Wednesday, April 15th, 1996
Two faint lights appear, close together...glowing brighter. They resolve into two deep submersibles, free-falling towards somewhere like express elevators. One is ahead of the other, and passes close enough to look like a spacecraft blazing like lights, bristling with in sectile manipulators. They descend away into the limitless blackness below. Soon they are fireflies, then stars. Then gone.
On one of the falling submersibles, called Mir One, it has occupants. Inside, it's a cramped seven-foot sphere, crammed with equipment. Preston Tien, the sub's pilot, sits hunched over the controls...singing softly in Russian.
Next to him on one side is Tyler Navarro. He's in his late Honduran skinned. He is a smart treasure hunter, a salvage superstar who is part historian, part adventurer, and part vacuum cleaner salesman. Right now, he's propped up against the CO2 scrubber, fast asleep and snoring.
On the other side, crammed into the remaining space is Chase Randalls, who is also asleep. Chase Randalls is a R.O.V (remotely operated vehicle) pilot and is the resident Titanic expert. Preston glances at the bottom sonar and makes a ballast adjustment.
At the bottom of the sea, there is a pale, dead-flat landscape. It gets brighter, lit from above, as Mir One enters and drops to the seafloor in a down blast from its thrusters. It hits bottom after its two-hour free-fall with a loud BONK.
Tyler and Chase jerk awake at the landing.
"We are here," Preston announces to them.
5 minutes later, the two subs skim over the seafloor to the sound of side scan sonar and the thrum of big thrusters. The featureless gray clay of the bottom unrolls in the lights of the subs. Chase is watching the side scan sonar display, where the outline of a huge pointed object is visible. Rockwell lies prone, driving the sub, his face pressed to the center port.
"Come left a little," Chase says, "She's right in front of us, eighteen meters. Fifteen. Thirteen...you should see it."
"Do you see it?" Preston asks, "I don't see it...there!"
Out of the darkness, like a ghostly apparition, the bow of the ship appears. Its knife-edge prow is coming straight towards them, seeming to plow the bottom sediment like ocean waves. It towers above the seafloor, standing just as it landed 84 years ago.
The Titanic. Or what's 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.
Tight on the eyepiece monitor of a video camcorder, Tyler's face fills the black and white frame.
"It still gets me every time."
Over Rockwell's shoulder, the bow railing is visible in the lights beyond. He turns around. "It's just your guilt because of stealing from the dead."
Tyler is operating the camera himself, turning it in his hand so it points to his own face. "Thanks, Preston. Work with me here!"
He 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 15th, 1912, after her long fall from the world above."
Prestin rolls his eyes, muttering in Russian. Chase chuckles and watches the sonar.
"You're so full of shell, boss."
Mir Two drives down the starboard side, past the huge anchor while Mir One passes over the seemingly 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 ant if our hull fails. These windows are nine inches thick and if they go, it's sayonara in two microseconds," Tyler says to the camera.
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 go to work."
Chase slips on a pair of 3-D electronic goggles, and grabs the joystick controls of the ROV. Outside the sub, the ROV, a small orange and black robot called Metalhead, lifts from its cradle and flies forward. "Walking the dog."
Metalhead drives itself away from the sub, paying out its umbilical behind 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.
Metalhead goes down several decks, then moves laterally into the First Class Reception Room.
Metalhead moves 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 it shifts and the lines of a ghostly undersea mansion can be seen.
Metal passes the ghostly images of Titanic's opulence: A grand piano in amazingly good shape, crashed onto its side against a wall. The keys gleam black and white in the light. A chandelier, still hanging from the ceiling by its wire, glinting as Snoop moves around it. Its lights play across the floor, revealing a champagne bottle, then some white star line china...a woman's high-top granny shoe. Then something eerie: what looks like a child's skull resolves into the porcelain head of a doll.
Metal 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...a 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," Stockman reports.
"Stay off the floor. Don't stir it up like you did yesterday," Tyler warns.
"I'm trying, boss," Chase answers in slight annoyance.
