Le masque de Troie

Extrait du prologueLe voyage d'Uta-NapishtimLJ homme se cramponna au rebord du bateau et observa l'horizon occidental, les yeux plissés, dans l'espoir de voir au-delà de l'éclat aveuglant du soleil. Il avait perçu un mouvement dans le ciel, senti une étrange odeur dans l'air, mais il se demandait désormais s'il n'avait pas rêvé, après avoir été ballotté pendant des semaines dans cette mer infestée d'algues. Il prit appui sur ses mains et se pencha par-dessus bord pour scruter les profondeurs. Les articulations de ses doigts étaient en sang, écorchées par le soleil et le sel, mais il ne ressentait plus la douleur. Depuis qu'ils étaient immobilisés au beau milieu de cette mer sans vent, il observait sans cesse le fond en tirant pardessus sa tête sa peau de léopard en loques, rigidifiée par le sel, pour ombrager la surface.La mer était bleu marine et devenait noire à une certaine distance. Il aperçut des taches argentées, des étincelles de lumière. Il savait qu'il y avait quelque chose là-dessous qui les suivait comme leur ombre, une forme tapie à la porte des enfers. Si seulement il parvenait à plonger son regard en elle, alors il pourrait puiser dans le pouvoir de son esprit. Il avait passé des heures à chercher, des jours. Même son frère Enlil ne l'appelait plus par le surnom qu'il lui donnait lorsqu'ils étaient enfants, Noé, mais s'adressait à lui en employant avec une certaine raillerie son nom de chaman, Uta-Napishtim, «Celui qui voit le fond de toutes choses». Les hommes qui se trouvaient encore avec lui dans son bateau étaient déjà partis trop loin pour l'aider à regarder. Ils n'étaient plus que quatre, paralysés par la soif, la faim et la peur. Mais il était leur voyageur spirituel, leur chaman. S'ils pouvaient voir la forme terrestre du monstre, seul lui était capable d'entrer en contact avec son esprit.Il prit son couteau en obsidienne et passa son pouce sur la lame, qui lui ouvrit la peau. Il se revit s'enfoncer dans les entrailles du volcan avec Enlil et leur père Ra Shamash pour aller extraire la pierre noire sacrée, et se rappela la façon dont le vieillard avait lissé le plat de la lame en retirant les aspérités à l'aide d'un morceau de bois de cerf. Il avait une cache de lames sur le bateau, dans un panier sous les bancs de nage, mais ce couteau était le plus sacré. Son père le lui avait fabriqué le jour où il les avait emmenés pour la première fois, son frère et lui, dans la grotte aux esprits. Là, il leur avait donné leur nom de chaman et appris à le graver dans la roche, à côté des peintures de taureaux, de léopards et de vautours, en employant les symboles anciens. Mais cela faisait des années qu'il avait gagné le monde des esprits. Aussi, Noé était désormais le seul à pouvoir donner aux hommes de son bateau la force de manier les rames et de chercher le rivage qui, il le savait, devait se trouver quelque part à l'horizon. Trois lunes auparavant, comme les eaux montaient le long des remparts de leur cité, avant qu'il ne sacrifie le dernier taureau et qu'ils n'embarquent à bord des bateaux, sa mère Nisir avait fermé les yeux et eu une vision. Elle avait vu un oiseau-tonnerre voler vers elle, puis deux sommets jumeaux au bord de la mer occidentale, aussi hauts que ceux de la montagne sacrée d'Atlantis, qui disparaissait sous les eaux autour d'eux. Et maintenant, il était sûr de les avoir aperçus lui aussi, la veille, à travers une fissure dans l'horizon, entre de lointains brisants, comme ceux qui encadraient la dernière terre qu'ils avaient contemplée, des semaines auparavant, ce grand cap jaillissant du littoral désertique. S'ils survivaient à cet esprit maléfique qui voulait les entraîner par le fond, s'il réussissait à dompter la bête et à la chevaucher dans le monde des esprits, alors peut-être atteindraient-ils ce lointain rivage. Peut-être Atlantis pourrait-elle renaître.

En 9000 avant J.-C., selon Platon, se dressait, au milieu de l'Atlantique, une île peuplée par des guerriers, les Atlantes. En quelques heures funestes, elle fut engloutie par les flots... De nos jours, au large de la Grèce. Lors de l'exploration sous-marine d'une épave, l'archéologue Jack Howard trouve un disque en or qui donnerait la clé de la cité perdue. Au même moment, dans une nécropole égyptienne, le professeur Hiebermeyer découvre un papyrus rédigé en grec ancien qui mentionne Atlantis et révèle son emplacement... Ces deux découvertes remettent en cause toute la science archéologique. Et même les plus sceptiques doivent se rendre à l'évidence : l'Atlandide n'est peut-être pas un mythe...

