“You don’t see those on Egyptian boats,” Jack said. “But you do see them on ancient ships of the Mediterranean, where the eye is still used today to ward off bad luck.”
“Specifically, you might see it on a Phoenician ship,” Jeremy said, taking the phone and swiping the screen to get maximum magnification. “Definitely on a Phoenician ship.”
“What else can you see?” Jack asked.
Jeremy handed the phone back, pointing. “That.”
Jack stared at the image. It was a section of planking just below the bow, half buried in mud, with a symbol faintly visible on one of the planks. “It’s a carpenter’s mark,” he said. “The letters alpha and gamma.”
“The letter A is toppled over on one side,” Jeremy said. “That’s the Phoenician letter A. Can you see it?”
“What could a Phoenician ship possibly be doing in the southern Red Sea?” Costas said, looking at Jack with a half-smile on his face.
“Pharaoh Necho’s expedition?” Rebecca said. “Didn’t he employ Phoenicians to sail south down the Red Sea on their expedition to circumnavigate Africa?”
“Phoenicians came in the other direction too, didn’t they?” Ahmed said. “Circumnavigating Africa from the west. You told me your theory about Hanno.”
Jack nodded slowly, his mind racing, staring at the photo. “He may not have sailed the entire route back into the Mediterranean, but he made it back to Carthage, and I’m convinced it was from this side of Africa.”
“Then you’ll be very intrigued with the other thing the fisherman found.” Ahmed unwrapped the package, carefully taking out an encrusted potsherd. “This was in the shallows just beyond the hull. It looks like an amphora sherd to me. I’ve been following the blog on your Phoenician wreck off Cornwall over the past few weeks, so I’m pretty sure I can recognize Phoenician letters when I see them. I think I can read that first word.”
He passed the sherd to Jack, who held it so the others could see it. One side, the interior, was covered with worm castings and accretion, with some of the pitch lining of the amphora still visible. The other side had the faint lines of letters scratched on it, clearly done in antiquity. Jack stared, astonished. Two words; two brothers. One was the man he had followed on his venture around the coast of Africa, an extraordinary expedition with an extraordinary cargo; the other was a man who had gone to the far side of the known world, whose final moments they had charted in the waters of the cove in England where Jack had been diving less than a week before, where Costas had found the sherd inscribed in the last moments of duress, when that man too could only think of his brother.
“Hanno and Himilco,” Rebecca said quietly. “Hanno thinking of his brother when he leaves his ship, wondering if he’ll see him again.”
Jeremy took out a pocket magnifier and scrutinized the sherd, angling it against the firelight. He snapped the magnifier shut and handed the sherd back to Jack. “I thought so,” he said.
“What is it?” Jack said.
“Between the names. You can barely see it, but it’s there. That pictogram.”
Jack stared. Suddenly he could see it, the image on the plaque from Clan Macpherson that had been on the sherd from the Cornwall wreck. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said, passing it to Rebecca, pointing at the symbol of the two men carrying the box. “That’s incredible. It’s exactly the same.”
Costas reached over and shook his hand. “Well, you didn’t find the Ark of the Covenant, but then neither did those Nazi bastards. But when it comes down to it, there’s nothing like a potsherd to keep an archaeologist happy.”
“Oh, but I did find it,” Jack said, taking the sherd again and holding it up. “And you’re right. This sherd is my gold, all the gold I need.” He grinned at Ahmed. “I think I owe you a place on our next big wreck excavation, your duties permitting, of course.”
“I’d love that.”
“Right, grub’s up,” Costas said. “There’s beer and water in the bag for everyone. Plates, please.”
Jack took a bottle of water and uncapped it. He picked up a plate, waiting his turn, and took a deep drink, looking at the stars that were just becoming visible above the horizon. He thought of all those he seemed to have been shadowing: Hanno and the Phoenicians, the soldiers who had scaled Magdala in 1868, the men of Clan Macpherson, and those in Bletchley Park who had decided their fate. For a moment he imagined himself looking down from far above, seeing only the red speck of the fire, the bare rock and the great expanse of the sea around them, imagining those lives that had gone before, all of them navigating routes that seemed to have converged at this place.
He took another swig and watched Rebecca sit down on the same rock as Jeremy with her plateful. He looked back at the sea again, thinking about diving. Macleod had told him about Rebecca’s project as soon as she had introduced it, but he had let her take it forward. They would need to sit down tomorrow with the Admiralty charts to talk about currents and reefs. He had already scoped out the island for the most likely places for wreckage, the places nearest to the sailing routes where ships might have been blown ashore. They would have to take account of the variegation of the seabed he had seen on their hurried dive from the doomed trawler. A few hundred meters of easy-looking coastal water on the surface could be a jumble of rocks and gullies underwater, hard to navigate and impossible to survey systematically. It would be Rebecca’s project, but he would make sure they did not come away empty-handed. And she might well be right. There could be a great treasure lurking under these waves in front of them, something to add to IMU’s rich bank of projects for the future.
Rebecca passed her phone over to Jack. “Maurice just sent me this. He wanted you to see it.”
Jack stared at the image, a selfie of Maurice holding a small Egyptian statue of a god and beaming at the camera. “Huh,” he said. “A shabti, a funerary figurine. That looks like the one he found when we excavated the Roman villa as schoolboys, the find that really turned him on to Egyptology. Good to see him looking happy again.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “That’s one he’s just found in Carthage. That’s why he’s so happy.”
Jack smiled broadly. “Well I’ll be damned. Good on you, Maurice.”
“It was at the bottom of the harbor entrance channel, below the bronze of Ba’al and the gorilla skin. He says he knows it doesn’t prove anything, that it could have been dropped overboard by a passing ship, but he does say that it’s the right date — ninth century BC — for an Egyptian presence in the early trading post at Carthage. He says finding it makes him feel as if he’s come full circle. He says from now on he’s not going to hold back on telling you what he’s found. From now on he’s going to tell you everything.”
“That sounds like the old Maurice. I knew he’d be back.”
Costas slapped a fish on Jack’s plate and sat down beside him, grunting with satisfaction as he contemplated the pile on his own plate. He nudged Jack along on his rock to make more space, and peered at him. “You’ve got that look again.”
“You always say that. I’ve just been thinking, that’s all.”
Costas picked up a fish by the tail and pulled the flesh off the bone, then cracked open a beer. “Is there something you want to ask me?”
“About what?”
He took a swig. “You know. The usual. About my plans.”
“About your arm.”
“My arm? What about it?”
“Salt water would do it good. Clean up the wound.”