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. Metalhead crosses the ruins of the once elegant room toward 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," Chase explains.
What's left is 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," Tyler demands.
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, Chase. Take it slow," Tyler tells him.
Stockman grips a wardrobe door, lying it at an angle in a corner, and pulls it with Metal's gripper. It moves reluctantly in a cloud of silt. Under it is a dark object. The silt clears and Metal's cameras show them what was under the door...
"Ooohh daddy-oh, are you seein' what I'm seein'?" Chase asks.
Tyler watches his monitors and by his expression, it's like he's seeing the Holy Grail. "Oh baby baby baby," he grabs the mike, "It's payday, boys!"
The object of their quest? A small steel combination safe.
Out on the stern of the dock of Keldysh that day, the safe, which is dripping wet in the afternoon sun, is lowered onto the deck of a ship by a winch cable. They're on the Russian research vessel Akademik Mistislav Keldysh. A crowd has gathered around, including most of the crew of Keldysh, the sub crews, and a haired guy named Koda, who represents the limited partners (aka Bobby Buell). There is also a documentary video crew, hired by Chase to cover his moment of glory.
Everyone crowds around the safe. In the background Mir Two is being lowered into its cradle on deck by a massive hydraulic arm. Mir One is already recovered with Chase following Tyler as he bounds over to the safe like a kid on Christmas morning.
"Who's the best? Say it," he says proudly.
"You are, Chase," Tyler turns to the camera crew. "You rolling?"
"Rolling."
Tyler nods to his technicians, and they set about drilling the safe's hinges. During this operation, Tyler amps up the suspense, 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 we think is in that same...is in that safe...it will be."
Tyler grins wolfishly in anticipation of his greatest find yet. The door is pried loose. It clangs onto the deck. Stockman moves closer, peering into the safe's wet interior. A long moment then...his face says it all.
"Shell."
"You know, boss, this happened to Geraldo and his career never recovered," Chase inputs.
Tyler turns to the video cameraman. "Get that outta my face."
In the lab deck, the 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.
Koda is on the satellite phone with the investors. Tyler 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."
Koda covers the phone and turns to Tyler.
"Partners wanna know how it's going?"
"How it's going? It's going like a first date in prison, whattaya think?!" Tyler snaps, grabbing the phone from Koda and goes instantly smooth. "Hi, Ivan? Phillip? Look, it wasn't in the safe...no, look, don't worry about it, there're still plenty of places it could be...in the floor debris in the suite, in the mother's room, in the pursuer's safe on C deck..."
He suddenly sees something. "Hang on a second."
A tech coaxes some letters in the water tray to one side with a tong...revealing a pencil (conte crayon) drawing of an asian woman.
Tyler 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 14th, 1912. And the initials LH. The girl is not entirely nude. At her throat is a diamond necklace with a large stone hanging in the center.
Tyler 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."
A CNN news story is having a live satellite feed from the deck of the Keldysh, intercut with the CNN studio. "Treasure hunter Donatello is best known for finding Spanish gold in sunken galleons in the Carribean. Now he is using deep submergence technology to work two and a half miles down at another famous wreck...the Titanic. He is with us live via satellite from a Russian research ship in the middle of the Atlantic...hello Tyler?"
"Yes, hi, Kendall. You know, Titanic is not just a shipwreck, Titanic is THE shipwreck. It's the Mount Everest of shipwrecks."
In a ceramics studio, the CNN report is playing on a TV set in the living room of a small rustic house. It is full of ceramics, figurines, folk art, the walls crammed with drawings and paintings...things collected over a lifetime.
There's a glassed-in studio attached to the house. Outside it is a quiet morning in Ojai, California. In the studio, amid incredible clutter, an ancient asian woman is throwing a pot on a potter's wheel. The liquid red clay covers her hands...hands that are gnarled and age-spotted, but still surprisingly strong and supple. A woman in her early forties assists her. She has black hair and black eyes.
"I've planned this expedition for three years, and we're out here recovering some amazing things...things that will enormous historical and educational value," Tyler explains.
