The Mask of Troy jh-5

by David Gibbins

  ‘What would we find?’ Hoar asked quietly.

  Schliemann paused. ‘I do not know what we will find. I do not know . It may be an empty chamber, a place where treasures of metal were once stored, a council chamber with empty seats. But even that could be enough to prove my theory, so that we may go forth with confidence and proclaim it to the world.’

  ‘What would you have us do?’ Bismarck said.

  ‘A year from now, a year to the day, we will reconvene at this spot. The arrangements will be made with the utmost secrecy, and we must not speak a word of this until we are agreed to do so, when the time is right. We must have something to show. I must be believed, not mocked. A grand opening. The press gathered, as they were at Mycenae when I revealed the Mask of Agamemnon. God willing, by a year from now Sophia and I will have dug through to that door, and created a passage wide enough to open it. It will be the greatest moment of all our lives. An incalculable treasure, far richer than all the gold in the world. The key, gentlemen, to the abatement of war. Proof, somewhere, indeed in the very existence of that chamber, that men could once control the urge to self-destruction.’

  ‘Do we few, so few, old men all of us, have the strength and morality to rise above the tide of technology, the monster of self-destruction humanity has created?’ Hoar asked.

  ‘The monster is within ourselves,’ Bismarck murmured, still staring at the swastika.

  ‘The world needs heroes,’ Schliemann said. ‘Not lords of war, not champions like Achilles, but heroes like Atreus, Minos, Priam of Troy, men willing to stand against the stream.’

  ‘We need more treaties,’ Gladstone murmured, tapping his fingers against his cane. ‘Treaties, with redoubled effort. I will be prime minster once again. This has convinced me of it. I will stand for re-election.’

  ‘We need a balance of power,’ Hoar said. ‘We will never prevent nations from having weapons, but if we maintain our strength we may prevent war through deterrence.’

  ‘Much can be set in motion in a year,’ Gladstone said. ‘And then, if we can show to the world that it has worked in the past, there may be the vigour and strength of purpose to get it done.’ He turned to Bismarck. ‘Chancellor, you have famously said that history is more than mere written words. We are old men, but we need to make history, not write it.’

  ‘It seems that after all we speak from the same page, Herr Gladstone.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Schliemann said, turning to them. ‘There is an ancient expression of the Hittites. I give you a tablet of war; I give you a tablet of peace.’ He held out his hands as he spoke, palm up, left hand then right. ‘Which is it to be?’

  Silently the others came up, first Gladstone, then Bismarck, then Hoar, and placed their hands one on top of the other, on his right hand. They remained still for a moment, and then Bismarck and Hoar withdrew, leaving Gladstone alone, staring into Schliemann’s eyes, a look of concern on his face. ‘My dear Heinrich,’ he said softly. ‘You have left your mark upon this age. An undying name. A name that I trust will be with us for many a year. You do not need to push so hard as to be injurious to your health, as is your wont.’

  Schliemann squeezed his hand. ‘Your solicitation is most gratefully acknowledged. But have no fear. My health is redoubled by this meeting. My energy is undiminished. Great days lie ahead.’

  Gladstone withdrew, and stood beside Bismarck in the shadows. Hoar raised his right hand and pulled a golden signet ring off his finger. ‘Gentlemen, I am humbled to be here. I feel a mere mortal among giants. This ring bears the crest of my forefathers, who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, the greatest affirmations of peace and liberty ever devised. Those documents, gentlemen, give us hope that the will of the individual can triumph. I give you this ring in solemn affirmation that I have spent and will spend my days in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for all mankind, and in observance of our pledge here today.’ He knelt down stiffly and pressed the ring as far as it would go into the earth on the side of the tunnel, then pushed a potsherd over the top of it. He got back up, tottering slightly. ‘And to you, Mr Schliemann, in your great endeavour to finish this excavation, I wish Godspeed.’

