1996
Blackness.
All of a sudden two faint lights appear, close together…growing brighter. They resolve into two deep submersibles, free falling toward us like express elevators. One is ahead of the other. Three people are in one of the submersibles. Inside it is cramped and is a seven feet sphere, crammed with equipment. Jason Gideon is the pilot, he sits hunched over her control. Next to her is David Rossi, he is in charge of the expedition and is asleep. Kevin Lynch is also asleep. He is an R.O.V. (Remotely Operated Vehicle) pilot and is the resident Titanic expert. Jason glances at the bottom sonar and makes a ballast adjustment.
A pale, dead-flar lunar landscape. It gets brighter, lit as Mir One drops to the seafloor in a downblast from its thrusters. It hits the bottom after its two hour free-fall with a loud BONK. Rossi and Lynch are both jerked awake at the landing.
"We are here, gentlemen." Jason tells the two men.
Five minutes later the two subs skim over the seafloor to the sound of sidescan sonar and the thrum of big thrusters. Kevin is watching the sidescan sonar display, where the outline of a huge pointed object is visible. Andi lies prone, driving the sub, her face pressed to the center port.
"Come left a little. She's right in front of us, eighteen meters. Fifteen…Thirteen…you should see it."
"Do you see it? I don't see it…there!"
Out of the darkness, like a ghostly apparation, the bow of the ship appears. Its knife-edge prow is coming straight at us, seeming to plow the bottom sediment like ocean waves. It towers above the seafloor, standing just as it landed 84 years prior.
The Titanic…or what is left of her. Mir One goes up and over the bow railing, intact except for an overgrowth of "rusticles" draping it like mutated Spanish moss.
David is holding a video camera and it's aimed at his face.
"It still gets me every time."
He points the camera to the front viewpoint, looking over Jason's shoulder, to the bow railing visible in the lights beyond. Jason turns to face him.
"Is it your guilt? Because of stealing from the dead?" he asks with a scowl.
"Thanks, Jason. Work with me, here."
David resumes his serious, pensive gaze out the front port, with the camera aimed at himself at arm's length.
"It still gets me every time…to see the sad ruin of the great ship sitting here, where she landed at 2:30 in the morning, April 15, 1912, after her long fall from the world above."
Jason rolls her eyes at the bullshit that seems to always radiate from his mouth.
"You are so full of shit, boss." Kevin laughs and watches the sonar.
Mir Two drives aft down the starboard side, past the huge anchor while Mir One passes over the seemingly endless forecastle deck, with its massive anchor chains still laid out in two neat rows, its bronze windlass caps gleaming. The 22 foot long subs are like white bugs next to the enormous wreck.
"Dive nine. Here we are again on the deck of Titanic…two and a half miles down. The pressure is three tons per square inch, enough to crush us like a freight train going over an anut if our hull fails. These windows are nine inches thick and if they go, it's sayonara in two microseconds.
Mir Two lands on the boat deck, next to the ruins of the Officer's Quarters. Mir One lands on the roof of the deck house nearby.
"Right. Let's get to work." David tells Kevin.
Kevin slips on a pair of 3D electronic goggles, and grabs the joystick controls of the ROV. Outside of the sub, the ROV, a small orange and black robot called Snoop Dog, lifts from its cradle and flie forward.
"Walkin' the dog."
Snoop Dog drives itself away from the sub, paying out its umbilical behind it like a robot yo-yo. Its twin stereo-video cameras swivel like insect eyes. The ROV descends through an open shaft that once was the beautiful First Class Grand Staircase. Snoop Dog goes down several decks, then moves laterally into the First Class Reception Room.
Dave and Kevin see through the monitors, that the ROV is moving through the cavernous interior. The remains of the ornate hand-carved woodwork which gave the ship its elegance move through the floodlights, the lines blurred by slow dissolution and descending rusticle formations. Stalactites of rust hang down so that at times it looks like a natural grotto, then the scene shifts and the lines of a ghostly undersea mansion can be seen again. They see a grand piano in amazing good shape, crushed on its side against a wall. The keys gleam black and white in the lights. A chandelier, still hanging from the ceiling by wire…glinting as Snoop moves around it. The lights play across the floor, revealing a champagne bottle, then some White Star Line china…a woman's high-top. Then something eerie: what looks like a child's skull resolves into the porcelain head of a doll.
Snoop enters a corridor which is much better preserved. Here and there a door still hangs on its rusted hinges. An ornate piece of molding, a wall sconce…hint at the grandeur of the past. The ROV turns and goes through a black doorway, entering room B-52, the sitting room of a promenade suite, one of the most luxurious staterooms on Titanic.
