the impression that his entire being revolved around sausage and sauerkraut. It was an illusion, Jack knew, for a man who was continuously on the move and had the energy of a small army.
“He’s still flying at half-mast, I see,” Costas muttered to Jack.
“Don’t say anything. Remember, I gave him those shorts. They’re a hallowed part of our archaeological heritage. One day they’ll be in the Smithsonian.” He glanced at Costas’ own baggy shorts and luridly colored shirt. “Anyway, you can hardly talk, Hawaii-Five-Oh.”
“Just getting ready,” Costas said. “For where we’re going in the Pacific. You remember? Holiday time. Thought I may as well kit up now.”
“Yes. About that.” Jack cleared his throat just as Hiebermeyer came up and shook hands warmly with him, and then with Costas. “Come on,” he said, continuing down the hill without actually stopping.
“So much for small talk,” Costas said, swigging at a water bottle.
“He’s been wanting to show me this place for months,” Jack said, slinging his faded old khaki bag over his shoulder and following. “I can’t wait.”
“Okay, okay.” Costas tossed the bottle back into the helicopter and followed Jack down the hill, catching up with them about fifty meters from the water’s edge. Hiebermeyer took off his little round glasses and wiped them, and then opened his arms expansively. “Welcome to ancient Berenike. The holiday resort at the end of the universe.” He pointed back up the slope. “Up there’s the Temple of Serapis, down here’s the main east-west road, the decumanus. The town was founded by Ptolemy II, son of Alexander the Great’s general, who ruled Egypt in the third century BC and named the place Berenike after his mother. Flourished mainly under the Roman emperor Augustus, declined after that.”
“So where’s the amphitheater?” Costas looked around. “I don’t see anything at all.”
“Look down.”
Costas kicked at the ground. “Okay. A few potsherds.”
“Now come over here.” They followed Hiebermeyer a few meters farther toward the shore. He had led them to the edge of an excavated area the size of a large swimming pool. It was as if the skin had been peeled off the ground. They saw rough rubble walls of coral and sandstone, forming small rooms and alleyways. It was the foundations of an ancient town, not an immaculately laid out Roman town like Pompeii or Herculaneum but a place without any architectural pretension, where walls and rooms had clearly been added organically as they were needed. Hiebermeyer leapt down with surprising agility onto a duckboard that lay across the trench. He bounded over to the far side and pulled a large tarpaulin away, then gave a triumphant flourish. “There you go, Jack. I thought you’d like that.”
It was a row of Roman amphoras, just like the ones they had seen on the wreck that morning, only these were worn and many had broken rims. “All reused, as you can see,” Hiebermeyer said. “My guess is these went all the way to India filled with wine, then were brought back here empty and reused as water containers. Water’s a precious commodity here. The nearest spring’s on the edge of the mountains, miles away. We don’t even have electricity. We use solar panels to run our computers. And we have to bring our food in, just as they did in ancient times from the Nile Valley. It really makes you empathize with the past.”
“It sounds like a lunar colony,” Costas murmured.
Hiebermeyer replaced the tarpaulin and pulled up another one beside it, revealing a pile of dark stones about the size of soccer balls. “Ballast,” he said. “It’s basalt, volcanic, foreign to this area.”
“Ballast,” Costas repeated. “Why?”
“An outward-bound ship, filled with gold and wine, is going to sail along fine. A ship returning with peppercorns is going to bob around like a cork. You needed ballast. This stone’s been sourced to southern India.”
“Maurice!” Jack exclaimed, patting him on the back. “We’ll make a nautical archaeologist of you yet.”
“India,” Costas said. “Someone’s going to have to fill me in.”
