The suit was released from the Oregon, and Juan adjusted the buoyancy so that he would descend at a slow and steady rate. The setting sun barely penetrated the gloom under the ship. In seconds, Juan was clear of the enormous doors along the keel.
Max stayed by him in Nomad as they went down. By the time they reached a depth of a hundred feet, their powerful LED lamps provided the only illumination. The routine descent meant they had a few minutes before the real work got under way.
Linda’s high-pitched voice came through the suit’s speakers. “Chairman, I’ve been reading up on Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow to see if we can narrow down where the treasure might be stashed.”
“Self-storage unit?” Juan joked.
“Unlikely,” she countered without missing a beat. “He started missing the monthly payments about two hundred years ago. The contents would have been auctioned off by now.”
“Then I’d say it’s either underwater or underground.”
“Most of the speculation says it’s underwater. With Napoleon’s horses dying left and right from the cold, they wouldn’t have had time to scout for caves. Sir Walter Scott’s nine-volume biography of Napoleon claims that the loot from Moscow was dumped into Semlev Lake, which is outside Smolensk.”
“Could it still be there?”
“I doubt it. The Communists conducted an exhaustive search of that lake, looking for the treasure, and came up empty.”
“What do they think the treasure is?”
“All the usual stuff. Silver and gold bullion, gold coins, precious gems, ancient weaponry. My favorite is the gold-plated cross that used to top Ivan the Great’s bell tower. To find it, we’ll have a lot of ground to cover. There are hundreds of lakes on the route Napoleon’s men took during their retreat.”
“I have a hard time believing the treasure is in a lake.”
“Why?” Linda asked.
“For two reasons. The lakes would have been frozen at the time Napoleon was retreating. It would have been difficult for his men to dump the treasure in the water. They would have had to cut away the thick ice.”
“And the second reason?”
“How would he have gotten the treasure out of the lake, assuming he ever returned to Russia to retrieve it? If the lake was deep, it would have been difficult to recover the treasure with the technology of the time. And if it was that shallow, the lake would have been frozen solid.”
“Which leaves us where?” Linda asked.
“If it’s in the water, it would have to be in a river.
One that was fast moving enough so that it wouldn’t be frozen over by the time of the retreat. But it would have to be small enough so that it could be dammed and rerouted.”
“Letting them collect it easily. You may be onto something.”
Juan added, “If someone kidnapped Napoleon to help them find the treasure, all he’d have to do was point out where it was and they could do the rest. But since the loot has never resurfaced, we have to assume that their mission was unsuccessful.”
“Then it’s still there,” Linda said.
Max piped up. “If that’s true, what we’re looking at now may give us the answer.”
Max must have seen the outline of the sunken ship seconds before it came into view for Juan, who could now see that the stern of the Narwhal was turned at an unnatural angle. Only the rear half of the ship’s name had survived the railgun’s tremendous blows.
Just how tough this job would be didn’t sink in until Juan panned across deck, turned at more than ninety degrees with the cargo ship lying on its side.
Most of the superstructure had been destroyed in the opening salvo and what was left of it was the only thing propping up the ship on the sloped seafloor. If it tipped over, the entire ship would go belly up, crushing the container underneath it and destroying any chance of salvaging the column.
THIRTY-NINE
As Juan glided along the sunken 300-foot-long ship, the awesome power of the railgun was evident in the catastrophic holes that had been torn in the Narwhal’s hull and deck. No wonder the ship had gone down so quickly. Some of the chasms were twenty feet across, with jagged metal protruding from the edges like the serrated teeth of a buzz saw. When he saw the extensive damage, he felt even more relieved that the Oregon had come out of the battle with the Achilles relatively unscathed.
“I have a better appreciation for your boat-driving skills, Max,” he said.
“It was all Eric,” Max said. “He was at the helm, dodging and weaving. I was just making lucky guesses about where to go.”