Chapter Text
Atlantic Ocean, 1996
In the blackness of the Atlantic Ocean, twin deep submersibles free-fell toward the ocean floor like express elevators. Mir One and Mir Two, as they were called, looked like spacecraft blazing with lights and bristling with insectile manipulators, the crushing depths of the ocean as uncharted as the endless abyss of outer space.
One sub, Mir One, was ahead of the other. Inside, it was a cramped seven foot sphere, crammed with equipment and humanity.
The three men inside—three was the maximum capacity of such a small vehicle—were all dressed in identical blue coveralls adorned with a white patch with Russian lettering on the right shoulder. Each had an role important role to play to ensure each dive was successful.
Anatoly Mikailavich, the sub's middle-aged and clean shaven pilot, sat hunched over his controls, singing softly in Russian.
Next to him on one side was Brock Lovett. He was American, in his late forties, deeply tanned with a mop of dirty blonde hair, and an ever-present five o'clock shadow. He liked to wear his Nomex divesuit unzipped to show the gold from famous shipwrecks covering his graying chest hair. He was a wiley, fast-talking treasure hunter, a salvage superstar who was part historian, part adventurer and part vacuum cleaner salesman. Right now, he was propped against the CO2 scrubber, fast asleep.
On the other side, crammed into the remaining space was another American: a burly man with long hair tied in a ponytail, a beard, and glasses named Lewis Bodine, who was also asleep. Asleep was the only state in which the outspoken and crass Bodine was not running his mouth, but he still made noise, as his snores filled the entire sub. Lovett's right hand man, Bodine was an R.O.V. (Remotely Operated Vehicle) pilot and was the resident Titanic expert.
Anatoly glanced at the bottom sonar and made an adjustment to the ballast.
It was going to be a long descent to the bottom for the aging R.O.V. pilot.
***
The sea floor was a pale, dead, flat lunar landscape, shrouded in a blanket of darkness. That darkness was cut by the lights of Mir One, as the sub dropped to the seafloor in a downblast from its thrusters. It hit bottom after its two hour free-fall with a loud BONK. Lovett and Bodine jerked awake at the landing.
"We are here," Anatoly announced in his heavy Russian accent.
Five minutes later, the two subs skimmed over the seafloor to the sound of sidescan sonar and the thrum of their big thrusters.
The featureless gray clay of the bottom unrolled before them in the lights of the subs. Bodine was watching the sidescan sonar display, where the outline of a huge pointed object was visible. Anatoly lay prone, driving the sub, his lined face pressed to the center port.
"Come left a little," directed Lewis. "She's right in front of us, eighteen meters. Fifteen. Thirteen... you should see it."
"Do you see it?" asked Anatoly. "I don't see it... there!"
Out of the darkness, like a ghostly apparition, the bow of the ship appeared. Its knife-edge prow came straight out at them, seeming to plow the bottom sediment like ocean waves. It towered above the seafloor, standing just as it landed—or rather crashed— that cold April morning in 1912.
The Royal Mail Ship Titanic. Or what was left of her.
Next to the enormous wreck, the two twenty-two foot long subs were like white bugs preparing to scavenge the carcass of a large animal.
"Alright," ordered Brock. "Take her up and over the bow rail."
Into the radio, Brock added, "Okay Mir Two, we're going over the bow. Stay with us."
Anatoly maneuvered Mir One up the towering bow and over the railing. Under the sub's lights they could see that the ship was still intact except for an overgrowth of "rusticles"—iron-eating bacteria— draping over the bow rail and everywhere else like mutated Spanish moss.
Mir Two drove aft down the starboard side, past the huge anchor while Mir One passed over the seemingly endless forecastle deck; its once polished wooden floors rotten away to reveal the barren iron underneath; with its massive anchor chains still laid out in two neat rows, dotted with bronze windlass caps and bollards, all with a layer of rust that made the tragic remains appear almost like a junkyard on a icy winter night.
Brock grabbed a video camcorder. His face filled the black and white frame.
"Okay, quiet," warned everyone. "We're rolling."
