The Mask of Troy Read online

  Mayne felt uneasy, confined. It was as if they had entered the underworld, and passed beyond a portal where return might be impossible. ‘All right. Let’s get this over and done with.’

  A locked door barred their way. The man produced another key and opened the padlock, and the door swung open. The interior was already lit, with bare bulbs hanging from wires strung high above. It was a cavernous chamber, with curved walls like a Nissen hut. The lattice of steel reinforcement rods in the concrete was clearly visible, evidently designed to withstand bomb blast. The shape reminded Mayne of the London underground station where he had sheltered during a German bombing raid early in the war. He looked around. It was packed with wooden shipping crates, pushed together like old coffins in a crypt, leaving a narrow passage ahead to another door at the far end. The man was already halfway down the passage, gesturing for them to follow. Mayne and Stein stood transfixed, staring at the crates.

  ‘Is this what I think it is?’ Mayne murmured.

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  Mayne holstered his revolver and unsheathed the commando knife he kept at the back of his webbing belt. He approached the nearest crate, then quickly prised up the lid and toppled it off. He sheathed the knife, and they both peered in at a mass of crumpled paper and straw packing material. He reached in and pulled out handfuls of the material, and they both gasped. ‘These are canvases, old paintings,’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I knew it. Let me have a look at one,’ Stein said, reaching in and pulling out more of the packing material. ‘I just need to identify one painting. Just one old master. Then we can keep going.’

  Mayne carefully pulled out a framed painting, propped it on the crate and ripped open the protective paper that had been wrapped crudely around it, revealing the canvas beneath. Stein caught his breath again. ‘This is wonderful.’ He whipped on a pair of spectacles and took out a torch, shining it at the painting, the deep colours and imagery of the canvas reflected at them. ‘Portrait of a Young Man, by Raphael,’ he murmured. ‘Stolen in 1941 from the Czawarky Museum in Krakow, Poland, on the personal orders of Göring.’ He took off his glasses and looked around. ‘That makes this place very important indeed. It could be an absolute treasure trove.’

  Mayne looked at the canvas, and shook his head in disbelief. He knew this painting well. He had given a print of it to Hugh before the war, had hung it over the fireplace of his college sitting room in Oxford. They had shared a bottle of wine in front of it, then gone for a walk along the river Isis. It had been one of those perfect days. He looked down for a moment. He wondered how Hugh was now. He hadn’t looked at all well. He hoped he wasn’t with his SAS unit somewhere on the edge of this forest, looking for the Germans, waiting. He hoped they had taken him out of the line. The end of the war was so close now. Hugh must survive. Mayne found himself suddenly crying, weeping, here of all places, in this awful bunker. He wiped his eyes, and shuddered. Please God, let Hugh survive.

  The man shouted to them in Yiddish, his voice harsher now, agitated. Stein listened, then turned to Mayne. ‘He says this is only the beginning. He says there’s more, much more. He says we need to follow him to the end, to the door at the other side.’

  Stein stared hard for a moment into the eyes of the young man in the painting, shook his head, smiled broadly and then turned away. Mayne pulled the protective paper back over the painting, then followed him. A few steps on he saw another open crate, close to the wall. He squeezed quickly between the boxes to have a look. This crate had also been packed with straw. It was lit by a bare light bulb directly overhead. He leaned awkwardly over and put his fingers on the edge of the crate, pulling himself forward by the strength of his arms, careful not to twist his bad shoulder. He peered inside.

  He had found it.

  It was there, nestled in straw at the bottom of the crate, partially wrapped in a piece of old burlap, as if it had been brought here recently and hastily unpackaged, not part of the carefully packed collection around him. It was resting the way the old foreman of Schliemann’s had described it, in reverse. A swastika, symbol of unimaginable horror, but somehow different, speaking of a different world, one Mayne had stepped out of six long years ago. He heard the ringing again in his ears, but this time it was like a distant clash of arms, like the mighty contest that had once transported him to the age of heroes. For a moment he was back on the hillside overlooking Mycenae, wondering what had driven the king of kings to set it all in motion, to lead his army to Troy. Now he saw what Schliemann had seen. The most fantastic treasure ever found. And he remembered what the girl had drawn, the girl with the harp, sitting out there in that wasteland. So this was what she had seen too. They must have taken it out, paraded it around when they brought her here.

