The Mask of Troy jh-5

by David Gibbins

  Costas came up alongside, wiping his oily hands on a rag, wearing torn working overalls with tools poking out of the pockets. He followed Jack’s gaze, and looked wistfully at the Zodiac as it receded into the distance. ‘It should have been me,’ he said. ‘Defusing that mine. It makes me feel empty inside.’

  ‘Not as empty as you’d feel if it had gone off while you were hugging it.’

  ‘Speaking of which.’ Costas pointed out to sea, and Jack saw that the Zodiac had come to a stop, perhaps a mile from the minesweeper. Two men came up behind them, Mustafa Alkozen, the IMU Turkish liaison, and Ben Kershaw, the ship’s security chief. Mustafa, a muscular, bearded man with a deep voice, had a two-way radio receiver clamped to his ear. He took it down. ‘Captain Macalister has just been informed by the captain of Nusbat. One minute.’ The ship’s klaxon sounded to warn the crew to brace for impact. They were well outside the danger zone, but Macalister was taking no chances. Jack looked out into the haze off the bows of the minesweeper, two, maybe two and a half nautical miles distant, Gallipoli just visible in the background, the coast of Troy to the right. Suddenly there was a wobble in the sea and a white ripple that flashed outwards, followed by a geyser of spray. Seconds later he felt something, barely discernible, as if a ghost had passed through them. ‘That was the shock wave, this far away,’ Costas said, shaking his head. ‘Imagine those guys in the Turkish minelayer in 1915, snagging one of those things. They wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

  Jack turned to Mustafa, smiled broadly and shook his hand. ‘Thanks again. That was excellent liaison. I’d like to have some of their guys dive with us, once the excavation gets under way.’

  ‘You have a standing invitation to the Turkish naval academy for dinner, you know that. You and Costas. You’ll be very well looked after.’

  ‘I know about Turkish hospitality. I’d be delighted. I’ve got some good friends there from my navy days, and now some more. Once we’re up and running.’

  Ben nodded at Jack. He was a small, wiry man, with a quiet voice, British ex-special forces. ‘They should have let you take out that mine with the Webley.’

  ‘You kidding? You should have seen me yesterday. All over the place.’

  ‘I was watching from the bridge. Not a bad final shot.’

  ‘Pure fluke. I’d given up trying.’

  ‘That’s often the key. It’s what I tell Rebecca. Stop trying so hard, relax.’

  ‘She’s a better shot than me.’

  Ben grinned. ‘You better watch it, Jack. She’ll be taking over.’ He stood quietly for a moment, a little awkward. ‘I meant to say. I really would have gone with her to London, you know. You just had to say the word. She’s… a really good kid. Hard to think what it was like on board without her. My guys would do anything for her. You know that.’

  ‘I know.’ Jack put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘And I appreciate it. Really do. She thinks of you guys, the crew, as an extended family. It’s the best thing for me to see, especially after what she’s gone through.’

  Ben nodded. He patted a bulge in his jacket. ‘I’ve done those reloads for you. Took the bullet weight down a notch, two hundred and sixty-five grains. That should do the trick. Wouldn’t mind having a go myself.’

  ‘See you on the foredeck after dinner?’

  ‘You’re on.’ Ben waved, and he and Mustafa walked back through the jumble of equipment. Jack turned to Costas. ‘So what’s the story with my Aquapod?’

  Costas exhaled forcibly, shaking his head. ‘Can’t work it out.’

  Jack looked at him incredulously. ‘I didn’t hear you say that.’

  ‘Jeremy and I spent half the night on it. He’s got a real knack. Sees things like you do, sees the whole problem first and then deconstructs it. Too many engineers are the other way round, too logical. I can’t really understand what made him leave engineering to study ancient languages, for God’s sake.’

  Jack grinned. ‘Same kind of challenges. Just less oily.’

  ‘The problem’s not a safety issue. It’s the external link on the intercom. We can communicate between the Aquapods, but you can’t link to the outside. We think it might be pressure-related. Only way to find out is to take it down.’

  ‘Fine by me. I never liked talking much underwater anyway. That’s the problem with all these submersibles. Diving’s about getting away from that. Just you and your breathing.’

  ‘It’s hard enough getting you to say anything at the best of times when you’ve seen something on the sea bed. Some fishermen holler when they’ve got a fish on. Some go silent, like a dog on a scent. You’re definitely the silent type.’

