Pyramid: A Novel

by David Gibbins

  Jones narrowed his eyes and stared at him. “Well, if you were good enough for old Charlie Gordon, God rest his soul, I suppose you’re good enough for me. But I still need your scarf.”

  Chaillé-Long snorted again, paused, then unlooped the scarf from his neck and dropped it into the opening. A few moments later there was a sound of dull thumping, of metal against metal, and then a sharp hissing noise that stopped as abruptly as it had started. “Done,” Jones called up. “That’s the breathing device prepared. As soon as the captain gives the word, Monsieur Guerin will be ready to go. We will help him to kit up.”

  —

  Fifteen minutes later Jones lit the small gas lamp inside the hold and then turned it down so that the glow would be invisible beyond the boat. He had known Guerin for only a few hours, since the man had joined them from the Cairo dock with his secret crate of equipment, and until now it had been a matter of fumbling around in the dark as he had helped to unbox and assemble the contraption.

  Guerin had come straight from the harbor of Alexandria, where he had intended to dive on the ruins of the Pharos, the great lighthouse from antiquity, but Chaillé-Long had seen him there and diverted him to their present purpose. Now for the first time with some semblance of light, Jones was able to see it: a bulbous cylinder containing compressed air, above that a complex attachment of pipes and hoses to regulate the supply of air to the diver, and attached to that a face mask with a glass plate and beneath it the mouthpiece. Jones remembered the course in submarine mine-laying and demolition that he had been obliged to take as a recruit at the Royal Engineers depot at Chatham. His greatest fear had been confined spaces, followed closely by being underwater, and he had been petrified that the instructor would select him to demonstrate the bulky hard-hat diving gear in the murky depths of the River Medway. Earlier, in the barracks, the corporal in charge had regaled them with lurid tales of divers being sucked up into their helmets when their tenders on the surface had forgotten to keep the pump going. As it was, the luckless recruit who was selected on the river that day had come up unconscious and blue, temporarily overcome by carbon dioxide.

  Jones squatted in the scuppers of the boat and peered more closely. The gear they had on the Medway had been helmet-diving equipment, in use for more than half a century; Guerin’s contraption was very different. He pointed at the regulating valve. “Does the diver introduce air manually by opening and shutting the valve with each breath, or is it automatic?”

  The Frenchman thrust his head through the neck hole in the suit and shot him a sharp glance. “You know something of diving technology, mon ami?”

  Jones started to speak, and then checked himself. Only Chaillé-Long knew anything of his army background, and it was best it stayed that way. “From watching salvage divers on the docks at Portsmouth, when I was a boy growing up there,” he replied. That much was true; he had seen divers raising guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s sunken warship, which had been deemed a hazard to the ever-larger naval ships that plied the Solent. “But of course they were only using Mr. Siebe’s hard-hat equipment.”

  “Then, mon ami, you will have seen how impossible it is,” Guerin exclaimed, straining as he tried to poke his fingers though the hand holes, his arms outstretched and his fingers working vigorously against the rubber. Finally his left hand broke through, and he used it quickly to pull through the other hand. “Premièrement, it is too heavy for the diver even to stand upright out of the water, firstly because the helmet must be strong enough to withstand the external pressure at depth, and therefore be a great weight of bronze, and secondly because the diver must wear yet more weight underwater to keep the helmet down because, despite its weight out of the water, it becomes almost buoyant underwater when filled with air.” His face reddened and his veins bulged where the rubber seal constricted his neck. “Deuxièmement,” he continued more hoarsely, “the diver must remain upright on the bottom to prevent the helmet from flooding and himself from drowning, and thus limiting his usefulness for jobs requiring any, how can I put it, finesse. Troisièmement, he is tethered to the surface by the air hose, so he has even less freedom of movement underwater, and he is entirely dependent for his survival on the man pumping the air down to him.”

  “And fourthly,” Jones said, remembering the recruit on the Medway, “he risks blackout from carbon dioxide poisoning if he fails to manually open the valve and expel the exhaled air from his helmet.”

