Schliemann. God knows, he had his faults. He mythologized his own past. He dug Troy like a bulldozer. And who knows what happened to his greatest discoveries, what he and his wife Sophia really found when they disappeared at night to dig alone. But look at his achievements. He opened the world to the glories of the Aegean Bronze Age. He changed our perception of myth and history. You can’t knock that. I don’t know any archaeologists today who would have the courage or imagination to make the leaps he did.’
‘I can think of one,’ Costas murmured.
Jack tapped the keyboard again. Two images came up, one a beautiful golden cup with scenes in relief, the other a group of swords. ‘When Monticelli made that painting, the only available images from antiquity came from the art of Greece and Rome, so that’s what he used. His figures look as if they’ve been lifted from sculptures in Rome. But these two images here are the real thing, actual Mycenaean art. The one on the left is the Vaphaio Cup from Greece, with wonderful relief work in gold, showing scenes of a hunt. And those are swords found by Schliemann at Mycenae, inlaid with gold and niello. These images suggest what we might expect to find on a shield, bronze decorated with inlays and gold relief. But they tell us more than that. Look at the bull on the cup. It’s stretched, powerful, a scene of intense action. The classical figures on Monticelli’s shield are indolent, posed, idealistic. Mycenaean art had an edge to it. The shield may have contained pastoral scenes, images of peaceful life, but there would have been a vibrancy to them, a dynamism, as if everything were tightly wound. In the world of the late Bronze Age, violence may have been ritualized, channelled through the contest of heroes, but it was still violence, a visible part of day-to-day life. It was a world where men at leisure didn’t lounge around in gymnasia or bathhouses as in the classical period, but went outdoors to hunt and play, to engage in bloody combat with boars and bulls and each other.’
‘So what about images of real men?’ Costas said. ‘Are there any Bronze Age portraits? Heroes and kings?’
Jack nodded slowly. ‘One stormy night in 1876 in the royal grave circle at Mycenae, Schliemann found this.’ He tapped, and the image changed to one of the most fabulous archaeological discoveries of all time, a golden mask in the shape of an angular, bearded face, the eyes hooded, elusive. It was the ultimate image of kingly power, aloof, unknowable, but unmistakably human, not the idealized image of a god.
‘The Mask of Agamemnon,’ Costas murmured. ‘When I was home in Greece as a boy, my grandfather took me to see it. It’s virtually a national symbol. It’s the pride of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.’
Jack stared hard at the image, trying as he had done a thousand times before to see beyond those hooded lids, to reach into the soul of the man who lay behind the mask. ‘According to the Iliad, the shield of Achilles was made during the siege of Troy, in the ninth year, close to the end. An expeditionary army in the field for so long would have had its own smiths and forges, its own armourers, probably at their base on the island of Tenedos. When Achilles needs new armour, he sends word back there. Forget about mythical Thetis and the forge on Olympus, but imagine some down-to-earth Hephaestos whose job is to keep the heroes supplied with all their finery, whose workshop does more than fix helmets and churn out spearheads. Our guy’s an artist, used to creating pieces of armour for swagger and display. And look at that mask. Mycenaean artists could do portraits.’
‘So you’re suggesting that the images on the shield, the people, could be real people, actual portraits?’
‘After nine years, everyone knew the faces. The images of generals are etched on the minds of soldiers. Think of Alexander the Great, King Henry V of England, Napoleon, General Ulysses S. Grant. We all know what they looked like. To the soldiers at Troy, the faces of their captains and heroes would have been as familiar as Hollywood actors are to us. These were not distant figures in some headquarters tent, but were there every day in front of the soldiers on the beach, shouting, feuding, drinking, whoring, sulking, just as Homer describes them. So yes, the people on the shield could be real people, real heroes. And a real image of a real king.’
‘ A real king,’ Costas repeated, pointing at the image of the golden mask. ‘And that one. Do you think that’s really Agamemnon?’