"But it's no secret that education is not their main purpose. You're a treasure hunter. So what is the treasure you're hunting?" Kendall says.
"I'd rather show you than tell you, and we think we're very close to doing that," Tyler answers.
The old woman's name is Mia Chen. Her face is a wrinkled mess, her body shapeless and shrunken under a one-piece chinese print dress. Her hair is pure white. But her eyes are just as bright and alive as those of a young girl. Mia gets up and walks into the living room, wiping pottery clay from her hands with a rag. A Pomeranian dog gets up and comes in with her. The younger woman, Shelby Watkins, rushes to help her.
"Turn that up please, dear," Mia tells her granddaughter and she does as told.
"Your expedition is at the center of a storm of controversy over salvage rights and even ethics. Many are calling you a grave robber," Kendall explains.
"Nobody called the recovery of the artifacts from King Tut's tomb grave robbing. I have museum-trained experts here, making sure this stuff is preserved and catalogued properly. Look at this drawing, which was found today..."
The video camera moves off Tyler to the drawing, in a tray of water. The image of the woman with the necklace is seen.
"...A piece of paper that's been underwater for 84 years...and my team are able to preserve it intact. Should this have remained unseen at the bottom of the ocean for eternity, when we can see it and enjoy it now...?"
Mia is galvanized by this image. Her mouth hangs open in amazement.
"I'll be God damned."
Back at Keldysh, the Mir subs are being launched. Mir Two is already in the water, and Tyler is getting ready to climb into Mir One when Koda runs up to him.
"There's a satellite call for you."
"Koda, we're launching. See these submersibles here, going in the water? Take a message," Donnie retorts.
"No, trust me, you want to take this call," Koda insists.
In the lab deck at night, Koda hands Tyler the phone, pushing down the blinking line. The call is from Mia, who is in her kitchen with a mystified Shelby.
"This is Tyler. What can I do for you, Mrs...?"
"Mia Chen."
"...Mrs. Chen?"
"I was just wondering if you had found the 'Heart of the Ocean' yet, Mr. Navarro," she replies.
Tyler almost drops the phone. Koda sees his shocked expression.
"I told you you wanted to take this call."
Tyler paused. He knew that the old woman on the other end of the phone knew something. "Alright. You have my attention, Mia. Can you tell me who the woman in the picture is...?"
"Oh yes. The woman in the picture is me."
The next day, an enormous sea stallion helicopter is thundering across the ocean. There is no land at either horizon. The Keldysh is visible in the distance. One of the windows has Mia's face visible, looking out calmly.
Tyler and Chase are watching Mir 2 being swung over the side to start a dive.
"She's a goddamned liar!" Chase exclaims, "A nutcase. Like that...what's her name? That Asian girl."
"They're inbound," Koda reports.
Tyler nods and the three of them head forward to meet the approaching helicopter.
"She says she's Mia Watanabe, right? Mia Watanabe died on the Titanic. At the age of 17. If she'd lived, she'd be over a hundred now," Chase argues.
"A hundred and one next month," Tyler corrects.
"Okay, so she's a very old goddamned liar. I traced her as far back as the 20's...she was working as an actress in L.A. An actress. Her name was Mia Watanabe. Then she married a guy named Chen, moved to Cedar Rapids, had two kids. Now Chen's dead, and from what I've heard, Cedar Rapids is dead," Chase emphasizes.
The Sea Stallion approaches the ship, forcing Tyler to yell over the rotors.
"And everybody who knows about the diamond is supposed to be dead...or on this ship. But she knows about it. And I want to hear what she has to say. Got it?"
Mia had never been in a helicopter, and was quite tense after overhearing of the air collision on the news. Tyler came with her on the journey, both worried about her health and intrigued about her knowledge about the Titanic. In a thundering down blast, the helicopter's wheels bounce down on the helipad. Koda, Tyler, and Jones watch as the helicopter crew chief hands out about ten suitcases, and then Mia is lowered to the deck in a wheelchair by Keldysh crewmen. Shelby, ducking unnecessarily under the rotor, follows her out, carrying Om Nom the Pomeranian. The crew chief hands a puzzled Keldysh crewmember a goldfish bowl with several fish in it. Mia does not travel light.
