Pyramid: A Novel Page 17

  Macalister looked grim. “Not so easy when your oppressors are psychopaths who have been building up a head of steam for over a hundred years.”

  “There’s always the military option,” Ben said.

  Jack stared at him. “Are you suggesting that we invade like the British did in 1882, and again in 1956? With the right force you might push the extremists out of Cairo, but then you’d be likely creating an insurgent war like the one the coalition fought in Iraq, with the same cocktail of terrorism, suicide bombings, and an enemy who disappears and rematerializes as soon as you think you’ve scored a success. The civilian population would soon become too weakened and demoralized to resist. And any Western intervention in Egypt now would be seen by hard-liners elsewhere as tantamount to an alliance with Israel. Any radicalized regime not yet in open conflict with Israel would soon join in. We’d be stoking up World War Three.”

  Ben leaned over the table and looked at him intently. “You know the other military option, Jack. You’ve been in special forces.”

  “You mean targeted assassinations?” Jack pursed his lips. “I was involved in two ops against leadership targets in the Middle East. I was just a ferryman, a temporary naval officer who happened to be good at driving Zodiacs. One op was a success, the other an abort. But if you want to hear about the tit-for-tat consequences of those ops, go no further than Engineer Lieutenant Commander Kazantzakis of the U.S. Navy Reserve, who won his Navy Cross rescuing seamen blown into the water from his ship in a copycat attack of the terrorist assault on USS Cole, provoked by a similar U.S. special forces assassination attempt.”

  Costas looked at Ben. “I was at the debrief with the SEAL team who did the op. That was back before 9/11, and the conclusion even then with targeted assassinations was that you cut off one head, and another one grows in its place. Since then the bad guys have become very good at creating the infrastructure to absorb punishment. Kill one Taliban commander, and five others are there to take his place. The extremists in Egypt must have a tight command structure, but they’ve been very careful not to publicize their leadership. Assassination is useful only if the target is a known quantity and a big name.”

  Jack tapped his pencil on the table. “Which brings us back to archaeology, and to the people of Egypt. Archaeology is the greatest weapon we have against extremism. Egypt more than any other country in the world has become dependent on archaeology for its livelihood. From the lowliest camel driver on the Giza plateau to the hotel owners and the tour guides, archaeology provides the lifeblood of the nation. That’s what we’ve got to marshal in this battle. It could be the first time that archaeology—the place of archaeology in the modern world and people’s lives—provides the critical groundswell for a popular uprising. Right now, that’s what we’re in this game for. We’re talking about saving people’s lives.”

  Ben nodded. “Let’s hope it happens in time for a frightened girl and her family in Cairo.”

  Jack stared bleakly around the table. He knew what Aysha would say: inshallah. He took a deep breath. “Okay. We’re done here. Thanks for everything, Ben. Keep me in the loop.”

  Costas stood up. “I can finally get to the engineering lab. No time for Little Joey, but I want to run some final diagnostics on the gimbal in the submersible. There’s something I need to adjust. And I haven’t had a go with the new derrick yet.”

  Macalister glanced at his watch. “Meet on deck at 1500 hours, dive at 1530. Let’s try to keep to the schedule.”

  Jack pushed his chair back. “Roger that. On deck one hour from now. Enough time for me to get some shuteye. See you then.”

  —

  Ten minutes later Jack closed the door of his cabin and lay back on his bunk, suddenly realizing how tired he was. His cabin was just below the bridge, its portholes looking out over the foredeck and to starboard. He glanced around at his most treasured belongings—the cases of old books, the battered old chest first taken to sea by an ancestor of his on an East Indiaman three hundred years before, the artifacts and photographs that covered the walls. More so than anywhere else, more than his rooms in the old Howard estate in Cornwall, his cabin on Seaquest was where he felt most at home, anchored by familiarity. This was where he dreamed of new discoveries, and yet it was also where the reality when he wakened and felt the tremor of the ship’s engines was more hard edged and exciting than anything he could imagine.

