Sphinx (7 page)

Isabella handed the metal detector up to me and hauled herself back onto the boat. Faakhir, smiling, climbed up after her while the others hung back, inexplicably tentative.

‘We should go back now, make the final dive tomorrow,’ Jamal announced, glancing at the horizon.

‘Absolutely not! The site will be covered again by tomorrow. We have to retrieve it in the next hour, before the tide comes through!’

Isabella’s tone was demanding and urgent. I glanced at the men and saw an expression cross Jamal’s face, so fast I think I was probably the only one who noticed. I’d seen it before with some of the Arab oil workers: resentment. It was difficult for them to take orders from a woman, no matter how much they respected her.

Faakhir, sensing potential conflict, put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘Please, we are so close, and if we dive tomorrow we’ll have to start all over again.’

Jamal glanced up at the flock of pigeons - now barely a speck on the horizon. A particularly high wave lifted the boat and a couple of dull thuds sounded as the floats lashed to the sides bumped against the hull.

‘Okay. But be as quick as you can.’

I picked up a spare mask and oxygen tank, ‘I’m coming with—’

‘Oliver, I don’t need . . .’ Isabella began.

But Faakhir put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Isabella, we could do with the extra help.’

Isabella glanced back at me. ‘Okay, but you’ll have to follow orders, understand?’

Stifling my claustrophia I nodded; there was no way I was going to allow Isabella to take any extra risk by being understaffed.

 

The site was illuminated by an underwater floodlight fixed by a rope. It was eerie swimming down towards the light - I had the strange sensation of an inverted world in which the sun lay beneath us. The water was cloudy, but as we neared the seabed the site came into view - a suspended oasis surrounded by darkness. Clouds of fish hovered like a swarm of moths, attracted by the floodlight.

At first the ship looked like some kind of unusual reef, a sudden manifestation of coral and molluscs jutting out from the seabed, but the hazy outline of what appeared to be a sphinx’s head and shoulders stood out from the base. Closer, the features of the statue took shape. Algae had covered everything but her face, which, unlike many of the images I’d seen in the past, had a human asymmetry about it. The arched nose and large eyes were surprisingly naturalistic and seemed to hold a wry humour. The creature stared back at me through the cloudy water with a beauty that was palpably and jarringly real. Was it a relic from the nearby submerged island of Antirhodos, which had once housed Cleopatra’s palace, swept in by the massive wave that had destroyed the whole area thousands of years before?

Isabella swam into view, gesturing towards the rest of the site. Pivoting slowly, I saw how the seabed had taken on the impression of the hull of a ship, with only the basic ribs of its construction still imprinted on the mud. Isabella hovered over the site, indicating the rim and handles of the steel tube, which now held the bronze artefact, its circular edges having been sunk down around it, deep enough for the object to be lifted along with the sea mud packed tightly around it.

She unhooked the floodlight and shone it onto the tube. Faakhir clipped a hook to one of the handles so the tube could be winched to the surface once we’d freed it from the seabed. He gave me the thumbs-up sign and we each took one of the handles and began to pull the tube slowly out of the mud. It wasn’t easy. I felt the muscles in my arms tighten and my mask began to steam up from perspiration. Through the clouds of dislodged sand I could just make out Faakhir’s straining face.

Unexpectedly, the mud released its grip and the tube began to lift away. Finally a foot and a half of steel gleamed dimly through the greenish water. After waving her hands in excitement, Isabella tugged on the cable to alert the crew on the surface. The steel tube began its ascent.

As it moved, I thought I heard a distant thud, a dull echo underwater. Then the water itself seemed to shift in transparent planes. The fish shot away in panic, breaking the natural patterns of their shoals. Just as I turned towards Isabella, the whole area was plunged into darkness. Suddenly my sense of claustrophobia was intense. Panicking, I struck out wildly, hoping to touch the others. My fingers became entangled in seaweed and my chest heaved with blind dread. The darkness stretched ahead into a bewildering void.

