Testament

by David Gibbins

  “Yep. I’m an archaeologist’s daughter.”

  “I remember that story,” Jeremy said. “I went to a seminar in Oxford on the analysis of Lemba Y chromosomes that appeared to reveal a haplogroup similarity among samples from one clan with those of Semitic peoples of the Levant. There was a lot of talk of the lost tribes of Israel, and some pretty wild speculation. It could never have occurred to me at the time, of course, but Semitic DNA could mean Phoenician, not Jewish.”

  “Maybe Hanno’s crew at the Cape made friends with the local women,” Costas said. “Might have made a nice change from gorillas. Probably easier to catch.”

  “If our bronze plaque was set up in the Lemba homeland at the Cape, isn’t it most likely that they would have safeguarded it?” Rebecca said. “They might have seen Hanno setting it up and making offerings to Ba’al Hammon, something he might have done extravagantly to try to keep the locals from tampering with it.”

  “And then they remove it and hide it away when they see it being threatened,” Costas said. “That could have happened two thousand years later, when the next navigators from the Mediterranean arrived at the Cape.”

  “You mean Bartolomeu Dias in 1488,” Rebecca said.

  “And then someone gets hold of it during the Second World War and conceals it among a consignment of gold on a British merchant ship in 1943,” Costas said.

  “Who do we know who was snooping around looking for Jewish antiquities at that time?” Jack said, eyeing Costas.

  Costas gave him a grim look. “I can think of one unsavory outfit we’ve come across before.”

  Jack stared at the photograph on the screen, his mind still on the ancient past. “We shouldn’t discount a direct connection between Judah and Ethiopia as well,” he said. “Remember, the early Christian kingdom of Axum was founded in the region of Ethiopia, maybe with an earlier Jewish presence. Perhaps some Jews fled south following the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, seeking the Promised Land. It might have been too dangerous for them to take the Ark and the other sacred objects from the Temple, with the risk of being apprehended by the Babylonians as they went south through Egypt, or of being waylaid in the lawless desert to the south. Perhaps they were a small number of the hardiest people, tasked with finding a secure place to hide the treasures. And once they had done so, it’s possible that some of them returned and made arrangements for the transport of the Ark by sea, all the way round Africa. What fuels all this speculation is that phrase ‘the appointed place’ in the plaque inscription. It seems clear that the Chariot of Fire was an actual place, and that there might have been a reception party awaiting Hanno.”

  “So how do you fit the Lemba people into this scenario?” Rebecca asked.

  “Only with more speculation,” Jack replied. “But if Hanno arrived at the Cape with his fleet depleted to only one ship, then he may have had a problem with disease as well as with shipwreck. The Periplus shows that they were making forays inland on the way down the west coast of Africa, and every time they did that, they would have been exposed to potentially fatal new diseases against which they would have had little resistance. You only have to look at the miserable time with disease on board the ships of the early European explorers to imagine the scenario. If Hanno encounters people at the Cape who are tough, friendly, and persuaded that the Phoenicians are some kind of messengers from the gods, then he might have recruited some of them to join him for the final part of the voyage. He would have needed strong men to carry the Ark from the shore into the mountains, for a start. And then once their job was done, they may have left Hanno and his surviving crew to carry on overland to Carthage, and made their own way back south to their homeland.”

  “Taking with them the story of having transported the Ark to a cave in the mountains,” Rebecca said.

  “And also taking with them some of the Jewish customs that researchers have identified among their beliefs,” Jeremy said. “Perhaps the Jewish refugees who formed the reception at the Chariot of Fire tried to convert them, to keep them in awe of the sacred nature of their mission and to impress on them the need for secrecy.”

  Costas leaned forward. “All of this is consistent with the idea of the Ark being in a church in Ethiopia, isn’t it? Search online and that seems to be one of the most common conjectures. Maybe its hiding place in the mountains was revealed at some point in recent history and it was secretly taken there by those who had been entrusted with its safety.”

