Page 17 (1/1)

Running before the wind, he ed surf of the coastline, the water was clear, alreenish cast Michael could even see fish, dark shapes running below the surface In places the shoreline was clotted with huge masses of debris, but elsewhere it seeun to fade as he approached the estuary’s e, dark shape stood in the channel As he neared, the i It had coe that traversed the channel He guided his craft closer The ship was listing slightly to port, bon, the tops of its round? How had it gotten there? Probably the sah Bolivar Pass Across the stern, dripping with rust, ritten the vessel’s naistry:

BERGENSFJORD

OSLO, NORWAY

He drew the Nautilus alongside the closest stanchion Yes, a ladder He tied off, dropped his sails, then went below to fetch a pry bar, a lantern, an assortths of heavy rope He put his supplies in a backpack, returned to the deck, took a steadying breath, and began to cliot to him, except for that At the refinery, circuround--swinging fro off the rust--and over time he’d become more brave about it, insofar as his crew could tell But exposure went only so far in its curative effects The ladder, steel rungs set into the concrete of the stanchion, was not, on close inspection, anywhere near as sturdy as it had appeared fros seemed barely attached By the tiainst the back of his throat He lay on his back on the suspension bridge’s roadway, just breathing, then peered over the edge He guessed it was a hundred and fifty feet down to the ship’s deck,and watched it fall The trick would be using his feet to control his descent Taking the rope in his hands, he leaned backward over the edge, sed hard, and stepped off

For half a second he believed he had estto plummet like a rock to the deck But then his feet found the rope, wrapping it in a death grip Hand over hand, he uessed the boat had been soht vessel He headed for the stern, where an open metal staircase led to the pilothouse At the top of the stairs he came to a heavy door with a handle that refused to move He popped the handle loose with the pry bar and inserted the tip of a screwdriver into the , and with a second pop of the pry bar the door swung free

An eye-watering ammoniac funk filled the air--air that nobody had breathed for a century Beneath the broad windshield, with its view of the channel, was the ship’s control panel: rows of switches and dials, flat-panel displays, coh-backed chairs that faced the panel was a body Time had turned it into little more than a shrunken brown stain encased by theMilitary-style epaulets with three stripes decorated the shoulders of its shirt An officer, Michael thought, perhaps the captain himself The cause of death was apparent: a hole in his skull, no bigger than the tip of Michael’s pinkie, marked the spot of the bullet’s entry On the floor, beneath the ht hand, lay a revolver

Michael found other bodies below decks Nearly all were in their beds He didn’t linger, merely added them to the count, forty-two corpses in all Had they killed themselves? The orderliness of the bodies said so, yet thebefore, but never sodoard into the ship, he came to a room that was different from the others, with not one or two beds but h on the bulkheads, the space bisected by a slim corridor The crew’s quarters? Many of the cots were e two that were naked, their liether in the cramped space of a lower bunk

This space wasand miscellaneous objects covered much of the floor Many of the walls beside the bunks were decorated: faded photographs, religious iraphs and held it up to his lantern A dark-haired wo an infant in her lap