In the brief lull that followed, York despatched two of the crew topside, the rising wind threatening gear that needed lashing to the deck. Jack quickly interjected to focus discussion on the matter to hand, the urgency of his tone reflecting the short time now available until Seaquest arrived on site.
“We must be sure we hit the right spot first time. You can be certain we’re under satellite surveillance right now, under the eyes of people who will not buy the story of hydrographic research for long.”
One of the ex-Navy men put up a hand. “Excuse me, sir, but what exactly is it we’re after?”
Jack moved aside to let the crew see the computer screen in the front of the console. “Mustafa, I’ll let you explain how we got here.”
Mustafa called up the isometric image of the Black Sea and swiftly ran through their interpretation of the papyrus text, advancing the boat along the shoreline until it reached the south-eastern sector. Now they had left their final port of call, Jack had decided to take the crew of Seaquest fully into his confidence. Those who had not yet heard the details stood mesmerized; even the veterans were transfixed by the immensity of a find that seemed to loom so fabulously out of the mists of legend.
“We reach target point by following the 150-metre depth contour, the shoreline before the flood. It swings out to sea as we move east from Trabzon. At present Seaquest is just over twelve nautical miles offshore but we’ll gradually head further out as we go east.”
He tapped a key and the image transformed to a close-up map.
“This is our best-fit scenario for Atlantis. It’s an area of seabed twenty nautical miles long by five miles wide. The 150-metre depth contour runs along the north side, so what we’re looking at here was all dry land. If we lower the sea level to that contour, we get some idea of its appearance before the flood.”
The image transformed to show an inland plain leading to a ridge along the coast several kilometres long. Beyond it was the volcano.
“There’s not much detail because there’s so little bathymetric data for this area. But we’re convinced the site must be either the ridge or the volcano. The ridge rises a hundred metres above the ancient shoreline. The trouble is, there’s no acropolis, no outcrop for a citadel. The papyrus is difficult to understand without it.”
“The volcano is the outstanding landmark,” Howe observed. “The north-west side forms a series of terraced platforms before it reaches a cliff. A citadel at this point would have been impressively situated, with views for miles on either side. You can imagine a town spreading along the lower slopes beside the seashore.”
“Defence was probably a factor, though not an overriding one if there were no other nearby city states,” Jack asserted. “The only threat might have been marauding bands of hunter-gatherers, a last residue from the Ice Age, but they would have been few in number. Finding high ground was mainly about avoiding floodplains and marshland.”
“What about volcanic activity?” York asked.
“No significant eruption for well over a million years,” Mustafa replied. “What you see today is occasional vental activity, geysers of gas and steam that spew out as pressure inside the core periodically builds up.”
They looked up at the virtual-reality screen where they could now just make out the island on the horizon. It was the peak of the volcano that had remained above water after the inundation. The wisps of steam rising from its summit seemed to join the grey and lowering sky, the leading edge of the storm that was rolling in from the north with alarming speed.
Jack spoke again. “In antiquity seismic events were almost invariably viewed as signs from the gods. A volcano with low-key activity could have become a focus for ritual observance, perhaps one of the original motivations for settling at this spot. In such a fertile region I’d expect both the volcano and the ridge to be occupied. But we must choose between the two. We may not have the chance to stake a second claim before unwelcome visitors arrive. We’ve got twenty minutes before Seaquest is over that ridge. I welcome any suggestions.”
There was another brief hiatus while Jack conferred with York. They made several adjustments on the navigational console and scrolled through the radar surveillance images. As the two men turned back towards the assembled crew, Katya produced her palm computer and tapped in a sequence of commands.
“Either place would fit the text,” she said. “Both the ridge and the volcano overlooked a wide valley to the south with distant mountains and salt lakes in between.”
“Does the papyrus tell us anything more that might help?” one of the crew asked.
“Not really.” Katya peered at the text again and shook her head. “The final fragments of writing seem to refer to the interior of the citadel.”
“There is something else.”
They all looked at Costas, who had been staring intently at the image of the island as it became larger and more clearly defined. He drew his gaze away and turned to Katya.
“Give us that first phrase after reaching Atlantis.”
Katya tapped a command and read from the screen.
“Under the sign of the bull.”
They all looked questioningly at Costas.
