Crusader Gold Read Online Free Page B
Maurice. Just hang on till this is over.” He turned back to the screen and Hiebermeyer went silent.
“Yes!”
The screen rippled with colour, and the two men moved up behind Costas for a better view. They were looking at a video image, a floodlit grey mass with a mechanical pincer arm extending into the middle.
“We’re now almost fifty feet below the sea floor, one hundred and sixty-eight feet absolute depth from our present position.” Costas removed the headset and leaned back as he spoke. “In a few seconds the imaging will automatically revert to sonar and the ferret should be back on line.”
“Ferret?”
Costas glanced apologetically at Hiebermeyer and handed over a plastic model he had been holding like a talisman, an odd cylindrical shape that bore a passing resemblance to the remote-operated vehicle they had used to explore the Neolithic village in the Black Sea. “A combination remote-operated vehicle, underwater vacuum cleaner and sub-bottom sonar,” he enthused. “It’s controlled from here via an umbilical and can burrow through sediment with pinpoint precision, sending back images as crisp as an MRI scan. At the moment it’s digging through terragenous sediment, land runoff, tons of it. We’re at the edge of the channel swept by the Bosporus, but even so there’s vast quantities of sediment, several metres per century. We need to go deep if we’re to stand any chance of finding what we want. The weight of that chain is going to bury it further still.”
“Ah, the chain,” Hiebermeyer murmured. “Remind me.”
Jack shifted over to a yellow Admiralty Chart of the Istanbul approaches pinned to the wall beside Costas. Their position was clearly marked at the outer edge of the estuary that cut through the city, its sinuous scimitar shape defining the promontory of Byzantium and forming one of the greatest natural harbours in the world. To the ancient Greeks this was Chrysoceras, the Golden Horn, as if a giant mythical bull had embedded itself in the Bosporus as it strained towards the Black Sea, a significance not lost on the three men with the bull imagery of Atlantis still fresh in their minds.
Jack picked up a pencil and traced a faint line over the entrance to the estuary.
“During the Byzantine period the Golden Horn was closed off in times of emergency by a giant boom almost a kilometre long, huge links of roughly forged iron held up on pylons and barges. It was attached here, on a tower near the extremity of the city walls where the estuary meets the Bosporus, and here, about three hundred metres away from us on the Galata shore. The chain is first recorded in the eighth century AD and had a famous role in the Great Siege of 1453, but we know of only two occasions when it may have been breached. The first was in the eleventh century, when a gang of Viking mercenaries supposedly got their longships over it. The second is more definite, in 1204, when Venetian galleys broke it with a ram. The chain was rebuilt, but a severed section may have been lost on the seabed. If we can find it, then we’ve hit the layer with the loot and we’re in business.”
“The first link in our story.” Costas’ pun scarcely concealed his anxiety, his fingers quietly drumming the desk and his eyes flitting over the screen. The image had gone dark and the only indication that the ferret was operational was the depth gauge in the corner, cycling with agonising slowness through one-inch increments.
“So how can you be so certain about the location?” Hiebermeyer had put his own quest on hold and was becoming absorbed in the project.
“It’s always been contentious, but a fifteenth-century manuscript unearthed in the Topkapi archive last year gives an exact position fix between known monuments on the shoreline.”
“I don’t like it.” Costas glanced at the wall clock and shifted uneasily in his seat.
“If that gun was from 1453, then we’ve got at least five metres of compacted sediment to
“Yes!”
The screen rippled with colour, and the two men moved up behind Costas for a better view. They were looking at a video image, a floodlit grey mass with a mechanical pincer arm extending into the middle.
“We’re now almost fifty feet below the sea floor, one hundred and sixty-eight feet absolute depth from our present position.” Costas removed the headset and leaned back as he spoke. “In a few seconds the imaging will automatically revert to sonar and the ferret should be back on line.”
“Ferret?”
Costas glanced apologetically at Hiebermeyer and handed over a plastic model he had been holding like a talisman, an odd cylindrical shape that bore a passing resemblance to the remote-operated vehicle they had used to explore the Neolithic village in the Black Sea. “A combination remote-operated vehicle, underwater vacuum cleaner and sub-bottom sonar,” he enthused. “It’s controlled from here via an umbilical and can burrow through sediment with pinpoint precision, sending back images as crisp as an MRI scan. At the moment it’s digging through terragenous sediment, land runoff, tons of it. We’re at the edge of the channel swept by the Bosporus, but even so there’s vast quantities of sediment, several metres per century. We need to go deep if we’re to stand any chance of finding what we want. The weight of that chain is going to bury it further still.”
“Ah, the chain,” Hiebermeyer murmured. “Remind me.”
Jack shifted over to a yellow Admiralty Chart of the Istanbul approaches pinned to the wall beside Costas. Their position was clearly marked at the outer edge of the estuary that cut through the city, its sinuous scimitar shape defining the promontory of Byzantium and forming one of the greatest natural harbours in the world. To the ancient Greeks this was Chrysoceras, the Golden Horn, as if a giant mythical bull had embedded itself in the Bosporus as it strained towards the Black Sea, a significance not lost on the three men with the bull imagery of Atlantis still fresh in their minds.
Jack picked up a pencil and traced a faint line over the entrance to the estuary.
“During the Byzantine period the Golden Horn was closed off in times of emergency by a giant boom almost a kilometre long, huge links of roughly forged iron held up on pylons and barges. It was attached here, on a tower near the extremity of the city walls where the estuary meets the Bosporus, and here, about three hundred metres away from us on the Galata shore. The chain is first recorded in the eighth century AD and had a famous role in the Great Siege of 1453, but we know of only two occasions when it may have been breached. The first was in the eleventh century, when a gang of Viking mercenaries supposedly got their longships over it. The second is more definite, in 1204, when Venetian galleys broke it with a ram. The chain was rebuilt, but a severed section may have been lost on the seabed. If we can find it, then we’ve hit the layer with the loot and we’re in business.”
“The first link in our story.” Costas’ pun scarcely concealed his anxiety, his fingers quietly drumming the desk and his eyes flitting over the screen. The image had gone dark and the only indication that the ferret was operational was the depth gauge in the corner, cycling with agonising slowness through one-inch increments.
“So how can you be so certain about the location?” Hiebermeyer had put his own quest on hold and was becoming absorbed in the project.
“It’s always been contentious, but a fifteenth-century manuscript unearthed in the Topkapi archive last year gives an exact position fix between known monuments on the shoreline.”
“I don’t like it.” Costas glanced at the wall clock and shifted uneasily in his seat.
“If that gun was from 1453, then we’ve got at least five metres of compacted sediment to
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