“Were those removed or jarred loose when she sank?” Ana asked.
“They look too orderly to have been knocked off by chance,” Giordino said.
Pitt propelled the submersible to the nearest steel cover and examined its painted surface. Fresh gouge marks were clearly visible on one edge.
“By the look of those marks,” Giordino said, “somebody’s scraped those pretty recently.”
“The salvage ship would have the means to do so,” Pitt said. “Let’s see if they left anything behind.”
He cruised to the first hold. The opening was more than double the size of the submersible, and Pitt easily dropped the vessel into the hold. At its bottom was a yellow tractor lashed to the deck, surrounded by miscellaneous farm equipment.
Giordino smiled. “Looks like Old MacDonald’s barn is still there.”
“The contents appear fully intact,” Pitt said. He elevated the submersible and hopscotched over and into the next three holds. Each looked identical, containing a tractor and related agricultural equipment. All of the holds appeared undisturbed.
Giordino turned to Ana. “I guess your ship’s manifest was legit.”
“Yes,” she said, “but it would appear that the salvors were interested in something else.”
“If the HEU was carried aboard,” Pitt asked, “what size container would it require?”
“Not large, depending on the quantity. If precautionary measures were used, it would be stored in a protective canister, which would then be enclosed in a small, secure crate. The engineer’s radioactivity exposure may indicate it was lightly protected—possibly disguised as ordinary goods.”
“Then the engine room it is,” Pitt said.
He turned the submersible around and traveled aft, cutting around the accommodations block to reach the squat rear deck. Unlike the forward area, the stern was a disrupted, mangled mass of twisted steel. A gaping hole was carved along a lower companionway, exposing the aft section of the engine room.
Ana turned pale. “They’ve cut into the engine room,” she said in a low voice.
“In a big way,” Giordino said. “Doesn’t look like they used explosives, though.”
“Maybe a grapple device,” Pitt said.
Giordino grunted. “They sure caused a lot of destruction. If it was just the HEU they were after, some divers could have carried it out.”
Pitt maneuvered the submersible to the jagged edge of the opening and tilted it forward. The craft’s lights flashed across the deck of the engine room, revealing a clean and unmolested bay. The sight triggered his memory. “The crate. I should have remembered it. There was a gray crate in the engine room. The assistant engineer was sprawled across it when I found him.”
They scanned the compartment, but Pitt’s gray box was nowhere to be seen.
“That must have been what they were after,” Giordino said. “Your uranium story might have some teeth to it after all.”
“I was hoping otherwise,” she said.
Pitt ascended the submersible and hovered for a moment over the Crimean Star’s fantail. He eyed a digital compass and then propelled the craft on a westerly heading.
“Are we surfacing?” Ana asked.
“A slight detour on the way up,” he said.
Giordino was already scanning the terrain ahead. After they traversed a thousand meters, he motioned to Pitt. “Possible target ahead on the left.”
Pitt saw a dark smudge in the distance and angled toward it. A short time later, the corroded remains of the Kerch materialized. It looked nothing like the proud warship he had examined in the photo. The ship sat keeled over against a large sand dune that partially covered her stern. The bow was crumpled from colliding with the bottom, while the central part of the ship was a brown mass of concretion-encrusted, rusting steel.
Pitt brought the submersible amidships, where more damage was visible on the remains of the superstructure. He noted an obvious difference in the mangled steel that was twisted open along the side of the bridge, where numerous raw gouges were evident. “Recent handiwork here as well,” he said. “Certainly not from 1917.”
He followed the damage to the rear of the superstructure, where an even larger hole had been carved out of a lower-level bulkhead.
Giordino pointed to a black object sitting on the deck beneath the gap. “Take a look at that.”