David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

‘It’s hard enough getting you to say anything at the best of times when you’ve seen something on the sea bed. Some fishermen holler when they’ve got a fish on. Some go silent, like a dog on a scent. You’re definitely the silent type.’

Jack smiled, then turned back and leaned out, feeling the breeze again, watching the occasional spray of whitecaps on the swell. ‘I was just thinking of Lanowski.’

‘Don’t. Please God, don’t.’

‘Seriously.’

‘You mean out there? The ripple effect from that mine. The shock wave. What he said about earthquakes.’

Jack nodded. ‘If something like that mine can produce a discernible shock wave two miles away, imagine what an earthquake might have done in 1200 BC. I don’t just mean our shipwreck. I mean a huge wave, an actual wave of water, hitting Troy. And watching the Zodiac go made me remember what he said about horses.’

‘When I nearly went to get a straitjacket.’

Jack shook his head. ‘He was right. I knew he was on to something. I just had to let it gel. It’s blindingly obvious. You remember he said the Greek word, ippoi, horses, could be used to mean waves, whitecaps, and also ships?’

‘Sure.’

‘Think of another horse.’ Jack jerked his hand to shore. ‘This place. Troy. Horse.’

‘Well. The Trojan Horse, obviously. But…’ Costas’ jaw dropped. ‘Holy cow.’

Jack turned to him, his eyes blazing. ‘That’s the point. That’s what Lanowski was driving at. The Trojan Horse wasn’t a horse. It was a ship.’

‘But what about Homer?’

‘Homer? The story of the Trojan Horse isn’t even in Homer. It’s only known from those later epic fragments. No way was Homer going to include a story of a wooden horse in the Iliad. He was far too great a poet for that. The story demeans the Trojans, makes Priam look ridiculous. What kind of enemy worth fighting is going to be duped by a gift like that? To make a great epic poem work, the enemy must be equal to yourselves. But that’s not to say the Trojan ippos didn’t happen. It was a terrifying event, truly the linchpin. But it was part of a different story, the story of the fall of Troy, the Ilioupersis. A poem Homer wrote but never revealed.’

‘But you’re saying some fragment survived, with that word, and that we’ve got it wrong.’

Jack nodded. ‘A fragment mentioning a “Trojan Horse”. But those later poets, the ones who compiled the epic fragments, didn’t know the imagery. They didn’t have the imagination. They hadn’t been there, seen what really happened, as I believe Homer had done. To them, ippos meant horse, the four-legged variety, full stop. So the story of the Trojan ship fades from history. And lo, the Trojan Horse.’

‘That might disappoint the site custodian at Troy.’

‘It’s not debunking the myth. It’s just doing what I’ve always done. It’s doing what Heinrich Schliemann did. It’s making it real. Imagine anything more ridiculous than the Trojan Horse. That’s the ancient equivalent of a scene in a dumbed-down thriller. But then imagine anything more mesmerizing, more terrifying, more awful than the Trojan ship, driven up into the walls of Troy, a swirling, howling blackness behind it, disgorging the warriors of Agamemnon into the citadel to do their worst. It’s fantastic. Fantastic.’

Fifteen minutes later they were strapped into the Aquapods, with the Plexiglas domes closed over them, running through the electronics and cross-checking with each other. The Aquapods were hanging from davits on either side of the ship’s internal docking bay, facing towards the stern, and were lashed down to stop them swaying dangerously with the roll and pitch of the ship. Even so, Jack was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, a combination of queasiness and his dislike of being cooped up inside submersibles, especially ones that only just accommodated his tall frame. He knew it would all change once they were in the water, when the small size of the Aquapods made them feel almost like a diving suit. He saw Costas glance over at him, and heard a crackle in the intercom. ‘Hold on, Jack. Only a couple of minutes until the ship’s under way, once the control team have told the bridge we’re secure.’

The Aquapods swayed close together and Jack forgot himself for a moment, as he saw Costas in his full glory. He laughed out loud.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Jack shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’

Costas was still wearing his white overalls, but it was the huge sombrero hat that made him look so garish, sitting in a state-of-the-art submersible about to go a hundred metres to the sea floor, dressed like a gaucho on the range in a very bad Western.

Costas glared at him through his dome. ‘You’ll wish you had one if we have to bob about on the surface in the blazing sun.’

‘Nobody’s going to catch me bobbing about on the surface,’ Jack replied firmly, swallowing hard as the swell made the ship roll again. ‘If Seaquest II misses us, I’ll be waiting on the sea floor. On solid ground.’

The ship’s screws churned under them and the deck began to vibrate. ‘Thank God for that,’ Jack murmured, as the ship stabilized. ‘How long have we got?’

‘The current running from the Dardanelles has strengthened a fraction since Macalister briefed us. It’s between fifty and ninety metres’ depth, like an underwater river. Lanowski’s modelled it, and done a best-fit for where Seaquest II should drop us. When we go, we go down like lead, full ballast. Macalister’s just told me we’ve got about twenty minutes till we’re green-lighted. So relax and enjoy the ride. You think about the treasure we’re going to find. I’m thinking about another one of those excellent cocktails the Turkish cook made me at the excavation house at Troy last night. What I came on holiday for.’

‘I meant to tell you,’ Jack said. ‘I was on the phone to James while the mine was being cleared. You remember Hugh, of course, don’t you?’

‘Great guy. I helped him have a go at diving in the IMU test pool. You were away with Maria somewhere. We got on together like a house on fire. You’d think we were chalk and cheese.’

‘A bit like you and Jeremy.’

‘So what’s the score?’

‘Hugh has opened up quite a bit about the Second World War. Very emotional. A bad experience in a concentration camp. James said he kept his cool when Hugh was talking, stiff upper lip and all that, but when he was speaking to me James had a real tremor in his voice, had to stop for a moment. Never heard him like that before. I think it really hit him, all those years he’d spent with Hugh as a boy, not knowing what Hugh was struggling with every minute of every day.’

‘I don’t know how those guys who were there could handle it,’ Costas replied quietly. ‘My uncle, the Monuments Man, said there was quite a lot of killing of SS at those camps after liberation, American and British soldiers encountering guards. Can you blame them? Some of the worst guards were women. Whenever I see those pictures of Belsen and Buchenwald, it makes me wish I could have pulled a trigger. When I was a kid in New York, we used to go up to Canada for holidays, to a forest wilderness where there were some older Germans, ex PoWs who’d gone there to work as loggers after being released by the Soviets in the fifties. A couple of them were unreconstructed Nazis, Waffen SS who’d disguised themselves as Wehrmacht for the Soviets. Looking back on it, I don’t see why they should still have been allowed to live.’

‘If they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have met them. Seen that they were real human beings. Seen how that could happen.’

‘So did Hugh open up about this treasure story?’

‘James was letting him tell it in his own way, in his own time.’ Jack replied. ‘He’s worried about Hugh’s health. Thinks he’s putting on a brave face for Rebecca but is much frailer than last time. He’s calling me again after the dive for an update. I did tell him what Maurice found this morning.’