David Gibbins - Pharaoh

Jack Howard eased forward in the confined space of the submersible, raising himself on his elbows so that he could see through the forward porthole into the azure shimmer of the Mediterranean. The thick cone of Perspex was designed to withstand the enormous pressures of abyssal depth, and distorted the view around the edge so that the research vessel Seaquest II some twenty metres above appeared as a strange play of white superstructure and dark hull. But the view in the centre was undistorted, a tunnel of clarity that seemed to match the single-minded determination that had brought Jack this far. As he made out the slope of rock and sand on the seabed below, his heart began to pound with excitement. Somewhere out there lay one of the greatest lost treasures of antiquity. For a moment Jack saw the image he had seen in his dreams for days now: a black basalt sarcophagus rising stark from the seabed like the toppled statue of a pharaoh half buried in the desert sand. Only this was not a dream. This was real .

‘Jack. Shift over. I need space.’ There was a grunt and a muttered curse in Greek and a figure pushed himself forward on his back alongside him, staring at the tangle of wires that hung from the open control panel above them. Costas Kazantzakis moved with a deftness that seemed to belie his barrel chest and thick forearms, and his shorter frame was more suited than Jack’s to fit inside the submersible. Jack knew better than to break his concentration, and watched as Costas moved his hands swiftly over the panel, pulling out and plugging in cables. In the distorted reflection of the Perspex Jack saw his face superimposed on Costas’, his thick dark hair appearing above the other man’s grizzled chin, and for a moment it seemed as if they were conjoined, two bodies become one. They had been doing this together for almost twenty years now, and it sometimes seemed like that. He pushed himself forwards to give Costas more space, watching his eyes dart over the panel. Seeing Costas at work quickened Jack’s sense of excitement over the discovery that might lie ahead. Costas had been his main dive buddy from before he had founded the International Maritime University, and together they had logged thousands of dives on IMU projects around the world. This one promised to be up there with the best, providing Costas could work out a way of releasing the tethering line that held the submersible suspended below Seaquest II like a lure on a fishing line.

Costas turned to him. ‘You okay in here?’

Jack shifted again. ‘I’d be happier diving free outside. Six foot five is about a foot too long for this space.’

‘Once I get this thing running, it’ll seem like an extension of your body. You’ll forget the cramped space, I promise.’

‘How much longer?’

Costas gazed back up at the wiring. ‘I once stared at a control panel for eighteen hours. Then bingo, I got it.’

‘I thought a PhD from MIT in submersibles engineering would have eased you through a glitch like this.’

Costas narrowed his eyes. ‘And I thought a PhD from Cambridge in archaeology would make you an instant expert in everything. I’m trying to remember the number of times I’ve watched my air gauge drop to zero while waiting for you to fathom out some ancient inscription.’

Jack grinned. ‘Okay. Touché.’

‘Have patience,’ Costas muttered, staring up. ‘It’ll come to me.’

There was movement from the hatch to the rear compartment beyond Jack’s feet, and the third person in the submersible appeared, a short woman with dark curly hair and glasses wearing an IMU jumpsuit. Sofia Fernandez, a former Spanish navy medic who was now an archaeologist with the local Cartagena museum, had come on board as the official representative of the Spanish antiquities authority. She had only arrived on Seaquest II an hour before and Jack had never met her previously, but both men had immediately liked her. At the moment, all that concerned Jack was that she was small enough not to reduce his comfort level in the sphere below a tolerable level.

She pulled herself in, and sat in the driver’s seat. ‘What gives?’ she said.

‘Apologies for the glitch,’ Costas replied, looking at her ruefully. ‘This is a new submersible fresh out of the engineering department at IMU, and today is its first open-water test. I haven’t even given her a name yet. Seaquest II can only be here for a day or two, as she’s due back for a winter refit in England, and this was the only window I had to get this thing in the water to see how she behaves on a real operation.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask. Where did you get that accent? The sassy attitude. And don’t get me wrong. I like it.’

Sofia smiled. ‘From dealing with men like you. I was brought up in Puerto Rico by my American mother.’

‘But you ended up in the Spanish navy.’

‘I was a Spanish citizen because of my father, and the navy offered to pay my way through medical school in Seville.’

‘And now you’re an archaeologist.’

‘After my pre-med year the call came for medical personnel to join the Spanish contingent in Afghanistan, and I volunteered to go as a combat medic. After that, I decided I’d done my bit for medicine and it was time to move on. At med school I’d developed an interest in operation theatre tools for remote surgery, so I did a masters in robotics engineering.’

‘No way,’ Costas exclaimed. ‘Right up my alley. We use the same basic technology for remote excavation from submersibles. We have got something to talk about during the long hours while I stare at this panel.’

‘Not long hours,’ Jack said firmly. ‘Short minutes.’

‘Well, my other fascination was archaeology, so I started over again and did a degree in anthropology and got the job at the Cartagena museum. My mother was a dive instructor in Puerto Rico and I’d dived almost before I could walk, so when I heard that you were planning to come to search for the wreck of the Beatrice off Cartagena, I couldn’t believe my luck.’

‘Combat medic, robotics engineer, archaeologist, diver,’ Costas said. ‘Sounds like a pretty good skill-set to me.’

‘Anyway, speaking of accents, what’s a Greek from the Kazantzakis shipping family doing with a New York accent? And best friends with a Brit?’

‘I went to school in Manhattan,’ Costas said. ‘And Jack’s only really a Brit in his ancestry. He was brought up in New Zealand and Canada before going to boarding school in England. So we’re international really. The International Maritime University. An international team of oddballs.’

‘That reminds me: a strange guy with long lank hair and a lab coat collared me topside before I got into the submersible. I forgot to tell you.’

‘Oh God,’ Costas murmured, staring back at the panel. ‘Lanowski. What does he want?’

‘He said that although Kazantzakis thinks he knows everything about submersibles, he’s really a concepts man and is pretty useless on computer systems and circuitry. He said that because you agreed to be his best man, it showed that you were his friend now and would have no problem acknowledging his superior mental agility. I think those were his exact words.’

Costas grimaced. ‘He’s got it in for me because when he and his glamour-model wife got married in our top-end submersible, the trim was wrong.’

‘Correction,’ Jack said. ‘You sabotaged the trim so that they would get married at the bottom of the Marianas Trench instead of just below the surface.’

‘It was a great opportunity to test the new pressure hull,’ Costas said defensively. ‘It was the only reason I agreed to be his best man.’