At 168 meters, the starry flecks grew thicker. At 171 meters, a couple of jerking crayfish scurried out of the light, and then, at 173 meters, the screen was suddenly flooded by a silent burst of yellow light. The ROV had landed.
Don’s highly protective guardian, a Corsican engineer by the
name of Pierre Attal, was locked in concentration as he used a joystick and a small keyboard to manipulate his robotic ward. He reached for a small trackball轨迹球{一个可以转动来移动光标小球的输入装置) at the edge of the keyboard and, responding to his fingers’ orders, the camera rotated on itself, panning摇镜头 across the seabed. Like the images from a Mars probe, the pictures showed an eerie, inviolate world. All around the robotic visitor was nothing but a flat expanse of sand that disappeared into a stygian darkness.
Tess’s skin was tingling with guarded anticipation. She couldn’t help but feel excited, although she knew they weren’t necessarily there yet, not by any means. The low-frequency, side-scan sonar only provided the rough position of any promising target; the ROV then had to be deployed, its high-frequency sonar allowing the eventual pinpointing and examination of those sites. She knew the ocean floor underneath the Savarona dropped as deep as 250 meters in places and was covered with scattered coral reefs, many the size they’d expect the Falcon Temple to be. The sonar scans weren’t enough to distinguish the wreck from these natural mounds, which was where the magnetometers came into play. Their readings would help detect the wreck’s residual iron, and, although they were carefully calibrated-Rassoulis and his team had calculated that after seven hundred years of saltwater corrosion, there would be, at most, a thousand pounds of iron left in the Falcon Temple’s remains- they still carried the risk of triggering false alarms due to natural pockets of geomagnetism or, more commonly, from more recent wrecks.
She watched as the procedure she had witnessed twice in recent days unfurled again. Using the most minute of tugs on the joystick, Attal confidently guided the ROV across the seafloor. Every minute or so, he would set it down in another cloudburst of sand. He would then hit a button that would cause its pinger to initiate a 360-degree sweep of its immediate surroundings. The team would carefully study the resulting scan before Attal would be back at the controls, firing the small robot’s hydraulic thrusters and propelling it forward on its silent quest.
Attal had repeated the exercise over half a dozen times before an inchoate刚开始的, 未发达的, patch appeared in the corner of the screen. Guiding the ROV to the spot, he initiated another sonar scan. The screen took a couple of seconds to record the results before Tess saw the patch coalesce (merge, unite) into an oblong pinkish shape, beckoning to her from its blue surroundings.
Tess glanced at Vance, who met her eyes calmly.
Without looking up at them, Rassoulis said to Attal, “Let’s get a closer look.”
The ROV was on the move again, skimming the bottom of the seafloor like an undersea hovercraft as Attal guided it expertly to its target. At the next ping, the pink shape grew more distinct along its edges.
“What do you think?” Vance asked.
Rassoulis glanced up at Vance and at Tess. “The magnetometer reading’s a bit high, but…” He pointed a finger at the image on the scan. “You see how it’s squared off at this end and pinched in over here at the other end?” He raised a hopeful eyebrow. “It doesn’t look like a rock to me.”
The room fell silent as the ROV moved in. Tess’s eyes were locked on the screen as the camera floated over a cloud of sea plants that swayed almost imperceptibly in the desolate waters. As it dropped back down and hugged the sand again, Tess felt her pulse quicken. At the edge of the ROV’s beam, something was coming into view. Its edges were too angular, its curves too regular. It looked man-made.
Within seconds, the unmistakable remains of a ship became discernible. The robot banked over the site, revealing the skeleton of a ship, its wooden ribs hollowed out by teredo worms.
Tess thought she spotted something. She pointed excitedly at the corner of the screen. “What’s that? Can you get a tighter shot of
that?”
Attal guided his robot as directed. Tess leaned in for a better look. In the bright glow of its spotlights, she could make out something rounded, barrel-like. It looked like it was made of rusted metal. It was hard to tell the relative scale of the objects on the screen, and, for a moment, she wondered if what she was seeing was a cannon. The thought triggered a sudden ripple of concern inside her -she knew a ship from the late Crusades wouldn’t have been carrying one. But as the ROV swung closer, the curved metallic shape appeared different. It looked flatter and wider. From the corner of her eye, Tess saw an unhappy grimace break across Rassoulis’s face.
“That’s steel plating,” he said, shrugging. She knew what he meant before he said it. “It’s not the Falcon.”
