“Tell that to McElroy when you see him,” Rausing finally said, then clicked off.

Murray shuddered at the thought of the dead man inside the Vampire, whose sopified body they’d no doubt encounter in a few minutes. He’d done body recoveries before, and seen plenty of corpses, but not that of anyone in whose death he’d taken an active part.

The bell splashed into the moonpool where, despite being protected from the open ocean, it rode the up-and-down of the night’s big swells. In a few moments, the bell was lowered into the depths and there was no sensation of movement at all. Only the depth gauge on the wall showed their progress to the sea floor. 150 feet, 200, 250, 300, then finally stopping at 330 fsw, “feet seawater.” It was silent. The men were no longer sweating. The cooler temperature at depth chilled the bell, and the cold sweat on Murray’s neck made him shiver.

“Terminal depth. Divers, prepare to exit the bell,” came the instruction from Dive Control.

When both divers had their helmets secured, tool harnesses buckled on, and umbilicals connected, Murray bent and unscrewed the hatch in the floor of the bell. He felt the familiar moment of uncertainty: if the pressure was not equalized, the seawater would pour in and fill up the bell in seconds. But the pressure was right and, like it always did, the ocean lapped at the platform like a hotel kiddie pool. Strong flood lights illuminated the water below, but beyond the white arc, the sea was black. Small fish flitted in the pool of light, like insects drawn to a lantern.

Aitkens was the first to descend the ladder, his multi-colored umbilical trailing behind him, unspooling from its rack inside the bell. He dropped into the blackness. Murray, whose role on the previous dive was to remain as bell man, followed him out. Leaving an empty bell was against ordinary protocols of diving safety. But this was anything but ordinary diving.

The divers dropped 15 feet and landed feet-first on the silty bottom. “Divers on the bottom,” Aitkens dutifully reported to Dive Control.

The Vampire’s sloping hull rose directly in front of them. Murray glanced at Aitkens and gestured for him to stay put, then took two big, low gravity strides and vaulted onto the edge of the gash in the steel hull and dropped inside the bowels of the ship.

Deep Despair

350 feet beneath the Indian Ocean. The same night.