The Covenant of Genesis

‘Interim Director,’ Chase reminded her. Nina had assumed the role four months earlier, following the death of her predecessor Hector Amoros, and the UN’s decision on the permanency of her appointment was pending. But it was a lock, she was sure; not bad for someone who had only turned thirty that year.

‘Whatever. But I still think we should do it. Proving a theory is one thing, but making a discovery that could change everything we thought about early man . . .’

Chase stepped behind her and wrapped his thick arms round her waist. ‘You just want to be on the cover of Time again, don’t you?’

‘No. Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But just think about what it would mean! Current theory believes that Homo sapiens didn’t develop anything but the most basic stone tools until the upper Palaeolithic period fifty thousand years ago, but if they had kilns able to bake bricks . . .’ She tailed off as Chase’s hands made their way up to her breasts. ‘Eddie, what are you doing?’

‘You get so turned on when you’re talking about archaeology,’ he said, a gap-toothed, lecherous smirk on his square face. ‘It’s like your version of porn. Your nipples pop up like grapes.’

‘I do not have grape nipples,’ Nina told him in a faux-frosty tone.

‘Well, they’re still nice and tasty. We could just nip - fnarr, fnarr - to our cabin . . .’

‘Maybe later, Eddie,’ she said, pulling his hands away. ‘Come on, I need to talk to Captain Branch and start a sonar survey.’

Chase rolled his eyes as she strode from the room. ‘Right. Because there’s nothing sexier than a sonar survey.’

Nina leaned against the railing on the Pianosa’s deck, watching the red and white de Havilland Otter floatplane nudge up to the L-shaped floating pontoon dock extending out from the ship’s starboard side. Chase waved at her from the co-pilot’s seat.

She waved back, then headed for her lab. It had taken some time to persuade Captain Branch - a stickler for adhering to the exact letter of a contract, nothing more, nothing less - to allow the floatplane to be used for anything other than its agreed purpose of bringing in fresh food from Jakarta over the course of the ten-day expedition. But she eventually got her way . . . with the promise of some extra money from the discretionary budget going his way.

The Otter had been outfitted with a small ‘dunking’ sonar array, then spent the next few hours making short hops along a rough spiral course out from the ship. At each landing, Chase lowered the sonar into the water to scan the surrounding sea bed. In theory, if any of the results matched the reading from the dig site, there was a good chance they would find more of the mysterious bricks, perhaps even their source.

In theory. There was an equal chance that the search would uncover absolutely nothing.

Chase entered, carrying the tubular sonar array. Behind him, holding the sonar’s data recorder, was Bejo, one of the Indonesian members of the crew. He was still in his late teens, and growing up on one of the vast archipelago’s many islands meant that he had spent almost as much of his life in boats as on land.

‘How was the trip?’ Nina asked as Chase returned the sonar to its large metal box.

‘Pretty good. Herve even let me hold the controls. For about a minute.’

‘I thought I heard terrified screams,’ Nina joked as Bejo put the recorder on a table. ‘Thanks, Bejo.’

‘No problem, Mrs Nina,’ Bejo said cheerily.

‘Please, I told you,’ she said as she connected the recorder to one of the lab’s computers, ‘I’m not “Mrs” anything. Not until next May, anyway.’

‘Ah! I see, then you will be Mrs Eddie?’

‘No, nonono.’ Nina wagged a finger. ‘Then he’ll be Mr Nina.’

Bejo erupted with laughter. ‘Mr Nina!’ he cried, pointing at Chase. ‘I like that, that is funny.’

‘Yeah, hilarious,’ Chase rumbled. He joined Nina at the computer. ‘See you later, Bejo.’

‘And you . . . Mr Nina!’ Bejo left the lab, his laughter echoing down the corridor.

‘Cheers for that,’ said Chase, batting Nina lightly on the back of her head. ‘Now I’m going to be “Mr Nina” for the rest of the bloody trip.’

‘Ah, you don’t mind really. Because you lurve me.’ She nudged him playfully with her hip.

‘Yeah, I need to get my head checked sometime. So what’ve we got?’

Nina was already working. ‘Let’s see, shall we? Okay, this is the dig site.’ An image appeared on the screen, blobs in various shades of grey against a black background. ‘It’s a composite of four readings - only objects that stay stationary in all four show up, so we don’t have to worry about fish confusing things.’ She zoomed in and indicated one particular group of objects. ‘These are the bricks you found.’

‘We didn’t dig up that many,’ Chase noted. ‘How deep can the sonar read?’

‘Up to two feet - it depends what’s on the sea bed. If it’s just sediment, any more bricks should show up clearly. Okay, let’s see what you found.’

The first composite image came up. Nina examined it, zooming in on everything that gave a strong sonar return, but found nothing resembling the regular forms of the bricks. By the time she had finished, more images had been processed, ready for inspection. She opened each up in turn.

‘Oh, oh,’ she said excitedly as the eighth reading appeared. ‘This looks promising.’ A jumbled swathe of sonar reflections showed up strongly, like a handful of tiny diamonds cast across black velvet. ‘Wow, it looks like some of the readings we got from Atlantis, remember? Like buildings buried under the silt.’ She zoomed in. While the objects were scattered, many of them revealed regular, clearly artificial shapes. ‘The place looks trashed, though. It’d take a massive earthquake or a tsunami to scatter everything that widely.’

‘Or people.’ They exchanged looks. ‘How deep is it?’

‘It’s at . . . whoa, a hundred and fifty feet. So it’s not from the same period as the original site.’ Nina brought up the GLUG program on her laptop, entering figures. The map changed, sea level falling still further. ‘Definitely not the same period. If this is right, then . . . about one hundred and thirty-five thousand years ago.’ She turned to face Chase, eyes wide. ‘Jesus, that would completely re-write everything we think we know about pre-history. According to current theories, humans didn’t even leave Africa until at most seventy thousand years ago.’

‘Maybe it’s not humans,’ Chase said with a grin. ‘Maybe aliens built it.’

Nina frowned. ‘It’s not aliens, Eddie.’

‘Yeah, you say that now, but when we find a crystal skull . . .’

‘Can we be serious, please?’ She magnified the sonar image still further. The image pixellated, but individual objects were still discernible, strewn across the sea floor. ‘We have to check this out. As soon as we can.’

‘It’s about five miles away,’ said Chase, comparing the image’s GPS co-ordinates to a chart. ‘Bit of a trudge to get the boats there and back.’

‘We’ll move the ship.’

‘I don’t think Branch’ll like that. You had a hard enough job getting him to let us use the plane.’

Nina gave him a determined grin. ‘I dunno. I’m feeling pretty persuasive today.’

With very poor grace, even after the promise of another payment to cover the unplanned use of fuel, Captain Branch did eventually agree to move the Pianosa to the new site. It took a couple of hours to bring the pontoons back aboard and get the vessel under way, but after that it didn’t take long to reach its destination. Once anchored, the crew reassembled the floating dock while the IHA team prepared for the dive. Nina had used the transit time to explain why she had changed the mission so drastically; both Gozzi and Bobak were startled by what she thought she had discovered, but quickly became caught up in her enthusiasm.

Chase was more pragmatic. ‘We can’t stay down there too long,’ he said as the team went through the involved process of donning their deep suits. ‘There’s only a couple of hours before sunset. It’ll be darker anyway because we’re deeper, but any daylight’s still better than none.’

‘This’ll just be a preliminary dive,’ Nina assured him. ‘I just want to be sure there really is something down