Pyramid: A Novel (Jack Howard Series Book 8) (18 page)

Costas shook his head and lay back, stretching. “All we can do now is wait.” He reached down into a paper bag on his side. “Brought lunch with me. Didn’t have time topside. Sandwich?”

Jack felt as drained as he had ever felt, bone tired and aching all over, and he knew that when they surfaced, the medicos on
Seaquest
would want to give him a thorough road check. But meanwhile he was famished, and the idea of a picnic with his best friend trapped inside a submersible almost a kilometer deep in the abyss did not seem such a bad plan at all. He took the sandwich, and they ate together, occasionally swigging from a water bottle that Costas had placed between them. As Jack sat there munching, staring at one of the greatest archaeological
discoveries they had ever made, he knew there was nowhere at this moment that he would rather be.

It felt good to be alive
.

Twenty minutes later Jack finished wrapping a bandage around his forearm and stared out the front viewing port at the sarcophagus. Inside it he knew lay the plaque they had discovered on their dive to the wreck three months previously, something that Colonel Vyse must have found inside the pyramid and included as an added extra for the British Museum when he consigned his cargo to the
Beatrice
that day in 1837 in Alexandria harbor. It was not the plaque they had seen that had spurred Jack to come back here, as they had been able to record all the surviving carving three months earlier, but rather the hope that they might find the fragment a meter or so across that had been missing from one corner, the sharp edges suggesting that the break had been recent rather than ancient and might have taken place during the wrecking. The plaque had shown the Aten sun symbol superimposed on a plan of the pyramids at the Giza plateau, with the orb of the Aten in front of the Pyramid of Menkaure and the radiating lines extending eastward toward the site of modern-day Cairo and the Nile. There was a chance, just a chance, that the missing fragment might show the intersection of the thickest radiating line with the river at a point just south of modern Cairo, the clue that Jack needed to the location of another entrance into the underground complex that he and Costas had seen from beneath the pyramid.

Jack glanced across at Costas, who was absorbed in a mass of wiring that he had disengaged from the upper casing of the bathysphere. Jack tapped the viewing port. “Come and look at this. Tell me I’m seeing things.”

Costas grunted, left a pair of miniature pliers dangling from a wire, and slid over beside Jack. “What are you looking at?”

“About two meters in front of us, at eleven o’clock, nearly abutting the sarcophagus. Just visible sticking out of the silt.”

Costas pressed his face against the middle of the glass. “Doesn’t look like ship structure or fittings. Looks like it might be stone.”

“That’s what I thought. It’s off-white, like marble.”

“The missing fragment of the plaque?”

“Any chance of getting the manipulator arm to work?”

Costas jerked his head back toward the dangling mass of wires. “Not a chance, Jack. We’ve got life support, that’s all. Somehow when that coil hit the sub, it short-circuited the main electronics board. It’s more than I can fix down here.”

Jack stared at the few centimeters of white stone visible in the silt.
So near, yet so far
. It was close enough that he felt he could almost reach out and grab it, yet he may as well be trying to touch ice on Mars. He took a deep breath, feeling the ache in his lungs. He would have to wait and see where they stood with the excavation, whether the backup submersible or remote-operated vehicle could examine his find, something that would take precious time that he could ill afford if he were to return to Egypt before the country went into meltdown.

A swirl of sediment filled his view, and in the distortion through the left side of the port he saw a commotion on the seafloor. Apart from a few diaphanous fish, he had seen little sign of life in the desolation outside, and he peered with some curiosity, expecting something larger. Suddenly an eye appeared only inches away, staring directly at him, luminous, blinking, the size of a baseball. He jumped back, startled, and then saw the flexible metallic neck. “Costas, we’ve got a friend.”

Costas slid back alongside him. “Joey!” he exclaimed excitedly, putting his hand against the Perspex. “I
knew
he’d come. Good boy.”

The eye retracted, looking down, and a manipulator arm came into view and pivoted at the elbow and wrist. It had five metallic digits just like a human hand. Behind
it Jack could see the yellow carapace covering the batteries and electric motor that powered the water jets, and an array of tools that Costas and his team had built into it, all of it operated from the surface via a fiber-optic cable that was just visible trailing off above. The forefinger of the hand pointed down at a tablet-sized LCD screen on the front of the ROV just below the manipulator arm, and Jack could just make out letters appearing on it, distorted through the Perspex cone of the viewing port. Costas pressed his face against the center of the cone, where there was the least distortion, and after a minute or so he rolled over and turned back to Jack.

