It was very dark down there; a shade of black – or bluish black – that neither of the men on board had seen before in their lives up until they started this exploration, almost a month ago. The gelid depths of the North Atlantic Ocean looked uninviting to the MIR submarine that had descended from the world above, more specifically, from the Russian exploration ship Kéldysh off the coast of Newfoundland. The waters that had housed a great secret for more than eighty years: what had really happened, on that cold April night, to the most luxurious, the grandest, the fastest and the unsinkable R.M.S. Titanic of the White Star Line?
Canadian treasure hunter Matthew Williams and his American step-sister and best friend – even though it was kind of lame on her part – Amelia Jones, along with a team of experts, were not looking for answers, rather than for a single object, a mundane and materialistic object that laid on the wreck of the ship of the century, which had gone down two hours after midnight of the 15ht of April, 1912 with a death toll of 1 500 men, women and children.
They were looking for the Blue Ceylon.
It was a simple piece of jewellery, worn by one of the passengers, whose stateroom they were actually on, examining each and every inch of the submerged room. It was a gold and diamond brooch, but it had a peculiarity that made it stand out from any other jewels from the world. It had a rare blue diamond brought from the very heart of the Sri Lankan civilization as a gift to an Indian emperor in his coronation day in the 2nd Century. The jewel, today, would be worth more than the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Amelia was currently on the controls of the submarines', as you could call it, "hands" and she was proud as how much progress she had made on the subject, while her stepbrother was looking out the small window when he spotted something next to the fireplace, upon entering through the private promenade deck.
"Wait. I think I see something. Flip that over" Matthew said, referring to a battered door that had probably belonged to the closet. Amelia did as she was told, looking intently through the night-sight as she carefully, as her stepbrother was guiding her through the process, took the door – which could have easily broken at that moment – away with the mechanic "hands". Underneath it there was a surprise for both of them, and surely, for everyone above, a surprise that could bring prestige to the stepsiblings' career as treasure finders.
"Payday, bitches" Amelia said with a smirk on her face.
Once on the deck, everyone had gathered around for the historic event. Amelia had brought in the champagne they were saving for the moment of the big finding and their colleague - although Amelia didn't like it because she thought that he was a "commie bastard" – Ivan Braginski put his hand over Matthew's shoulder with a smile on his face. He knew the effort of the Canadian had paid off finally. Next to him, the Lithuanian Toris Laurinatis had been told to record the whole event with the camera.
The battered safe deposit box found on the First Class cabin was slowly lowered down and put on the deck, in the middle of a puddle, but when it was opened, and with everybody expecting to see the shining diamond, everything came out in a gush of muddy water. Inside there were papers, surely shares of stock, a black booklet...
... but no diamond.
"No" Matthew said, almost traumatized with glazed eyes, grabbing papers that broke up in his hands as he touched them "This can't be" after all the effort they had put in that, nothing came out. He was disappointed, to say the least. Amelia made a sign to Toris to turn off the camera and she kneeled behind her brother, who was close to tears.
"We'll find it" Amelia said, although she didn't know how... that was until she saw something that caught her eye, amidst the muddy water the safe had inside. It was a drawing, but it was not too clear, so she couldn't tell what was drawn in that piece of paper "Let's take this to the lab"
In the laboratory, in the upper deck, Polish forensic investigator – not of corpses, they were icky – Feliks Lukasiewicz was carefully rinsing the dirty water off the drawing and, on a monitor, Matthew and Amelia could see the progress. Matthew's eyes widened when he saw it: drawn in that paper was a young man, a boy, who appeared to be fair-skinned with blonde hair because it was not coloured, big eyes and completely naked in a sensual pose, but there were two things that caught his attention. One was the date of the drawing, which was clearly April 14th, 1912, the last day Titanic saw the light of day, and the other was the silk scarf worn by the boy... which was held together by the Blue Ceylon!
"Give me the photo of the diamond, please" Matthew asked their assistant, a young Latvian boy named Raivis, who, upon seeing a naked man on the screen, turned his face away blushing like a tomato. He grabbed the picture from the corkboard and gave it to Matthew, who put it next to the screen. Amelia was watching behind his back "Perfect match" she said.
"I'll be God damned" Matthew said, with a smile on his face, mesmerized by the coincidence.
In a small house in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California, an elderly man who had been trying to paint a flower vase in front of him for the past half an hour, made a big red angry cross on the canvas and huffed, throwing it away with as much force as he could muster. He wasn't really talented when it came to painting, and when he couldn't paint what he tried to paint, he got angry. He was quite short-tempered, he had always been since he was a kid, he remembered. The only artistic talent he had was playing the piano, he had learned when he was just a lad back in England, but he had been forced to sell his grand piano in more difficult times.