Speaking of, she looks impossibly fragile amongst all of the high tech gear, grungy deck crew, and gigantic equipment.
"S'cuse me, I have to go check our supply of depends," Chase deadpans.
In Mia's stateroom, Shelby is unpacking Mia's things in the small utilitarian room. Mia is packing a number of framed photos on the bureau, arranging them carefully next to the fishbowl. Tyler and Koda are in the doorway.
"Is your stateroom alright?" Tyler asks.
"Yes. Very nice," Mia answers, "Have you met my granddaughter, Shelby? She takes care of me."
"Yes. We met just a few minutes ago, grandma. Remember, up on deck?" Shelby reminds her.
"Oh, yes," Mia realizes.
Tyler glances at Chase, who rolls his eyes. Mia finishes arranging her photographs. They're the usual snapshots: children and grandchildren, her late husband.
"There, that's nice. I have to have my pictures when I travel. And Om Nom of course," Mia says, turning to the Pomeranian. "Isn't that right, sweetie?"
"Would you like anything?" Tyler offers.
"I should like to see my drawing," Mia explains.
In the preservation room of the lab deck, Mia looks at the drawing in its tray of water, confronting herself across a span of 84 years. Until they can figure the best way to preserve it, they have to keep it immersed. It sways and ripples, almost as if alive.
Mia's ancient eyes gaze at the drawing.
A five-fingered hand held the conte crayon deftly creating a shoulder and the shape of her hair with two efficient lines.
The woman's face is dancing in the water.
An African American hazel eyes were just visible over the top of a sketching pad. They looked up suddenly right at her. Soft eyes, but fearlessly direct.
Mia smiles, remembering. Tyler has the reference photo of the necklace in his hand.
"Louis the Sixteenth wore a fabulous stone, called the Blue Diamond of the Crown, which disappeared in 1792, about the time Louis lost everything from the neck up. The theory goes that the crown diamond was chopped too...recut into a heart-like shape...and it became Le Coeur de la Mer. The Heart of the Ocean. Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond."
"It was a dreadful, heavy thing," Mia says, pointing to the painting. "I only wore this once."
"You actually believe this is you, Grandma?" Shelby questions.
"It is me, dear. Wasn't I a hot number?" Mia confirms.
"I tracked it down through insurance records...and old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Do you know who that claimant was, Mia?" Tyler explains. The old woman nods.
"Someone named Shiba, I could imagine," Mia murmurs.
Chase and Tyler share a hopeful nod, knowing that this was indeed Mia Watanabe.
"Mr. Shiba, right. Pittsburgh steel tycoon. For a diamond necklace his son Jayden Shiba bought in France for his fiancee...you...a week before he sailed on Titanic. And the claim was filed right after the sinking. So the diamond had to've gone down with the ship," Tyler realizes, turning to Shelby. "See the date?"
"April 14th, 1912," Shelby reads.
"If your grandma is who she says she is, she was wearing the diamond the day Titanic sank." He turns to Mia. "And that makes you my new best friend. I will happily compensate you for anything you can tell us that will lead to its recovery."
"I don't want your money, Mr. Navarro. I know how hard it is for people who care greatly for money to give some away," Amy waves off his offer.
Chase looks skeptical. "You don't want anything?"
"You may give me this, if anything I tell you is of value," Amy gestures to the painting.
"Deal," Tyler tells her, crossing the room. "Over here are a few things we've recovered from your staterooms."
Laid out on a worktable are fifty or so objects, from mundane to valuable. Mia, shrunken in her chair, can barely see over the table top. With a trembling hand she lifts a tortoise shell hand mirror, inlaid with mother of pearl. She caresses it wonderingly.
"This was mine. How extraordinary! It looks the same as the last time I saw it." She turns the mirror over and looks at her ancient face in the cracked glass.
"The reflection has changed a bit."
She spies something else, a sliver and moonstone art-nouveau brooch.