“Joey’s inspected the manifold, and everything looks okay. They can’t reconnect our communications cable, so it’s going to have to be done the old-fashioned way, with written messages. The problem with the derrick was an electronic switch override, which the engineer has replaced. They’re currently recoiling the cable on the spool and expect to be ready to retrieve us in about twenty minutes. The recompression chamber is prepped and the medical team is waiting. You’re supposed to breathe pure oxygen.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said. “Tell them there’s no evidence of barotrauma.”

“You know what the medicos are like. And Joey’s watching.”

Jack grunted, pulled the oxygen mask from the emergency bottle beside his seat, cracked the valve, and pressed it against his mouth and nose. “Okay?” he said, his voice muffled.

Costas turned back to read the screen. “Meanwhile, Joey’s going to carry on snaking the hawser under the sarcophagus, the job we were meant to be doing. Now that they know we’re safe and sound, they’re going to carry on with the plan. As soon as we’re back on deck, the cable will be dropped again for Joey to attach to the hawser. Fortunately the media people haven’t yet been allowed out, so they’ll have no idea what’s happened,
other than a small delay. They’ll be told that the decision was made to use the ROV rather than the manned submersible because Joey’s manipulator arm was better up to the task than the arms on the submersible. Which happens to be true.”

Jack stared out of the viewing port beside him at the white form of the sarcophagus. The fragment of stone protruding from the silt was only about a meter from Joey. He sidled over to the main port beside Costas, and pointed exaggeratedly at it. The eye looked at him and cocked sideways, and the hand twisted around with the palm up, as if questioning. Jack dropped the oxygen mask, picked up a pencil and notepad and quickly scribbled on it, and then pressed the pad up against the window. The eye slowly scanned the paper, and Jack turned to Costas. “If we’ve got twenty minutes, that might be just enough time for Joey to see whether that slab is the missing fragment.”

The screen on the ROV began scrolling out letters again, and Costas pressed his face against the Perspex to read it. “The ROV operator is under strict orders from Captain Macalister to focus on the task at hand. Under no circumstances is he to let Dr. Howard divert Joey to dig a hole somewhere else.”

“You try. Doesn’t Joey have a mind of his own?”

Costas scribbled on the pad and pressed it against the window. Joey read it, flexed his hand, looked up and around as if to check that he was not being watched, and then backed off slowly. “I think I got a result,” Costas said. “I told him he wouldn’t get a treat unless he obeyed you.”

“You mean the ROV operator, or Joey?”

Costas grinned, and they both stared out the port. As Joey turned toward the sarcophagus, they could see his entire form. Unlike the box shape of most ROVs, Joey had a tapering body and an extended tail that flexed as he swam, providing improved hydrodynamics and stability while he was working on the seabed. With his second manipulator arm now extended, he looked like
an outsized prehistoric scorpion. He angled gracefully through the water and came to a halt just above the protruding stone. The eye extended ever farther on its mount, snaking around and down and peering at the slab from every angle.

“Okay,” Jack murmured. “That’s the one. Go for it, Joey.”

The left arm reached under the carapace, drew out a tube like a vacuum-cleaner hose, and placed the end of it near the slab. Seconds later a jet of silt blew out behind the tail, and the surface of the slab was revealed. The pump sucked away sediment until all four sides had been uncovered. Joey backed away, and Jack pressed his face against the cone, staring.

“That’s it,” he said excitedly. “I can see the fracture line. This
must
be the missing piece of the plaque.”

“I can’t see any carving,” Costas said. “It must be upside down.”

“Can Joey shift it?”

“If I tell him to.” Joey had remained in position as the silt settled, and then looked back to them, his eye rolling sideways as if questioning. Costas pointed at the slab, made a turning motion with his hands, and then repeated it. Joey raised his finger upward and slowly shook his eye. Costas glared at him, jabbing his finger at the slab. “Come on, Marcus,” he muttered. “I know it’s him. He’s my best ROV operator, usually. He always gives Joey a little bit more personality. Now he needs to make him into a free thinker.”

