Clive Cussler - Trojan Odyssey

The coral thinned this far under the reef. With no light to encourage marine growth the encrustation on the walls of the shaft was less than an inch thick and consisted more of slimy growth than hard coral. Dirk took his gloved hand and brushed away the greasy coating and felt his heart quicken as he recognized grooves in granite rock that he theorized were put there by ancient hands when the sea was lower.

Then, through the water, he heard Summer utter a distorted squeal. He kicked upward and was stunned when he broke the surface of the water into an air pocket. He looked up as Summer's light swept over a domed ceiling of seemingly chiseled stones fit tightly together without mortar.

"What have we got here?" Dirk spoke through his underwater communications system.

"It's either a freak of nature or an ancient man-made vault," Summer murmured in awe.

"This is no freak of nature."

"It must have been submerged after the melting of the Ice Age."

"That was ten thousand years ago. Impossible to be that ancient. More likely, the vault sank during an earthquake like the one that struck Port Royal, Jamaica, the pirate haven that slipped into the sea after a massive tremor in sixteen ninety-two."

"Could it be a forgotten ghost city?" asked Summer, her excitement mounting.

Dirk shook his head. "Unless there is much more buried under the surrounding coral, my gut instinct is this was some sort of temple."

"Built by ancient natives of the Caribbean?"

"I doubt it. Archaeologists have found no evidence of stone masonry in the West Indies before Columbus. And the local natives certainly didn't know how to forge a bronze urn. This was built by a different culture, a lost and unknown civilization."

"Not another Atlantis myth," Summer said sarcastically.

"No, Dad and Al put that to rest in the Antarctic several years ago."

"Seems incredible that ancient peoples of Europe sailed across the ocean and built a temple on a coral reef."

Dirk slowly ran his gloved hand on one wall. "Navidad Reef was probably an island back then."

"When you think about it," said Summer, "we must be breathing air thousands of years old."

Dirk deeply inhaled and then exhaled. "Smells and tastes good to me."

Summer pointed over her shoulder. "Help me with the camera. We must get a photo record."

Dirk moved behind her and removed an aluminum carrying case attached to a clip beneath her air tanks. He pulled out a minidigital Sony PC-100 camcorder mounted inside a compact Ikelite clear-acrylic housing. Setting the controls on manual mode, he attached the arms for the floodlights. Since there was no ambient light there was no need for a light meter.

There was an illusive grandeur to the submarine chamber and Summer was more than proficient enough with a camera to capture it. The instant she flicked on the floodlights the bleak cave came alive in a montage of green, yellow, red and purple hues from the growth on the sheer walls. Except for a mild distortion, the water was nearly as clear as glass.

While Summer photographed the vault below and above the water, Dirk dove down and began exploring the floor along the walls. The lights from Summer's camera cast weird quivering images in the water as he slowly worked his way around the perimeter.

He almost passed by without seeing a space that opened up between two walls. It was a corner entrance no more than two feet wide. Dirk barely shouldered through with his air tanks, keeping the hand gripping the dive light extended in front of him. He entered another chamber slightly larger than the outer one. This one had recessed seats in the walls and what looked like a large stone bed in the center. At first he thought it was empty of artifacts but then his light revealed a round object with two large holes on the sides and one smaller hole at the top lying on the bed, like armor that covered the torso. A gold necklace rested on the stone above the object with two coiled armbands placed on each side. What looked like an intricate metal lace headpiece sat above the necklace and above it an ornate diadem.

Dirk began to imagine that a body once lay inside the relics. Where the legs might have been were a pair of bronze greaves, ancient armor worn below the knees. A sword blade and dagger blade were situated on the left side while a socketed spearhead without its shaft lay on the right. If there was a body, it was long ago dissolved or consumed by sea creatures that devoured anything organic.

Sitting at the foot of the bed was a large cauldron.

Rising a few inches over four feet, the circumference of the cauldron was too large for him to circle his arms around and touch his fingertips. He rapped the hilt of his dive knife against the side and heard a dull metallic thud. Bronze, he thought to himself. He smeared away the growth on the surface and revealed the figure of a warrior throwing a spear. Using his glove to brush his way around the cauldron, he discovered an army of sculpted men and women wearing armor and posed as if fighting a battle. They carried man-sized shields and long swords. Several held spears with short shafts but extremely long heads in a spiral form. Some fought in body armor that covered their torso.

Others fought naked, but most all wore huge helmets, many with horns protruding out the top.

He swam above the rim, shined his light through the wide neck and peered inside.

The interior of the big cauldron was filled almost to the top with jumbled, intermingled but still recognizable artifacts. Dirk identified bronze spearheads, dagger blades with the hilts eroded away, edged and winged axes, coiled bracelets and chain waist belts. He left the relics as he had found them, all but one. He gently picked it out of the cauldron and held it between his fingers. Then he moved through an archway that loomed on the opposite side of what he now supposed was an ancient bedroom used as a tomb.

He quickly identified the chamber beyond as a kitchen. There was no air pocket here and his bubbles trailed to the ceiling and flowed outward in confused streams like quicksilver. Bronze cooking tureens, amphors, urns and jars lay scattered on the floor along with broken clay pots. Beside what appeared to be a fireplace he found bronze tongs and a large ladle, all partially buried in the silt that had filtered into the chamber over thousands of years. He swam over the debris and examined the artifacts closely, trying to find distinguishing artwork or markings, but they were half buried in the silt and covered with little hard-shell crustaceans that had made their way over the centuries into the room.

Satisfied there were no more doorways or side rooms to explore, he returned through the bedroom chamber and approached Summer, who was focusing and furiously recording every dimension of the arched vault below the water surface.

He touched her arm and pointed up. After they surfaced, he said excitedly, "I found two more chambers."

"This gets more intriguing by the minute," Summer said, without taking her eye from the viewfinder.

He grinned and held up a bronze lady's hair comb. "Run the comb through your hair and try to imagine the last woman to use it."

Summer lowered her camera and stared at the object in Dirk's hand. Her eyes widened as she delicately took the comb and held it between her fingers. "It's lovely," she murmured. She was about to run the comb through a few strands of her flame-red hair that trailed past her cars when she stopped and suddenly looked at him seriously. "You should put it back where you found it. When archaeologists examine this place, and they will, you'll be condemned as a relic thief."

"If I had a girlfriend, I bet she'd keep it."

"The last of your long string of women would have stolen the charity box from a church."

Dirk feigned looking hurt. "Sara's streak of larceny made her irresistible."