The Mask of Troy (2 page)

The face of a king. The mightiest earth-shaker of them all.
The king of kings
.

‘Shall we take it now?’ Sophia whispered.

He stared hard at the mask, then shook his head. ‘No. We need to give our supporters what they want. What I said I believed in, all my life. Heinrich Schliemann will be vindicated. We will rebury this, and find it again with the workmen tomorrow. This image, this mask, will be etched for ever in the history of archaeology, for ever be associated with my name, with yours.’

‘What will you tell them?’

He carefully pushed the tips of his fingers under the edges of the mask. ‘I will tell them,’ he said slowly, ‘that I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.’

‘But we must see what lies beneath,’ she said. ‘
Now
.’

He gazed at her, his eyes suddenly moist with emotion. ‘What we find here will be my gift to you. To the children we will have. To the children of the world.’ He dug his fingers in further. He stared at the face on the mask again, those eyes at once open and closed. He held his breath. It was what he told the world he would find. A
herrscherbild
. The image of a lord of men, a warrior king. He continued staring. For the first time he felt a pang of doubt. Was this truly the face of a hero, a face that could bring back a golden age? Or was it another face, the face of a man who had unleashed a war that destroyed the world’s first great civilization? He remembered the myths again. The curse of the House of Atreus. He thought of the wars he had known, wars in his own lifetime, wars that had ravaged Europe, America, the East. Millions killed, whole countries devastated. Wars where there were no longer heroes. Wars fought with weapons forged in the fires of hell itself. He thought of the wars that could come. Total war. He and Sophia, their secret circle of friends, the powerful and good from around the world, had dreamed of a world where war was vanquished, where heroes once again would rule supreme, champions willing to sacrifice themselves for their people, for peace, a creed that he, Heinrich Schliemann, would reawaken by his determination to find the truth of what lay buried in this land of legends.

He stared into the eyes of the mask. He thought of those who had wielded power in his own world. Of those who might come. A kaiser.
A führer
.

He thought of what he might unleash.

Sophia nudged him. ‘You must do it, Heinrich. You must. It’s nearly dawn.’

He swallowed hard, then took a deep breath. He smelled the earth again, the deep metallic odour. The exhalation of history.
The smell of blood
.

He lifted the mask.

 

 

Jack Howard woke with a start as a Turkish air force F-16 shrieked low overhead, the roar dropping to a deep rumble as the jet hurtled over the coastline to the east. He shut his eyes, then rubbed them, trying to calm his breathing. The dream was always the same, and ended the same way. Maybe today reality would take over. He checked his dive watch, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. In forty-five minutes he was due at the briefing, and twenty minutes after that he would be kitting up to dive on the shipwreck in the depths below them. He took a deep breath, sprang to his feet, then rolled up his sleeping mat and stashed it in its usual place beside the bow railing. It was his favourite spot to take a siesta, where he felt close to the elements - the intense Aegean sky, the noise and smell of the sea - yet within hailing distance of the bridge should he be needed.

He glanced back at the bridge windows, waving at the watch officer, and then looked down the sleek lines of the ship.
Seaquest II
had emerged from a refit only two weeks previously, and the white paint on her superstructure was still gleaming. Beyond the Lynx helicopter at the stern he could see the flag of the International Maritime University, bearing the anchor from his own family coat of arms, and above that a red flag with a white crescent moon and a star, their courtesy flag in Turkish waters. He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon, picking out the lines of sight he had spotted before lying down, mentally triangulating their position. To the south-west lay the island of Bozcaada, ancient Tenedos, less than two nautical miles off the port bow. To the north-east he could just make out the low cliffs of Gallipoli, the long peninsula that jutted out from the European shore and flanked the Dardanelles, the narrow strait that divided Europe from Asia. He glanced at the GPS receiver he had left propped by the railing, confirming his fix. His pulse quickened. Captain Macalister was returning to the sonar contact they had made just before noon. The sea was rougher now, but the decision had clearly been made. Jack coursed with excitement. He remembered the extraordinary shape he had seen on the sea bed earlier that morning.
The dive was still on
.

He gripped the railing. The dream had left him jumpy, unable to relax. He remembered what he had come up here planning to do, when he had thought he would not sleep. He picked up the makeshift wooden target, three pieces of plank nailed into a crude triangle, and tossed it overboard, feeding out the line and tying it to the railing. He looked back to the bridge and put his hand up, and a moment later heard the triple warning blast on the tannoy indicating that a live firing exercise was about to take place. He put on the ear protectors and unholstered the heavy revolver he had put on the deck beside him. He slipped the lanyard over his neck, then pressed the thumb catch to break open the revolver and load six .455 calibre cartridges from the pouch on the belt. He snapped the gun shut and took aim, his right arm locked straight out, his left hand supporting the grip. He cocked the hammer with his left thumb and curled his right index finger round the trigger. The target was thirty, maybe thirty-five metres away, a challenge at the best of times, but compounded by the rise of the swell and the heave of the ship’s bow. He pulled the trigger and the revolver jumped back, its dull subsonic report almost lost in the noise of the wind. He fired again, and saw a stab of bubbles just short of the target. He pursed his lips. The powder load was right, but the bullets needed to be lighter. He fired off the remaining four chambers double-action, squeezing the trigger each time the revolver returned from the recoil, aiming high. The final bullet hit the target and sent it spinning crazily above the waves. He lowered his arms, pressed the thumb catch and broke the gun open, ejecting the spent cartridges into a bucket at his feet. He pulled off the ear protectors and hung them round his neck, raised his arm again and listened for the tannoy blasts to signal the end of firing. As he waited, he stared at the horizon, at the line of open sea to the south between the island and the Turkish mainland.

