Treasure dp-9

by Clive Cussler

  Lily and the other archaeologists were sitting at a folding table in one corner of the shelter, making a series of drawings and discussing them with Pitt as he suited up for the dive.

  "Ready when you are," Simon announced.

  "Another five minutes," Giordino replied while busily checking the valve assemblies and regulator on a Mark I navy diver's mask.

  Pitt had slipped a special dry suit over long underwear made of heavy nylon pile for thermal insulation. Next he pulled on a hood and then a quick-release weight belt while trying to absorb a cram course in ancient ship construction.

  "In early merchant vessels the shipwrights favored cedar and cypress, and often pine, for the planking," lectured Gronquist. "They mostly used oak for the keel."

  "I won't be able to tell one wood from another," Pitt said.

  "Then study the hull. The planks were tightly joined by tenons and mortises. Many ships had lead plates laid on their underwater surface.

  The hardware may be of iron or copper."

  "What about the rudder?" asked Pitt. "Anything I should look for in design and fastenings?"

  "You won't find a stern-centered rudder," said Sam Hoskins. "They didn't Turn up for another eight hundred years. All early Mediterranean merchantmen used twill steering oars that extended from the aft quarters."

  "Do you want a reserve 'come home' air bottle?" Giordino interrupted.

  Pitt shook his head. "Not necessary for a dive this shallow as long as I'm on a lifeline."

  Giordino lifted the Mark I mask and helped Pitt pull it down over his head. He checked the face seal, adjusted the position and cinched up the spider straps. The air supply was on, and when Pitt signaled that he had proper air flow, Giordino secured the communications line to the mask.

  ANie one of the Navy men unreeled and straightened the air-supply hose and communications line, Giordino tied a manila lifeline around Pitts waist. He performed the predive checkout and then donned a headset with microphone.

  "You hear me okay?" he asked.

  "Clear but faint," Pitt answered. "Turn up the volume a notch."

  "Better?"

  "Much."

  "How do you feel?"

  "Nice and cozy so long as I'm breathing warm air."

  "All set?"

  Pitt answered by making an okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. He paused to hook an underwater dive light to his belt.

  Lily gave him a hug and gazed up through his face mask. "Good hunting, and be careful."

  He willked back at her.

  He turned and walked through the entryway of the shelter into the cold outside, trailed by two Navy men who tended his lines.

  Giordino began to follow when Lily clutched his arm. "Will we be able to hear him?" she asked anxiously.

  "Yes, I've connected him into a speaker. You and Dr. Gronquist can stay here where it's warm and listen in. If you have a message for Pitt, simply come and tell me, and I'll pass it on."

  Pitt walked stiffly to the edge of the ice hole and sat down. The air temperature had dropped to zero. It was a crystalline November day with a biting edge, courtesy of a ten-mile-an-hour wind.

  As he slipped on his fins he looked up at the sheer sides of the mountains that soared above the inlet. The tons of snow and ice clinging to the steep palisades seemed as if they could fall at any moment. He turned to the upper end of the fjord where he could see glacier arms curling and grinding toward the sea. Then he looked down.

  The water in the dive hole looked jade, ominous and cold.

  Commander Knight approached and put his hand on Pitts shoulder. All he could see was a pair of intense green eyes through the glass of the mask. He spoke loudly so Pitt could hear.

  "One hour, twenty-three minutes left. I thought you ought to know."

  Pitt gave him a steel-edged stare but did not reply. He made a "thumbs up" sign and slipped through the narrow hole into the forbidding water.

  He slowly settled past the encircling white walls. He felt as if he were diving down a well. Once clear, he was dazzled by the glistening kaleidoscope of color from the sun's rays that penetrated the ice. The underside of the sheet was jagged and uneven and specked with small hanging stalactites formed by brine from the rapidly freezing fresh water carried into the fjord by glaciers.

  Underwater visibility was almost eighty meters on a horizontal range. He glanced down and saw a small kelp community grasping the rocky mass carpeting the bottom. Thousands of small shrimplike crustaceans suspended in the still water swirled past his sight.

