David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

It was over.

It’s twenty-three metres from the edge of the platform to the water surface, give or take a few centimetres. We’ll need to rig a pretty elaborate gantry to get the machinery operational.”

“If they could do it in the 1950s, we can do it now. I’ll trust your ingenuity.”

“As it happens, I’ve designed just the thing.”

Costas pulled out a large blueprint from a cardboard tube and unrolled it on the hot limestone, pinning down one corner with the laser rangefinder he had been holding. Jack resigned himself to a detailed technical exposition, but then was saved by the appearance of Jeremy and Maria at the end of the processional way.

“Lunch.” Jeremy vaulted down the rock carrying a cooler, then ducked under the tarpaulin they had rigged against the sun. It had been two full days since the storm had abated, and the air still felt cleansed and fresh, but that morning the heat had returned with a vengeance and the humidity was stifling.

Jeremy opened the cooler and laid out the food and drink on the table as Jack came up. Costas was grumbling to himself but gave up at the sight of food and rolled up his blueprint. They sat down, with Maria leaning on the rock behind them.

“What have you got for me this time?” Costas said. “Some Toltec delicacy? Pickled human heart perhaps?”

Jeremy spoke between mouthfuls. “Nope. Just good old Mexican.” He turned to Jack. “Tourists back this afternoon.” He swallowed, and took a swig of water. “The tremor that hit us in the jungle barely even registered here, so they think it’s safe. Too damn hot to work here anyway.” He tore off another chunk of bread and gestured at the deep pit of the Well of Sacrifice, below the platform where Jack and Costas had been standing. “We really going to do this?”

“Later this year,” Jack said. “I’m sure there’s some fabulous stuff still down there.”

“I’ve got it all worked out.” Costas was gleaming with sweat under his panama hat, his mouth full of food. “Come over when you’ve finished and I’ll show you.”

“I’d love to see Harald’s last stand, the stuff you guys found,” Jeremy said. “Back in the other cenote.”

“I don’t think so,” Jack murmured. “The entrance is blocked by hundreds of tons of stone, and in the other direction you’d be fighting an impossible current. We’ve found Harald’s last battle, his Ragnarok, and that’s enough. Something tells me I’d be pushing my battle-luck to go back there again.”

“It’s a dark place.” Maria shivered. “You don’t want to go there.”

“It’s just a bunch of stalagmites anyway,” Costas said.

Jeremy peered dubiously at the green surface of the sinkhole in front of them. “If you’re thinking of sending me down into this one as an alternative, count me out. This place spooks me enough as it is.”

“You can at least come along on the expedition as food-bearer.”

“Maria?” Jeremy craned his neck over the table to look at her. “The Hereford library, I mean. Can I have leaves of absence in my contract?”

Maria put down her water bottle and gave a tired smile. Jack had been watching her carefully from the other side of the table. She had been asleep or resting almost the entire time since Reksnys’ death. The medical team on Seaquest II had treated the abrasion on her face, which was now covered in white gauze. There would be no scar, which would have been an appalling legacy. Psychologically was another matter. Jack knew from his own experience that the loss of O’Connor would hit her hardest when she was back on home turf, with time to reflect. And two days before, Maria had stood with a gun aimed at the head of the man who had ordered that murder and who had traumatised her long before she had met O’Connor. Jack had seen her in a new light since she had revealed the terrible truth of her family’s past. He had met her mother years ago, when he and Maria were students together, had assumed she was Sephardic like Maria’s father, had never guessed. Like many Holocaust survivors, her mother had found some way of locking the horror away in her memory, had only let it overwhelm her when she knew she was dying. It explained Maria’s strength, but also her restlessness, her reluctance to commit herself to anyone. Exposing a trauma she had internalised all her life would change her. The showdown with Reksnys had brought some measure of closure, bringing her own blood feud to an end, but it had been a shocking experience and had taken its toll on her. Fortunately the Mexican police had been all too happy to change sides when they saw who was winning, and Maria had been hailed a hero for saving the little boy’s life. Only Jack and Costas and Jeremy had witnessed the final scene.

Maria gazed at Jeremy. “The job’s got your name on it, but any more time with these IMU guys and you’ll be hooked for good.” She gave him another tired smile and then looked across at Jack. “What’s the latest on the menorah?”

“I’ve been thinking about the symmetry of history,” Jack replied.

Costas gave an alarmed look and straightened himself. “Oh no. Philosophy. Time I got back to my blueprints.”

“No. Wait. It’s important, maybe the key to the whole story.” Costas sat down heavily while Jack marshalled his thoughts. “It came to me when I saw that painting of the Toltec procession to the Well of Sacrifice, so incredibly similar to the Roman procession a thousand years before on the Arch of Titus. Think of all the different places we know the menorah has been, all the different cultures. The supreme symbol of the Jewish people, second only to the Ark of the Covenant. Then it’s snatched by the Roman emperors and becomes a prestige item for them as well. Then the Byzantines. Then Harald Hardrada and the Vikings. Each time it could have been melted down, but it wasn’t. For the Romans it was a symbol of conquest, of superiority. For the Byzantines it was one of the hoarded treasures that linked them back to the old Rome, to the old virtues. For Harald Hardrada it was a symbol of his personal prowess and then became something more mystical, almost a talisman. By then its original Jewish significance was lost, but it still had almost supernatural meaning, the power to shape men’s destinies.”

Costas had been listening intently. “The Fourth Crusade, the sack of Constantinople,” he said. “That’s it. All that stuff we were looking for, the ancient works of art. Some of it had prestige value like you said, transformed into a different culture. The Horses of St. Mark’s in Venice, originally an ancient sculpture but then the symbol of a medieval city-state, something its makers could never have dreamed possible.”

“You get my drift.”

“And the other stuff, the works of art ditched in the Golden Horn. No prestige value.”

“Or symbolism that was dangerous, unwanted. For the Crusaders, like the Vatican, the symbolic power of the menorah had come full circle, back to its Jewish origins. That’s why we thought there was a chance of finding it in the Golden Horn.”

“So after the Vikings we move on to the Toltecs,” Costas said. “I see what you’re driving at.”

“The Toltecs were big on symbols of victory, symbols of prowess and dominance,” Jack said. “Really big. Just look at the architecture of this place, the sculpture. And they loved their gold. Maybe they didn’t offer the menorah to the gods at the end of that procession but stashed it away, something to be brought out only for the most sacred ceremonies. Think about the emperor Vespasian a thousand years before, the triumphal procession in the Roman Forum. Like the Toltecs he sacrificed his prisoners of war, the Jewish captives. He could have sacrificed their treasure too, melted it down to make a king’s ransom in coin. Instead he locked it away in the Temple of Peace.”