  ‘Mayne.’ Stein’s voice broke in, a dull, resounding echo. ‘He’s going to open the door for us.’

  Mayne pushed back from the crate, twisted round and searched for the voice. His mind was in a tumult. He saw Stein and the man standing by the door at the far end of the room. He felt the dread lurch in the pit of his stomach again. Another door, another room. Something else had been going on here. Perhaps the art, the treasure, had all been a front. Perhaps Stein had been right.

  He made his way through the crates quickly and reached Stein. ‘You’ve got your Raphael. Now listen to what I’ve found.’

  Stein jerked his head to the door. ‘It can wait. This is more important.’

  The door was metal. Halfway down was a swastika, saucer-sized, impressed into the metal within a roundel. It was tilted sideways in an X shape. Mayne realized that it was some kind of keyhole, and had been opened. It was magnetic, pulling his wrist with his watch towards it. It was exactly the same shape and size as the swastika he had just seen in the crate. Mayne looked higher. There was a small clouded window, like a porthole. It was dark inside, but he could see green growth around the inside edges of the window, like algae. Maybe the dehumidifiers in this room had failed. Stein stood to his right, the man to his left. The man raised his right arm to pull out the upper latch of the door. As he did so, the sleeve of his tunic fell back, revealing the raw red tattoo on his wrist and then another tattoo, an older one, further up under his bicep. Mayne stared. He remembered the soldiers they had captured in Italy, with their blood group tattooed in that way.

  He froze. Only the SS did that.

  In that split second the man realized what Mayne had seen. He pulled Mayne’s right arm back and twisted it up, shoving him violently against the door, pressing his cheek hard against the window. Mayne heard a click under his right ear and felt cold steel against the nape of his neck. He cursed himself for letting his guard down. The man had come at him on his right side, where he was deaf. He should never have holstered his pistol. It was what he always told his soldiers. It only takes one mistake. The cold steel was removed and there was a deafening crack. He felt a warm wetness splatter the side of his head, and Stein’s body slumped to the floor. The man let go of his arm, and Mayne’s hand dropped, instinctively searching for the hilt of the knife in his belt. Then the barrel was pressed into his neck again, burning hot now. ‘Your Juden friend is dead,’ the man hissed, close to his ear, speaking in English, barely audible through the ringing in Mayne’s ears. ‘You see? They will never escape us. And now I will unleash hell. This war has only just begun. Heil Hitler.’ Mayne felt the muzzle thrust into his neck, and saw the man’s other hand push up the second latch on the door. He unsheathed the knife, then flipped it so the blade faced upwards, holding it flat against his back. The man kicked the door and Mayne could feel it give, edging inwards. ‘Raus,’ the man snarled, pushing his body hard against Mayne. ‘Schnell. You wanted to find out what was going on in here. Now you will have your wish.’

  A light flashed on inside the room. Mayne looked through the window.

  He saw something too horrible for words.

  The door swung open, and he lurched forward, bringing the knife up, deep into the heart of his assail
ant. The pistol cracked. They fell together.

  Then blackness.

  PART 3

  13

  Bristol, England, present-day

  Rebecca Howard stood on the gloomy landing of the flat in front of the chipped white door and straightened her fleece, then eased off her backpack and waited hesitantly, glancing back at Dillen. He reached the top of the creaky wooden stairs and smiled at her. They had arrived in Bristol half an hour before, on the train from Paddington in London, having landed at Heathrow airport from Istanbul soon after dawn that morning. In the taxi from the station Dillen had called Jack on Seaquest II to confirm their arrival and his plan to escort Rebecca back to the hotel in London, where she would meet her school party that evening for her trip to Paris. He shivered slightly, pushing his hands into his coat pockets. The old house was one of a row of villas off Royal York Crescent, a magnificent location overlooking the city and the Avon Gorge but exposed to the westerly winds coming off the Atlantic. For once, at least, it had not been raining, and it promised to be a beautiful June day.