  Jack smiled, then turned back and leaned out, feeling the breeze again, watching the occasional spray of whitecaps on the swell. ‘I was just thinking of Lanowski.’

  ‘Don’t. Please God, don’t.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘You mean out there? The ripple effect from that mine. The shock wave. What he said about earthquakes.’

  Jack nodded. ‘If something like that mine can produce a discernible shock wave two miles away, imagine what an earthquake might have done in 1200 BC. I don’t just mean our shipwreck. I mean a huge wave, an actual wave of water, hitting Troy. And watching the Zodiac go made me remember what he said about horses.’

  ‘When I nearly went to get a straitjacket.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘He was right. I knew he was on to something. I just had to let it gel. It’s blindingly obvious. You remember he said the Greek word, ippoi, horses, could be used to mean waves, whitecaps, and also ships?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Think of another horse.’ Jack jerked his hand to shore. ‘This place. Troy. Horse.’

  ‘Well. The Trojan Horse, obviously. But…’ Costas’ jaw dropped. ‘Holy cow.’

  Jack turned to him, his eyes blazing. ‘That’s the point. That’s what Lanowski was driving at. The Trojan Horse wasn’t a horse. It was a ship.’

  ‘But what about Homer?’

  ‘Homer? The story of the Trojan Horse isn’t even in Homer. It’s only known from those later epic fragments. No way was Homer going to include a story of a wooden horse in the Iliad. He was far too great a poet for that. The story demeans the Trojans, makes Priam look ridiculous. What kind of enemy worth fighting is going to be duped by a gift like that? To make a great epic poem work, the enemy must be equal to yourselves. But that’s not to say the Trojan ippos didn’t happen. It was a terrifying event, truly the linchpin. But it was part of a different story, the story of the fall of Troy, the Ilioupersis. A poem Homer wrote but never revealed.’

  ‘But you’re saying some fragment survived, with that word, and that we’ve got it wrong.’

  Jack nodded. ‘A fragment mentioning a “Trojan Horse”. But those later poets, the ones who compiled the epic fragments, didn’t know the imagery. They didn’t have the imagination. They hadn’t been there, seen what really happened, as I believe Homer had done. To them, ippos meant horse, the four-legged variety, full stop. So the story of the Trojan ship fades from history. And lo, the Trojan Horse.’

  ‘That might disappoint the site custodian at Troy.’

  ‘It’s not debunking the myth. It’s just doing what I’ve always done. It’s doing what Heinrich Schliemann did. It’s making it real. Imagine anything more ridiculous than the Trojan Horse. That’s the ancient equivalent of a scene in a dumbed-down thriller. But then imagine anything more mesmerizing, more terrifying, more awful than the Trojan ship, driven up into the walls of Troy, a swirling, howling blackness behind it, disgorging the warriors of Agamemnon into the citadel to do their worst. It’s fantastic. Fantastic.’

  Fifteen minutes later they were strapped into the Aquapods, with the Plexiglas domes closed over them, running through the electronics and cross-checking with each other. The Aquapods were hanging from davits on either side of the ship’s internal docking bay, facing towards the stern, and were lashed down to stop them swaying dangerously with the roll and pit
ch of the ship. Even so, Jack was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, a combination of queasiness and his dislike of being cooped up inside submersibles, especially ones that only just accommodated his tall frame. He knew it would all change once they were in the water, when the small size of the Aquapods made them feel almost like a diving suit. He saw Costas glance over at him, and heard a crackle in the intercom. ‘Hold on, Jack. Only a couple of minutes until the ship’s under way, once the control team have told the bridge we’re secure.’

  The Aquapods swayed close together and Jack forgot himself for a moment, as he saw Costas in his full glory. He laughed out loud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Jack shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Costas was still wearing his white overalls, but it was the huge sombrero hat that made him look so garish, sitting in a state-of-the-art submersible about to go a hundred metres to the sea floor, dressed like a gaucho on the range in a very bad Western.

  Costas glared at him through his dome. ‘You’ll wish you had one if we have to bob about on the surface in the blazing sun.’

  ‘Nobody’s going to catch me bobbing about on the surface,’ Jack replied firmly, swallowing hard as the swell made the ship roll again. ‘If Seaquest II misses us, I’ll be waiting on the sea floor. On solid ground.’

