shallows.”
Jack leaned over the plan, and tapped his pencil at various points. “We suggest you establish a floating caisson, a cofferdam, to enclose an area of riverbed abutting the land site,” he said. “You discharge sieved sediment outside the caisson, meaning the water inside remains clear. We have a piece of a kit designed by Costas that we first used in the Black Sea, like a gigantic cookie cutter you place on the area of sediment to be excavated, five meters square. It has an integral dredge pump and can be built up as you excavate deeper, with the pipe outlet on shore where the sediment can be sieved for small finds and organic material. I’ll have a couple of our technical people stay here with your team as advisors.”
“Because Jack and I are going to Hawaii,” Costas murmured.
Pradesh coughed, glancing at the shirt. “So I see. Holiday?”
“Work,” Jack said.
Pradesh looked out at the river. “I’m extremely grateful,” he said. “Even the smallest find at this site is worth its weight in gold. And the riverbed could be our treasure trove. Now, please excuse me for a few minutes while I let my people know.” He hurried off to a group of divers organizing equipment on the jetty, and Jack turned toward the main excavated area of the site. What had the author of the Periplus seen when he had disembarked here at this spot, two thousand years ago? It was a jungle clearing on a riverbank, an area smaller than a soccer pitch. In his mind’s eye Jack saw mud-brick walls, narrow alleys, flat-roofed warehouses; a line of Roman amphoras along the wharfside, crates of red-glazed pottery from Italy. Arikamedu was like Berenike on the Red Sea, functional to the point of impoverishment, with no temples, no mosaics-a bartertown on the edge of the unknown, yet a place that belied the enormous value of the goods that passed through it; every scrap of pottery preserved unique evidence for one of the ancient world’s most extraordinary endeavors.
“Jack!” Hiebermeyer came bounding up, followed by Aysha and Rebecca. He was pouring sweat. “You remember at Ostia, the port of Rome? The Square of the Merchants, with all the little offices? That’s what we’ve got here, this warehouse building. It’s like a stable, with each stall being for one merchant, one firm. And you won’t believe whose office we’ve just found. Aysha spotted it.”
An Indian student came up with a finds tray. Aysha carefully took a plastic bag from it and extracted a worn pot sherd. “It’s local, south Indian manufacture of the late first century BC.”
“There’s graffiti on it,” Jack said.
Aysha nodded. “It’s Tamil. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.” Her voice was tight with excitement. “It’s the same name as a Tamil graffito we found on the sherd in the merchant’s house at Berenike. The name of a woman, Amrita.”
“And now look at the other sherds,” Hiebermeyer said, picking one out and showing it to Jack. “The pottery’s central Italian, from a wine amphora. Recognize the writing?”
“Numbers,” Jack murmured. “They’re ledgers, accounts. What you’d expect.” He saw some words in Greek. He suddenly gasped. “I recognize the style. Look, the way the letters are sloped. It could be the same hand as the sherds you found at Berenike with the Periplus text!”
Hiebermeyer nodded enthusiastically, then pointed at the excavation. “Here’s what I see. We don’t know his name, but let’s call him Priscus. He’s sitting over there in his office with his wife, Amrita. They’re a husband and wife team. She’s local, perfect for business contacts over here, and her family keeps an eye on their office when they’re back in Egypt. You remember we suspected our man was a silk merchant, maybe with a sideline in gems? Well, look at these Greek words. That’s serikon, silk. The numbers must be grades, quantities, prices. And look at this one. Sappheiros. That’s a Greek word for lapis lazuli. It’s the word the author of the Periplus uses. In antiquity, that can only mean the lapis mined in the mountains of Badakhshan, in Afghanistan.”
“You mean this stuff,” Costas said, pulling out a piece of shimmering blue stone from his shorts pocket, holding it in front of them.
Hiebermeyer gasped. “That’s the piece you found at Berenike! We can’t take you anywhere! What is it with divers?”
“Well, Jack does it sometimes,” Costas said, his expression deadpan. “I just borrowed it. For good luck, until we get to Hawaii. Then you can take it back.”
Jack suppressed a smile. “Anything else, Maurice?”
Hiebermeyer snorted at Costas, then turned to Rebecca. “Well, your daughter has just won her archaeological credentials,” he said. “It was during those few minutes we spent troweling with the students. She has finder’s luck.”
“That sounds familiar,” Jack said. Rebecca opened her hand and showed him a perfect olive-green gem, uncut but brilliantly reflective in the midday sun.
“Peridot,” Jack exclaimed, taking the gem from her and holding it up. “From St. John’s Island, near Berenike. Costas and I flew over it on the Red Sea just a few days ago. So you think our man was exporting this from Egypt?”
“And trading it for silk,” Aysha said. “Looking at this gem, you can see why peridot might have fascinated the Chinese. It’s like refined jade.”
“The warrior empire,” Jack murmured, holding the piece up to the sun, looking at the green light cast on his other hand.
“What do you mean?” Costas said.
“Just an image I had,” Jack explained. “An image of Chinese ships, of warriors coming from the east. But this makes it real.”
“And it closes the loop,” Hiebermeyer said. “Rome, Egypt, India, lapis lazuli from the mines of Afghanistan, the Silk Route, the fabled city of Xian. Five thousand miles of contact, linking the two greatest empires the world has ever known.”
Costas took the gemstone from Jack. He held it toward the sun, with the piece of lapis lazuli in his other hand. The light flashed through them and they seemed to glow together, as if they were enveloped in the same ball of incandescence. He held them closer together, and then flinched, moving them apart. “Hot,” he said.
“Probably a focusing effect, like a magnifying glass, concentrating the light,” Pradesh said, rejoining the group. “There have always been stories of gemstones doing this, a plausible result of refraction. One of my professors at Roorkee University specialized in it. But I’ve never heard of peridot and lapis lazuli interacting like this before, especially uncut stones. An interesting research project.”
“You’re welcome at the IMU engineering lab anytime,” Costas said enthusiastically, handing the peridot back to Rebecca and pocketing the lapis lazuli. “But you’d soon get bored with gemstones. There’s some incredible underwater robotic stuff I’ve just been working on. A lot of military applications, right up your street I’d imagine.”
“Really?” Pradesh said. “Tell me more.”
“Plenty of time for that later,” Jack said, shielding his eyes and spying the Lynx helicopter coming in low over the shoreline from Seaquest II He felt the excitement well up inside him. “Are we ready?”
Pradesh nodded, and pointed at two men in jeans and T-shirts with rucksacks and G3 automatic rifles. “A couple of my sappers,” he said. “I don’t want to aggravate the tribals by showing up in the jungle with soldiers, but there’s a very real threat from Maoist insurgents. I don’t want to be responsible for the disappearance of the world’s most famous underwater archaeologist.”
“And his sidekick,” Costas added.
Rebecca looked dolefully at Jack, holding up the peridot. “If I’ve earned my credentials like Hiemy says, does that mean I can come along now too?”
“Not this time.” Jack eyed Hiebermeyer. “But Hiemy might let you drive the Zodiac back. Slowly.”
“Oh, cool.” She put the stone back in the finds tray and clapped her hands.
Jack grinned, and made a whirling motion with his fingers to Costas. “Good to go?”
“Good to go.”
9
Three hours after leaving the Roman site at Arikamedu, Jack sat beside Costas and Pradesh on the foredeck
