that embodied the virtues they so admired, that emphasized family continuity. Those portraits were kept hidden away, often in a private room, and were traditionally in wax and wood so haven’t survived. The Romans get a lot of bad press because art historians of the Victorian period, who glorified classical Greece, mostly only saw collections of ancient sculptures ripped out of context and lined up in galleries and museums. It seemed to show indiscriminate judgement, bad taste, vulgarity. Come here, and you can see that nothing was further from the truth. If anything, it was the Greeks at this period who lacked the edge.’
‘Which brings us very neatly to the reason you’re here,’ Hiebermeyer beamed, pressing his hard hat back on.
They watched as the guard finally roused himself, ambling over to the wooden doorway and making a big display of unlocking it. ‘The greatest lost library of antiquity,’ Hiebermeyer said quietly. ‘And one of the greatest black holes in archaeology. Until now.’
8
J ack crouched behind Hiebermeyer at the entrance to the tunnel into the ancient villa. It was already cooler, a relief from the baking sun outside. Immediately in front of them was a metre-wide extractor fan with an electric motor, and behind it a flexible corrugated tube that ran out of the temporary wooden structure in front of the entrance to a coil and an outlet high on a wall above the site.
‘After coming out of the tunnel yesterday, I played up the danger element just to ensure they wouldn’t try going in,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘But there really is a toxic gas buildup in there, methane, carbon monoxide. Mostly it’s from organic material that’s beginning to rot, with the introduction of more oxygen after the tunnel was opened up.’
‘Not bodies?’ Costas said hopefully.
‘In this place, they’re either skeletonized, or incinerated,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘Usually,’ he added.
‘How long do we have to wait?’ Maria asked.
‘We’ll give it a few more minutes, then take the fan in and reactivate it when we reach the grille.’
Jack paused. ‘I think this is the first time we’ve dug together since Carthage.’ He turned to Costas. ‘The three of us were students together, and we cut our teeth with a UNESCO team at Carthage. I dived in the ancient harbour, Maurice disappeared into a hole in the ground and Maria recorded inscriptions.’
‘I feel the odd one out here,’ Costas said.
‘I think you can join our club.’ Jack nudged Hiebermeyer, who tried to look at Costas stonily through his pebble glasses, the hint of a smile on his face, his cheeks streaked with grime. Jack suppressed a grin. ‘Maurice found the remains of a great bronze furnace, just as described by the Romans, the first definitive evidence for Carthaginian child sacrifice. It was a fantastic find.’
‘Fantastic?’ Costas said weakly. ‘Child sacrifice. I thought we’d left all that behind on our last little adventure, with the Toltecs in Mexico.’
‘The past is a pretty unsavoury place sometimes,’ Jack said wryly. ‘You just have to take what you get, go with the flow.’
‘Go with the flow,’ Costas repeated. ‘Yeah, right.’ He looked into the dark recess behind the gated entrance in front of them, then back at Jack. ‘So what delights does this place hold for us?’
‘Ever been to the Getty Villa?’
‘The Getty Villa. Malibu, California. Yeah,’ Costas said vaguely. ‘I remember a school trip. Classical design, lots of statues. Big central pool, great for skimming coins.’
Hiebermeyer raised his eyes, and Jack grinned again. ‘Well, this place was the basis for the design of the Getty Villa.’
Costas looked doubtfully at the black hole in front of them. ‘No kidding.’
‘Okay, we’re moving,’ Hiebermeyer said, eyeing the hole that he and Mana had managed to enlarge slightly the evening before. He lifted up the extractor fan and heaved it forward, pulling the exhaust hose behind him. Jack and the others followed, and within a few metres they were completely enclosed by the tunnel. It was about as wide as a person could stretch, and just high enough for Jack to stand upright. The surface was like an old mine shaft, covered with the marks of chisels and pickaxes, and it smelled musty. Jack felt as if he were walking back into the eighteenth century, seeing the site through the eyes of the first tunnellers who had hacked their way into the rock-hard mud, through the eyes of the engineer Karl Weber as he tried to make sense of the labyrinth his men had dug in their search for loot. He followed Hiebermeyer round a corner, and it became darker. ‘No electric lighting yet,’ Hiebermeyer said ruefully. ‘But keep your headlamps off for a moment. Okay, you can switch them on now.’
Jack activated his beam and shone it forward. He stifled a gasp, and tripped forward slightly. The head of Anubis was staring out from the side of the tunnel just ahead of him, the black ears upright and the snout defiant just as Hiebermeyer and Maria had first seen it the day before.
‘Behold your second treat.’ Hiebermeyer twisted back round after having placed the extractor fan just in front of him. ‘This is the key find I meant, the clincher for the superintendency. It’s exactly what they want. A spectacular find. You can see they’ve already widened the recess around the statue, ready for taking it out later today. It’ll be all over the front pages tomorrow morning. Cue closing up this tunnel. Permanently.’
‘Amazing.’ Jack was still awestruck by the image, and put his hand carefully on the snout. ‘They found one of these in King Tut’s tomb,’ he said to Costas.
‘At least that one was where it belonged, in Egypt,’ Hiebermeyer grumbled.
‘Greeter of the souls of the underworld, and protector of them on their journey,’ Maria said from behind. ‘Or so Maurice tells me.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Costas muttered. ‘I thought you said there were no bodies in here.’
Jack tilted his helmet up, and looked past the snout of Anubis to the darkness beyond. He felt as if the eighteenth century had now given way to a much older past, erupting through the walls like the head of Anubis. He also sensed the danger. A few metres beyond the statue was a temporary metal grille across the tunnel bearing the word PERICOLO and a large death’s-head symbol. Hiebermeyer unlocked the hatch through the grille and pushed the extractor fan inside. He clicked it on, and a red light began flashing, accompanied by a low electronic whirr.
‘That’s a good start,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not, the extension lead actually works. We’ve got electricity.’ He checked a digital readout on the back of the fan. ‘In about ten minutes this should have cleared the tunnel ahead as far as we got yesterday, to the point where it ends at another wall. When the light goes green we’ll take the fan forward until the sensor flashes red again.’ He glanced at Jack, and spoke quietly. ‘I could have had this running before you arrived, but I didn’t want to tempt anyone to sneak in. Your superintendency friend seems perfectly happy with Anubis. In fact she’s obsessed with it.’
‘That would figure,’ Jack said quietly. ‘Elizabeth was passionate about Egypt when I knew her. She was paid to study Roman archaeology, but she really wanted to follow in your footsteps, Maurice. I told her all about you. She swore she’d go there once she’d fulfilled her government contract. But something drew her back here. Family connections. Obligations. She only ever hinted at it, hated the whole thing. That’s what really baffles me. Why she’s still here.’
‘You seem to have known her well,’ Maria murmured.
‘Friends for a while. But not any more, it seems.’
Hiebermeyer pushed up his glasses. ‘The bottom line is, as far as they’re concerned, the investigation has got its result, and what we’re doing now is purely a sideshow, a recce, before the whole thing is deemed unsafe and sealed up again. At the moment, I’m happy to go along with that.’
‘How safe is it, exactly?’ Costas said.
‘Well, the tunnel isn’t shored up, and there’s the risk of another earth tremor. The place is full of toxic gas. Vesuvius might erupt again. We could be crushed, asphyxiated, incinerated.’
‘Archaeology,’ Costas sighed. ‘To think, I turned down a position at CalTech for all this. Beach house, surfing, martinis on tap.’
‘We could also be gunned down by the Mafia,’ Maria added.
