pointed the craft back toward the bow on a path parallel to their earlier course: The multi-tiered decks were a ninety-foot-high vertical wall off to their left. They moved past the three swimming pools that had once cooled passengers according to class on their transatlantic passage, scudding along the lifeboat deck whose davits didn't work any better now than they did in 1956.
Dozens of fishing nets had become snagged on the hook-like davits. The nets veiled the decks like great shrouds draped over an immense bier. The mesh was coated with a hoary cloak of marine growth. Some nets, held aloft from the wreck by their buoys, were still snaring fish from the schools of large pollock and cod that darted dangerously close. Noting the rotting bones caught in the mesh, Zavala wisely kept the mini-sub at a respectful distance from the still dangerous nets.
The ship's great red-and-white smokestack had fallen off, leaving an immense square shaft down to the engine room. Other openings marked uncovered staircase wells. The superstructure had slipped off and lay in a jumble of disintegrating debris on the sea bottom. With its distinctive stack and superstructure gone the Andrea Doria looked more like a barge than a ship. Only when they glided by the remnants of the wheelhouse and saw the massive booms, winch heads, and bollards intact on the foredeck did they began to get the sense that this was a huge passenger liner. It was hard to believe a vessel this big could ever sink, but that's what they said about the Titanic, Austin reminded himself.
They had been as reverent as mourners at a funeral, but now Austin broke the silence. 'That's what thirty million dollars looks like after a few decades at the bottom of the sea.'
'Hell of a lot of money to pay for an oversized fish, catcher,' Zavala said.
'That's just for the hull. I didn't count the millions in furnishings and artwork and four hundred tons of freight. The pride of the Italian navy.'
'I can't figure it,' Zavala said. 'I know all about the thick fog, but both these ships had radar and lookouts. How in all of those millions of square miles of ocean did they happen to occupy the same space at the same time?'
'Plain lucky. I guess.'
'They couldn't have done better if they planned out a collision course in advance.'
'Fifty two people dead. A twenty-nine-thousand-ton ocean liner on the bottom. The Stockholm heavily damaged. Millions in cargo lost That's some planning.'
'I think you're telling me it's one of those unsolved mysteries of the sea.'
'Do you have a better answer?'
'Not one that makes any sense,' he replied with a sigh that was audible over the mike. 'Where to now?'
'Let's go up to Gimbel's Hole for a looksee,' Austin said.
The minisub banked around as gracefully as a manta ray and headed back toward the bow, then cruised evenly about halfway down the length of the port side until it came to a jagged four-sided opening.
Gimbel's Hole.
The eight-by-twenty-foot hole was the legacy of Peter Gimbel. Less than twentyeight hours after the Doria went under, Gunbel and another photographer named Joseph Fox dove on the liner and spent thirteen minutes exploring the wreck. It was the start of Gimbel's fascination with the ship. In 1981 he led an expedition that used a diving bell and saturation diving techniques. The divers cut away the entrance doors into the First Class Foyer Lounge to get at a safe reported to hold a million dollars in valuables. Amid great hoopla the safe was opened on TV, but it yielded only a few hundred dollars.
'Looks like a barn door,' Zavala quipped.
'This barn door took two weeks to open with magnesium rods,' Austin said. 'We don't have that long.'
'Might be easier to raise the whole thing. If NUMA could raise the Titanic, the Doria should be a cinch.'
'You're not the first one to suggest that. There have been a pile of schemes to bring her up. Compressed air. Helium-filled balloons. A coffer dam. Plastic bubbles. Even Ping-Pong balls.'
'The Ping-Pong guy must have had some cojones.' Zavala whistled.
Austin groaned at the Spanish double entendre. Aside from that astute observation, from what you've seen, what do you think?'
'I think we've got our work cut out for us:'
'I agree. Let's go topside and see what the others say'
Zavala gave him a thumbs up, tweaked the motor, and lifted the nose of the sub. As they quickly ascended with the power from four thrusters, Austin glanced at the gray ghost receding in the gloom. Somewhere in that huge hull was the key to the bizarre series of murders. He put his grim thoughts aside as Zavala broke into a Spanish chorus of 'Octopus's Garden.' Austin thanked his lucky stars that the trip was short.
The Deep Flight broke the surface in an explosion of froth and foam. Through the water-streaked observation bubbles a gray-hulled boat with a white superstructure was visible about a hundred fifty feet away. The minisub was as agile as a minnow underwater. On the surface its flat planes were susceptible to the wave motion, and it rocked in the slight chop being kicked up by a freshening breeze. Austin didn't normally get seasick, but he was starting to feel green around the gills and was happy when the boat got under way and rapidly covered the distance between them.
The boat's design was typical of many salvage and survey ships whose main function is to serve as a platform for lowering, towing, and hauling various instruments and vehicles. It had a snub tugboat's bow and a high forecastle, but most of the sixty five-foot length was open deck. At either side of the deck was an elbow crane. An A-frame spanned most of the twenty-two-foot beam at the stern where a ramp slanted down to the sea. Two men in wetsuits pushed an inflatable down the ramp into the water, jumped into it, and skimmed over the wave tops to the minisub. While one man manned the tiller the other secured the sturdy hook to a grommet at the front of the submersible.
The line led to a deck winch that pulled the minisub closer, the boat maneuvering until the Deep Flight was on its starboard. A crane swung over and lowered tackle that was attached by the men in the inflatable to cleats on the sub. The cable went taut. The sub and its passengers were lifted dripping from the sea, swung over the deck, and lowered onto a steel cradle. The operation was handled with Swisswatch precision and dispatch. Austin would have expected nothing less than perfection from one of his father's boats.
After the revealing session at the Peabody, Austin had called Rudi Gunn to fill him in and request a salvage vessel. NUMA had dozens of ships involved in its farflung operations. That was the problem, Gunn explained. The agency's boats were flung all around the globe. Most carried scientists who had stood in line for a spot on board. The nearest ship was the Nereus, still in Mexico. Austin said he didn't need a fullblown salvage ship, but Gunn said the quickest he could get something to Austin was a week. Austin told him to make a reservation and hung up. After a moment's thought he dialed again.
The voice like a bear coughing in the woods came on the line. Austin told his father what he needed.
'Hah!' the older man guffawed. 'Chrissakes, I thought NUMA had more ships than the U.S. Navy. Can't the admiral spare you one dinky boat from his fleet?'
Austin let his father enjoy his gloat 'Not in the time I need it. I could really use your help, Pop.'
'Hmm. Help comes with a price tag, lad,' the old man said slyly.
'NUMA will reimburse you for any expenses, Pop.'
'I could give a rat's ass about money,' he growled. My accountant will find a way to put it down as a charitable donation if he doesn't get sent to Alcatraz before then. If I get you something that floats, does that mean you'll wrap up whatever nonsense Sandecker's got you involved in and get out here to see me before I'm so damned senile I don't recognize you?'
'Can't promise anything. There's a good chance of it.'
'Humph. Finding a boat for you isn't like hailing a cab, you know. I'll see what I can do.' He hung up.
Austin laughed softly. His father knew exactly where every vessel he owned was and what it was doing, down to the smallest rowboat. Dad wanted to let him wriggle on the hook. Austin wasn't surprised when the phone rang a few minutes later.
The gruff voice said, 'You're in luck. Got you an old scow. We've got a salvage vessel doing some work for the navy off Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Not one of your big research vessels, but she'll do fine. She'll put into Nantucket Harbor tomorrow and wait for you.'
'Thanks, Pop, I really appreciate it.'
