The Mask of Troy

by David Gibbins

  ‘You’re a rare breed, Rebecca,’ Costas said. ‘The only seventeen year old I know who collects antiquarian books.’

  Jack grinned at Costas. ‘And you’re the only submersibles engineer I know who can quote Auden.’

  ‘Jack!’ Costas looked aghast. ‘You promised not to tell!’

  Jeremy looked in astonishment at Costas. ‘You? Poetry? I don’t believe it.’

  Costas gave a theatrical groan. ‘See? My credibility shattered.’

  ‘No. Not at all.’ Jeremy shook his head emphatically. ‘Auden was the subject of my undergraduate dissertation at Stanford. Before I switched to palaeolinguistics, I wrote about Homeric imagery in Auden.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’ Costas had been playing with a spanner, and spun it between his fingers. He looked at Jeremy quizzically. ‘I was thinking of Auden again when we arrived here this afternoon, seeing James photographing the excavation. You know?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jeremy replied, nodding enthusiastically. ‘About the eye of the crow and the eye of the camera, looking on Homer’s world, not ours.’

  ‘And earth being more powerful than both gods and men, yet being impassive, uncaring,’ Costas said.

  Jeremy nodded. ‘That was published in 1952, but it was written in memory of a friend who died in April 1945, in the final weeks of the Second World War. It’s the poem I studied most intensively, along with The Shield of Achilles.’

  ‘Funny. Jack and I were just talking about that one,’ Costas said. ‘On board Seaquest II, before our dive.’

  Jeremy cocked an eye at Jack. ‘Really? He and I talked about it in Oxford several months ago, when he and James came to talk about the Ilioupersis, just after Maria and I had found it.’

  ‘Jack.’ Costas narrowed his eyes at him. ‘You knew about Jeremy and Auden all along.’

  ‘I said you’d be surprised.’

  Rebecca opened the old book, and examined the frontispiece. ‘This is what I really love,’ she murmured. ‘Where people have annotated books, written in them. It really makes them come alive.’

  Dillen shifted in his seat, and raised the unlit pipe again to his mouth. ‘I was going to point that out to you,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Read the inscription out to us, would you?’

  Rebecca angled the page, finding the best light. Jack got up to glance at it, to remind himself. The ink was faded, but the handwriting was bold, elegant. ‘To Hugh, with love and affection from Peter. Remembering our summer at Mycenae, 1938.’

  Jack glanced at Dillen. ‘That’s Hugh Frazer, your old schoolmaster?’

  Dillen nodded. ‘And Peter Mayne, a fellow undergraduate of Hugh’s at Oxford. They both studied classics, and dug together on the British excavation at Mycenae just before the war. They were close friends.’

  ‘Must have been very close,’ Rebecca said, looking at the inscription again.

  Dillen sat back, rocking slightly. ‘They were steeped in Homer, in a world of heroes and gods, of Arcadian groves and lovers. I think it was pretty innocent, though. The war changed all that.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rebecca murmured. ‘Young men in 1939. Just like the young men of 1915, over there at Gallipoli.’

  ‘They both became soldiers, army officers,’ Dillen said, putting his pipe in his mouth, thinking for a moment, then taking it out. ‘I know little about it, actually. They both ended up in special commando units, but I don’t know what happened to Peter in the end. Hugh never spoke about it, and I never pressed him. Hugh had been one of the first into the concentration camp at Belsen, so he’d seen the worst. When I was a schoolboy in the fifties, you didn’t speak to veterans about that. Chaps like Hugh who’d found some way of surviving mentally just wanted to get on with life. Maybe he’d talk now, though. The defences fall away in old age, all that suppression of trauma. They say talk can help.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Costas said.

  ‘Lives in a flat in Bristol, the same place as when I was a schoolboy there. My parents had been killed by German bombing in the Blitz, and he put me up. He’s frail, but perfectly alert. I visit him a couple of times a year. I owe him a visit about now.’

  ‘Maybe his friend Peter was killed,’ Rebecca murmured, staring at the inscription.

