“You’re going back there, aren’t you?” Rebecca said quietly. “Into the cauldron.”
Jack stared into the fire, watching Costas turn the fish. “I don’t know. But I can’t just ignore it. None of us can.” He exhaled forcefully, then looked at her. “What about you?”
“Me?” Rebecca took off the headscarf she had been wearing, and gave him a brazen look. Instead of the long, dark hair he was so used to, he saw that she had shorn it almost completely, to above the ears. He stared, flabbergasted, and then slowly smiled. Suddenly she was no longer a girl but a young woman, tough and ready for anything.
“I had no idea,” he said. “That looks great.”
“I didn’t do it for the look of it. I did it because it’s more practical in this heat, for what Jeremy and I have planned.”
“Which is?”
“We talked it through with Captain Macleod on Seaquest. He has to stay on station for another five days at least, while they finish clearing the pen. The warships will be here as well for our protection, and the Yemeni official in charge of Socotra has given us the go-ahead.”
“You planning to invade the island? Costas said.
“Intensive archaeological survey off the south coast. We can put four Zodiacs in the water from Seaquest. The diving units on both warships are excited about it too, an excellent training opportunity for them. With the possibility of war looming, when are we ever going to get another opportunity like this? These islands were bang in the middle of one of the most incredible trade routes of the ancient world, between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea on the one hand and the Indian Ocean and the world beyond on the other. We could get anything: medieval Arab traders, Chinese junks, Greek and Roman merchant ships, you name it. My hope is for an ancient Egyptian ship coming back from India laden with treasures of the East. Maurice thought that would be really cool.”
“You’ve discussed this with him?” Jack said.
“It was his idea, actually. Apparently he’s always wanted to explore Socotra. Something about Egyptian Middle Kingdom artifacts dug up here years ago by a British adventurer, in the mid-nineteenth century, I think.”
“Ah, yes,” Jack said. “That would be Captain Peter Hall of the Bengal Sappers, one of the men on the 1868 Abyssinia expedition. I found out about his Socotra excursion in one of my great-great-grandfather’s letters, and made the mistake of telling Maurice about it.”
“Actually, he’s itching to get out here,” Rebecca said.
“Maurice is coming?”
Rebecca looked at her watch. “Should be in the air in a couple of hours. Almost all finished at Carthage. He just needs to clean up in his trench and get it backfilled.”
“Good of you to keep me in the loop.”
“You and Costas are welcome to join us. That is,” she said, eyeing Jack mischievously, “if you’re not too old for that kind of thing.”
“That reminds me,” Jack said, suddenly remembering something. “Louise, the Bletchley girl back in England. I owe her an update.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jeremy said. “I’ve kept her posted since the get-go. She seems to have taken a particular shine to me.”
“Still, I’ll Skype her tomorrow,” Jack said. “She opened up to us about the war, about her work at Bletchley, and I owe it to her. Finding the gold helps to bring the story of Clan Macpherson and that whole secret operation to a kind of resolution, something she’s been wanting for more than seventy years.”
“She’ll love to hear what you’re planning to do with it,” Jeremy said. “One up on the Nazis. A lot of people like her who put their all into it back then are still fighting the war, you know.”
Twenty minutes later, Lieutenant Ahmed came along the rocks from the direction of the inlet, wearing Somali navy fatigues and carrying a plastic bag. “A few more for the barbecue,” he said, handing the bag to Costas. “My men did some spearfishing after their final inspection of the inlet.”
“How goes it?” Jack said.
Ahmed sat down on a rock and accepted a bottle of water from Costas. “All the radioactive material is now in the frigate, destined for disposal. We’ve got everything set up for the team from the museum who are arriving tomorrow to begin clearing that treasure chamber. Are your people still good with that?”
Jack nodded. “The IMU conservators are due this evening at Mogadishu and will be brought out by the Lynx from Seaquest in the morning. With any luck we’ll have all the artifacts flown out and in a secure laboratory by the end of the week.”
“This is going to cause a huge stir,” Ahmed said. “It looks as if those Ahnenerbe men were quietly stealing everything they could find of value in the places they explored in Africa. One of my friends who works for the museum has had a look at the records, and there were items that disappeared mysteriously while this place was under Mussolini’s control in the late 1930s, most of it gold from the ancient Axum civilization. Restoring those artifacts to their rightful place will give a big boost to the sense of identity and pride among the people here, something much needed after the past couple of decades.”
“IMU will do everything it can to help,” Jack said.
“There is one other thing.” Ahmed took a swaddled package from his pocket and leaned forward, eyeing Jack intently. “Do you remember I told you my plan to enlist local fishermen in our search for wrecks, a way of getting a program of maritime archaeological research on a proper footing in Somalia?”
“Putting out an APB,” Costas said, taking Ahmed’s fish and laying them beside the grill. “It’s always the best way. Use local knowledge first.”
Ahmed nodded. “Well, we’ve already come up with something very interesting. One of the fishermen, a grandson of the man who led us to this island, regularly goes along the northern Somali coast into the Red Sea as far as Eritrea, to Annesley Bay. One of his favorite spots is not far from the town of Zula, near ancient Adulis, the port of Axum.”
“Where the British landed during the 1868 Abyssinia expedition,” Jack said.
“Right. It’s a big area of salt flats, and there’s still some evidence of the British engineering works: piles for jetties and the remains of wooden causeways. At one of those places our man came ashore and saw the remains of an old hull poking out of the mud, with strange-looking markings on the bow. He took a picture of it on his phone and forwarded it to me.”
Ahmed tapped his phone and passed it over to Jack, who enlarged the picture and stared at it, swiping from side to side to get a full view. “That’s old all right,” he murmured. “Very old. Ancient mortice-and-tenon construction.”
“Could be Egyptian,” Rebecca said, peering over his shoulder. “The ancient Egyptians sailed down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt, and they were the originators of that construction technique. At least that’s what Maurice says.”
“Not with this on the bow.” Jack passed her the phone, and Jeremy and Costas leaned over to see. “Good Lord,” Jeremy said. “It’s a painted eye. An apotropaic eye.”