As Charlie Stross points out, this story of the missing cargo vessel is getting more and more like a Ken Follett novel. To recap – a Russian cargo ship has gone missing, presumably hijacked by pirates. The Russians – and everyone else – are looking for it with warships, submarines, planes and satellites. And now there’s a theory going around that it was carrying a ‘secret cargo’, something ‘expensive and dangerous’ which it picked up at the shipyard in Kaliningrad…
I’m getting more of a "When Eight Bells Toll" vibe off it – after all, what’s the easiest way to hide a ship? Sink it, then use divers and/or submersibles to recover the putative loot…