David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

He looked at Rebecca again, and then at Ben, who gestured back, smiling and pointing at Rebecca and doing a thumbs-up. Jack returned the gesture. She was in the best possible hands. He and Costas were now the only ones left in the chamber, discounting the two bodies. Jack took out the Webley, clicked it open, ejected the cartridges into his hand and dumped them in his fleece pocket. Then he closed the Webley and held it tight. It was over. He could let go. He walked towards the ancient bronze door, and suddenly began to shake uncontrollably. He squatted down, then stood up, leaning against the door, the Webley still in his hand, bowing his head, trying to control it. Costas put a hand on his shoulder. Jack nodded at him, then stood upright, taking several deep breaths, and tried to relax. He swallowed hard. ‘Two days can seem like a very long time.’

‘We did it,’ Costas said. ‘You did what you said you’d do. You got Rebecca back.’

Jack high-fived Costas with one hand. ‘Right on,’ he said, wiping his eyes. Right on. He looked at the door he was holding, and then moved round to glance at the extraordinary symbol, the keyhole, visible from both sides.

‘I was thinking about the swastika, the meaning, the associations,’ Costas said. ‘On one side, the clockwise swastika, you’ve got war, horror, the Nazis. On the other side, peace, the balance of power, if you’re right about this place.’

Jack stared at it. ‘The ancient Hittites had a saying. “I give you a tablet of peace; I give you a tablet of war.” It’s the same thing, offering the same tablet, different sides. We make the choice. One side, war. The other side, peace.’

‘Unless you’re up against Agamemnon with ten thousand arrows of iron, or Hitler and the Nazis.’

‘Or a bunch of Russian thugs.’

‘No choice there.’

‘None at all.’

A team of Turkish naval ratings in overalls appeared with body bags and went past them into the chamber, quickly bagging the two bodies and carrying them out. Jack looked back at the extraordinary place Hiebermeyer had found, that Schliemann had found, thinking of the days ahead when this discovery would be splashed across world headlines. Hiebermeyer would take the cake, but Jack would be there alongside him once the shipwreck excavation was finished and he could reveal the splendours of the Shield of Achilles and the other discoveries. He looked around again. Had Schliemann truly dug this far, and seen this? Jack fervently hoped so, hoped that in the days before his death Schliemann had been vindicated, had found what he needed to prove he had been right. This place now would be put before the world as Jack imagined Schliemann would have planned, not simply as an astonishing discovery but also for its place in history, to show a time when men might have found a way to curb war. He looked around one final time, and sniffed. He could smell the blood in the chamber. He thought of it for a moment, of all that this meant. The smell of blood. The smell of iron. He shook his head. He looked at his fingernails, and realized that they still had the dark residue of blood in them from the Russian he had killed in the mine. At Troy, killing was never far away.

‘I think…’ he said to Costas, rubbing his stubble. ‘I think I might take a trip to Paris. Look at some art, you know. It’s been a while.’

‘While you’ve got a Trojan War shipwreck to excavate? No way. You mean you plan never to let Rebecca out of your sight again, ever.’

‘You can come too.’

‘Me? The Louvre? Dad and Uncle Costas? Accidentally in Paris, just when Rebecca happens to be on a school trip there? No way Rebecca will allow that. Let Ben deal with security. Anyway…’

‘Let me guess. You’ve got a submersible to fix. And Jeremy’s waiting.’

‘Uncanny mind-reading ability.’

‘What do you expect? That’s how I’ve saved your life so many times.’

‘Huh? What? Let’s just get that right. Who defused that mine?’

‘You didn’t defuse it. You activated it.’

‘And what about in there? Covering your back like that?’

Jack put his hand on Costas’ shoulder. ‘Yeah, yeah. What would I do without you?’ He cracked a tired grin. ‘I need to get under the sea again. Let’s get out of here.’

James Dillen got out of the taxi, paid the driver and watched the battered old car reverse and speed back the way it had come, belching exhaust into the narrow lane. He waited until the noise had gone, then turned, pulling up the collar of his coat, tucking the folder he was carrying under his arm and shoving his hands into his pockets. It felt cold, like the cold he had felt that morning five months ago when he and Rebecca had gone to visit Hugh in Bristol, only this time it was not tiredness that made him shiver, but the real bitterness of an early November morning, cold enough for snow.

He smeared his foot over the light hoar frost that covered the lane. The air itself seemed to have frozen, reducing visibility to a few hundred yards. He took a deep breath, feeling the sharpness in his lungs, and then exhaled forcibly. He smelled burning, the lingering fumes of car exhaust. He reached out and put his hand on one of the trees that lined the lane, wanting to feel what life felt like in this place. Place of the beeches, they had called it. Birkenau. The bark felt tough and carapaced, yet also strangely yielding and soft. He leaned over, and smelled a mossy smell. Close up, he saw the colours of vegetation beneath the frost, deep browns, dark greens. He watched a leaf detach itself from a branch and fall, spinning slowly down, brushing his leg and coming to rest in the wetness where his foot had smeared the frost. He watched it settle, absorb the moisture, lose its colour, suddenly flat and immaterial.

He straightened up, discomfited. He had expected to be overwhelmed by this place, not absorbed in detail. Perhaps it was the detail that gave definition to the enormity that lay just beyond, in the mist. He looked through the trees and spotted the disused railway track, bisected by the path to the house. He left the lane and walked towards the track, then knelt alongside it, listening. There would always be trains running along this track, lines of boxcars, frozen in time. He wondered if those trees had been saplings back then, whether they held some imprint of what had passed this way: crammed-together faces in boxcar doors of trucks, anxious mothers and exhausted children, moments of sudden fear. He looked up to where he knew the railway line was heading. The track cut across the image like a great tear through a canvas, and for a moment he felt as if he were a crouched figure in a painting, anonymous, insignificant. He stood up. He had come here to see Hugh, and the girl. And he had come to tell the others the final reckoning on Troy, the words of the ancient poet that he and Hugh had so painstakingly translated in the weeks since Rebecca had been freed and the excavation had ended.

‘James!’ He looked over to the house, startled. A figure was hurrying towards him, wearing snow boots, a grey school greatcoat, a multicoloured scarf and an orange hat, her long dark hair streaming behind her. She was rubbing her hands together, and gave him a quick hug when she reached him. ‘Come on inside. You must be freezing.’

‘Is Hugh here yet?’

‘Dad and I flew in with him to Warsaw yesterday.’ Rebecca blew on her hands again. ‘We’ve only been here about an hour. The couple who run this place are really nice. Hugh’s not very well, you know. It was a bit of a shock seeing him away from his room. He’s pretty frail.’

‘I know.’ Dillen paused. ‘But before we go in. How did you work out that this was the place?’