“Okay,” Costas said, standing up. “If we’re done here, it’s time to dive.”
Jeremy gave Jack a hesitant look. “Jack, can I borrow your drysuit? We’re about the same height.”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, I only brought my wetsuit. You’re going to have to brave the icy North Atlantic.”
“Some of us don’t even need a wetsuit,” Rebecca said, giving Jeremy a challenging look. “Maybe you should go back to hot cocoa and a hot-water bottle at the Institute.”
“No way,” Jeremy said. “I want to see those carpenter’s marks on the timbers. I want to see every last inscription this site produces.”
“Well then,” Costas said, gesturing at the tent flap. “Are we good to go?”
“Good to go,” Rebecca replied firmly, watching Jeremy close his computer and stash his papers in his briefcase. “You still want us back here at four P.M., Dad?”
Jack nodded. “Before then, I’ve got some phone calls to make. When I was at Kew I met up with an Imperial War Museum friend who is an expert on the intelligence files. She says there’s someone still alive from Bletchley Park in 1943 who might be able to shed light on what was going on with our convoy. It’s probably a long shot, but worth a try. If I can set up a visit, I’d like all of us to go. It sounds as if she’s quite a character.”
“I’ve got to stay here, Dad. I’m taking over from the site director next week while he’s away.”
“It’ll have to be Costas and Jeremy, then. Apparently she’s quite fond of men.”
They all got up and went toward the tent entrance. Costas hesitated, and then turned back, pointing at the sherd. “Rebecca was right, Jack. It was a message in a bottle. That guy Himilco must have known that nobody in his lifetime would ever find that sherd, so he was looking to the future, to some distant time when others might pick up the trail. He was leaving it for us. For you.”
Jack was alone again, as he had been that morning after arriving at the site. He picked up the two objects, the photograph of the plaque and the inscribed potsherd. They were fragmentary messages from the past, made at the furthest extremities of the known world over two and a half thousand years ago. He thought of Hanno and Himilco: the one standing at the Cape as the waves lashed and the wind howled, and yet somehow surviving his voyage; the other pulling off an equal feat of navigation but falling foul of the weather just as landfall must have seemed certain. They were two men determined to bask in the glory of their achievements, undoubtedly, but whose main audience was perhaps each other, driving the one to survive his ordeal against the odds in the hope of meeting his brother again, and the other to devote his final moments to scratching a message that could only have been intended for people in the far-distant future — people who might tell the world what he too had done and erect a monument on the harbor front at Carthage, where he would expect there to be one honoring his brother as well, the two men equal in stature and achievement, forever celebrated side by side.
Jack held up the potsherd, imagining Himilco in those final moments. History from the age of sailing was full of dread images of mariners being driven inshore with full knowledge of what was likely to happen but refusing to believe it until the very end. He remembered the image of the ship he had conjured up when he had discovered those timbers on the wreck site. Somewhere over the promontory in front of him, in a raging sea with death all but inevitable, a man had scratched those words, words important enough to be his final message, to his brother, to the world, words that revealed an extraordinary secret that Hanno too had felt compelled to record for posterity on his own inscription set up at the very extremity of Africa more than seven thousand miles away.
Jack put down the photograph and the potsherd and pulled out his phone. Secrets were meant to be forever, but the passage of time so often weakened that resolve; it was the human propensity to break the pact, to leave something for the future, that had been the lynchpin of so many of his quests, and this one now needed a veil to be lifted, a veil that had concealed one of the most secretive enterprises in history. He remembered what Costas had said: one unsavory outfit we’ve come across before. It was not just the extraordinary enterprise of Allied intelligence and counter-intelligence that he needed to break into, but the operations of a Nazi organization, one that had recruited archaeologists, fantasists, and the most diehard fanatics into its fold, an organization that would have been farcical had its purpose not been to help justify and instigate the worst crime against humanity ever committed.
He took a deep breath, tapped a saved number, and listened while it rang. A woman with an accent straight out of the 1940s answered, and he spoke. “Hello, Miss Hunter-Jones. My name is Dr. Jack Howard, and I’m calling from the International Maritime University. I believe that our mutual friend Dr. Gordon from the Imperial War Museum may have contacted you and explained that I’m researching a merchant ship lost off West Africa during the war. I’ve listened to the recording you did for him about Bletchley Park for the museum project last month, and I was fascinated. To help me with my research, I’m very much hoping that you may be willing to talk about some aspects of your work at Bletchley during the early part of 1943. We have an archaeological mystery to solve, and I’m hoping you can be part of it.”
Part 3
12
The man ducked against the downdraft of the rotor as he made his way from the helipad to the main deck of the ship, clutching his briefcase against his chest and holding his glasses on with his other hand. A crewman who had been waiting guided him past the ROV derrick and salvage machinery on the aft deck, steering him clear of the port railing where spray from the bow wave lashed the deck as the ship plowed through increasingly heavy seas. They clattered up the metal stairs and along the gangway toward the bridge, where the crewman opened the door and waved him inside. He dropped his suitcase, took off his glasses, and wiped them on his shirt, almost losing his balance as the ship pitched forward and another huge wave broke over the bow. A man wearing a baseball cap with the company logo and the four gold bands of a captain on his shoulder boards came over from the binnacle to greet him. “Dr. Collingwood. Welcome to Deep Explorer. Mr. Landor is waiting for you in the chart room. This way, please.”
Collingwood picked up his briefcase and followed him toward the door at the back of the bridge, staggering as the ship lurched forward again. The captain opened the door and ushered him inside, closing it behind them. The noise of the spray against the bridge windscreen was blocked off, but they could feel the ship shuddering and groaning beneath their feet as it powered forward. Collingwood steadied himself and looked around.
As well as the captain, there were two other men present: Landor, whom he knew from their meetings in London before the Clan Macpherson project, and another he did not recognize, a wiry younger man chewing gum who looked Somali, dressed in a tracksuit and cradling an assault rifle. Collingwood stared at the gun, discomfited, and then back at Landor, who got up from his chair and limped over to shake hands. “Dr. Collingwood. The captain you already know, and this is the boss. He’s our contact in northern Somalia, where he runs a fishing trawler. Don’t worry about the Kalashnikov. It’s the tool of the trade in these parts, wouldn’t you say, Boss?”