The Gods of Atlantis jh-6

by David Gibbins

  ‘Don’t give up just yet,’ Lanowski urged. ‘Take a look at that.’

  The wobbling stopped and the image stabilized. The eye of the ROV had angled upwards to the top of the boulder, to a wider crack between its upper surface and the top of the tunnel. They all stared in stunned silence.

  What they saw was a scene of horror. On top of the boulder were three human skulls lying at different angles, their lower jaws wide open. The skulls were covered in the same lime concretion as the bones of the sacrificial victims on the floor of the chamber, cementing them to the top of the boulder. But it was not the image of the skulls that was so horrifying. It was what lay behind and in front of them. The skulls were articulated with other human bones, ribcages caught in the crack behind, arm bones extending over the boulder as if some awful multi-legged creature had been trying to get out. One ribcage had collapsed and several of the arms were missing hands, but the rest of the bones were joined together, evidently cemented to the rock while the sinews were still in place.

  Jack stared. As if some creature had been trying to get out. It was suddenly an image of shocking clarity. These people had been alive and struggling when the flood waters rose, their last screams caught in the contorted grimaces of their skulls. And this was no accident of fate. They had been forced inside that tunnel and sealed in with the boulder. He could barely imagine what lay in the darkness beyond.

  What had gone on here? Human sacrifice, mass suicide, then the last of the shamans sealed inside, doomed to an agonizing and terrifying death. Had this been the final apocalypse, the end of the old order and the beginning of the new? He remembered those stark stone pillars standing in the chamber. Had they presided over this, those new gods, like statues half formed that now would be able to reveal themselves in their final shape, wherever those who had carried out this act were destined to find landfall and hold sway over men again?

  Then Jack remembered Lanowski’s chalk drawing on the blackboard: the crooked cross, the swastika, a shape that seemed to form in Jack’s mind out of the swirling images of the deep past. Now he knew that the end of the old order had been a time of appalling violence. But he also knew that those who had vanquished the old, these new priests, these gods, had not come from somewhere else, like invaders sweeping in on a wave of destruction. They had come from within. He remembered Hiebermeyer’s call, where he was going now, to a time when that cross had been resurrected to serve a new breed of gods. Suddenly the image of fear and desperation in those skeletons from seven thousand years ago seemed terrifyingly immediate.

  There was a sudden jolt, and a blur. The camera appeared to move forward, as if the ROV were riding something underneath. Then there was a white flash and the screen went blank. A moment later the ship’s klaxon sounded, and a red light went on above the control-room door. ‘We’re moving again,’ Costas said. ‘Macalister must have registered another seismic disturbance, and he’ll be taking us further offshore. My guess is that’s the archaeology gone for good. That chamber’s going to be entombed in lava, Little Joey too.’

  Jack sniffed the air. He thought he caught a whiff of sulphur, whether some effulgence of the volcano drawn in by the ship’s ventilators or a residue on their own bodies from the dive was unclear. Smell was the one sense he had been deprived of that morning; the dive had come to seem more like a voyage of the mind than reality. But the hint of acrid smell jolted him. Instead of a phantasm, an image now lost forever to history, the vision of those people in their death throes now seemed shockingly real. He knew that where he had to go next, the smell of death was more than just a ghostly exhalation. He realized what had been troubling him for the last six months, what had led him to block off the world around him, to totter on the edge on the dive that morning. It was not only Atlantis that had come at a price, with the death of Peter Howe five years ago. Troy had come at a price too. Six months ago they had opened up another cave from the past, another chamber with a dark revelation. It was unresolved business, and he needed to confront it head-on now. He straightened up, clicked on his phone, nodded at Jeremy and Lanowski and gave Costas a steely look. ‘Next time we meet in this room, it will be on the trail of a shaman of Atlantis who may have survived all this, a seven-thousand-year-old seafarer who might just have been called Noah. Until then, sit tight. You’ll be hearing from me.’