"I'm in the sitting room. Heading for bedroom B-54." Kevin tells Dave.
"Stay off the floor. Don't stir it up like you did yesterday."
"I'm tryin' boss."
Glinting in the lights are the brass fixtures of the near-perfectly preserved fireplace. An albino Galathea crab crawls over it. Nearby are the remains of a divan and a writing desk. The Dog crosses the ruins of the once elegant room towards another door. It squeezes through the doorframe, scraping rust and wood chunks loose on both sides. It moves out of a cloud of rust and keeps on going.
"I'm crossing the bedroom." Kevin tells Dave and Andi.
The remains of a pillared canopy bed. Broken chairs and a dresser. Through the collapsed wall of the bathroom, the porcelain commode and bathtub look almost new, gleaming in the dark.
"Okay, I want to see what's under that wardrobe door." Dave tells Kevin.
The ROV deploys its manipulator arms and starts moving debris aside. A lamp is lifted, its ceramic colors as bright as they were in 1912.
"Easy, Kevin. Take it slow."
Kevin grips a wardrobe door, lying at an angle in a corner, and pulls it with Snoop's gripper. It moves reluctantly in a cloud of silt. Under it is a dark object. The silt clears and Snoop's cameras show them what was under the door.
"Oooh, boss, are you seein' what I'm seein'?"
Dave smiles like he is seeing the Holy Grail.
"It's payday, boys."
On the monitor; in the glare of the lights, is the object of their quest: a small steel combination safe.
On the deck of the Keldysh, the safe, is dripping wet in the afternoon sun, is lowered onto the deck of a ship by a winch cable.
A crowd has gathered, including most of the crew of the Keldysh, the sub crews, and a hand-wringing money guy named Derek Morgan, who represents the limited partners. There is also a documentary video crew, hired by Rossi to cover his moment of glory.
Everyone crowds around the safe. Behind the crowding Mir Two is being lowered into its cradle on deck by a massive hydralic arm. Mir One is already recovered with Kevin Lynch following David Rossi as he bounds over to the safe like a kid on Christmas morning.
"Who's the best? Say it." Kevin asks Dave.
"You are, Kevin." He turns to the video crew. "You rolling?"
"Rolling."
Dave nods to his technicians, and they set about drilling the safe's hinges. During this operation, Dave amps the suspence, working the lens to fill the time.
"Well, here it is, the moment of truth. Here's where we find out if the time, the sweat, the money spent to charter this ship and these subs, to come out here to the middle of the North Atlantic…were worth it. If what we think is in that safe…it will be."
Rossi grins wolfishly in anticipation of his greatest find yet. The door is pried loose. It clangs onto the deck. Rossi moves closer, peering into the safe's wet interior. He takes out wet cash and and a sketchbook, that all.
"Shit."
"No diamond." A russian crewmember of the Keldysh says.
"You know, boss, this happened to Geraldo and his career never recovered." Kevin tells him.
"Turn that camera off."
In the Lab and Preservation Room technicians are carefully removing some papers from the safe and placing them in a tray of water to separate them safely. Nearby, other artifacts from the stateroom are being washed and preserved.
Derek is on the satellite phone with the investors. Dave is yelling at the video crew.
"You send out what I tell you when I tell you. I'm signing your paychecks, not 60 Minutes. Now get set up for the uplink."
Derek covers the phone and turns to Dave.
"The partners want to know how its going?"
"How it's going? It' s going like a first date in prison, what ya think?"
Dave grabs the phone from Derek and goes instantly smooth.
"Hi Barry? Look, it wasn't in the safe…no, look, don't worry about it, there are still plenty of places it could be…in the floor debris in the suite, in the mother's room, in the purser's safe on C Deck…"
Dave sees something on the monitor and sees a drawing.
"Hang on a second."
A tech coaxes some letters in the water tray to one side with a tong…revealing a conte crayon drawing of a woman.
Dave looks closely at the drawing, which is in excellent shape, though its edges have partially disintegrated. The woman is beautiful, and beautifully rendered. In her late teens or early twenties, she is nude, though posed with a kind of casual modesty. She is on an Empire divan, in a pool of light that seems to radiate outward from her eyes. Scrawled in the lower right corner is the date: April 14 1912. And the initials SR.
The girl is not entirely nude. At her throat is a diamond with one large stone hanging in the center.
Dave grabs a reference photo from the clutter on the lab table. It is a period black-and-white photo of a diamond necklace on a black velvet jeweler's display stand. He holds it next to the drawing. It is clearly the same piece…a complex setting with a massive central stone which is almost heart-shaped.
"I'll be God damned."