The ROV banked around it, showing it from another angle. Attal nodded in grim confirmation. “And look, over here. That’s paint.” He looked up at Tess and shook his head with dismay. As the robot nosed around the sunken vessel’s hull, it was pretty clear that what they had found were the remains of a far more recent ship.
“Mid-nineteenth century,” Rassoulis confirmed. “Sorry.” He shot a glance out the window. The sea was getting increasingly restless, and dark-bellied clouds were rolling in from two fronts with alarming speed. “We’d better get out of here and head back anyway. This doesn’t look good.” He turned to Attal. “Bring Don up. We’re done here.”
Tess nodded slowly, heaving a dejected sigh. She was about to turn and leave the room when something at the edge of the screen caught her eye. She felt a sudden shiver of excitement and stared at it, wide-eyed, before jabbing a finger at the monitor’s left side. “What’s this? Right here? You see that?”
Rassoulis craned his neck in, staring intently at the screen while Attal maneuvered the robot toward the spot Tess had pointed out. Peering between the two men, Tess studied the screen intently. At the edge of the ROV’s frail light, a protrusion was coming into view. It looked like a leaning tree stump, rising out of a small mound. As the robot edged nearer, she could see that the mound was composed of what appeared to be spars sturdy pole (like one used for masts), some of them trailing strands of seaweed, but which her imagination hoped were actually remnants of rigging. Some of the pieces were curved, like the ribs of an ancient carcass. Centuries of marine growth covered the ghostly remains.
Her heart was racing. It had to be a ship. Another one, an older one, partially obscured by the more recent wreck lying on top of it.
The ROV moved in closer, gliding over the disintegrating, coral-encrusted wreckage, its lights bathing the protrusion in their
whitish glow.
Tess suddenly felt the air being sucked out of the room around her.
There, basking in the otherworldly glare of the spotlight and jutting out of the ocean floor in fierce defiance, stood the falcon figurehead.
Chapter 75
In the heaving wheelhouse, Rassoulis, Vance, and Tess stared out with growing concern at the approaching storm fronts. The wind had climbed to thirty knots, and the swell around the Savarona -had grown into breaking waves, the churning water now matching the roiling black clouds in their threat.
Below the bridge, a small crane was settling the ROV down onto the main deck. Attal and two other crewmen stood there, braving the weather as they waited to fasten it down.
Tess pulled the windblown hair out of her face. “Shouldn’t we be heading back?” she asked Rassoulis.
Vance jumped in, unhesitant. “Nonsense. It’s not that bad. I’m sure we have time to send the ROV down for one more look,” he said, smiling assertively to Rassoulis. “Don’t you agree?”
Tess watched the captain as he studied the bruised, angry skies
bearing down on them. To their south, lightning tore at the clouds, and, even from this distance, they could see that thick veils of rain were now sweeping across the sea. “I don’t like it. One front we can handle, but two… We can slip through them if we leave now.” He turned to Vance. “Don’t worry. Storms out here don’t last too long, and our GPS locator’s accurate to within a meter. We’ll come back once it’s passed, probably by morning.”
Vance scowled inwardly. “I’d really rather not leave here without something,” he said calmly. “The falcon figurehead, for instance. Surely, we have time to recover that before we have to get out of here, don’t we?” From Rassoulis’s concerned frown, it was clear he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea. “I’m just worried that the storm will last longer than you expect,” Vance pressed on, “and then, what with your other charter already booked, it could be months before we can get back and who knows what can happen in the meantime.”
Rassoulis scowled at the converging weather fronts, clearly evaluating whether or not the Savarona could afford to hang around the wreck site.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” Vance persisted. “Bring up the falcon and I’m done here. You can have anything else that’s down there.”
Rassoulis cocked a curious eyebrow. “That’s all you want? The falcon?” He paused, scrutinizing Vance. Tess watched him and felt like she was intruding on a major poker game. “Why?”
Vance shrugged, and his expression became distant. “It’s personal. Call it a matter of… closure.” His eyes hardened, settling back on Rassoulis. “We’re wasting time. I’m sure we can do it if we move quickly. And after that, it’s all yours.”
The captain seemed to consider his options for a few seconds, then nodded and stepped away, hollering orders at Attal and the other crewmen.
Vance turned to Tess, his face jittery with nervous energy. “Almost there,” he murmured, his voice crackling. “We’re almost there.”
.
“HOW MUCH FURTHER?” De Angelis yelled to the captain.
Reilly could feel the bridge of the Karadeniz reverberating heavily, much more so than it had before. For over an hour, they’d been cutting diagonally through waves that were stampeding toward their starboard side and pummeling the patrol boat’s hull with increasing ferocity. With the wind shrieking in and the engines straining against the swell, they were having to shout to make themselves heard.
