David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

There was a sudden commotion behind them as Costas drew his chair up to the video screen. Hiebermeyer’s eyes remained on the image of the horses and he put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“You say anything from ancient Rome could have been brought here,” he said quietly. “Last year after our little adventure on the Black Sea I was called to Rome to translate an Egyptian hieratic text found on the site of Vespasian’s Temple of Peace, near the spot where the fragments of the marble plan of the city were found. It proved to be one of a series of bronze plaques attached to the public colonnade of the precinct, each with an identical text in all of the main languages of the Roman Empire: Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Aramaic, you name it. They were proclamations listing Vespasian’s victories and Rome’s triumph. Their subject was the Jewish War.”

Jack turned from watching Costas and looked Hiebermeyer full in the face, his dark eyes fathomless.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Hiebermeyer asked haltingly.

Jack remained silent.

“My God.” Hiebermeyer’s German accent grew more pronounced, and his voice wavered. “The Jewish treasures of the Tabernacle. Vespasian had them consigned to the Temple of Peace, never to be paraded again. They passed into legend.” His voice became a whisper. “Could they have been secretly shipped to Constantinople before Rome fell?”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Jack replied quietly.

Hiebermeyer took off his little round glasses and mopped his forehead. “The sacred vessels of the inner sanctum. The golden table. The menorah.” The last word was a hoarse gasp. “Do you have any idea what we could be getting into?”

“Yes,” said Jack.

“We’re not just talking fabulous treasures here. We’re talking major present-day ramifications. The menorah is the symbol of the modern state of Israel. Any hint that we’re on to the lost treasure of the Jewish Temple and the result could be explosive. Literally.”

“It doesn’t go beyond these four walls,” Jack said firmly.

At that moment there was a whoop and a joyful string of expletives from the other console. Jack and Hiebermeyer quickly returned to their positions behind Costas, and the ship’s second officer appeared beside them. Jack glanced curiously at the man and then reverted to the screen. They could immediately see why Costas was jubilant. The screen had transformed into a fantastic multicoloured image, the lines and contours of the scan as sharp as a 3-D computer drawing. In the centre were unmistakable signs of human agency, a dark twisted mass embedded in the sediment of the sea floor. It was an immense metal link, at least a metre long, a figure-eight shape crudely welded at the waist. A second link was looped through it and extended off-screen to the right, but the loop to the left was scarred and buckled where the adjoining link had sheared off.

“Fantastic!” Jack clapped Costas on the back. He was overjoyed, his mind already racing forward to the next stage of the search, but his eyes remained glued on the screen as the camera panned forward to the edge of the exposed metal. Wedged into the final loop was a fragmentary mass of wood, evidently ship’s timbers, a section of overlapping hull strakes with lines of regularly spaced dark protrusions where the iron rivets had been preserved for more than eight hundred years in the anaerobic ooze. Jack and Hiebermeyer both gasped as they realised what was woven through the link, a mass of white that looked like denuded branches from a tree. It was a crushed human skeleton, its arms pinned at grotesque angles through the metal, the skull distorted and barely recognisable but still covered with a rusty brown stain where there had once been a close-fitting conical helmet with a nose-guard.

“There’s your chain, and one of its casualties,” Costas said. “Now it’s time to get out of here.”

Costas activated a control to cast off the ferret’s umbilical just as the ship’s engines began to throb. Jack left Hiebermeyer with him and followed the Estonian officer out of the navigation room to join York on the bridge. He would broadcast the news of the discovery to the crew during the hour that Sea Venture would have off-site before the shipping lane was accessible to them again. He looked out of the window beyond the ore-carrier waiting to traverse the passage and to the low arches of the Galata Bridge, its road bustling with morning traffic and its balustrades lined with hopeful fishermen, oblivious to the true treasures that might lie beneath them. The choppy waters once plied by the pleasure barges of emperors and sultans now shone again, the result of a massive cleanup operation in the past decade. As Jack looked beyond the bridge to the radiant skyline, he felt again the allure that had drawn him and Katya to seek out Istanbul’s deepest secrets. For all its chaos and dark history, this city had come to symbolise hope; it was the place where Jack had revived his passion for the mysteries of the past that had driven him since childhood.

He looked down as the sparkling waters off Sea Venture’s bow erupted in turmoil from the vessel’s water jet stabilisers. He was exhilarated beyond belief that they had made a discovery that could vindicate his dream, a stepping-stone to even more sensational finds over the coming days. The chain put them right at the key moment in history, and showed they were at the outer limits of the harbour where the spoils from the Sack of Constantinople had been dumped. All they had to do now was work their way into the Golden Horn and they should hit pay dirt. But as usual Jack’s jubilation was tempered by anxiety. The pressure was now on. They still had a long way to go. He knew they would have to keep coming up with the goods for the authorities to continue boxing in the sea lane for them; the gun and the chain had proved him right but would also raise expectations. He looked again at the waters of the Golden Horn, shielding his eyes against the brilliance of the glare, and prayed fervently that it would live up to its name.

Maria De Montijo shifted almost imperceptibly on her stool and briefly shut her eyes. It had been their longest day in the cathedral precinct so far, and despite the adrenaline that had sustained her hour after hour she knew her concentration would soon begin to wane. Outside, the dull grey English afternoon was beginning to darken, and she could hear the insistent patter of rain on the windowpanes. She straightened her back, blinked hard and raised the palette with her cleaning tools to the edge of the frame. In the utter silence of the room, time seemed to stand still, and all attention was focused on the intricate pattern of ink revealed by the microlight only inches from her face. She breathed slowly and deliberately, at the end of each exhalation bringing her brush to bear with a steadiness born of years of experience. After fifteen minutes she rocked backwards and handed the palette to her assistant.

“That’s it,” she said. “We’re finished.”

She carefully pulled back the angle-lamp to reveal the entire inscription, the product of more than a week of painstaking labour. With the patina of centuries removed, the letters stood out crisp and black as if they had been applied only days before.

Tuz ki cest estorie ont. Ou oyront ou lirront ou ueront. Prient a ihesu en deyte. De Richard de haldingham o de Lafford eyt pite. Ki lat fet e compasse. Ki ioie en cel li seit done.

The unfamiliar spelling of the Old French only served to deepen the mystery of the man who had composed it. After a moment of contemplation Maria turned encouragingly to her assistant, a willowy young man with steel-rimmed spectacles, who eagerly leaned forwards to make the translation.