  A huge, three-meter bearded seal eyed him curiously at a distance, tufts of coarse bristles sprouting from its muzzle. Pitt waved his arms, and the big seal shot him a wary look and swam away.

  Pitt touched the bottom and paused to equalize his ears. There was a danger in diving with a buoyancy-compensatortype life-jacket under ice and he did not wear one. He was slightly heavy, so he adjusted by removing and dropping a lead weight from his belt. The air that flowed from the compressor through a filter and then an accumulator into his mask tasted bland but pure.

  He gazed upward and oriented himself from the eerie glow of the ice hole and checked his compass. He hadn't bothered to carry a depth gauge. He wouldn't be working in water over four meters deep.

  "Talk to me," the voice of Al Giordino came through the mask's earphones.

  "I'm on the bottom," replied Pitt. "All systems up to par."

  Pitt spun and stared through the green void. "She lies about ten meters north of me. I'm going to move toward her. Give me some slack in the lines."

  He swain slowly, taking care his lines didn't foul on the rock outcroppings. The intense cold of the frigid water began to seep into his body. He was thankful Giordino had had the foresight to see that his air supply was warm and dry The stern of the wreck slowly unveiled before his eyes. The sides were covered with a mat of algae. He brushed away a small area with his gloved hand, stirn'ng up a green cloud. He waited a minute for the cloud to dissipate and then peered at the result.

  "Inform Lily and Doc I'm looking at a wooden hull without a stern rudder, but no sign of steering oars."

  "Acknowledged," said Giordino.

  Pitt pulled a knife from a sheath strapped to one leg and pried at the underside of the hull near the keel. The point revealed soft metal.

  "We have a lead-sheathed bottom," he announced.

  "Looking good," replied Giordino. "Doc Gronquist wants to know if there is any sign of carving on the sternpost."

  "Hold on."

  Pitt carefully wiped off the growth over a flat section of the sternpost just before it disappeared upward into the ice, waiting patiently for the resulting algae cloud to drift away.

  "There's some kind of a hardwood plaque imbedded into the sternpost. I can make out lettering and a face."

  "A face?"

  "With a curly head of hair and heavy beard."

  "What does it read?"

  "Sorry, I can't translate Greek."

  "Not Latin?" Giordino asked skeptically.

  The raised carving was indistinct in the shimmering light that filtered through the ice. Pitt moved in until his face mask nearly touched the wooden plaque.

  "Greek," Pitt stated firmly.

  "Certain?"

  "I used to go with a girl who was an Alpha Delta Pi."

  "Hold on. You've thrown the bone pickers into spasms."

  After nearly two minutes, Giordino's voice returned over the earphones.

  "Gronquist thinks you're hallucinating, but Mike Graham says he studied classical Greek in college and asks if you can describe the lettering."

  "First letter resembles an S shaped like a lightning strike. Then an A with the right leg missing. Next a P followed by another handicapped A and what looks like an inverted L or a gallows. Then an 1. Last letter is another lightning strike S.

  That's the best I can do."

  Listening over the speaker inside the shelter, Graham copied Pitts meager description on the page of a noteboo
k.

  He scrutinized what appeared to be a word for several moments.

  Something was out of place. He struggled to jog his memory, and then he had it. The letters were Classical but Eastern Greek.

  His thoughtful expression slowly turned incredulous. He furiously wrote a short word, tore out the page and held it up-in modern capitals it read, S A R A PI S

  Lily stared at Graham questioningly- "Does it mean anything?"

  Gronquist said, "I think it's the name of a Greek-Egyptian god. "

  "A popular deity throughout the Mediterranean," agreed Hoskins. "Modern spelling is usually 'Serapis. "'

  "So our ship is the Serapes," murmured Lily pensively, Knight grunted.

  "So we might have either a Roman, Grecian or Egyptian shipwreck. Which is it?"

  "We're over our heads," answered Gronquist. "We'll need the expertise of a marine archaeologist who knows ancient Mediterranean shipping to sort this one out."