  Dillen put his pipe in his mouth, dry-sucked it, then took it out again. ‘The only time he ever said anything was when he gave me that little book as a graduation present, almost fifty years ago now. He said Mayne had been badly wounded, at Cassino. I think the wounds were more than physical. Afterwards he went into a special unit involved in the reparation of works of art, antiquities stolen by the Nazis. Funnily enough, it was Costas who jolted my memory, a few weeks ago when I was at the IMU campus, when you were arranging for the return of that painting from the Howard Gallery to Germany.’

  ‘We talked about my uncle,’ Costas said. ‘The US army Monuments Man.’

  Dillen nodded. He looked at his pipe, then cleared his throat. ‘There is something else. Something that’s been especially on my mind here, at Troy. I’ve always kept it to myself, but this is the right time and place to tell it.’

  ‘Please do,’ Jack said.

  Dillen tapped his pipe on the arm of his chair, then put it down and spoke. ‘Something Hugh said to us at school, in a Greek lesson. It was my first year there, when I was twelve. He told us the story of Heinrich Schliemann and the discovery of Troy. I remember it as if it were yesterday. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, passionate. Gesticulating. We were utterly entranced. The fifties was a pretty grim decade, with post-war deprivation and the threat of nuclear annihilation, and the distant past seemed a far more interesting place than the future. Hugh said he believed in the Trojan War, absolutely believed in it. And he said he knew something top secret. During the war, he’d heard about the most incredible treasure, something Schliemann had found and hidden away and then the Nazis stole. He didn’t say anything more. He swore us all to secrecy. It became a kind of myth. There were half a dozen of us, but I was the only one who carried on with Greek. I never knew for sure whether he was telling a real story, or just trying to inspire us with a dream. I didn’t want to burst that bubble, to discover it was only fiction. That’s why I never brought it up with him again. I still want to believe in it. He was an inspirational teacher.’

  ‘Not the only one,’ Jack murmured.

  Rebecca carefully closed the book, and held it in both hands. ‘I’d love to meet him.’

  ‘He was always very fond of your dad,’ Dillen said, picking up his pipe again. ‘I first took Jack to see Hugh when he wasn’t very much older than you are now.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Rebecca said, suddenly businesslike, looking at Jack. ‘Professor Dillen and I both have to fly back to London tomorrow, right? He’s got a conference at the end of the week, and I’ve got my school trip to France. We’ve both got tomorrow afternoon free. Why don’t we take a trip to Bristol? I’ve been there, to the university open day. I might even study there, actually. You don’t know that yet. Now you do. It’s only an hour and a half on the train from London.’

  Dillen sucked thoughtfully on his pipe, smiled to himself, looked at Jack and raised an eyebrow. Jack glanced at Rebecca, then nodded. ‘It seems that when my daughter sets her mind on something, she does it.’

  Dillen pointed his pipe. ‘What was it you just said about Hugh? “Not the only one”?’

  Jack smiled, looking serious. ‘If there’s a chance this story’s true, then it’s part of the archaeology of this place. We should try to chase it up. But only if Hugh wants us to.’

  ‘I think he will. And we don’t need to pussyfoot around him. For all the trauma, chaps like Hugh are also tough as nails. Remember what they’ve seen and done and had to live with. He’ll tell us exactly what he wants to tell us.’

  ‘Mission Creep, yet again,’ Costas sighed. ‘We need to keep focused. On the archaeology. On the diving.’

  ‘We need to keep all possible avenues open,’ Jack said.

  �
�I just want to talk to him,’ Rebecca said quietly. ‘Maybe about Peter, if he wants.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Ben, who’s personally taken charge of security for this project,’ Jack said. ‘He and Macalister have just liaised with the Turkish navy to get a demolitions team in tomorrow morning to clear that mine from the wreck. Once they’re done, we’re good to go with another dive, Costas. I want to shore up the minelayer wreck and begin doing airlift excavation on the ancient hull straight away. If you can get the Aquapods up to scratch, we’ll be in the water tomorrow afternoon. With the Turkish navy around, I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about with the security of Seaquest II. I think we can spare Ben or one of his guys to accompany you, Rebecca.’

  ‘Dad.’ Rebecca looked at Jack defiantly. ‘It’s not like I’m a little girl any more. I’m seventeen. I don’t need a chaperone.’

  Jack paused. ‘Remember Ben’s reaction when you marched off alone to organize the repatriation of a work of art stolen by the Nazis? There are a lot of shady characters out there. Art and antiquities are big business on the black market.’

