‘Especially if she was so poorly laden,’ Jack said, tapping a key again. ‘Lanowski’s done a simulation. Take a look at this. You can see the ship sailing west from Malta, and all is well. The prevailing wind is from the north-east, and the captain decides to sail with the wind on his starboard beam, west-north-west, in order to avoid being blown into the north African shore. He turns with the wind towards Gibraltar when the Spanish coast hoves into view, but he’s come too close to the shore and has forgotten how sluggish the cargo makes the ship. He realises his mistake and tries to veer south back into the open sea with the wind now on his port aft quarter, but it’s too late. A sudden squall, a big inshore wave, and the sarcophagus slips, then the ship heels over and is gone, probably so fast that the crew would hardly have known what was happening.’
Costas nodded. ‘So she sinks close to shore but in deep water, here where the bottom shelves off rapidly to abyssal depth. If she’d been in shallow water there would have been some attempt at salvage, and perhaps more survivors. But if she sank like a stone, at least we should have a fairly well-contained wreck site.’
‘Trickier to find, though, without a wide debris field.’
‘We’ve got the magnetic anomalies from Seaquest II’s run over the sector this morning,’ Costas said. ‘One of them will come up trumps.’
‘Fingers crossed,’ Jack said.
‘Lucky Jack,’ Costas replied, smiling at Sofia. ‘Jack’s luck is better than any science.’
Jack closed the computer. ‘I keep thinking of the captain, Wichelo, perhaps the only survivor, a man afraid of creditors and claimants or overcome with shame, knowing he’d never be trusted again with a cargo, deciding to disappear and change his name and start a new life.’
‘But not too ashamed to record the location and put it in this book, perhaps many years later when he could use his original name again,’ Costas said. ‘Maybe an old man wanting to tie up loose ends, recording the location for someone to find.’
Sofia turned and eyed Jack shrewdly. ‘Let me get this right. The idea that the Beatrice was wrecked somewhere off Spain has been floating around for years, but nobody’s ever been allowed to search for it inside Spanish territorial waters. Even the Egyptian Antiquities Service with all its wealthy international backers fails to get permission. But then Jack Howard finds some clue to the whereabouts of the wreck, picks up the phone and hey presto, green light.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Our record speaks for itself.’
‘We’re archaeologists, not salvors,’ Costas said, still eyeing the control panel. ‘Everything we find in territorial waters goes to a local museum, and everything in international waters to our museum at Carthage or to the IMU campus in England. We fund the entire process of conservation and display. Our commercial wing makes a healthy income from our films and from sales of equipment developed in our engineering facility, but we operate on an endowment, which means there’s no need to make a profit. We’ve got a hell of a benefactor.’
‘I read about him on the website,’ Sofia said. ‘Efram Jacobovich, the software tycoon.’
‘He’s also why we’re test-driving this submersible,’ Costas said. ‘One of his companies does deep-water mineral extraction, small quantities of rare minerals around hot-air vents, and they use the same robotic manipulator arms that we’ve developed for excavation. Their success makes Efram richer and he increases our endowment. So you see, everything’s linked.’ He stared again above him, a puzzled look on his face, his voice trailing off as he spoke. ‘A bit like the wiring in this control panel. All linked somehow. I wish I could work out how Lanowski got that right.’
Jack smiled at Sofia. ‘That clear it up for you?’
Costas coughed. ‘And in this case, there was the small matter of Jack’s girlfriend.’
Jack narrowed his eyes at Costas. ‘Not girlfriend. Colleague.’
‘Right.’ Costas grinned at Sofia. ‘Her name’s Dr Maria de Montijo. She’s head of the Oxford Institute of Epigraphy and an adjunct professor of IMU. She’s been with us on a number of expeditions. Her mother also happens to be the Spanish Minister of Culture.’
‘Of course,’ Sofia said. ‘My boss. So, the old boys’ network.’
‘The old girls’ network.’
‘Problem is, Maria always comes up with the goods but Jack never commits in return. Too busy diving with his buddy Costas.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Jack said, ‘how are we coming along?’
Costas peered at Sofia. ‘Now that I know you’re an engineer too, can I ask you to help?’
‘Fire away.’
‘We’ve got to manually disengage the cable tethering us to Seaquest II. The lever’s the red one labelled “tether” in the ceiling of the double-lock chamber. I need to be here with my hands on about four switches to allow it to unlock. You’ll need to shut the chamber door behind you to get at the lever. A red light will fire up beside it when I’m ready. It’ll be no more than a couple of minutes. Can you do it?’
‘Sure. No problem.’ She slid off the chair and disappeared back through the hatch, and they heard the clang of the chamber door shutting behind her. Costas quickly turned to Jack. ‘Okay. Spill it.’
Jack stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, Jack. I know that look. What’s going on?’
Jack cleared his throat. ‘We’re searching for one of the greatest archaeological treasures of all time. We’re doing our job.’
‘That’s just it. Doing our job. It’s not enough, is it? Okay, an Egyptian stone sarcophagus, covered with carvings. And not just any old sarcophagus. The sarcophagus of a pharaoh, from one of the pyramids at Giza. That’s big-time. I mean, really big-time. But to get you this fired up, there just has to be more.’
‘The sarcophagus would be one of the greatest Egyptian finds since King Tut’s tomb. Even including all of Maurice’s discoveries.’
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ Costas exclaimed. ‘Maurice Hiebermeyer. He’s the missing link. Last year at Troy he found that Egyptian sculpture with the strange hieroglyphic inscriptions and the sculptor’s name he recognised. Before you could say golden mummy, he’d shot down to Akhenaten’s city at Amarna beside the Nile, digging around for something he’d seen before. And then quick as a flash he was in the Nubian desert, and then back in Egypt up to his neck in a pyramid. It’s not like Hiebermeyer to flit around like that. Once he’s got his nose stuck in a site, he stays there until it’s done. And not just any old pyramid. The pyramid of Menkaure at Giza, precisely the place where Vyse found the sarcophagus. You’re on a trail, aren’t you, Jack? What we’re doing today, whatever we find, this isn’t just about that sarcophagus. There’s a bigger prize.’
Jack was silent for a moment, then he turned to Costas, his face an image of suppressed excitement. ‘Right at the moment it could all be a house of cards. We need one more crucial clue. And I don’t want to upset your plans for some R and R on the beach tomorrow at Cartagena.’
‘I knew that was never going to happen,’ Costas said resignedly. He shook his head, then jerked his thumb towards the porthole. ‘The clue you need. Is it out there? In the wreck?’
Jack gave him a steely look. ‘Maybe. Just maybe.’
Costas turned back to the panel and flipped the switches. A few seconds later there was a shudder and the submersible seemed to drop in the water, then it pitched and yawed like a boat bobbing in the waves. Costas quickly got up and sat in the pilot’s seat, one hand over the control stick and the other on the throttle. Sofia re-emerged and slid down in front of the Perspex screen beside Jack. They heard the whine of the electric motor, and then felt the submersible steadying itself in the water. Jack stared again into the blue. There might be nothing down there but bare rock and sand, but Costas was right about one thing. He had always been lucky when it came to archaeology, and he felt it now. He just knew there was something there that would change history for ever.