David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

‘That’s about how long Dad sees the fieldwork running,’ Rebecca said.

‘As tight as that?’ Hugh murmured.

Dillen nodded. ‘Very tight, I think, with the shipwreck as well as Hiebermeyer’s excavation. The Turks are planning a major naval exercise in the region and everything has to shut down by the beginning of August. The IMU operation is going to have to run with military precision. They need you there really, Hugh, an old soldier, but HQ have assigned you to intelligence, I’m afraid.’

‘ Plus ca change. They were always doing that. I was too damned cocky for my own good. Always being treated like a boffin, but I preferred being at the sharp end. Still, I’m sure Jack can handle it. Wars need young men, not old ones.’ He rocked on his feet in front of the fire. ‘And the Ilioupersis. It’ll be marvellous to get my teeth into some real Homer. Some Homer I can truly believe in.’

‘You’re convinced I’m right?’

‘Those lines you sent me? Absolutely.’

‘Excellent. Excellent.’ Dillen put down his mug and rubbed his hands. ‘After I’ve taken Rebecca back to London and got her settled in her hotel, I’ll come straight back and we can get cracking.’

‘You really don’t have to take me,’ Rebecca said. ‘I can manage.’ She looked at Hugh, and sighed. ‘Sometimes they treat me like I’m some kind of innocent little girl from a finishing school. I’m not.’

‘I promised Jack,’ Dillen said. ‘And there’ll be an IMU security man waiting for us at the hotel. That’s a done deal.’

Rebecca rolled her eyes. ‘IMU security? Please.’

‘Problems?’ Hugh said to Dillen.

‘Precautions,’ he replied. ‘Rebecca was involved in the repatriation of that Durer from the Howard Gallery earlier this year, you remember? Art stolen by the Nazis. She overstepped the mark rather by going off on her own and doing a shady deal with some character in Amsterdam. Jack went ballistic when he heard.’

Rebecca stared defiantly into the air. ‘It was not a shady deal. His name was Marcus Brandeis. Not really a bad man, exactly. He said he’d had a change of heart about the antiquities black market, but I knew perfectly well he was turning informant because he needed protection. I was just the right person for him to talk to. And it helped make one of Europe’s most notorious black-market art dealers into a police asset.’

‘ And stirred up something of a hornets’ nest,’ Dillen said. ‘All of the bad guys who wanted his neck, and their armies of neo-Nazi and Russian thugs.’

Hugh grinned at Rebecca. ‘You’re a chip off the old block. That’s the real problem. Jack sees too much of himself in you.’

‘He also remembers what happened to my mother in Naples,’ Rebecca replied, more quietly.

Hugh reached out and touched her arm. ‘Of course.’ He steered her to the sofa. ‘Sit, please.’ She put down her mug, then shrugged off her fleece and sat down. Dillen took off his coat and sat beside her. Hugh turned back and adjusted the dial on the gas fire. ‘I hope you can bear the heat. It’s my one indulgence. From the war, you know. Winter of ’44, in the Ardennes. Too many nights in the open. Once you’ve known the true meaning of cold, heat becomes the most precious thing.’

‘It’s perfect,’ Rebecca said. ‘It feels very homely.’

‘That’s what James said the first night he spent here, in my old army sleeping bag in the room across the landing, with the other children I put up.’

Dillen sipped his drink, fingering the pipe in his pocket. He turned to Hugh. ‘About Rebecca’s security. Jack thinks the IMU operation at Troy is bound to set the underworld buzzing, antiquities smugglers and dealers like Rebecca’s friend in Amsterdam. Everyone knows Jack’s projects are rarely piecemeal, but go for the big questions, leave few stones unturned. The advantage of having virtually unlimited resources.’

‘Ephram hasn’t been hit by the recession, I take it?’

‘Ephram? Far from it. He keeps pumping more and more into the endowment for IMU. And he’s just agreed to fund the Herculaneum ancient library project.’

Hugh turned to Rebecca. ‘Ephram Jacobovich was one of my last pupils before I retired. I sent him on to James at Cambridge. I knew he was going to make a fortune. You can tell, with some boys. I was determined to stoke his fascination with ancient history and archaeology, to push him to study that at university, rather than computers. He knew all that anyway. And look what’s happened.’

‘That must be very satisfying,’ Rebecca said.

‘I was going to be a kind of archaeologist once,’ Hugh said quietly, glancing back at the mantelpiece. ‘With a friend of mine. Long time ago. That couldn’t happen, but all of this, everything with IMU and your dad, means I’m living a little bit of that dream.’ He turned to Dillen. ‘Speaking of Jack. You were saying. Carry on.’

Dillen nodded. ‘Jack’s never made any secret of his belief that part of Schliemann’s treasure is still hidden away, somewhere in Europe. It’s one occasion where he felt that going public was the best way to spirit up the clues. You remember the TV documentary he did last year? He thinks the gold that showed up in Moscow in 1993 was only part of it, that Schliemann secretly sent other finds back to Germany, and that some of those may have ended up in Nazi hands.’

‘So you’re saying that these underworld characters just have to watch and wait.’

‘Jack’s worried about kidnapping and extortion,’ Dillen said. ‘It’s becoming a bigger problem now in Europe. And of course Rebecca is vulnerable.’

Rebecca gave an impatient shrug. ‘I can look after myself, right? Every time I’ve been on Seaquest II, Ben’s given me self-defence training, and taken me through another weapon. He says I’m a natural with Dad’s Beretta nine-millimetre.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Hugh said. ‘I don’t doubt it at all.’ He gave Rebecca a steely look, then turned back to Dillen. ‘Now, let’s get to the other reason you’re here. You said on the phone that you’d been researching Schliemann’s papers.’

‘Only skimmed the surface. Schliemann was a prodigious correspondent. Do you remember Jeremy Haverstock, Maria’s American assistant in the Institute of Palaeography? I mentioned him a moment ago. He and I worked together through Schliemann’s papers from the time of his first dig at Troy in 1871 to his final visit there in 1890. It was fascinating, and Jack was right. He says treasure-hunters worth their salt always leave clues for future explorers, in case they don’t make it. To find the clues, you have to get into the mind of the treasure-hunter, something Jack was sure Schliemann knew too. But it’s what we didn’t find that was so revealing. Schliemann had a virtually uncontrollable urge to tell the world everything he discovered. At Troy he found the treasure of Priam; at Mycenae, the Mask of Agamemnon. He trumpeted them both to the world. His name was splashed over the newspapers, and he loved it. But then there’s something not quite right. He abruptly departed each place, Troy, Mycenae, at the moment of his greatest breakthrough, when he should have stayed and dug for more. After finding the mask at Mycenae he embarked on fifteen years of restless exploration, in Greece, in Italy, in Egypt, chasing dreams that seem half-baked, almost unhinged. It was as if he’d lost the plot, let his ego get the better of him.’

Hugh nodded. ‘I was at Mycenae the summer before the war, you remember, digging with the British School. I recall sitting on the hillside staring at that magnificent place, wondering how on earth an archaeologist like Schliemann could have left it unfinished. I always thought there was something else driving him, something that allowed him to turn his back on the gold and other treasures he knew must still lie there, as if he’d found what he needed and had to move on, some kind of obsessive quest that we can only guess at now.’