“I figured this was deco territory. Everything worth diving over here is deep. Sorry, that didn’t come out right.” Ian said, sheepishly.

An hour later, they were motoring out of the lagoon in a small fiberglass skiff loaded with gear. There was no canopy against the sun. The sea was flat calm and shimmered as if covered with a film of oil. They had no trouble spotting the makeshift buoy the police had placed to mark the location where the Taprobane had sunk. It consisted of no more than a cinder block dropped over the side, 200 feet of nylon rope, and a plastic bottle. As Roland slowed the boat, Tusker looked around and felt a spasm of sadness. He thought back to that last text message from Upali. He had been excited about finding a new wreck, the dream of any marine archaeologist. He never could have imagined ending like this, Tusker was sure of it.

“I can’t really tie off to this buoy, but there’s not much current,” Roland said. “I’ll just keep the boat around while you guys are under. Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you come back.” The yellow smile.

Tusker nodded back. The charts showed the depth at around 180 feet, well beyond recreational limits and necessitating some decompression before they could surface. A 20-minute dive would require 50 minutes of decompression: hanging on the buoy line in stages as they slowly ascended, allowing their bodies to respirate the excess nitrogen that had been forced into their blood vessels and tissues. Taking into account time and greater air consumption at depth, Ian and Tusker both wore twin 80-cubic foot cylinders of air, with two regulators for redundancy, just in case.

Lifting that gear up to the tiny boat’s gunwales was clumsy, heavy work. Sitting on opposite sides of the boat, Tusker and Ian made eye contact and Roland gave a countdown. “3, 2, 1, go!” Tusker and Ian backrolled simultaneously over the side into the water and immediately descended into the indigo blue water.

Sunken Crime Scene

Bay of Bengal, one mile offshore of Batticaloa. The same day.

Tusker could see the Taprobane’s white foredeck below as soon as he began descending, as if she was still afloat and he was hang gliding above her. The ship lay upright on the seafloor. At first, she showed no signs of damage, and Tusker found himself thinking that maybe there was no explosion. Could it have just sank, and the crew swam ashore? It wasn’t that far offshore. It was all just a misunderstanding.

Then he saw the body.