether he is interested as a middleman, or whether there was any other motivation. Did he say anything, did you hear anything? If I believe you, that’s another mark in your favour with the courts.’

Raitz looked pale, and put his hand to his forehead. His voice was shaky. ‘I can’t think of anything. Anything at all. We only ever spoke about it in the British Museum where we first met, where he passed me the code document, and then in that ghastly flat in London where they murdered the Dutchman. It was only ever family interest with him. The family business. Marseille mafia. It was just money.’

Costas nodded at him, still keeping the Beretta trained. ‘Just out of curiosity. What’s Saumerre’s religion?’

‘Saumerre? Muslim, of course. His grandfather was from Algeria. So what? There are millions of Muslims in Algeria, in France. And look at him. He’s hardly a terrorist.’

‘Who is?’ Costas murmured.

‘He did say something. When we parted at that flat.’ Raitz stared at Jack, clearly thinking hard, then sank down and put his head in his hands. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Why didn’t I see?’

Jack reached over and lifted his head up. ‘What?’

‘I said I was doing this for the Fuhrer. For the cause. For a museum, God help me. He said something in Arabic, about Allah, but then seemed apologetic, as if he’d let something slip. I thought it was odd, as he’d been so adamant about this being all to do with gold and antiquities and money. But I thought he was just repeating a familiar phrase. I remember it. It was Jazaka Allahu Khairan. May Allah reward us with good. A perfectly normal expression for a Muslim. He even said so, when he explained it. But maybe… my God. My God .’

Jack leaned over and took Raitz’s chin in his hands. ‘Listen to me, and listen well. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, anywhere, my people will know. You’ll be getting that one-way ticket to Diyarbakir. Play your cards right, and I’ll see what I can do for you.’

Jack nodded at Costas, who took the iPhone from his belt and pressed it. Seconds later Ben appeared at the entrance to the chamber flanked by two IMU security men with handguns drawn, and then a team of black-clad Turkish navy commandos with MP-5 sub-machine guns, who quickly filed into the chamber, training their weapons on Raitz and the two bodies, and then kicking the bodies. Jack recognized the officer in charge, did a thumbs-up at him and pointed to Raitz. The officer gestured, and two of his men dragged Raitz to his feet, handcuffed him behind his back, and then pushed him through the entrance and out of sight down the tunnel. They could hear the clatter of a helicopter somewhere close by. Rebecca had come running from her hiding place, and Jack took her in his arms and held her tight.

‘I hope I never see him again,’ Rebecca murmured.

‘Are you all right? Did they touch you? Thank God you’re here.’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’m fine. What about you?’

One of the security team, a woman, passed them each a small water bottle, and they uncapped and drained them together, then clicked the bottles together. Jack smiled at her. ‘I’m fine. A little tired.’ He gestured at Ben and the security team. ‘Bet they’re itching to hear your story.’

Costas came up to them, and eyed Rebecca shrewdly. ‘Nice kick. Ouch.’

‘Ben taught me that.’

Jack nodded at Ben, who had joined them. ‘Yeah, he’s pretty good like that.’

Ben nodded, and looked intently at him. ‘Got a result?’

Jack handed him the notebook. ‘Got a result.’

‘I’m on to it.’ Ben tapped his BlackBerry, Googling the name. ‘Saumerre. Keynote speaker at a European Union cultural affairs conference in Brussels today.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Should be on the podium in roughly forty-five minutes.’

‘Okay. He’s going to be on tenterhooks waiting for a result from here. I imagine Raitz would have been planning to call him about now. Get Raitz’s cell phone and try the contact numbers. I want to be on the phone with Saumerre before he makes that speech.’

‘What are you going to say to him?’

‘I’m going to tell him that I know everything about his criminal activities. Enough to destroy his political career. That career is undoubtedly crucial to his, shall we say, business interests, as well as to the bigger picture that may lie behind all this. He won’t want to jeopardize his status and influence, as that’s worth a huge amount to him, to the organization he may represent.’

‘Fill me in.’

‘We need to check any affiliation he might have with extremist Islamist terrorism.’

Ben peered at him. ‘Okay. Got you.’

‘What’s the latest on the bunker?’

‘We’ve been overtime on that one. My people have scoured everything they can get their hands on that’s not under the Official Secrets Act, and called in a few favours to see some things we shouldn’t have. We knew the site of the camp was under a NATO airbase built fairly soon after the war. The construction workers came across a pit full of hundreds of skeletons, all shot. We now think we can pin the likely location of that sector of forest with the bunker to an area well within the military compound, actually beneath the runway tarmac. That’s good news as far as we’re concerned, Jack. Nobody’s going to go burrowing around there and it’s about as secure a site as you could get. It’s still an active base, two Luftwaffe squadrons flying Tornados. The question is, how long will that last, with the Cold War standoff finished and so many bases being mothballed?’

‘Have you told anyone in the military about the bunker yet?’