Egypte ancienne, 1334 av. J.-C. Après avoir profané le temple d'Isis dans sa quête désespérée du secret de la vie éternelle, le pharaon Akhenaton est momifié vivant par les prêtres de la divinité. Mais avant de rendre son dernier souffle, il a eu le temps de confier ce qu'il savait à son esclave le plus fidèle... Egypte, de nos jours. Jack Howard et ses compagnons trouvent de nouvelles traces de l'Atlantide, la cité légendaire dont ils avaient découvert la localisation lors de précédentes fouilles. Parviendront-ils maintenant à apprendre où ont migré les Atlantes ? Et à trouver l'orichalque, ce métal fabuleux qui promet l'immortalité ? Jack se lance à la poursuite de ce savoir ancestral, s'attirant de nombreux ennemis.

Extrait Chapter OneI'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE!"The words came from a dry suited diver who had just surfaced behind the stern of the research vessel, his voice breathless with excitement. After swimming over to the ladder, he removed his fins and mask and passed them up to the waiting barge chief. He hauled himself laboriously out of the water, his heavy cylinders causing him momentarily to lose balance, but a heave from above landed him safe and sound on the deck. His dripping shape was quickly surrounded by other members of the team who had been waiting on the dive platform.Jack Howard made his way down from the bridge walkway and smiled at his friend. He still found it amazing that such a bulky figure could be so agile underwater. As he negotiated the clutter of dive equipment on the aft deck he called out, his mocking tone a familiar part of their banter over the years."We thought you'd swum back to Athens for a gin and tonic beside your father's pool. What've you found, the lost treasure of the Queen of Sheba?"Costas Kazantzakis shook his head impatiently as he struggled along the railing towards Jack. He was too agitated even to bother taking off his equipment. "No," he panted. "I'm serious. Take a look at this."Jack silently prayed that the news was good. It had been a solo dive to investigate a silted-up shelf on top of the submerged volcano, and the two divers who had followed Costas would soon be surfacing from the decompression stop. There would be no more dives that season.Costas unclipped a carabiner and passed over an underwater camcorder housing, pressing the replay button as he did so. The other members of the team converged behind the tall Englishman as he flipped open the miniature LCD screen and activated the video. Within moments Jack's sceptical grin had given way to a look of blank amazement.The underwater scene was illuminated by powerful floodlights which gave colour to the gloom almost one hundred metres below. Two divers were kneeling on the seabed using an airlift, a large vacuum tube fed by a low-pressure air hose which sucked up the silt covering the site. One diver wrestled to keep the airlift in position while the other gently wafted sediment up towards the mouth of the tube, the action revealing artifacts just as an archaeologist on land would use a trowel.As the camera zoomed in, the object of the divers' attention came dramatically into view. The dark shape visible upslope was not rock but a concreted mass of metal slabs laid in interlocking rows like shingles."Oxhide ingots," Jack said excitedly. "Hundreds of them. And there's a cushioning layer of brushwood dunnage, just as Homer described in the ship of Odysseus."Each slab was about a metre long with protruding corners, their shape resembling the flayed and stretched hide of an ox. They were the characteristic copper ingots of the Bronze Age, dating back more than three and a half thousand years."It looks like the early type," one of the students on the team ventured. "Sixteenth century BC?""Unquestionably," Jack said. "And still in rows just as they were laden, suggesting the hull may be preserved underneath. We could have the oldest ship ever discovered."Jack's excitement mounted as the camera traversed down the slope. Between the ingots and the divers loomed three giant pottery jars, each as tall as a man and over a metre in girth. They were identical to jars that Jack had seen in the storerooms at Knossos on Crete. Inside, they could see stacks of stemmed cups painted with beautifully naturalistic octopuses and marine motifs, their swirling forms at one with the undulations of the seabed.There was no mistaking the pottery of the Minoans, the remarkable island civilization that flourished at the time of the Egyptian Middle and New Kingdoms but then disappeared suddenly, around 1400 BC. Knossos, the fabled labyrinth of the Minotaur, had been one of the most sensational discoveries of the last century. Following close on the heels of Heinrich Schliemann, excavator of Troy, the English archaeologist Arthur Evans had set out to prove that the legend of the Athenian prince Theseus and his lover Ariadne was as grounded in real events as the Trojan War. The sprawling palace just south of Heraklion was the key to a lost civilization he dubbed Minoan after their legendary king. The maze of passageways and chambers gave extraordinary credence to the story of Theseus' battle with the Minotaur, and showed that the myths of the Greeks centuries later were closer to real