The Pharaoh's Secret

  “The same items our violent friends just lifted without paying a penny,” Joe said.

  “Kensington said two hundred thousand wouldn’t get them a seat at the table, so they took the whole buffet.”

  Joe asked the obvious question: “Why would Kensington point us to the Sophie Celine when he wouldn’t even tell us what was going to be in the auction?”

  “The same reason these guys didn’t kill him and take the artifacts until we showed up and started asking questions. There must be something on that wreck they still want, something that hasn’t come up yet.”

  “The Egyptian tablets I saw were broken,” Joe said. “Partial pieces, fragments. Maybe they’re after the remaining sections.”

  Kurt turned to Renata. “Where’s this wreck?”

  “Here’s the location,” she said, handing Kurt the rest of her notes. “It’s about thirty miles east of Valletta.”

  “Last I checked, that wasn’t the way to France,” Kurt said.

  “Her captain was trying to avoid British ships. He planned a route east and then north, either intending to skirt the coast of Sicily or to cut through the strait between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Apparently, he ran into bad weather before he had the chance to do either. The guess is he turned back but never made it to port.”

  For the first time in days, Kurt felt they were getting ahead of the game.

  “I guess we know our next move,” Joe said. “And their move as well. When they find out these carvings and tablets are only partials and fragments, they’ll go after that wreck and try to salvage what’s left on it themselves.”

  “That’s what I would do,” Kurt said. “I still can’t imagine how this all connects or what they’re after, but if it didn’t truly matter, they’d have cut and run by now. Something tells me we’d better dive on this wreck site before they do.”

  30

  The Sea Dragon left Valletta with Kurt, Joe, Dr. Ambrosini and a skeleton crew on board. Kurt had sent everyone else back to the States out of an abundance of caution.

  “Stay on this heading,” he told Captain Reynolds.

  “Aye,” Reynolds said. “But you realize we’re going to miss the wreck by miles unless we turn north.”

  “I’m counting on that separation to give us the element of surprise.”

  Reynolds nodded and rechecked the navigation screen. “You’re the boss.”

  Confident they were on the right course, Kurt went aft, to find Joe and Renata assembling a glider. “Ready to take wing?”

  “Almost,” Renata said. She checked the latches on the glider’s payload and activated a camera with a powerful zoom lens. “All set.”

  Kurt moved to a spot in front of the winch controls. They were normally used to tow a sonar array, but the steel cable had been replaced by a thin plastic line that was now attached to the glider, which Joe was carrying to the stern.

  “Ready,” Renata said.

  Joe stood on the transom holding the glider up high over his head. It all but jumped from his hand as the lengthy wings caught the slipstream formed by the boat’s forward motion.

  As the glider took flight, Kurt spooled out the tether and the thin, fiber optic cable began to unwind from the drum of the winch. As the glider rose above and behind the boat, Renata took control of it using a small handset.

  When the glider reached five hundred feet, she stopped the climb. “Lock it in there,” she said to Kurt.

  Kurt stopped the winch and the glider held altitude, trailing out behind the Sea Dragon. “How does it look from the bird’s-eye view?”

  Renata switched on the glider’s camera, watching as the video came up on a computer screen to her right. At first, everything was blurry, but the autofocus sharpened quickly and the Sea Dragon could be seen clearly, plowing across a field of deep blue.

  “We look fine,” she said. “Now, let’s see about our friends.”

  She panned to the north, where a pair of boats came into view. Initially, they were tiny specks on the ocean, like two grains of rice on a dark blue tablecloth, but as she adjusted the powerful zoom lens on the glider’s camera it brought the targets into focus.

  “A dive boat and a barge,” she said.

  “Can you zoom in closer?” Kurt asked.

  “No problem.”

  “Start with the barge,” he suggested.

  She focused on the barge, extending the telescopic lens until the details began to emerge. White lettering along its red hull spelled out D’Campion Conservancy. A small crane sat at one end of the barge. The crane was currently supporting a large PVC tube. Turbulent water and sediment were pouring through it. The silt washed out onto a metal screen designed to trap anything larger than a fist-sized stone, but the residue and seawater splashed through unabated, leaving a milky stain that spread west of the barge.

  “Looks like they’re tidying up,” Joe said.

  “Vacuuming up the entire seafloor,” Kurt added.

  As the camera panned, two men could be seen examining various items caught in the screens. After quick looks, they tossed the items overboard.

  “Rocks, shells or bits of coral,” Kurt guessed.

  “They must be looking for big prizes,” Joe replied. “More tablets like the one I saw in the museum. What do they care if they flush minor treasures back into the sea?”

  “They’d care if they were truly working for the conservancy,” Kurt said, “but I don’t think that’s the case.”

  He turned to Renata. “Can you focus on the other boat?”

  She changed the angle of the camera and locked onto the sixty-foot dive boat. Racks of scuba tanks and other gear sat on the front deck. The stern was crowded with several people, who were sitting cross-legged in the sun.

  “Either they’re taking a yoga class or . . .”

  Standing behind these men was another figure. In his arms, a long-barreled rifle.

