The Tiger Warrior Read online

  “And I see some modern conveniences,” Jack said, pointing over to the corner where the workers were excavating.

  “It’s a water cistern, dug into the rock, lined with impervious concrete. Alongside it there’s an economy version of a Roman bath. He’s built himself a frigidarium, lined with pottery tubes for insulation and an ingenious system for keeping the room damp.”

  “He must have spent a lot of time in there,” Costas grumbled, wiping the sweat off his face. “I don’t know how anyone could stand this heat.”

  “They didn’t, for half the year,” Aysha replied. “This place was pretty well abandoned for months on end, between ships leaving from here to catch the northeast monsoon and then arriving back with the southwest. I think this guy was a traveling merchant, on the move a lot. I think this was just his pad when he was in town. And I think he probably had another place, in India.”

  “In India!” Costas exclaimed.

  “Aysha, show them, will you?” Hiebermeyer said, clearly relishing the moment.

  Aysha nodded, and led them under a tarpaulin shelter beside the trench. On a trestle table were trays full of finds, mainly fragments of pottery. “Some of this is Indian, Tamil style,” she said, passing Jack a sherd in a polythene bag. “That one has a Tamil graffito on it, possibly the word Ramaya. It could be the name of the merchant himself, but I think it’s the name for the Roman community in south India, the name the local people there gave it.”

  “You think this guy was Indian?” Costas said.

  “Or his wife,” Aysha said. “Take a look at this.” She pointed to a chunk of sandstone about thirty centimeters across, highly eroded but with a carving on the front. It showed a woman, with pronounced hips and breasts, in a swirling motion as if she were dancing, between pillars with spiral fluting surmounted by a decorative architrave. “When she was found, my British assistant called her the Venus of Berenikê,” Aysha said. “Typical western perspective. For my money, she’s Indian. The swirl, the decoration, are clearly south Indian. I think she’s not a classical goddess at all, but a yaksi, an Indian female spirit. You might expect to find this in a cave temple in Tamil Nadu, the farthest point we know Roman merchants visited along the coast of India, on the Bay of Bengal.”

  “And look at this.” Hiebermeyer pointed at an airtight box with a thermostat alongside. “That’s silk.”

  “Silk?” Costas said. “You mean from China?”

  “We think so,” Aysha said excitedly. “We think this shows that silk wasn’t just coming overland via Persia to the Roman Empire. It was also arriving by sea, from the ports of India. It shows that traders were leaving the Silk Route somewhere in central Asia, and going south through Afghanistan and down the Indus and the Ganges to reach the ports where they met up with merchants like this one. And yes, Costas, it brings China one step closer to the Roman world.”

  “Maybe that’s where all the gold was going,” Costas said. “Not to buy pepper, but silk.”

  “Another nice idea,” Jack murmured.

  “Find a shipwreck of that trade, and that would be a cargo worth excavating,” Hiebermeyer said. “Even I concede that. An ancient East Indiaman.”

  “I think we might be just one step ahead of you there, old boy,” Costas replied, kicking at a rock, glancing at Jack. But Hiebermeyer bounded away to the other side of the excavation, where he lifted up an aluminium case and carried it carefully back toward them, the sweat now pouring off him.

  Costas picked up the rock, and Jack watched him. It was a gemstone, uncut, deep blue with speckles of gold. “Check this out.”

  Aysha looked over, then gasped. “It’s lapis lazuli! Maurice, look! Costas has found a piece of lapis lazuli!”

  Hiebermeyer put down the case and took the stone from Costas, raising his glasses and peering at it, turning it over and wiping it. “My God,” he muttered. “It’s the highest grade. From Afghanistan. That’s another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. They also traded for this. Lapis lazuli was worth a fortune too.”

  “Months of painstaking excavation and you would never have found it,” Costas said, looking at Hiebermeyer deadpan.

  Hiebermeyer’s eyes narrowed. “Where, might I ask, did you pick this up?”

  Costas pointed down, grinning. “You just have to know where to look.”