  The ship’s screws churned under them and the deck began to vibrate. ‘Thank God for that,’ Jack murmured, as the ship stabilized. ‘How long have we got?’

  ‘The current running from the Dardanelles has strengthened a fraction since Macalister briefed us. It’s between fifty and ninety metres’ depth, like an underwater river. Lanowski’s modelled it, and done a best-fit for where Seaquest II should drop us. When we go, we go down like lead, full ballast. Macalister’s just told me we’ve got about twenty minutes till we’re green-lighted. So relax and enjoy the ride. You think about the treasure we’re going to find. I’m thinking about another one of those excellent cocktails the Turkish cook made me at the excavation house at Troy last night. What I came on holiday for.’

  ‘I meant to tell you,’ Jack said. ‘I was on the phone to James while the mine was being cleared. You remember Hugh, of course, don’t you?’

  ‘Great guy. I helped him have a go at diving in the IMU test pool. You were away with Maria somewhere. We got on together like a house on fire. You’d think we were chalk and cheese.’

  ‘A bit like you and Jeremy.’

  ‘So what’s the score?’

  ‘Hugh has opened up quite a bit about the Second World War. Very emotional. A bad experience in a concentration camp. James said he kept his cool when Hugh was talking, stiff upper lip and all that, but when he was speaking to me James had a real tremor in his voice, had to stop for a moment. Never heard him like that before. I think it really hit him, all those years he’d spent with Hugh as a boy, not knowing what Hugh was struggling with every minute of every day.’

  ‘I don’t know how those guys who were there could handle it,’ Costas replied quietly. ‘My uncle, the Monuments Man, said there was quite a lot of killing of SS at those camps after liberation, American and British soldiers encountering guards. Can you blame them? Some of the worst guards were women. Whenever I see those pictures of Belsen and Buchenwald, it makes me wish I could have pulled a trigger. When I was a kid in New York, we used to go up to Canada for holidays, to a forest wilderness where there were some older Germans, ex PoWs who’d gone there to work as loggers after being released by the Soviets in the fifties. A couple of them were unreconstructed Nazis, Waffen SS who’d disguised themselves as Wehrmacht for the Soviets. Looking back on it, I don’t see why they should still have been allowed to live.’

  ‘If they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have met them. Seen that they were real human beings. Seen how that could happen.’

  ‘So did Hugh open up about this treasure story?’

  ‘James was letting him tell it in his own way, in his own time.’ Jack replied. ‘He’s worried about Hugh’s health. Thinks he’s putting on a brave face for Rebecca but is much frailer than last time. He’s calling me again after the dive for an update. I did tell him what Maurice found this morning.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You didn’t hear?’

  ‘Up to my neck in the innards of an Aquapod all morning, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Another statue. Opposite the one Jeremy and Rebecca found.’

  ‘ Two statues.’

  ‘Almost like gate guardians,’ Jack said. ‘And he’s been in another tunnel. Just can’t keep him out of them. This time it’s the one the Austrians working at Troy a few years ago found leading from the citadel out to a spring beyond the walls. He got almost a hundred yards into it. Says he thinks it may lead to the chamber he believes is at the end of the passageway with the statues. He had one of our halogen dive torches with him and said he could see a long way ahead, well under the citadel. He got stuck.’

  ‘Well, that makes a change.’

  ‘Said it needs a more lithe, athletic form.’

  ‘Sounds right up my street.’

  ‘Thought we might nip over there after the dive for a little recce.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  Jack heard a crackle in his headphone, and turned it down. ‘That was Macalister,’ Costas said. ‘Ten minutes to go.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘While we wait. Run me through the Shield of Achilles again. What we’re looking for. The decoration.’

  ‘Best guess? Wooden-backed, about a metre across, covered in beaten gold. The decoration? Maybe bands of black niello, red carnelian, though whether that survives underwater for three thousand years, who knows. The scenes might show a kind of cosmography, a bit like a medieval mappa mundi. It’s for a hero, for display and swagger and appearance, but like most prestige weapons it’s made as if for real combat, using the best techniques of the smith. So the five layers described by Homer were probably built up one on top of the other, leaving a progressively smaller outer ring visible for the decorative scenes, and the thickest part of the shield in the centre, at the boss. That’s exactly how you’d make a real working shield, strengthening the centre where you fend off the blows, minimizing the weight around the edge. I think Homer had seen a shield like that being made, as he knew what he was talking about. The scenes he describes are plausible, everyday scenes of the world of heroes, the world before the apocalypse, scenes of hunting, contests between champions, the countryside, town life, the unending cycle of life in the Age of Heroes.’