“You’re familiar with the rooftop bar in the Maritime Museum at Carthage.”
There was a general murmur of assent.
“The view across the Bay of Tunis to the east, the evening sun splashing its rosy light on the sea, the twin mountain peaks of Ba’al Qarnain piercing the sky in the background.”
They all nodded.
“Well, perhaps fewer of you will be so familiar with the view first thing in the morning. The midsummer sun rises directly over the saddle between the peaks. To the Phoenicians this was a holy mountain, sacred to the sky god. Ba’al Qarnain means Two-Horned Lord.” He turned to Jack. “I believe sign of the bull refers to the profile of that island.”
They all looked up at the looming landmass on the screen.
“I’m puzzled,” Howe cut in. “From where we are the island doesn’t look anything like that.”
“Try another direction,” Costas said. “We’re looking south-east. What about the view from the shoreline, from below the volcano where a settlement would have been?”
Mustafa quickly tapped the keyboard to reorientate the view from the north-east, increasing the magnification as he did so to bring the viewpoint down to the ancient shoreline beneath the volcano.
There was a gasp of astonishment as the image locked into place. Above them loomed two peaks separated by a deep saddle.
Costas looked at the screen triumphantly. “There, ladies and gentlemen, are our bull’s horns.”
Jack grinned broadly at his friend. “I knew you’d do something useful eventually.” He turned to York.
“I think we have our answer. Lay in a course for that island at maximum speed.”
THE TWIN FLOODLIGHTS ON EITHER SIDE OF the Aquapods cast a brilliant swath of illumination on the seabed, the beams angled inward to converge five metres below. The light reflected off millions of particles of suspended silt as if they were passing through endless veils of speckly haze. Isolated rocky outcrops reared up and disappeared behind as they pressed on at maximum speed. To the left the bottom dropped off sharply into the abyss, the desolate grey of the sea floor sliding into a forbidding blackness devoid of all life.
The intercom crackled.
“Jack, this is Seaquest. Do you read me? Over.”
“We read you loud and clear.”
“The drone has got something.” York’s voice was edged with excitement. “You should reach its position in about five hundred metres by maintaining your present trajectory. I’m sending the co-ordinates so you can program in a fix.”
Earlier that day, the island had loomed out of the horizon like some mythical apparition. Just before Seaquest arrived, the sea had gone dead calm, an eerie lull that seemed to draw up its vapours in a ghostly pall. As the wind picked up again and curled the mist towards the barren shore, they felt like explorers who had chanced upon some lost world. With its lack of vegetation and sheer rock the island seemed old beyond belief, a craggy wasteland reduced by time and weather to its bare essence. Yet if their instincts were right, it was here that all the hopes and potential of mankind had first taken root.
They had brought Seaquest to a halt two nautical miles west of the island. For a reconnaissance towards its submerged slopes they had used a sonar drone rather than the ROV, which was limited to visual survey. For three hours now there had been nothing unusual in the sonar readout, and they had made the decision to deploy the Aquapods as well. Speed was now paramount.
Jack gave a thumbs-up to Costas, who was hugging the seabed at the 140 metre contour. They could sense each other’s excitement, a thrill of anticipation that needed no exchange of words. From the moment of the telephone call when Hiebermeyer first uttered that word from the papyrus, Jack had known they would be propelled to some greater revelation. All through the painstaking process of translation and decipherment he had felt supremely confident that this was the one, that the stars were all in alignment this time. Yet the pace of events since they cracked the code had left little time for reflection. Only days before he had been elated beyond belief by the Minoan wreck. Now they were on the cusp of one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.
The Aquapods slowed to a crawl and they continued in silence, each man aware of the other through their Plexiglas domes as the yellow pods inched forward a few metres apart in the gloom.
Moments later a vista of spectral shapes began to materialize out of the haze. They had studied the images of the Neolithic village off Trabzon in anticipation of this moment. But nothing could have prepared them for the reality of entering a place which had been lost to the world for almost eight thousand years.
Suddenly it was happening.
“Slow down.” Jack spoke with bated breath. “Take a look at that.”
What had seemed strangely regular undulations in the seabed took on a new form as Jack fired a blast from his water jet to clear away the sediment. As it settled they could see the gaping mouths of a pair of huge pottery jars, buried upright side by side between low retaining walls. Another blast revealed a second pair of jars, and identical undulations continued upslope as far as they could see.