  “Precisely. Précisément. You have it.” Guerin got up, climbed out of the hold, and lurched and fell backward. He was caught just in time by Chaillé-Long, who steered him to a plank that served as a bench. The Frenchman thrust his fingers into the neck seal to pull it open, gasping as he relieved the pressure. “I assure you, mes amis,” he said even more hoarsely, his face running with sweat, “this constriction is relieved underwater, but it is necessary to keep the suit watertight.”

  “Well, I for one am mighty relieved to hear it,” said Chaillé-Long, looking at the man dubiously and then at the river. “We shall need to secure that contraption on your back and get you in the water once our captain has steered this benighted craft to shore.”

  Guerin nodded, his face now looking drained. “Un moment, monsieur, while I recover my composure.” He gestured at the equipment and then looked at Jones. He was suddenly beaming. “It is, as I believe you have correctly surmised, an automatic valve, the first-ever demand valve. When the diver breathes in, the cylinder releases a lungful of air, regulated through the device on the valve.”

  “Tried and tested, I presume?” said Chaillé-Long, taking the butt of his cigar from his mouth and tossing it into the river.

  “Monsieur Denayrouze has been developing a similar device, and Monsieur Rouquayrol has been making cylinders strong enough to hold more air,” he replied, his eyes narrowing. “But their régulateur is inferior to mine, requiring the diver to open the valve manually each time he needs air.”

  Chaillé-Long looked at him shrewdly. “Are you in competition with these other gentlemen?”

  “It is why I have had to be so secretive. And there is something else, mon ami. This device would revolutionize underwater warfare. Divers could swim freely to attach mines beneath enemy ships’ hulls, wreaking havoc. One day wars will be fought underwater, you know. The world’s navies would clamor for it.”

  “It is a good thing, then, that when I needed a diver for our enterprise, I was not obliged to employ these other gentlemen, and you were at hand.”

  “A matter of good fortune that I had travelled to Alexandria intending to test my prototype, first in the ancient remains of the harbor and then on the wreck of the Oceanus in Aboukir Bay, where it blew up in 1798 during the Battle of the Nile. In these days of the British Empire, people have forgotten the role of Napoleon in opening up ancient Egypt to the world, and my discovery of the wreck would have been pour la France.”

  “You mean it would have brought you the fortune in gold coin that is said to lie in her hold?”

  Guerin shrugged theatrically. “An inventeur needs his income, monsieur. How else does he buy his matériel?”

  “So, you do not selflessly give your endeavors to la France, then?”

  Guerin eyed Chaillé-Long. “Do you work for the United States of America, monsieur, or for yourself?”

  The ghost of a smile passed Chaillé-Long’s lips. “It sounds as if you are embarked upon a profitable enterprise.”

  “Now you understand how it is that I have not been able to test my equipment like this before. I could not risk prying eyes seeing it.”

  Chaillé-Long gave the man a wry look. “I am grateful to you for answering my question in so direct a fashion.” He put his hands on his hips, surveying the shore that was just coming into view, a dark bank several boat lengths away. “Now, are we ready?”

  Jones eyed Guerin. “Do you have your lamp?”

  “Mais oui,” the Frenchman replied exuberantly, lifting an open-fronted metallic box the size
of a kerosene lamp but containing an opaque glass ball. “Another one of my inventions. It contains a battery and an electrical filament. The opaque glass keeps the light from shining too strongly, as the glare off the suspended particles in the water would obscure my view. I have tested it myself to a depth of ten meters off the Marseilles docks.”

  “You are indeed an entrepreneur,” Chaille-Long murmured. “If liberté, fraternité et égalité are in truth not your master, then you and I could do business.”

  Guerin looked at Jones, his eyes glinting. “And you, monsieur, for your part, you have les explosifs?”

  Jones carefully lifted up an oiled tarpaulin beside the hatch and revealed a small wooden box attached by a coiled cable to a plunger. “Borrowed from the Royal Engineers depot in Cairo,” he said. “Security there is not what it used to be. The box contains eight one-pound sticks of dynamite, packed in petroleum jelly for waterproofing. The cable is two hundred feet long, and the charge should be waterproof down to a depth of thirty feet. If the captain can hold us at that distance from the riverbank, the boat should survive the detonation unscathed.”

