David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

He pressed the icon to email the image of the papyrus to Lanowski, put the iPad on the trestle table in front of him and then fed his hands into the arms of the suit, pushing them through the wrist seals into the attached gloves and pressing his head through the neck seal, finishing by zipping up the front of the suit until it completely encased him. He was inside a tent at the back of the Portakabin that served as a kitting-up room for those entering the bunker, with suits like the one he had been struggling into hanging in a row along one side. He stretched his neck to left and right, feeling the discomfort of the rubber latex seal against his Adam’s apple. ‘It’s a little tight, but I suppose that’s necessary,’ he grumbled.

The British Royal Engineers sergeant who had helped him into the suit finished wiping off the chalk powder he had used to ease Hiebermeyer’s head through the neck seal, and then yanked the chest zip to make sure it was closed. He spoke with a strong Welsh accent. ‘It has to be that way, sir. This is the latest-generation chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear suit. We used to call them NBC suits – nuclear, biological and chemical – but they added radiological because of the terrorist threat from dirty bombs. The CBRN suits are more like astronaut suits than the old NBC gear.’

‘What happens if I need to relieve myself?’

‘That’s why we asked you not to drink for two hours and to use the toilet just now. There’s a one-hour limit for each shift inside the bunker. If you feel claustrophobic, tell Major Penn and he’ll get you out. We’ve done a few of these old Nazi bunkers before, and they can be pretty grim. There’s a diaper with a urine bag if you need it.’

‘Sergeant Jones, I am not wearing a diaper,’ Hiebermeyer said firmly. ‘This suit is bad enough as it is.’

‘Okay.’ Jones slapped his back. ‘You’re good to go. I’ll do the helmet once Major Penn has briefed you.’ He handed Hiebermeyer his glasses, then picked up a towel from the table. ‘How bad’s your eyesight?’

‘Gets blurry beyond about two metres, but I don’t need them for reading.’

‘Then I recommend you don’t wear them inside. The helmets can get a little warm, and if you sweat from the face, spectacles can fog up. It’s a small glitch in the air circulation system we’re working on.’

‘There always seem to be glitches with equipment,’ Hiebermeyer grumbled. ‘My diver colleagues at IMU are forever burning the midnight oil in the engineering department trying to fix things.’ He stretched his neck again, grimacing. ‘Myself, I’m just an old-fashioned dirt archaeologist. All I need is a trowel, my desert boots, my trusty shorts and a decent hat.’

‘I’ve seen you on TV,’ Jones enthused. ‘I’ve watched you with my kids. They think you’re the star of the show. Those old khaki shorts flying at half-mast, somehow staying up? Pretty hard to forget, if you don’t mind me saying so. It was a programme about Atlantis, and you were in Egypt unwrapping a mummy to show how you’d revealed an ancient papyrus. There was an Egyptian woman with you, really good at explaining it all. I couldn’t work out which of you was in charge.’

‘That would be Aysha,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘In answer to your question, I was, but now she is. We got married about a year after that film, and now she’s six months pregnant.’

‘Congratulations. Your first?’

Hiebermeyer gave him a doleful look. ‘It wasn’t part of my plan.’

‘You’ll love it. It’ll change your life. I’ve got three, myself.’ He nodded towards a bag on the table. ‘Sure you don’t want to try the diaper? Could be good training.’

Hiebermeyer glared at him. ‘Don’t push your luck.’

The sergeant grinned, and then swivelled him towards a full-length mirror leaning against the side of the tent. ‘The final part of the drill is to do a complete visual inspection yourself. I’ve got to nip out, but Major Penn will be here soon. He’ll be pleased to see you to talk some history. We’ve got a European Union Health and Safety official here in an hour, due to go into the bunker with me on the next rotation. The man’s been before and I’ve watched Penn having to restrain himself while he was treated like a schoolboy. That’s what makes a good officer. I’d have been at the guy’s throat.’

Hiebermeyer took the proffered towel, wiped his face and the balding top of his head and put on his glasses. He had heated up already with the exertion of getting the suit on. He stared at the image of himself in the mirror. The suit looked similar to the new thermal-resistant diving oversuits that Costas had shown him at IMU headquarters a few months ago, the ones that Costas and Jack would have worn on their dive into the volcano today. He glanced up at the clock hanging on the tent wall. It was 12.30 p.m., one hour behind Turkey. They should have finished the dive by now, but he knew Jack would not want to hear from him until there was some news from this end. The excavation of a Second World War bunker was not like the other times, not like uncovering the mummy in Egypt or breaking into the lost Roman library in Herculaneum, when Jack would have felt just as Hiebermeyer did now about the return to Atlantis, itching to hear what they had found. This time it was as if the pall from those terrible days in 1945 were still here, something they all desperately hoped that the excavation of the bunker today would dispel.

Hiebermeyer had insisted on coming here in Jack’s place to evaluate any antiquities that might be among the looted treasures found inside. He had grown up with the legacy of Germany under the Nazis, and had used that to persuade Jack that he should be the one to go into the bunker. To Hiebermeyer’s eye as an archaeologist, every Nazi site revealed – every bunker, every sunken U-boat – added clarity to the events of that time; keeping the artefacts of the period visible was the best way of ensuring that people did not forget. He hoped fervently that the possibility that this place might contain a dark secret – something more than stolen art – would prove wrong, but they would not know for sure until every inch of the bunker had been exhumed. But his line with Jack had another purpose, something he had discussed with Costas. They had seen the effect on Jack six months earlier of searching for Heinrich Schliemann’s lost treasures from Troy, a search that had brought them face to face with the horrors of the Holocaust. The future of IMU operations depended on the charisma and driving force that came from the top, and both he and Costas had been concerned that Rebecca’s kidnapping and the events of her rescue – twenty-four hours that had propelled Jack from a desperate underwater fight in a mineshaft to the final showdown beneath Troy, where he and Costas had rescued Rebecca from Saumerre’s men – may have taken a toll on Jack that he had not fully acknowledged.

Hiebermeyer thought of Jack and Costas again, diving into the side of an underwater volcano. A brief shadow of doubt crossed his mind. He hoped that keeping Jack away from this place would not have the opposite effect, leading him to make reckless decisions, overcompensating as a way of dealing with an issue he could not confront head-on. But then Hiebermeyer hardly knew of a project where Jack and Costas had not stretched the envelope about as far as it would go. He thought back to when he and Jack had been at boarding school together, carving out the undiscovered treasures of the world between them, his on land and Jack’s underwater. Hiebermeyer had sworn he would never dive, and he had stuck to it. Like Jack, he had an almost superstitious belief in his own ability to ferret out archaeological finds, and part of that certainty involved sticking to a ritual. He had been down plenty of dark tunnels and squeezed into plenty of lost tombs in his time, but never wearing more than his trusty khakis. He had told Jack that the mere idea of diving equipment clouded his thinking. He held up his arms, flexing his fingers in the white gloves. This was the nearest he had ever got, and it was stretching his own envelope. He picked up the towel and wiped his forehead. And it was making him unpleasantly hot.