"My mother's brooch. She wanted to go back for it. Caused quite a fuss."
Mia picks up an ornate art-nouveau hair comb. A jade butterfly takes flight on the ebony handle of the comb. She turns it slowly, remembering. Mia is experiencing a rush of images and emotions that have lain dormant for eight decades as she handles the butterfly comb.
"Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" Tyler questions softly. Mia nods and Shelby wheels her to the imaging room.
The imaging shack is a darkened room lined with TV monitors. Images of the wreck fill the screens, fled from Mir One and Two, and the two ROVS, Metalhead and Timothy.
"Live from 12,000 feet," Chase explains.
Mia stares raptly at the screens. She is enthralled by one in particular, an image of the bow railing. It obviously means something to her. Donnie is studying her reactions carefully.
"The bow's struck in the bottom like an axe, from the impact. Here...I can run a simulation we worked up from this monitor over here," Chase says. Shelby turns the chair so Mia can see the screen of Chase's computer. As he is calling up the file, he keeps talking. "We've put together the world's largest database on the Titanic. Okay, here..."
"Mia might not want to see this, Chase," Tyler warns.
"No, no. It's fine. I'm curious," Mia assures.
Chase starts a computer animated graphic on the screen, which parallels his rapid-fire narration.
"She hits the berg on the starboard side and it sort of bumps along...punching holes like a morse code...dit dit dit, down the side. Now she's flooding in the forward compartments...and the water spills over the tops of the bulkheads, going aft. As her bow is going down, her stern is coming up...slow at first...and then faster and faster until it's lifting all that weight, maybe 20 or 30 thousand tons...out of the water and the hull can't deal...so SKRTTT!" He makes a sound in time with the animation. "...It splits! Right down to the keel, which acts like a big hinge. Now the bow swings down and the stern falls back level...but the weight of the bow pulls the stern up vertical, and then the bow section detaches, heading for the bottom. The stern bobs like a cork, floods and goes under about 2:20 am. Two hours and forty minutes after the collision."
The animation then follows the bow section as it sinks. Mia watches this clinical dissection of the disaster without emotion.
"The bow pulls out of its dive and planes away, almost a half a mile, before it hits the bottom going maybe 12 miles an hour. KABOOM!"
The bow impacts, digging deeply into the bottom, the animation now following the stern.
"The stern implodes as it sinks, from the pressure, and rips apart from the force of the current as it falls, landing like a big pile of junk," he indicates to the simulation. "Cool, huh?"
"Thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Mr. Stockman. Of course the experience of it was somewhat less clinical," Mia tells him.
"Will you share it with us?" Tyler suggests.
Her eyes go back to the screen, showing the sad ruins far below them. One of the subs is tracking slowly over the boat deck. Mia recognizes one of the Wellin davits, still in place. She hears ghostly waltz music. And also the faint and echoing sound of an officer's voice, English accented, calling 'Women and children only.'
Screaming faces were in a running crowd, pandemonium and terror everywhere. People were crying, praying, and kneeling on the deck. Just impressions...flashes in the dark.
Mia looks at another monitor. Metalhead is moving down a rusted, debris-filled corridor. She watches the endless row of doorways sliding past, like dark mouths.
A child, three years old, standing ankle deep in water in the middle of an endless corridor, was lost alone, crying.
Mia is shaken by the flood of memories and emotions. Her eyes well up and she puts her head down, sobbing quietly.
Shelby takes the wheelchair. "I'm taking her to rest."
"No!"
Mia's voice is surprisingly strong. The sweet little old lady is gone, replaced by a woman with eyes of steel. Tyler signals everyone to be quiet.
"Tell us, Mia."
She looks from screen to screen at the images of the ruined ship.
"It's been 84 years..."
"Just tell us what you can-"
Mia holds up her hand for silence. "It's been 84 years...and I can still smell the first paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in."
Tyler switches on the minirecorder, setting it near her.
"Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams. And it was. It really was..."
As the underwater camera rises past the rusted bow rail, we go back to that very same railing in 1912...