David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

Dillen stood for a moment, trying to think ahead. His mind was in a turmoil. He did not know what the next few days might hold for him. Much would rest on what Hugh told them now. He would return here as planned after taking Rebecca to London, to spend time with Hugh on the translation, but only to get it started and to map a course of action. The pressure was already on at Troy to get results, with the deadline of the military exercise looming, and now he felt another line of investigation was going to cascade before them and require his involvement, with Jack and the rest of the team fully committed in the field. And they needed to keep ahead of the game before word leaked out that they were on any kind of new trail, not at Troy this time but in the shadowy underworld of present-day Europe.

He closed the door behind him, and sat down. Hugh handed him another steaming mug. ‘Call get through?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Good show. Are they diving?’

Dillen looked at his watch. ‘Scheduled for fourteen thirty local time. They’re planning to use the one-man submersibles, the Aquapods.’

‘Blast it all. If only I were younger. Jack got me into a drysuit and tank in the IMU pool a few years ago, and it was wonderful. At least he keeps me up to date, with that gizmo.’ He pointed at the computer half submerged under the stacks of papers on his table. ‘Real-time video. Not for this project, though, it seems.’

‘Media blackout,’ Rebecca said. ‘Too many bad guys watching. But I’m sure Dad will link you up as soon as it’s safe.’

‘Do you want to have a proper rest before talking more?’ Dillen asked.

‘Good Lord, no. Let’s carry on.’

‘To Mycenae, then.’

Hugh leaned forward. ‘All right. The summer of 1938. One of the foremen on the excavation had actually known Schliemann. Had actually known him. The foreman was frail and crippled, too arthritic to dig any more, a kind of camp elder. But as a boy, he’d been the one who first showed Schliemann the mound at Hissarlik when Schliemann went there in 1868. It was astonishing to hear his account. It wasn’t Schliemann who discovered Troy. It wasn’t even Frank Calvert, the British consul who led him to the site. The local people had always known about it. A clan in the village of Hissarlik claimed they were descended from Hector, the Trojan prince. Schliemann knew the power of local legend, and of course he believed that real history lay behind myth. And he knew the power of dreams in childhood. That had been where his own quest had begun, as a little boy in a town in Germany, dreaming of Troy. So when he went to Hissarlik, the first thing he did was to go to the children. He offered them riches beyond their imagination, to open up the world to them as the world had once been opened up to him. And the boy who became the crippled old man had taken the bait.’

‘And afterwards he followed Schliemann to Mycenae?’ Rebecca asked.

Hugh nodded. ‘The boy’s father was a Greek sailor his mother had met in nearby Canakkale, and the boy could pass himself off as a Greek or a Turk. Schliemann was as good as his word and took the boy on as a kind of protege, teaching him to read, teaching him English and German, showing him the tricks that had led Schliemann himself to wealth and fame. But the boy was unambitious and content to remain by Schliemann’s side. After the great man’s death, he never rose above excavation foreman, working for the German and British archaeologists who followed in Schliemann’s wake. But what he did tell us was fascinating. He knew perfectly well that Schliemann and Sophia had dug secretly at Troy. And he told us the Ottoman authorities knew too.’

‘So the Ottomans turned a blind eye?’ Dillen said.

‘It was more than that. At Hissarlik, the local Ottoman vizier threatened to expose the boy’s Greek paternity if he didn’t inform on Schliemann. That was why the man opened up to us, all those years later, when he knew he was close to death. All his life he’d felt as if he’d betrayed Schliemann’s trust, and he wanted to ease his burden and tell those he felt might forgive him. But Schliemann like many showmen was too absorbed in his own self-image to realize that others were playing him as well. He was a huge international celebrity, a powerful tool for regimes aspiring to improve their status in the world. The Ottoman court in Constantinople was a decaying beast by the 1870s, but was still a byword for intrigue. It suited the Ottomans to know that Schliemann had dug secretly at Troy and found treasure he had spirited away. One day they might use that knowledge as leverage to make him play their game, to enlist him to help blow their trumpet abroad. The Ottomans were well aware of their bad reputation. Schliemann’s friend Prime Minister Gladstone of Britain was particularly antagonistic towards them. Schliemann unwittingly became a pawn in the world of international power politics. The Greeks allowed him to dig at Mycenae so they could keep up with the Turks, to allow Greece to lay claim to her own share of the Trojan War myth and the Schliemann celebrity juggernaut. Everyone knew that. But that was only what the world was allowed to see. Behind the scenes, the Greeks were playing the same game as the Turks.’

‘You mean Schliemann dug secretly at Mycenae too?’ Rebecca said.

Hugh leaned towards them, his voice low. ‘One night in 1876, just before the excavation closed for the season, Schliemann and Sophia got the Greek inspector of antiquities – the ephor – blind drunk, and secretly made their way up to the citadel. Or so they thought. The ephor wasn’t really drunk. And the boy, by then a teenager and spying for the Greeks as well, was sent to follow them. He said Schliemann was always visible at night at Mycenae because he loved to stand like Agamemnon at the highest point of the ruins, staring out towards the sea. The boy watched Schliemann and Sophia descend with their tools into the royal shaft grave, the place where a few days later the world would watch as Schliemann raised the golden mask of Agamemnon.’

‘The boy saw that?’ Rebecca whispered.

Hugh nodded. ‘Then, almost fifteen years later, he watched Schliemann and Sophia do the same at Troy, secretly digging again, night after night. Schliemann should have known he would be watched. Maybe he did. Maybe that was part of his game. Once, when the boy was small and watched the great trench being dug through Troy, Schliemann joked that he was not the descendant of Hector but of Homer himself, always watching, perched above like an ancient bard, playing his toy pipes. The Greeks at Mycenae said that about Schliemann, too. The ephor told the boy that Schliemann was a poet, and Sophia was his muse. He said the Greeks had a soft spot for foreign poets coming to their shores, like Byron. He said that was really why they tolerated Schliemann. Do you remember, James, when you were a small boy and I first told you the stories of Homer, I said that we were poets too, and that one day you would sit on the walls of Troy and see the ghosts of heroes, and hear the bellow of Agamemnon?’

Dillen stared at Hugh. ‘I do remember. You should have seen me at Troy, yesterday. But tell us what the boy saw.’

‘This is where it really gets extraordinary. At Mycenae that night, he watched Schliemann and Sophia emerge from the shaft grave and then disappear down the hillside. When he thought they’d gone, he crept down to have a look himself. He saw the Mask of Agamemnon freshly revealed, and he lifted it. Imagine it. A small boy alone, seeing that. Just then he heard low voices above, and he quickly replaced the mask and hid himself in the back of the shaft, inside another grave. Schliemann and Sophia came back down the ladder carrying a bundle. There was much digging and exertion, and half an hour later they left, this time for good. The boy waited a long time, then came out and looked again. The earth had been tamped down as if it had never been disturbed, and even had water poured on it to look as if it had been rained on. He dug down where he’d seen the mask, and uncovered it again, and that was when he saw what he hadn’t seen before, a human skeleton underneath. He hadn’t seen it because it hadn’t been there before. He realized what Schliemann and Sophia had brought with them, in the bundle. They’d brought a skeleton and buried it under the mask.’