  He felt the cold because he was tired, and he looked forward to the warmth he always found here, sitting back on the dilapidated sofa and cradling a cup of hot chocolate in front of the gas fire, relishing the familiar smells of old books and coffee and drying clothes. It felt as if he were returning home. His parents had been killed by German bombing in London when he was only five years old, and Hugh had taken him under his wing at boarding school and offered this place as a home. There had been other young people like Dillen, and they had grown up together as an extended family. Every time Dillen mounted these stairs he felt as if he were on vacation from university, bursting to tell Hugh what he had seen and done, to introduce him to new friends. He glanced at Rebecca, and remembered with a jolt that more than fifty years separated them. He had made this same pilgrimage with her father when Jack was her age, almost thirty years before.

  Rebecca gestured back down the stairs. ‘Does he always leave the front door unlocked?’ she whispered.

  ‘He usually has young people staying here,’ Dillen said. ‘Always has done, since I was a boy. They used to be pupils like me from Clifton College and Bath School for Girls, orphans from the war with no other family to stay with out of termtime. We had the other rooms off this landing, the doors behind you. Nowadays the net’s wider, I think. Street kids. Come on, knock on the door. He’ll be waiting for us.’

  Rebecca raised her hand and rapped on the door. A muffled voice shouted, ‘Come in!’ She turned the knob, pushed the door and stepped inside. Dillen slipped in behind her and shut the door. Hugh was crouched with his back to them over the electric ring in front of the gas fire. The warmth was lovely, just as Dillen remembered it. The room was large, the bedroom of a spacious Victorian townhouse, with a shuttered window that overlooked an untidy garden with large trees, the rear windows of the adjacent row of houses just visible beyond. In the centre of the room was the old sofa-bed, folded back with the bedding stowed beneath, and beside it the battered oak table that was the only gift Hugh had wanted from the school on his retirement, scarred with the graffiti of generations of boys he had taught Greek and Latin. The walls were buried under books, thousands of them, in cases and tottering piles, the spaces in between filled with old prints and drawings.

  Everything was as Dillen remembered it. On the mantelpiece was Edward Dodwell’s 1821 print The Gate of the Lions at Mycenae, the image that had so fired his imagination when he had first sat here as a boy. Beside it was the black-and-white photo from the Second World War. It showed a tanned, good-looking young man leaning languidly against the bonnet of a jeep, desert sand in the background, goggles hanging around his neck and a holster slung low over his shorts, cracking a smile at the camera. He was wearing the ersatz uniform of an irregular soldier, a tattered old jumper that made him look like a schoolboy, yet he exuded the confidence of a seasoned veteran. It was the picture of a man who had been forced to grow up fast, been toughened before his time. At the bottom was a faded signature, the words Peter, Egypt 1941 clearly visible, in the same handwriting as the dedication to Hugh in the volume of Pope’s Homer that Dillen had given Rebecca at Troy the day before.

  Hugh took the pot off the electric ring and poured the contents into three mugs, then picked up a spoon and stirred them. He watched the steaming liquid for a moment, then picked up two of the mugs and turned towards them. ‘Perfect timing,’ he said, looking intensely at Rebecca, a twinkle in his eye. ‘It’s a fine art, you know. If you’d arrived a moment later, this would have been ruined.’ He had an educated accent of the 1930s, with clipped vowels but a softness that came from his West Country childhood. He was wearing corduroy trousers, threadbare in places, an oatmeal-coloured jumper with holes in the elbows and a frayed silk scarf tucked in around his neck. He had thick white hair, swept back and neatly cut, and he was clean-shaven. Dillen thought he was a strikingly handsome man, and he had seemingly lost none of his vigour, despite having passed his ninety-second birthday a few months before. Rebecca nodded politely. ‘My dad told me about your hot chocolate. He said it was the best ever.’

