At first it had been a grand adventure, squeezing through silent portals, gazing in wonder at the funny old glass and brass gauges in the control room and the cook pots still hanging over the galley range. But as the narrow golden beam of his light played over long-abandoned bunks and empty leather boots, Stefan grew more thoughtful.

He’d expected to crawl through a wet, rusted interior smelling of brine and the creatures of the sea. But nothing was wet. With a chill, he suddenly understood: for all these years, the sub’s hull had held. He saw the pair of eyeglasses lying on a table and the trumpet clutched against the desiccated ribcage of the man who’d once played it, and the awful truth of what he was seeing hit him. These men hadn’t died quickly in a fiery explosion. They hadn’t even drowned. They’d suffocated. Slowly.

Stefan had grown up hearing his grandmother’s stories of the Great Patriotic War, of the siege of Stalingrad and the deadly winters of ’forty-two and ’forty-three. He’d imagined the Nazis as demons, as somehow not quite human. He’d never thought of them as the kind of men who might set aside a pair of reading glasses to clutch a beloved musical instrument to their chest as they breathed in their last, dying gasps. Suddenly the narrow passageways and low ceilings seemed to press in on him, stealing his breath until he raced for the hatch again, not caring how much noise he made or who saw him.

Uncle Jasha had slapped his big hand against the side of Stefan’s head for taking the dive light without asking. But when Stefan started ranting about how what they were doing was wrong-wrong and dangerous, for surely they were tempting the wrath of the ancient gods of the sea-Uncle Jasha had simply laughed and called him sentimental and superstitious. Yet the sense of foreboding lingered, even in the cold light of day.