  “It’s exactly the kind of thing that King Theodore of Abyssinia might have done, the one who took on the British in 1868,” Jack said. “Maybe knowledge of the original mountaintop location of the Ark had somehow percolated out, and reached the ears of some of the adventurers in the British expedition against him. There were men like Stanley there, later of Livingstone fame. Maybe there was more to that expedition than meets the eye.”

  “You might have the key to that in those nineteenth-century documents you have,” Rebecca said.

  Jack stared at her, his mind racing. “That’s one direction I want to go in. The other is to find out what the hell was happening in 1943. There’s a crucial backstory to all this in what happened to Clan Macpherson, and I still need to get to the bottom of that.” He sat upright, checking his watch. “That’s fantastic work, Jeremy. And to Costas, for finding the sherd. Absolutely incredible.”

  “Okay,” Costas said, standing up. “If we’re done here, it’s time to dive.”

  Jeremy gave Jack a hesitant look. “Jack, can I borrow your drysuit? We’re about the same height.”

  Jack shook his head. “Sorry, I only brought my wetsuit. You’re going to have to brave the icy North Atlantic.”

  “Some of us don’t even need a wetsuit,” Rebecca said, giving Jeremy a challenging look. “Maybe you should go back to hot cocoa and a hot-water bottle at the Institute.”

  “No way,” Jeremy said. “I want to see those carpenter’s marks on the timbers. I want to see every last inscription this site produces.”

  “Well then,” Costas said, gesturing at the tent flap. “Are we good to go?”

  “Good to go,” Rebecca replied firmly, watching Jeremy close his computer and stash his papers in his briefcase. “You still want us back here at four P.M., Dad?”

  Jack nodded. “Before then, I’ve got some phone calls to make. When I was at Kew I met up with an Imperial War Museum friend who is an expert on the intelligence files. She says there’s someone still alive from Bletchley Park in 1943 who might be able to shed light on what was going on with our convoy. It’s probably a long shot, but worth a try. If I can set up a visit, I’d like all of us to go. It sounds as if she’s quite a character.”

  “I’ve got to stay here, Dad. I’m taking over from the site director next week while he’s away.”

  “It’ll have to be Costas and Jeremy, then. Apparently she’s quite fond of men.”

  They all got up and went toward the tent entrance. Costas hesitated, and then turned back, pointing at the sherd. “Rebecca was right, Jack. It was a message in a bottle. That guy Himilco must have known that nobody in his lifetime would ever find that sherd, so he was looking to the future, to some distant time when others might pick up the trail. He was leaving it for us. For you.”

  * * *

  Jack was alone again, as he had been that morning after arriving at the site. He picked up the two objects, the photograph of the plaque and the inscribed potsherd. They were fragmentary messages from the past, made at the furthest extremities of the known world over two and a half thousand years ago. He thought of Hanno and Himilco: the one standing at the Cape as the waves lashed and the wind howled, and yet somehow surviving his voyage; the other pulling off an equal feat of navigation but falling foul of the weather just as landfall must have seemed certain. They were two men determined to bask in the glory of their achievements, undoubtedly, but whose main audience was perhaps each other, driving the one to survive his ordeal against the odds in the hope of meeting his brother aga
in, and the other to devote his final moments to scratching a message that could only have been intended for people in the far-distant future—people who might tell the world what he too had done and erect a monument on the harbor front at Carthage, where he would expect there to be one honoring his brother as well, the two men equal in stature and achievement, forever celebrated side by side.

  Jack held up the potsherd, imagining Himilco in those final moments. History from the age of sailing was full of dread images of mariners being driven inshore with full knowledge of what was likely to happen but refusing to believe it until the very end. He remembered the image of the ship he had conjured up when he had discovered those timbers on the wreck site. Somewhere over the promontory in front of him, in a raging sea with death all but inevitable, a man had scratched those words, words important enough to be his final message, to his brother, to the world, words that revealed an extraordinary secret that Hanno too had felt compelled to record for posterity on his own inscription set up at the very extremity of Africa more than seven thousand miles away.