  Renata tried to zoom farther in, but the camera’s autolock was challenged to keep the man’s face in the picture. “Can’t see his features,” she said.

  “We don’t need to,” Kurt told her. “I think we all know who we’re dealing with.”

  “Maybe we should contact the Coast Guard or the Maltese Defense Force at this point,” she suggested. “They could send a few boats from the Defense Force. We could round up the whole gang.”

  “I like that idea,” Kurt said, “except that we’d just be getting those poor divers killed. These guys play for keeps. We’ve already seen them take out one of their own to prevent us from getting any information out of him. They killed Hagen and Kensington and half the security team at the museum. And they even tried to blow up the warehouse. If we call in the Maltese Defense Force, they’ll kill those divers and hightail it out of here. Even if they’re caught or surrounded, I expect they’d go down shooting or blow themselves up. And at that point we’re back to square one, with another dozen bodies added to the count.”

  Renata nodded at his logic, sighed and brushed a curl of dark hair from her face. “I suppose you’re right. But we can’t take them ourselves.”

  “We might be able to use the element of surprise,” Kurt said.

  “Hate to tell you, but I left our cloaking device back in Washington,” Joe said.

  “I’m not suggesting we approach from the surface,” Kurt said.

  “So we take the fight to the deep,” Joe said.

  “Surprise will be on our side. And we might pick up some allies.”

  “From where?”

  “If these guys had divers of their own, they wouldn’t need to keep the men on deck at gunpoint. If the divers from the conservancy are working below to keep their friends from getting shot up top, they’d probably be ready to mutiny if the chance came along.”

  “So we go in, make friends and start a rebellion,” Joe said.

&nbs
p; “Classic counterinsurgency,” Kurt said.

  Twenty minutes later, Kurt and Joe were being lowered over the side in the powered dive suits along with an ROV named Turtle. They were still three miles from the wreck site, presumably far enough to keep the armed thugs from being suspicious. Just to make sure, Captain Reynolds turned the Sea Dragon away. If they were being watched on radar or with binoculars, it would look as if they were passing harmlessly to the south.

  As the platform reached the water, Kurt, Joe and the Turtle were swept off it. They adjusted their buoyancy and disappeared beneath the surface, sinking slowly, grasping the frame of the ROV and pulling themselves into the curved sections behind its bulbous hydrodynamic nose. At a depth of fifty feet, Kurt gave a thumbs-up and the propellers on the Turtle began to spin.

  The Turtle was normally piloted from the mother ship up above, but because it was designed to work in concert with divers on the bottom, the controls could be linked to the dive suits that Kurt and Joe were wearing. In this case, Joe was plugged in and driving.

  “Take us down,” Kurt said. “Let’s hug the bottom.”

  “Roger that,” Joe replied.

  The waters east of Malta were relatively shallow, with an area known as the Malta Plateau spreading to the east and also north toward Sicily. The Sophie Celine had settled at a depth of ninety feet. It was deep enough to be a challenge, shallow enough for regular divers to work, but with a minimum of natural light reaching down from the surface.

  “Bottom coming up,” Joe said.

  In addition to the controls, Joe was plugged into the ROV’s telemetry. He could see their depth, heading and speed on a heads-up display inside his helmet.

  The seafloor soon came into view, illuminated by the ROV’s forward-mounted lights. Joe leveled off, adjusted their course and punched the throttle.

  “I’m going to kill the lights,” Joe said. “Don’t want anyone to see us coming.”

  “Try not to run into anything,” Kurt said.

  The lights went out and the ride became a trip through a dark tunnel until their eyes adjusted. “More light than I expected,” Joe said.

  “Seas are calm,” Kurt said. “That always helps. Not a lot of sediment moving around down here.”

  “I put the visibility at fifty feet.”

  “Then make sure we stop at least a hundred and ten feet from the wreck.”

  The Turtle was fast for an ROV. With a boost from the current, they were doing almost seven knots, but it still took nearly twenty minutes before they approached the wreck site, a dim glow in the distance.

  “At least three or four diving lights,” Joe said.

  Kurt acknowledged, then saw a fifth and sixth light appear, as someone came up from behind a mound of sediment.

  Up ahead, the lights blurred as if hidden in a swirl of dust. Already Kurt could feel the strange throbbing sound of a submerged vacuum at work.

  “Ease us in a little closer and drop me off,” Kurt said. “I’ll find the nearest diver and ask if he needs help.”

  Kurt flipped open a panel on the hard suit’s arm. A waterproof display screen would translate anything he said into printed words, allowing him to communicate with other divers.

  “And what if he’s a bad guy?”

  “That’s what this is for.”

  From the tool rack Kurt pulled a Picasso twin-rail speargun. The two spears were set side by side, the triggers were arranged one in front of the other. The safety was currently on.

  “I brought one for you in case you need it,” Kurt added. “But, for now, stay out on the perimeter and keep a sharp eye. If I get in trouble, you know what to do.”