  ‘And Godspeed to you too, Mr Hoar.’ Schliemann turned to go, took a few steps and then turned back. The three men were still there, standing, but had receded into the gloom. For a split second he saw them for what they were, three old men already half into shadowland, looming like wraiths of long-dead kings, like the kings Schliemann imagined still pacing the halls and battlements above. He felt a chill wind, and wrapped his coat around him. Could these men still make history? Or had he deceived himself? Had his passion, his yearning for more and more discoveries, his endless delay in returning to Troy, year after year, made him push this day too far ahead? Had he left it too late? He shook away the thought, and raised his hand. ‘Godspeed to you all. Until we meet again here, a year from now.’

  Schliemann returned on the path past the point where he had met Bismarck, following the line of little candles, now spluttering and dying. Night winds at Troy were always disturbing, and he half imagined the rustling he heard was not the wind in the grass but the advancing Greeks parting their way through wheat on the plain below, and the sound of bare feet pattering over the smooth adobe of the streets and walls, the trembling sounds of that final night before the storm, a night when each breath could be heard. He reached the ramp up the western wall of the citadel, on the edge of the great trench they had dug through the site. He looked up at the stars and saw Orion, the hunter, his favourite. Far above him, close below Orion, he saw black birds flying silently, heading north.

  He looked towards the grassy knoll on the northern edge of the citadel, and felt a rush of warmth. Sophia was still there, framed by the night sky, the wind blowing back her veil and revealing the golden belt, the bracelets, the headband, glistening in the starlight. But was it Sophia, or was he imagining another, Helen of Troy? Schliemann closed his eyes for a moment, feeling dizzy, a sound like the sea coming and going in his head. He opened his eyes and saw that Sophia had lifted up a tallow torch and lit it, sending wisps of smoke curling in the wind towards him. The flames suddenly erupted, illuminating her red dress, and for a moment it looked as though they would devour her, as if she herself would become a torch, a leaping, twisting beacon of fire, a signal into the night. Was that how it had all begun? And was the Trojan Horse real, or was it some dark force of the sea, raging, tossing its mane, turning to fire and bloody murder as it swept death towards the citadel, breaking over the beacon, carrying all before it?

  He knew Homer off by heart. He thought he knew about the Trojan War. A war fought for beauteous Helen, and the wealth she brought. But had it been? He closed his eyes, and tried to conjure it, melding fragmentary images as they came to him. The sea, the colour of widow’s tears, steel-blue. Grooms beside beached ships, whispering to tethered horses not to fear the sea, then kissing and releasing them. Harpies flying overhead, bronze and iron messengers of death. He looked at his hand, calloused as he imagined Agamemnon’s might have been: the hand of Agamemnon, people-devouring king, battle-wise, lion-maned, he who knew war in all its bloody ways. The ringing in his ears became shouts, bellows, roars. Blood was everywhere, pounding in his head, cloying in his nostrils, its iron taste filling his mouth. Dark blood spurting from wounds cleaved by champions. Blood swept up from the plain and falling like a rainstorm, staining the ground black. Blood lapping against Scamander’s shore, drenching the beach, drowning the plain below the battlements, seeping up over them. Sophia, blood-red beacon, dripping fire.

  Schliemann gasped as if coming up for air, leaning against the stone ramp. Perhaps Gladstone had been right. He was letting the past consume him. He looked up and saw Sophia turn and walk towards him, holding the burning torch. He pushed himself back up, and waved at her. He remembered how close he had felt to her that night years before, in the shaft grave in the far-off citadel of Agam
emnon. He remembered the thrill of that moment, but also the fear, a tremulous, paralysing fear, just before he had lifted the golden mask. A fear that had been his greatest weakness, the fear of making a discovery that would cap his career but dim the light of his passion and infect the memory of all that had gone before, the exhilaration that had fuelled him. He feared a discovery that might diminish his yearning for more, and diminish the supreme fulfilment he had found with Sophia.

