TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter One
Blackness. Then two faint lights appeared,
close together, growing brighter. They resolved into two deep submersibles,
free-falling like express elevators. One was ahead of the other, looking like a
spacecraft blazing with lights, bristling with insectile manipulators. It
descended away into the limitless blackness below. Soon they were fireflies,
then stars. Then gone.
Inside the first falling submersible, Mir
One, was a cramped seven foot sphere, crammed with equipment. Anatoly Mikailavich,
the submersible's pilot, sat hunched over his controls, singing softly in
Russian.
Next to him on one side was Brock Lovett. He
was in his late thirties, deeply tanned, and liked to wear his Nomex suit
unzipped to show the gold from famous shipwrecks covering his chest hair. He
was a wily, fast-talking treasure hunter, a salvage superstar who was part
historian, part adventurer, and part vacuum cleaner salesman. At that moment,
he was propped against the CO2 scrubber, fast asleep and snoring.
On the other side, crammed into the remaining
space, was a bearded wide-body named Lewis Bodine, who was also asleep. Lewis
was a Remotely Operated Vehicle pilot and the resident Titanic expert.
Anatoly glanced at the bottom sonar and made
a ballast adjustment.
The bottom of the sea was a pale, dead-flat
lunar landscape. It got brighter, lit from above, as Mir One dropped to the
seafloor in a down blast from its thrusters. It hit bottom after its two hour
free-fall with a loud bonk.
Lovett and Bodine jerked awake at the
landing.
Anatoly spoke in his heavy Russian accent.
"We are here."
Minutes later, the two submersibles skimmed
over the seafloor to the sound of side scan sonar and the thrum of big
thrusters.
The featureless gray clay of the bottom
unrolled in the lights of the submersibles. Bodine was watching the side scan
sonar display, where the outline of a huge pointed object was visible. Anatoly
lay prone, driving the submersible, his face pressed to the center port.
Bodine tried to direct him.
"Come left a little. She's right in
front of us, eighteen meters. Fifteen. Thirteen...you should see it."
Anatoly was growing tired of Bodine's
attitude.
"Do you see it? I don't see
it...there!"
Out of the darkness, like a ghostly
apparition, the bow of the ship appeared. Its knife-edge prow was coming
straight at them, seeming to plow the bottom sediment like ocean waves. It
towered above the seafloor, standing just as it landed eighty-four years
before.
The Titanic. Or what was left of her. Mir One
went up and over the bow railing, intact except for an overgrowth of rusticles
draping it like mutated Spanish moss.
Brock Lovett's face filled the black and
white frame of a video camcorder.
"It still gets me every time."
He turned the camera to the front view port,
looking over Anatoly's shoulder, to the bow railing visible in the lights
beyond. Anatoly turned.
"Is just your guilt because of stealing
from the dead."
Brock turned the camera in his hand so it
pointed at his own face.
"Thanks, Tolya. Work with me,
here."
Brock resumed his serious, pensive gaze out
the front port, with the camera aimed at himself at arm's length.
"It still gets me every time...to see
the sad ruin of the great ship sitting here, where she landed at 2:20 in the
morning, April 15, 1912, after her long fall from the world above."
Anatoly rolled his eyes and muttered in
Russian. Bodine, who had been watching the sonar, snorted with laughter.
"You are so full of shit, boss."
Mir Two drove aft down the starboard side,
past the huge anchor, while Mir One passed over the seemingly endless
forecastle deck, with its massive anchor chains still laid out in two neat
rows, its bronze windlass caps gleaming. The twenty-two foot long submersibles
were like white bugs next to the enormous wreck.
Lovett turned the camera back toward the
window.
"Dive nine. Here we are again on the
deck of Titanic...two and a half miles down. The pressure is three tons per
square inch, enough to crush us like a freight train going over an ant if our
hull fails. 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. A ghostly echo seemed to surround the
submersible--people shouting and screaming, music playing in the background.
The occupants of Mir Two suppressed a shudder.
Mir One landed on the roof of the deck house
nearby.
Lovett turned the camera off.
"Right. Enough of that bullshit. Let's
go to work."
Bodine slipped on a pair of 3-D electronic
goggles, and grabbed the joystick controls of the ROV.
Outside the submersible, the ROV, a small
orange and black robot called Snoop Dog, lifted from its cradle and flew
forward.
Bodine grinned as he manipulated the
controls.
"Walkin' the dog."
Snoop Dog drove itself away from the
submersible, paying out its umbilical behind it like a robot yo-yo. Its twin
stereo-video cameras swiveled like insect eyes. The ROV descended through an
open shaft that once was the beautiful First Class Grand Staircase.
Snoop Dog went down several decks, then moved
laterally into the First Class Reception Room.
Snoop Dog moved through the cavernous
interior. The remains of the ornate hand-carved woodwork which gave the ship
its elegance moved through the floodlights, the lines blurred by slow
dissolution and descending rusticles formations. Stalactites of rust hung down
so that at times it looked like a natural grotto, then the scene shifted and
the lines of a ghostly undersea mansion could be seen again. Snoop Dog passed
ghostly images of Titanic's opulence.
A grand piano, in amazingly good shape, lay
crashed on its side against a wall. The keys gleamed black and white in the
lights.
A chandelier, still hanging from the ceiling
by its wire, glinted as Snoop Dog moved around it.
Its lights played across the floor, revealing
a champagne bottle, then some White Star Line china, then a woman's high-top
granny shoe. Then something eerie: what looked like a child's skull resolved
into the porcelain head of a doll.
Snoop Dog 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 hinted at the grandeur of the past.
The ROV turned and went through a black
doorway, entering room B-52, the sitting room of a promenade suite, one of the
most luxurious staterooms on Titanic.
Bodine spoke up.
"I'm in the sitting room. Heading for
bedroom B-54."
Lovett nodded, then warned, "Stay off
the floor. Don't stir it up like you did yesterday."
Bodine snapped back.
"I'm tryin', boss."
The brass fixtures of the near-perfectly
preserved fireplace glinted in the lights. An albino Galathea crab crawled over
the hearth. Nearby were the remains of a divan and a writing desk. Snoop Dog
crossed the ruins of the once elegant room toward another door. It squeezed
through the doorframe, scraping rust and wood chunks loose on both sides. It
moved out of a cloud of rust and kept on going.
Bodine was watching closely.
"I'm crossing the bedroom."
The remains of a pillared canopy bed were
visible in the light. Lovett grinned.
"That's Hockley's bed. That's where the
son of a bitch slept."
Bodine smirked. Broken chairs and a dresser
moved through the light. Through the collapsed wall of the bathroom, the
porcelain commode and bathtub looked almost new, gleaming in the dark.
Bodine grinned. "Uh-oh. Looks like
someone left the water running."
Lovett had noticed something. "Come back
over here. I want to see what's under that wardrobe door."
Bodine moved the robot back. "You
smelling something, boss?"
The ROV deployed its manipulator arms and
started moving debris aside. A lamp was lifted, its ceramic colors as bright as
they were in 1912.
Lovett was tense, watching.
"Easy, Lewis. Take it slow. It might
come apart."
Snoop Dog gripped a wardrobe door, lying at
an angle in a corner, and pulled it over. It moved reluctantly in a cloud of
silt. Under it was a dark object. The silt cleared and Snoop Dog's cameras
showed them what was under the door.
Bodine was excited. "Ooh, baby, baby,
are you seein' this, boss?"
Lovett was watching his monitors with a rapt
expression. It was like he was seeing the Holy Grail.
"It's payday, boys."
In the glare of the lights was the object of
their quest: a small steel combination safe.