In the morning, before dawn, Upali Karuna and his small team—a boat captain, a sonar expert, and a young intern—loaded up a small dive skiff from Sebastian de Silva’s Deep Blue Resort and motored out to the R/V Taprobane where she was anchored offshore, beyond Batticaloa’s shallow lagoon. There they hefted a sonar device, hundreds of feet of coaxial cable, and a rather expensive remotely operated vehicle aboard and set off to search for a shipwreck.

The research vessel Taprobane was a 46-foot former navy patrol boat, with a wide aft deck, a broad forward cabin, and plenty of storage below deck. When the Ministry of Culture, History and Archaeology had acquired it from the Sri Lankan Navy after the end of the civil war, they’d refitted it for use as a sonar boat that could serve as a platform for divers. Its camouflaged hull had been painted white and adorned with MOCHA’s official seal, the Sri Lankan flag on both sides of the bow, and her name emblazoned across the low stern.

Upali stood on the forward deck of the boat, enjoying the predawn breeze and a flask of hot milk tea he’d brought from the Deep Blue. The sky was just starting to turn orange on the horizon. Upali wanted to get an early start, since launching the ROV off of the transom was heavy work that would only be made worse in a blazing midday sun. They’d reach the search coordinates by about 6:00.

“Hold up, Ranjith!” Upali called over his shoulder to the captain. “We’ve got a vessel in our grid area. Toss me those binocs.” The Taprobane slowed to a crawl, its twin Mercury Marine diesels reduced to a loping rumble. Looking through the binoculars in the dim light, Upali made out a massive ship with no running lights. It looked out of place there, a huge slab of steel where, at most, he might have expected to spot a wooden fishing trawler. Upali squinted. He could just make out two figures in the pilothouse, silhouetted against the eerie green light of navigation instruments. From their stance, they were clearly looking back at the Taprobane.

As he scanned the ship from bow to stern, Upali recognized the distinctive high superstructure at the front and the low-slung rear deck pierced by the tall skeleton of a powerful crane. It was the dive support vessel he’d seen in Batticaloa harbor, the Depth Charge. But what were they doing out this far? He’d only seen the ship in the gouged-out basin of the forthcoming deep-water port, where its divers were presumably at work fitting pipe or electrical cabling. Otherwise it had always been tied up along the makeshift pier overnight, its crew staying aboard. Were they in trouble? Some sort of power outage causing them to drift and lose their lights? He’d better raise them on the radio.