  Hiebermeyer snorted, then carefully placed the stone on a finds tray. “Something of Jack’s knack has clearly rubbed off on you. And now for the real treasure.”

  “There’s more?” Jack said.

  Hiebermeyer tapped the case. “I’ve been waiting for Seaquest II to arrive. We need full lab facilities, infrared viewers, multispectral imagery. We need a place to look at this properly, not out here, in this oven,” he said, wiping his face. “We’re finished here for the season. It’s become too hot. My Egyptian foreman will close up the site. Aysha and I have already said our good-byes to the team, and we’re ready and packed.”

  “You mean you want to go right now?” Jack said.

  “You’ve got spare cabins, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. I’ll radio the captain. You can join us for a cruise on the Indian Ocean.”

  Costas peered skeptically at Hiebermeyer. “How are your sea legs? We might hit the monsoon.”

  “My sea legs are fine.” Hiebermeyer looked pointedly at Jack. “It’s his I’m worried about.”

  “That hasn’t happened for years,” Jack said defensively. “Not since we were kids, Maurice. And that was a sailing dinghy. One that you built. Very badly.”

  Aysha looked wide-eyed at Jack, the hint of a smile on her lips. “I am hearing this right? The famous Jack Howard gets seasick?”

  “He calls it the Nelson touch,” Costas said. “Lord Nelson, England’s greatest admiral. Sick as a dog every time he put out to sea.”

  “I do not get seasick,” Jack said. “I just empathize with my heroes.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Hiebermeyer said. “Because with what I’ve got here in this case, you won’t be having much time to stare at the horizon. Are you really taking us to Arikamedu?”

  “Where?” Costas peered at Jack suspiciously. “You’ve got that look.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Where the Romans who sailed from here landed in southeast India. It’s an amazing site. Roman pottery in India. The Archaeological Survey of India are planning a new excavation. I’m official advisor for their underwater unit, and I promised to look in when Seaquest II was next in the Indian Ocean. Maurice and Aysha have never been there, and it seems crazy not to give them the chance if they’re going to be aboard with us anyway. I’ve already called our contact at Arikamedu and prepped him. He can’t wait to see us.”

  “I thought we were going to test my new submersible off Hawaii,” Costas grumbled. “And find a beach. And prop up a nice little palm-fronded bar.”

  “Just a small diversion first,” Jack said.

  Costas stared at him. “Yeah. Right. A diversion.”

  Jack looked at the carving of the dancing female spirit, then at the sherd with the Tamil graffito. Ramaya. He put it back down carefully on the table, and glanced up at the others. “Well, if you’re ready, I think we’re good to go. The sooner we do, the sooner we find out what it is you’ve got in that case.”

  Hiebermeyer picked up the case. Jack and Costas each shouldered a rucksack lying ready by the tent, and Aysha took a briefcase and a smaller bag. They waved back at the group in the trench and began to walk down the slope toward the helicopter. Hiebermeyer seemed lost in thought again, but suddenly stopped, put the case down and peered at Jack. “I just remembered. Talking about the dinghy reminded me. And then going to southern India. You’ve got family history out there, haven’t you? Your great-great grandfather, wasn’t it, the soldier? Something he found in the jungle, back in the nineteenth century. You used to go on about it when we were at school. How you’d love to get out there. As I recall it was somewhere in Tamil Nadu, the Eastern Ghats. If you’re at Arikamedu, you won’t be
that far off.”

  Jack stared intently at Hiebermeyer. “I’ve always wanted to see if I could find out more. You’re right. I’m passionate about it. This is too good an opportunity to miss. It’d be a small diversion, a day or two. I think I can set it up with the Survey of India. And there’s a connection with the Romans, I’m sure of it. I’ve got a gut instinct.”

  “Uh-oh,” Costas said, stopping beside them. “Not just a diversion. A gut instinct. That’s serious.”