Jack turned to him. “For millennia, the ancient Egyptians received goods from beyond the Red Sea, but always via middlemen. Then, after Alexander conquered Egypt and the first Greek merchants appeared along this coast, someone told the Egyptians and the Greeks how to sail across the Indian Ocean using the monsoon. They sailed out from Egypt with the northeasterly monsoon, came back with the southwesterly, achieving one round voyage a year. It was dangerous and terrifying, but the winds were as predictable as the seasons. It opened up an amazing era of maritime discovery. The first Greek sea merchants hit India soon after Berenike was established. After the Romans took over Egypt in 31 BC, everything revved up. Under Augustus as many as three hundred ships left from here annually. It was big investment, big risk stuff, just like the European East Indies trade fifteen hundred years later. Gold, silver, wine went out; gems, spices, pepper came back.”
“And not just that,” Hiebermeyer said, leaping out of the trench and wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Now for what I really wanted you to see. Follow me up the hill.” A scorching gust of wind blew up, stinging their eyes. Costas crouched back against it, then trudged up behind the other two men.
“We’ve been talking about the Battle of Carrhae, Crassus’ lost legions,” Jack said.
“I’m always ready to hear about a Roman defeat,” Hiebermeyer replied, grinning at Jack.
“Come on. The Romans didn’t rule Egypt that badly. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be here, sunning yourself beside the Red Sea. This is basically a Roman site.”
“I’d rather be in the Valley of the Kings,” Hiebermeyer sniffed.
“Talking to Costas about Carrhae set me thinking about another Roman defeat,” Jack said. “One never forgotten by the emperors. The lost legions of Varus, destroyed in AD 9 in the Teutoberg Forest.”
Hiebermeyer stopped in his tracks. “That was my first real taste of archaeology as a boy, hunting for the site of the battle. My family owned a lodge nearby, outside Osnabruck in Lower Saxony.”
Jack shaded his eyes and looked at Costas. “The Romans were pushing into Germany. It was the glory days of Augustus. The possibilities seemed limitless. Then it all went horribly wrong. Varus was inexperienced, like Crassus, and took three legions into unknown territory. They were ambushed by the Germans and annihilated, twenty thousand men at least.”
“What’s your point?” Hiebermeyer said, walking slowly again up the hill.
“The decline of Berenike, after Augustus. It’s bizarre, at the height of the empire when the Roman economy was booming. It’s as if the British government had suddenly pulled out of any interest in the East India Company in the late eighteenth century, when the biggest fortunes were being made.”
“The defeat stopped the Romans in their tracks,” Hiebermeyer said. “The Rhine became the frontier. Augustus nearly went insane over those lost legions.” Jack nodded. “I wonder if Augustus had second thoughts. He looked east, to Arabia, to India, the lands beyond this place, where everything was ripe for conquest. He looked, and he said no. The empire was big enough. They couldn’t afford another defeat. And the risk out here, the cost of failure, was huge.”
“And not just military,” Costas said.
“Go on.”
“Massive fortunes were involved, right? Shiploads of gold and silver. That means only the wealthiest investors, including the emperor himself What are the chances of shipwreck on a voyage out here, one in three, one in four? Let’s say it happens, and the emperor loses big-time. His own cash. A high-risk investment gone wrong, and then those legions wiped out. It’s all too much. He pulls the plug on India.”
Jack stopped. “That’s a hell of an idea.”
“I’ll sell you it for a cold beer,” Costas said, wiping his forehead.
“Find me a wreck out here full of mint issues of Imperial gold, and I might believe you,” Hiebermeyer said, trudging determinedly up the slope ahead of them. Costas looked questioningly at Jack, who grinned and followed Hiebermeyer.
“Speaking of shipwrecks, thanks for the hint, Maurice,” Jack said loudly, catching up.
“Huh?”
“That translation you emailed me. From the Coptos archive. The ancient shipwreck. The elephantegos. ”
“Ah. Yes.”
“We found one.”
“Ah. Good.”
“We found an elephantegos. ”
“Ah. Yes. Good.” Hiebermeyer stopped, clearly deep in some other train of thought, nodded sagely, then
