“I guess this one wants to play hard to get,” Pitt muttered.
“Like too many of the women I’ve dated,” Giordino grimaced. “I guess we’ll have to take Dahlgren up on his ship’s bell offer after all.”
Pitt elevated the submersible above the deck, then swept toward the stern. The deck was remarkably clear of debris, the ship obviously configured in its winter hibernation mode when it was abandoned. The only unusual item was a large canvas structure that lay across the deck amidships. Pitt knew from the historical accounts that a tentlike covered structure was set up on the deck in winter so that the crew could escape the interior confines of the ship for exercise.
Pitt continued aft, where he found the helmsman’s station and the large wooden ship’s wheel, still standing upright and attached to the rudder. A small bell was mounted nearby, but, after careful scrutiny, he could find no markings on it.
“I know where the ship’s bell is,” Pitt stated, cruising back toward the bow. Hovering over the tangled mass of timbers and debris where the bow had buckled, he pointed down.
“It’s in the garbage pit here.”
“Must be,” Giordino agreed with a nod. “It’s not our day. Or night.” He checked a console of dials in front of him. “We have just under four hours of battery power remaining. Do you want to rummage around for the bell or have a look inside?”
“Let’s take Rover for a walk. There’s one upside to this damage, I suppose. It will allow us easier access to the interior.”
Pitt edged the Bloodhoundto a clear section of the deck, then carefully set the submersible down. When the ship’s timbers gave no indication of stress, he powered off the propulsion motors.
In the copilot seat, Giordino was busy engaging another device. Tucked between the submersible’s support skids was a small, tethered ROV the size of a small suitcase. Equipped with a micro-sized video camera and small array of lights, it could maneuver into the smallest corners of the shipwreck.
Jockeying a controlling joystick, Giordino guided the Rover out from its cradle and toward the open section of the deck. Pitt flipped down an overhead monitor, which displayed the live video feed from the device. Methodically weaving above and around the debris, Giordino finally found a large gap in the deck and guided the ROV into the bowels of the ship.
Pitt unrolled a cutaway diagram of the Erebusand tried to track the ROV’s location as it moved beneath the main deck. The ship had two levels belowdecks, plus a dank hold where the engine, boiler, and coal reserves were housed below the waterline. The living and dining areas for both crew and officers were located on the lower deck, one level down from the main deck. Beneath the lower deck was the orlop deck, which was strictly a storage area for provisions, tools, and ship’s spares.
“You should be dropping near the galley,” Pitt remarked. “It’s adjacent to the crew’s living quarters, which is a sizable compartment.”
Giordino guided the Rover down until the deck came into view, then he turned and panned the bay. The still water inside the ship was exceedingly translucent, providing perfectly clear visibility. Pitt and Giordino could see, not five feet away from the ROV, the galley’s large cookstove, built up on a layer of bricks. It was a massive structure made of cast iron and crowned by six large burners on its flat cooking surface. Sitting atop it were several black iron pots of varying sizes.
“One galley, as ordered,” Giordino remarked.
He then steered the ROV aft, slowly scanning back and forth. The thin bulkheads surrounding the galley had fallen to the deck, revealing the open crew’s quarters. The bay was mostly empty of debris, save for a large number of planked wooden slabs that lay evenly spaced across the deck.
“Mess tables,” Pitt explained as the Rover’s cameras focused in on one of the tabletops. “They were stowed overhead to make way for the crew’s hammocks but lowered on ropes at meal-times. They’ve fallen to the deck as the ropes deteriorated.”
The ROV moved aft as the compartment narrowed until fronting a wide bulkhead.
“That will be the main hatchway,” Pitt explained. “Keep moving aft and we should reach a ladderway that descends to the orlop deck. They covered it with an enclosure to keep out the draft from below, but we’ll have to hope it was dislodged when the ship sank.”
Giordino steered the ROV around the hatchway, then brought it to a sudden halt. Tilting it toward the deck, the camera revealed a large circular hole cut through the deck.
“No door here,” he said.
“Of course, we can drop through the deck collar,” Pitt replied.
The deck collar held one of the ship’s three masts as it ran down to the hold. When the masts pulled free during the sinking, they left an open passageway into the lowest depths of the ship.
The Rover squeezed through the opening, then sprayed its lights on the black orlop deck. For the next fifty minutes, the ROV scoured the corners of the deck, Giordino methodically searching for possible traces of the ore. But all they found was a vast supply of tools, weapons, and the ship’s stowed canvas sails, which would never feel a sea breeze again. Returning to the mast stand, they delved into the lower hold, finding only a few scraps of coal near the massive steam boiler. Coming up empty on both levels, Giordino began threading the ROV back up to the lower deck, when the submersible’s radio crackled.
“ Narwhalto Bloodhound, have you got your ears on? ” came the readily distinguishable voice of Jack Dahlgren.
“ Bloodhoundhere. Go ahead, Jack,” Pitt replied.
“The captain wanted me to let you know that our friend with the barge has moseyed back onto the radar screen. Appears to be sitting stationary about ten miles north of us.”
“Affirmative. Please keep us advised.”
“Will do. You boys having any luck down there?”
“We sure are, but it has all been bad. We’ve got Rover on the leash and are about to try for the captain’s cabin.”
“How are you doing on power?”
Pitt eyed a bank of dials and meters overhead. “We’re good for another ninety minutes on the bottom, and we’ll probably need it all.”
“Roger. We’ll look for you up top in less than two. Narwhalout.”
Pitt stared at the dark abyss beyond the submersible, contemplating the icebreaker on the surface above. Were they in fact monitoring the Narwhal? His gut told him so with certainty. It wouldn’t be his first encounter with the forces of Mitchell Goyette, he now knew. And what of Clay Zak? Could it be possible that Goyette’s thug was aboard the icebreaker?
Giordino nudged him back to the task at hand.
“Ready to move aft.”
“The clock is ticking,” Pitt said quietly. “Let’s get it done.”
65
A dense, icy fog crept across the Otokas dusk settled over Victoria Strait. The Narwhalwas long lost from physical view, and Zak searched for her on the radarscope, finding the research ship as a narrow smudge on the top of the screen. Across the bridge, the icebreaker’s captain paced back and forth, having grown bored with holding his ship stationary for the past few hours.
But the captain saw no signs of boredom in Zak’s face. On the contrary, there was an odd intensity about him. Like in the moment before an assassination, he was fully alert, his senses in high gear. While he had murdered many times before, he had never done so on a large scale. It was a test of cunning, he liked to think, that made his blood run fast. It gave him a sensation of invincibility, inflated by the knowledge that he had always come out on top.