Jeremy took a portable hard drive out of his pocket and pointed to one of the computer workstations. ‘I need to get the program running,’ he said, veering off and sitting down in front of a console.
Lanowski went straight to the ROV monitoring station on the other side of the room and clamped the earphones to his head with one hand, quickly tapping the keyboard with his other. He put down the earphones and walked over to Jack and Costas. ‘I’m running a system diagnostic. It should take about fifteen minutes. Any more noise from the ROV?’ he said, peering through his little round glasses at Costas.
‘Nothing since we spoke, but I did what you said and shut everything down. I want to see how you reboot the system.’
Lanowski knelt down, reached under the table and extracted a portable blackboard, then propped it up on a chair and pulled a piece of chalk out of his pocket, tossing it in the air and catching it. He pushed up his glasses and gave Jack a lopsided grin, his eyes burning with anticipation, then cleared his throat and turned to the board.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ Costas said firmly, standing up and moving the blackboard back under the table. ‘Not the blackboard. Not the chalk.’
‘Just a little diagram to show how electromagnetic interference from a magma upsurge in the earth’s crust might be causing the problem with the ROV. To help you redesign the equipment so that next time it actually works.’
‘Not now, Jacob.’ Costas stood defiantly in front of the blackboard, his arms crossed. Lanowski sighed, tossed the chalk again, caught it and put it back in his pocket, then drummed his fingers on the chair beside him until Costas reached over and put his hand over Lanowski’s, stopping it.
Jeremy pushed his chair back and loped towards them. ‘Okay, that’s loading. Might be about the same time frame, fifteen minutes or so.’ He stood in front of them, as tall as Jack, and smiled broadly. ‘Boy, am I glad to see you two. From what Costas said on the phone, it sounds like you really did it this time. Diving inside a live volcano. Hard to beat that.’
‘Watch this space,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘You know that officially it didn’t happen?’
‘Captain Macalister collared me on deck as soon as I got out of the Lynx, and gave me a rundown.’
Costas reached over and slapped Jeremy on the back. ‘How’s my favourite ancient linguistics and submersibles technology expert?’
‘Excellent,’ Jeremy replied. ‘I’m really pleased with our final days at Troy. I left Professor Dillen in charge, after Maurice and his team had departed for Egypt. It was great to get Hugh Frazer out there, wasn’t it, before he passed away? It was heartbreaking when we took him to that care home in Poland to see the old lady with the harp, still sitting with it as he remembered her as a girl in that concentration camp in 1945. But he was really thrilled to be at Troy and see the wall painting Dillen discovered of Homer with his lyre. I think it brought back the joy of his time excavating with his friend Peter Mayne before the war, the strength of that friendship, their love of Homer. He and Dillen stayed up on the walls half the night declaiming passages in ancient Greek, and drinking wine from the golden cup of Agamemnon that Jack found in the shipwreck.’
‘You let them do that?’ Costas said, eyeing Jack. ‘You’ve just gone up even higher in my estimation.’
‘Far better than consigning it to a glass case,’ Jack murmured, turning to Jeremy. ‘Anything more on that Egyptian statue Maurice found?’
‘I think you’d better let him tell you about that,’ Jeremy replied. ‘He says he’s only going to reveal it when it’s cleaned up, but it’ll change our whole view of prehistory.’
Jack grinned. ‘Maurice always says that when he finds something Egyptian outside Egypt.’
Jeremy looked at Costas with concern. ‘I meant to say. About Little Joey. I’m really sorry for your loss. All those hours we spent together in the engineering lab over the winter, working on him.’
Costas looked to one side, swallowing hard. ‘I keep saying to myself that the fun’s in making the toy, not in playing with it. But it doesn’t ease the pain. Lost forever, entombed inside a volcano. I can’t even bear to say his name.’
‘But he did good work.’
Costas nodded; his voice was hoarse with emotion. ‘He did good work.’
Jack looked at Jeremy. ‘And how’s my favourite daughter?’
‘Sends her love. To Uncle Costas too.’
Lanowski was peering at Costas, and put a hand clumsily on his shoulder. ‘About the ROV. I’ve been thinking. What you need is children.’
Costas looked down at the hand, and then at Lanowski. ‘Did I hear you right? I need what?’
‘I said you need children.’
Costas gently removed the hand. ‘Of the many strange things I’ve heard you say over the years, that’s just about the strangest.’
‘I was only sharing that passion this morning with my girlfriend.’
Costas’ jaw dropped. ‘Your what?’
Lanowski reached into his shirt pocket and tossed out a picture of a raven-haired beauty. ‘She’s Brazilian. Models for Vogue. That’s how she paid her way through college. She’s got a PhD, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Jack murmured, scratching his chin.
‘And she hit on you, just like that,’ Costas said incredulously. ‘A Brazilian Vogue model with a PhD. You’ve kept that well under wraps.’
‘Well.’ Lanowski coughed, moved his long, lank fringe from his forehead, then pushed up his glasses again. ‘We haven’t actually met.’
‘You haven’t met.’
‘Well, not as such. Not hands-on.’
‘How do you know she wants children, if you haven’t actually met?’
‘Her profile says she wants children, and my profile says I want children. Do the math.’
‘Ah,’ Jack said, putting his head down to hide his expression.
‘Ah,’ Costas echoed. ‘You’ve got an internet girlfriend. Have you, um, sent her your picture?’
‘That’s why I was getting you to take a photo of me in the submersible yesterday, at the controls.’
‘I was wondering what that was all about.’
‘I just mentioned to her that submersibles were my latest thing, with my friend Costas, and she jumped on it,’ Lanowski said. ‘That’s the great thing about internet dating. You learn right away about shared passions.’
Costas nodded sagely. ‘Could have taken you years to find that out.’
‘The picture might do the trick,’ Jack murmured.
‘Well, my friend,’ Costas said, slapping Lanowski on the back, ‘you know where to find me if you need a best man.’
Lanowski looked at him gratefully, then at Jack, not batting an eyelid. ‘I’ll remember that. Now for the ROV program.’ He turned and walked quickly back to the monitoring station, sat down and put on the headphones.