Odessa Sea (Dirk Pitt 24)

Pitt extinguished the welding torch and removed the face shield. “Dr. Dimitov?” he asked.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pitt.” He dropped his satchel and shook hands. “It is an honor to have NUMA’s support for my research project.” The archeologist glanced at the damaged submersible. “Your submersible . . . is it operational?”

Giordino popped out of the craft’s hatch, clutching a loom of electrical wiring, and introduced himself. “She’s a little dinged up, but the damage isn’t as bad as it looks. Once we replace the thrusters and perform some safety tests, she’ll be ready to go—in forty-eight hours, tops.”

Pitt nodded. “Our sidelined submersible won’t have any impact on our ability to survey.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Dimitov said, “as I know your time in the Black Sea is limited.”

Pitt eyed the man’s painting and satchel and pointed amidships. “Georgi, let’s get out of the sun, and you can tell us about the Fethiye.”

The three men reconvened in a nearby lab, where Giordino helped the archeologist set the painting against a bulkhead. “You don’t travel light,” Giordino said.

Dimitov smiled. “It’s the only known image of the Fethiye, painted at the time of her launch in 1766. The curator of the Bulgarian National Art Gallery is a friend of mine and he let me borrow it.”

Pitt studied the painting, which depicted a three-masted frigate gliding out of the Golden Horn under full sail. A large red banner fluttered from the stern post, identifying the ship as a vessel of the Ottoman fleet. “A fine-looking ship,” Pitt said. “What can you tell us about her?”

“She was built as a fast frigate, in support of the larger ships of the line. She apparently spent some time on station in Alexandria before returning to the service of the Sultan.”

“How did she end up sinking in the Black Sea?” Giordino asked.

“Early in the Russo-Turkish War, the Russian Army advanced through what is now Ukraine and Moldova, scoring a major victory at the Battle of Kagul. One of Sultan Mehmet III’s wives was at the nearby fortress of Izmail, visiting an injured son, when hostilities drew near. The Sultan dispatched the Fethiye from Constantinople to retrieve them from danger. The royal entourage boarde

d the ship and sailed down the Danube in August 1770, never to be seen again.”

“Sunk by the Russians?” Pitt asked.

“A few historians believe so, but there is no historical record to substantiate it. Most believe, as do I, that she was lost in a storm somewhere off the Bulgarian coast.”

Pitt shook his head. “Sounds like the makings of a pretty large search area.”

“You know better than I the difficulties in locating a lost shipwreck,” Dimitov said. “The truth of the matter is, the Fethiye could be within a fifty-thousand-square-mile area. I could spend the rest of my life chasing her wake. But I recently discovered some additional information that I think will enable a fruitful search.” He opened his leather case and retrieved a photocopied page of a handwritten diary entry.

Pitt saw it was written in Turkish and thought he recognized a notation about weather. “A ship’s logbook entry?”

“Precisely,” Dimitov said. “It’s from an Ottoman merchant schooner named Cejas. A researcher at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences came across it in the school’s archives and kindly advised me about it.”

“What does it reveal?” Giordino asked.

Dimitov translated, line by line: “Moderate breeze from the southeast, seas weakening. Departed our mooring off Erulska bluff at noon after weather improved, and resumed passage to Galati. Lookout reported concentration of debris to leeward one hour on, including a section of mast with a red tughra banner.”

“Did they mark their position?” Pitt asked.

“I’m afraid not.” Dimitov retrieved a chart of the western Black Sea and unrolled it across the table. “The Erulska bluff proved a bit troublesome, as there are no modern references to such a place along the shoreline. It took a bit of geographical snooping, but we finally found it in an ancient reference to a village north of Varna.”

“They would likely anchor close to shore if riding out a storm from the southeast,” Pitt said.

“We know they departed this point and were headed up the coast toward Romania,” Dimitov said, “so we can make a reasonable guess as to their heading.”

“However far they traveled in an hour along that line would put us in the ballpark,” Pitt said.

“Exactly. But we don’t know their speed, which expands the probable area. A merchant schooner of the typical variety would likely average eight to ten knots, so that gives us a good starting place.”

“What we don’t know is, when the Fethiye sank,” Pitt said, “or how far her debris field may have drifted before crossing the Cejas’s path.”

“Another assumption of our model. The entry states the wreckage seen was concentrated, which leads me to believe she foundered not long before that. We know the state of the sea and wind, so I incorporated some amount of drift in the estimate. It is, of course, a gamble.” Dimitov smiled. “But I have zeroed in on a hundred-square-mile area I feel has the highest probability of her position.”

“Seems reasonable,” Giordino said, eyeing the red grid penciled on the chart. “But how certain are you that the wreckage was actually from the Fethiye?”