history than anyone had dared think."Yes!" Jack punched the air with his free hand, his normal reserve giving way to the emotion of a truly momentous discovery. It was the culmination of years of single-minded passion, the fulfilment of a dream that had driven him since boyhood. It was a find that would rival Tutankhamen’s tomb, a discovery that would secure his team front place in the annals of archaeology.For Jack these images were enough. Yet there was more, much more, and he stood transfixed by the screen. The camera panned down to the divers on a low shelf below the clump of ingots."Probably the stern compartment." Costas was pointing at the screen. "Just beyond this ledge is a row of stone anchors and a wooden steering oar."Immediately in front was an area of shimmering yellow which looked like the reflection of the floodlights off the sediment in the water. As the camera zoomed in, there was a collective gasp of astonishment."That's not sand," the student whispered. "That's gold!"Now they knew what they were looking at, the image was one of surpassing splendour. In the centre was a magnificent golden chalice fit for King Minos himself. It was decorated in relief with an elaborate bullfighting scene. Alongside lay a life-sized golden statue of a woman, her arms raised in supplication and her headdress wreathed in snakes. Her bare breasts had been sculpted from ivory, and a flickering arc of colour showed where her neck was embellished with jewels. Nestled in front was a bundle of golden-handled bronze swords, their blades decorated with fighting scenes made from inlaid silver and blue enamel.The most brilliant reflection came from the area just in front of the divers. Each waft of the hand seemed to reveal another gleaming object. Jack could make out gold bars, royal seals, jewellery and delicate diadem crowns of intertwined leaves, all jumbled together as if they had once been inside a treasure chest.The view suddenly veered up towards the ascent line and the screen abruptly went blank. In the stunned silence that followed, Jack lowered the camera and looked at Costas."I think we're in business," he said quietly. *** Jack had staked his reputation on a far-flung proposal. In the decade since completing his doctorate he had become fixated on discovering a Minoan wreck, a find that would clinch his theory about the maritime supremacy of the Minoans in the Bronze Age. He had become convinced that the most likely spot was a group of reefs and islets some seventy nautical miles north-east of Knossos.Yet for weeks they had searched in vain. A few days earlier their hopes had been raised and then dashed by the discovery of a Roman wreck, a dive Jack expected to be his last of the season. Today was to have been a chance to evaluate new equipment for their next project. Once again Jack's luck had held out."Mind giving me a hand?"Costas had slumped exhausted beside the stern railing on Seaquest, his equipment still unbuckled and the water on his face now joined by rivulets of sweat. The late afternoon sun of the Aegean drenched his form in light. He looked up at the lean physique that towered over him. Jack was an unlikely scion of one of England's most ancient families, his easy grace the only hint of a privileged lineage. His father had been an adventurer who had eschewed his background and used his wealth to take his family away with him to remote locations around the world. His unconventional upbringing had left Jack an outsider, a man most at ease in his own company and beholden to nobody. He was a born leader who commanded respect on the bridge and the foredeck."What would you do without me?" Jack asked with a grin as he lifted the tanks off Costas' back.The son of a Greek shipping tycoon, Costas had spurned the playboy lifestyle which was his for the asking and opted for ten years at Stanford and MIT, emerging as an expert in submersible technology. Surrounded by a vast jumble of tools and parts that only he could navigate, Costas would routinely conjure up wondrous inventions like some latter-day Caractacus Pott. His passion for a challenge was matched by his gregarious nature, a vital asset in a profession where teamwork was essential.The two men had first met at the NATO base at Izmir in Turkey when Jack had been seconded to the Naval Intelligence School and Costas was a civilian adviser to UNANTSUB, the United Nations anti-submarine warfare research establishment. A few years later Jack invited Costas to join him at the International Maritime University, the research institution which had been their home for more than ten years now. In that time Jack had seen his remit as director of field operations at IMU grow to four ships and more than two hundred personnel, and despite an equally burgeoning role in the engineering department, Costas always seemed to find a way to join Jack when things got exciting."Thanks, Jack." Costas slowly stood up, too tired to say more. He only stood as high as Jack's shoulders and had a barrel chest and forearms inherited from generations of Greek sponge fishermen and sailors, with a personality to match. This project had been close to his heart as well, and he was suddenly drained by the excitemen... --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Poche .