"It still gets me every time," he began in reverent tones.
The camcorder panned to the front viewport, looking over Anatoly's shoulder, to the bow railing visible in the lights beyond.
Anatoly gave him a judgmental side-eye.
"Is just your guilt because of stealing from the dead," the Russian muttered.
Brock turned the camera in his hand so that it pointed at his own face instead of Anatoly, allowing himself a self-deprecating grin. "Thanks, Tolya. Work with me, here."
He resumed his serious, pensive gaze out the front port, with the camera aimed at himself at arm's length. "Seeing her come out of the darkness, like a ghost ship, still gets me every time... to see the sad ruin of the great ship sitting here, where she landed at two-thirty in the morning of April 15, 1912, after her long fall from the world above."
Anatoly rolled his eyes and muttered to himself in Russian.
Bodine snorted and watched the sonar, chuckling, shaking his shaggy head.
"You are so full of shit, boss."
Brock looked back at Lewis and grinned back.
The farther the two subs went on along the deck, they could see the foremast of the crow's nest toppled over the a nearby hatch onto the bridge. Mir Two passed over the First Class promenade deck, its windows overgrown with rusticles that obscured them like tree leaves.
Inside Mir One, Brock continued his monologue. "Dive nine. Here we are again on the deck of Titanic... two and a half miles down. Three thousand, eight hundred and twenty-one meters. The pressure is three and a half tons per square inch. These windows are nine inches thick and if they go, it's sayonara in two microseconds."
Mir Two landed on the boat deck, next to the ruins of the Officer's Quarters. Mir One landed on the roof of the deck house nearby.
Brock set aside the camcorder. "Alright... enough of that bullshit."
Mir Two's cameras focused on the ruins of the Officer's Quarters. Debris was strewn about on the deck outside. Rusticles trailed down the walls like raised scratches. One window was wide open, the other broken. Another had no glass at all. In the silence of the deep ocean, one could almost hear the calamity that occurred so many decades before...
Inside Mir One, Brock was slipping on a green sweater.
"Just put her down on the roof of the Officer's Quarters like yesterday," he ordered.
"Sure," replied Anatoly, maneuvering the sub gently down, landing it on the roof like a helicopter on a helipad.
"Okay Mir Two, we just landed right over by the Grand Staircase," announced Brock into the radio. "You guys set to launch?"
<Yeah, Brock,> came the reply. <Launching Dunkin now.>
Outside Mir Two, the R.O.V. Dunkin—a small yellow and black robot— lifted from its cradle and flew forward and down the starboard side.
<Okay Brock, dropping down along the hull.>
"Yeah. Roger that," replied Brock. "Drop down and go in the First Class gangway door. I want you guys working the D-Deck reception area and dining saloon."
<Copy that.>
Dunkin drove itself away from the sub, paying out its umbilical behind it like a robotic yo-yo. Its twin stereo-video cameras swiveled like insect eyes. It entered a small, square open space that looked like a wound on the great ship, just large enough for the R.O.V. to fit through.
Once inside, Dunkin approached what was once an ornate door to the First Class gangway, now a spooky gate to an undersea haunted house.
Inside Mir One, Lewis slipped on a pair of 3-D electronic goggles, and grabbed the joystick controls of Mir One's ROV.
"Snoop Dog is on the move," announced Brock as the orange and black R.O.V. descended through an open shaft that once was the beautiful First Class Grand Staircase. "We're heading down the stairwell."
Snoop Dog went down several decks, then moved laterally into the First Class Reception Room.
"Okay Lewis, drop down to B-Deck..." directed Brock with the utmost concentration. "Okay, A-Deck..."
"Gimme some rope, Cap'n," replied Lewis, trying to parse through the disorienting vision silt, rust, and debris.
On the monitors, Lewis could see a shaft that led to... "B-Deck! Get in there!" He pointed at a monitor. "Get in there!"
Lewis drove Snoop Dog through the cavernous interior. Through Snoop's cameras, the remains of the ornate handcarved woodwork which gave the ship its elegance moved through the floodlights, the lines blurred by slow dissolution and descending rusticle formations. Stalactites of rust hung down so that at times it looked like a natural grotto, then the scene on the monitor would shift and the lines of a ghostly undersea mansion could be seen again.
