‘That’s it,’ he replied. ‘The Temple of Poseidon.’
The glow came from powerful spotlights standing on the roof of a massive structure rising from the sea floor. Even in ruins, the centrepiece of the lost city was still awe-inspiring. When Nina had first discovered it, the great temple had been largely buried by silt. Most of the surrounding sediment had since been cleared, but the building itself had suffered massive damage when her survey ship was deliberately scuttled and smashed down on top of it. Some of the RV Evenor’s remains were still in place, the wreck too big and costly to remove entirely. But parts had been cut away to give access to what remained of the temple.
The submersible approached the northern end of the huge vaulted ruin. The lights encircled an area where the damaged roof had been carefully opened up. Beneath it was the altar room, not merely a place of religious importance, but also an archive: the entire history of the Atlantean civilisation was recorded within, scribed into the sheets of gold alloy covering the walls. Some had been lost when the ceiling collapsed, but others were still intact, including an account of the doomed civilisation’s last hours.
It was a different record that the expedition hoped to discover, however.
‘Matt, move to drop-off position,’ Blumberg ordered. ‘Nerio, Eddie, you’re up.’
The submersible stopped above the ring of lights, pulsing its thrusters at low power to hold position against the ocean’s slow but relentless current. ‘Okay, guys, we’re here,’ said Matt. The two divers each collected an equipment case, then Eddie leaned his shaved head closer to the camera and grinned at Nina, revealing the gap between his two front teeth, before stepping off the skid.
‘Good luck,’ she told him.
‘Hope we don’t need it,’ Eddie replied. The deep suit — comprised of a hard casing around his body that let him breathe air at normal atmospheric pressure to eliminate any risk of the bends, heavy-duty seals at the shoulders and hips allowing his drysuited limbs to move freely — was neutrally buoyant, but the case was heavy enough to let him drift lazily downwards. A spool of hair-thin fibre-optic communications line played out behind him, keeping him in direct contact with the sub and the IHA. His feet made gentle contact with the ancient stone. ‘Touchdown! It didn’t collapse, so that’s a good start.’
Cellini landed a few feet away. ‘This part of the temple should be very stable,’ he said. ‘Only below the altar room is it…’ He searched for the best English word, waggling his free hand from side to side. ‘Wobbly.’
‘And guess where we’re going,’ Eddie sighed. He became more serious as he surveyed his surroundings.
He had visited the altar room before, as well as near-identical copies the Atlanteans had built after abandoning their homeland; one in a vast cavern within a Himalayan mountain, the other deep in the jungles of Brazil. The archaeologists cataloguing the lost city on the Amazon had since discovered more chambers beneath its altar room — not hidden, exactly, but neither had they been immediately obvious. Meanwhile, the teams exploring Atlantis itself had uncovered references to a previously unknown treasure held somewhere within the Temple of Poseidon, and all the clues pointed to one of those secondary rooms.
There were two problems. The first was that nobody was sure if the Brazilian temple’s chambers were exact duplicates of the original — sonar searches suggested open spaces beneath this altar room, but the results were far from conclusive. The second, and bigger, was that even if they existed, the Evenor’s destructive landing had dropped countless tons of debris into the temple’s interior, making it impossible to know what was beneath.
Until someone remembered that Nina and Eddie had been inside the temple while it was still intact…
There was a camera mounted on the Yorkshireman’s right shoulder. ‘Nina, you seeing this?’ he asked.
‘Yes, all looking good,’ his wife replied. ‘I can see the stairs.’
An opening in one wall descended into darkness. The rubble blocking it had been removed, only for the IHA’s explorers to find another, more solid obstruction further down. Small underwater drones had been able to squeeze past it to confirm that the stairway continued beyond, but in turn were stymied by further debris. To the fury of their controllers, the second blockage looked loose enough to be cleared by hand, but the little robots lacked the power to do so.
Which was why, the previous day, Cellini and another diver had used precision explosive charges to split apart the first obstacle. The blast had stirred up debris and sediment, turning the water in the tunnel completely opaque. It had now settled, so he and Eddie could check if the stairway was passable, and if so, explore its depths.
The Italian gestured to his dive partner. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Sure,’ Eddie replied. ‘I’ll try not to wreck the entire place.’ He smiled to reassure the younger man, who clearly knew his reputation.
Blumberg’s voice came through his earpiece. ‘That would be appreciated this time.’
‘Twat,’ said Eddie under his breath, though deliberately just loud enough for his microphone to pick up. The IHA’s director was making an implied criticism of his predecessor and her husband; despite their best efforts, the Temple of Poseidon was far from the only archaeological site to be seriously damaged after Nina had discovered it.
‘What was that?’
‘Must have been a fish farting. Okay, Nerio, let’s go.’
Eddie used the controller stalk attached to the deep suit’s chest to start its ducted propellers, gliding at low speed to the entrance. Cellini touched down beside him, directing his suit’s lights down the steeply sloping passage. Stone steps receded into the murk for about twenty feet before the path came to an abrupt halt.
A huge stone slab had been dislodged from the ceiling, pulverising everything beneath it. It had originally come to rest at an angle, leaving a gap just big enough for the drones. Now, though, the space was much larger. The explosives had split the great block in two, the lower half dropping on to the steps and the upper wedging against it.
Rather than use the thrusters, Eddie carefully walked to the slab and took a powerful hand-held light from his case, shining it over the carved stone. It looked as if the divers could swim past — but first there was a question that had to be answered.
Cellini voiced it. ‘Is it safe?’
‘Who am I, Dustin Hoffman?’ Eddie waited for a reply, but got only a bemused stare from the young man. ‘You haven’t seen Marathon Man?’ Another blank look. ‘You haven’t even heard of… Oh, I give up. Kids today!’
‘Just wait until our kid’s older,’ Nina joked. ‘Macy’ll be like, “Dad, all your cultural references are from the twentieth century! Mom’s the archaeologist, not me.”’
‘I dunno, if ever a kid was destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps…’ He used his hands to test the blocks. They stayed firm.
Cellini added his torchlight to the Englishman’s. ‘So we will fit, yes? Help me through.’ He swam to the gap. ‘Is my suit clear?’
Eddie checked. There would only be a small space between the suit’s fibreglass casing and the stone. ‘Roll on your right so you don’t bang your air tank cover on the ceiling.’ Cellini did so. ‘Okay, try to get through. Don’t use your legs — I’ll push you.’
Bracing himself, he carefully assisted the other man into the opening. Despite their best efforts, the suit scraped against the tight surrounds, with a tense moment when the control stalk caught the stone block, but a small roll brought Cellini clear. The hard carapace finally slipped through, and the Italian immediately angled downwards to get clear. ‘I made it!’ he cried.