The weather on Nantucket Shoals lived up to its reputation for changeability. When Austin and Zavala crawled out of their bunks that morning the air was transparent. The lumpy sea of the previous day had vanished, and the ocean was mirror calm, reflecting like polished glass the images of the seabirds dotting the surface. A pair of black fins cut the water. Dolphins. McGinty said they were a sign of good luck and would keep the sharks away. The surface current was about one knot. He predicted that a thick fog would later work its way onto the shoals, and the current might come up, but they could deal with that.
Encased in their heavy suits, the NUMA men were lowered by crane into the water. They spent several minutes just under the surface checking out their gear while the crane again swung out over the water and dropped a Kevlar cable that was ganged into four short lines ending in sturdy metal dips. They gripped the line firmly in their mechanical claws. With a hum of vertical thrusters they descended into the indigo sea. The Monkfish was locked in place exactly over the wreck by four anchor lines, two at the bow, two at the stern, one hundred meters in each direction. Stability was crucial. Otherwise the diving bell would swing at the end of its tether like a pendulum.
Although the Hard Suits were equipped with lights and they brought portable lamps with them, no illumination was needed. The visibility was at least thirty feet, and the shadowy outline of the ship stood out in relief against the paler bottom. They headed toward where a section of the hull was illuminated by a cold pulsating glow.
At the center of the eddying bluish corona two saturation divers clung to the up-ended port side of the ship like insects on a log. One diver knelt on the hull with a cutting torch in his gloved hand while the other tended the Kerry cable that conveyed the fuel and kept an eye on things in general. They had been transported down earlier by the diving bell, which served as an elevator and underwater habitat for the dive team.
Suspended by a thick cable that ran to a winch on the deck of the Monkfish, the bell hung a few meters above the hull. It was shaped like a gaspowered camp lantern. The four sides were rounded slightly at the corners, the roof sloped down from the hole for the hoisting cable. Another cable containing communications and power entered the bell from a lower point on the roof. Fastened to the outside were tanks holding breathing gases and torch fuel. The bottom of the bell was open to the sea, which was held in abeyance by air pressure. From the opening umbilicals snaked to the divers, carrying the breathing mixture and hot water to bodywarming tubing in their Divex Armadillo suits. In addition each diver carried an emergency breathing tank on his back.
The divers were working on a section of steel plating that had been scraped clear of anemones to expose the black hull paint. The heat discoloration from the magnesium rods in the high-pressure feed oxyarc cutting torch outlined a large rectangle around the garage doors. The saturation diver who'd been tending the torchman became aware of the twin yellow blimps approaching. Using the slow-motion movement that comes with working in deep water, the diver reached up to take the cable from Austin and Zavala. The NUMA men could communicate directly with themselves and with the salvage boat, but there was no direct link to the saturation divers except through the bell. Austin was unconcerned because everyone had gone over the plan many times, and hand signals were adequate for all but the most complicated message.
The kneeling diver snapped off his torch when he saw the new arrivals. He pointed to each comer of the rectangle where he had cut double holes and gave the thumbs-up signal. Then he and his companion attached the clips from the surface line to the holes. The divers moved several meters away, and one made a jerking motion with his hand like a locomotive engineer pulling the whistle cord.
Austin radioed the deck crew. All clear. Start hauling."
The deck crew relayed the message to the crane operator, and the Kevlar line went as taut as a bow string. Seconds passed. Nothing happened. The framework around the door had been cut like a dotted line on cardboard. Austin was wondering if more cutting was needed when there was an explosion of bubbles from the deck. The section pulled free with a muffled boom.
Austin directed the surface crew to move the crane over and let the doors drop onto the hull.
A huge gaping rectangular hole had been opened in the side of the ship at the B Deck level. The tourist class cabins had been stuffed into fore and aft sections of this deck and C Deck, the level below it. The forward section of deck was where the cabins were split by the autorimessa, the deck that housed nine cars and an armored truck.