  They were about a hundred feet away from the activity. Kurt doubted anyone could see them, the same way a man in a lighted room can’t see out onto a dark lawn at night, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  “This is my stop,” he said. With that, he pushed away from the Turtle, engaged his own thrusters and moved off at an angle. A last look back showed Joe holding station, as ordered.

  31

  Kurt moved through the water in almost complete silence, the slight whirring of his own thruster barely audible. The left side of the wreck appeared to have more activity. At least five lights in that area, plus the divers in standard gear who were working the vacuum. He moved to the right, where he saw only two lights.

  Approaching through the cloud, he could tell the divers were trying to dig something out from under the fossilized bones of the old ship.

  Unlike with the NUMA excavations—and every other underwater dig Kurt had ever heard of—these men were literally hacking at the wreck, breaking pieces off and tossing them aside.

  I guess when you have a gun to your head, preservation goes out the window.

  By now, Joe was too far away to pick up any radio transmission, so Kurt was on his own. He eased in behind two divers, who were oblivious to his presence.

  “Enable written communication,” he whispered.

  A little green box with the letter T inside it appeared on his helmet display.

  He had only so many characters to work with and he settled on the simplest thing he could think of. “I’m here to help you.”

  The small screen on his arm lit up and Kurt nudged the throttle forward.

  Reaching out, he tapped the closest man on the shoulder, waiting for the diver to turn in shock or look around surprised. But, of all things, the diver just continued working.

  Kurt tapped him again, harder this time. When nothing happened, he grabbed the diver’s shoulder and spun him around forcibly.

  The diver looked at him in numbed shock. Kurt could see that the diver’s face was blue, his eyes half closed. These men had been down here a long time. Too long.

  Kurt pointed down to his arm and the display panel.

  The man read the message and nodded slowly. He then grabbed a small whiteboard he had with him and scribbled Digging fast as I can. And turned back to the job.

  He thinks I’m one of the bad guys. That meant there were overseers down here among the dive crew.

  Kurt grabbed the man again.

  “I rescue you.”

  The man blinked for a moment, his eyes widened a bit. Now he seemed to get it. He became agitated to the point that Kurt had to hold him still.

  “How many bad guys?”

  The man wrote 9.

  “All down here?”

  5 . . . 4

  Five up top and four in the water. That was worse than Kurt had expected.

  “Show me.”

  Before the man had a chance to show Kurt anything, a wave of light swept over them both. The diver’s eyes told the story. Kurt spun and saw a man charging with a spear in his hand.

  32

  Kurt pushed the diver to one side and brought the Picasso up to shoot, but the attacking diver was too close and they ended up grappling instead of spearing each other.

  To Kurt’s chagrin, the attacker was in a full-face helmet and had on a partial hard suit. Otherwise, Kurt would have simply ripped the guy’s mask off. Instead, they twisted and rolled until Kurt got the man in a headlock, engaged the thrusters and accelerated toward an outcropping of wood and coral that had once been the bow of the Sophie C.

  The attacker dropped the speargun and went for a knife, but before he could use it Kurt dragged him across the high point of the bow, slamming the back of the diver’s head into the outcropping at maximum speed.

  The diver went limp on impact, dropping the knife and sinking toward the bottom with his arms outstretched, knocked-out at the very least.

  Two more men came racing toward him from the far side of the work site. Like the first man, these men were wearing full-face helmets, but, unlike the man he’d just knocked out, they were being pushed through the water by propulsion units of their own.

  A spe
ar shot past Kurt, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake. Kurt dove for the bottom, kicking up silt to act as a smokescreen.

  He engaged his own thrusters at full speed and the cloud grew behind him. He remembered an old adage from a World War II fighter pilot he’d worked with years back: Always turn left in the clouds. Why left and not right, he didn’t know, but if it was good enough for the skies over Midway, it was good enough for the bottom of the sea.

  He kept the throttle of his dive suit wide open and banked to the left, dragging his foot to kick more sediment. The trick worked for a moment, but the lights of one frogman came rushing out through the cloud. He spotted Kurt and raised a weapon.

  Kurt turned, and instead of the whoosh of another spear, Kurt heard the dull, muted thumping of a rifle. It sounded an awful lot like the venerable AK-47.

  One of the shoulder-mounted wings of his suit shattered. Kurt continued to move, kicking furiously in addition to the power of the thrusters.

  He made it to behind the wreck. “Joe, if you can hear me, I need help in a big way. It’s three against one and these guys are carrying underwater rifles. Their propulsion units look Russian to me, so I’m guessing the rifles are too.”

  Kurt could think of two different rifles the Russians had designed for their Spetsnaz commandos and frogmen. A weapon called the APS, which fired special steel-core projectiles called bolts that were nearly five inches long. These heavy bolts cut through the water far better than any standard lead bullet, but they still had a limited range due to the density of water. At this depth, it couldn’t have been more than fifty to sixty feet, but as Kurt’s aching back attested, they could still deliver a thump even out of the effective killing distance.

  “Joe, do you read me? Joe?”

  Another thing dense water did was limit even the most advanced communications systems. Joe was out of range. He looked left to the stern of the Sophie Celine, there were lights coming around that way. He glanced to the right and saw the same thing.