2025 年修复版，直接用百度翻译。
译文
冰岛海岸警卫队的官员在控制室的监视器上监视着这艘船——这是航海地图上蓝色广阔区域上的一个孤立点。2017年4月，这个点在离岸120英里处盘旋了好几天，在这种天气下，没有理智的水手会在里面闲逛。狂风呼啸着穿过多山的海域；雨夹着雨夹雪。
从船的外观看，它不是来捕鱼的。几天前，海底建造者号在雷克雅未克接受补给，其不同寻常的外观吸引了当地新闻工作人员和海岸警卫队准将的到访。其光滑的橙色船体支撑着太空时代的通信阵列和直升机停机坪。一种巨大的鹤，形状像蝎子的尾巴，从船尾拱起。现在，当“建设者”号在风暴中颠簸时，海岸警卫队通过无线电向船上的舰桥发出询问。回应——“研究”——如此模糊，令人恼火，以至于警察派遣了一架直升机进行调查。飞行员在头顶嗡嗡作响，报告说看到设备被卷进卷出海浪。
建造商位于冰岛领海之外，但在其经济影响区内，距离海底互联网电缆仅几英里。高级海岸警卫队人员讨论了该怎么办，然后派了一艘武装巡逻艇护送建造师到港口。
当船返回雷克雅未克时，船长和两名运营经理被带到警察局接受冰岛侦探的采访。这三个人都很合作，但很谨慎。他们是为伦敦客户工作的承包商，他们无法或不愿透露身份。他们说，他们被雇来在二战期间沉没的德国货船SS Minden上寻找贵重物品，该船在水面以下约2240米（7350英尺）处破损。
1939年战争爆发时，明登号在巴西。历史记录没有显示这艘船带回纳粹德国的是什么，但它们表明船上有少数德国商人，其中包括两名银行家。无论货物是什么，它都很有价值，当英国海军发现明登号时，船长凿沉了这艘船，而不是让它落入敌人手中。
起初，冰岛海岸警卫队不愿意让这项行动继续下去，但在收到建造商律师威胁要起诉的信几周后，他们让步了。为了恢复明登号所载的一切，所有救助者需要做的就是带着环境许可证返回。该申请提出了一项计划，即使用电池供电的远程操作潜艇切割船体，弯曲一块金属板，并从邮件收发室取回一个木箱。该文件称：“我们的客户预计，如果天气条件有利，手术将需要大约24到48小时。”。
冰岛当局从未得知这位神秘客户的身份，他是明登探险队的支持者。他们不可能知道这艘德国船只是他多年来追捕的数十艘船只之一。关于这名男子发现或发现的沉船的媒体报道将他描述为一名匿名的伦敦金融家、“未知的救助者”和“发起者”。他组织了一项高科技行动，以追回丢失的历史宝藏，跨越了几个世纪和整个文明，覆盖了地球上大部分蓝色地区。他成功地保守了这个非凡的企业秘密——直到现在。
为了将这一切拼凑在一起，彭博商业周刊调查了这位金融家在11个月内的运营情况，采访了他公司的40多名现任和前任员工，以及承包商、考古学家、政府官员、执法人员和律师。他们中的许多人要求匿名，担心讨论金融家对其私人业务的看法可能会产生法律后果。这项研究还利用了公司和法律文件、政府记录和卫星船位置数据来证实以前未报告的探险。
原文
Officers from the Icelandic coast guard watched the ship on the control room monitors—a solitary dot on the blue expanse of the nautical map. The dot had been circling 120 miles offshore for several days in April 2017, in weather no sane sailor would loiter in. Near-gale-force winds howled across mountainous seas; rain mixed with sleet.
By the look of the ship, it wasn’t there to catch fish. Taking on supplies in Reykjavik a few days earlier, the Seabed Constructor’s unusual appearance had attracted local news crews and a visit from a coast guard commodore. Its sleek orange hull supported a space-age communications array and a helipad. A gigantic crane shaped like a scorpion’s tail arched from its stern. Now, as the Constructor bobbed in the storm, the coast guard radioed the vessel’s bridge to ask its business. The response—“research”—was so infuriatingly vague that officers dispatched a helicopter to investigate. The pilot buzzed overhead and reported seeing equipment being winched in and out of the waves.
The Constructor was outside Iceland’s territorial waters but inside its zone of economic influence, just a few miles from an undersea internet cable. Senior coast guard personnel debated what to do, then sent an armed patrol boat to escort the Constructor to port.
When the ship got back to Reykjavik, the captain and two operations managers were taken to a police station to be interviewed by Icelandic detectives. All three were cooperative but cagey. They were contractors working for a London client whom they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, identify. They said they’d been hired to search for valuables on the SS Minden, a German cargo ship sunk during World War II that lay broken some 2,240 meters (7,350 feet) below the surface.
The Minden was in Brazil when war broke out in 1939. Historical records don’t show what the vessel was carrying back to Nazi Germany, but they indicate that a handful of German businessmen were on board, including two bankers. Whatever the cargo, it was valuable enough that, when the Minden was spotted by the British navy, the captain scuttled the ship rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
At first the Icelandic coast guard was reluctant to allow the operation to continue, but it relented a couple of weeks on after receiving a letter from the Constructor’s lawyers threatening to sue. To recover whatever the Minden contained, all the salvors needed to do was return with an environmental permit. The application set out a plan to use battery-powered, remotely operated subs to cut open the hull, bend back a sheet of metal and retrieve a wooden box from the mailroom. “Our client expects that the operation will take approximately 24 to 48 hours if weather conditions are favourable,” the document said.
At no point did the Icelandic authorities learn the identity of this mysterious client, the backer of the Minden expedition. They couldn’t have known that the German ship was one of dozens he’s pursued over the years. Media reports about wrecks this man has found or recovered have described him variously as an anonymous London financier, “the unknown salvor” and “the Originator.” He’s marshaled a high-tech operation to recover the lost treasures of history, spanning centuries and entire civilizations and covering most of the blue portion of the planet. And he’s managed to keep this remarkable enterprise secret—until now.
To piece it all together, Bloomberg Businessweek investigated the financier’s operations across 11 months, interviewing more than 40 current and former employees of his companies, as well as contractors, archaeologists, government officials, law enforcement officers and attorneys. Many of them requested anonymity, concerned about possible legal consequences from discussing what the financier considers his private business. The research also drew on corporate and legal filings, government records and satellite ship location data to confirm previously unreported expeditions.
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