He tapped a command and the table erupted in colour. It was an underwater excavation, brilliantly clear with every detail sharply delineated. A mass of sediment had been cleared away to reveal rows of pottery vats and metal ingots lying across a keel, with timbers projecting on either side. The hull was cradled in a gully above a precipitous slope, great tongues of rock disappearing down either side where lava had once flowed.
“The Minoan wreck as it looked ten minutes ago. Jack asked me to have it relayed through so he could monitor progress. Once we have this equipment fully online we’ll truly enter the age of remote fieldwork, able to direct excavations without ever getting wet.”
In the old days huge efforts were required to plan underwater sites, the measurements being taken painstakingly by hand. Now all this was eliminated by the use of digital photogrammetry, a sophisticated mapping package which utilized a remote operated vehicle to take images wired directly to Seaquest. In a ten-minute sweep over the wreck that morning the ROV had collected more data than an entire excavation in the past. As well as the hologram, the data were fed into a laser projector which constructed a latex model of the site in Seaquest’s conference room, modifications continuously being made as the excavators stripped off artefacts and sediment. The innovative system was another reason to be thankful to Efram Jacobovich, IMU’s founding benefactor, who had put the expertise of his giant software company entirely at their disposal.
Jack had spent several hours scrutinizing the hologram that afternoon during a teleconference with the excavation team. But for the others it was a breathtaking sight, as if they had suddenly been transported to the seabed of the Aegean eight hundred nautical miles away. It showed the remarkable progress made in the twenty-four hours since they had flown off by helicopter. The team had removed most of the overburden and sent another trove of artefacts to the safety of the Carthage museum. Under a layer of pottery amphoras filled with ritual incense was a hull far better preserved than Jack had dared imagine, its mortise-and-tenon joints as crisp and clear as if they had been chiselled yesterday.
Mustafa tapped again. “And now the Black Sea.”
The wreck disintegrated into a kaleidoscope of colours from which a model of the Black Sea took shape. In the centre was the abyssal plain, the toxic netherworld almost 2,200 metres deep. Around the edge were the coastal shallows which sloped off more gently than most parts of the Mediterranean.
He tapped another key to highlight the line of the coast before the flood.
“Our target area.”
A pinprick of light appeared in the far south-eastern corner.
“Forty-two degrees north latitude, forty-two degrees east longitude. That’s as precise as we can get with our distance calculation from the Bosporus.”
“That’s a pretty big area,” Costas cautioned. “A nautical mile is one minute of latitude, a degree sixty minutes. That’s three hundred and sixty square miles.”
“Remember we’re looking for a coastal site,” Jack said. “If we follow the ancient coastline on the landward side we should eventually reach our target.”
“The closer we can pinpoint it now, the better,” Mustafa said. “According to the bathymetry the ancient coastline in this sector is at least thirty miles offshore, well beyond territorial waters. It’ll become pretty obvious we’re searching along a particular contour. There are going to be prying eyes about.”
There was a murmur from the others as the implications became depressingly apparent. The map showed how dangerously close they would be to the far shore of the Black Sea, a modern-day Barbary Coast where east met west in a new and sinister fashion.
“I’m intrigued by this feature.” Macleod pointed to an irregularity in the sea floor, a ridge about five kilometres long, parallel to the ancient shoreline. On the seaward side was a narrow chasm which dropped below five hundred metres, an anomaly where the average gradient did not reach this depth for another thirty miles offshore. “It’s the only upstanding feature for miles around. If I was going to build a citadel I’d want a commanding position. This is an obvious place.”
“But the final passage from the papyrus talks about salt lakes,” Costas said.
Katya took her cue and read from the palm computer.
“Then you reach the citadel. And there below lies a vast golden plain, the deep basins, the salt lakes, as far as the eye can see.”
“That’s the image I have of the Mediterranean during the Messinian salinity crisis,” Costas commented. “Stagnant brine lakes, like the southern Dead Sea today.”
“I think I have an explanation.” Mustafa tapped the keyboard and the hologram transformed to a close-up of the south-eastern sector. “With the sea level lowered one hundred and fifty metres, much of the area inland from that ridge was only just dry, a metre or two above the ancient shoreline. Large areas were actually a few metres below sea level. As the level dropped to its lowest, towards the end of the Pleistocene, it would have left salt lakes in those depressions. They were shallow and would have evaporated quickly, leaving immense salt pans. They’d have been visible from an elevated position some distance away as they wouldn’t have supported any vegetation.”
“And let’s remember how important salt was,” Jack said. “It was a vital preservative, a major trade commodity in its own right. The early Romans flourished because they controlled the salt pans at the mouth of the Tiber, and we may be looking at a similar story here thousands of years earlier.”
Costas spoke thoughtfully. “Golden plain could mean fields of wheat and barley, a rich prairie of cultivated grain with the mountains of Anatolia in the background. It was the ‘mountain-girt plain’ of Plato’s account.”
“You’ve got it,” said Mustafa.
“Am I right in thinking part of the ridge is above water today?” Costas was peering at the geomorphology on the hologram.
“It’s the top of a small volcano. The ridge is part of the zone of seismic disturbance along the Asiatic plate that extends west to the north Anatolian fault. The volcano’s not entirely dormant but hasn’t erupted in recorded history. The caldera is about a kilometre in diameter and rises three hundred metres above sea level.”
“What’s its name?”
“Doesn’t have one,” Macleod answered. “It’s been disputed territory ever since the Crimean War of 1853 to ’56 between Ottoman Turkey and Tsarist Russia. It’s in international waters but lies almost exactly off the border between Turkey and Georgia.”
“The area’s been a no-go zone for a long time,” Mustafa continued. “Just months before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 a nuclear sub went down somewhere near here in mysterious circumstances.” The others were intrigued, and Mustafa carried on cautiously. “It was never found, but the search operation led to shots being exchanged between Turkish and Soviet warships. It was a potential global flashpoint, given Turkey’s NATO affiliations. Both sides agreed to back off and the confrontation was hushed up, but as a result there’s been hardly any hydrographic research in this area.”
“Sounds like we’re on our own again,” Costas said glumly. “Friendly countries on either side but powerless to intervene.”
“We’re doing what we can,” Mustafa said. “The 1992 Black Sea economic cooperation agreement led to the establishment of Blackseafor, the Black Sea naval cooperation task group. It’s still more gesture than substance, and most Turkish maritime interdiction has continued to be unilateral. But at least the basis for intervention exists. There’s also a glimmer of hope on the scientific side. The Turkish National Oceanographic Commission is considering an offer from the Georgian Academy of Sciences to collaborate on a survey that would include that island.”