  Jack grinned, then dumped the rucksack and reached into his own bag and extracted a small brown envelope. He took Hiebermeyer’s hand, held it palm-up and gently tipped out the gold coin. Aysha gasped, and Hiebermeyer held the coin up, the sun glinting dazzlingly off the image of the emperor. “I guessed you’d found something like this, Jack. You were leaving a trail of hints. I do know you pretty well.” He held up the coin again. “It’s fantastic,” he murmured. “The crumbled walls, these scraps of ancient Berenikê, they tell a human story, but this place was really about what passed through it, incredible riches, the wealth of an empire. To understand what actually went on here, you have to hold this. To hold treasure. That’s what fueled this place, treasure on an unimaginable scale.”

  “And the sea trapped one load in its net,” Costas said.

  “There are more of these coins?” Hiebermeyer said.

  “Thousands of them,” Jack said. “All mint issues. All Imperial gold.”

  “It’s the mother lode,” Costas said.

  Hiebermeyer relaxed his shoulders, gave a broad smile and put his other hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Jack. You remember what I used to call you, when we were boys? Lucky Jack.” He handed back the coin, picked up the case again then took Costas by the arm, steering him down the dusty slope toward the helicopter. “Now, tell me about these elephants.”

  “You’re not going to believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  THREE DAYS LATER JACK STOOD OUTSIDE ON THE FLYING bridge of Seaquest II, leaning on the railing and looking out toward the eastern horizon. The sun had risen in a clear sky for the first time since they had left the Red Sea, and Jack enjoyed the warm radiance as it reflected off the water. It had been three days not entirely to his liking. The monsoon had hit them as soon as they rounded Arabia, and they had sailed directly across the open ocean toward the southern tip of India. The only saving grace was the twenty-knot speed with the wind behind them. Jack could barely comprehend how ancient Greek and Egyptian sailors had done it, bucketing and wallowing in the swell, hundreds of miles from land with only the direction of the monsoon for navigation. It would have been a tremendous feat of courage, and sailing out of sight of land would have been their worst nightmare. Especially if they had been seasick. Jack swallowed hard, and tried to forget the last seventy-eight hours. The worst had not happened, but it had been close. He felt dog-tired, but also like the survivor of a near-fatal illness with a new lease on life. And it had also been exhilarating, the hours he had spent rooted to this spot, lashed by wind and spray, his eyes roving continuously, searching for the line of the horizon, in the tumult of the swell and flickering blackness that had seemed without end.

  The captain’s face popped out of the bridge door, and a hand holding a steaming mug. “We’re entering the Palk Strait now. We’ve got a local pilot coming to navigate us through and I’m putting the ship on alert. The Sri Lankan navy’s fighting a gun battle with Tamil Tiger boats just off the northern tip, and we’ll be within range.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Jack took the mug gratefully and turned back to the sea. He watched the launch carrying the pilot come alongside, skillfully matching their speed while the pilot was hooked into a chair and winched on board. He could see land now on both sides, the southern tip of India and the northwestern coast of Sri Lanka. The narrows ahead were another obstacle facing ancient sailors, treacherous shallows and reefs that only local craft could ply. But once through, the sailors were near the end of their voyage, at the place where they met traders coming from the east, from Chrysê, the semi-mythical land of gold, from the farthest places known to westerners. Jack looked at his watch. Maurice had promised that this would be the morning to reveal his find before they reached the Roman site of Arikamedu. Maurice and Aysha had been holed up continuously in the ship’s lab belowdecks, piecing together whatever it was that Maurice had brought on board from his excavation in Egypt. Jack was itching to join them. He would go down and see for himself once he had finished his coffee. Especially now that belowdecks was a realistic proposition, not the lurching nightmare of the last three days.