"We are here with Canadian treasure hunter Matthew Williams and his crew on board the Kéldysh to explore the most famous wreck of our century, the Titanic" Arthur heard from the television elsewhere in the house and that caught his attention so he slowly – very slowly – got up and grabbed his cane to go to the living room, where the television was. His grandson Peter was watching and when he saw his grandfather approaching the sofa, got up and went over to help him.
"What is it?" Peter asked his grandfather. He pointed at the television with his cane, once he had sat down comfortably.
"Please, turn that up, Peter" his grandson complied and he could hear perfectly what that cute young Canadian man was saying, showing a drawing that was not all too clear for Arthur.
"Look, for example, at this picture we found today. It is eighty five years old..." once they made a close-up of the picture in question, Arthur's eyes widened considerably. That was the picture he had thought he would never see again in his life.
"I'll be God bloody damned" he whispered.
Matthew was inspecting the MIRs before taking another plunge into the cold Atlantic to see if he and his team were lucky this time and found that damn jewel, or at least, hints of that. It could be anywhere in his room, or his fiancée's room. Just when he was mentally going through the blueprints of the First Class cabins, which he had seen personally underwater for at least a month, Ivan came up behind him with a smile on his face, making him look damned cute in the eyes of the Canadian, who had always had a crush on the Russian, but had been too shy to say so.
"Matvey, there is a call for you" Ivan said, clutching the phone to his chest. It was quite windy on the deck "It's important".
Matthew turned around and his cheeks got a little bit pinker looking at the cute Russian, but had to shake his head and turn back around "I'm sorry, Vanya, I'm busy".
"You will want to take this" Ivan said tauntingly. Matthew turned around again and grabbed the phone with a thankful smile on his face "Speak up, he is kind of old"
"Great" Matthew mumbled before speaking on the phone "My name is Matthew Williams, how can I help you mister...?"
"Arthur Jones" came a soft voice from the other side of the line. Arthur took a deep breath before asking "I was wondering, Mr. Williams, if you have found the Blue Ceylon yet" there was a short pause as Matthew was stunned and wide-eyed, he turned to look at Ivan, who was smiling like a child and rocking back and forth on his heels.
"I told you" he said before walking away, giving the Canadian a good view of his bum. Matthew, again had to shake his head and spoke "W-Well, you have my attention, Arthur. Can you tell us who the boy on the picture is?"
Arthur smiled on the other side of the line and let out a breathy laugh "Oh, yes" he said "The lad in the picture is me".
The helicopter from the mainland landed with a deafening sound at the heliport of the Kéldysh. Matthew went over from the lab to welcome the new arrivals, who could finally unravel the mystery surrounding the Blue Ceylon and its disappearance, but Amelia wasn't so convinced; she was following her stepbrother through the deck, trying to knock some sense on him.
"There is no record of Arthur Kirkland after the sinking, when he was seventeen. As for Arthur Jones, he worked as a piano and French teacher until he retired. He adopted a little girl in the fifties and moved to Los Angeles, but never married. She had a kid and so on. I'm telling you. This guy is a God damned liar!" Amelia said, frantically moving her arms around to try to catch her stepbrother's attention, but he continued walking and didn't turn around when he said "Everybody who knows about the diamond are either dead or here, but he knows. Besides, he will be a hundred on May, so it makes sense that he was on the Titanic around that time"
"Well, then he is a very old God damned liar" she said, but Matthew paid her no mind as he smiled and walked over to where the men in orange overalls were helping down an elderly man in a wheelchair and, once he was down, covering his ears for the noise, helped down an attractive young boy with porcelain skin, golden hair like once his grandfather had but instead of bright green, his orbs were the purest shade of blue.
"Mr. Kirkland, welcome on board the Kéldysh!" Matthew yelled over the sound of the blades. From the helicopter, the men continued unloading a couple suitcases. Arthur always liked to travel light, but he knew Peter couldn't live without his dog Hanatamago, so they brought him along. Matthew and Amelia moved aside so Peter could push his grandfather to where Ivan was leading them, with a smile on his face. He winked at Matthew from afar and the Canadian blushed. Amelia rolled her eyes.
"With everything that's going on you are focusing on the commie bastard? I can't believe you, bro. I just can't" Amelia mumbled as she walked away from his love struck stepbrother.
Half an hour later, as Peter had fed Hanatamago in his cabin, the dog had fallen asleep on what would be his bed for as long as they stayed there, and he went over to his grandfather's stateroom which was across the corridor. Arthur was looking at himself in the mirror next to the bed and combing his messy white hair. He had thanked all Heavens above that he had not lost all his hair while getting old. He was truly thankful for that and for many other things, too.
