David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

Jack gazed at the sediment. “We’re hardly going to see anything ancient sticking out of this stuff, are we?”

“We might. The earthquake’s shaken it all up, and the silt that normally blankets the bedrock protuberances and other solid features may have slid down the slope. The brown haze in the water shows there’s been movement, a turbitude. But the shake-up also leaves everything unstable. There could be another mass of sediment farther up the slope ready to drop down and bury whatever might have been revealed.”

Jack looked around. “So the walls, the ravine, whatever it was Rebecca saw on the sonar readout, might actually be visible.”

“They did the sub-bottom profiler run more than twenty-four hours ago. According to the bearings I programmed into my computer, we should follow this contour for about fifty meters, toward the south. That should put us over the gully, directly opposite that creek on the shoreline. The old Soviet seismological reports put this contour at about the level of the shoreline two and a half thousand years ago. Everything upslope was dry land. They think there was a single event that put it all underwater, a violent localized quake about 2,200 years ago.”

They turned carefully and began to fin south, Costas in the lead. They were within a horizon of improved visibility, able to see five or six meters ahead, beneath the blanket of suspended sediment a few meters above them. Jack scanned the grayness below for anything solid, any protuberance. After about twenty meters Costas suddenly stopped finning. “I’ve got something,” he said. Jack came up alongside. The lake floor was more mottled, irregular. Jack gingerly put out a hand. It was hard clay, smearing his glove. “Looks like a ridge, coming out from shore,” he murmured. “It could be decayed mud-brick, but there’s no visible stonework, no masonry.”

“Check this out.” Costas fanned his hand over something embedded in the clay. Jack switched on his headlamp, and gasped in astonishment. “It’s a bronze handle,” he exclaimed. Costas pulled it out. The handle was attached to a disk about the size of a dinner plate. Jack took it, wafting away the adhering clay. “It’s a mirror,” he said. “The surface has oxidized green, but it’s intact.”

“Weird thing to find in this place,” Costas said.

Jack turned the object over. “Bronzes like this have been found along this shore before, hauled out by fishermen,” he said. “Mirrors, elaborate horse harnesses, cauldrons. It was what first excited the attention of the Russian, Przhevalsky. The objects were all like this, intact, very high quality workmanship, not the kind of things people usually throw away. Rumors spread of a sunken palace, a drowned city.”

“Or a tomb?” Costas said.

“That’s my gut instinct,” Jack said. “But these finds don’t fit with the story of Genghis Khan. Mongol tombs were concealed, discreet. And I don’t think a Mongol warlord would have had grave goods like these, mirrors, cauldrons. It doesn’t add up. But I’ll wager this must have been thrown up out of a burial site by the earthquake, something pretty prestigious. That would explain the past finds too. And these are not the result of tomb robbing in antiquity, when this slope was still dry land. Tomb robbers don’t abandon valuable items like this.”

Costas pointed to where fine lines of incision were visible on the handle, swirling shapes and bulbous eyes. “The decoration reminds me of that halberd Katya found in the Roman burial on the other side of the lake. It looks the same, Chinese.”

“I agree,” Jack replied. “The local population here includes those displaced Muslim Chinese from the fringes of the Taklamakan Desert, and there were earlier migrations, Uighurs. This mirror looks more than two thousand years old, but back then this end of the lake would have been a cultural melting pot, a staging post between west and east. Prestigious Chinese artifacts could have found their way here. But I don’t think that accounts for these finds. Stuff like this wouldn’t just be tossed into the lake. These people were traders.”

Jack put down the bronze, and Costas placed a miniature electronic beacon beside it. Jack took the lead this time, finning along the forty-meter depth contour. The visibility was still only a few meters, but it was enough to see that the ridge of clay curved around to his left, and the lakebed dropped off to the right. “An erosion channel,” Costas said from behind. “This must be the edge of the gully that leads down from the creek, cutting a ravine into the lakebed. It’s consistent with the profiler readout. It should be dropping down ten meters deeper, and be twenty meters or so across. I think it’s normally smothered in sediment, but the earthquake’s shaken it away. This must be the converging feature Rebecca saw on the printout, that looked so promising. Maybe not man-made after all.”

“I want to look a bit farther. Just to make sure.”

“The mirror’s a great find, Jack. We can surface with it like a pair of treasure hunters. Rebecca will be thrilled.”

Jack was already finning ahead. “I’ve just got a feeling about this.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a feeling too,” Costas replied urgently. “And it’s a bad one. Did you see that?” There was a shimmer in the water, then a shudder. “Jack, there’s a wall of sediment about three meters above you. It’s where the turbitude slipped down that revealed the channel. Any moment it’s all going to come down. We need to get out of here. Now.”

Jack looked up, saw the darkness of the sediment wall, then looked down again. He was motionless, spread-eagled above the lake floor. The shudder had lifted a veil of silt that had obscured his vision almost completely. The glow from the headlamp behind him diminished as Costas began to ascend. Jack knew Costas would remain a few meters to one side until he was certain Jack was following. He flicked on his own headlamp, so Costas could see him, and looked at his compass readout. He had come far enough. There was nothing more to be seen. “Roger that,” he said. He reached for the buoyancy control on his E-suit. Costas was right. This was no place to die.

There was another shimmer in the water. Jack was suddenly wary, feeling that he himself was an active part of the forces around them, that his own movement could trigger the next quake. He looked down at the buoyancy valve on the front of his suit, checking that it was clear of sediment that might jam it open. It was a design glitch he had noticed before. He would have a word with Costas about it. He kept his right hand over the valve, then raised his head. His helmet bumped against something. He rolled over and looked up, seeing only the reflection off sediment. It would be unlike Costas to be so close overhead when he knew Jack was ascending. It must be something else. He rolled back, and felt forward with his left hand. It was a solid object, angled out of the lakebed toward him. It felt like a tree trunk. He suddenly remembered the lost torpedo. But this was wrong. The surface was like bark on an old maple, thickly segmented. He felt his way up with both hands, to where it angled above him. If it was an old tree trunk, it was hoary, twisted, with the remains of branches on either side. He felt the top. The trunk narrowed, then came out again before ending, like a bulbous growth.

Jack froze. He had seen something.

“You okay? You stopped.” Costas’ voice came harshly over the intercom.

Jack’s voice faltered. “I’ve got something.”

“Drop it. You need to get out of there. Now.”

“Roger that.” There was another shimmer, and the suspended sediment that had obscured his visibility suddenly flashed away, like a school of tiny fish. There was a moment of total clarity. Jack could see it clearly now.