Jack paused, then spoke quietly. ‘I think he existed. I think we’re on his trail, here and now. Agamemnon, what he did, is where the truth of the Trojan War lies.’
‘And for Jack Howard, the fact that this shield would be one of the most priceless treasures ever discovered is neither here nor there?’
Jack grinned. ‘It would make a pretty good centrepiece in a new archaeological museum at Troy, don’t you think? Along with everything that Hiebermeyer and Dillen and Rebecca and Jeremy are discovering. Finding the shield would repay the Turks for giving us a permit to dig here.’
‘And you think the shield’s somewhere on the sea bed, in a wreck.’
‘In the funeral games of Achilles, Homer has the armour going to the champion who won the contest for it, the outstanding hero. But by the final chapters of the war, all of the heroes were dead, and their treasure had reverted to Agamemnon. The age of heroes was over, the age that saw chivalric contests to claim the armour of a slain warrior. Agamemnon was no longer merely coalition leader, the first among many; he was now mighty ruler of them all, king of kings. Achilles’ armour would have become part of his prestige display. All the treasures of the heroes would have been stashed away in his personal war galley. Remember Dillen’s translation? The ship, booty- laden, weighted down with gold.’
‘Holy cow,’ Costas said quietly. ‘Now I’ve got you.’
‘Treasure. Big time.’
‘Bring back the age of pirates,’ Costas sighed, shaking his head. ‘Treasure like that could set me up for life.’
‘That’s exactly why I want this kept under wraps,’ Jack said. ‘If word slipped out, every treasure-hunter in the world would be hovering around us, the good, the bad and the ugly.’
‘The whereabouts of Schliemann’s stolen treasure has attracted some pretty rough customers. The Nazis were after it.’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Dillen told me. It was when Rebecca was involved with returning that painting in the Howard Gallery, the one Goring had pilfered. Dillen was at the IMU campus at the time and we got to talking. A great-uncle of mine was a Monuments Man, with the US army, responsible for recovering art stolen from Jewish families in Greece. Dillen mentioned a schoolteacher of his who had some connection with the search for the lost treasures from Troy.’
‘That’d be Hugh Frazer,’ Jack murmured. ‘I knew Frazer had been in special forces during the war, but I didn’t know anything about that. Intriguing. I’ll have to plug Dillen on it.’
‘It was something he had just remembered. Something this guy, Frazer, knew about some other guy, a British officer friend of his, who went missing. Something to do with one of the death camps.’
‘It was a more hazardous job than you’d think. And there was a lethal subtext, that the places where treasures were hidden could also conceal other secrets, weapons ready for use to execute the so-called Nero Decree.’
‘I know about that. Hitler’s order to destroy the Reich.’
‘And take the world with it, if at all possible.’
Costas checked his watch. ‘So, the shield of Achilles. Mum’s the word on your dream find?’
‘Radio silence until we find out what’s actually down there.’
Costas nodded. ‘Okay. For now, soggy timbers it is. But between you and me?’
‘What?’
‘This really is a treasure hunt, isn’t it? I mean, you owe me. It’s why you convinced me to get into this game in the first place. You promised, fifteen years ago at Troy.’
‘I thought that was submersibles. Getting your own shed full of gadgets.’
‘Means to an end. It was seeing those pictures just now, the shield, the golden mask. I think I’ve finally got the fever.’
Jack sighed. ‘Okay. Just to keep my old dive buddy happy. Treasure it is.’
‘Right on.’
‘I want to give Dillen and Hiebermeyer a call. See how they’re getting on. I’m due to be choppered over there after the dive. And see Rebecca.’
‘Tell her Uncle Costas expects her to be able to strip a dive regulator the next time we meet.’
‘Uncle Costas,’ Jack muttered. ‘ Uncle Costas.’ He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Speaking of regulators, time you went below to prep our gear.’
Costas broke into a huge smile. ‘Now you’re talking.’ He got up, collected his things and walked towards the