“Just under twenty nautical miles,” Karakas replied.
“What about the chopper?”
The skipper consulted his radar operator, then shouted back, “Contact estimated in just under five minutes.”
De Angelis breathed out heavily, stewing with impatience. “Can’t this damn thing go any faster?”
“Not in this sea,” Karakas answered tersely.
Reilly stepped closer to the skipper. “How bad will it be by the time we reach them?”
Karakas shook his head, his expression grim. He didn’t shout his answer, but Reilly heard it anyway.
“God knows.” He shrugged.
TESS WATCHED THROUGH RAPT eyes as Attal’s fingers coaxed Don’s manipulator arm to attach the last of the harnesses to the falcon figurehead. Despite the difficult conditions, the crew had worked fast and with military precision in equipping the ROV with the necessary recovery equipment before sending it back into the churning water. Attal had performed his magic at the joystick, guiding the ROV down and positioning the retrieval netting with disarming efficiency. All that remained was to pull it back, using the remote control to trigger the simultaneous inflation of the three lift
bags, and watch as the figurehead floated gently up to the surface.
Attal nodded his readiness. “We can bring it up, but…” He let out a Gallic shrug, his eyes glancing toward the windshield, which was buffeted by the howling wind.
Rassoulis frowned, staring out at the maelstrom raging around them. “I know. Getting it on board once it surfaces won’t be easy.” He turned to Vance, his expression dour. “We can’t put a Zodiac down in this sea, and I don’t want to risk sending divers in either. It’s going to be hard enough getting the ROV back, but at least it’s tethered and mobile.” He paused, evaluating the rapidly deteriorating conditions, before seemingly making up his mind. “We won’t be able to bring it up today. We’ll leave the floats down there and come back for it when the storm clears.”
Vance looked incredulous. “We have to bring it up now,” he insisted. “We might not get another chance.”
“What are you talking about?” Rassoulis shot back. “No one’s going to come out here and steal it from under us in this weather. We’ll come back for it as soon as the weather allows it.”
“No!” Vance burst out angrily. “We have to do it now!”
Rassoulis cocked his head back, surprised by the tone of Vance’s outburst. “Look, I’m not risking anyone’s life over this. We’re heading back, and that’s it.” His eyes bored sharply into Vance’s for a second before he turned to Attal. “Bring Don up as quickly as you can,” he snapped. But before he could issue any more orders, something attracted his attention. It was the familiar, guttural thumping of helicopter blades. Tess heard it too, and, from Vance’s scowl, it was obvious he had as well.
They grabbed some Windbreakers and stepped out onto the narrow deck outside the bridge. The wind had risen to a full gale, and sheets of rain were now sweeping in with it. Tess shielded her eyes with her hand as she scanned the turbulent sky, and she soon spotted it.
“There,” she yelled, pointing at it.
It was skimming the water, heading straight for them. Within seconds, it was on them, bathtub white and with a wide diagonal red stripe, thundering over their heads before arcing up and banking for another pass. It slowed as it neared the ship, then hovered in place alongside the Savarona’s port side, fighting the wind, its rotor wash blasting the sea and kicking up a swirling plume of water off the crests of the foaming waves. Tess could clearly make out the Turkish Coast Guard markings on its fuselage and could see the pilot talking into his microphone as his eyes moved over the vessel.
He then pointed at his headset, gesturing vigorously for them to
pick up their radio.
ON THE KARADENIZ’S BRIDGE, Reilly saw De Angelis’s face light up. The report from the helicopter confirmed the contact to be a diving ship. Despite the gravely worsening conditions, it was holding position. The pilot could see activity on the deck around the crane, indicating the imminent recovery of a submersible of some sort. He had also spotted the two target figures on its deck, and their descriptions clearly left no doubt in the monsignor’s mind.
“I’ve asked him to establish radio contact with them,” Karakas told De Angelis. “What do you want me to tell them?”
De Angelis didn’t hesitate. “Tell them they’re about to get hit by a storm of biblical proportions,” he answered flatly. “Tell them they should get out of there if they want to live.”
Reilly studied De Angelis’s face, and it only confirmed the uncompromising threat he had read into the monsignor’s reply. The man was determined not to let them escape with what they had come for, at any cost. He’d already shown his callous disregard for human life when it came to protecting the Church’s big secret. Everyone’s expendable, he had stated in no uncertain terms back in Turkey.
