The Tiger Warrior

Chapter One

The Red Sea, present-day

Jack, you're not going to believe what I've found."

The voice came through the intercom from somewhere in the blue void ahead, where a silvery stream of bubbles rose from beyond a rocky ledge to the surface of the sea nearly fifty meters above. Jack Howard took a last look at the coral-encrusted anchor below him, then injected a burst of air into his buoyancy compensator and floated above the thick bed of sea whips bending in the current, like tall grass in the wind. He powered forward with his fins, then spread his arms and legs like a skydiver and dropped over the ledge. The view below was breathtaking. All down the slope he had seen fragments of ancient pottery, Islamic, Nabatean, Egyptian, but this was the motherlode. For years there had been rumors of a ships' graveyard on the windward side of the reef, but it had been just that, hearsay and rumor, until the unusually strong tidal currents in the Red Sea that spring had scoured the plateau and revealed what lay before him. Then there had been the rumor that set Jack's heart racing, the rumor of a Roman shipwreck, perfectly preserved under the sand. Now, as he saw the shapes emerging from the sediment, row upon row of ancient pottery amphoras, their tall handles rising to wide rims, he exhaled hard, dropping faster, and felt the familiar excitement course through him. He silently mouthed the words, as he always did. Lucky Jack.

The voice crackled again. "Fifteen years of diving with you, and I thought I'd seen everything. This one really takes the cake."

Jack turned toward the far edge of the plateau. He could see Costas now, hovering motionless in front of a coral head the size of a small truck, the growths rising several meters higher than him.

Two more heads rose behind the first, forming a row. Beyond them the water was too deep for coral to flourish, and Jack could see the sandy slope dropping off into an abyss. He flicked on his headlamp and swam toward Costas, coming to a halt a few meters before him and panning his light over the seabed. It was an explosion of color, bright red sponges, sea anemones, profusely growing soft corals, with clownfish darting among the nooks and crevices. An eel drooped out of a hole, mouth lolling, eyeing Jack, then withdrew again. Jack looked down through a waving bed of sea fans and saw fragments of amphoras, so thickly encrusted as to be almost unrecognizable. He peered again, saw a high arching handle, a distinctive rim. He turned to Costas, his headlamp lighting up his friend's yellow helmet and the streamlined backpack that held his trimix breathing gas.

"Nice find," he said. "I saw sherds like this coming down the slope. Rhodian wine amphoras, second century BC."

"Switch off your headlamp." Costas seemed riveted by something in front of him. "Take another look. And forget about amphoras."

Jack was itching to swim over to the wreck he had seen in the sand. But he lingered in front of the coral head, stared at the dazzle of color and movement. He remembered the words of Professor Dillen, all those years ago at Cambridge. Archaeology is about detail, but don't let the detail obscure the bigger picture. Jack had already known it, since he had first gone hunting for artifacts as a boy. It had always been his special gift. To see the bigger picture. And to find things. Lucky Jack. He shut his eyes, flicked off his headlamp then opened his eyes again. It was as if he were in a different universe. The profusion of color had been replaced by a monotone blue, shades of dark where there had been vivid purples and reds. It was like looking at an artist's charcoal sketch, all the finish and color stripped away, the eye drawn not to the detail but to the form, to the overall shape. To the bigger picture.

And then he saw it.

"Good God."