  Guerin stared hesitantly at the box. “That is, if I find what you are after, and have occasion to lay the charge.”

  “I have spent weeks triangulating this exact position from the pyramids, transposing the ancient plan on the most up-to-date topographical maps prepared by the Ordnance Survey.”

  The Frenchman tweaked his mustache. “More équipage liberated from the Royal Engineers, I surmise? And you found a theodolite too? You are a man of many skills.”

  Jones coughed. “Let’s just say I’ve had some training.”

  Guerin’s eyes twinkled. “Do you mean in larceny, mon ami, or in the military sciences?”

  Jones pointed at the riverbank looming out of the darkness. It was held off by the captain’s boy with a pole. A cascade of bricks and mortar lay embedded in the bank, and above it they could make out the ruined walls and gun embrasure of the fort. “There it is,” Jones exclaimed, his voice hushed. “This was the feature that coincided precisely with my measurement, the place I told the captain to find. When I came here in daylight, I also measured the movement of water along the shore. It’s outside the main river current, but there are strong eddies, enough to keep river silt from accumulating or mud from building up too deeply. Monsieur Guerin, I believe you will be in with a very good chance.” He looked up at Chaillé-Long. “Are you up to getting your hands wet, Colonel?”

  Chaillé-Long bristled. “I will have you know that I have survived pitiless rain, mud, misery, malaria, and the other dread fevers of the jungle in my years as an explorer of deepest Africa.” He pointed to a faint scar on his cheek. “This wound, as you will doubtless have wondered, I acquired fighting off the Bunyan warriors of Uganda, alone with my Reilly elephant gun, assisted only by two of my bearers with Snider rifles, together accounting for dozens of ’em.” He took off his silk gloves with a theatrical flourish. “I do believe, sir, that I am capable of dipping my hand in this river, however fetid and pestilential its waters may be.”

  Jones glanced at Chaillé-Long as he squatted down beside him. He noted the silk top hat, the black cape with its crimson lining, the patent leather shoes. The war in Sudan had attracted all manner of mavericks, some of them genuinely capable, others charlatans, and had refracted their skills in the intensity of the struggle, sometimes brilliantly so. And then it had thrown them out at the other end, propelling some on to greater things and others back to the obscurity from which they had emerged. The American officers hired as mercenaries in the Khedive’s service had made the Egyptian army a force to be reckoned with, but it had included their share of tale spinners and egotists. Jones remembered one night by the Nile sitting with his officer, Major Mayne, and a group of other Royal Engineers officers and listening to them talk about Chaillé-Long and his exploits in equatorial Africa. He had been derided at the Royal Geographical Society for suggesting that Lake Victoria was only twelve miles across, having misidentified some islands as the opposite shore, and for trying to bribe a cartographer to make Lake Kyogo, on the Upper Nile, appear larger than it was, a blatant act of self-aggrandizement. It was also common knowledge that the wound on his face had not been caused by enemy fire but by his Sudanese cook, who had saved his life by shooting an attacking warrior with a revolver but in the process grazing Chaillé-Long on the face with the bullet.

  Yet all the posturing and exaggeration was unnecessary. Chaillé-Long had indisputably gone farther south than any other foreigner in the Khedive’s service, showing the grit and determination so admired by the British and earning a letter of approbation from Gordon himself, published in the New York Herald. And he had no need to embellish his experience of fighting: Jones had respect for anyone who had been through the bloodbath of the American Civil War, and he knew that Chaillé-Long had been in at the sharp end. Beneath the foppery and affectation, he had seen the look in his eyes that he knew well from men who had faced death on the battlefield, and he had also seen the pearl-handled Colt revolver beneath the cape. Of one thing he was certain: Chaillé-Long was not a man to be trifled with, and Jones knew that, having made the decision to approach him in the first place, he was now committed to seeing this through with that man in the cape and top hat looming over him, whatever the outcome.

