David Gibbins - The Last Gospel

‘Maurice.’ A muffled voice came through from behind.

‘Maria.’

‘Relax for a moment.’

There was a massive jolt and he sprang forward, tumbling awkwardly down the cascade of rock fragments that filled the tunnel entrance. He began to cough violently and quickly replaced the dust mask where it had been wrenched off. He grimaced, pulled his legs through, then crouched upright in the narrow tunnel.

‘Sorry.’ Maria’s face appeared through the hole, capped with a yellow hard hat and wearing protective glasses and a dust mask, her long dark hair tied back. Her voice was strong and mellifluous, English with a hint of a Spanish accent. ‘Always best to catch people unawares, I find. If you tense up it’s hopeless.’

‘You’ve done that often?’

‘I’ve been through a few holes in my time.’ She slipped effortlessly through and crouched beside him, their two bodies exactly filling the width of the tunnel with scarcely enough headroom to stand upright. ‘I hope you’re still intact. A few bruises seemed better than another sentence to the superintendency office, begging for a pneumatic drill.’

‘My thoughts precisely.’ Hiebermeyer rubbed his left leg gingerly. ‘The permit only allows us to follow this old tunnel, not to dig new ones. Even widening that hole created by the earthquake would be a criminal transgression. It’s madness.’ He peered back through the dust. ‘Not that the superintendency people will notice what we do right now.’

‘They’ll be catching up to us soon.’

Hiebermeyer grunted, then raised his safety glasses and eyed Maria thoughtfully as he cleaned the lenses. ‘Anyway, I rather enjoyed our time together in the office. A crash course on medieval manuscripts from a world expert. Fascinating. And I was about to read you my doctoral thesis on the Roman quarries opened up by the emperor Claudius in Egypt.’

Maria groaned. ‘You’re supposed to be in your element here, Maurice. Underground, I mean. Remember, I was on board Seaquest II when Jack took the call, after the earthquake here. Get an Egyptologist, he said. Someone used to catacombs, burrowing in the ground, the Valley of the Kings and all that.’

‘Ah, the Valley of the Kings,’ Hiebermeyer sighed. He watched as Maria backed up until her head was inches from the snout of the jackal. ‘But you’re right. I am in my element now. It’s fabulous. We have a new friend.’

‘Huh?’

‘Turn around. Slowly.’

Maria did as instructed, then yelped and threw herself back. ‘ Dios mia. Oh my God.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s just a statue.’

Maria was splayed against the tunnel entrance, but far enough back to take in everything that had been revealed. ‘It’s a dog,’ she whispered. ‘A wolf. On a human torso.’

‘Relax. It won’t bite.’

‘Sorry. My nerves are a little frayed.’ Maria took a deep breath, then leaned forward and peered closely. ‘It’s not possible,’ she murmured. ‘Hieroglyphs? Is this thing Egyptian?’

‘Anubis,’ Hiebermeyer said matter-of-factly. ‘A life-sized statue of the Egyptian god of the dead, in black steatite. The hieroglyphs are a copy of the Instructions for Merikare, a text of the third millennium BC, but that cartouche at the bottom is a royal inscription of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, of the Sixth century BC. I wouldn’t be surprised if this came from the royal capital at Sais, on the Nile delta.’

‘That rings a bell,’ Maria said. ‘Wasn’t that where the Athenian Solon visited the high priest? Where he recorded the legend of Atlantis?’

‘You’ve spent some time with Jack.’

‘I’m an adjunct professor of the International Maritime University now, remember? Just like you. It’s like we’re all back at college again. He told me the whole story on board Seaquest II on our voyage back from the Yucatan. I was completely hooked. It really helped to refocus me.’

Hiebermeyer peered back at her through the dust. ‘I know this may seem an odd time to say it, but I do know what you went through. In the Yucatan, I mean, the kidnapping and torture, your friend O’Connor in Scotland. Jack told me on the phone before you joined me in Naples. I haven’t mentioned it before because the time was never right. Like now. Just so you know.’

‘I know.’ Maria straightened up and dusted off her sleeves. ‘Jack said he’d told you. Thank you, Maurice. Much appreciated. End of topic.’

Hiebermeyer paused as if about to say something, then nodded. ‘So. Atlantis.’

‘Jack and Costas have plans to go back to the Black Sea to the site and find a Greek wreck they saw nearby, a trireme I think.’

Hiebermeyer grunted. ‘I wish Jack would give me some time instead. I’ve got something much better for him. It’s supposed to be our job, feeding him any new leads. I’ve been trying to tell him about this one for months now.’ He sighed in exasperation, then looked at the statue. ‘But back to what we’ve got here. The Greek historian Herodotus also visited Sais and described a lake outside the Temple of Neith, a sanctuary surrounded by statues like this, pharaohs and gods brought from older sites all over Egypt. By the Roman period Sais was silted up and abandoned, but it would have been accessible to Roman ships and stripped of all its precious stone and statuary.’

‘You’re saying this was looted?’

‘I prefer the word transferred. The Romans who built this villa had access to great works of art from all over the Mediterranean and beyond, from many different cultures stretching far back in history. They were just like private collectors or museum curators today. Some of the best Greek bronze statues ever found came from this very villa, discovered only yards away from us when well-diggers broke through in the eighteenth century. Some Romans equated Anubis with Cerberus, guardian of the river Styx in the underworld, but to many he was a figure of derision, the barking one, a dog. This statue would have been an antiquity, a curio, probably seen as an amusing work of art and nothing more.’

‘I don’t know,’ Maria said quietly. ‘He seems to be staring at us, half in and half out of history, exactly like a guardian.’ She peered at Hiebermeyer. ‘Do you ever get superstitious, Maurice? I mean, King Tut’s tomb, the curse of the mummy, all that?’

‘No.’ Hiebermeyer spoke curtly. ‘I’m just a dirt archaeologist.’

‘Come on, Maurice. You must at least be thrilled by this. Remember when we were undergraduates, and you talked all the time about Egypt? And I mean all the time. Admit it.’

Hiebermeyer looked at the jackal head, and allowed himself a rare smile. ‘I am thrilled. Of course I am. It’s wonderful. I can’t wait to see the rest of the inscription.’ He pressed the palm of his hand against the polished steatite, then looked down the tunnel. ‘But I really think this is the end of the road. This statue must have been revealed in the seismic aftershock last night, and we must be the first to see it. But others have been this far in the tunnel before us, before it was sealed up to get it ready for our arrival. The local site security people will have been in here as soon as that first earthquake opened it up. If they found anything it’s probably on the black market already. I doubt whether we’ll find anything else.’

‘I can’t believe you’re so cynical.’ Maria seemed genuinely affronted. ‘They’d never have allowed it. Have you forgotten where we are? The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Site of the only known library of papyrus scrolls to survive from antiquity, yet everyone knows that more of it must remain here to be found, sealed up behind these walls. You don’t just let anyone walk in here and pilfer it.’

‘Also one of the greatest disappointments in archaeology,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘Almost all the excavated scrolls are by Philodemus, a third-rate philosopher of no lasting significance. No great works of literature, hardly anything in Latin.’ He replaced his glasses. ‘Ever wonder why the villa was never fully excavated?’