Crescent Dawn (5 page)

He pretended to briefly admire a rosette in the façade, then quickly made his way to the Barber’s Gate, which led out of the mosque compound. A few blocks away, he climbed into a small rental car parked on the street and drove in the direction of the Nile. Passing through a dingy industrial neighborhood, he turned onto the lot of a crumbling old brickyard and pulled behind its abandoned loading dock. There he pulled off his loose trousers and shirt, revealing a pair of jeans and silk blouse underneath. The eyeglasses were removed, along with a wig, and then the fake beard. The male Muslim student was no more, replaced by an attractive, olive-skinned woman with hard dark eyes and stylishly layered short black hair. Ditching her disguise in a rusty garbage bin, she hopped back into the car and rejoined Cairo’s sluggish traffic, crawling away from the Nile to the Cairo International Airport on the northeast side of town.

She was standing in line at the check-in counter when the backpack exploded. A small white cloud rose over al-Azhar Mosque as the prayer hall roof was blown off and the
mihrab
shattered into a pile of rubble. Though the explosion had been timed to detonate between daily prayers, several students and mosque attendants were killed and dozens more injured.

After the initial shock subsided, the Cairo Muslim community was outraged. Israel was blamed first, then other Western nations were targeted when no one claimed responsibility for the blast. In a few weeks, the prayer hall would be repaired and a new
mihrab
quickly installed. But to Muslims across Egypt and around the world, the anger at the assault on such a sacred site lasted much longer. Few could have recognized, however, that the attack was only the first salvo in a strategic ploy that would attempt to transform the very dominance of the entire region.

T
AKE THE KNIFE AND CUT IT FREE. ”

An angry scowl covered the Greek fisherman’s face as he handed his son a rusty serrated knife. The teenage boy stripped down to his shorts, then leaped off the side of the boat, the knife held firmly in one hand.

It had been nearly two hours since the trawler’s fishing nets had first snagged on the bottom, much to the surprise of the old Greek, who had safely dragged these waters many times before. He ran his boat in every direction, hoping to work the nets free, cursing loudly as his frustration mounted. Try as he might, the nets held firm. It would be a costly loss to cut away a portion of his nets, but the fisherman grudgingly accepted the occupational hazard and sent his boy over the side.

Though windswept on the surface, the waters of the eastern Aegean Sea were warm and clear, and at thirty feet down the boy could faintly see the bottom. But it was still well beyond his ability to free-dive, so he halted his descent and attacked the dangling nets with his knife. It took several dives before the last strand was cut free and the boy yanked to the surface with the damaged nets, exhausted and out of breath. Still cursing over his loss, the fisherman turned the boat west and putted off toward Chios, a Greek island close to the Turkish mainland, which rose from the azure waters a short distance away.

A quarter mile farther out to sea, a man studied the fisherman’s plight with curiosity. His frame was tall and lean yet robust, his skin deeply tanned from years in the sun. He lowered an old-fashioned brass telescope from his brow, exposing a pair of sea-green eyes that flickered with intelligence. They were reflective eyes, hardened by adversity and numerous brushes with death, yet they softened easily with humor. He rubbed his hand through thick ebony hair flecked with gray, then he stepped onto the bridge of the research vessel
Aegean Explorer
.

“Rudi, we’ve surveyed a good chunk of the bottom between here and Chios, haven’t we?” he asked.

A diminutive man with horn-rimmed glasses looked up from a computer station and nodded his head.

“Yes, our last grid ran within a mile of the eastern shore. With the Greek island situated less than five miles from Turkey, I don’t even know whose waters we’re in. We had about ninety percent of the grid complete when the AUV’s rear sensor blew a seal and flooded with salt water. We’ll be down at least two more hours while our technicians repair the damage.”

The AUV, or autonomous underwater vehicle, was a torpedo-shaped robot packed with sensing equipment that was dropped over the side of the research ship. Self-propelled and preprogrammed with a designated survey path, the AUV would cruise above the seafloor collecting data that was periodically relayed back to the surface ship.

