The sun was now setting, its rays casting a rosy hue on the waters of the Great Harbour below. They had returned to the conference room for a final session following a late afternoon break. None of them showed any sign of exhaustion despite the hours they had spent huddled round the table with the precious document. They were all bound up in the elation of discovery, of uncovering a key to the past which might change the entire picture of the rise of civilization.
Dillen settled back and spoke. “And finally, Jack, to that symbol you said you had seen before.”
At that moment there was a loud knocking on the door and a young man looked in.
“Excuse me, Professor, but this is very urgent. Dr. Howard.”
Jack strode over and took the cellphone that was offered to him, positioning himself on the seafront balustrade out of earshot of the others.
“Howard here.”
“Jack, this is Costas. We are on Red Alert. You must return to Seaquest at once.”
JACK EASED BACK ON THE CONTROL COLUMN and the Lynx helicopter stood still in the air, the normal whirr of its rotor reduced to a shuddering clatter. He adjusted the audio on his headset as he gently worked the left pedal, at the same time giving the tail rotor a quick burst to bring the machine broadside on to the spectacular sight below. He turned to Costas and they both peered out of the open port-side door.
A thousand metres below lay the smouldering heart of Thera. They were hovering over the flooded remnant of a gigantic caldera, a vast scooped-out shell with only its jagged edges protruding above the sea. All round them cliffs reared up precipitously. Directly below was Nea Kameni, “New Burnt,” its surface scorched and lifeless. In the centre were telltale wisps of smoke where the volcano was once again thrusting through the earth’s crust. It was a warning beacon, Jack thought, a harbinger of doom, like a bull snorting and pawing before the onslaught.
A disembodied voice came over the intercom, one that Jack was finding increasingly irresistible.
“It’s awesome,” Katya said. “The African and Eurasian plates grind together to produce more earthquakes and volcanoes than virtually anywhere else on earth. No wonder the Greek gods were such a violent lot. Founding a civilization here is like building a city on the San Andreas fault.”
“Sure,” Costas replied. “But without plate tectonics limestone would never have turned into marble. No temples, no sculpture.” He gestured at the cliff walls. “And what about volcanic ash? Incredible stuff. The Romans discovered if you add it to lime mortar you get concrete that sets underwater.”
“That’s true,” Katya conceded. “Volcanic fallout also makes incredibly fertile soil. The plains around Etna and Vesuvius were breadbaskets of the ancient world.”
Jack smiled to himself. Costas was a ladies’ man, and he and Katya had discovered a shared passion for geology which had dominated the conversation all the way from Alexandria.
The Lynx had been on a return flight to the Maritime Museum in Carthage when Costas had received an emergency signal from Tom York, Seaquest’s captain. Costas had immediately put in the call to Jack and diverted south to Egypt. That afternoon beside the harbour he had watched as Jack said quick farewells to Dillen and Hiebermeyer, any disappointment they may have felt masked by the anxiety clearly etched on their faces.
Jack had learned that Katya was an experienced diver and when she approached him on the balcony to ask if she could join him, he had seen no reason to refuse.
“It’s my chance to join the forefront of the fray,” she had said, “to experience first-hand what modern archaeologists are up against.”
Meanwhile her assistant Olga would return on urgent business to Moscow.
“There she is.”
The forward tilt of the helicopter directed their gaze towards the eastern horizon. They were now out of sight of Thera and could just make out Seaquest in the distant haze. As they flew closer the deep blue of the Mediterranean darkened as if under a passing cloud. Costas explained that it was a submerged volcano, its peak rising from the abyss like a gigantic atoll.
Jack flicked on the intercom. “This is not where I expected to find a site,” he said. “The top of the volcano is thirty metres underwater, too deep to have been a reef. Something else wrecked our Minoan ship.”
They were now directly over Seaquest and began to descend towards the helipad on the stern. The landing markings became clearer as the altimeter dropped below five hundred feet.
“But we’re incredibly lucky the ship sank where it did, at a depth where our divers can work. This is the only place for miles around where the seabed is less than five hundred metres deep.”
Katya’s voice came over the intercom. “You say the ship went down in the sixteenth century BC. This may be a long shot, but could it have been the eruption of Thera?”
“Absolutely,” Jack enthused. “And oddly enough, that would also account for the excellent state of preservation. The ship was swamped in a sudden deluge and sank upright about seventy metres below the summit.”
Costas spoke again. “It was probably an earthquake a few days before the volcano blew. We know the Therans had advance warning and were able to leave with most of their possessions.”
Jack nodded. “The explosive discharge would have destroyed everything for miles around,” Costas continued. “But that was only the beginning. The rush of water into the caldera would have rebounded horrifically, causing hundred-metre tsunamis. We’re pretty close to Thera and the waves would have lost little of their power. They would have smashed any ship in their path to smithereens, leaving only mangled fragments. Our wreck survived on the sea floor only because it got wedged in a cleft below the depth of the wave oscillations.”
