gets bigger with each person we bring on board. Hiebermeyer and Maria have to be up there at the top. There’s your friend Elizabeth. And Jeremy’s been seen with us, by that guy who slipped you the message in London. God knows what was overheard when we talked in the cathedral. We should have been more careful.’
‘My Reuters friend is only a call away. We’ll send out a press release with the images from Herculaneum at the first threat.’
‘There’s not enough hard evidence for this concilium, Jack. As it stands, it could all be a figment of our imagination. It would be yet another conspiracy theory, big news one day, forgotten the next. And any investigative reporter’s got to think twice about taking on this lot.’
‘We’ll just have to hope our man really is what he says he is,’ Jack murmured. ‘And that Jeremy comes up with something in London.’
Costas grunted, and lay back. Jack was still reeling in astonishment at what they had heard. They had another hour to kill before the taxi to the airport, and he got on his cell phone to update Hiebermeyer and their old mentor Professor Dillen with the latest developments, skirting around what they had just been told until he could be convinced it was all true. Many pieces of the puzzle seemed to have fallen together, but the enormity of what they might be up against was only beginning to register. He focused on the view below, anything to take his mind off it, knowing there was nothing they could do at the moment, no leads they could follow until Jeremy had exhausted all possible lines of enquiry in England. He glanced at Costas. ‘A few days ago you asked about the size of St Paul’s ship,’ he said, pocketing his cell phone. ‘Take a look at the centre of the piazza.’
Costas heaved himself up, and peered over the parapet. ‘You mean the obelisk?’
‘Brought here by the emperor Caligula from Egypt, to decorate the central spine of the circus, the place where Peter and Paul were executed,’ Jack said. ‘Twenty-five metres tall, weighing at least two hundred tons. Looking at stone like that is the best way to gauge the size of the biggest Roman ships, including grain ships like the one carrying St Paul. The obelisk-carrier was eventually sunk by Claudius in his new harbour at Ostia, filled with hydraulic concrete to make a mole. It’s still there today. Pliny the Elder tells us all about it in his Natural History.’
‘Good old Pliny,’ Costas murmured, then slumped back in the sun. Jack peered round at the other people who had come up to the roof of the dome, his eyes alert for anything suspicious, his vigilance heightened after their warning in the catacombs far below. He might have been telling the truth. Jack had no reason to believe they had been followed, and they were probably safer here than anywhere else in the city. He relaxed slightly, and looked back over the parapet. He had an eagle’s-eye view of the piazza, whose grandeur equalled the greatest monuments of pagan Rome. He watched the people crossing far below. It was as if he were viewing a computer-generated image from a Hollywood epic, of Rome the way people thought of it, not the way it was, as if on closer inspection the people below would be revealed not as flesh and blood but as stick figures, mere embellishments to the architecture, ethereal and meaningless. Jack reached for his wallet and took out a paper sleeve containing the bronze coin of Claudius they had found in Herculaneum, then slid it out and held it up so that it blocked his view of the piazza between the colonnades of the roof.
‘My find! You took it. Good man. Nobody would ever have seen it again if we’d left it.’ Costas was peering at Jack, and at the coin.
‘Borrowed it.’
‘Yeah. Right.’
‘I’m thinking about Claudius again,’ Jack said. ‘That history is shaped by individuals, unique personalities, not by processes. Those are real people down there in the piazza, individuals with their own volition, their own free will, and they aren’t subordinate to this whole thing.’ He gestured back at the dome of St Peter’s, and at the huge colonnades surrounding the square. ‘Somewhere down there is someone who could create more grandeur than all this, or destroy it. It’s individual decisions, whims, that make history. And people have fun. Look where Claudius has taken us.’
‘Fun isn’t exactly the word that springs to mind, Jack.’ Costas rolled over. ‘Let me see. Dead rats, sewage, body liqueur, a fossilized Vestal Virgin, a terrifying banshee redhead queen.’
‘But you got an unexploded bomb.’
‘Didn’t even get to defuse it.’
Jack’s phone chirped, and he quickly sleeved the coin. He took out the phone, listened intently for a few minutes, spoke briefly and then pocketed it. He had a broad smile on his face.
‘Well?’ Costas said. ‘You’ve got that look again.’
‘That was Jeremy. He had a hunch, and did a search of the international death registries available on the web. All the obvious places Everett could have disappeared to in 1912: Australia, Canada, the States. You’re going to love this one. The IMU Embraer’s being fuelled up as we speak.’
‘Try me.’
‘When was the last time you were in southern California?’
20
J ack was struggling towards consciousness, and became aware of the vibration of the aircraft where he had been leaning against the window. Images had been cycling through his mind, flashbacks to their extraordinary discoveries of the past few days. The chi-rho symbol in the ancient shipwreck, the scratched name of St Paul. The shadowy head of Anubis, leering out of the tunnel like a demon, beckoning him into the lost chamber in Herculaneum. More dark places, the cave of the Sibyl, the underground labyrinth in Rome, the blue woaded skull under London, staring sightlessly up at him from her tomb. Images at once vivid yet opaque, disjointed yet somehow bound together, images that flashed up in his mind over and over again as if he were caught in a continuous loop. He felt like Aeneas in the underworld, yet without the Sibyl to guide him back, only some malign force that pulled him down as he struggled to find the light, trapping him in a dark maze of his own devising. He felt disturbed, discomfited, and it was a relief to open his eyes and see the reassuring figure of Costas slumped over in the seat opposite. He realized that the overbearing feeling in his head had been the increased air pressure as the aircraft descended, and he blew on his nose to equalize. The whine of the Embraer’s twin jets swept the images from his mind, and reality took over. He leaned forward and stared out of the window.
‘Bad dream?’ Jeremy slipped into the aisle seat beside him, and closed the dog-eared notebook he had been studying.
Jack grunted. ‘It’s as if the ingredients are there, but nothing’s cooking. This trip’s make or break. If we don’t get anywhere today, I’m out of options.’ He took a deep breath, calmed himself, then glanced curiously at Jeremy’s book. ‘Cryptography?’
‘One of my childhood passions. I collated all the German codes broken by the Allies during the First World War. I was just getting myself back up to speed. It was looking at some of those early Christian acrostics that did it. I’ve realized you can’t have too many skills in this game.’
‘It would appear,’ Jack said, scratching his stubble, ‘that you have the makings of an archaeologist. Maria was right. Maybe I should just give up now and hand it all over to you.’
‘Maybe in about twenty years,’ Jeremy replied thoughtfully, then grinned at Jack. ‘That should give me time for a stint in special forces, to learn everything about diving, weapons and helicopters, to overcome all fear, and, most importantly, to work out how to handle your esteemed colleague opposite.’
Costas moaned and snorted in his sleep, and Jack laughed. ‘No one handles him. He’s the boss around here.’
‘Trouble is, in twenty years’ time, all the world’s mysteries will have been solved.’
Jack shook his head. ‘The past is like the New World was to the first colonists. You think you’ve found it all, then you turn a corner and another El Dorado’s shimmering on the horizon. And look where we are today. Some of the greatest mysteries may always be there, half solved, constantly drawing you on.’
‘Sometimes that’s the best way,’ Jeremy murmured. ‘You remember the Viking sagas? The loose ends aren’t always tied up, virtue isn’t always rewarded. We don’t always want a conventional ending.’
‘And you won’t always get one, with me,’ Jack grinned. ‘Something else I’ve learned, the treasure you find is rarely what you think you’ve been looking for.’