Rudi Gunn resumed tapping at the keyboard. Dressed as he was in a tattered T-shirt and plaid shorts, nobody would have guessed he was the Deputy Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, the prominent government organization responsible for the scientific study of the world’s oceans. Gunn was normally confined to NUMA’s Washington headquarters rather than stationed aboard one of the turquoise-colored research vessels that the agency used to gather information on marine life, ocean currents, and environmental pollution. An adept administrator, he relished escaping the hubris of the nation’s capital and getting his hands dirty in the field, especially when his boss had escaped likewise.

“What sort of bottom contours have we seen in the shallows around here?”

“Typical of the local islands. A sloping shelf extends offshore a short distance before abruptly plunging to thousand-foot depths. We’re in about a hundred and twenty feet of water here. As I recall, this area has a fairly sandy bottom, with few obstructions.”

“That’s what I thought,” the man replied, a sparkle growing in his eye.

Gunn caught the look and said, “I detect a devious plot in the boss’s head.”

Dirk Pitt laughed. As the Director of NUMA, he had led dozens of underwater explorations, with remarkable results. From raising the
Titanic
to discovering the ships of the lost Franklin Expedition in the Arctic, Pitt had an uncanny knack for solving the mysteries of the deep. A quietly confident man with an insatiable curiosity, he’d been enamored of the sea from an early age. The lure never waned, and drew him out of NUMA’s Washington headquarters on a regular basis.

“It’s a known fact,” he said cheerily, “that most inshore shipwrecks are found by the nets of local fishermen.”

“Shipwrecks?” Gunn replied. “As I recall, our invitation from the Turkish government was to locate and study the impact of algae blooms reported along their coastal waters. There was no mention of any wreck searches.”

“I only take them as they come,” Pitt smiled.

“Well, we are out of commission for the moment. Do you want to drop the ROV over the side?”

“No, the nets of our neighborhood fisherman are snagged well within diving range.”

Gunn looked at his watch. “I thought you were leaving in two hours to spend the weekend in Istanbul with your wife?”

“More than enough time,” Pitt said with a grin, “for a quick dive on the way to the airport.”

“Then I guess this means,” Gunn replied with a resigned shake of the head, “that I gotta go wake up Al.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Pitt tossed an overnight bag into a Zodiac that bobbed alongside the
Aegean Explorer
, then climbed a portable ladder down into the boat. As he took his seat, a short barrel-chested man at the stern twisted the throttle on a small outboard motor, and the rubber boat leaped away from the ship.

“Which way to the bottom?” Al Giordino shouted, the cobwebs from an afternoon siesta slowly clearing from his dark brown eyes.

Pitt had taken a visual bearing using several landmarks on the neighboring island. Guiding Giordino inshore on a decided angle, they motored just a short distance before Pitt ordered the engine cut. He then threw a small anchor over the bow, tying it off when the line went slack.

“Just over a hundred feet,” he remarked, eyeing a red stripe on the line that was visible underwater.

“And just what do you expect to find down below?”

“Anything from a pile of rocks to the
Britannic
,” Pitt replied, referring to a sister ship of the
Titanic
that was sunk by a mine in the Mediterranean during World War I.

“My money’s on the rocks,” Giordino replied, slipping into a blue wet suit whose seams were tested by his brawny shoulders and biceps.

Deep down, Giordino knew there would be something more interesting than an outcropping of rocks at the bottom. He had too much history with Pitt to question his friend’s apparent sixth sense when it came to underwater mysteries. The two had been childhood friends, in Southern California, where they’d learned to dive together off Laguna Beach. While serving in the Air Force, they’d both taken a temporary assignment at a fledgling new federal department tasked with studying the oceans. Scores of projects and adventures later, Pitt now headed up the vastly expanded agency called NUMA, while Giordino worked alongside him as his Director of Underwater Technology.