  ‘Dad. I’m going to see a lonely old man in a flat in Bristol. And James will be with me.’

  Jack looked at her, shaking his head, then at Dillen. ‘We’ll talk about it.’

  ‘Good. That’s a yes, then. We’re going. Thanks, Dad. And I’ll look after Professor Dillen, don’t worry.’

  Hiebermeyer came out of the excavation room carrying a large perspex board with a plan of Troy taped to it. He was still streaked with dirt, and his eyes were gleaming with excitement.

  ‘You got a result?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Better than you could have imagined. Wundervoll.’ He turned to the others. ‘When Jack and I nipped back to that sculpture during dinner, it was because I wanted to take photographs. I e-mailed them through to the institute in Alexandria. I’ve got a brilliant student there who specializes in Egyptian New Kingdom portrait sculpture. She can spot an individual sculptor’s hand. She knew this one immediately. She calls him Seth IV. She knows him from Thebes. It’s incredibly exciting, because three of his four other known sculptures show officials of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the later thirteenth century BC. And the fourth is even better. It’s a recently revealed statue of Usermaatre-setpenre, otherwise known as Rameses the Great, died 1213 BC.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Jeremy exclaimed. ‘Priam would have been about contemporary with Rameses, wouldn’t he? So this sculptor, Seth IV, takes a commission to sculpt the greatest king of Troy, and comes up here with his stone. That clinches it for me.’

  ‘We’ll do a laser scan and compare the data from the other statues. It’s like fingerprint analysis. But she can tell by eye. You can completely trust it.’

  ‘Another small step closer to the Trojan War,’ Dillen murmured, shaking his head. ‘I never thought I’d see anything like this in my lifetime.’

  Jack pointed at the board. ‘What have you got there?’

  Hiebermeyer put it on the ground between them and knelt in front. ‘Look at this. We’ve dug out enough of the passageway walls to project the walls inward to their apex. I’m convinced it’ll be a circular chamber or a tomb.’ He stabbed a finger at the centre of the plan. ‘I’m putting the ground-penetrating radar over that spot first thing tomorrow morning. And I’ve worked out what we need to get through the remaining rubble. I’ve got a crack team coming up from the institute in Egypt. Experienced at digging out pyramids, monumental tombs. Real archaeologists. And Aysha’s coming. She’s my top hieroglyphics expert.’

  ‘You mean she’s your wife,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘This is science, Rebecca. Science. I’m talking about assembling the best possible archaeological team. Period.’

  ‘Dad says archaeology isn’t a science. He says it’s all about emotional understanding of the past. About passion. About your own passion, Maurice. Aysha tells me she really wants children. This would be the perfect place to get serious, don’t you think? Professor Dillen and I will be away. You’ve got the excavation house to yourselves. Jeremy can go and camp with his sleeping bag up on the ruins, can’t you, Jeremy? What about it, Hiemy?’

  Hiebermeyer was silent for a moment, apparently absorbed in the plan. Then he looked up, narrowing his eyes at Rebecca. ‘Here’s what Hiemy thinks. You remember how Hiemy offered Rebecca the job of site assistant at the mummy necropolis next summer? Hiemy thinks that if Rebecca’s excellent plan comes to fruition, that job brief might just change. It might change to nanny.’

  Rebecca looked aghast. ‘Not,’ she said vehemently.

  Jack bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. He cleared his throat, and turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘Hieroglyphics,’ he murmured, shaking his head doubtfully. ‘Is that really what you saw down there in that tunnel, Maurice?’

  Hiebermeyer gave him a defiant look. ‘Did you really see the lion-shaped prow of a Mycenaean galley on the sea bed this afternoon?’

  Rebecca looked at Dillen. ‘Dad has a bet with Maurice that he’s going to find the Shield of Achilles before Maurice finds the palladion.’

  ‘An extra team from Egypt,’ Jack murmured, scratching his stubble. ‘That sounds like an unfair advantage. That raises the stakes. It’s a crate of whisky, not a bottle. And James chooses the malt. It’s for him, after all.’

  ‘Done,’ Hiebermeyer said.

  Costas stood up, spun his spanner, checked his watch and looked at Jeremy. ‘That reminds me. I’ve got an Aquapod to fix. The chopper’s waiting. Want to come and help?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask.’

