Free Crusader Gold by David Gibbins Page B

imagined, but the Golden Horn could still contain treasures of inestimable historical value. The team were riding on a wave of euphoria after the cannon and chain discoveries and had already begun to use Costas’ probe to penetrate the harbour sediments, but it was hit and miss and could be days before they came up trumps.
    “Right,” he said. “What have you got?”
    O’Connor sat with a small green-backed book pressed open in front of him, Greek text visible on one side and English on the other. Costas had excused himself and returned to the engineering complex, but Maria and Jeremy sat expectantly at the table with Jack.
    “In his book The Jewish Wars, Josephus tells us that Vespasian had the treasures locked away in the Temple of Jupiter,” O’Connor began. “But we know they were transferred to the Temple of Peace when that was completed a few years into Vespasian’s reign. After that there’s no mention of the menorah for hundreds of years.”
    “But surely the emperor would have wanted to display his loot at every opportunity, at parades and festivals in the city,” Maria protested.
    “Vespasian was the supreme embodiment of the Roman imperial virtues,” Jack interjected. “Conquest, stability, building. As a young man he commanded a legion in the conquest of Britain, and as emperor he oversaw the conquest of Judaea. Then he stabilised the empire following the disastrous reign of Nero.
    Now his focus was entirely on building. The Temple of Peace, the monuments in the Forum damaged by the Great Fire of AD 64 under Nero, above all the Colosseum. He didn’t need to shout about his triumphs anymore.”
    “There may be more to it than that,” O’Connor said cautiously. “You know, it’s an odd feature of Josephus’ account of the triumph that he only mentions the execution of Simon, the charismatic Jewish leader who’d been brought in chains to Rome. There’s nothing on the fate of the hundreds of other Jewish captives, men, women and children. Some of us now believe there was an orgy of murder at the end of the procession, a scene so appalling Josephus couldn’t bring himself to describe it. After all, these were his people, and he never forsook his Jewish faith. When Vespasian saw it, he too was repulsed. The emperor was a tough old soldier, as ruthless as any Roman to his enemies, but was well known for his hatred of gratuitous bloodshed. Perhaps he contrived an ill omen as an excuse never to celebrate the Jewish triumph again, secretly instructing his priests to keep the menorah under lock and key for all time.”
    “And then the trail goes cold,” Maria said.
    “All we have to go on is Procopius.” O’Connor gestured at the book in front of him. “He was an eyewitness to the last great attempt to reunite the Roman Empire, when the Byzantine general Belisarius recaptured Rome from the Vandals and Goths who had overrun the western provinces in the fifth century AD.”
    “It amazes me that the menorah survived for so long in Rome without being looted,” Jack said. “Those weren’t exactly centuries of peace and harmony.
    Think of Commodus, the demented son of Marcus Aurelius. He thought he was the god Hercules, and melted down most of the imperial treasure to pay for gladiatorial contests. Or the anarchy of the third century, when there were more than thirty emperors in fifty years. The Temple of Peace was a well-known repository for the spoils of war, and its treasuries would surely have been thrown open to find gold to pay for the mercenary armies of each new claimant to the throne.”
    “Absolutely.” O’Connor paused, then looked piercingly at Jack and lowered his voice. “I must ask you again to keep what I say within these four walls. The answer is staring at us in that image of the Arch of Titus. In the 1970s a sonar survey by a conservation team revealed a hidden chamber in the attic, behind the dedicatory inscription.”
    Jack’s jaw dropped. “You’re not suggesting the