  The captain of the boat whistled gently and pointed to the shore. Chaillé-Long waved back and drew himself up. “Now, Monsieur Guerin, if you will be so kind as to instruct us, Jones and I will assist you in donning your contraption. We have less than four hours until dawn, when we shall suddenly be conspicuous. We have no time to lose.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Half an hour later, Jones and Chaillé-Long watched as Guerin floated on the surface of the Nile, his underwater lamp lighting up a brown smudge of silt in the water around him. With some considerable effort they had heaved him off the side of the boat. Meanwhile the captain and his boy offset the balance on the other side by swinging the boom around and hanging out as far as they could from it without falling in. After they had slid Guerin into the water, trying to keep their splashing to a minimum, Jones had double-checked the regulator valve above the bulbous air tank on his back while Guerin had inspected his face mask for leaks.

  There were thirty atmospheres in the tank, pumped into it by a steam compressor in some backstreet mechanical shop that Guerin had found in Alexandria, and Jones could only hope that there was more air than fumes in the mix. If all went well, he should have some thirty minutes at the depth that Jones had estimated for their target, about twenty-five feet below. Guerin had shown him the small safety shutoff he had devised for when the pressure reached ten atmospheres, indicating that it was time to surface but allowing him to open the flow again to breathe the final lungfuls of air from the cylinder before it emptied.

  The regulator was hissing now, a froth of bubbles coming out with each exhalation. They watched as he vented the air bladder under his arms that had kept him afloat. As his head began to sink, Jones reached out and tapped it. “Bonne chance, my friend. Remember to drop your lead weights when you intend to ascend, or else you will never make it back up.” Guerin nodded, raised a hand in farewell, and dropped below the surface, the smudge of light quickly disappearing. After a few moments, only the bubbles from his exhaust betrayed his presence, along with the detonator cord that Jones fed out as Guerin descended. The cord was attached to the dynamite in a box on the front of his suit. “Damn it to hell,” Jones murmured. “I forgot to remind him to breathe out as he ascends.”

  Chaillé-Long dabbed his wet forearms with his handkerchief and rolled his sleeves back down. “Breathe out? Why should he need reminding of that, might I enquire?”

  “Because the instinct underwater is to hold your breath,” said Jones. “We were taught that in diving class at the Royal Engineers School at Chatham. If you hold your breath while ascending, you get something called an embolism.”

  Chaillé-Long snapped shut his
cuff links. “And what might that be?”

  “Your lungs rupture like an overfilled balloon.”

  “Surely Monsieur Guerin would know of such things.”

  “Monsieur Guerin is more an engineer than a diver, more a theoretician than a practitioner.”

  “Elegantly put, Jones. You are an educated man, I find, more so than I might expect from the ruffians I have seen in the rank and file of your army.”

  “Educated, but not a gentleman. A benefactor who visited my orphanage paid for me to go to the Bluecoat School in Bristol. But I was too rebellious and knew I’d never be polished enough to be admitted to the Royal Military Academy, so at sixteen I ran away from the school and joined my father’s old regiment, the sappers and miners. They gave me some skills, but the rest is self-taught. I’ve always enjoyed reading. Done a lot of that over the past eight years, since the war.”

  Chaillé-Long tucked his cloak under him and sat down on the bench on the foredeck. He adjusted his top hat, produced two cheroots from his waistcoat pocket, offered one to Jones, who declined it, and then lit the other one with a silver lighter, drawing deeply on it and crossing his legs. “I’ve wanted to ask you about that, Jones, now that we have some time on our hands. About the last eight years. About the officer who pointed you in my direction, Major Mayne.”

  Jones was looking at Guerin’s bubbles, straining to follow them in the darkness as they advanced toward the shoreline and then seemed to veer a dozen or so yards to the north. The bubbles would be pulled farther along by the current as they rose, giving a misleading impression of the position of the diver, but even so Guerin would soon be reaching the limit of the detonator cable. Jones watched anxiously, checking that the plunger box was still secure where he had nailed it to the deck, but then saw with relief that the bubbles were returning along the shore in the direction of the boat. They were no more than fifty feet away now. He perched on the gunwale, still keeping an eye on them, and glanced at Chaillé-Long.