Zavala powered his suit so he was directly above the newly created opening
“You ”You could drive a HumVee through this thing."
“Why do things halfway? Think of it. Everyone who dives on the wreck from now on will think of this as Zavala's Hole.”
“I'll pass that honor on to you. How about naming it Austin's Aperture?” .
“How about scouting things out?”
“No time like the present.”
“I'll take the point. We'll go nice and slow. Watch out for ceiling cables and collapsed bulkheads. Remember to keep a safe distance apart.”
Zavala didn't need to be warned. The Hard Suits resembled space suits worn by the astronauts. As with astronauts floating in free fall, motions had to be deliberate and unexaggerated. Even at slow speed a collision between the thousand pound suits would rattle their teeth.
Austin moved in under Zavala so that the light from his suit pointed straight into the ship. The powerful beam was swallowed by the darkness. He gave his vertical thrusters a short blast, descended feet-first into the garage, then stopped and rotated the suit three hundred sixty degrees. The water was free of loose ends and projections. He gave Zavala the all-clear and watched the bloated yellow figure sink through the blue-green hole and come to a hovering stop.
“This reminds me of the Baja Cantina in Tijuana,” Zavala said. Actually it's not as dark."
“We'll stop for shots of Cuervo on the way back,” Austin replied. “The ship is ninety feet wide. The cargo would have slid. down to the bottom like Captain McGinty said. Everything is at a ninety-degree angle, so the floor of the garage is actually that vertical wall right behind you. We'll stick close to the wall so as not to become disoriented.”
As they descended Austin went down a mental checklist, anticipating obstacles and reactions. While he worked on practical problems and solutions his brain was busy on another, irrational level, probably the survival mechanism that raised the hackles on the unshaven necks of his ancestors. He was hearing Donatelli's voice describing his terrifying descent into the innards of the ship. The old man was wrong, Austin concluded. This was worse than anything Dante could have imagined. Austin would take the fire and brimstone of the Inferno any day. At least Dante could see something. Even if it was only demons and the damned.
It was hard to believe now that the decks of this vast empty hulk once throbbed with the diesel power of fifty thousand horses, and more than twelve hundred passengers basked in the ship's sensuous beauty, their needs served by a crew of nearly six hundred. The first person to dive on the Andrea Doria after she slid beneath the Atlantic said the ship seemed still alive, producing an eerie cacophony of groans and creaks, the banging of loose debris, water rushing in and out of doorways. Austin saw only decay, emptiness, and silence, except for the sound of their rebreathers. This huge metal cairn was a haunted place where a man who lingered too long could go mad.
The ship seemed to close in on them, and Austin kept checking his depth gauge. Although they were only about two hundred feet from the surface, it seemed deeper because of the darkness. He looked upward. The bluegreen rectangle that marked the opening was diffused in the murk and eventually might have become invisible if the saturation divers hadn't placed a strobe light on the edge as a beacon. Austin glanced at the blinking pinpoint and felt reassured, then turned his focus to what lay below.
Under their feet solid objects were looming out of the darkness into the circle of il
lumination cast by their lights. Straight lines and
edges. Mysterious rounded shapes. Tons of debris were jammed into the horizontal space that had once been the starboard bulkhead of the Dona. When the ship was level the garage was covered with heavy metal mesh and catwalks. Now these were vertical as well. Austin and Zavala started a search pattern, moving in parallel lines, back and forth, between the vertical partitions formed by the old floor and ceiling of the garage, the type of search they would execute if they were on the surface looking for a shipwreck. They encountered dangling wires from the old light fixtures but not enough to be dangerous and they were easily avoided.
Their lights caught the glint of metal and glass and vague forms that occasionally resolved into familiar shapes.
“Hey, Kurt, is that a Rolls-Royce I see down there?”
Austin directed his light at the distinctive heavy grille sticking out of the debris.
