Rosa couldn’t see much more than a raised round shape, with a few angular chunks of rock in the background.
“It measures roughly three feet in diameter, but it’s probably taller than that. We can assume that, like the other eleven, it’s sunk deep into the seabed. But we’re going to take a closer look at it.”
The dim, ghostly illumination from the searchlight and the floating particles visible in the foreground of the picture reminded Rosa of the Dallamano photographs. Those, however, had shown a statue of two animals: a panther upright on his hind legs, with the broad body of a giant snake coiled around him. The reptile’s head hung before the eyes of the big cat, and the two of them were looking at each other.
“We’ve compared the photos you gave us with these.” Campbell pressed a combination of keys. The picture of the panther and the snake that they had found at Iole’s house moved over the picture on the screen like a film. The perspectives were not exactly the same, but because of the rocky structures in the background there was no possible doubt. It was the same place, but the statue was gone.
“Fuck,” whispered Rosa.
The treasure hunter smiled. “My sentiments exactly.”
She glanced at Alessandro. The greenish light from the screen intensified the color of his eyes. For a moment she couldn’t look away from him. “Did you know about this?” she asked.
“Not until yesterday. I was going to tell you about it today.”
“Does it mean that’s it? Everything here was all for nothing?”
“Definitely not for nothing,” said Campbell drily. “Wait until you see my invoice.”
“Wasn’t salvaging the statues supposed to be your job?” she asked sharply.
“I’m not through yet.” For the first time he spoke as if he took her seriously. “I have some information that will be new to your friend as well.”
Alessandro’s cheek muscles twitched. “Go on, let’s hear it.”
Campbell zoomed in closer on the round block of stone. “As I said, the plinths probably go down several feet into the seabed. That assumption is based on values drawn from past experience of the geological nature of this region, tremors, volcanic activity, et cetera, et cetera…. But let’s look at the surface of the stone, so far as the picture quality allows it. I already have divers down there who will look more closely at our find, put it under a magnifying glass, but it looks like someone cut the statues neatly away from their plinths.”
“You mean each plinth and its statue were carved from a single piece of rock?” asked Alessandro.
Campbell nodded. “Do you see that fluted structure? What we have there are either traces left by extremely fine conventional cutters, or a laser cutter manufactured specially for an underwater operation like this one.”
“Then someone must have invested a lot of money to get hold of those statues,” said Rosa thoughtfully.
“Going down to a hundred and twenty feet isn’t a problem for a well-trained amateur diver, and certainly not for experienced deep-sea or military divers. With the right equipment, you can stay at that depth for quite some time. However, we’ve calculated that to sever a stone block like that cleanly would probably take several hours. Which means that the teams down there either worked with top-quality respiratory technology, probably the kind used by military divers, or worked in several shifts.”
Rosa’s hand was lying on the back of Campbell’s chair. When she felt the touch of Alessandro’s fingers, they exchanged a fleeting smile. She couldn’t have said just what she had expected of this venture. She had trained intensively as a diver herself, but when she and Alessandro had finally gone down, they had been unable to find anything but rocks and mud. Only after that had they hired a professional salvage team.
“What’s more, we’re talking about twelve statues,” the treasure hunter went on, “and we can now say for certain that at least seven were removed from their plinths by the same high-precision methods. In the photos you gave us, the statues were all of panthers and snakes. Some of them were in pieces, or badly damaged. But even those remains must have been salvaged to the very last fragment, all but the plinths. Whoever did it was very thorough, and also treated his find with great respect. Those people didn’t make it easy for themselves. And we have to assume that they could afford to work without any financial restrictions.”
Rosa nodded to Alessandro. She silently formed the word TABULA