  Jack put down the photograph and the potsherd and pulled out his phone. Secrets were meant to be forever, but the passage of time so often weakened that resolve; it was the human propensity to break the pact, to leave something for the future, that had been the lynchpin of so many of his quests, and this one now needed a veil to be lifted, a veil that had concealed one of the most secretive enterprises in history. He remembered what Costas had said: one unsavory outfit we’ve come across before. It was not just the extraordinary enterprise of Allied intelligence and counter-intelligence that he needed to break into, but the operations of a Nazi organization, one that had recruited archaeologists, fantasists, and the most diehard fanatics into its fold, an organization that would have been farcical had its purpose not been to help justify and instigate the worst crime against humanity ever committed.

  He took a deep breath, tapped a saved number, and listened while it rang. A woman with an accent straight out of the 1940s answered, and he spoke. “Hello, Miss Hunter-Jones. My name is Dr. Jack Howard, and I’m calling from the International Maritime University. I believe that our mutual friend Dr. Gordon from the Imperial War Museum may have contacted you and explained that I’m researching a merchant ship lost off West Africa during the war. I’ve listened to the recording you did for him about Bletchley Park for the museum project last month, and I was fascinated. To help me with my research, I’m very much hoping that you may be willing to talk about some aspects of your work at Bletchley during the early part of 1943. We have an archaeological mystery to solve, and I’m hoping you can be part of it.”

  Part 3

  12

  Off Madagascar, East Africa, present day

  The man ducked against the downdraft of the rotor as he made his way from the helipad to the main deck of the ship, clutching his briefcase against his chest and holding his glasses on with his other hand. A crewman who had been waiting guided him past the ROV derrick and salvage machinery on the aft deck, steering him clear of the port railing where spray from the bow wave lashed the deck as the ship plowed through increasingly heavy seas. They clattered up the metal stairs and along the gangway toward the bridge, where the crewman opened the door and waved him inside. He dropped his suitcase, took off his glasses, and wiped them on his shirt, almost losing his balance as the ship pitched forward and another huge wave broke over the bow. A man wearing a baseball cap with the company logo and the four gold bands of a captain on his shoulder boards came over from the binnacle to greet him. “Dr. Collingwood. Welcome to Deep Explorer. Mr. Landor is waiting for you in the chart room. This way, please.”

  Collingwood picked up his briefcase and followed him toward the door at the back of the bridge, staggering as the ship lurched forward again. The captain opened the door and ushered him inside, closing it behind them. The noise of the spray against the bridge windscreen was blocked off, but they could feel the ship shuddering and groaning beneath their feet as it powered forward. Collingwood steadied himself and looked around.

  As well as the captain, there were two other men present: Landor, whom he knew from their meetings in London before the Clan Macpherson project, and another he did not recognize, a wiry younger man chewing gum who looked Somali, dressed in a tracksuit and cradling an assault rifle. Collingwood stared at the gun, discomfited, and then back at Landor, who got up from his chair and limped over to shake hands. “Dr. Collingwood. The captain you already know, and this is the boss. He’s our contact in northern Somalia, where he runs a fishing trawler. Don’t worry about the Kalashnikov. It’s the tool of the trade in these parts, wouldn’t you say, Boss?”

  The Boss spat his gum into a bin, then took out a handful of green leaves from his pocket and stuffed them into one cheek. “Whatever you say, man.”

  Landor turned back to Collingwood. “Drink?”

  Collingwood lurched sideways again. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Straight to business, then. As soon as you called us three days ago with the heads-up on the U-boat, I took a gamble and set us on this course. You’d better be right.”

  Collingwood sat down heavily on a chair beside the chart table in the center of the room, bringing his briefcase up and opening it. “I’ve never had a lead as exciting as this one in all my years researching.”

  Landor sat down again opposite him and leaned forward, eyeing him intently. “I need everything you’ve got, and I mean everything. We’re only forty-eight hours from Somali territorial waters and we need to be ready to strike fast and get out of there as soon as we can. This time we’re not waiting for some joke UN inspection like we did with Clan Macpherson.”

