The Covenant of Genesis Read Online Free PDF Page A

position,’ Nina told them. ‘If it’s a fishing net, they would have kept it close to the shore.’ She checked the little display in her helmet to get their exact depth. ‘Ninety-eight feet. If I put that into GLUG, I’ll be able to work out exactly how long ago this spot was last above water.’ She saw a yellow mesh bag on the ground nearby. ‘What else have you found?’
    ‘Stone tools, we think,’ Gozzi told her. He pointed to a spot behind Chase. ‘We found them there.’
    Chase turned in place. An orange-painted stick marked where the other divers had been working. Near it, a little mound of round-edged stones stood out above the sea floor.
    He looked back at Nina, who was using a smaller version of the vacuum pump to clear silt away from the net. Quickly becoming tired of watching her work, he swam to the stones, the deep suit’s neutral buoyancy letting him hover just above them. ‘Anything under these?’
    ‘I don’t know, we didn’t look,’ said Gozzi.
    ‘Mind if I do?’
    ‘Wait, you want to do some actual archaeology?’ Nina asked, amused. ‘I guess my influence is finally rubbing off on you.’
    ‘Nah, it’s just that if you’re going to keep oohing and aahing over a bit of old net, I’ll need something to keep me occupied. It gets boring just watching out for sharks.’
    Bobak spun in alarm. ‘Sharks? Where are sharks?’
    ‘There aren’t any sharks, Gregor,’ said Nina as Gozzi suppressed a laugh. Still, Bobak surveyed the surrounding waters with deep apprehension before finally returning his attention to the find.
    ‘We have catalogued there,’ Gozzi said. ‘Go ahead.’
    ‘If you find anything, tell us,’ Nina added.
    ‘If it’s just some stone knife, then yeah, I’ll tell you,’ said Chase. ‘If it’s a pirate treasure chest, I’m keeping that to myself !’ Quickly scanning for sharks or other potentially dangerous marine life - despite his earlier jokiness, part of his job was to look after the rest of the team, a responsibility he took very seriously especially where Nina was concerned - he prodded at the nearest rock with his spear gun. Satisfied that a moray eel or similarly nasty surprise wasn’t going to spring out, he pulled the stone free of the sediment.
    While the exposed end had been smoothed off, the rest of it was flat-faced and hard-edged, reminding him of a large brick. Putting it aside, he aimed a light into the new hole. It was sadly lacking in pirate treasure, or even stone knives: nothing but thick sediment and the chipped corners of more blocks.
    He extracted another brick, which came stickily free of its home of untold centuries like a bad tooth from a gum. A couple of colourful fish came to investigate the resulting hole, but like Chase they too were disappointed to find only more bricks.
    ‘No treasure chest?’ Nina asked as he rejoined her.
    ‘Narr, me hearty. Didn’t find anything except some old bricks.’
    Nina exchanged shocked glances with the other two archaeologists, then slowly faced Chase. ‘You found what ?’

    The brick sat on a table in Nina’s lab aboard the Pianosa . Slightly over a foot in length and about five inches to a side in cross-section, slightly curved, there seemed little remarkable about it.
    Except for the mere fact of its existence.
    ‘It’s a brick ,’ said Chase, not for the first time since Nina, Gozzi and Bobak had raced past him to the pile of stones. ‘What’s the big deal?’
    ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Nina, turning round the Apple laptop on which she had been frenziedly working to show him. On its screen was a map of part of Indonesia and the Java Sea, Sumatra and its myriad surrounding islands on the left side. ‘This is the sea level today, right?’
    ‘Okay. And?’
    She zoomed in on one area. ‘This is us, here. The depth of the site is ninety-eight feet below sea level. But if I wind back time to show the last time the site was above sea level . . .’
    The program she was using was