Treasure

"Talk to me," the voice of Al Giordino came through the mask's earphones.

"I'm on the bottom," replied Pitt. "All systems up to par."

Pitt spun and stared through the green void. "She lies about ten meters north of me. I'm going to move toward her. Give me some slack in the lines."

He swain slowly, taking care his lines didn't foul on the rock outcroppings. The intense cold of the frigid water began to seep into his body. He was thankful Giordino had had the foresight to see that his air supply was warm and dry The stern of the wreck slowly unveiled before his eyes. The sides were covered with a mat of algae. He brushed away a small area with his gloved hand, stirn'ng up a green cloud. He waited a minute for the cloud to dissipate and then peered at the result.

"Inform Lily and Doc I'm looking at a wooden hull without a stern rudder, but no sign of steering oars."

"Acknowledged," said Giordino.

Pitt pulled a knife from a sheath strapped to one leg and pried at the underside of the hull near the keel. The point revealed soft metal.

"We have a lead-sheathed bottom," he a

"Looking good," replied Giordino. "Doc Gronquist wants to know if there is any sign of carving on the sternpost."

"Hold on."

Pitt carefully wiped off the growth over a flat section of the sternpost just before it disappeared upward into the ice, waiting patiently for the resulting algae cloud to drift away.

"There's some kind of a hardwood plaque imbedded into the sternpost. I can make out lettering and a face."

"A face?"

"With a curly head of hair and heavy beard."

"What does it read?"

"Sorry, I can't translate Greek."

"Not Latin?" Giordino asked skeptically.

The raised carving was indistinct in the shimmering light that filtered through the ice. Pitt moved in until his face mask nearly touched the wooden plaque.

"Greek," Pitt stated firmly.

"Certain?"

"I used to go with a girl who was an Alpha Delta Pi."

"Hold on. You've thrown the bone pickers into spasms."

After nearly two minutes, Giordino's voice returned over the earphones.

"Gronquist thinks you're hallucinating, but Mike Graham says he studied classical Greek in college and asks if you can describe the lettering."

"First letter resembles an S shaped like a lightning strike. Then an A with the right leg missing. Next a P followed by another handicapped A and what looks like an inverted L or a gallows. Then an 1. Last letter is another lightning strike S.

That's the best I can do."

Listening over the speaker inside the shelter, Graham copied Pitts meager description on the page of a notebook.

He scrutinized what appeared to be a word for several moments.

Something was out of place. He struggled to jog his memory, and then he had it. The letters were Classical but Eastern Greek.

His thoughtful expression slowly turned incredulous. He furiously wrote a short word, tore out the page and held it up-in modern capitals it read, S A R A PI S

Lily stared at Graham questioningly- "Does it mean anything?"

Gronquist said, "I think it's the name of a Greek-Egyptian god. "

"A popular deity throughout the Mediterranean," agreed Hoskins. "Modern spelling is usually 'Serapis. "'

"So our ship is the Serapes," murmured Lily pensively, Knight grunted.

"So we might have either a Roman, Grecian or Egyptian shipwreck. Which is it?"

"We're over our heads," answered Gronquist. "We'll need the expertise of a marine archaeologist who knows ancient Mediterranean shipping to sort this one out."

Below the ice, Pitt moved across the starboard side of the hull, stopping where the planking vanished into the ice. He swam around the sternpost to the port. The planking looked warped and bowed outward. A few kicks of his fins, and he could see a section that was stove in by the ice.

He eased up to the opening and slipped his head inside. it was like looking in a dark closet. He saw only vague, indiscernible shapes. He reached in and felt something round and hard. He gauged the distance between the broken panels, The gap was too small to squeeze his shoulders through.

He grasped the upper plank, planted a fi

any respectable card-carrying marine archaeologist would have gone into cardiac arrest at such irreverent brutality toward an ancient artifact, Pitt felt totally unsympathetic toward academic scruples. He was cold and getting colder, his shoulder began to ache from the impact on the rock, and he knew he couldn't stay down much longer.

"I've found a break in the hull," he said, panting like a marathon ru

"Understood," replied the stolid voice of Giordino. "Come back and I'll pass it to you."

Pitt returned to the dive hole and followed his bubbles to the surface.

Giordino lay on his stomach on the ice, reached down and handed Pitt a compact underwater video camera/recorder.

"Take a few meters of tape and get out," said Giordino. "You've accomplished enough."

"What about Commander Knight?"

"Hold tight, I'll put him on."

Knight's voice came over the earphones. "Dirk?"

"Go ahead, Byron."

"Are you one hundred percent certain we've got a thousand-year-old relic in pristine condition?"

"All indications look solid."

"I'll need something tangible if I'm to convince Atlantic Command to keep us on station another forty-eight hours."

"Stand by and I'll seal it with a kiss."

"An identifiable antiquity will suffice," Knight said dourly.

Pitt threw a wave and faded from view.

He did not enter the wreck immediately. How long he floated motionless outside the jagged opening he couldn't be sure. Probably about one minute, certainly no longer then two. Why he hesitated, he didn't know.

Maybe he was waiting for an invitation from a skeletal hand beckoning from within, maybe he was afraid of finding nothing more than debris from an eighty-year-old Icelandic fishing schooner, or maybe he was just leery of entering what might be a tomb.

Finally he lowered his head, tightened his shoulders and cautiously kicked his fins.

The black unknown opened up and he swam in.

Once Pitt squeezed inside, he paused and hung motionless, slowly settling on his knees, listening to his pounding heart and his breath escaping from the exhaust valve, waiting until his eyes eventually became accustomed to the fluid gloom.

He didn't know what he'd expected to find: what he found was an array of terra-cotta jars, pitchers, cups and plates neatly stacked in shelves set in the bulkheads. One was a large copper pot he had touched when groping through the hull; its walls had turned a deep patina green.

At first he thought his knees were resting on the hard surface of the deck. He felt about with his hands and discovered he was kneeling on the tiled surface of a hearth. He glanced up and saw his bubbles rise up and spread in a wavering cover. He stood and surfaced into clear air, his head and shoulders having risen above the water level of the fjord,