Pitt briefed the men on his hunt for the ruthenium, its trail to the Arctic, and Mitchell Goyette’s possible involvement. He checked some additional papers that Yaeger had provided, which confirmed that the Athabasca Shipping Company was owned by one of Goyette’s holding companies.

“If Goyette is shipping gas and oil from the Arctic, his environmental posturing is certainly fraudulent,” Giordino noted.

“A dockworker I met at a bar told me someone was shipping the Chinese massive quantities of oil sands, or bitumen, out of Kugluktuk,” Dahlgren said. “He said they were bypassing the government’s shutdown of refineries in Alberta due to greenhouse gas emissions.”

“A good bet it’s on Goyette’s barges,” Pitt said. “Maybe it’s even his oil sands.”

“It would seem that this Goyette might have a powerful incentive to obtain the ruthenium source,” Stenseth said. “How do you propose beating him to it?”

“By finding a one-hundred-and-eighty-five-year-old ship,” Pitt replied. He then shared Perlmutter’s findings and the clues linking the mineral to Franklin’s expedition ship Erebus.

“We know the ships were initially abandoned northwest of King William Island. The Inuit account places the Erebus farther south, so it is possible that a shifting ice sheet drove the ships in that direction before they sank.”

Stenseth excused himself to run to the bridge, while Dahlgren asked Pitt what he hoped to find.

“Providing that the ice didn’t completely crush the ships, there’s a good chance the vessels are intact and in an excellent state of preservation due to the frigid water.”

Stenseth returned to the lounge with an armful of maps and photographs. He opened a nautical chart that showed the area around King William Island, then produced a high-altitude photo of the same region.

“Satellite photo of Victoria Strait. We’ve got updates for the entire passage. Some areas north of here are still encased in sea ice, but the waters around King William have already broken up due to an early melt off this year.” He laid the photograph on the table for all to see. “The seas are essentially clear in the area where Franklin became icebound one hundred and sixty-fi ve years ago. A bit of drift ice still remains, but nothing that should impede a search effort.”

While Pitt nodded with satisfaction, Dahlgren was shaking his head.

“Aren’t we forgetting one mighty important tidbit?” he asked. “The Canadians have expelled us from their waters. The only reason we have been able to remain in Tuktoyaktuk so long is because we feigned problems with our rudder.”

“With your arrival, those problems have now been rectified,” Stenseth said to Pitt with a wily smile.

Pitt turned to Giordino. “Al, I believe you were tasked with proposing a strategy to address Jack’s concern.”