  “Is that where your friend comes in?” Collingwood gestured at the Somali. “Keeping away unwanted attention?”

  “You call him the Boss.”

  “That’s right.” The man spat a jet of green juice into the bin. “You call me the Boss, I call you English. The only names we need.”

  Collingwood looked at him uncertainly, and back at Landor. “Right. The Boss. I’ve got it.” He clutched his briefcase to stop it sliding down the table, and then delved inside it, passing over a sheaf of papers and a file. “That contains copies of all the original source material I unearthed from the Deutsches U-Boot archive, and my summary and assessment. There’s nothing more.”

  Landor arranged the material into a neat pile in front of him, and then put his hands on it. “Okay. I want a quick briefing. First, the U-boat.”

  The ship lurched again, and Collingwood swallowed hard, gripping the table. “U-409. She was a top-secret Type XB cargo boat designed to be used in the trade in raw materials and gold between the Nazis and Imperial Japan, laid down in November 1942 and first deployed four months later. She carried out two successful runs right under the noses of the British and Americans, despite the fact that at least one operative at the German B-Dienst intelligence facility believed that the Allies had broken Enigma and were on to the secret trade. Luckily the operative wasn’t believed, otherwise the Battle of the Atlantic might have gone catastrophically wrong for the Allies in the middle of 1943. Not only that, but with Enigma being shut down, some of the secret U-boats that were intercepted and destroyed by the Allies on the basis of Ultra intelligence might have got through with cargos that could have changed the course of the war.”

  “You mean the cargos you told me about on the phone. You’re certain of that?”

  “We already knew that the U-boats on this mission were used to transport uranium ore to Japan. None of it, thankfully, was ever put to any use, other than one consignment captured by the Americans that probably went to the Manhattan Project, the A-bomb program. But the risk was always there, the terrifying possibility of the Germans or the Japanese developing a nuclear weapon. And the risk with material that remains unrecovered is still there today, only the enemy is different and the value much higher, now that we know how uranium can be used to make dirty bombs as well. A consignment of uranium wo
rth two tons of gold back then would be worth ten times that now, and a number of potential customers have those kind of resources.”

  “That’s my business, not yours,” Landor said testily. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, about to risk my ship in a potential war zone. Just tell me about this U-boat.”

  “According to my informant, the last time anyone heard of U-409, right at the end of the war, she was heading toward the Horn of Africa off Somalia with as much gold as she could carry, as well as a secret cargo, very possibly uranium ore. Judging by the consignment captured by the Americans, it would have been unrefined, and sealed inside lead cubes to minimize radiation. There was no record of her sinking. She vanished without trace.”

  “And you’re certain about the secret U-boat pen on the island?”

  “It was built just before the war under instructions from the Ahnenerbe, Himmler’s so-called Department of Cultural Heritage. That in itself was odd. I can only assume that the Ahnenerbe were intending to store artifacts in it from their crazed expeditions around the world to find lost treasures, a kind of halfway house before working out a way to get them to Germany. Perhaps the captain of U-409 had been involved in transport for the Ahnenerbe at some earlier point in the war and knew its location, and then remembered it as an ideal place to stash his loot—better than surrendering to the Allies or carrying on to Japan, with the Nazi war over. I feel certain that’s where he went.”

  “Your source?”

  “As I told you on the phone. A verbal testimony from a former SS Ahnenerbe man who gave himself up after the war and spilled the beans to an American interrogator, in return for an assurance that he would not be executed for other crimes. Unfortunately for him, the assurance he was given could only be empty, as he had gone on to work for the SS Einsatzgruppen liquidating Jews in Ukraine; but fortunately for us, his death meant that the story stopped there until I uncovered it. Any account mentioning the uranium transport was considered so secret that no written record was ever made of it. I know about it only from speaking to a former US naval intelligence interrogator who died a decade ago. I kept the story to myself, and was only able to link it to U-409 after my visit to the Deutsches U-Boot archive last week.”