Ian managed to sleep in the front passenger seat for most of the six-hour drive, while Tusker brooded in the back, perched uncomfortably over the hot, noisy engine. A full day wasted in this damn van, he thought, looking out the dirty side window at the flashing scenery. When they stopped for a lunch of fish buns and tea at a roadside cafe back in Gampaha, Tusker didn’t talk much, picking at his food and leaving his tea half drunk.

Back on the road, he turned over every possibility of how the Taprobane could have sunk. We’ll get out there and dive it as soon as possible, he resolved to himself. There will be clues. I’m an archaeologist after all.

On the outskirts of Batticaloa, along an empty strip of sand and scrub pine, are several pockets of buildings that somehow survived the tsunami or were partially rebuilt. Stalks of rebar poke up from cement foundations, houses forever unfinished. It is out here, at the end of a long hard packed sand road, where you’ll find the Deep Blue Resort and Diving School.

As the tired van bumped and lurched across the road, trailing a plume of dust, Tusker wondered why this man, Sebastian, would want to run a dive resort at this desolate dead end. He was starting to doubt they’d ever find it. Srivathnan had to stop every half mile or so to ask locals on bicycles where the place was, and it seemed like every one sent them in a different direction than the last. But finally, after passing under a canopy of low, thorny trees, Tusker saw the whitewashed wall of a building with the silhouette of a diver on it and the words, “Deep Blue Resort — We’re the Wrecks-perts” on it.

Tusker slid open the van’s side door and shimmied out, bending over to stretch out his stiff back. Ian emerged sleepily, rubbing his eyes. The grounds of the resort were strangely silent, other than the ticking of the cooling engine and a chorus of buzzing cicadas somewhere in the trees. No one came to greet them and the place seemed deserted.

The Deep Blue was a series of single story, white buildings with red tile roofs laid out almost like barracks, in a line with a stone path running in front of them. Each “hut” had a number on it, presumably the room numbers. Opposite the sleeping quarters was an open air dining area covered by a thatched roof and an enclosed kitchen at one end.

“Where’s the welcoming committee?” Ian said. “I was expecting a pretty girl with an umbrella drink.”