“It’s a storehouse, probably for grain,” Jack said. “They’re just like the pithoi at Knossos. Only four thousand years older.”
Suddenly a larger shape appeared before them, completely blocking their way ahead. For a moment it seemed as if they had come to the edge of the world. They were at the base of an enormous cliff extending on the same line in either direction, its sheer wall broken by ledges and fissures like a quarry face. Then they saw curious rectangular patches of pitch blackness, some at regular intervals on the same level.
They realized with amazement what they were looking at.
It was a huge conglomeration of walls and flat roofs, broken by windows and entranceways, all shrouded in a blanket of silt. It was like the Neolithic village but on a gigantic scale. The buildings rose four or five storeys, the highest blocks reached by terraces of rooftop platforms linked by stairways and ladders.
They halted their Aquapods and gazed in awe, forcing their minds to register an image that seemed more fantasy than fact.
“It’s like some huge condominium,” Costas marvelled.
Jack shut his eyes hard and then opened them again, disbelief turning to wonder as the silt stirred up by the Aquapods began to settle and reveal the unmistakable signs of human endeavour all round them.
“People got about on the rooftops, through those hatches.” His heart was thumping, his mouth was dry, but he forced himself to speak in the dispassionate tones of a professional archaeologist. “My guess is each of these blocks housed an extended family. As the group got larger they built upwards, adding timber-framed mud-brick storeys.”
As they ascended they could see the blocks were riddled by a maze of alleyways, astonishingly reminiscent of the medieval bazaars of the Middle East.
“It must have bustled with crafts and trade,” Jack said. “There’s no way these people were just farmers. They were expert potters and carpenters and metalworkers.”
He paused, staring through the Plexiglas at what looked like a ground-floor shopfront.
“Someone in this place made that gold disc.”
For several minutes they passed over more flat-roofed highrises, the dark windows staring at them like sightless eyes caught in the glare of their floodlights. About five hundred metres due east from the storehouse the conglomeration came to an abrupt end. In the murk ahead they could make out another complex, perhaps twenty metres away, and below them a space wider and more regular than the alleyways.
“It’s a road,” Jack said. “It must go down to the ancient seafront. Let’s go inland and then resume our original course.”
They veered south and followed the road gently upslope. Two hundred metres on, it was bisected by another road running east-west. They turned and followed it due east, the Aquapods maintaining an altitude of twenty metres to avoid the mass of buildings on either side.
“Extraordinary,” Jack said. “These blocks are separated by a regular grid of streets, the earliest by thousands of years.”
“Someone planned this place.”
Tutankhamun’s tomb, the palace of Knossos, the fabled walls of Troy, all the hallowed discoveries of archaeology suddenly seemed pedestrian and mundane, mere stepping stones to the marvels that now lay before them.
“Atlantis,” Costas breathed. “A few days ago I didn’t even believe it existed.” He looked across at the figure in the other Plexiglas dome. “A little thanks would be appreciated.”
Jack grinned in spite of his preoccupation with the fabulous images around them.
“OK. You pointed us in the right direction. I owe you a large gin and tonic.”
“That’s what I got last time.”
“A lifetime’s supply then.”
“Done.”
A moment later the buildings on either side suddenly disappeared and the sea floor dropped away out of sight. Fifty metres on, there was still nothing except a haze of suspended silt.
“My depth sounder shows the sea floor has dropped almost twenty metres below the level of the road,” Jack exclaimed. “I suggest we descend and backtrack to the point where the buildings disappeared.”
They increased their water ballast until the lights revealed the sea floor. It was level and featureless, unlike the undulating surface they had traversed on their way towards the western edge of the city.
A few minutes later they had returned to the point where they last saw structures. In front of them the sea floor rose abruptly at a 45-degree angle until it reached the base of the buildings and the end of the road above.
Costas moved his Aquapod forward until its ballast tanks rested on the floor just before it angled upwards. He directed a long blast from his water jet at the slope and then drew back to Jack’s position.
“Just as I thought.”
The silt cleared to reveal a stepped terrace like the seating in a theatre. Between the floor and the beginning of the terrace was a vertical wall three metres high.
