Atlantis

the morning mist. On the promontory they could make out the palace of Topkapi, once the very symbol of oriental decadence but now one of the finest archaeological museums in the world. Near the seafront were the great walls of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which kept Rome alive in the east until the city fell to the Turks in 1453.

“It’s one of my favourite cities,” Jack said. “Once you find your way around, it’s got the richest history you can imagine.”

“When this is over I’d like you to take me there,” Katya said.

Ahead lay the Black Sea, the broad sweep of coast on either side of the Bosporus seemingly extending to infinity. The GPS showed the final leg of their journey due east to a position some ten nautical miles north of the Turkish port of Trabzon. Jack opened the IMU channel on the VHF relayer and engaged the scrambler, punching in a routine position fix for the crew of Sea Venture.

Moments later a blue light flashed on the lower right-hand corner of the screen above the central console.

“Incoming email,” Costas said.

Jack double-clicked the mouse and waited while the address appeared.

“It’s from Professor Dillen. Let’s hope it’s his translation of the Phaistos disc.”

Katya leaned forward from the back seat and they waited in hushed anticipation. Soon all the words were visible on the screen.

My dear Jack,

Since our teleconference last night I have worked flat out to complete the translation. Much has depended on the co-operation of colleagues around the world. The Linear A archive found at Knossos last year was parcelled out to many different scholars for study, and you know how protective academics can be of their unpublished data — remember the trouble we had accessing the Dead Sea Scrolls when we began our search for Sodom and Gomorrah. Fortunately most scholars of Minoan epigraphy are former students of mine.

Only the obverse of the second disc was meaningful. The attempt to conceal the true text was even more extensive than we thought.

Our mysterious symbol occurs twice and I have simply translated it as Atlantis.

Here it is:

Beneath the sign of the bull lies the outstretched eagle god. (At) his tail (here is) golden-walled Atlantis, the great golden door of the (citadel?). (His) wingtips touch the rising and the setting of the sun. (At the) rising of the sun (here is) the mountain of fire and metal. (Here is) the hall of the high priests [Throne room? Audience chamber?]. Above (here is) Atlantis. (Here is) the mother goddess. (Here is) the place (of) the gods (and) the storeroom (of) knowledge.

I do not yet know what to make of this. Is it a riddle? Maurice and I are eager to know what you think.

Yours ever,

James Dillen

They read the translation several times in silence. Costas was the first to speak, his mind as ever seeking practicality where others saw only mystery.

“This is no riddle. It’s a treasure map.”

CHAPTER 8

Jack! Welcome aboard!”

The voice was raised above the din of the Rolls-Royce Gem turboshafts as they powered down. Jack had just stepped out onto the inflatable skid landing gear, a modification of the usual fixed-wheel naval configuration that allowed the IMU helicopters to land on water. He hurried over to shake Malcolm Macleod’s outstretched hand, his tall frame stooped low as the rotor shuddered to a halt. Costas and Katya followed close behind. As they made their way below, several of the crew scurried round the Lynx, securing it to the deck, and began offloading gearbags from the cargo bay.

Sea Venture differed from Seaquest only in the range of equipment suited to her role as IMU’s chief deep-sea research vessel. She had recently conducted the first manned submersible survey of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. Her present role in the Black Sea had begun as a routine sedimentological analysis but had now taken on a startling new dimension.

“Follow me to the bridge console.”

Malcolm Macleod led them below the same dome-shaped screen they had viewed on Seaquest. Macleod was Jack’s counterpart in the department of oceanography, a man whose expertise Jack had come greatly to respect through their many collaborative projects around the world.

The burly, red-haired Scotsman sat down in the operator’s chair beside the console.

“Welcome to Sea Venture. I trust your inspection can wait until I show you what we’ve found.”

Jack nodded. “Go on.”

“Do you know about the Messinian salinity crisis?”

Jack and Costas nodded but Katya looked perplexed.

“OK. For the benefit of our new colleague.” Macleod smiled at Katya. “Named after deposits found near the Strait of Messina in Sicily. In the early 1970s the deep-sea drilling ship Glomar Challenger took core samples across the Mediterranean. Beneath the sea floor they found a huge layer of compacted evaporates, in places three kilometres thick. It formed during the late Miocene, the most recent geological era before our own, around five and a half million years ago.”

“Evaporates?” Katya asked.

“Mainly halite, common rock salt, the stuff left when seawater evaporates. Above and below it are marls, normal marine sediments of clay and calcium carbonate. The salt layer formed at the same time across the Mediterranean.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means the Mediterranean evaporated.”

Katya looked incredulous. “The Mediterranean evaporated? All of it?”

Macleod nodded. “The trigger was a huge drop in atmospheric temperature, a far colder spell than our recent Ice Age. The polar ice trapped a vast amount of the world’s oceans, causing the sea level to fall as much as five hundred metres. The Mediterranean was sealed off and began to dry up, eventually leaving only brackish mire in the deepest basins.”

“Like the Dead Sea,” Katya suggested.

“Even more saline, in fact barely liquid at all. Too salty for most life, hence the paucity of fossils. Large areas became desert.”

“When did it fill up again?”

“About two hundred thousand years later. It would have been a dramatic process, a result of massive melt at the Poles. The first trickles from the Atlantic would have become a torrent, the biggest waterfall ever, a hundred times bigger than Niagara, carving the Strait of Gibraltar down to its present depth.”

“How is this relevant to the Black Sea?” Katya asked.

“The Messinian salinity crisis is an established scientific fact.” Macleod looked across keenly at Jack. “It will help you believe the unbelievable, which is what I’m going to tell you next.”

They gathered behind Sea Venture’s remote operated vehicle station on the far side of the console. Macleod invited Katya to sit behind the screen and showed her how to use the joystick.

“Think of it as a flight simulator. Use the joystick to fly it any way you want, up or down, sideways or backwards. Speed control is the dial on the left-hand side.”

Macleod put his hand on Katya’s and executed a full clockwise circle, pulling it round at maximum depression. The wide-format video screen remained pitch-black but the direction indicator spun through 360 degrees. The depth gauge read 135 metres, and a set of GPS coordinates showed the ROV’s position with an accuracy deviation of less