Atlantis

Atlantis in the final sentence of the account of Keftiu.”

Jack immediately caught his mentor’s drift. “You mean that in Solon’s confusion the word Atlantis may have replaced Keftiu whenever he recalled the story of the end of the Minoans.”

“You have it.” Dillen nodded. “There’s nothing in Plato’s account to suggest Solon remembered anything of the second section of text. No cataract, no vast plain. And no pyramids, which would be difficult to forget. Someone must have hit him pretty hard on the head that final night.”

The sun was now setting, its rays casting a rosy hue on the waters of the Great Harbour below. They had returned to the conference room for a final session following a late afternoon break. None of them showed any sign of exhaustion despite the hours they had spent huddled round the table with the precious document. They were all bound up in the elation of discovery, of uncovering a key to the past which might change the entire picture of the rise of civilization.

Dillen settled back and spoke. “And finally, Jack, to that symbol you said you had seen before.”

At that moment there was a loud knocking on the door and a young man looked in.

“Excuse me, Professor, but this is very urgent. Dr. Howard.”

Jack strode over and took the cellphone that was offered to him, positioning himself on the seafront balustrade out of earshot of the others.

“Howard here.”

“Jack, this is Costas. We are on Red Alert. You must return to Seaquest at once.”

CHAPTER 5

Jack eased back on the control column and the Lynx helicopter stood still in the air, the normal whirr of its rotor reduced to a shuddering clatter. He adjusted the audio on his headset as he gently worked the left pedal, at the same time giving the tail rotor a quick burst to bring the machine broadside on to the spectacular sight below. He turned to Costas and they both peered out of the open port-side door.

A thousand metres below lay the smouldering heart of Thera. They were hovering over the flooded remnant of a gigantic caldera, a vast scooped-out shell with only its jagged edges protruding above the sea. All round them cliffs reared up precipitously. Directly below was Nea Kameni, “New Burnt,” its surface scorched and lifeless. In the centre were telltale wisps of smoke where the volcano was once again thrusting through the earth’s crust. It was a warning beacon, Jack thought, a harbinger of doom, like a bull snorting and pawing before the onslaught.

A disembodied voice came over the intercom, one that Jack was finding increasingly irresistible.

“It’s awesome,” Katya said. “The African and Eurasian plates grind together to produce more earthquakes and volcanoes than virtually anywhere else on earth. No wonder the Greek gods were such a violent lot. Founding a civilization here is like building a city on the San Andreas fault.”

“Sure,” Costas replied. “But without plate tectonics limestone would never have turned into marble. No temples, no sculpture.” He gestured at the cliff walls. “And what about volcanic ash? Incredible stuff. The Romans discovered if you add it to lime mortar you get concrete that sets underwater.”

“That’s true,” Katya conceded. “Volcanic fallout also makes incredibly fertile soil. The plains around Etna and Vesuvius were breadbaskets of the ancient world.”

Jack smiled to himself. Costas was a ladies’ man, and he and Katya had discovered a shared passion for geology which had dominated the conversation all the way from Alexandria.

The Lynx had been on a return flight to the Maritime Museum in Carthage when Costas had received an emergency signal from Tom York, Seaquest’s captain. Costas had immediately put in the call to Jack and diverted south to Egypt. That afternoon beside the harbour he had watched as Jack said quick farewells to Dillen and Hiebermeyer, any disappointment they may have felt masked by the anxiety clearly etched on their faces.

Jack had learned that Katya was an experienced diver and when she approached him on the balcony to ask if she could join him, he had seen no reason to refuse.

“It’s my chance to join the forefront of the fray,” she had said, “to experience first-hand what modern archaeologists are up against.”

Meanwhile her assistant Olga would return on urgent business to Moscow.

“There she is.”

The forward tilt of the helicopter directed their gaze towards the eastern horizon. They were now out of sight of Thera and could just make out Seaquest in the distant haze. As they flew closer the deep blue of the Mediterranean darkened as if under a passing cloud. Costas explained that it was a submerged volcano, its peak rising from the abyss like a gigantic atoll.

Jack flicked on the intercom. “This is not where I expected to find a site,” he said. “The top of the volcano is thirty metres underwater, too deep to have been a reef. Something else wrecked our Minoan ship.”

They were now directly over Seaquest and began to descend towards the helipad on the stern. The landing markings became clearer as the altimeter dropped below five hundred feet.

“But we’re incredibly lucky the ship sank where it did, at a depth where our divers can work. This is the only place for miles around where the seabed is less than five hundred metres deep.”

Katya’s voice came over the intercom. “You say the ship went down in the sixteenth century BC. This may be a long shot, but could it have been the eruption of Thera?”

“Absolutely,” Jack enthused. “And oddly enough, that would also account for the excellent state of preservation. The ship was swamped in a sudden deluge and sank upright about seventy metres below the summit.”

Costas spoke again. “It was probably an earthquake a few days before the volcano blew. We know the Therans had advance warning and were able to leave with most of their possessions.”

Jack nodded. “The explosive discharge would have destroyed everything for miles around,” Costas continued. “But that was only the beginning. The rush of water into the caldera would have rebounded horrifically, causing hundred-metre tsunamis. We’re pretty close to Thera and the waves would have lost little of their power. They would have smashed any ship in their path to smithereens, leaving only mangled fragments. Our wreck survived on the sea floor only because it got wedged in a cleft below the depth of the wave oscillations.”

The helicopter hovered a hundred feet above Seaquest while Jack awaited permission to land. He took the opportunity to cast a critical eye over his pride and joy. Beyond the helipad and the Zodiac inflatables was the three-storey accommodation block, able to house twenty scientists and the crew of thirty. At 75 metres Seaquest was almost twice the length of Cousteau’s Calypso. She had been custom-built in the shipyards in Finland that produced the famous Akademic-class vessels for the Russian Institute of Oceanology. Like them she had bow and lateral thrusters for dynamic positioning ability, allowing her to hold over a precise fix on the seabed, and an automated trimming system to maintain stability by regulating the flow of water in her ballast tanks. She was now more than ten years old and due for a refit but still vital to IMU’s research and exploration around the world.

As he nudged the stick forward, their attention was caught by a dark silhouette on the horizon ahead. It was another vessel, low-set and sinister, lying motionless several kilometres off Seaquest’s bows.

They all knew what they were looking at. It was the reason why Jack had been recalled so urgently from Alexandria. Katya and Costas went silent, their minds reverting from the excitement of archaeology to the sobering problems of the present. Jack set his jaw in grim determination as he made a perfect landing inside the orange circle on the helipad. His calm assurance belied the rage that welled up inside him. He had known their excavation would be discovered, but he had not expected it quite so soon. Their opponents had access to ex-Soviet satellite surveillance that could make out a man’s face from an orbital height of four hundred kilometres. Seaquest was totally exposed in the cloudless summer skies of the Mediterranean, and the fact that she had stayed put for several days had obviously excited interest.

“Check this out. It came up yesterday before I flew out.”