“Probably. According to the liner's manifest a guy from Miami was shipping his Rolls back from Europe.”
“Goes to show it pays to have a Rolls on every continent.”
Austin glided over the Rolls and saw part of another car with unconventional sweeping lines.
“That looks like the Chrysler experimental car built by Ghia. Too bad Pitt isn't here. He'd go through hell and high water to add a oneof-a-kind to his collection.”
“He'd have to go through a lot of mud, too.”
The cars had tumbled on top of one another and now were largely covered by debris and silt. Austin had briefly entertained thoughts of a plan to excavate the debris, but it was an intellectual exercise only. Too dangerous, costly, and time-consuming. Any effort to dig through the cover would stir up a cloud so thick it would take days to settle.
From what Donatelli said of the truck's position, the vehicle should have fallen onto the top of the heap. It should have been visible. Could the old man have been wrong? He was under tremendous stress that night. Maybe the car was in another cargo hold. Austin groaned. It had taken a tremendous effort to cut into the garage. They had neither the time nor resources to try again. His expeditionary force was made up of assets borrowed for only a few days.
Doubts grew the longer they searched. They went over every square yard of visible debris.
“Whatever happened to the plan to refloat this thing with Ping-Pong balls?” Zavala said.
“I don't think there are enough PingPong balls in China for the job. What's your take?”
“I think Angelo Donatelli was one gutsy guy. This must be the biggest sensory deprivation tank in the world. Hard to believe we're still on planet Earth. I feel like a fly in a molasses jar.”
“I'm beginning to wonder if the truck is in here at all.”
“Where would it be?”
“I wish I knew,” Austin replied.
“Nina is going to be disappointed.”
“I know. What say we go topside and deliver the bad news?”
“Fine with me. My bladder is telling me I drank too much coffee this morning.”
They powered the vertical thrusters, keeping a slow but steady pace, homing in on the flashing beacon above. As they ascended they flashed their lights ahead and above to make sure they weren't coming up on unseen obstructions. The beam from Zavala's light stabbed the blackness in a corner of the garage, moved away for a second, then came back.
“Kurt,” he called out excitedly. “There's something in the corner.”
They stopped their ascent. Austin saw two red eyes glowing in the inky darkness.
Having spent more than an hour in this otherworldly environment his first reaction was that they were looking at a huge sea creature who'd made the ship its lair. He pointed his light at the twin orbs, and his pulse rate ratcheted up a few beats. It couldn't be. Both men moved in for a closer look and put the full force of their lights on the corner.
“Well, I'll be damned,” they said in unison.
Serpent
43
DECADES BEFORE AUSTIN AND ZAVALA cut their way into the Andrea Doria's garage a ship's officer presciently pictured the dire consequences of an armored truck weighing several tons crashing around in the hold during a storm at sea. To head off that possibility the vehicle was lashed by .strong cables passed over the truck's body and bolted to the floor. More than fifty years later the cables still held the truck in place at a right angle to the vertical wall that had once been the garage floor.
The black body was mottled with .rust, and the tire rubber had softened into an evi-llooking mush. The chrome still held a dull shine, though, and the truck itself was in one piece. After as thorough an inspection as they could make, Austin and Zavala left the hull and went back into the open sea. The saturation divers had retreated to the dry comfort of the pressurized bell. Austin didn't blame them. Saturated trimix is eight times as difficult to breathe as air from a scuba tank.
Austin called McGinty. “Tell Mr. Donatelli we've located the truck.”
“Goddamn! Knew you could do it. Is it accessible for salvage?”
“With a little luck and the right equipment. I've got a shopping list.”
Austin quickly laid out the gear he wanted.
“No problem. There's a fresh crew coming down. They'll bring the stuff with them.”