  10

  Over Europe

  J ack scanned the instrument panel in front of him, noting that the airspeed indicator and altimeter had shown near-constant figures since they had flown over the northern shore of the Adriatic Sea fifteen minutes ago. He was strapped into the rear ejector seat of an RAF Tornado GR4, and since their exhilarating take-off from Incirlik airbase in Turkey he had managed to put aside thinking about his destination and let himself enjoy the thrill of flying in a fast jet. They had flown low over Troy, allowing him a fascinating view of the ancient site, as well as the Dardanelles Strait where any prehistoric exodus from the Black Sea to the west must have taken place. Now he peered sideways through the canopy over the swept-back starboard wing, looking past the silvery nacelle of the long-range drop tank and seeing the snowy peaks of the Alps some twenty thousand feet below. He turned back to face the upper part of the instrument panel, which blocked his view of the pilot’s seat in front, and spoke into the intercom. ‘That looks like Innsbruck in Austria below us, Paul. What’s our ETA?’

  ‘I’m dropping from six hundred to five hundred knots in fifteen minutes and then finding a lower altitude. All going according to plan, we should be flying over Hanover in Germany and coming in to land in about thirty-five minutes.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  ‘You okay? Lunch still inside you?’

  ‘I’m having the time of my life. I can’t see how this kind of flying could ever pale.’

  ‘That’s the problem. It’s a constant adrenalin kick. I’ve done thousands of hours in Tornados, including four big operational deployments – the Gulf War, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan. I’ve had enough of war, Jack, but I still love the flying. I can’t believe this is going to be my last official fast-jet flight.’

  ‘Congratulations on the Distinguished Service Order, by the way. Well deserved.’

  ‘Those things should go to the ground crews. They’re the ones who keep these birds flying. The unsung heroes.’

  ‘That’s the way I feel about my diving expeditions. It’s always a team effort.’ Jack cast his mind back more than two decades. Paul Llewelyn had been one of his close-knit group of friends at Cambridge University, where they had shared college rooms in their first year; he was a fellow diver and had gone along with Jack on his first expeditions to the Mediterranean. They had not seen each other for several years now, but Jack had spent an hour with Paul in the officers’ mess at Incirlik while the air-traffic controllers worked on clearance for a modified flight plan to his destination in Germany and the aircraft was fitted with long-range drop tanks. He had sworn Paul to secrecy and told him about their Atlantis dive, then briefed him about the excavation at the bunker site in Germany and about Maurice Hiebermeyer, another mutual friend from Cambridge. He had outlined the security and contamination risk at the bunker and why Paul would not be allowed out of the aircraft when they landed at the old NATO runway next to the excavation site. Beyond that he had let himself enjoy the experience of flying, and being with an old friend. He spoke into the intercom again. ‘Paul, do you remember the last time we flew together? In that rickety old Bulldog trainer in the University Air Squadron?’

  ‘That time you were in the driver’s seat. You actually got your wings just before I did. I’m still trying to live that down.’

  ‘Learning to fly was just part of my toolkit. I wanted to get all the skills I could under my belt. I guessed I was going to have to fly at some time in the future, and I was right. But for you, flying and getting into the RAF was always your main passion, like diving was for me.’

  ‘It’s still there, Jack. All I ever wanted was to get inside one of these
things. And here I am now, an RAF group captain, about to be booted up to one-star rank so I can fly a desk in the Ministry of Defence in London. I’ll be like one of those mothballed planes in the Arizona desert, waiting for a reactivation everyone knows is never going to happen. All fast-jet jocks say the same when they reach my stage. It’s as if we’ve gone beyond our sell-by date, but they can’t quite bring themselves to scrap us.’

  ‘Ever think of retirement?’

  ‘I’d retire from the air force, but only to fly again. You?’

  ‘Rebecca says I need more sabbaticals, and to stop taking all the best projects. She said IMU needs to get more expeditions going with other people leading them. People like herself.’

  ‘I can’t wait to meet her. Her mother’s death must have been a terrible blow, but it’s amazing how kids can weather storms. So Elizabeth disappeared back to Naples without telling you she was pregnant? I bet you can’t believe you’ve only known Rebecca for three years.’

  ‘Her kidnapping last year really brought it all home again.’

  ‘ Kidnapping? Jesus, Jack, what have you been getting into?’

