out of six months in a submarine.’
Hiebermeyer halted before reaching them, gesturing at the phone and turning his back on them, while Maria walked up and embraced them both. Jack closed his eyes as she pressed against him. He had missed seeing her, hearing her sonorous voice, her accent. It had been an intensive time together during the search for the menorah, and Jack had gone through the usual moments of emptiness when the expedition was over. Above all he wanted to see that she was well, that he had made the right move in suggesting that she join Hiebermeyer in Naples. Maria shot him a look from her dark eyes. ‘It’s been six weeks since I was on Seaquest, but it seems a lot longer.’
‘It’s the company you miss,’ Costas said, looking at her with concern.
‘I’ve really tried to put it all behind me,’ she said quietly, turning away from them and gazing out over the site. ‘I had a text message from Jeremy this morning, and that was the first time I’d really flashed back to our time in the Yucatan, those terrible scenes. It’s been good for me to have this new project to focus on, better than going back straight away to my medieval manuscript research at the Institute. And Jeremy’s taken care of everything in Oxford. It’s just the break he wanted, a chance to serve as acting director while still just a graduate student, and he’s brilliant at it.’
‘I really want him at IMU full time, you know,’ Jack said. ‘It’s only been a couple of months since he joined us on the trail of the Vikings, but already he seems like a permanent fixture. I always know when someone’s right, and the moment he walked through the IMU engineering lab and began talking to Costas about submersibles I knew that was it.’
‘How is my favourite new dive buddy?’ Costas said. ‘Has he told you I passed him with flying colours on his checkout dive? A real natural.’
‘Buried up to his neck in the lost library at Hereford Cathedral. He’s got some fantastic new stuff, Jack. Another early map, some reference to Phoenicians, I think. He’s itching to show you. And he’s had an idea for some new diving contraption, Costas. I don’t understand a word of it.’
‘Really?’ Costas said in hushed excitement. ‘If it’s Jeremy, it’s got to be good.’ He reached into his hip pouch for his cell phone, but Jack stopped his arm.
‘Not now. Bad timing.’
Costas relented, ruefully. ‘Just keeping on the ball.’
‘No multi-tasking, remember? Let’s stick with where we are for now.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘I’m grateful you suggested me, Jack,’ Maria continued. ‘It’s a real privilege to be here. And an eye-opener in more ways than one. But it should have been you here from the outset.’
‘Then you’d never have had the pleasure of spending time with our old friend Maurice,’ Jack said with a smile. ‘I know you haven’t seen him much since Cambridge.’
Maria sidled up to them. ‘He’s a dear man,’ she whispered, looking questioningly at Jack. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘He is a dear man,’ Jack replied quietly, giving her a knowing look. ‘Remember, he and I were at school together, even before we all met up at Cambridge. I had my first real adventures with him, when we were kids. You know, he’s treated like a god in Egypt, with some justification. Easily the finest field archaeologist I know. And despite appearances, he’s not one of those Egyptologists who thinks all other archaeology is beneath them. He’s tremendously knowledgeable, inquisitive across all periods and places. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a wetsuit, but he’s a perfect adjunct professor for
IMU.’
‘So what’s with the shorts?’ she whispered.
‘Ah.’ Jack looked at Hiebermeyer’s backside, and struggled with his expression. ‘Genuine German Afrika Corps, circa 1940. Seemed appropriate, when he first went to Egypt and needed kit. I gave them to him as a graduation present. He gave me my British Eighth Army khaki bag. I always have it with me too.’ Jack patted the battered bag hanging against his side. ‘My fault. Sorry.’
‘Some suspenders would help,’ Maria whispered. ‘You know, lederhosen.’
‘What Jack’s saying,’ Costas said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘is that Maurice grows on you.’
‘He’s developed quite a lot since you knew him at Cambridge,’ Jack said.
‘Just as long as he doesn’t expect me to treat him like a god,’ Maria whispered, then she stood back and spoke normally. ‘Anyway, now I see what it’s like to be in Jack Howard’s shoes. I just hope I haven’t taken the steam out of your sails.’
‘We haven’t exactly been sunbathing on the foredeck,’ Costas said. ‘Wait until you hear what we found yesterday.’
Hiebermeyer looked increasingly exasperated, raising his eyes and bunching his fist in the air, then suddenly he listened intently on the phone and flashed a look of relief. He nodded towards Maria, then snapped the phone shut and walked over, shaking hands quickly with Jack and Costas. ‘I thought I’d be wasting your time.’ His voice was slightly hoarse with stress, his German accent more pronounced. ‘I couldn’t believe it. All I did was step out yesterday to call you. They weren’t going to let us back in.’
‘Can you finger anyone?’ Jack said. ‘I might be able to exert some pressure in the archaeological superintendency.’
‘It’s not the archaeologists who are the problem, it’s the site guards and whoever is topping up their wages. Whoever it is also pulls the strings at the top of the archaeological superintendency. They’re always apprehensive, clamped down, even some old colleagues I know personally, and sometimes there’s real fear in their eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it. I feel as if we’re walking on very thin ground.’
‘Everyone ready?’ Maria said, slinging her pack and clipping on her waist strap, then turning back up the ramp. ‘Maurice and I have learned the hard way that when you get the go-ahead in this place, you go-ahead pronto. It’s about two hundred yards due west from here, but we have to go out of the site and down some back alleys. We’ll be met at the entrance.’ She eyed Costas’ camera bag. ‘And watch your valuables, right? Remember where we are.’
7
T wenty minutes later, Jack and the others stood outside a low door at the end of a dark alley in the modern town of Ercolano. They were above the buried remains of the Villa of the Papyri, one of the greatest archaeological sites ever discovered, much of it still entombed under the streets around them. Jack’s excitement had increased as they came closer, though the narrowing walls of the alleyway seemed to accentuate the unease he had felt since talking to Hiebermeyer and Maria. It had become hot in the midday sun, and they gathered in the shade against the wall. The scene was astonishingly similar to an excavated street in ancient Herculaeum a few hundred metres away, and for a split second Jack felt completely displaced, uncertain whether he was in the past or the present. He was brought back to reality by the tinny echo of a Vespa scooter as it hurtled down a nearby alley, and by the distinctly modern smells that rose up around them. The sides of the alley were strewn with rubbish, and an alcove beside the doorway was scattered with used hypodermic syringes.
‘Watch your feet,’ Maria said. ‘It’s a favourite local shooting-up place.’
‘Opium,’ Costas said. ‘ Plus ca change.’
Maria looked at him questioningly. ‘Later,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve got some fabulous news. An incredible discovery. But let’s do what we’ve got to do here first.’
The door opened, and an armed security guard appeared. Hiebermeyer spoke a few halting words of Italian and the man looked dubiously at Jack and Costas. He shook his head, grudgingly took the permit papers Hiebermeyer offered him and pushed him back out into the alley, shutting the door again in his face.
‘This happens every time,’ Hiebermeyer said, his teeth clenched. ‘There’s always a new guard, and they always need to see the paperwork. Then they insist on keeping the papers, and I have to get new ones issued by the superintendency in Naples. It took two weeks before they’d let Maria in.’