  Below the ice, Pitt moved across the starboard side of the hull, stopping where the planking vanished into the ice. He swam around the sternpost to the port. The planking looked warped and bowed outward. A few kicks of his fins, and he could see a section that was stove in by the ice.

  He eased up to the opening and slipped his head inside. it was like looking in a dark closet. He saw only vague, indiscernible shapes. He reached in and felt something round and hard. He gauged the distance between the broken panels, The gap was too small to squeeze his shoulders through.

  He grasped the upper plank, planted a finned foot against the hull and pulled. The well-preserved wood slowly bent but refused to give. Pitt tried both feet and heaved with everything he had. The plank still held firm. When he was just about to call it quits the treenails suddenly tore off the inside ribs and the waterlogged wood peeled away, throwing Pitt backward in awkward slow motion against a large rock.

  any respectable card-carrying marine archaeologist would have gone into cardiac arrest at such irreverent brutality toward an ancient artifact, Pitt felt totally unsympathetic toward academic scruples. He was cold and getting colder, his shoulder began to ache from the impact on the rock, and he knew he couldn't stay down much longer.

  "I've found a break in the hull," he said, panting like a marathon runner. "Send down a camera."

  "Understood," replied the stolid voice of Giordino. "Come back and I'll pass it to you."

  Pitt returned to the dive hole and followed his bubbles to the surface.

  Giordino lay on his stomach on the ice, reached down and handed Pitt a compact underwater video camera/recorder.

  "Take a few meters of tape and get out," said Giordino. "You've accomplished enough."

  "What about Commander Knight?"

  "Hold tight, I'll put him on."

  Knight's voice came over the earphones. "Dirk?"

  "Go ahead, Byron."

  "Are you one hundred percent certain we've got a thousand-year-old relic in pristine condition?"

  "All indications look solid."

  "I'll need something tangible if I'm to convince Atlantic Command to keep us on station another forty-eight hours."

  "Stand by and I'll seal it with a kiss."

  "An identifiable antiquity will suffice," Knight said dourly.

  Pitt threw a wave and faded from view.

  He did not enter the wreck immediately. How long he floated motionless outside the jagged opening he couldn't be sure. Probably about one minute, certainly no longer then two. Why he hesitated, he didn't know.

  Maybe he was waiting for an invitation from a skeletal hand beckoning from within, maybe he was afraid of finding nothing more than debris from an eighty-year-old Icelandic fishing schooner, or maybe he was just leery of entering what might be a tomb.

  Finally he lowered his head, tightened his shoulders and cautiously kicked his fins.

  The black unknown opened up and he swam in.

  Once Pitt squeezed inside, he paused and hung motionless, slowly settling on his knees, listening to his pounding heart and his breath escaping from the exhaust valve, waiting until his eyes eventually became accustomed to the fluid gloom.

  He didn't know what he'd expected to find: what he found was an array of terra-cotta jars, pitchers, cups and plates neatly stacked in shelves set in the bulkheads. One was a large copper pot he had touched when groping through the hull; its walls had turned a deep patina green.

  At first he thought his knees were resting on the hard surface of the deck. He felt about with his hands and discovered he was kneeling on the tiled surface of a hearth. He glanced up and saw his bubbles rise up and spread in a wavering cover. He stood and surfaced into clear air, his head and shoulders having risen above the water level of the fjord,

  "I'm inside the ship's galley," he notified the spellbound party on the ice. "The upper half is dry. Camera is rolling."

  "Acknowledged," Giordino said briefly. Pitt used the next few minutes to video-record the galley's interior above and below the water level, while keeping a running dialogue on the inventory. He found an open cupboard stocked with several elegant glass vessels, He lifted one and peered inside. It held coins. He picked one out, rubbed away the algae with his gloved fingers, and shot tape with one hand. The coin's surface revealed a golden color.

  A sense of awe and apprehension flooded over Pitt. He looked quickly around as if expecting a ghostly crew, or at least their skeletal apparitions, to come bursting through the hatchway to accuse him of theft. Only there was no crew. He was alone and touching objects that belonged to men who had walked the same deck, prepared food and eaten here-men who had been dead for sixteen centuries.