  ‘It was only for forty-eight hours. That was close to a lifetime for me, though. I found out a few things about myself, I can tell you. About what protecting your own will make you do. All I can say is I’ve got more blood on my hands than the last time we met. It’s wrapped up with the bunker discovery, so the security issue is ongoing.’

  ‘But she’s all right?’

  ‘Back at school in New York City after working with us at Troy. You met Ben Kershaw when you visited Seaquest II a few years ago? He heads up the IMU security team and is looking after her. Round-the-clock surveillance. And Rebecca’s developing quite a few survival skills of her own. She’s about to get her glider pilot’s licence, you know. If she can fit it in with her advanced nitrox diving course. And her weekend co-op programme at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.’

  ‘Christ, Jack. Sounds like a chip off the old block.’

  ‘That’s why I could never retire. She needs management.’

  ‘Been there, done that. Remember, I have three teenage daughters. Trying to keep Rebecca under control is exactly what you don’t want to be doing.’

  Jack laughed. ‘Advice taken. But back to retirement. My friend Costas jokes that there’s an inner philosopher in me ready to retreat to some remote cabin and grow a long white beard like Charles Darwin, cogitating for my remaining years before producing the definitive tome on human prehistory.’

  ‘You always were the thinking action man, but I really don’t see it.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I haven’t met Costas yet, but I’ve seen him on the IMU films. Seems like a good guy.’

  ‘He and I first met during my short-term commission in the Navy; you remember? Between graduating and my doctorate, before I founded IMU. Costas had been at MIT before going to the US Navy research establishment to work on submersibles, his metier. We actually met in the naval base at Izmir in Turkey, where I discovered he was a diver and cajoled him into doing some shipwreck exploration with me. He’s in charge of the engineering department at IMU, but he’s a lot more than that. I couldn’t imagine doing an expedition without him. He keeps me on the straight and narrow. He’s a rock.’

  ‘Efram Jacobovich still pumps money into your foundation?’

  ‘We had some pretty amazing friends at Cambridge, don’t you think? I remember the first time I met Efram in the dining hall at college. He’d thought up the internet ten years before it was officially invented. He had software tycoon written all over him. I took him on a frigid dive in the English Channel that put him in bed shivering for a week, but something about the experience must have struck a chord for him to give IMU its endowment ten years later. He’s been a fantastic friend and supporter.’

  ‘And your father gave IMU your family estate in the Fal estuary? I remember my visits there when we dived off the south coast looking for that elusive Phoenician shipwreck. Perfect place for a maritime research campus.’

  ‘It just seemed right. My father’s family had been in Cornwall since Tudor times, when the estate was given to my ancestor Captain Jack Howard by King Henry VIII for services rendered against the Spanish. In Spanish history books he was a pirate, but in ours a glorious hero. Since then the family history has seen quite a bit more adventure on the high seas but also a gentle decline into aristocratic impoverishment. My own apparently exotic childhood moving around the world was actually as much about my father evading financial inconvenience as it was his bohemian life as a painter. Luckily there was a trust fund that paid for my boarding school, and another one that kept the Howard Gallery and its art collection from the debt collectors. My father was a great supporter of the idea of IMU, but it also came as something of a relief to him, because he could bequeath the estate to our foundation as a tax break.’

  ‘I remember reading the obituaries. What was it now, eight years ago? I’ve got very fond memories of him, and your mother. How’s she doing?’

  ‘Still lives there and runs the place, really, in between mountain trekking expeditions. She and Rebecca get on like a house on fire. Still has her huge garden and her dogs.’

  ‘So what about old Heimy? You should be seeing him within an hour.’

  ‘It’s funny – that’s what Rebecca calls him, too. Of course he got married last year, as you know.’

  ‘Maurice Hiebermeyer, married. It beggars belief. I got an invite, but I was on deployment in Afghanistan. Amazing he remembered me, but I always knew there was a thoughtful and loving human being inside the fanatical Egyptologist. Lucky he found a woman who spotted that too. Makes my head reel to think of it. Does he still have those awful khaki lederhosen?’

  ‘Still wears them at half-mast.’