The helicopter hovered a hundred feet above Seaquest while Jack awaited permission to land. He took the opportunity to cast a critical eye over his pride and joy. Beyond the helipad and the Zodiac inflatables was the three-storey accommodation block, able to house twenty scientists and the crew of thirty. At 75 metres Seaquest was almost twice the length of Cousteau’s Calypso. She had been custom-built in the shipyards in Finland that produced the famous Akademic-class vessels for the Russian Institute of Oceanology. Like them she had bow and lateral thrusters for dynamic positioning ability, allowing her to hold over a precise fix on the seabed, and an automated trimming system to maintain stability by regulating the flow of water in her ballast tanks. She was now more than ten years old and due for a refit but still vital to IMU’s research and exploration around the world.
As he nudged the stick forward, their attention was caught by a dark silhouette on the horizon ahead. It was another vessel, low-set and sinister, lying motionless several kilometres off Seaquest’s bows.
They all knew what they were looking at. It was the reason why Jack had been recalled so urgently from Alexandria. Katya and Costas went silent, their minds reverting from the excitement of archaeology to the sobering problems of the present. Jack set his jaw in grim determination as he made a perfect landing inside the orange circle on the helipad. His calm assurance belied the rage that welled up inside him. He had known their excavation would be discovered, but he had not expected it quite so soon. Their opponents had access to ex-Soviet satellite surveillance that could make out a man’s face from an orbital height of four hundred kilometres. Seaquest was totally exposed in the cloudless summer skies of the Mediterranean, and the fact that she had stayed put for several days had obviously excited interest.
“Check this out. It came up yesterday before I flew out.”
Costas was leading Jack and Katya through the maze of tables in Seaquest’s conservation lab. The tungsten bulbs in the overhead gantry cast a brilliant optical light over the scene. A group of white-coated technicians were busy cleaning and recording the dozens of precious artefacts that had come up from the Minoan wreck over the last two days, preparing them for conservation before being readied for display. At the far end Costas stopped beside a low bench and gingerly lifted the covering from an object about a metre high.
Katya drew in her breath with astonishment. It was a life-sized bull’s head, its flesh black steatite from Egypt, its eyes lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, its horns solid gold capped with sparkling rubies from India. A hole in the mouth showed it was a rhyton, a hollowed-out libation vessel for offerings to the gods. A rhyton as sumptuous as this could only have been used by the high priests in the most sacred ceremonies of the Minoan world.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “Picasso would have loved it.”
“A brilliant centrepiece for the exhibit,” Costas said.
“In the maritime museum?” Katya asked.
“Jack earmarked one of the trireme sheds for his long-cherished Minoan wreck. It’s almost full and the excavation’s hardly begun.”
IMU’s Mediterranean base was the ancient site of Carthage in Tunisia, where the circular war harbour of the Phoenicians had been magnificently reconstructed. The sheds once used for oared galleys now housed the finds from the many ancient shipwrecks they had excavated.
Jack suddenly seethed with anger. That such a priceless artefact should fall into the hands of the criminal underworld was unconscionable. Even the safe haven of the museum was no longer an option. When that silhouette had appeared on the horizon, it had been decided to abandon the regular helicopter shuttle. The Lynx had a supercharge capacity, enabling it to outrun virtually any other rotary-winged aircraft over short distances, but it was as vulnerable as any subsonic aircraft to laser-guided ship-to-air missiles. Their enemy would pinpoint the crash site with GPS and then retrieve the wreckage using submersible remote-operated vehicles. Any surviving crew would be summarily executed and the artefacts would disappear forever as attacker’s booty.
It was a new and lethal form of piracy on the high seas.
Jack and his companions made their way to the captain’s day cabin. Tom York, the vessel’s master, was a compact, white-haired Englishman who had finished a distinguished career in the Royal Navy as captain of a jump-jet carrier. Opposite him sat a ruggedly handsome man whose physique had been honed as a rugby international for his native New Zealand. Peter Howe had spent twenty years in the Royal Marines and Australian Special Air Service and was now IMU’s chief security officer. He had flown in from IMU’s Cornwall headquarters in England the night before. Howe had been a friend of Jack’s since schooldays and all three had served together in naval intelligence.
“I couldn’t fit in our climbing gear.” Howe gave Jack a rueful look.
“No problem.” Jack’s face creased into a smile. “I’ll have it airfreighted out. We’ll find a mountain to climb when this is done.”
On the table lay a two-way UHF radio and an Admiralty Chart of the Aegean. Costas and Katya squeezed in beside York and Howe. Jack remained standing, his tall frame filling the doorway and his voice suddenly terse and to the point.
“Right. What do we have?”
“It’s a new one on us,” Howe said. “His name is Aslan.”
Katya visibly shuddered, her eyes widening in disbelief. “Aslan.” Her voice was barely audible.
“You know this man?” Jack asked.