After what seemed an eternity, the floodlight spluttered back on. But now the beam was pointing away from the site at an extreme angle, illuminating the descending clouds of stirred-up sand.

An earthquake. Somewhere in the jumble of my panicked mind, a thought crystallised. I looked up for the supply line. It arched above me, intact - but where were the others?

Isabella. I peered frantically through the thick fog of disturbed mud, but nothing was visible. I had the disorientating sensation of suddenly being entirely alone. Terrified, I spun around, looking for her. Nothing, not even the glimmer of a diving mask. Then I caught sight of a small white hand curling upwards through the clouds of sand. Isabella! I lunged towards her, my heart banging wildly against my ribs.

The sphinx had slipped sideways and pinned her leg against the sea floor. A silver cascade of bubbles gushed out from the oxygen-tank pipe where it had torn away from her mask.

The gravity of the situation didn’t hit me immediately; I suppose it was a combination of shock and disbelief. As I hovered there in the drifting cloud of mud I felt thrown out of the moment, almost as though I was an observer. I hesitated - a fatal mistake.

Then, almost magically, Faakhir was beside me and both of us were swimming frantically towards Isabella. A cloud of pink blood now threaded its way through the water; her loosened hair floated like delicate seaweed.

I tore away my mouthpiece and tried to place it in her mouth while Faakhir prised the statue off her leg. But her mouth lolled open and she was already unconscious. Faakhir and I placed our shoulders against the sphinx and pushed. As it lifted from the seabed, I pulled Isabella’s crushed leg free. Holding her limp body to mine, I swam full pelt towards the light filtering down from above.

 

We burst through the water’s surface to the sound of shouting. Frantic, I pushed Isabella up towards the outstretched arms, then clambered into the boat myself and crouched over her body where it lay on the deck. My hands seemed like huge clumsy paws as I tried to pump the water out of her chest; I felt the shock of her cold lips as I gave her mouth-to-mouth. Pump, breathe, pump, breathe. It seemed like hours.

The others stood by dumbly, silenced by the horror of the scene. The terrible, almost unbelievable images seared into my memory: the water trickling from the edge of Isabella’s mouth, Faakhir’s blanched face as finally he pulled me away from the lifeless body, her limp hands. All the while, the steel tube containing the astrarium stood on the deck, glinting in the sun.

‘Isabella? Isabella!’ In disbelief I shook her, my whole body trembling uncontrollably. Then I collapsed on the deck alongside her, cradling her to me.

Above me, as if at a great distance, I heard Faakhir shout suddenly. I glanced up to see Omar standing over us, a small revolver in his hand. He looked almost embarrassed.

‘
Ana asif, ana asif
. I’m sorry this is necessary.’

The sight of him pointing the gun while apologising profusely was so incongruous that the three of us could only watch in frozen surprise as he tucked the mud-packed cylinder containing the astrarium under his arm.

‘What are you doing? Are you crazy?’ Jamal shouted.

‘Excuse me for resorting to such extreme measures, but this object is infinitely more valuable than you imagine.’ Omar’s voice was clipped and bizarrely polite. Then he aimed the gun upwards, as if about to shoot a warning signal into the air.

A blind anger roared through me. Not caring whether I lived or died, I sprang towards Omar and punched him on the jaw, so hard that he fell to the deck, dropping the cylinder. It rolled to the side of the boat and lodged against the railing. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. He was unconscious.

Suddenly terrified, I stared down at Omar’s body. ‘Who is he?’ I blurted out.

Faakhir lifted one of Omar’s arms and shook it, as if testing that he really was out cold.

‘A nobody. A middleman,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t worry me. It’s who he might be working for that is the real concern.’

Faakhir’s calmness and professional control was staggering. Somehow, in the midst of extreme distress, I registered that he too wasn’t quite what he appeared.

I dropped to the deck and cradled Isabella in my arms again, beginning to realise the impossibility of bringing her back to life, the sky and the deck receding from me. I was in shock.