Joey looked back at the slab, then at the submersible, then back at the slab again. He suddenly jetted forward, settling again on the seabed just in front of the slab.

“Good boy,” Costas murmured. “
Good
boy.”

Stabilizing legs drove down from each corner of the carapace into the sediment. The second manipulator arm came into play, and Joey hooked both hands under the exposed edge of the slab. He heaved upward, shuddering, a fine sheen of sediment rising with each vibration. The slab slowly rose to vertical, and then Joey
retracted one arm, pulled out the vacuum pipe, and sucked away the sediment from it. They saw the flash of a camera, and then Joey gently lowered the slab back to the seabed, released it in a puff of silt, and jetted back toward the submersible. He came to a halt, raised both hands as if in a gesture of uncertainty, and pointed with one of them at the screen below. It showed the surface of the slab, dazzling white with the flash, at first sight devoid of any features of interest.

Jack stared, his heart suddenly racing. “That’s it,” he exclaimed, pointing. The ROV moved closer, and the image came more sharply into view. A line furrowed into the rock extended from the fracture to the center of the slab, where it joined another, wider line extending to either side roughly at right angles, creating something akin to a T shape. “The first line is the extension of the radiate line from the Aten symbol. The second line is the River Nile. I believe the first line shows the course of a man-made tunnel, and this map reveals where it intersects with the Nile.”

“You think that’s a way in?”

“I’ve got to get this to Lanowski. He can try to match it to modern coordinates. This is fantastic. It might be the best break we’ve had.”

Joey’s screen flashed with another message, and Costas pressed his face again the viewing port to read it. He gave Joey a diver’s okay sign and then turned to Jack. “Everything’s now fixed topside, and they’re going to begin lifting us in about two minutes. The plan for raising the sarcophagus is still on schedule. Joey’s going to rig up the sarcophagus for raising, and the media can get live-stream video from his camera. Once we’re topside, they’ll drop the cable and Joey can hook it on. Macalister says that our little glitch served a useful purpose in ironing out a problem with the derrick winch. Assuming our ascent is successful, the engineers now have complete confidence in using it to raise the sarcophagus.”

“Glad to know our little jaunt has been of some use.”

Costas punched a finger at the viewing port. “
That’s
where it’s been of use. Getting Joey to perform exactly the kind of task I envisaged for him. He’s the one who should have come down here to do this job in the first place.”

Jack waved the piece of notepaper with a sketch he had made of the depiction on the plaque fragment. “Nothing beats the Mark One human eyeball. Joey might never have found this without us to guide him.”

Costas was barely listening as he watched Joey uncoil the hawser strap from a basket beneath the ROV that he would feed beneath the sarcophagus. “You think Joey’s impressive, you should see
Little
Joey. Almost thinks intuitively.”

“I remember his predecessor. Got stuck inside a volcano.”

Costas looked suddenly crestfallen. “Don’t remind me. But all his technology has gone into the new one, and more. He’s truly pocket-sized.”

They strapped themselves back into the seats of the submersible, and Jack gazed one last time at the sarcophagus in situ, Joey alongside. “That’s how I want to remember it,” he said. “I’m glad I won’t be here to see it being raised. Do you remember seeing the Egyptian sculptures raised from the harbor of Alexandria, where they’d fallen when the ancient lighthouse collapsed? They seem diminished on land, like rusty old cannon raised from shipwrecks. Some artifacts are just better left on the seabed, where they have much more power and meaning. If I had my way, the sarcophagus would go to the British Museum just as Colonel Vyse intended, only in a way he could never have envisaged, not as an actual artifact but as a virtual exhibit. The HD multi-beam sonar scan and terrain mapper could produce a CG model of the wreck in incredible detail, and we’ve got enough imagery to simulate a real-time submersible dive to the site. Leaving the actual sarcophagus here on the seabed would mean that you retain the power and mystique of an object in the darkness of the abyss, in a place where no human could survive. That’s what would
really fire up people’s imaginations, not being able to inspect the finer points of Old Kingdom architectonic sculpture close-up.”