  Hugh smiled back at her. ‘I do apologize. I’ve been rude. But I couldn’t take my eye off the pot.’ He held out the two mugs. ‘Hello, Rebecca. Your dad has told me all about you. And hello, James. I can’t believe what you told me on the phone. Marvellous discoveries. Marvellous. That cup from the shipwreck, with the word for king. You really think it could be Agamemnon? And the painting of the lyre-player with that word Homeros. Quite astonishing. It really puts the fire under our translation project.’

  Rebecca took the mug and shook Hugh’s hand, and Dillen did the same. ‘Hello to you too, Hugh,’ he replied warmly. He nodded at the papers and manuscripts piled on the table. ‘How goes the war?’ Hugh followed his gaze, then exhaled forcefully, stooped down and picked up the third mug. He stood with his back to the fire, legs apart, his free hand behind his back, and took a sip from his mug. ‘The war,’ he replied, ‘goes slowly. Too damned slowly for my liking. It’s those wretched fragments of the Cypria in the Trojan epic cycle. I just can’t make up my mind whether they’re genuine Homer or not. There’s Homer in them, no doubt about it. But I just can’t say whether it’s the poet himself, or some later pastiche of bits and pieces that survived down to the Hellenistic period, thrown together to look plausible. I’m completely stumped. I can say that to you, but not to my editor at the university press. My siege, James, is in need of a Trojan Horse.’

  ‘Then I can be your Odysseus.’ Dillen took a large envelope out of the laptop case he had been carrying, stepped over to the table and dropped it on the pile of manuscripts. ‘As I promised.’

  ‘You’re certain you want me to do this?’

  ‘Never more so.’ Dillen turned to Rebecca. ‘I’ve asked Hugh to help me translate the Ilioupersis. After spending time with your dad and Maurice over the past week, it became clear to me that the translation is about more than a clue to an ancient shipwreck. The fall of Troy, this text, is the backdrop to everything we’re doing out there. What with my work on the excavation, it was going to take me a month or more to get the text done. Jeremy’s too busy, and he doesn’t have the expertise in early Greek. With Hugh’s help, it might get done in a week, maybe ten days.’

  ‘That’s about how long Dad sees the fieldwork running,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘As tight as that?’ Hugh murmured.

  Dillen nodded. ‘Very tight, I think, with the shipwreck as well as Hiebermeyer’s excavation. The Turks are planning a major naval exercise in the region and everything has to shut down by the beginning of August. The IMU operation is going to have to run with military precision. They need you there really, Hugh, an old soldier, but HQ have assigned you to intelligence, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Plus ça change. They were always doing that. I was too damned cocky for my own good. Always being treated like a boffin, but I preferred being at the sharp end. Still, I’m sure Jack can handle it.
Wars need young men, not old ones.’ He rocked on his feet in front of the fire. ‘And the Ilioupersis. It’ll be marvellous to get my teeth into some real Homer. Some Homer I can truly believe in.’

  ‘You’re convinced I’m right?’

  ‘Those lines you sent me? Absolutely.’

  ‘Excellent. Excellent.’ Dillen put down his mug and rubbed his hands. ‘After I’ve taken Rebecca back to London and got her settled in her hotel, I’ll come straight back and we can get cracking.’

  ‘You really don’t have to take me,’ Rebecca said. ‘I can manage.’ She looked at Hugh, and sighed. ‘Sometimes they treat me like I’m some kind of innocent little girl from a finishing school. I’m not.’

  ‘I promised Jack,’ Dillen said. ‘And there’ll be an IMU security man waiting for us at the hotel. That’s a done deal.’

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. ‘IMU security? Please.’

  ‘Problems?’ Hugh said to Dillen.

  ‘Precautions,’ he replied. ‘Rebecca was involved in the repatriation of that Dürer from the Howard Gallery earlier this year, you remember? Art stolen by the Nazis. She overstepped the mark rather by going off on her own and doing a shady deal with some character in Amsterdam. Jack went ballistic when he heard.’

  Rebecca stared defiantly into the air. ‘It was not a shady deal. His name was Marcus Brandeis. Not really a bad man, exactly. He said he’d had a change of heart about the antiquities black market, but I knew perfectly well he was turning informant because he needed protection. I was just the right person for him to talk to. And it helped make one of Europe’s most notorious black-market art dealers into a police asset.’