A Bridge of Magpies

Doodenstadt turns out to be not merely a figure of speech. Ifs real, it's a town. A lost city.'

'And Atlantis lies under Table Bay. I never thought I'd live to see the high office of Commander-in-Chief knocked by fantasy.'

'I almost said the same thing myself at first.'

'I've seen the way the egg-heads' minds go into orbit over Santorin. They steam themselves up into all sorts of improbable conclusions-it's Plato's drowned paradise, God knows what else. I'll bet it's the same about Doodenstadt.'

For an answer he rummaged in a drawer and produced a volume book-marked with newspaper cuttings.

'Ever heard of Farini?'

'Farini was an American traveller who chimed to have camped at a lost city in the Kalahari desert in let me see

… 1885.'

'The Kalahari isn't the Sperrgebiet. Moreover, it's half-way across the sub-continent from Doodenstadt:

'I'm not suggesting a connection. Only it's interesting that Farini found an ancient ruined city covered by sand: '

Says who-Farini?'

'He wrote a book about it:

'I'll bet he did.'

'I value your scepticism, Struan. Farini's discovery has been kicked about by everybody. The weight of the evidence is that he did finds ruins and that probably they've since been covered over again by sand. His son even took a photograph of the place. Scores of expeditions in modern times have searched for Farini's lost city -without without success,'

I helped myself to another cigarette.

'The Navy's become a fun outfit since my time. We never thought much beyond ships and the sea. Lost cities didn't figure?

'You've seen Santorin. There could be a parallel.'

Look, I'm not an expert. I'm the dimmest sort of amateur when it comes to this sort of thing. I've seen some of Santorin's frescos-they're much too valuable for a duffer like me to touch. My boat provided cheap transport for some second- and third-rate stuff.'

We don't lack experts. In fact, you're going to meet one of them pretty soon. He's sitting right outside waiting for me to ring. Dr Hellmut Koch. He discovered Doodenstadt's fresco.'

'Then why bring me here? -and with all that elaborate cloak-and-dagger?'

'Think, man. For more than a century the Sperrgebiet's been the mysterious, out-of-reach, get-rich-quick mecca of every crook who could get himself a ship to sail in. First it was for the "white gold" guano. Then diamonds. Now Doodenstadt could be stage three, sparking off a big-scale treasurehunt. I couldn't give a damn whether Doodenstadt is Atlantis or a link in Farini's chain of cities under the sand. What I am concerned about is that a lot of hoodlums could invade the Forbidden Coast.'

'Not for the sake of a fresco or two,'

'That won't be the way the treasure-hounds will view Doodenstadt. That fresco will be an arrow pointing straight at buried treasure unlimited. Gold, ancient jewels, all the never-never stuff. Soon they'll be saying Captain Kidd's treasure is peanuts beside what lies under Doodenstadt. That's the way a treasure legend snowballs and there are always suckers to believe it. No-good suckers. When they don't find treasure they'll turn to a spot of illicit diamond running as a backstop against their costs. And ships willing to do that sort of thing cost plenty.'

'This is a job for the diamond police, not the Navy.'

`You're wrong. There are hundreds of foreign trawlers on the fishing grounds. If word leaked out about a lost city at Doodenstadt, the Navy's life wouldn't be worth living. And one thing's sure: the diamond police won't play ball over this hot potato. They argue, rightly, that the land security's as tight as all get-out but that it's wide wide open from the sea. And the sea is the Navy's responsibility.'

'Station a frigate at Possession. That would plug the gap.'

'How long do you think Doodenstadt's secret would stay a secret if I did that? Every trawler and every island headman would start asking, 'What's new? What's a frigate up to? Another big diamond strike to protect?" The buzz would spread like a veld fire. No, a warship would be the surest way to advertise a lost city. Besides, how effective would it be? You know that bloody Sperrgebiet weather – a gale twenty days a month. And the fog: every day there's that damn fog. Every day there's half an extra smuggler's night thrown in gratis. You can't win. You know yourself you can't operate a big ship like a frigate round Possession. There's no sea room and the reefs are thicker than pock-marks on a Hottentot's face.'

'A brace of fast patrol boats would do the trick.'

'Logistically sound; but, economically and ecologically, crap. Possession's one of the most important guano islands. Disturb the birds with high-powered boats' engines and they'll push off. No guano, no white gold.'

'We're playing verbal skittles. I pot 'em up, you knock ' em down.'

'You're the only skittle that can't be knocked down.' '

What the hell do you mean?'

`The "lost city" game must be played cards dose to the chest There must be security until Koch has time to sort out what really gives. But security with a difference: it mustn't seem to be security. What's needed is a one-man outfit – you.'

' M e

For reply, he spoke into the intercom. 'Send in Dr Koch? Koch was a tall, rangy Austrian with slicked-back hair and a pair of humorous grey eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He didn't look much older than me,

'This is our man, Koch.'

`Hotfoot from Circe and her wine, eh?' (It was the first flash of a sense of fun I came to know well; that, and his total dedication to his work: the investigation of sea-shore middens belonging to Strandlopers-'Seashore Walkers' – who were a vanished Stone Age race of Sperrgebiet nomads.) The way he said it turned me on. 'Gigi,' I corrected. 'Her name was Gigi.'

'The memory of sweet days ferments inside me,' he sighed. '

I remember once, in Athens, a bottle from Santorin… slightly sweet, but it had a fire.

'You can swop boozy reminiscences later,' snapped the C-in-C. 'He hasn't accepted yet, Koch. Tell him about the fresco.'

'The admiral's put you in the picture about Doodenstadt?' '

Aye.'

'Here's the set-up: there are these enormous blocks of rock half-in and half-out of the breakers. There's the old wreck of a big liner lying on top of them. I was snuffling about there for middens one exceptionally low tide-a rare good chance for me: you don't often see the water as low as that. Or so cairn, also a rarity in those parts. A large cave, originally a fault in the rock strata, had been opened up and formed by wave action. I went in. At its landward end the cleft led to a regular-shaped rock tunnel which ran clean under the desert. This tunnel was higher than the sea cave and out of reach of the water, and so quite dry. I went in only a little way, as I was scared of being trapped by the tide returning. But I spotted this with my torch and got a shot of it,'

He tossed me a photographic colour slide. I held it up to the light.

It might have been a duplicate-with variations-of one of the most precious finds to come out of Santorini it was 31 a small fresco showing two gemsbok, or oryx, cavorting, tails swishing, heads held high. Certainly the artists' treatment-light and graceful-was uncannily similar in the two cases. The Santorin scene had presented the pundits with an inexplicable enigma: had oryx (in modem times found only in the Middle East and Africa) once inhabited the Aegean islands? Or had there been a land link, now submerged by the ocean?

I'll be damned!'

• I elaborated on the Santorin discovery.

Koch was afire when I'd finished. The C-in-C sat back with the air of a magician who has produced rabbit quintuplets out of a hat when he'd expected one.

Koch's words tumbled over one another. 'If Struan's right we may be on to something much bigger than we imagined! If Doodenstadt's tied up in some way with the Middle East or a vanished Minoan civilization ..