David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

“For three days? You? Dad.” She had only just begun calling him that. “It’s me, remember? You don’t need to play the hero.”

Jack gestured at what she was holding. “What’s the book?”

“A guy called Cosmas Indicopleustes. That means Cosmas, sailor of the Indian Ocean. He was an Egyptian monk who came here in the sixth century AD. I was doing background reading, like you asked. Being your research assistant. I found this in your library.”

“What does he say about Sri Lanka?”

She opened the book and read:

“The island being, as it is, in a central position, is much frequented by ships from all parts of India and from Persia and Ethiopia, and it likewise sends many of its own. And from the remotest countries, I mean Tzinitza, it receives silks, aloes, cloves and other products, and these again are passed on to marts on this side. And the island receives imports from all these marts which we have mentioned and passes them on to the remoter ports, while at the same time, exporting its produce in both directions. And farther away is the clove country, then Tzinitza, which produces the silk. Beyond this there is no other country, for the Ocean surrounds it to the east.”

She closed the book. “Okay. Tzinitza is China, the clove country is Indonesia. What he’s saying is that Sri Lanka was a kind of clearinghouse, midway between two worlds. Captain Macalister suggested I look at the Admiralty chart. I saw how treacherous this strait is, a deathtrap for big ships. So what Cosmas was saying was, ships from Egypt came here, off-loaded their stuff onto local craft, then waited. The local craft took it over the shallows to the other side, loaded it on big ships coming from the Bay of Bengal, Indonesia, even China. And the same thing happened in reverse. You can really picture it out here, those big fat-hulled Roman ships where we are now, and over there on the other side Chinese junks, with all kinds of canoes and catamarans in between. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Pretty cool,” Jack replied, grinning. “Cosmas was writing five hundred years after what the Romans we’re talking about at Berenike, but basically it’s the same scenario, until the Arab conquest of the Middle East and north Africa shut down the sea routes to India. Cosmas provides the most detailed account we have of the ancient trade that went on here. Good work, research assistant.”

“Think outside the box. That’s what Uncle Costas tells me.”

“Uncle Costas?” Jack said.

“Hiemy says I’m a lot like you. I don’t know whether that’s praise or not.”

“Who?”

“Hiemy. You know, your old buddy. Herr Professor Dr. Hiebermeyer. That’s what Aysha calls him, Hiemy.”

“Of course,” Jack said. “Hiemy.”

“Aysha’s in love with him, you know.”

“Hang on a second. One thing at a time.”

“Just getting you up to speed. You’ve spent the last three days with your head in the clouds.”

Jack laughed. “Well, I’ve been waiting. Hiemy’s been holed up like Caractacus Potts working on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He’s been like that ever since we were at school. Every time he calls me up with a new discovery, insists that I come and see it, I agree to go, and then he realizes he needs more time to make absolutely sure. So before going I usually wait until he’s come to see me personally three times. Then I know. It’s a fine art.”

“I’m sworn to secrecy. I could tell you what it is, but I can’t. That was his condition for allowing me to help them in the lab.”

“That’s part of the game too.” He looked into her eyes, thought for a moment, then spoke carefully. “I’ve been thinking about your mother a lot over the past days. You know when I saw her last year I hadn’t been in contact with her since before you were born and when I did see her, it was for only a few moments in the archaeological site at Herculaneum. But I’ve got a perfect memory of her from when we were together all those years ago, like a favorite old film that will never change. You’re in that film now too. It’s as if we’re a family together. I can see a lot of her in you.”

“When she told me about you the last time I saw her, she said the same about you,” Rebecca said. “She was planning to contact you after my sixteenth birthday, you know. She said she always meant to, once I was old enough to look after myself. My birthday was a month after she disappeared.” Rebecca looked at Jack with unfathomable eyes, and then draped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulders. Jack held her tight, and smiled. “Maybe she was right,” he said. “Maybe there is a bit of me in you.”

“Not the seasick bit, I hope.”

“I do not get seasick.”

“Yeah, right.” She leaned back into the bridge and yelled, “Dr. Jack Howard, famous underwater archaeologist and commando extraordinaire, gets seasick.”

“Time you were back in school,” Jack grumbled.

“Hah. We’re on the high seas. I’ve been reading about that too. Out here, no laws apply.”

A hand clamped her shoulder, and Scott Macalister stepped out from behind her, smiling at Jack. “Young lady, only one law applies, and that is the law of the captain. Anyone signed on under the age of eighteen is my personal responsibility.” He placed an old brass sextant into her hands. “Navigation class at 1600 hours.” At that moment a white streak appeared a few hundred meters off the starboard bow. “Tracer rounds,” he said. “Everyone inside, now.” He ushered them into the bridge and shut the door, pulling down a steel plate over the window. He took out his binoculars and peered through the bulletproof glass of the front screen. “That was a spent round from the gun battle a couple of miles away, but better safe than sorry.”

“Ben’s been teaching me to shoot with a twenty-two,” Rebecca said.

“I don’t think you’re going to be taking on the Tamil Tigers with a twenty-two,” Macalister murmured, eyes still fixed to his binoculars.

“I hope you were wearing ear protection,” Jack said.

“I can look after myself.” She turned around and walked toward the rear hatch that led down to the accommodation decks.

“Maybe she does have a bit of me in her,” Jack muttered, looking apologetically at Macalister. “Teenagers.”

“Come on, Dad,” Rebecca called. “They’re ready for you in the lab. That’s what I came up to tell you. I helped Aysha with the final pieces. You’re going to love this. It’s my present to you for rescuing me from school.”

Jack felt a surge of excitement, and turned to Macalister. “Okay, Scott. Let me know when we clear the strait, will you? And I want the Zodiac prepared. Our meeting with the Archaeological Survey of India people at Arikamedu is at 0900 hours tomorrow, and I don’t want the schedule to slip.”

“Will do, Jack.” Macalister jerked his head toward the hatchway. “You’d better follow the boss.”

The main laboratory on Seaquest II was the size of a school classroom, set below the accommodation block and above the engine room. The wet cleaning and conservation of finds was carried out in a room behind, with a cluster of desalination tanks for timbers and other artifacts too delicate to be taken out of water. Jack thought of the complex like a field hospital for the stabilization of finds that would then be transferred for long-term treatment to the IMU museum at Carthage in the Mediterranean or the IMU campus in England. The lab was a dry facility for the cleaning of finds such as pottery that could safely be removed from water for short periods. Farther forward were rooms for analytical work, including multispectral imagery, thin-section petrology and mass spectrometry. The complex was designed to allow basic questions to be answered during an excavation when time might be pressing.