  And there had been the other, deeper fear, a fear of what he might reveal, an awful truth about the human condition, about war. Those terrible images of blood, those dreams that always came to him up here, were more than just a vivid imagining of Homer. He remembered what Bismarck had said. Coming events cast their shadows before. Schliemann had finally realized why those images so unnerved him. It was as if the tide of the future were rolling back, and he was seeing the river Scamander not drenched in ancient blood, in the blood of heroes, but in fresh, red blood, in the blood of the children of today. It was not the past he was seeing. It was the future.

  Sophia reached him, and they embraced. He held her tight, taking the torch and holding it away from them, the flame flickering in the breeze. All grim thoughts left him, and he experienced a supreme contentment. Their children were waiting. He felt a burst of the familiar adrenalin. Tomorrow he and Sophia would be here again, in the tunnel, at the crack of dawn, alone in secret with their trowels and shovels, just as they had been so many times before, knowing they were on the cusp of another discovery that they would one day reveal to an astonished world. What they found here could change history. He could hardly wait. There was no time to lose.

  19

  Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland

  A t first all Jack could see underwater was a green haze, obscuring the forms of Costas and the other three divers in front of him. He sank to the bottom of the pool, only a few metres below the surface, and angled the headlamps on either side of his helmet, locking them in place once they had reached a convergence point about five metres in front of him. He had never seen water of this hue before. Green usually meant organic matter, algae, that would reflect the light from underwater torches, like using full-beam car headlights in a snowstorm. But here there was no reflection, just haze. He remembered what Wladislaw had said about the copper inclusions that caused the colour, evidently particles of very small size.

  He could hear the suck and exhaust of the three Russians, all of them breathing hard on their regulators. The rebreathers he and Costas were wearing only needed to be vented of excess gas build-up every ten minutes or so, so were effectively closed systems most of the time that produced no exhaust. Through the intercom he could hear Costas’ breathing, calm, slow, reassuring. He knew his own breathing would conform to the same rate, a sign of a good buddy pairing. Only he and Costas would be able to talk to each other. Ben had not mentioned this to the phone contact when the arrangements had been made. The three Russians had been too concerned with understanding their own equipment, and they had evidently been briefed that he and Costas would have specialized gear. And each of them had just drunk a third of a litre of neat vodka. They were probably too drunk to care.

  He feathered his buoyancy control, injecting air into his e-suit, then looked around and saw a dark smudge where the tunnel descended. He looked at Costas. ‘You read me?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’

  ‘Let’s move. They can follow, if they’re able.’

  ‘One of them’s breathing like a steam engine. No way he’ll last.’

  ‘Shouldn’t drink and dive.’

  ‘You getting the map on your screen?’

  ‘Roger that.’ Jack peered at the lattice of red lines visible in three dimensions inside his helmet, to the left of his visor. ‘Looks like we’ve got about fifty metres ahead where the railway track continues to a vertical shaft. The shaft drops way down, about eighty metres. Then at the bottom there’s another stretch of tunnel angling down at about thirty degrees, evidently the line of the natural fissure. Looks like our target area’s going to be a hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and twenty metres below water level.’

  ‘My computer gives us about twenty-five minutes no-stop time. If the Russians stick to plan, they’ll go no deeper than eighty metres. That means part-way up that shaft.’

  ‘You ready?’ Jack said.

  ‘We’re heading into a sump, completely submerged for a bit and then surfacing again near the head of that shaft. The railway tunnel must have collapsed at some point. I’ll go first.’

  ‘I’m behind you.’

  They ignored the other three and swam down into the gloom, their headlamps reflecting off the walls of green halite, which had been hacked away to widen the tunnel. After about ten metres the salt gave way to bare rock, cracked and jumbled in front of them. ‘Looks like someone got a little ambitious with the pick,’ Costas murmured. ‘Remember what Wlady said, that the miners tried not to dig out all the halite to keep the walls from collapsing.’ He swam down, pulling himself along the rusted metal rails of the track. Jack could see a way ahead, with only a metre or so of clearance below the collapsed rock. He followed Costas, inching along. He heard the three Russians close behind, scraping and clanging their tanks as they hauled themselves along the passage, the exhaust from their breathing cascading along the cracks and fissures above Jack. He swore under his breath. If they caused another rock fall, nobody would be coming out of here alive. He concentrated on looking ahead, and saw that Costas had reached the end of the sump and had knelt up out of the water. Jack came alongside, and broke surface. They had come nearly to the end of the rockfall, and could see the end of the tunnel about ten metres ahead, half submerged.

