Constantinople?”
Jack took a gulp of his coffee and stood up. “Wait here.”
The two men had been in England for less than an hour, having taken a dawn flight from Turkey direct to the Royal Naval Air Station at Culdrose and transferring by Lynx helicopter to the campus of the International Maritime University nearby. Costas had scheduled his return to England several days before, knowing that once the sub-bottom excavator in the Golden Horn was fully operational, he would be needed to provide technical backup for another IMU field project off the coast of Greenland. For Jack the decision had come only the previous evening, following the extraordinary phone call from his friend Maria de Montijo in Hereford. He had summoned an emergency meeting of the excavation staff and had asked Maurice Hiebermeyer to take over the archaeological supervision on Sea Venture, knowing that his friend would be delighted to accept a role well beyond his usual remit in the deserts of Egypt.
“You’d better make it quick.” Costas extracted a cellphone from his oil-spattered overalls and checked a text message. “They’re due in any time now.”
Jack nodded and made his way from the patio where they had been sitting to the open door of his office. He paused to look back over the broad sweep of Carrick Roads, the sinuous estuary which led out from the tip of Cornwall towards the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. From here generations of his ancestors had set sail to shape the destiny of England and make their fortune. Howards had fought with Drake against the Spanish Armada and under Nelson at Trafalgar, had brought back the riches of the Indies and had mapped the farthest reaches of the oceans.
Jack felt a surge of certainty as he surveyed the scene, knowing that he was maintaining a family tradition that stretched back a thousand years to before the Norman conquest of England. It was Jack’s father who had decided to donate the Cornwall estate to the fledgling International Maritime University, but IMU
had been Jack’s dream and he had seen it to fruition. With generous financial backing from Efram Jacobovich, an old friend who had become a software tycoon, the mansion and outbuildings had been transformed into a state-of-the-art research facility that rivalled the world’s best oceanographic institutes. Beside the estuary the old shipyard had been expanded into a sprawling engineering complex, complete with a dry dock facility for the IMU research vessels as well as an experimental tank for submersibles research. On a wooded hill adjoining the complex was the elegant neoclassical building of the Howard Gallery, one of the foremost private collections of art in the world and also a venue for travelling exhibits from the IMU Maritime Museum at Carthage in the Mediterranean. Only a few weeks earlier Jack had inaugurated one of their most stunning exhibits yet, a dazzling display of finds from the Bronze Age Minoan shipwreck they had excavated the previous year. A banner advertisement showing the golden disc and the magnificent bull’s-head sculpture from the wreck adorned the wall facing Jack as he entered his office, a former sixteenth-century drawing room which was now the hub of IMU research and exploration worldwide.
A few moments later he was back outside with a map of Europe which he unrolled and pinned down on the patio table using their coffee mugs. Costas drew his chair up as Jack swept his hand from Scandinavia to the Black Sea.
“The Byzantines called them Varangians,” Jack said. “Tall, blond, terrifying barbarians from the north who served as mercenaries in the Byzantine emperor’s legendary Varangian Guard, the successor of the Praetorian Guard of ancient Rome. In Hardrada’s day the Varangian Guard were mainly Vikings, Norse warriors from Scandinavia whose behaviour fully justified their reputation. They pillaged and burned their way around the Mediterranean, thinly disguised as standard-bearers for
Jack took a gulp of his coffee and stood up. “Wait here.”
The two men had been in England for less than an hour, having taken a dawn flight from Turkey direct to the Royal Naval Air Station at Culdrose and transferring by Lynx helicopter to the campus of the International Maritime University nearby. Costas had scheduled his return to England several days before, knowing that once the sub-bottom excavator in the Golden Horn was fully operational, he would be needed to provide technical backup for another IMU field project off the coast of Greenland. For Jack the decision had come only the previous evening, following the extraordinary phone call from his friend Maria de Montijo in Hereford. He had summoned an emergency meeting of the excavation staff and had asked Maurice Hiebermeyer to take over the archaeological supervision on Sea Venture, knowing that his friend would be delighted to accept a role well beyond his usual remit in the deserts of Egypt.
“You’d better make it quick.” Costas extracted a cellphone from his oil-spattered overalls and checked a text message. “They’re due in any time now.”
Jack nodded and made his way from the patio where they had been sitting to the open door of his office. He paused to look back over the broad sweep of Carrick Roads, the sinuous estuary which led out from the tip of Cornwall towards the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. From here generations of his ancestors had set sail to shape the destiny of England and make their fortune. Howards had fought with Drake against the Spanish Armada and under Nelson at Trafalgar, had brought back the riches of the Indies and had mapped the farthest reaches of the oceans.
Jack felt a surge of certainty as he surveyed the scene, knowing that he was maintaining a family tradition that stretched back a thousand years to before the Norman conquest of England. It was Jack’s father who had decided to donate the Cornwall estate to the fledgling International Maritime University, but IMU
had been Jack’s dream and he had seen it to fruition. With generous financial backing from Efram Jacobovich, an old friend who had become a software tycoon, the mansion and outbuildings had been transformed into a state-of-the-art research facility that rivalled the world’s best oceanographic institutes. Beside the estuary the old shipyard had been expanded into a sprawling engineering complex, complete with a dry dock facility for the IMU research vessels as well as an experimental tank for submersibles research. On a wooded hill adjoining the complex was the elegant neoclassical building of the Howard Gallery, one of the foremost private collections of art in the world and also a venue for travelling exhibits from the IMU Maritime Museum at Carthage in the Mediterranean. Only a few weeks earlier Jack had inaugurated one of their most stunning exhibits yet, a dazzling display of finds from the Bronze Age Minoan shipwreck they had excavated the previous year. A banner advertisement showing the golden disc and the magnificent bull’s-head sculpture from the wreck adorned the wall facing Jack as he entered his office, a former sixteenth-century drawing room which was now the hub of IMU research and exploration worldwide.
A few moments later he was back outside with a map of Europe which he unrolled and pinned down on the patio table using their coffee mugs. Costas drew his chair up as Jack swept his hand from Scandinavia to the Black Sea.
“The Byzantines called them Varangians,” Jack said. “Tall, blond, terrifying barbarians from the north who served as mercenaries in the Byzantine emperor’s legendary Varangian Guard, the successor of the Praetorian Guard of ancient Rome. In Hardrada’s day the Varangian Guard were mainly Vikings, Norse warriors from Scandinavia whose behaviour fully justified their reputation. They pillaged and burned their way around the Mediterranean, thinly disguised as standard-bearers for
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