Jamal picked up the fallen gun and aimed it at Omar. Faakhir grabbed his cousin’s wrist. ‘Stop! Kill him and we’re all finished!’ He took the gun, then squatted beside me, gripping my hand. ‘Oliver, you must listen! You must let me go now so that I can keep the astrarium safe. But I promise I will return it to you.’

Water seeped from Isabella’s wetsuit, forming a pool around my knees. Her hand lay outstretched on the deck, the fingernails already bluish.

Faakhir shook me. ‘Oliver, concentrate. For Isabella!’

I nodded now, unable to speak.

He turned to Jamal and said something in his own dialect. Immediately they hoisted Omar’s unconscious body into the small life raft hanging from the side of the boat, then lowered it into the sea. Finally the reality of the moment came rushing painfully back,

‘What are you doing?’ I asked. My voice sounded oddly emotionless.

‘Don’t worry,’ Faakhir said. ‘The current will carry him ashore. He will be found alive within hours. But this way I have more time.’

He picked up the cylinder with the astrarium inside and then sat on the edge of the boat. ‘Oliver, when you get back to shore with Isabella’s body the harbour master will have to contact the police immediately. If they interrogate you, it is important that you don’t mention I was on this boat. You have never heard of the astrarium. You and Isabella were on an innocent tourist dive. Understand?’ Faakhir’s face was grim. ‘Oliver, do you understand?’

‘I understand.’

Faakhir took my hand.

‘I will see you in a few days, my friend,’ he said. ‘I will come to you. If this really is the actual astrarium, then Isabella would want you to take it back where it belongs.’

Before I had a chance to ask any questions, he’d slipped backwards into the water and, with a ripple of his black flippers, disappeared from sight.

 

Jamal slowly steered our boat back to shore. I stepped onto the jetty carrying Isabella’s body wrapped in a blanket. I remember talking to her, telling her everything was all right, I was there to protect her and everything was going to work out, my voice sounding curiously distant. Behind me, I was vaguely aware of Jamal arguing with the harbour master.

Minutes later a police car and an ambulance screeched up to the kerb. Before I’d even reached the Corniche an ambulance officer was guiding me towards the waiting stretcher. I laid Isabella’s body gently onto it, arranging a limp hand that had fallen loose, tucking her hair carefully around her face, still murmuring to her, part of me refusing to comprehend the reality of her death.

Two police officers stepped up and, apologising, politely asked me to go with them. Ignoring them, I continued to stroke Isabella’s cold face, her fingers that were stiff beneath my own.

‘Mr Warnock, we are sorry to inform you that you must accompany us to the police station. Please.’ Slipping an arm through each of mine, they pulled me away and marched me towards the police car.

Over my shoulder I watched my wife’s body being loaded into the white van. It was the last time I ever saw her.

The police held me for over a day, convinced that Isabella had drowned planting sea mines and that I was a spy. They also interrogated me about Faakhir and his involvement with Isabella, even claiming he was my wife’s lover in an attempt to break me down.

In a monosyllabic voice, I repeated the same story like a mantra: we had wanted to see the ancient underwater sights for ourselves, we assumed we had official permission to dive in a military zone and the earth tremor had taken us completely by surprise, causing Isabella’s drowning. Over and over they asked why Isabella, as an archaeologist, hadn’t had a whole team assisting her and whether I had heard of anyone called Faakhir. I denied his existence again and again. I felt as if I was still underwater, mouthing words that floated on the other side of a glass wall separating me from an outside world.

At dawn I was freed, apparently due to a phone call from Henries, the British consul. I couldn’t face going back to the villa; instead, I found myself stumbling through the streets towards the Brambilla family home. Time had stopped for me, refusing to spill over into the tragedy that had now become my life. I can’t remember how, but what seemed only a minute later I was standing under the stone arch of the entrance, too petrified to ring the bell. When I did, and Aadeel opened the door, my unshaved face, sullied clothes and violent trembling told him everything.