David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

‘Who’s Altamaty, by the way?’ Lanowski said, looking at Jack with a hint of concern on his face.

Jack stared at him. ‘What? Oh, he’s in charge of the petroglyph open-air museum. It’s a World Heritage Site now, a result of a little bit of extra lobbying from us. He’s really climbed up the ladder in the last two years. He’s also been doing some fascinating underwater work in the lake. He was a diver in Soviet special forces, and I made him a research associate of IMU. And yes, he and Katya are very good friends.’

‘And you’re not always around,’ Lanowski said cautiously.

‘Not always.’ Jack stared pointedly at the screen. ‘Now, where were we? I think we’re just about done.’ He picked up his phone and saw that the message indicator had been flashing. ‘I had this switched off while we were talking before I called Katya and someone’s left a message. Just let me listen to it and then I’m off to the helipad.’ He pushed the chair back and got up, stretching and feeling the aches from diving in his body again. He glanced back at the computer screen. It had been great to see Katya again. And secretly he was pleased to hear how much Rebecca adored her. Lanowski was right, too. His time management was out of hand. After this was over, he needed to sit on a mountainside somewhere and work out his priorities. Moving from one adrenalin-fuelled project to another was the life he was made for, but it was time to splice in some other kinds of excitement and make that a permanent fixture. It had been building up to this ever since Rebecca had appeared in his life. He needed to listen to his friends. He took a deep breath, then walked over to the other side of the room, one hand in his pocket, clicked the inbox and put the phone up to his ear. He stood still, listening intently, then slowly took the phone down, staring back at the other three. ‘That was Maurice Hiebermeyer.’ He felt numb, unable to move, as if he had just reached a tipping point. ‘He wants me to go to the bunker site in Germany right away.’

‘Any news?’ Costas said, staring at Jack.

‘He said he wasn’t going to tell me anything on the phone. And I can’t call him back, as he’s spending six hours in decontamination.’

‘Shit. That sounds bad.’

‘He said it was just routine. They all have to do it. He said now he knew what it felt like when we had to go into the recompression chamber. But I’ve never heard him sound like that before. I barely recognized his voice.’

‘It can’t have been a good experience, whatever he saw.’

‘I should never have let him take my place.’

‘You can’t be everywhere. Jack. And he insisted.’

Jack glanced at his watch. 1450 hours. ‘Time I packed my bag.’

‘How are you going to get there?’ Costas asked. ‘Maurice used the Embraer to fly from Egypt to Germany, and it’s still at Frankfurt waiting for him.’

Jack waved his phone. ‘I had a call last night from an old friend who’s just about to finish his flying career in the Royal Air Force, Paul Llewelyn. He’s spending the night at Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, and he knew I’d been excavating at Troy. He gave me a call on the off-chance that we might hook up.’

‘Didn’t he go on your first expeditions when you were undergraduates?’

Jack nodded. ‘A battered van, a home-made inflatable boat, an ancient compressor and cobbled-together diving equipment. Peter Howe was another stalwart. I always dreamed of something like this, Seaquest II, IMU, but I never imagined that the adventures we planned would attract the dark clouds we seem to be under now. Back then we didn’t have the equipment to search for Atlantis, but those were days when the world seemed like our oyster.’

‘The excitement’s still there, Jack,’ Costas said, peering at him. ‘Bigger than ever. Don’t lose hold of that. And the best projects are still to come. You’ve got a daughter to keep entertained, remember?’

Jeremy coughed. ‘I think she might see it the other way round.’

‘So what about Paul?’ Costas said.

‘He’s ferrying a Tornado GR4 back from Kandahar in Afghanistan to the UK. For years he’s been offering me a back-seat ride in a fast jet. The old NATO base next to the bunker site in Germany is still functional, and they’ve put in a skeleton ground team to deal with aircraft bringing in supplies for the excavation. The Lynx should be able to take me from here direct to Incirlik, and I’ll see whether Paul can make a small diversion on his way back to England.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ Jeremy said.

‘Fun’s probably not the right word for where Jack’s going,’ Costas murmured.

Lanowski got up and put a hand awkwardly on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Take it easy, Jack.’ He pointed at the image of the papyrus on his screen. ‘I want you back here in this ship to find out where that’s leading us.’

‘Jacob’s right,’ Costas added. ‘And remember, Saumerre can’t make a move until he has the upper hand, and he’ll only have that if he’s got hold of the weapon he thinks lies in that Nazi bunker. There’s no chance of that now, is there? The place must be locked down like Fort Knox. Once we find it and we’re certain Saumerre is neutered, then the matter is out of our hands and we can let MI6 blow his network wide open and take him down. Then we can get back to the archaeology. This has been eating away at you for months, Jack, at all of us. Let’s get it done.’ Costas turned back, looked at the ROV monitor and idly tapped the control handle. The screen lurched. He hit the handle. It lurched again. ‘Holy shit,’ he whispered.

‘What is it?’ Jack turned, followed by the others.

Costas tapped the handle again. The image wobbled. ‘It’s not just the camera that’s still working,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s Little Joey. He’s still alive.’

Lanowski quickly sat down beside Costas, tapping the keyboard and working the mouse. He nudged Costas’ hand away and held the handle himself, gently tugging it in every direction. ‘Okay,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s only the eye that’s moving, the socket holding the camera, and we’ve only got movement in one direction, at about forty-five degrees on a three-sixty-degree compass, which will take us up the rock face to the right of those symbols. The computer says it’ll only go up to an arc of forty degrees or so, which means it’ll stop after about two metres up the rock face.’ He let go and sat aside, staring at the screen.

Costas put his hand back on the handle and moved it slowly to the right. The image climbed away from the symbols, showing a smoothed section of rock wall, then a dark crack and a large protrusion with a crack on the other side. ‘It’s a boulder,’ he said. ‘Those cracks look like the edge of some kind of tunnel, and the boulder’s been wedged into it. I can’t push it any further to the right.’

‘Try going up,’ Lanowski suggested.

Costas did as he suggested, moving the stick carefully. Nothing happened. He pushed it to its maximum angle. There was a sudden blur and the image wobbled, as if the eye of the ROV were on a spring. A shimmer of bubbles and a cloud of brown filaments surged up from below, and the water wavered and blurred like heat rising in air. ‘Something bad is happening,’ Costas murmured. ‘I think the lava has just entered the chamber and has pushed into the back of the ROV, and the water’s boiling up. In that confined space there’ll be a massive phreatic explosion. I think this really is the last gasp for Little Joey.’

‘Don’t give up just yet,’ Lanowski urged. ‘Take a look at that.’

The wobbling stopped and the image stabilized. The eye of the ROV had angled upwards to the top of the boulder, to a wider crack between its upper surface and the top of the tunnel. They all stared in stunned silence.