  ‘And what if the world had moved beyond?’ Costas said. ‘Remember Auden? The thin-lipped armourer, Hephaestos, hobbles away, and Thetis “cried out in dismay at what the god had wrought”. We know the armour won’t protect her son Achilles from death, and maybe Homer’s audience knew that the shield as a metaphor wouldn’t protect history from the rise of Agamemnon, from the destruction of Troy, from total war.’

  ‘That’s good. Very good. Actually, thinking of Hugh has made me ponder all that too. What he must have seen, at the end of the Second World War. What Auden saw, in the bombed cities of Germany. A kind of truth that no artistry can mask, where no metaphor or simile or symbol can stand in for stark reality. Auden even talks about it, doesn’t he? “Of barbed wire, of weed-choked fields, of rape, of casual murder.” ’

  ‘The age of heroes, the age of controlled violence, is gone. The age of men has come.’

  ‘The history of our times. Maybe it all begins at Troy.’

  The churning of the screws ended, and was replaced by the whirring noise of the ship’s water-jet stabilizers coming on line. A green light flashed above the entrance to the dock. ‘Okay. We’re on,’ Costas said. He gave a thumbs-up to the controller standing on the deck beside him. She raised one arm and pressed her headset against her ear to listen to instructions from the bridge, and then stood back and gave an emphatic thumbs-down. Costas repeated the sign to her and turned to Jack. ‘Good to go?’

  Jack took a deep breath. T
hey always treated submersible dives like SCUBA dives, using the same instructions and hand signals, a deliberate reminder that it was people, not machines, that were diving, and that the safety of a submersible dive was dependent on human judgement more than machines and computers. But Costas also knew Jack’s discomfort with submersibles and understood that treating the dive this way gave him a sense of control. Jack exhaled, then closed his eyes for a moment. It felt right. He looked intently at Costas, then put up his left hand and dropped the thumb down. ‘Roger that. Good to go.’

  The davits quickly lowered and released them into the water. They were immediately under the waves, plummeting at a rate pre-set by the computer that controlled the buoyancy chambers in the pontoons. Had they lingered for even a moment and been a few metres off, they would have missed the wreck, with nothing to do other than abort the dive and try again. Thirty-five metres down, they entered the current stream with a jerk that pressed Jack back in his seat, but once in the stream he had little sense of it, like being on a high-speed escalator walkway. Dropping out of it, though, was a fairly serious G-force jolt that threw him forward. Below that the readout showed a modest 1.5 knot current, reduced enough for the Aquapods to maintain position at the site using their water-jet propulsion systems. Nevertheless, they had agreed with Macalister that this was not a day to linger, and they would leave in no more than twenty minutes. Officially the dive was a second recce to confirm what they had seen on the first dive and allow an excavation plan to be formulated for the next day.

  Five minutes after exiting Seaquest II they had reached the site, perfectly on target. Jack breathed a silent thanks to Lanowski. He scanned the sea bed, remembering the waymarkers of their dive yesterday, distorted slightly through the Plexiglas dome. He activated the magnifier, which brought the image through the thick flat slab of glass at the front of the dome close to his face, as if he were looking through a mask. He immediately felt more comfortable, a diver again. They had come up off the starboard stern side of the wreckage. He saw the stem post of the ancient wreck, still there, the shape of the lion of Mycenae. He had not dreamed it. It was real. In the decaying superstructure of the minelayer he saw the gap where the Turkish navy divers had attached lifting bags and removed the mine. He jetted forward a few metres and angled the Aquapod to peer below the starboard side of the minelayer’s hull, where he had first seen the ancient timbers, some eight metres from the stem post. He was concerned to see how much more exposed the timbers were after only a matter of hours, with the increase in the current and the effect of his own rapid clearance by hand the day before. He could see several square metres of planking and frames on both sides, giving an exact image of the dimensions of the ancient hull as it converged towards the stem post. His pulse quickened. He had been right. It was a war galley, there was no doubt about it.