  ‘This must be where the vertical shaft begins,’ Costas said. ‘I’m looking at my atmospheric sensor. There’s still oxygen here, but methane as well in pockets against the ceiling. Probably breathable, just.’

  ‘Won’t be like that below,’ Jack said. ‘From what Wlady said, we’ll have to assume any gas pockets are methane.’

  They crawled and waded forward, past a ledge that had once been some kind of loading platform. A massive rusted pulley mechanism hung down from the ceiling where the track ended. It was a winch for a lift, but the metal cable was missing, evidently cut off or rusted away and dropped down the shaft with the lift platform. He looked back and saw the first of the Russians haul himself out of the water, spit out his mouthpiece and wheeze heavily, his hands on his knees. Jack turned back, and saw Costas’ fins sticking up. He pulled himself along, below the winch. The view over the edge was astonishing. Costas was hanging upside down, his headlamps aimed down a vertical shaft lined with timbers. The coppery green had gone, and the water was extraordinarily clear. Jack could see down a phenomenal depth, but still not make out the bottom. It was an awesome sight, spine-tingling, as if he were looking down a shaft into the centre of the earth. Costas craned his head up, looked at him. ‘You good with this?’

  ‘Good to go.’ They had been in a mineshaft before, just like this, when Jack had run out of air and nearly died. But now was not the time for flashbacks. Survival instinct overrode that. He remembered Rebecca, why they were here, and steeled himself. He watched Costas drop head first down the shaft, and then followed him. The water was so clear that it was as if he were jumping into air, and he instinctively put out his hands and feet to catch himself on the wooden beams, to stop himself from falling headlong. He made himself straighten his legs and hold his hands ahead like an arrow, spiralling down behind Costas. They dropped quickly, twenty metres, thirty, forty. He was grateful for the automated buoyancy control, the computer that sensed their speed of descent and kept it in check. He tilted his head so that he could see directly ahead. Far below them, thirty or forty metres perhaps, he could now see the glimmerings of the base of the shaft, a mass of collapsed metal machinery lit up by their headlamp beams. Two minutes later they were nearly there. ‘Let’s go neutral,’ Costas said. Jack pressed the manual buoyancy override and
injected air into his suit, then tucked into a ball and rolled upright so that he came down feet first like a parachutist. He injected more air to stop just short of the coiled pulley cable and iron platform, coming to a halt alongside Costas. They both looked up. A confused mass of bubbles and light beams moving to and fro was visible far above, where the Russians were coming down.

  Jack looked at his depth gauge. Ninety-five metres. He turned and aimed his beam horizontally into the passageway they were about to enter, the level that would drop at a thirty-degree slope towards their target area about a hundred metres ahead. Costas came alongside and did the same. An extraordinary vista opened up before them. It was clear that they were following a natural fissure in the rock, just as Wladislaw had predicted, with outcrops of halite crystals visible. The crystals shimmered and sparkled as they panned their headlights over them. The fissure had once formed a series of interconnected caverns, but the narrower spaces between the caverns had been hacked away to create a continuous tunnel wide enough for a narrow-gauge track to be laid, identical to the one they had followed at the higher level. Jack could see the track continuing for about thirty metres and then ending at a point where the rock had been left untouched, a much narrower gap. They swam slowly forward. On either side the indentations formed deep chambers, some crudely hacked into a rectilinear shape, one of them with a half-built wooden door and wall enclosing it. Tools lay strewn around, whitened by salt precipitate growing over them. At the end of the track they saw the railway car, a standard narrow-gauge hopper small enough to be pushed by miners, containing a wooden cradle as if some substantial piece of equipment had been carried in it to this point.