The bell rose to the surface, and the divers inside exchanged places with a team living in the decompression chamber. When the bell returned, the equipment Austin ordered was secured to its exterior. Austin had talked by radio to the replacement divers before they left the ship and outlined the plan. The divers popped from the bottom of the bell and swam over to the hole in the hull. Austin and Zavala re-entered the ship first. The saturation divers followed with their umbilical lifesupport hoses trailing behind. One of them carried an oxygen cutting torch.
Austin regretted not having direct contact with the divers. He would have liked to hear their comments when they saw the truck hanging from the wall at a right angle. Their animated arm waving was almost as enjoyable. After their initial reaction they got right to work on the truck's rear doors. They wouldn't yield to a crowbar or the mechanical claws of the Hard Suits.
Donatelli had said the assassins who killed the armored truck guards simply slammed the doors. They were probably rusted shut rather than locked, Austin guessed. The torch blazed to life, and the diver drew its scalpellike flame along the lock and hinges, the rust exploding in a shower of sparks. They tried the crowbar again, both saturation divers putting their backs .to it. The doors fell off, and a brownish cloud of rotting debris, flushed out by the intruding seawater, enveloped the four men. When it settled and the water was somewhat clear again, Austin edged forward and probed the truck's interior with his light.
The space was piled with metal strongboxes that had fallen off shelves. The swirling water had cleaned away the clothing, hair and remnants of tissue so that the grinning skulls caught in the beam of the light looked freshly scrubbed, not green with algae as they might otherwise have been. The bones had all tumbled in a heap onto one side of the truck with the other debris. Austin moved aside to make room for his partner.
Zavala was silent for a moment. “Looks like the charnel house you see under the old churches in Mexico and Spain.”
“It's more of a slaughterhouse,” Austin said grimly. “Angelo Donatelli's memory is pretty good. Those strongboxes are probably for the jewels that were being shipped.” He willed himself to avoid the sightless eyes. “We'll deal with that stuff later.”
He gestured to the saturation divers, and they swam closer to inspect the inside of the truck. In telling the divers about the stone slab earlier, Austin had warned, “You'll also come across some human bones. I can tell you later how they got there. Hope you're not superstitious.”
The divers stared into the truck and shook their heads, but their stunned reaction was temporary. The NUMA divers were pros. They swam into the truck without further hesitation and started moving the boxes and bones aside. Within minutes they had exposed a s
olidlooking corner of a blackishgray object.
The long lost talking stone.
While the divers tidied up the interior, Austin and Zavala scudded back to the diving bell and returned with a block and tackle attached to the Kevlar tow line that went up to the ship. The bones had been respectfully placed in a neat pile. The strongboxes were stacked out of the way except for one the divers had set aside. With great ceremony a diver opened the box to display its contents. Light glittered off a breathtakingfortune in diamonds, sapphires, and other precious stones.
Austin heard Zavala's sharp intake of breath. “That stuff must be worth millions.”
“Maybe billions if the other boxes are as full. This confirms that the motive was murder, not robbery.” He signaled the saturation divers to move the box, and he set the double block and tackle he was carrying just inside the door. Zavala had been carrying a metal loop. The saturation divers attached this wire collar around a protruding end of the slab, then affixed the line to the pulley.
Austin knew that the center of lift should be maintained directly above the center of gravity. He also knew this ideal seldom occurred. It was like telling someone to lift with his legs, not his back. Good advice, but of little use when the load is in the back of a closet or under the cellar stairs. The Kevlar cable went through the hull, then angled to the truck. The block and tackle would translate its force into a more lateral pull while doubling the pulling capacity.
Austin was dealing with a number of unknowns. One was the weight of the slab. An object is buoyed up by the water it displaces. Austin knew the slab would be lighter in water, but since he could only guess at its original weight, this didn't do much good. He'd asked McGinty for two tackles rigged with a continuous fall, which can lift twice as much as a single tackle. It was revved for a right-angle luff. Technical jargon meaning that they'd done everything they could to compensate for the awkward pulling system.