David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

‘Maybe it was,’ Rebecca added. ‘Maybe to conceal what Schliemann had found.’

‘I did find this.’ Hiebermeyer turned away and blew his nose noisily between his fingers, flicking off the drip from the end of his nose, then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a handful of dust. Nestled in the middle was a ring. He extracted a half-crumpled water bottle from his pocket, screwed off the top with his teeth and trickled water on the ring, rubbing it, then passed it over to Jack. Rebecca and Jeremy moved over to look, and Rebecca gasped as she saw it. ‘It’s gold.’

‘I found it close to the wall with the inscription.’

‘It’s modern, of course,’ Jack murmured, staring at it.

Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘A signet ring, maybe late nineteenth century. My grandfather used to wear one. My American grandfather, my mother’s father. It was the fashion then, for men of means.’

‘How on earth does a Victorian signet ring get down here?’ Rebecca murmured.

Hiebermeyer stared at the rubble. ‘Wealthy people came to Troy after Schliemann discovered it, his supporters, invited by him. Maybe one of them lost the ring on the mound. You’ve seen how that rubble and earth can shift. The ring could have worked its way underground through the spaces between the stones, reaching the base of the passageway.’

Rebecca looked at him doubtfully. ‘Or someone has been in this passageway before.’

Hiebermeyer pursed his lips. ‘Someone could have dug their way in, then carefully refilled the passageway to make it look as if it was undisturbed. Only an archaeologist could do that. Someone intimately familiar with this site, who would know how to make it look convincing. I wouldn’t put it past Schliemann and Sophia. But how? How could Schliemann, showman par excellence, find something like this passageway and not tell the world? He’d have been telegramming his friends, the British Prime Minister Gladstone, or Bismarck in Germany, the other great and the good he courted. Schliemann could never keep his discoveries secret.’

‘Maybe the showmanship was an act, carefully calculated,’ Jack murmured. ‘You know my feelings about Schliemann. A lot more there than meets the eye.’

‘You mean to persuade people that he’d told them everything he’d found, when really he hadn’t?’ Rebecca said slowly.

‘We know for sure he hid away some of that gold he and Sophia found at Troy, the so-called Treasure of Priam,’ Jeremy said. ‘Sent it secretly back to Germany. That gives a lot of weight to what Jack says.’

Jack peered at the ring. ‘There’s a design on it, a family crest. It’s a double-headed griffin, in a shield. Very German-looking.’ He paused, thinking hard. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen this somewhere before.’

‘Schliemann’s crest?’ Jeremy suggested.

‘No.’ Jack shook his head. ‘Not Schliemann. It was when I was a student. A long time ago. Something I saw in a library. I’ll have to think.’

Hiebermeyer turned and stared defiantly at the rubble face, his hands on his hips. ‘We need to dig, dig, dig. That’s the only way to solve this. It’s about time Troy gave us some answers.’

‘And you’re the man for the job.’ Jack slapped Hiebermeyer’s shoulder, and a shroud of dust erupted over them. They both sneezed explosively, then caught each other’s eye and suddenly convulsed with laughter, shaking uncontrollably, holding on to each other. Jack knew it had to happen. The pent-up excitement needed a release. Rebecca and Jeremy and Dillen watched, smiling broadly. Jack looked at Hiebermeyer, the shrouded form of his schoolboy friend, glasses askew and all steamed up. It couldn’t get much better than this. He pushed away, composing himself, wiping his eyes. ‘And now,’ he said, clearing his throat, glancing at his watch. ‘ Now it’s time for supper. Costas is waiting for us at the excavation house. Having a well-earned gin and tonic, I hope. Our excellent Turkish foreman and his wife have laid on a feast fit for King Priam.’

Jeremy coughed quietly. ‘Speaking of which. Priam, I mean.’

‘Yes?’

‘It might be,’ Rebecca cautioned Jeremy. ‘Only might be.’

‘Yes?’ Jack said.

‘Something we found.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jack said, looking at them intently. ‘ Of course . I hadn’t forgotten. Not a chance. Maurice, they’ve found something. Where you set them digging. On our way out.’ He carefully lifted his khaki bag with the shape in it and slung it over his shoulder, eyeing Dillen as he did so. ‘It looks as if today is the day for revelations. Jeremy, lead the way.’

Two hours later, Jack walked out on to the veranda of the bungalow that served as Hiebermeyer’s excavation headquarters, the very place where Schliemann had stayed almost a century and a half before. Costas and Jeremy followed, and they went over to where Rebecca and Dillen were sitting together on a long bench swinging from a frame in the garden, with the mound of the ancient citadel looming beyond the trees in front of them. Rebecca was rocking gently to and fro, humming to herself, and Dillen was cradling his pipe, an unopened packet of tobacco on his lap. Jack and the other two sat down on garden chairs facing the swing. It had been a long day, and Jack suddenly felt dead tired, drained by the dive that afternoon and the decompression, which always sapped his energy. He and Maurice had rushed off before the main course to have another quick look at the sculpture in the passageway wall, and that had been the subject of intensive conversation for the rest of the meal. It had been a day of extraordinary discoveries, a portent of what might come. And Jack still had not told Dillen about the ancient cup from the wreck. The time for that would be later, in the right place, a special moment alone with his old mentor.

He stared off into the sunset beyond the mound of Troy, then turned to Rebecca and smiled. She was holding an old book, about five by two inches across, with faded gold lettering on the spine. Jack peered at it, and then at Dillen. ‘I recognize that, James. It’s your old edition of Pope, isn’t it?’

Dillen put the pipe between his teeth, clenched it and nodded. ‘ The Iliad of Homer, translated by Alexander Pope in the early eighteenth century, this edition published in 1806.’

‘I recognize that tear on the spine. It was always on your desk in Cambridge.’

‘It’s so cool,’ Rebecca murmured, carefully opening and closing the cover, then tracing her fingers over the worn leather boards. ‘Professor Dillen has just given it to me. I feel like a real collector now.’ She looked at Dillen. ‘Dad gave me John Wood’s Source of the River Oxus for my birthday. We’re planning to go back there again, you know, to Afghanistan, to search for it.’

‘When the war’s over,’ Jack murmured.

‘You’re a rare breed, Rebecca,’ Costas said. ‘The only seventeen year old I know who collects antiquarian books.’

Jack grinned at Costas. ‘And you’re the only submersibles engineer I know who can quote Auden.’

‘Jack!’ Costas looked aghast. ‘You promised not to tell!’

Jeremy looked in astonishment at Costas. ‘You? Poetry? I don’t believe it.’

Costas gave a theatrical groan. ‘See? My credibility shattered.’

‘No. Not at all.’ Jeremy shook his head emphatically. ‘Auden was the subject of my undergraduate dissertation at Stanford. Before I switched to palaeolinguistics, I wrote about Homeric imagery in Auden.’

‘You’re kidding me.’ Costas had been playing with a spanner, and spun it between his fingers. He looked at Jeremy quizzically. ‘I was thinking of Auden again when we arrived here this afternoon, seeing James photographing the excavation. You know?’