As Snoop passed the ghostly images of Titanic's opulence, they could see a chandelier, still hanging from the ceiling by its wire, crystals intact, glinting as Snoop's lights hit it through a ruined corridor...
...playing across the floor, the lights revealed a champagne bottle, then some White Star Line china...
....a woman's high-top "granny shoe" and broken eyeglasses, their owners long gone ...
...Brock's heart skipped a beat as what looked eerily like a child's skull resolved into the porcelain head of a doll...
Moving on, Snoop entered a corridor which was much better preserved. Here and there a door still hung on its rusted hinges. An ornate piece of molding and a wall sconce hint at the grandeur of the past.
The R.O.V. stopped at a black doorway, which was once B-52, the sitting room of a "promenade suite", one of the most luxurious staterooms on Titanic.
"That's the door frame, that's the door frame!" warned Brock impatiently. "Watch it! Watch it!"
"I see it," assured Lewis. "I get it."
Bodine drove Snoop through the doorway, but it was a tight squeeze, scraping rust and wood chunks loose on both sides, which made Brock nervous.
"We're good, we're good," insisted Lewis, driving Snoop through the cloud of rust. "Just chill, boss."
A fish swam across Snoop's camera, unsettling them further. Once the fish moved out of frame, the R.O.V. was able to move further into the stateroom. Glinting in the lights were the brass fixtures of the near-perfectly preserved fireplace. An albino Galathea crab crawled over it.
Nearby were the barely recognizable remains of a divan couch and an overturned and cracked writing desk. Snoop crossed the ruins of the once elegant room toward the fireplace. In a truly surreal moment, the men were able to see Snoop's reflection in the remaining glass of the mantelpiece mirror.
"Okay. Okay," directed Brock. "Make your turn. Watch the wall."
<Yeah, Brock. We're at the piano,> came a report from Mir Two.
Mir Two's cameras revealed a grand piano in amazingly good shape, surrounded by debris. The keys gleamed black and white in the lights.
"Okay, copy that," replied Brock. Continuing on through the room, the black opening of another doorway caught Brock's eye. "Okay. Right there. Right there, right there!"
Brock nearly leapt off the ground in his effort to point at the monitors. "Okay, that's it! That's the bedroom–"
"I see it," grinned Lewis. "I see it."
Entering the bedroom, Snoop came upon the remains of a pillared canopy bed, surrounded by broken chairs, a dresser.
"We're in!" exclaimed Lewis. "We're in, baby. We're there!"
"That's Hockley's bed," Brock pointed out. "That's where the son of a bitch slept..."
Revealing yellowed teeth, Lewis wolfishly wagged his tongue.
Through the collapsed wall of the bathroom, they could see the porcelain commode and bathtub took almost new, gleaming in the dark.
"Oops. Somebody left the water running," Lewis commented irreverently.
Brock ignored his tactless comment, too focused on the hunt.
"Hold it, hold it, just a second," he ordered, something in the frame catching his eye. "Go back to the right."
Lewis rotated the R.O.V in the direction Brock requested. By the bedroom doorway was a pile of innocuous debris that they'd previously overlooked: an overturned lounge chair, wooden beams, a wardrobe door.
"That wardrobe door... get closer," murmured Brock, almost in a trancelike state. He was 'getting in the zone', as Lewis called it. His instincts were what made Brock such a successful explorer and treasure hunter.
"You smellin' somethin', boss?" asked Lewis.
"I wanna see what's under it..."
"Give me my hands, man," called Lewis, and Anatoly remotely deployed the R.O.V.'s robotic manipulator arms, like crab pincers.
"All right..." said Lewis, taking hold of a pair of electronic controllers that allowed him to wield Snoop's manipulator arms.
"Take it easy, it might come apart," warned Brock as Lewis began moving debris aside.
Lewis licked his lips in concentration. "Okay..."
