them were written as historical documents as we would understand the term, let alone geographical ones. To those who put the texts together, it was probably a matter of little consequence which island Paul was actually wrecked on.’
‘I had all this drummed into me by my Greek Orthodox family. Acts was written by a survivor of the wrecking, by Paul’s companion Luke.’
Jack nodded. ‘That was what everyone was taught. Acts tells us that Paul was accompanied by two men, Luke from Asia Minor and a Macedonian from Thessaloniki.’
‘Aristarchos.’
‘I’m preaching to the converted,’ Jack grinned. ‘You should be telling this.’
‘I can only give you the bare bones,’ Costas said. ‘After Paul was arrested in Judaea, they joined him on the voyage north from Caesarea to Myra in southern Turkey, where they transferred to an Alexandrian ship destined for Rome.’
‘That’s what we’re told,’ Jack said. ‘But we need to stand back from the detail. It goes back to what I said about reading the Gospels as history. That wasn’t their primary purpose. Some scholars now think Acts was composed several decades later by someone else, maybe based on an eyewitness account. And then there are questions over textual transmission. The Gospels went through the same process as all the other classical texts, all those except the fragments we’ve actually found in ancient sites. Sieved, purified, translated, embellished with interpretations and annotations which became part of the text, censored by religious authorities, altered by the whim or negligence of the individual copyist.’
‘You’re saying take the details with a pinch of salt.’
‘Be circumspect.’
‘A favourite word of yours these days.’
Jack grinned. ‘The earliest surviving fragment we have of Acts dates to about AD 200, almost 150 years after Paul, and it only contains the first part of the story. The earliest version with the wreck dates several hundred years later. It gets translated from Greek to Latin to medieval languages, to seventeenth-century English, goes through numerous scribes and copyists. It makes me very cautious, circumspect, about a detail like the word Melita, whether it even means Malta. Some ancient versions even render it as Mytilene, an island in the Aegean more familiar to Greek copyists of the Gospels.’
‘Treasure-hunting 101,’ Costas said solemnly. ‘Always authenticate your map.’
‘St Paul’s shipwreck is just about the first time in history that we can hunt a known wreck, but like so many wreck accounts it’s fraught with pitfalls. You have to stand back from it, open your mind to all the possibilities and let them fall into place, not force them towards a foregone conclusion. I think that’s what I’ve been doing over the years since I last dived here, since the idea first began to dawn on me.’
‘That’s why you’re an archaeologist, and I’m an engineer,’ Costas said. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’
‘And that’s why I leave robotics and submersibles to you.’ Jack grinned at Costas, then looked towards the eastern horizon. ‘There’s nothing else in Acts to corroborate Malta as the location, and all that happens on the island is that Paul heals some local man. Sicily makes a lot more sense. It’s in the right neck of the woods, a far more likely landfall for a grain ship blown off course in the Ionian Sea by a north-east wind. Acts even mentions Syracuse, just round the headland from us, where Paul and his companions spent several days on their eventual trip to Rome after the wrecking. According to Acts, they hitched a lift on another grain ship which had overwintered in Malta, but I believe that was far more likely to be a ship in the Great Harbour at Syracuse itself.’
‘So two thousand years of Biblical scholarship is wrong, and Jack Howard has a hunch and is right?’
‘Careful reasoning based on an accumulation of evidence, pointing …’
‘Pointing unswervingly to one conclusion,’ Costas finished. ‘Yeah, yeah. A hunch.’ He grinned at Jack, then spoke with mock resignation. ‘Okay. You’ve sold me. And now that I look at it, that cleft in the cliff face beside us, your marker for the wreck site. Have you noticed how it also looks like the Greek letter chi? Like a cross?’ Costas grinned. ‘While we’re on the subject of leaps of faith, don’t tell me you’re above a little sign from on high.’
Jack squinted at the rock, then grinned. ‘Okay. I’ll go with that. Twenty years on, you see things with different eyes.’ He leaned back on his elbows, and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to put all these pieces together.’
‘You’ve had a few other projects on your mind.’
‘Yes, but this could be the biggest of them all.’ Jack sat up and leaned towards Costas, his face ablaze with excitement. ‘Anything, anything at all, that identifies this shipwreck with St Paul would make it a treasure trove like we’ve never seen before. Nobody has ever found anything so intimately linked with the lives of the evangelists, with the reality behind the Gospels. We’re looking at a time when a few people truly believed in a kingdom of heaven on earth, a dream that pagan religion didn’t offer the common people. A time before churches, before priests, before guilt and confession and inquisitions and holy wars. Strip away all that and you go back to the essence of what Jesus had to say, what drew so many to him.’
‘I never knew you were so passionate about it.’
‘It’s the idea that individuals can take charge of their own destiny and seek beauty and joy on earth. That seems to be about as uplifting as you can get. If we can find something that will draw people back to that, take them back to the essence of the idea and make them reflect on it, then we’ll have done humanity a service.’
‘Holy cow, Jack. I thought we were just treasure-hunters.’
Jack grinned. ‘Archaeology isn’t just about filling up museums.’
‘I know. It’s about the hard facts.’
‘A shipwreck could be a time capsule of the period like Pompeii and Herculaneum, only with a direct connection to the most potent figures in western history. It would capture the imagination of the world.’
Costas shifted and stretched. ‘We still have to find it yet. And speaking of excitement, we’ve got company.’ He jerked his head towards the cascade of bubbles now erupting on the surface, and they watched as the two divers came into view a few metres below them. They surfaced simultaneously and both gave the okay signal. Jack noted down the time in the log and then glanced at Costas. ‘This place was a fulcrum of history,’ he continued. ‘Whatever we find, we’d be adding to a story that’s already pretty fantastic. In 415 BC the Athenians landed at this spot to attack Syracuse, a key event in the war with Sparta which almost destroyed Greek civilization. Fast-forward to another world war, July 1943, Operation Husky. My grandfather was here, chief officer of the armed merchant ship Empire Elaine, just inshore from the monitor HMS Erebus as she bombarded the enemy positions above us with fifteen-inch shells.’
‘This place must be in your blood,’ Costas said. ‘Seems like a Howard was present at just about every famous naval engagement in British history.’
‘If many English families knew their background, they’d be able to say the same.’
‘Anything left to see?’
‘The Special Raiding Squadron, an offshoot of the SAS, parachuted on to the cliff above us and forced the Italian coastal defence battery to surrender, throwing their arms into the sea. When we first dived here the site was strewn with ammunition.’
Costas rubbed his hands. ‘That’s what I like. Real archaeology. Beats bits of old pot any day.’
‘Let’s keep our eyes on the prize. You can play bomb disposal later.’
Costas grinned, and held up the feed hose from his rebreather. ‘Lock and load.’ He clicked it home, then watched Jack do the same.
‘Done.’ Jack angled his neck down to check his equipment, then eyed Costas. ‘You up for it?’ he said. ‘I mean, going deep?’
Costas raised his eyes, then gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let me see. Our last dive was in an underground passageway beneath the jungles of the Yucatan, being swept towards some kind of Mayan hell. And before that it was inside a rolling iceberg. Oh, and before that, an erupting volcano.’
‘You saying you’ve had enough, or can manage one more?’
Costas gave his version of the thousand-yard stare, then gave a haggard grin and began pulling up his diving suit. ‘You just say the words.’
‘Time to kit up.’