“Let’s try an elongated circle search off the anchor line,” Pitt suggested, as they buckled on their air tanks. “My bearing puts the net snag slightly inshore of our present position.”

Giordino nodded, then stuffed a regulator into his mouth and slipped backward off the Zodiac and into the water. Pitt splashed in a second later, and the two men followed the anchor line to the bottom.

The blue waters of the Aegean Sea were remarkably clear, and Pitt had no trouble seeing fifty feet or more. As they approached the darkened bottom, he noted with some satisfaction that the seafloor was a combination of flat gravel and sand. Gunn’s assessment was correct. The area appeared to be naturally free of obstructions.

The two men spread apart a dozen feet above the seafloor and swam a lazy arc seaward around the anchor line. A small school of sea bass cruised by, eyeing the divers suspiciously before darting away to deeper water. As they angled around toward Chios, Pitt noticed Giordino waving at him. Thrusting his legs in a strong scissors kick, Pitt swam closer, finding his partner pointing to a large shape ahead of them.

It was a towering brown shadow that seemed to waver in the thin light. It reminded Pitt of a windblown tree, its leafy branches sprouting skyward. Swimming closer, he saw that it was no tree but the remnants of the fisherman’s nets drifting lazily in the current.

Leery of entanglement, the two divers moved cautiously, positioning themselves up current as they approached. The nets were caught on a single point, protruding just above the seafloor. Pitt could see a faint trench scratched across the gravel-and-sand bottom, ending in an upright spar tangled with the nets. Kicking closer to the obstruction, he could see that it was a corroded T-shaped iron anchor about five feet in length. The anchor was tilted on its side, with one fluke pointing toward the surface, the fisherman’s nets hopelessly ensnarled around it, while the other fluke was embedded in the seafloor. Pitt reached down and fanned away around the base, revealing that the buried fluke was wedged between a thick beam of wood and a smaller cross frame. Pitt had explored enough shipwrecks to recognize the thick beam as a ship’s keel.

He turned away from the nets and eyed the wide, shallow trench that had recently been scratched across the bottom. Giordino was already hovering over it, tracking it to its origin. Like Pitt, he had surmised what happened. The fishing nets had snagged the anchor at one end of the wreck and dragged it along the keel line until it had caught a cross frame and held firm. The action had unwittingly exposed a large portion of an aged shipwreck.

Pitt swam toward Giordino, who was fanning sand from a linear protrusion. Clearing the protective sediment revealed several pieces of cross frame beneath the keel. Giordino gazed into Pitt’s dive mask with bright eyes and shook his head. Pitt’s underwater sense had sniffed out a shipwreck, and an old one at that.

Uncovering bits and pieces as they swept the perimeter, they could tell that the ship was about fifty feet long, and its upper deck had long since eroded away. Most of the vessel had in fact disappeared, with just a few sections of the hull surviving intact. Yet at the stern, portions of several small compartments were evident beneath soft sand. Ceramic dishes, tile, and fragments of unglazed pottery were visible throughout, although the ship’s actual cargo was not apparent.

With their bottom time beginning to run low, the two divers returned to the stern and scooped away sections of gravel and sand, searching for anything that might help identify the wreck. Poking through an area of loose timbers, Giordino’s fingers brushed upon a flat object under the sand and he dug down to find a small metal box. Holding it up to his mask, he could see a pin-type locking mechanism was encrusted to the front, though the shackle was mostly corroded away. Carefully wrapping it in a dive bag, he checked his watch, then swam over to Pitt and signaled that he was surfacing.

Pitt had uncovered a small row of clay pots, which he left undisturbed as Giordino approached. He was turning to follow Giordino to the surface when a small glint in the sand caught his eye. It came from opposite the pots, where his fins had brushed up some bottom sediment. Pitt swam around and fanned away more sand, exposing a flat section of ceramic. Though it was caked with concretions, he could see that the design featured an elaborate floral motif. Digging his fingers into the sand, he grasped the edges of a rectangular box and pulled it free.