He gripped a wardrobe door, lying at an angle in a corner, and pulled it with Snoop's manipulator arms.
"Go. Go go go!" urged Brock. "Flip it over! Flip it over! Go!"
The door moved reluctantly in a cloud of silt. It took all of Lewis's skill with the manipulator arms to turn it over, with Brock in his ear all the while.
"Turn it over! Keep going! Go go go!"
Lewis managed the difficult, precise movement to flip the door over.
"Okay, drop it!" ordered Brock, and the manipulators dropped the old door on the pile of wooden beams, kicking up a cloud of silt.
Underneath it was a dark object. The silt cleared and Snoop's cameras showed them what was under the door...
"Ooohh baby baby, are you seein' this, boss?" called Lewis, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Brock watched his monitors, his expression like one would have seeing the Holy Grail. For on the screen, in the glare of the lights, was the object of their quest: a small steel combination safe.
Brock grabbed the mic, smiling from ear to ear.
"It's payday, boys."
***
The safe, dripping wet in the afternoon sun, was being lifted from the ocean by a winch cable onto the Russian research vessel Akademik Mistislav Keldysh. A four hundred foot, six thousand, two-hundred forty ton ivory-colored vessel, the Keldysh was a ship that specialized in deep sea exploration.
As Mir Two was being lowered into its cradle on deck by a massive hydraulic arm, a cheering crowd had gathered to greet the returning Mir One crew, including most of the crew of the Keldysh, and a hand-wringing money guy named Bobby Buell who was a representative of Brock's few partners. He had a thick layer of sunscreen on his prominent nose.
"Cha-ching!" laughed Lewis as he slapped palms and half-hugged Bobby.
Bobby turned and gave Brock a handshake.
"We did it, Bobby," he grinned, putting an arm around Bobby's shoulders. "My cigar?"
"Right here," he replied, handing him his celebratory cigar he'd light after every successful expedition.
Brock had even hired a documentary video crew to cover his moment of glory. Everyone crowded around the safe as it was lowered onto the deck.
"Oh yeah! Who's the man? Who's the man, baby?" crowed Lewis, putting an arm around Brock's shoulders. "Say it...say it..."
"You are, Lewis," beamed Brock, and Lewis planted a wet, hairy kiss on him. He turned to the film crew. "You rolling?"
"Rolling," confirmed the cameraman.
Brock nodded to his technicians, and they set about sawing open the safe's hinges with a power-saw.
During this operation, Brock amped the suspense, working the lens to fill the time. "Well, here it is, the moment of truth. Here's where we find out if the time, the sweat, the money spent to charter this ship and these subs, to come out here to the middle of the North Atlantic... were worth it. If what we think is in that same... is in that safe... it will be."
He grinned wolfishly in anticipation of his greatest find yet as sparks flew from the safe. Lewis popped open a bottle of champagne and doused Brock and Bobby with the bubbly to another chorus of cheers.
"Okay, crack her open," he said to the technician as he set down the saw and affixed a chain to the door.
The door was pried loose. It clanged heavily onto the deck as muddy seawater rushed out from inside the safe.
"Get around. Hang on," directed a cameraman to another cameraman as they documented the moment. "You getting it?"
"Got it."
Brock moved closer, peering into the safe's wet interior. He got on his hands and knees and reached inside, pulling out indistinguishable clods of paper as he searched for his prize.
With each clod, Brock grew in desperation.
Next came a leather-bound journal of some sort. He looked at it in bewilderment for a moment and threw it aside with the other clods.
Another clod. Brock was aware of his breath drawing ragged as he pawed through every remaining corner and crevice he could reach.
A long moment then... his face said it all.
"Shit."
"No diamond?" Anatoly asked over his shoulder.
He stood up, aware much more than before of all the eyes and camera lenses focused on his every move, his reaction to the biggest and most public failure of his life.
Of course, Lewis was never known for his tact. "You know, boss, the same thing happened to Geraldo and his career never recovered."
Brock rose to his feet, scowling at the safe and then the cameraman. "Turn the camera off."
He then stormed off towards his cabin, wondering what the hell he was going to do next.