  He stared at the wall opposite, at the hanging brass gauntlet from India in the shape of a tiger and above that a painting that Rebecca had done of the Jewish menorah from the temple in Jerusalem, the lost ancient treasure that had taken him on a quest halfway around the world when she was just a child. He was now only a flight away from seeing her, and yet when he closed his eyes it was not her he saw but the immediate task ahead of him, the inky darkness a thousand meters below and the extraordinary scene that he and Costas had seen three months before when they had discovered the wreck of the Beatrice and the ancient sarcophagus. He tried to relax, thinking of nothing but the sensation of being underwater, but his mind kept returning to the nagging question that had driven him to return here. Was the missing fragment of the plaque of Akhenaten still inside the sarcophagus? Did it contain the clue that he so desperately wanted, the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that would justify a return to Egypt and their unfinished quest beneath the pyramid?

  “Dr. Howard. Time to go.”

  Jack opened his eyes, sat bolt upright, and stared at the chronometer beside his bed. He had been out for almost half an hour. He stood up and took a swig of water from a bottle on his desk, and then the coffee proffered by the crewman. He quickly drank half the cup. “What’s the state of play?”

  “Costas is already in the water.”

  “What? In the sub? He’s supposed to wait for me.”

  “He wanted to get it submerged to check the gimbal, to make sure it’ll keep the sub trim and level. He realized that the only way he could do it was to have it in the water for a shallow-water trial. All’s going well. He should be finished and on the surface by the time you get on deck.”

  Jack drained the rest of the coffee and handed back the mug. “Thanks. Two minutes to change into my overalls and I’m there.” The crewman ducked away down the corridor, and Jack stripped off his outer clothes and pulled on the orange IMU overalls that had been hanging behind his door. They were more comfortable in the confined space of the bathysphere, and cooler if the heat ramped up. He had to steel himself to spending the next few hours cooped up inside a metal and Perspex ball barely big enough to fit the two of them crouched down, something that preyed on a lingering claustrophobia he had battled since a near-death experience diving in a mine shaft when he was a boy. He splashed some water on his face, wiped it on his sleeve, and stooped out the door into the passageway. He kept his own personal demon at bay by focusing his mind on the objective. This was not just about the plaque, about his burning personal quest. It was also about ensuring that the sarcophagus was successfully winched to the surface, a huge achievement in itself but also a carrot to dangle in front of the egomaniacal tyrant in charge of the Egyptian antiquities service who might thus be persuaded to save a young woman from an appalling fate.

  Jack slid on his hands down the rails of the stairway to the main deck level, swung open the hatch, and stood in the full glare of the sunlight on the foredeck below the bridge, cursing himself for having forgotten his sunglasses. In front of him the new red derrick was swung off to starboard, its cable taut where the submersible was held over the side of the ship. Jack grabbed a hard hat from the bin beside the hatch and went over to the rail. Looking down he could see the submersible awash in the azure blue of the Mediterranean. Out of the water it was ungainly, its manipulator arms making it look like some giant insect, with racks of compressed air cylinders and piping on either side. In the water it was another story entirely. A streamlined yellow carapace covered the pressurized bathysphere and double-lock chamber, a crucial feature that allowed divers to e
nter and egress. The vectored-thrust propellers allowed an extraordinary precision of movement and position holding, perfect for archaeological work and the task ahead of them almost a thousand meters below on the seabed.

  Macalister came alongside him, and they both watched as the submersible rose higher and Costas came into view through the Perspex viewing dome. Jack glanced at his watch. The journalists would be having their second briefing now, and soon afterward be expecting to set up their cameras. Before that the submersible would have to be raised out of the water and placed on its cradle on the deck in order for Jack to get inside. Then it would be winched out again. If this was going to be in full view of the world’s media, they needed everything to run as smoothly as possible and not allow filming until they were in the water again and certain that everything was good to go.

