The Emperor's Revenge

THIRTY-EIGHT

Juan and Gretchen arrived at the moon pool to find Nomad already lowered into the water. Because the pool was even with sea level outside, opening the keel doors didn’t cause the ocean to rush into the chamber. The salty tang of seawater filled the cavernous space, which bustled with noise and activity from techs getting their gear in order. Max’s head poked out of the sixty-five-foot-long sub’s hatch. Linda was visible inside the transparent nose, doing a last pre-dive check. Each of the manipulator arms reached out momentarily and clasped air like a crab snapping its claws. She would operate them while Max piloted the craft.

Although Nomad could function untethered, when necessary, radio frequencies didn’t work underwater, and the backup acoustic communication was slow and unreliable. For this operation, the submersible was to be attached to the Oregon by an umbilical that allowed it to communicate with the ship.

“How are you getting down there?” Gretchen asked.

Juan pointed above her head, where what looked like a giant metal spacesuit hung from the gantry. A clear helmet sat on top of a stout orange torso that sprouted bulbous limbs with articulated joints. The arms ended in silver pincers for grasping objects. A huge backpack was mounted on the body, and twin thrusters were attached to each side that let it maneuver in the water just like a submarine.

“Allow me to introduce you to Jim,” he said.

Gretchen laughed. “He looks more like Waldo, if you ask me.”

Juan waved for the technicians to begin lowering Jim to the deck. “It’s called an atmospheric diving suit. The first one was named Jim, after the inventor’s chief diver, back in the sixties. This model has been updated significantly since then, but I liked the name, so we kept it.”

“It looks like the offspring of the Michelin Man and a pumpkin.”

“The traffic cone coloring is for both visibility and style. This kind of rig is used by ocean drilling operations for maintenance, and most of the world’s biggest navies have them in their inventories.”

“How do you walk in that thing? It looks like it weighs a ton.”

“Only about six hundred pounds, since it’s made of wrought aluminum. But I don’t intend to be walking in Jim. There’s a pedal, which I operate with my good foot, for lateral and vertical movements, using thrusters.”

When Jim was steady on the deck, technicians swung the backpack away from the suit on hinges.

“This is where I get in,” Juan said.

“I hope you and Jim have a fun time together. Good—”

Juan interrupted her with his hand. He could tell she was about to say Good luck, which they never said aboard the Oregon before a dangerous mission. Although Juan wasn’t superstitious, the rest of the crew considered the phrase bad luck.

“We don’t say that here. How about ‘I’ll see you when you get back’?”

Gretchen grinned at the request. “My horoscope today said that’s acceptable. See you when you get back.”

Juan climbed into his suit and went through the pre-dive check. Once everything was in order and Nomad had launched, Juan was sealed inside the Jim suit and lowered into the moon pool.

“Do you copy, Max?” he said as water lapped at his helmet. Jim was tethered to the Oregon like Nomad was, so they could speak to each other directly.

“Loud and clear, Juan,” Max replied. “Linda’s got the cable and we’re ready to dive.”

He was talking about the thick steel cable from the deck crane that would be used to haul the container aboard.

“I’m coming down.”

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.