  ‘You remember our little escapade in Egypt that summer after graduation? You illegally scaling the Great Pyramid at Giza to spend the night on the top waiting with a camera, me flying Maurice in a dilapidated old Tiger Moth biplane for some dawn aerobatics over the Sphinx. It was something to do with re-creating a National Geographic picture Maurice had seen from the 1920s showing RAF biplanes over the pyramids. We just had to have a go, otherwise we weren’t going to hear the end of it.’

  Jack laughed. ‘It was also a shrewd publicity stunt. Maurice had spent weeks camped outside the Egyptian Antiquities Authority, trying to get them to take his discovery in the Fayum desert seriously. If you remember how he looked in those shorts, you could see what the problem was. But our stunt got us hauled in front of the director-general himself, and Maurice instantly won him over with his knowledge of all things Egyptian. I can still see the two of them on their knees on the office floor poring over Maurice’s sketch map of his discovery, the mummy necropolis that was to make his name. And now there he is, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Alexandria and arguably the world’s foremost Egyptologist.’

  ‘Seems a long way from that to unearthing a Nazi bunker in Germany.’

  ‘He volunteered to take my place. His family home was not far from there, and he said he felt a personal responsibility as a German to address the past.’

  ‘We’re about to lose altitude now. Just in case you need it, the sick bag’s in the pocket in front of you.’ Jack felt his stomach lurch as the aircraft suddenly dropped out of the sky, hurtling at a forty-five-degree angle towards the patchwork of fields now visible below. They levelled out at three thousand feet, and Jack watched the wings sweep forward and the airspeed indicator drop to three hundred knots. Paul’s voice crackled on the intercom. ‘Okay, Jack? That’s Lower Saxony ahead of us. We’ll be over the airfield in a few minutes. I’m going to do several wide sweeps around so you can get your bearings.’

  Jack swallowed hard, feeling his stomach return to normal. ‘Do you know this area? I remember your first RAF posting was in Germany, in the late 1980s.’

  ‘I was always fascinated with the Second World War. I spent a lot of my leave time trave
lling around, trying to come to grips with what happened in those final months in 1945. With the fall of Berlin and the confrontation with the Soviets, it was as if the history of that time was suppressed, almost as if there was a conscious effort by the Allied authorities to put a lid on it. Nobody in Germany wanted to dwell on the nightmare, and there was a desperate need to get people to look forward. But to me there still seemed an awful lot of unanswered questions. There’s plenty of unexcavated history here, just below the surface. With the end of the Cold War, I felt the lid might blow off. I know you can’t really say more, but I’m guessing that’s what this bunker excavation is all about.’

  Jack looked out as the aircraft banked to starboard and saw runway lights in the haze ahead. Seconds later they swept over the airbase and the flat land beyond, a large area of low scrub and marsh punctuated by patches of plantation forest. Paul came on the intercom again. ‘We’re doing a wide turn to come in from the south. I did a stopover here once in the 1980s, and the Luftwaffe guys at the base told me a bit about the history. There was a large old-growth forest here, a former royal hunting ground. On the day the British liberated the camp at Belsen a few miles from here, this forest was the front line for the British 11th Armoured Division, part of 21st Army Group. On the other side of the forest, just about where we are now, remnant German forces including SS were about to establish defensive positions. Nobody on the Allied side wanted a repeat of the bloodbaths in the Hurtgen or Reichswald forests, so an RAF bomber raid was diverted here. Almost five hundred Lancasters, most carrying fourteen thousand pounds of high-explosive and incendiary bombs. My Phantom squadron at the time prided itself on being the descendant of a wartime pathfinder Lancaster squadron that flew on that raid, and then dropped relief supplies to the survivors of Belsen. I often wonder what it would have felt like for those bomber crews on what we would now call humanitarian missions, saving lives instead of destroying them. I don’t think it would have been easy. It’s hard to change your mindset from being an instrument of destruction to an instrument of salvation. It puts too much of what you might have done before into sharp focus. Anyway, they achieved their objective in that forest. What wasn’t destroyed by blast was burnt in the firestorm. The airbase was originally an RAF forward operating field built immediately after liberation, on land cleared of smashed trees by German prisoners of war.’