  A hand touched his arm, and he turned to Rebecca. She was dressed in jeans and an IMU T-shirt. “Feeling better?” she said. Jack nodded, smiling. Her accent was American, and her voice was developing the depth that Jack had found attractive in her mother. Rebecca was black-haired, as Elizabeth had been, but had Jack’s blue eyes. There was a sadness in them, a sadness that would always be there, and Jack’s heart went out to a child who had experienced the loss of her mother, and had grown up apart from her real parents. Jack had only known he was a father since the appalling circumstances of Elizabeth’s disappearance and death in Naples less than a year before. Elizabeth had left him sixteen years earlier when she had succumbed to family pressure to return to Naples, and Jack realized she could only have known she was pregnant once she had been sucked back into the dark underworld from which she never found an escape. She had not wanted to risk bringing up her daughter in that world and had sent her to New York. Rebecca had grown up strong and confident under the guardianship of her mother’s friends, and when Elizabeth had explained to her the reasons why, the dark backdrop of her life in Naples, she had understood as only a child could, absorbed in the excitements of her own life. But the death of her mother had been devastating, and after Jack had first met Rebecca in New York, his friends at IMU had become a second family to her. Jack had gone with her to Naples for the commemoration held by her mother’s colleagues from the archaeological superintendency on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, overlooking the Roman site that had been Elizabeth’s lifelong work, and the modern city whose dark tentacles had taken her life. Jack knew they were still there, those who had used her, worn her down, even among her own family, but there was to be no retribution; that cycle had been the poison that killed her. His choice, the one Elizabeth would have craved, was to walk away and take their daughter with him, to create a new and exciting world for Rebecca that would help her package the past in a place where it would never threaten to take hold of her. Jack would never know whether Elizabeth had intended to tell him about their daughter, but he could not afford to dwell on it. His responsibility now was Rebecca’s happiness. He put his hand on hers. “I feel fine,” he said. “I just needed some off-time.”

  “For three days? You? Dad.” She had only just begun calling him that. “It’s me, remember? You don’t need to play the hero.”

  Jack gestured at what she was holding. “What’s the book?”

  “A guy called Cosmas Indicopleustes. That means Cosmas, sailor of the Indian Ocean. He was an Egyptian monk who came here in the sixth century AD. I was doing background reading, like you asked. Being your research assistant. I found this in your library.”

  “What does he say about Sri Lanka?”

  She opened the book and read:

  “The island being, as it is, in a central position, is much frequented by ships from all parts of India and from Persia and Ethiopia, and it likewise sends many of its own. And from the remotest countries, I mean Tzinitza, it receives silks, aloes, cloves and other products, and these again are passed on to marts on this side. And the island receives imports from all these marts which we have mentioned and passes them on to the remoter ports, while at the same time, exporting its produce in both directions. And farther away is the clove country, then Tzinitza, which produces the silk. Beyond this there is no other country, for the Ocean surrounds it to the east.”

  She closed the bo
ok. “Okay. Tzinitza is China, the clove country is Indonesia. What he’s saying is that Sri Lanka was a kind of clearinghouse, midway between two worlds. Captain Macalister suggested I look at the Admiralty chart. I saw how treacherous this strait is, a deathtrap for big ships. So what Cosmas was saying was, ships from Egypt came here, off-loaded their stuff onto local craft, then waited. The local craft took it over the shallows to the other side, loaded it on big ships coming from the Bay of Bengal, Indonesia, even China. And the same thing happened in reverse. You can really picture it out here, those big fat-hulled Roman ships where we are now, and over there on the other side Chinese junks, with all kinds of canoes and catamarans in between. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Pretty cool,” Jack replied, grinning. “Cosmas was writing five hundred years after what the Romans we’re talking about at Berenikê, but basically it’s the same scenario, until the Arab conquest of the Middle East and north Africa shut down the sea routes to India. Cosmas provides the most detailed account we have of the ancient trade that went on here. Good work, research assistant.”

  “Think outside the box. That’s what Uncle Costas tells me.”

  “Uncle Costas?” Jack said.

  “Hiemy says I’m a lot like you. I don’t know whether that’s praise or not.”

  “Who?”

  “Hiemy. You know, your old buddy. Herr Professor Dr. Hiebermeyer. That’s what Aysha calls him, Hiemy.”

  “Of course,” Jack said. “Hiemy.”

  “Aysha’s in love with him, you know.”

  “Hang on a second. One thing at a time.”

  “Just getting you up to speed. You’ve spent the last three days with your head in the clouds.”