  Macalister pressed the earphone he was wearing and bent down to listen more clearly and then straightened up, gave a thumbs-up, and made a whirling motion with his hand, looking back at the derrick operator. He turned to Jack. “That was Costas, and he’s ready to come up. He said it was crucial to trial it, and the issue’s resolved.”

  “You mean he got itchy feet, and just couldn’t resist taking it for a joyride.”

  Macalister grinned, and signalled again to the derrick operator.

  The cable creaked, and the motor screeched. There was a sudden lurch, and the cable began paying out rapidly from the derrick, coiling in the sea around the submersible. Jack glanced back in alarm and saw the derrick operator frantically pulling the emergency hand brake. Jack looked at the submersible. At least it was buoyant, not dependent on the winch to keep it afloat. But as he watched, the top of the submersible dipped beneath the waves, and then was submerged. Jack’s heart began to pound. Something was wrong.

  “It’s the cable,” Macalister shouted. “The coils have fallen on top of the submersible, weighing it down.”

  Jack stared at the cable. At least fifty meters had been paid out. If the weight of the cable forced the submersible down to a depth of ten meters, then the volume of air in its ballast tanks would be halved and it would sink of its own accord. It would come to a halt only when it reached the maximum extent of the cable. Jack tossed off his hard hat, grabbed another intercom headset from its stand, and put it on. “Costas, do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Blow the ballast tanks. There’s a malfunction in the derrick, and about fifty meters of coiled cable has dropped onto you.”

  “No can do, Jack. Something’s jamming the valve.”

  Jack stared at the wavering form of the submersible just beneath the surface. He could just see where a coil of cable had caught around the manifold linking together the rack of compressed air cylinders on one side. The submersible suddenly sank deeper and the coil disengaged, swirling around with the rest of the cable in the water below the derrick. “Okay,” Jack said. “A coil of cable was caught around it. Try now.”

  “Still no good. The drag from the cable must have somehow closed the external valve.”

  Jack turned back to the derrick operator. “Can you hold it?” he shouted.

  The man gave a thumbs-up, his other hand still on the brake. “I should be able to hold it once it reaches the maximum extent already paid out. That’s fifty-seven meters from the top of the derrick. But I can’t guarantee for how long. After that, it’s a thousand-meter payout.”

  Jack turned back to the water. The submersible was nearly out of sight now, sinking more rapidly, the cable unwinding and straightening out above it. Two men with tool kits rushed up to the derrick, removed the panel over the electronic controls, and tried to isolate the problem.

  Beside Jack the two safety divers were quickly finishing kitting up. Jack cupped his hand over the mike so that Costas could hear against the noise. “You’re going to come to a halt at about fifty meters depth. The divers should be able to free the valve. Failing that, you can do an emergency egress through the double-lock chamber, and they’ll escort you to the surface. You copy that?”

  “Copy, Jack. But there’s another problem. It’s also cut off my breathing air. The carbon dioxide levels in the bathysphere are already in the red. I’ve only got a few minutes before blackout.”

  Jack stared at the two safety divers, his mind racing through the options. They had just zipped up their E-suits and were donning air cylinders. The cable suddenly became taut, and the derrick jolted. “Okay,” he said into the mike. “The divers are less than a minute away from entry. Do you copy?”

  There was a pause, and Costas’ voice when it came through sounded distant. “Copy that. I’m on the way out, Jack. My legs and arms are tingling.”

  Jack stared at the cable, watching the water shimmer off it. In the space of a few minutes, a routine equipment check had turned into a deadly crisis. He felt his breathing and heart rate slow, as if he were making time itself slow down to stretch out the seconds so that he could run through all the options. The divers had only the compressed air tanks they used for shallow-water safety checks and maintenance. It would take too long now to rig them up with mixed gas or rebreathers. With compressed air, they were limited to fifty meters, maybe twenty meters beyond that in an extreme emergency, but no more. If the cable ran free again and the submersible plummeted beyond that depth, there was only one option left for rescue, one that he would never allow another member of his team to take.