"Hana has eaten and is asleep" Peter said as he sat down on his grandfather's comfortable bed. Arthur huffed and rolled his eyes.
"At least we won't have the damn thing bothering us" he said bitterly, but was cut off when there was a knock on the open door and they both turned to look at Matthew and Amelia, smiling at them "Oh, Mr. Williams, Ms. Jones" Arthur said, quite surprised that they visited them so early upon their arrival. They must have wanted to get down to business as soon as possible.
"We wanted to check if you were comfortable in your cabin, sir" Matthew said politely in a very soft voice that was barely audible, but Arthur understood it alright, and he nodded with a small smile. He didn't want to smile so much. When he was younger and his skin was smooth and porcelain-like, he smiled and laughed carelessly, but now that he was older, he feared that, upon smiling, his face would get wrinkled in a way that he dreaded it would, so he rather have a stone face than the face of a Shar Pei.
"Is there anything you'd like?" Amelia asked with a fake tone of hospitality. She didn't believe a thing Arthur had told them, and he knew it. He had known it ever since he stepped a foot – or rather, a wheel – on that ship that she didn't like him. Arthur straightened up.
"Yes. I would like to see my drawing, please" he said with his head up high.
Arthur couldn't believe it. Laying in a tray, under the clear water, much different to the one it had been submerged in for the past eighty years inside the safe, was the drawing that wonderful man had done of him, completely naked and wearing that astounding piece of jewellery. Peter, upon seeing his grandfather – who was actually very cute when he was younger – in the nude, turned his head to the other side with a blush on his cheeks and his gaze met that of a young ash-blonde that was standing there, Raivis. They looked at each other, blushed and smiled. Peter shook his head and rested his hands on his grumpy grandfather's shoulders, trying to avoid looking at the picture.
"You actually think that was you, grandpa?" Peter asked, not sure of the answer. His grandfather could remember what he had had for lunch on Victory Day, but he wasn't sure the memory of a man who was almost a hundred years old could go as far as the post-Edwardian period (AN: I didn't know if call it that way, because the Edwardian had ended in 1910, or call it Georgian). Arthur turned around.
"Of course I was, poppet. Wasn't I a dish?" Arthur said, wiggling his eyebrows and causing his grandson to groan. The elderly man chuckled. Matthew approached them with the picture of the Blue Ceylon he had for reference.
"In the second century, Emperor Kanishka was given a rare blue diamond extracted from the very heart of Sri Lanka – which was later named Ceylon by the British – as a present for his coronation and he wore it on his sceptre for which it was called Nīlē Rājadaṇḍa or 'Blue Sceptre'. It was brought to London upon the colonisation of India in the nineteenth century and made a brooch which was later bought, from the Queen's private collection. Today, it would be worth more than the Koh-i-Noor and the Hope diamond together" Matthew explained, showing Arthur and Peter the picture. The young boy was marvelled at the sheer size of the diamond and the opulent brooch that his grandfather had apparently worn.
"It was a dreadfully heavy thing. I only wore it that once" Arthur said, dismissing it as if nothing. Matthew smiled and Amelia rolled her eyes. She still didn't believe him and she wouldn't any time soon, apparently.
"Okay, here we go" Amelia said after a couple minutes of Arthur looking at the jewellery recovered from his cabin. She was showing them a virtual simulation of how the ship had sunk, all the while Peter was stealing glances at Raivis "She hits the berg on the starboard side and drags along, punching holes into the hull like Morse code. Tip, tip, tip. The forward five compartments are flooded immediately and the water begins to spill over the top of the bulkheads. The bow begins to go down, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until she's got her whole ass sticking up in the sky, and we are talking about twenty or thirty tons. The hull wasn't built to handle that amount of pressure so, what happens?" Amelia makes a cracking sound, all the while, Arthur is staring blankly at the screen "It splits down to the keel. After a couple minutes, the bow detaches and the stern floods and goes under about 2:20 am, two hours and forty minutes after the collision" Amelia finished with a smile, proud of herself "Pretty cool, huh?"
Arthur sighed "Thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Ms. Jones. However, the experience was somewhat different" he said blankly. Matthew approached him from behind and politely put his hand over the elderly man's small shoulder "Mr. Jones... are you ready to go back to the Titanic?"
He had suppressed those memories for eighty-five years. The gelid waters swallowing the ship full of screaming men, women and children. The frozen bodies found the following morning. The death of someone he cared for the most. A tear rolled down his cheek, but he wiped it away with shaky hands and took a deep breath.
"It's been eighty-five years, already..."