‘You said to hang fire, and I’ve done that. It’s your call. When they built the base, there was no ground-penetrating radar, but any survey today in advance of new building work might reveal it. The runways get resurfaced routinely but are pretty old underneath, and at some point they’ll redo them if the base is kept running. There’s probably no structural issue with the bunker under the runway, as it’ll be buried very deep, but if you’re right, we may need to think about whether our NATO pilots should be taxiing and landing with JDAMs and who knows what other munitions with something just beneath their runway that may contain a deadly biological weapon.’

‘Okay. Good work. I’ll give you my decision when we’re out of here. Meanwhile, let’s catch Saumerre on the phone.’

‘I’m on to it.’

Rebecca waved at the other security people she knew, then detached herself from Jack and went down the passageway. Jack watched her stop and stare at the rubble wall, and then turn back to him. ‘Dad. I forgot to say. That ring Maurice found here, the signet ring? It was George Hoar. A famous American senator who knew Schliemann.’

Jack knew he had seen it before. ‘Of course. Hugh has Hoar’s copy of Schliemann’s Mycenae. The bookplate with the coat of arms in the front.’

Rebecca waved, then turned and spoke intently to the others, gesturing. Jack remembered Dillen’s account from Hugh of Schliemann’s foreman, and the men he had seen here that night in 1890. What was George Hoar doing here? Had Schliemann invited him to see this wonder he had begun to uncover? Jack remembered reading Hoar’s speeches to the US Senate against imperialism. Had Schliemann wanted to tell others what he thought had happened here, others who might find hope in this chamber for avoiding war in the future?

He looked at Rebecca again, and then at Ben, who gestured back, smiling and pointing at Rebecca and doing a thumbs-up. Jack returned the gesture. She was in the best possible hands. He and Costas were now the only ones left in the chamber, discounting the two bodies. Jack took out the Webley, clicked it open, ejected the cartridges into his hand and dumped them in his fleece pocket. Then he closed the Webley and held it tight. It was over. He could let go. He walked towards the ancient bronze door, and suddenly began to shake uncontrollably. He squatted down, then stood up, leaning against the door, the Webley still in his hand, bowing his head, trying to control it. Costas put a hand on his shoulder. Jack nodded at him, then stood upright, taking several deep breaths, and tried to relax. He swallowed hard. ‘Two days can seem like a very long time.’

‘We did it,’ Costas said. ‘You did what you said you’d do. You got Rebecca back.’

Jack high-fived Costas with one hand. ‘Right on,’ he said, wiping his eyes. Right on. He looked at the door he was holding, and then moved round to glance at the extraordinary symbol, the keyhole, visible from both sides.

‘I was thinking about the swastika, the meaning, the associations,’ Costas said. ‘On one side, the clockwise swastika, you’ve got war, horror, the Nazis. On the other side, peace, the balance of power, if you’re right about this place.’

Jack stared at it. ‘The ancient Hittites had a saying. “I give you a tablet of peace; I give you a tablet of war.” It’s the same thing, offering the same tablet, different sides. We make the choice. One side, war. The other side, peace.’

‘Unless you’re up against Agamemnon with ten thousand arrows of iron, or Hitler and the Nazis.’

‘Or a bunch of Russian thugs.’

‘No choice there.’

‘None at all.’

A team of Turkish naval ratings in overalls appeared with body bags and went past them into the chamber, quickly bagging the two bodies and carrying them out. Jack looked back at the extraordinary place Hiebermeyer had found, that Schliemann had found, thinking of the days ahead when this discovery would be splashed across world headlines. Hiebermeyer would take the cake, but Jack would be there alongside him once the shipwreck excavation was finished and he could reveal the splendours of the Shield of Achilles and the other discoveries. He looked around again. Had Schliemann truly dug this far, and seen this? Jack fervently hoped so, hoped that in the days before his death Schliemann had been vindicated, had found what he needed to prove he had been right. This place now would be put before the world as Jack imagined Schliemann would have planned, not simply as an astonishing discovery but also for its place in history, to show a time when men might have found a way to curb war. He looked around one final time, and sniffed. He could smell the blood in the chamber. He thought of it for a moment, of all that this meant. The smell of blood. The smell of iron. He shook his head. He looked at his fingernails, and realized that they still had the dark residue of blood in them from the Russian he had killed in the mine. At Troy, killing was never far away.

‘I think…’ he said to Costas, rubbing his stubble. ‘I think I might take a trip to Paris. Look at some art, you know. It’s been a while.’

‘While you’ve got a Trojan War shipwreck to excavate? No way. You mean you plan never to let Rebecca out of your sight again, ever.’

‘You can come too.’

‘Me? The Louvre? Dad and Uncle Costas? Accidentally in Paris, just when Rebecca happens to be on a school trip there? No way Rebecca will allow that. Let Ben deal with security. Anyway…’

‘Let me guess. You’ve got a submersible to fix. And Jeremy’s waiting.’

‘Uncanny mind-reading ability.’

‘What do you expect? That’s how I’ve saved your life so many times.’

‘Huh? What? Let’s just get that right. Who defused that mine?’

‘You didn’t defuse it. You activated it.’

‘And what about in there? Covering your back like that?’

Jack put his hand on Costas’ shoulder. ‘Yeah, yeah. What would I do without you?’ He cracked a tired grin. ‘I need to get under the sea again. Let’s get out of here.’