“I know this man.” She spoke haltingly. “Aslan—it means Lion. He is…” She hesitated, her face pale. “He is a warlord, a gangster. The worst.”
“From Kazakhstan, to be precise.” Tom York pulled out a photograph and slapped it down on the chart. “I received this by email from the IMU press agency in London a few minutes ago.”
It showed a group of men in combat fatigues and traditional Islamic gear. The backdrop was a barren landscape of sun-scorched ravines and scree slopes. They held Kalashnikovs and the ground in front was piled high with Soviet-era weaponry, from heavy-calibre machine guns to RPG launchers.
It was not so much the bristling arsenal that caught their attention, such images being commonplace since the early days of the mujahedin in Afghanistan; it was the figure sitting in the centre. He was a man of awesome bulk, his hands grasping his knees and his elbows jutting out defiantly. In contrast to the khaki that surrounded him, he wore a billowing white robe and a close-fitting cap. The hint of a moustache showed on either side of his mouth. The face had once been fine-featured, even handsome, with the arched nose and high cheekbones of the nomads of central Asia. The eyes that stared out of sunken sockets were jet-black and piercing.
“Aslan,” York said. “Real name Piotr Alexandrovich Nazarbetov. Father a Mongolian, mother from Kyrgyzstan. Based in Kazakhstan but has a stronghold on the Black Sea in Abkhazia, the breakaway province of the Georgian Republic. A former Soviet Academician and Professor of Art History at Bishkek University, would you believe.”
Howe nodded. This was his area of expertise. “All manner of people have been seduced by the huge profits of crime in this part of the world. And it takes an art historian to know the value of antiquities and where to find them.” He glanced at the newcomers. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with the situation in Kazakhstan.” He gestured at the map on the wall behind him. “It’s the usual story. Kazakhastan gains independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the government’s run by the former Communist Party boss. Corruption is rife and democracy a farce. Despite oil reserves and foreign investment, there’s a progressive breakdown in internal security. A popular uprising gives the Russians an excuse to send in the army, which is withdrawn after a bloody war. The nationalist forces are severely weakened and the place is left in anarchy.”
“And then the warlords move in,” Costas interjected.
“Right. The insurgents who once fought together against the Russians now compete with each other to fill the vacuum. The idealists of the early days are replaced by thugs and religious extremists. The most ruthless murder and pillage their way across the country. They carve out territories for themselves like medieval barons, running their own armies and growing fat on drug and gun money.”
“I read somewhere that Kazakhstan is becoming the world’s main opium and heroin producer,” Costas said.
“That’s right,” said Howe. “And this man controls most of it. By all accounts he’s a charming host to journalists invited to meet him, a scholar who collects art and antiquities on a prodigious scale.” Howe paused and looked round the table. “He’s also a murderous psychopath.”
“How long has he been eyeballing us?” Jack asked.
“They hove into visual range twenty-four hours ago, immediately before Costas called you in Alexandria,” York responded. “SATSURV had already warned us of a potentially hostile intrusion, a vessel of warship configuration which answered no international call signs.”
“That’s when you shifted position.” Seaquest now lay off the far side of the atoll two nautical miles from the wreck.
“Not before we bubble-mined the site,” York replied.
Katya looked questioningly at Jack.
“An IMU innovation,” he explained. “Miniature contact mines the size of Ping-Pong balls joined together by monofilaments like a screen of bubbles. They’re triggered by photoelectric sensors which can distinguish the movement of divers and submersibles.”
Costas shifted his gaze to York. “What are our options?”
“Whatever we do now may be pointless.” York’s voice was bleak and emotionless. “We’ve been issued an ultimatum.” He handed Jack a sheet of paper which had just come through by email. Jack quickly scanned the text, his face betraying nothing of the turmoil he felt inside.
“Seaquest, this is Vultura. Depart by eighteen hundred hours or be annihilated.”
Costas peered over at the paper. “Doesn’t mess around, does he?”
As if on cue, there was an immense rushing sound like a low-flying jet followed by a thunderous crash off the starboard bow. Tom York spun round to the nearest porthole just as a towering column of white water lashed the windowpane with spray. The shell had only narrowly missed them.
“You bastards.” York spoke through clenched teeth with the rage of a professional naval officer who was powerless to respond in kind.
At that moment the two-way radio began to crackle, and York angrily punched the intercom so they all could hear.
“This is Seaquest.” York’s voice was barely controlled, almost a snarl. “Make your intentions clear. Over.”
After a few moments a voice came over the intercom, its drawling, guttural tones unmistakably Russian.
“Good afternoon, Captain York. Major Howe. And Dr. Howard, I presume? Our felicitations. This is Vultura.” There was a pause. “You have been warned.”
York switched off the receiver in disgust and flipped open a lid beside him. Before he pulled down the lever inside, he looked up at Jack, his voice now coldly composed.
“We’re going to battle stations.”