© 2009

Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia: Saturday 24 October

7:45 A.M. local time

Engines throbbing, the salvage ship slipped into the secluded cove by the cold light of a misty Baltic dawn. Stefan Baklanov stood at the Yalena’s prow, his hands clamped around the rusted rail, his gaze fixed on the empty docks of the dilapidated shipyard before them. He was sixteen years old and just beginning his fifth month working on the Yalena, a lumbering old diesel-powered catamaran. He heard his uncle, the captain, bark an order from the bridge, then felt the deck of the big ship shudder beneath him as the engines slowed. A shiver of excitement tingled up Stefan’s spine, mingled with a stir of unease. He threw a glance over his shoulder at the barge that wallowed in their wake like a dead whale. On the barge’s deck rested the ghostly wreck of a Nazi-era U-boat.

Even in the dim light of dawn, the huge submarine’s long, low silhouette and upthrusting conning tower were unmistakable, its steel hull covered with accretions from the sixty-plus years it had lain beneath the waters of the sea, a silent tomb to the scores of Germans who’d once sailed her. The sailors were still there-or at least, their bones were still there. Stefan knew because last night he’d taken one of the dive lights and squeezed in through the sub’s popped hatch for a quick look.

His uncle and a couple of the men had already spent hours crawling through the U-boat’s narrow passageways and cramped quarters. Uncle Jasha emerged unusually silent and grim faced, but that only piqued Stefan’s curiosity more.