He braced his tall frame against the roll and pitch of the ship, and swallowed hard. The sea swell was making him feel uncomfortable, though he hated to acknowledge it. Captain Macalister had deactivated
Seaquest II
’s stabilizer system as he reacquired their position over the site. The sea had been calm that morning, but the wind had picked up as usual in the early afternoon and the waves were now racing over the crests of the swell, sending occasional swirls of spindrift above the whitecaps like horses’ manes as the sea drove towards the shore. Jack concentrated on the low coastline where the F-16 had disappeared. For a moment he wished he was over there with the other team, on dry land, excavating the most fabled archaeological site in history, the ruins of an ancient citadel once thought to be no more than a figment in the imagination of a blind poet. Then he remembered what he had seen that morning, almost a hundred metres deep on the sea bed, a shape barely discernible on the edge of the darkness. He still did not know if it was a hallucination, the fulfilment of a dream that had obsessed him, the dream that had drawn so many to this place and left them yearning for more, for one more discovery to transform the legend into rock-solid reality. He thought of Heinrich Schliemann, almost a century and a half before. Schliemann had come here chasing a dream.
And he had found Troy
.

Jack stared at the grey sky that seemed to hang over the shoreline of Troy like a shroud, and then looked down into the darkness below the waves, straining to see deeper. He had excavated many fabulous wrecks in his years as an undersea explorer, but this one could be the most extraordinary ever. This time they could be stepping back into the world of myth, to the time when men had not yet learned to cast off the yoke that tied them to the fickle judgement of the gods. What they found today could reignite the passion that had driven Schliemann, the conviction that the Trojan War was historical reality. Jack whispered the words to himself.
A shipwreck from the Age of Heroes. A shipwreck from the Trojan War
.

‘Jack! Don’t shoot! I surrender!’

Jack turned, and saw a stocky figure making his way up the foredeck, waving at him. Costas Kazantzakis swayed from side to side as he walked, a gait born of generations of Greek fishermen that seemed to allow him to barrel on in defiance of all the natural laws. Jack had even noticed it in their dives together, as Costas hurtled down to the sea bed regardless of currents or any other obstacle. Jack stared in disbelief as Costas came closer. He was wearing sandals, some kind of pyjama pants, a Hawaiian shirt, aviator sunglasses and an extraordinary hat, a faded leather affair with ear flaps. Jack bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. Costas stopped in front of him, and saw Jack’s expression. ‘What?’ he said defiantly.

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s the pants, isn’t it? Mustafa gave them to me.’ Costas had a distinctive New York accent, picked up despite every effort of his wealthy parents to shield him from the reality outside his exclusive school. Jack had always loved it, and with Costas he never felt conscious of his own accent, a result of a peripatetic childhood in Canada and New Zealand as well as England. ‘They’re Ottoman Turkish. Just blending in with the local culture.’

Jack cleared his throat. ‘The Ottoman Empire crumbled a little while ago. About a century ago, to be exact. Anyway, no, it wasn’t those.’

‘The hat? A present from your old digging buddy Maurice Hiebermeyer. You gave him those baggy British Empire shorts he loves wearing, and he gave you your beloved khaki bag. So he gave me the hat when I took the heli out to Troy yesterday and saw him. He said it made me an honorary archaeologist. Only honorary, of course. He found it in the Egyptian desert while he was looking for mummies. It’s an Italian tank driver’s hat from the Second World War. He said Italian gear had real style. Said it suited me.’

Jack looked at Costas unswervingly. ‘He said that.’

‘You bet.’ Costas wiped his stubble with the back of his hand, and then thrust a phone at him. ‘Text message from your daughter.’

Jack looked at the screen. It was one word.
Paydirt
. He looked up, his eyes gleaming. ‘They must have found it,’ he exclaimed. ‘The passageway under the citadel. Maurice
knew
it was there. I’ve got to get over there as soon as we finish the dive.’

Costas shook his head. ‘Mission creep.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, first your old professor James Dillen finds some clue on an ancient papyrus, something about a shipwreck from the Trojan War. You get all excited.
Seaquest II
gets booked. A few weeks go by. Then Mustafa pulls all the strings and the authorities grant us a blanket permit to excavate the entire north-west corner of Turkey. Before you know it, Maurice Hiebermeyer arrives with Aysha and their team from Egypt. Rebecca somehow gets off school and flies here even before asking you. Even my buddy Jeremy leaves his beloved Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and is over there right now at Troy, neck deep in dust. What starts off as a long-shot recce ends up as a campaign to solve the entire mystery of the Trojan War.
That’s
what I call Mission creep.’