“This was hewn out of living rock,” Costas said. “It’s tufa, isn’t it? The same dark stone used in ancient Rome. Lightweight but tough, easily quarried but an excellent load-bearer.”
“But we haven’t seen any masonry buildings,” Jack protested.
“There must be some pretty massive structures somewhere.”
Jack was looking closely at the features in front of them. “This is more than just a quarry. Let’s follow those terraces and see where they take us.”
Twenty minutes later they had traversed three sides of a vast sunken courtyard almost a kilometre long and half a kilometre wide. Whereas the road layout respected the line of the ancient coast, running parallel and at right angles to it, the courtyard was aligned off to the south-east. They had skirted it clockwise and were now at the south-eastern boundary opposite their starting point. Above them buildings and the road resumed exactly as they appeared on the other side of the courtyard.
“It looks like a stadium,” Costas murmured. “I remember you saying those palace courtyards in Crete were for bull-baiting, for sacrifices and other rituals.”
“The Minoan courtyards were smaller,” Jack replied. “Even the arena of the Colosseum in Rome is only eighty metres across. This is huge.” He thought for a moment. “It’s just a hunch, but before we continue along the road I’d like to see across the middle of this space.”
Inside his dome Costas nodded in agreement.
They set out across the courtyard due west. After about 150 metres, they came to a halt. Ahead of them was a mass of silt-covered stone, its shape irregular and quite unlike the courtyard boundary.
Costas fired his water jet at the rock face, shrouding his dome in silt. After a few moments his voice came over the intercom.
“It’s an outcrop left standing when the rest was quarried out.”
Jack was slowly traversing south-east along a spur which extended twenty metres from the main mass. It terminated in a rounded ledge about two metres high and five metres across. Costas followed as Jack gently cleaned the surface with his water jet, blowing away silt to reveal the bare rock.
They stared transfixed by the shape that emerged, their minds unable to acknowledge what lay before them.
“My God.”
“It’s…” Jack faltered.
“It’s a paw,” Costas whispered.
“A lion’s paw.” Jack quickly regained his composure. “This must be a gigantic statue, at least a hundred metres long and thirty metres high.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“A sphinx.”
For a moment the two men stared at each other through their domes in stupefied silence. Eventually Costas’ voice crackled over the intercom.
“Seems incredible but anything’s possible in this place. Whatever’s up there is a long way off our entry route and we wouldn’t have seen it. I’m going to check it out.”
Jack remained stationary while Costas floated upwards, gradually receding until all that was left was a diminishing halo of light. Just as that too seemed about to disappear, it came to an abrupt halt some thirty metres above the sea floor.
Jack waited anxiously for Costas to report. After more than a minute he could restrain himself no longer.
“What can you see?”
The voice that came through seemed strangely suppressed.
“Remind me. A sphinx has a lion’s body and a human head. Right?”
“Right.”
“Try this for a variant.”
Costas flicked his floodlights to full beam. The image that appeared high above was awesome and terrifying, the stuff of nightmares. It was as if a flash of lightning on a stormy night had revealed a huge beast towering over them, its features silhouetted in a spectral sheen that burst forth between rolling banks of clouds.
Jack stared up transfixed, scarcely able to register an image for which all their experience, all their years of exploration and extraordinary discovery, could provide no preparation.
It was an immense bull’s head, its huge horns sweeping up into the darkness beyond the arc of light, its snout half open as if it were about to lower its head and paw the ground before the onslaught.
After what seemed an eternity, Costas angled his Aquapod forward and panned the light down the neck of the beast, showing where it became a lion’s body.
“It’s carved from the living rock, basalt by the look of it,” he said. “The horns extend at least ten metres above the buildings. This must once have been a jutting ridge of lava that flowed down to the sea.”
He was descending more rapidly now and soon reached Jack.
“It’s facing the volcano,” he continued. “That explains the strange alignment of the courtyard. It respects the orientation of the twin peaks rather than the line of the coast, which would have been a more practical benchmark for the street layout.”
Jack quickly latched onto the significance of Costas’ words.
“And the rising sun would have shone directly between the horns and the two peaks,” he said. “It must have been a sight even the ancients could scarcely have imagined in their wildest fantasies about the lost world of Atlantis.”