  Dillen stood up as well. ‘And I need to go back to my trench. To clean up.’

  Hiebermeyer wiped his face, leaving a streak like war paint across his forehead. He looked at Dillen seriously. ‘Of course you do, Professor.’ He grinned. ‘Inspection in half an hour.’

  9

  James Dillen walked down from the excavation house to the dirt lane that encircled the site of Troy, on the edge of the rich humic plain that seemed to lap the ancient citadel like a sea. There were plain that seemed to lap the ancient citadel like a sea. There were tomatoes everywhere, rows of lush plants in the fields, ripe red fruit dropped from carts and squashed on the trackway, oozing into the stagnant pools that lined the fields. He remembered what a French soldier had called the plain of Troy: marais sanglant, bloody marsh, after the French had fought the Turks to a standstill beside the Dardanelles in 1915. The dark waters of the past always seemed close to the surface here, as if to step off the track would be to risk being swallowed up in it; to navigate this place meant knowing the latticework of dykes and causeways used by the farm workers who dotted the fields, visible here and there like distant scavengers picking their way through the aftermath of battle.

  Dillen stopped for a moment, and looked out. The sun was nearly set far out over the Aegean, leaving a fiery orange glow that deepened to dark red from west to east. The ancient stage-set of war was all visible here: the plain of Ilion, the river Scamander behind the low line of trees to the east, in front of the place where the ancient shoreline had been, an arrow-shot away from where he stood now. He could see across the distant waters of the Dardanelles to Cape Helles, the westernmost point of the Gallipoli peninsula, capped by the stark white tower of the memorial to the British dead of 1915. Two nights before, with Jack on Seaquest II, they had gone on deck and seen the far-off speckle of phosphorescence in the surf, on the beaches where so many had died. It was as if the ghosts still lingered there, dancing as their corpses had once danced in the lapping waves. Now he saw the same coast rimmed red, where the setting sun reflected off the phosphorescence; above it the ravines and gullies shimmered white, where the shattered bones of men lay too thick to nurture new life, as if the storm of death still reeked and echoed across the years. Behind him the crumbled citadel of Troy was verdant, overgrown, but it too seemed gutted by history, a place that never again would pulse to the sounds of running feet and laughter and children, gone for ever in th
e whirling vortex of war three thousand years before.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, savouring the silence, the preternatural stillness that followed the afternoon wind. Then a diesel tractor coughed to life somewhere away in the fields, and a donkey brayed. He slapped his arm, leaving a bloody smear. Mosquitoes did not seem to live on the citadel, and it was a good enough reason for getting off the plain. He stepped off the path into Schliemann’s trench and made his way towards his excavation, high above the trench on a grassy knoll that marked the northern edge of the ancient city. He scrambled over the makeshift wooden revetment and into the Bronze Age house, pausing, as he always did, to remember where he was, standing on a floor that had been buried for three millennia: a house whose last inhabitants had seen the great beacon burning high above the wall, and had watched the men of Mycenae storm across the plain towards them on a wave of destruction, harbingers of rape and fire and death.

  What he had said to Jeremy earlier was too easy, too glib. The Trojan War was not a clash of civilizations, of east and west. Troy was a crucible for all mankind, for men to do their worst. He looked out from his new vantage point high above the plain, to the north-east. Darkness was enveloping the Gallipoli peninsula, blotting out the afterglow of dusk; it was the darkness of an impending storm that had been building up all afternoon. Distant lightning flashed on the horizon, revealing cavernous folds in the clouds. There was a far-off rumble, whether of thunder or the fighter jets that had streaked overhead all day he was not sure. War was never far from this place. He remembered what he had smelled that afternoon, the smell of ancient burning in that pyre against the wall.

  He looked up and saw the shadowy shapes of a pair of birds flying west, fleeing the storm, their wings beating the still air. It was going to rain, but he would stay here until it began, wait for Jack. He took off his camera, stowed it in its bag, sat down and nursed his aching knees for a moment, then reached over and rolled up the plastic cover on the wall, revealing the extraordinary fresco of the lyre-player. He stared at it, still astonished at what he had found. The lyre-player seemed to be an observer, looking over the dark plain just as he had been doing, standing apart from history: Auden’s mother earth, remaining immutable as gods and men came and went.