  He began to wonder what had happened to them. How had they come to be in the frozen north when there were no records of such a historic voyage? They must have died of exposure, but where did their bodies lie?

  "You'd better come up," said Giordino. "You've been down almost thirty minutes."

  "Not yet," replied Pitt. Thirty minutes, he thought. It seemed more like five. Time was slipping away from him. The cold was beginning to affect his brain. He dropped the coin back in the glass vessel and continued his inspection.

  The galley's ceiling rose half a meter above the main deck overhead, and small arched windows that normally allowed ventilation were battened down on the upper side of the forward bulkhead. Pitt pried one partially open only to confront a solid wall of ice.

  He made a rough measurement and found the water level was deeper toward the aft end of the galley, Pitt took this to indicate that the bow and central section of the hull were aground on the raised slope of the ice-buried shoreline.

  "Come up with anything else?" Giordino inquired with burning curiosity.

  "Like what?"

  "Remains of the crew?"

  "Sorry, no bones to be seen." Pitt ducked under the water and scanned the deck to make certain. It was free and clean of litter.

  "They probably panicked and abandoned ship at sea," Giord'L-o theorized.

  "Nothing points to a panic," said Pitt. "The galley could pass a general inspection."

  "Can you penetrate the rest of the ship?"

  "There's a hatchway in the forward bulkhead. I'm going to see what's on the other side."

  He leaned down and ducked through the low and narrow opening, carefully pulling his lifeline and air hose after him. The darkness was oppressive. He unhooked the dive light from his weight belt and swept its beam around a small compartment.

  "I'm now in some kind of storeroom. The water is shallower here, rising just short of my knees. I can see tools, yes, the ship's carpenter's tools, spare anchors, a large steelyard ' "Steelyard?" Giordino broke in.

  "A balance scale that hangs from a hook."

  "Got you."

  "There's also an assortment of axes, lead weights and fish netting. Hold on while I document."

  A narrow wooden ladder led upward through an opening in the main deck.

  After shooting tape, he cautiously tested it, surprised to find
it still stout enough to support his weight.

  Pitt slowly climbed the rungs and poked his head into the shattered remains of a deck cabin. Little was visible except a few buried bits of debris. The cabin had been nearly crushed flat by the build up of ice.

  He dropped down and waded through another hatch that opened into the cargo hold. He swung the dive light's beam from Starboard to port and instantly went numb from shock.

  It was not only a cargo hold.

  It was also a crypt.

  The extreme cold had transformed the dry hold into a cryogenic chamber.

  Eight bodies in a state of nearperfect preservation were grouped around a small iron stove toward the bow. Each was covered by a shroud of ice, making them look as though they had been individually wrapped in a thick, clear plastic.

  Their facial expressions appeared peaceful and their eyes were locked open-Like mannikins in a shop window, they were posed in different positions as if placed and adjusted for the correct attitude. Four sat around a table eating, plates in hand, cups raised to mouth. Two reclined side by side against the hull, reading what Pitt guessed were scrolls. One was bent over a wooden chest, while the last was seated in the act of writing.

  Pitt felt as if he had entered a time machine. He could not believe he was staring at men who had been citizens of Imperial Rome. Ancient mariners who sailed into ports long buried under the debris of later civilizations, ancestors over sixty generations from the past.

  They had not been prepared for the Arctic cold. None wore heavy clothing; all were bundled in coarse blankets. They seemed small in size compared to Pitt; all would have measured a good head shorter. One little man was bald, with gray woolly side hair. Another had shaggy red hair and was heavily bearded. Most were clean-shaven. from what he could read through their icy covering, the youngest was around eighteen and the oldest close to forty years of age.

  The mariner who had died while writing had a leather cap pulled tight around his head and long strips of wool wrapped around his legs and feet. He was bent over a small stack of wax tablets resting on the scarred surface of a small folding table. A stylus was still gripped in his right hand.