A cold current swept him sideways. He let himself be taken by it, then reoriented himself and resumed his exploration, making sure that Miles was filming away, both to provide footage for their documentary and to enable their shipboard project crew to follow along. Not that they’d had that much to film so far, despite it being such a perfect-looking wreck mound, nearly eighty metres long, covered in deep sand studded by rocks, dead coral and a scatter-pattern of artefacts. It lay at the foot of a steep rock shelf that rose sharply from the sea-bed like a gigantic underwater podium on which corals had grown over the centuries to within a foot or two of the surface at low tide, a real hazard for the ships of old, navigating by their crude charts and rough reckoning, on prayer and sacrifices to the gods.
The shark had circled around and now passed close enough by that he could see the ugly pale yellow of its underbelly, the dark spots and stripes on its blue-grey back. A tiger, ten to twelve feet long. He shared a glance with Miles. They were notoriously unpredictable creatures: they’d take a bite out of you just from curiosity. But there was little to be done about it. Sharks liked to attack from underneath; ending the dive and beginning their ascent now would be far more dangerous than staying put. He turned back to the sea-bed. They’d already recovered the two Chinese cannons that they’d known about before they’d arrived. They’d also found a number of early Ming coins and several shards of fifteenth-century porcelain, plus broken coarse-ware, nails and ironwork that were harder to attribute, but which all presumably came from the same wreck. But what wreck? Everything they could date pointed to early fifteenth-century Chinese, which made it overwhelmingly likely that this ship had once been a part of one of Zheng He’s famed treasure fleets, which had sailed near this channel around that time. But those vast armadas had been made up of all kinds of vessels, and most of them had been ordinary junks and supply ships. Magnificent finds, of course, and historically significant. But not what they were after.
Another current swept him towards the tiger. He grabbed instinctively for the sea-bed, fingers raking the sand before hooking something solid. He held it till the current had relented, looked down. It was reddish-brown and scabbed, and it protruded in too smooth a curve from the sea-bed to be natural. He brushed away sand to reveal the top of a rusted iron ring, perhaps a foot in diameter. He checked to make sure that Miles was filming, then beckoned Klaus to bring over one of their water-dredges. The fat grey pipe quickly sucked away the sand and sediment until he’d completely exposed an iron doughnut at one end of a fat long metal rod, like the eye at the top of an impossibly large needle.
The second dive-team arrived with a second dredge, set to work in parallel. The iron shaft grew longer and longer. It could surely only be an anchor. Knox felt his excitement build. Just as it was possible to make an educated guess at a person’s height from the length of their stride, so it was possible to estimate a ship’s size from certain of its component parts. The Chinese treasure ships had reputedly been equipped with anchors eight feet long, fitted with iron flukes to hook on to rocks or dig into sand, and so hold the ship in position. Knox had to remind himself to keep breathing steadily as they exposed a good six feet of shaft. Eight feet. Ten feet and still going. Twelve. And finally they found the first fluke. Knox glanced around at Miles, still filming like the professional he was, but pumping his free fist in triumph; and the exultation of all the others was magnified by the strange distortion of their goggles. For it was surely undeniable now. They’d found what they’d come looking for.
They’d found a Chinese treasure ship.
II
The Nergadze estate, Georgian Black Sea Coast
It was the first time in two years that Boris Dekanosidze had laid eyes on Ilya Nergadze, and what he saw shocked him. The great man was a frail shell of himself, shrunken, pale and bald, lying huddled beneath thick blankets on his medical bed despite the cloying warmth of the room. He had a translucent oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, sensors and tubes on his arms and throat, banks of monitors and other medical equipment on either side, while a disturbingly androgynous male nurse in a starched white uniform sat on a high chair overlooking him, like an umpire at a tennis match.
So the rumours were true, then: Old Man Ilya was dying.
Ilya’s bed was mechanised, allowing him to raise himself almost to a sitting position as Boris walked towards him. With a weak and trembling hand, he clawed down his breathing mask so that it hung around his throat like a grotesque medallion. ‘Good to see you, Boris,’ he croaked, raising his head so that Boris could kiss him respectfully on both cheeks.
‘Good to see you too, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Ilya. But even that much conversation seemed to exhaust him. He let his head drop into his pillow, pulled his breathing mask back up.
Sandro Nergadze, Ilya’s son and heir apparent, had followed Boris to the bed. Now he cleared his throat to gain the nurse’s attention. ‘A few moments, please,’ he said.
‘Five minutes,’ said the nurse primly. ‘Your father must have his rest.’
‘Five minutes,’ agreed Sandro, with a tight smile. He was courteous for a Nergadze, but that didn’t mean he liked taking orders from the help. He rested his briefcase on the bedside table, then accompanied the nurse to the door, closing it emphatically behind him before returning to his father’s bed and standing across it from Boris, so that his father could follow their conversation with his eyes, even if he was too tired to take part in it himself.
‘Well?’ asked Boris. ‘What can I do for you?’
Sandro pursed his lips before replying. ‘You know as well as anyone, Boris, that our family has its fair share of enemies.’
Boris nodded. He’d been Sandro’s head of security until everything had gone to shit, after all. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘Things have grown even worse since our Greek … setback.’
Our Greek setback, thought Boris. Is that what they’re calling it these days? Some two years before, during Ilya Nergadze’s ill-fated run at the presidency of the Republic of Georgia, the campaign team had got a tip that their nation’s greatest lost treasure, the golden fleece, had been rediscovered in Greece. But their efforts to bring it back here and so boost Ilya’s flagging popularity had backfired spectacularly, culminating in the death of Ilya’s grandson Mikhail and the destruction of the family’s business empire and political aspirations. ‘I can imagine.’
‘It’s not merely that we have more enemies now,’ continued Sandro. ‘It’s also that they’ve grown bolder, less respectful. People no longer fear us as they did. We’ve introduced extra security, as you no doubt noticed. We’ve also been compelled to start a programme of active threat monitoring.’
‘Active threat monitoring, sir?’
Sandro gestured towards the French windows, the fine view over treetops down to the Black Sea. ‘It’s the damned Internet,’ he said. ‘It’s the easiest thing in the world, these days, for our enemies to learn about us. They download satellite photographs of our estates. They check for our names at public events. They search the archives of local newspapers. They gossip about what cars we drive, what planes and yachts we own. All from the comfort and safety of their living rooms.’ He turned back to face Boris. ‘But it works both ways, particularly if you hire the right people.’
Boris nodded. The Nergadzes had never begrudged spending money on their own safety. ‘As you have, no doubt.’
‘We’ve set up various websites and chat rooms,’ said Sandro. ‘We’ve seeded them with the kind of confidential information that our enemies would dearly love to know. Some of it’s even true. We make these sites hard to find, so that only our more dedicated … followers can find them. Then we monitor them, particularly for return visitors.