Sphinx by T. S. Learner Read Free Book Online

until something registers on the metal detectors.’
    Isabella’s voice had the clipped authoritative tone she adopted when she was nervous, and I felt another stab of apprehension.
    ‘How long will you be?’ I asked.
    ‘We’ve narrowed down the location to a few feet with the help of side-scan sonar. We have a window of opportunity of about three hours.’
    ‘A mystery thousands of years old! We are going to make history - I know it.’
    Faakhir’s excitement was infectious and I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Just stay safe,’ I told them both.
    ‘Don’t worry.’ Isabella was impatient as she handed an oxygen tank to Faakhir.
    Two metal detectors - clumsy Soviet-designed devices the navy used for detecting underwater bombs - lay on the wooden deck. Isabella and Faakhir placed the attached headphones over their ears and tested for sound. Both of them sat concentrating, eyes shut as they strained to hear the dull bleeping, already lost in concentration on the task at hand. There was a strange intimacy to the act and, for a moment, I found myself irrationally jealous.
    The plan was that they would swim along the seabed at a distance of about half a metre from the bottom. As soon as they heard anything, they would signal me and I’d lower a steel tube, which they’d then sink around the bronze artefact. The tube would be lifted off the seabed with the artefact preserved in the mud packed around it. Later, they would clean and desalinate the artefact, first in a bath of salt water and then in fresh water.
    Opening her eyes, Isabella checked her watch, then stood decisively. Faakhir followed and solemnly they pulled on their diving masks. Isabella sat on the side of the boat before she threw herself backwards into the sea. A moment later, Faakhir - flippers kicking like black fins - disappeared into the blue. Jamal and I carefully lowered the metal detectors after them. Within minutes the only evidence we could see of their presence underwater was the movement of the rope leading down to them and the dull torchlight that rapidly vanished in the rippling depths.
    Omar was sitting on an upturned lobster cage, his head tilted towards the sun as if he were sunbathing. I was convinced his indifference was disingenuous.
    He leaned towards me. ‘Mr Warnock, we are very pleased with your wife’s work. We think she has much talent. But maybe a little crazy too, non ?’
    Hiding my distrust, I smiled and nodded.
    I took my own seat on the deck and stared back at Alexandria, its skyline of hotels and apartment buildings broken by the occasional distinctive minaret of a mosque. It was hard to believe that Isabella might finally locate her holy grail.
    I sat back remembering the first time Isabella had told me about the astrarium, sitting there at that bar in Goa. The establishment was a small bamboo-and-brick structure run by a German hippie and her Hindu husband. Incense burnt in the corner and the Rolling Stones played incessantly through a small tinny speaker. Appropriately named ‘Marlene Chakrabuty’s Sanctuary from Hell’, they were famous for their Bloody Marys - my favourite cocktail. The air was constantly filled with the treacly aroma of hashish and an autographed cover of the Abbey Road album hung proudly above the bar.
    I had just finished a job with Shell and was consumed by the ennui I always experienced after a successful exploration. Then I lived solely for the elation of the chase, the feeling of using all my senses, the intellectual rigour of the geological calculations involved as well as the emotional groping - the blind intuitive flash that always came to me standing out there in the field, sniffing the air, feeling the vibration of the rock beneath my bare feet; the roustabouts joking nervously amongst themselves as they watched me take off my shoes and socks to stand there in silence, eyes shut, reading the land under my naked soles.
    In those days I was always running to the next job as quickly as I