Sealed in the dark
The submarine’s interior was narrow and low-ceilinged, as all submarines are, but it was also impossibly dry. Dry, as if sealed from the canal’s water by a design or repair that had held for over eighty years. Declan swept the torchlight across instrument panels, gauges, a fold-down bunk, and rusted fittings on the wall. All intact. Untouched.
In the forward compartment, behind a bulkhead door that swung open with surprising ease, they found two things that made Sorcha stop walking and Declan forget to breathe. The first was a metal storage crate, military-green, stencilled with a sequence of letters and numbers that Sorcha photographed without comment. The second was a logbook. It was wrapped in an oilskin, sitting on a shelf as if left there by someone who expected to come back.
Declan picked up the logbook. His gloved hands were trembling slightly. The oilskin had done its job—the pages were yellowed but legible, dense with handwritten German entries in faded ink. The last entry was dated November 1943. But it was the name written on the inside cover—in English, not German—that made him surprised.
