“More like an administrative office.”

Juan brought them down again and nosed the submersible up to where Admiral Tsai had placed the explosive charge that scuttled the ship and killed its ill-fated crew. The xenon lights threw what little of the interior they could see into sharp relief. The decks were wooden, as were the walls. The room they were looking into was too broad for them to see the far side and contained a veritable forest of support columns. Too many, in fact, and it was Tamara who recognized what they were seeing.

“This is one of the crew’s berths. They hung hammocks from the columns.”

Juan added, “They were still doing it that way into the twentieth century, at least on warships.”

“This is just amazing,” Tamara breathed. Her eyes were wide with wonder.

“Now for the bad news,” Juan said. She looked at him sharply. “We have to destroy it. I brought you along so you could see it with your own eyes, but we can’t let the Chinese find her.”

“But—”

“No buts. I’m sorry. Once we convince the Argentines that it’s in their best interest to abandon their plans here, we can’t leave a window open for Beijing to fill the vacuum. They’re riding on the Argentines’ coattails because they have no claim. This gives them one. A damned big one, at that. They discovered Antarctica three hundred and eighty years before the first European laid eyes on the continent.”

“I . . .” Tamara’s brow furrowed. “I hate politics. This is one of the most significant archaeological finds in history and it has to be sacrificed so some power-hungry men can’t get their hands on a bunch of oil.”

“That’s it in a nutshell, I’m afraid,” Juan said as kindly as he could. “The stakes are too high for anything else. Our government has decided it doesn’t want to play the role of world cop, but we need to show people that there are still consequences for breaking international law. One of the ways we have to do it is to destroy that wreck.”

She didn’t look at him, or even speak, but after a second she nodded slightly.

Juan laid a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then went back to the controls. He vented some water out of the ballast tanks, and as the submersible rose toward the surface the light slowly became brighter.

When they broached, Juan climbed out of his seat and over Linda to reach the topside hatch. “Back in a second.”