“The son of Akhenaten and Nefertiti?” Costas said.
“Not all would agree, but I believe so,” Hiebermeyer said. “Whatever their true relationship, they were certainly only a generation apart.”
“Good enough for me,” Costas said. “And Akhenaten’s our man? I mean, are we sure he’s the pharaoh of the Old Testament, the one who chased the Israelites across the sea?”
Hiebermeyer looked at Jack, who nodded. “We’re not sure, but that’s the consensus.”
“Well, looking at those two photos, I’d say those two swords were cast in the same foundry.”
“You may well be right,” Hiebermeyer said. “But it’s not enough evidence to confirm the identification of the pharaoh at the time of the chariot disaster. Egyptologists are used to dealing with very precise data, and our theory won’t wash unless we can find archaeological evidence to pin this with absolute certainty to Akhenaten. Did you have time to look closely at the blade of that sword, Jack? Any indication of hieroglyphs?”
“Nothing that I could see.”
“Any other artifacts at the site? Any at all?”
Costas suddenly shot bolt upright. “Ah.” He turned to Jack, a guilty look on his face.
“I know that look,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes. “It means Costas has seen something archaeological but forgotten to tell me, usually because whatever technical thing he was doing at the time was more important. Am I right?”
Costas coughed, spilling crumbs down his shirt, and reached into his shorts pocket. “Well, not seen something, exactly. I found something. I’d clean forgotten about it until this moment. Had it in these shorts all the way from the dive boat.”
Jack stared at him. “You mean you went through security at the airport with some looted antiquity in your pocket, just when we were trying to remain incognito and avoid any confrontation with the Egyptian authorities?”
“Sorry, okay?” Costas took another bite from his sandwich. “Anyway, I’d also forgotten that my notebook had the full specs for the latest IMU deep-submergence Aquapod on it. That’s far worse. I must have had too much nitrogen still circulating in my head. Now it would have been a disaster if they’d found that.”
Hiebermeyer stared at him. “If you hadn’t been my son’s godfather…”
“And an all-round good guy,” Costas said, munching away and handing him the object he had fished out of his pocket. “You were going to say?”
“Mein Gott,” Hiebermeyer whispered, staring at the artifact in his hands, turning it over and letting Jack look. “It’s a fragment of gilding from a wooden panel that’s thick enough to be gold plate. It must be part of the openwork decoration on that chariot facing. Look at that poster again and you can see a shield decorated that way from the tomb of Tutankhamun that shows the pharaoh smiting a lion, and a small panel on the side containing his two first names.”
“Can you see any detail?” Jack asked,
“Just a moment,” Hiebermeyer murmured, carefully prizing away a layer of marine accretion from the gold and revealing the lower end of a cartouche with symbols inside. “We’re in luck!” he exclaimed, his voice hoarse with excitement. “Hieroglyphs.” He turned to Costas, his face flushed. “As the discoverer and guardian of this priceless artifact, the honor of translating it should be yours.”
“What do you mean? You’re the Egyptologist.”
“Have you seen those symbols before? In the crocodile temple on the Nile, for example? On the panel inside the sarcophagus of Menkaure in the shipwreck? At Tell-el Amarna?”
Costas stared. “A reed. That bird. A ball of string. That half-sun symbol.” He looked up. “Is this our man?”
“Neferkheperure-Waenre Akhenaten, to give him his full name,” Hiebermeyer said triumphantly. “This cartouche could have been put on a chariot only during his reign. That clinches it. We’ve not only got the lost chariots from the biblical Exodus, but we’ve pinned down the pharaoh.”
“Bingo,” Costas said, beaming at Jack.
“What do you mean, bingo?”
“I mean, Costas saves the day again. What would you do without me?” He reached across for the fragment of gilding, and Hiebermeyer gently but firmly pushed his arm away. Then he placed the artifact on a foam pad beside his computer. “I think you’ve taken care of that long enough. I need to get it cleaned up and photographed. When the time’s right, we’ve got what we need for the biggest archaeological press release from Egypt since the time of Howard Carter.”
“When will you do it?” Jack asked.
“It’ll have to be just after we’ve packed our bags and left. Otherwise I’ll have to explain how we raised an artifact from Egyptian waters without a permit, and there will be hell to pay. I’d rather close up shop here before the thugs arrive to do it for me, and then we can leave on a high note.”
“Unless you get some last-minute find from the mummy necropolis.”
“Unless you find a way into Ahkenaten’s underground City of Light.”
Aysha put a hand on both men’s shoulders. “Now that’s what I like to hear. The Jack and Maurice of old. If we’re finished here, Jack, I’ve got something I want to show you.”
Jack looked at her. “You’ve done great stuff already for us, Aysha. You should get back to the necropolis with Maurice. This is your country, and you need to do whatever’s necessary to leave it in your own terms, with your own projects resolved.”
She took a deep, faltering breath. “I don’t feel that Egypt is my country anymore. I feel we’re on the verge of an exodus just like the one that Moses and the Israelites set out on more than three thousand years ago. We’ll be like so many others who have fallen back before this modern-day darkness, like the Somalis, the Afghans, the Syrians, living in exile, a modern-day diaspora. We can’t delude ourselves. Egypt will fall, and we have only a few weeks left at most, probably only days. The hours ahead are going to be the most intense of my life. Part of that is doing what I have to do for you.”
Jack stared back at her. “Okay, Aysha. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
CHAPTER 8
At that moment Jack’s phone hummed, and he glanced at it. “It’s a text from Rebecca. She’s arrived at Tel Aviv airport. Israeli security interrogated her for more than three hours.”
Aysha looked at him. “You worried, Jack?”
“About my nineteen-year-old daughter flying into a war zone? Of course not.”
Costas coughed. “What were you doing at that age, Jack? I seem to remember you telling me about Royal Navy diver training, and then a stint with the Royal Marines on some special forces ops in the Arabian Gulf.”
“The Special Boat Section,” Jack said. “Anyway, I wasn’t really with them, I was just trying it out. I’d already decided to go to university instead, which is more than can be said for Rebecca.”
“Given all the experience we’ve provided her with on IMU projects during her school vacations,” Aysha said, “you can hardly blame her for wanting to bypass that. Anyway, I think she’ll do it. I spotted her looking at the prospectus for Cambridge.”
“What’s she doing in Israel, anyway?” Costas asked.
“She’s been wanting to go there ever since I told her about our hunt six years ago for the tomb beneath the Holy Sepulchre,” Jack said. “She found out about the big project at the City of David site to sort and wash ancient debris swept off the Al-Aqsa mosque platform when it was built. There are millions of sherds dating back to prehistory, and volunteers are always needed.”