David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

“Just a small diversion first,” Jack said.

Costas stared at him. “Yeah. Right. A diversion.”

Jack looked at the carving of the dancing female spirit, then at the sherd with the Tamil graffito. Ramaya. He put it back down carefully on the table, and glanced up at the others. “Well, if you’re ready, I think we’re good to go. The sooner we do, the sooner we find out what it is you’ve got in that case.”

Hiebermeyer picked up the case. Jack and Costas each shouldered a rucksack lying ready by the tent, and Aysha took a briefcase and a smaller bag. They waved back at the group in the trench and began to walk down the slope toward the helicopter. Hiebermeyer seemed lost in thought again, but suddenly stopped, put the case down and peered at Jack. “I just remembered. Talking about the dinghy reminded me. And then going to southern India. You’ve got family history out there, haven’t you? Your great-great grandfather, wasn’t it, the soldier? Something he found in the jungle, back in the nineteenth century. You used to go on about it when we were at school. How you’d love to get out there. As I recall it was somewhere in Tamil Nadu, the Eastern Ghats. If you’re at Arikamedu, you won’t be that far off.”

Jack stared intently at Hiebermeyer. “I’ve always wanted to see if I could find out more. You’re right. I’m passionate about it. This is too good an opportunity to miss. It’d be a small diversion, a day or two. I think I can set it up with the Survey of India. And there’s a connection with the Romans, I’m sure of it. I’ve got a gut instinct.”

“Uh-oh,” Costas said, stopping beside them. “Not just a diversion. A gut instinct. That’s serious.”

Jack grinned, then dumped the rucksack and reached into his own bag and extracted a small brown envelope. He took Hiebermeyer’s hand, held it palm-up and gently tipped out the gold coin. Aysha gasped, and Hiebermeyer held the coin up, the sun glinting dazzlingly off the image of the emperor. “I guessed you’d found something like this, Jack. You were leaving a trail of hints. I do know you pretty well.” He held up the coin again. “It’s fantastic,” he murmured. “The crumbled walls, these scraps of ancient Berenike, they tell a human story, but this place was really about what passed through it, incredible riches, the wealth of an empire. To understand what actually went on here, you have to hold this. To hold treasure. That’s what fueled this place, treasure on an unimaginable scale.”

“And the sea trapped one load in its net,” Costas said.

“There are more of these coins?” Hiebermeyer said.

“Thousands of them,” Jack said. “All mint issues. All Imperial gold.”

“It’s the mother lode,” Costas said.

Hiebermeyer relaxed his shoulders, gave a broad smile and put his other hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Jack. You remember what I used to call you, when we were boys? Lucky Jack.” He handed back the coin, picked up the case again then took Costas by the arm, steering him down the dusty slope toward the helicopter. “Now, tell me about these elephants.”

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“Try me.”

Three days later Jack stood outside on the flying bridge of Seaquest II, leaning on the railing and looking out toward the eastern horizon. The sun had risen in a clear sky for the first time since they had left the Red Sea, and Jack enjoyed the warm radiance as it reflected off the water. It had been three days not entirely to his liking. The monsoon had hit them as soon as they rounded Arabia, and they had sailed directly across the open ocean toward the southern tip of India. The only saving grace was the twenty-knot speed with the wind behind them. Jack could barely comprehend how ancient Greek and Egyptian sailors had done it, bucketing and wallowing in the swell, hundreds of miles from land with only the direction of the monsoon for navigation. It would have been a tremendous feat of courage, and sailing out of sight of land would have been their worst nightmare. Especially if they had been seasick. Jack swallowed hard, and tried to forget the last seventy-eight hours. The worst had not happened, but it had been close. He felt dog-tired, but also like the survivor of a near-fatal illness with a new lease on life. And it had also been exhilarating, the hours he had spent rooted to this spot, lashed by wind and spray, his eyes roving continuously, searching for the line of the horizon, in the tumult of the swell and flickering blackness that had seemed without end.

The captain’s face popped out of the bridge door, and a hand holding a steaming mug. “We’re entering the Palk Strait now. We’ve got a local pilot coming to navigate us through and I’m putting the ship on alert. The Sri Lankan navy’s fighting a gun battle with Tamil Tiger boats just off the northern tip, and we’ll be within range.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Jack took the mug gratefully and turned back to the sea. He watched the launch carrying the pilot come alongside, skillfully matching their speed while the pilot was hooked into a chair and winched on board. He could see land now on both sides, the southern tip of India and the northwestern coast of Sri Lanka. The narrows ahead were another obstacle facing ancient sailors, treacherous shallows and reefs that only local craft could ply. But once through, the sailors were near the end of their voyage, at the place where they met traders coming from the east, from Chryse, the semi-mythical land of gold, from the farthest places known to westerners. Jack looked at his watch. Maurice had promised that this would be the morning to reveal his find before they reached the Roman site of Arikamedu. Maurice and Aysha had been holed up continuously in the ship’s lab belowdecks, piecing together whatever it was that Maurice had brought on board from his excavation in Egypt. Jack was itching to join them. He would go down and see for himself once he had finished his coffee. Especially now that belowdecks was a realistic proposition, not the lurching nightmare of the last three days.

A hand touched his arm, and he turned to Rebecca. She was dressed in jeans and an IMU T-shirt. “Feeling better?” she said. Jack nodded, smiling. Her accent was American, and her voice was developing the depth that Jack had found attractive in her mother. Rebecca was black-haired, as Elizabeth had been, but had Jack’s blue eyes. There was a sadness in them, a sadness that would always be there, and Jack’s heart went out to a child who had experienced the loss of her mother, and had grown up apart from her real parents. Jack had only known he was a father since the appalling circumstances of Elizabeth’s disappearance and death in Naples less than a year before. Elizabeth had left him sixteen years earlier when she had succumbed to family pressure to return to Naples, and Jack realized she could only have known she was pregnant once she had been sucked back into the dark underworld from which she never found an escape. She had not wanted to risk bringing up her daughter in that world and had sent her to New York. Rebecca had grown up strong and confident under the guardianship of her mother’s friends, and when Elizabeth had explained to her the reasons why, the dark backdrop of her life in Naples, she had understood as only a child could, absorbed in the excitements of her own life. But the death of her mother had been devastating, and after Jack had first met Rebecca in New York, his friends at IMU had become a second family to her. Jack had gone with her to Naples for the commemoration held by her mother’s colleagues from the archaeological superintendency on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, overlooking the Roman site that had been Elizabeth’s lifelong work, and the modern city whose dark tentacles had taken her life. Jack knew they were still there, those who had used her, worn her down, even among her own family, but there was to be no retribution; that cycle had been the poison that killed her. His choice, the one Elizabeth would have craved, was to walk away and take their daughter with him, to create a new and exciting world for Rebecca that would help her package the past in a place where it would never threaten to take hold of her. Jack would never know whether Elizabeth had intended to tell him about their daughter, but he could not afford to dwell on it. His responsibility now was Rebecca’s happiness. He put his hand on hers. “I feel fine,” he said. “I just needed some off-time.”