  And then it happened. The derrick screeched and the cable began to feed out again. Jack ripped off the headphones and glanced back to the derrick operator, seeing where the others had leapt forward to help him try to hold the brake, their tools cast aside. The cable was falling fast, dropping the submersible far beyond air-diving depth now. Jack turned, feeling as if he were in slow motion. His vision tunneled, his metabolism slowed as if he were already in dive response, his system anticipating what his brain was telling it and doing all it could to maximize his chances of survival. He blew on his nose to clear his ears, keeping his nose pinched, and with his other hand scooped up the weight belt of one of the divers, holding it tight and bounding to the edge of the deck beside the cable. He was barely conscious of those around him, of Macalister’s shocked face, of the two divers too stunned to move, of voices behind yelling at him not to do it.

  He stared into the abyss. All he thought of was the darkness, and Costas.

  He breathed fast, gulping in the air, took a final deep lungful, and jumped.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jack had just enough time to cross his ankles and arms to present minimal resistance before he hit the water, his right hand pinching his nose ready to equalize the pressure in his ears and sinuses and his other hand wrapped around the diver’s weight belt he had grabbed just before leaving the deck. He knew that the cable from the derrick to the submersible was only a few meters away, and with the dead weight of the belt he would plummet directly on target without having to angle sideways.

  In the seconds it took him to leave the deck, his mind had flashed through the physiology of free diving: the possibility of middle ear and sinus rupture if he failed to equalize, and the inevitability of lung barotrauma and blood shift into the capillaries as his chest cavity was squeezed. Yet there was also the reflexive response of the body to being underwater, the reduction of metabolic rate that could allow him to remain conscious for the crucial few extra seconds he might need to reach the submersible and open the air-tank manifold to give Costas a chance of survival.

  Below him lay almost a thousand meters of water to the wreck of the Beatrice. At that depth without a pressure suit, his organs would be crushed, but he would have been dead a long time before that. With every ten meters of depth from the surface, his lungs would halve in volume, so that at fifty meters the air that had filled his lungs would occupy only one-fifth of that volume, at a hundred meters one-tenth. By a hundred and fifty meters, lung barotrauma was a near certainty. The constricting volume of his chest cavity would cause the membranes to rupture, and he w
ould begin to drown in his own blood. By then, perhaps two minutes or two and a half minutes into the dive, he would be reaching the limit of his breath-holding endurance. At that point he would either give way and breathe in water, or black out because the increased carbon dioxide level in his body would trigger unconsciousness. Either way meant death. All he knew for certain was that the maximum free-diving depth ever achieved had been a little over 250 meters, less than a quarter of the depth of the water below him now and representing almost superhuman physiological endurance. If the submersible had dropped any deeper than that before he reached it, there could be only one possible outcome, for him as well as for Costas.

  He was instinctively prepared for a shock of cold, but as he sliced into the water he felt the warmth of the Mediterranean envelop him. He knew that the cold would come, a rapid, numbing cold as he passed through the thermocline, and that the oxygen saturation in his brain was inducing a mild sense of euphoria, something that would wear off quickly as the oxygen was depleted. As he felt himself plummet, he concentrated on equalizing his ears, his eyes shut tight. To open them in the pellucid water would be to reveal the enormity of the darkness beneath him, something that would make even the strongest diver balk. He would do so only once he had passed the point of no return, once he knew that bailout was impossible.

  Less than ten seconds after entering the water, he passed the first big thermocline, at this time of year at a depth of about thirty-five meters. Even if he dropped the weights, he knew that without fins he would stand no chance of returning to the surface now. The cold increased his sense of speed, his skin more sensitized to the water rushing past. Equalizing became easier as the pressure differential decreased, each halving of the air spaces in his body every ten meters now involving smaller and smaller volumes of gas. He was deeper than he had ever free-dived before—eighty, perhaps ninety meters—far beyond the safe depth for compressed-air diving, well into the death zone, where the chances of sudden unconsciousness increased dramatically with every meter of descent.