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4

“A skull with diamonds. Weird.” Jeth had moved to get a look at the death’s-head. He stood in his fishing shorts, heavy legs apart, tattered boat shoes on a man raised barefoot. “Motorcycle gangs wear those sorts of badges, don’t they?”

“Um-huh,” I replied. “The gang that made this, though, preferred tanks and planes.”

“Tanks? Oh…Real Nazis. Are you sure?”

“No. But I don’t have another explanation.”

“It’s gotta be worth some money.”

“You’d think. How much, a collector could tell you. Maybe a lot. The rest of this stuff will take a few days to clean, so we’ll see.” I gestured to the five-gallon bucket at my feet. It contained a soup of salt water, cable, and more encrusted artifacts. “I’m wondering what kind of wreck you found. A German war medal this close to Sanibel?”

Jeth pursed his lips, an idea forming. “You’ve heard the rumors there’s a sunken German submarine out there. That it’s filled with mercury, so it floats around underwater. Or that it’s booby-trapped, and that’s why divers who found it won’t tell where it was.”

Yes, I’d heard the rumors, and didn’t believe them. Not after doing some research. U-boat activity in the Gulf of Mexico was brisk during World War II. German subs sank merchant ships, and they came close enough to Florida’s shore to deliver, and probably pick up, Nazi spies. But there was only one recorded sinking of a U-boat in the Gulf—off New Orleans.

It wasn’t impossible that a second U-boat was out there, but it was improbable. The Germans kept exacting records.

I told Jeth what I knew, adding, “Let’s assume it’s not a sub. Then what’s down there? The silver’s well preserved—why? Considering where you found it, and how long it was down there, it’s in good shape. After fifty, sixty years underwater—I’m guessing metal this delicate would have crumbled. Maybe the wreck was buried, then uncovered by the storm.”

“Meaning, it was protected. Kinda insulated?”

“Yeah. You know what the bottom’s like off Sanibel, it’s all sand. Hurricane wind—what’d we have, gusts of over a hundred and seventy miles an hour? Underwater currents had to be pumping like fire hoses. They eroded the sand away.”

Jeth was picturing it, nodding. “Makes sense, or we’d of found the wreck a long time ago. Two-forty heading off Lighthouse Point. I’ve been over that bottom a hundred times, never saw a thing, but last week I was running along, watching my fish-finder, when those GPS numbers popped up on the Viking. I slowed—I knew there wasn’t no structure in the area but figured, what the hell.”

Fish-finder—a common term for a device that pings sound waves off the sea bottom and produces a digital likeness of what lies beneath.

Jeth said he’d begun to do a search pattern watching the screen of his fish-finder. He was about to give up when there it was—something on the bottom.

“The wreck was sticking up where nothin’ had ever been before,” Jeth said. “The fish-finder marked it sharp as looking at TV, so I figured it was a new wreck. The storm caught a boat out there and sunk her. But then I reeled up this old stuff.”

I said, “Makes me wonder what else is there. What’d it look like on your sonar screen?”

“There’s a main structure, fifteen, twenty feet long, then a bunch of scattered junk. Comes up three, maybe four feet off the bottom.”

“That’s all?”

“At the most, maybe five feet.”

“If it’s a boat, and the hull’s intact, then the rest of it’s still buried. Or…it could be a plane.”

“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. There used to be a military air base around here during the second war. Fighters and bombers, all prop planes. They used Captiva Island, and some of the other islands, for target practice. But why would an American plane have a German war medal aboard?”

I said, “Maybe one of the instructors brought it back from Europe as a trophy. Or twenty years later, some private collector packed it aboard a Cessna that had to ditch in the Gulf. No telling until you take a look for yourself.”

“You mean we take a look?”

“It’s your wreck. Your call.”

“We need to dive it, Doc.”

“I’m willing. I was hoping you’d ask.”

“You were the first one I called because that’s what I was already thinking. Javier, too. Maybe we can use his boat—if the damn marina lets him have it back.”

I said, “Sure. Does he dive?”

Jeth said, “I don’t know if he’s certified, but, yeah, he’s got tanks and stuff. Thing is, the visibility’s so bad now we wouldn’t be able to see the end of our nose. And the water won’t clear up for weeks, maybe a couple months, she’s so stirred up.”

He reminded me that there were two more hurricanes down by Cuba, one of them maybe headed this way.

Actually, both were now on track to hit Florida’s Gulf coast. I’d listened to VHF weather on the boat ride here. Statistically, there wasn’t much chance we’d get another direct hit. But even if the storms passed within a few hundred miles, it’d be too rough to anchor offshore.

I said, “Then either we use the small window we have, tomorrow or the next day, or we wait a month or more. Even if it’s murky, I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.”

“I don’t know, man. The water out there’s thick as motor oil. We won’t be able to see nothing. Just feel around with our hands. Us bumpin’ into stuff, crap bumping into us. Doesn’t sound like much fun to me. Javier’s not gonna be too wild about it, either.”

I was holding the death’s-head in my hand. It seemed too light, too fragile, to support the history it represented.

I said, “Nobody likes diving in murky water. If those storms hit close, though, they could bury your wreck again. We wouldn’t get another chance.”

“Crap…I hadn’t thought of that. Geez”—the big man made a face of distaste—“we’ve both seen the size of sharks out there. Big ol’ lemons, and tigers and hammerheads. Bull sharks, too. Big as canoes, and they’re always on the feed. If the water’s clear, I don’t worry about them when I’m diving. But, if the viz is crappy—”

“Sharks see better in the dark than we see in daylight,” I interrupted. “They’re the least of our worries. I think we should go if weather allows.”

Jeth made a low sound, close to a groan. It told me he would dive in the murk but hated the idea.

“Then we can’t show this Nazi thing to Augie?”

I said, “Augie Heller? No. I don’t even know the man, but I do know one thing about him: He’d try to beat us to the wreck.”

I refilled the pan with salt water, then used the forceps to remove a final layer of barnacle. The entire swastika was now visible. Twenty-six diamonds, counting the eyes.

Jeth took a closer look before straightening, gazing around, head moving slowly, trying not to show that he was nervous. “That thing’s gotta bad feel to it. Sorta like this marina.”

I knew what he meant. The Indian Harbor Marina and Resort had once been a village of tin-roofed cottages built on shell mounds, called Gumbo Limbo, plus docks and a commercial warehouse. I’d had friends here, crabbers and mullet fishermen. Among them was a long-legged woman with skinny, countrified hips and denim-colored eyes. A woman who wore boots and jeans, who owned her own boat, and lived an edgy, independent life of her own design. She was a powerful lady, Hannah Smith.

Like the village she’d once called home, Hannah was gone.

Florida’s most destructive storms have been developmental, not environmental. I’d read about the village’s transformation in the newspaper, heard about it from locals. I hadn’t relished the idea of coming back. I’d done it for Jeth, no other reason. Now I was eager to leave.

Jeth was right. Indian Harbor Marina and Resort had a bad feel.

I’d wrapped the bronze eagle in a towel soaked in salt water. I now did the same with the death’s-head, as I said, “We’ve given Javier enough time. Let’s get out of here. There’s a better way to clean this stuff, anyway. When we get back to Sanibel, I’ll call an archaeologist pal of mine and we can do it in my lab.”

What was left of my lab, anyway.

I glanced toward the bay. “Where’s Tomlinson?”

“Huh?”

I repeated myself as I squatted, placed both towels in the five-gallon bucket, and nodded toward the docks where my boat was tied: a new twenty-one-foot Maverick with a ghost blue hull and a high-powered Yamaha engine on the back. Just looking at it gave me pleasure.

The boat was empty.

“Where’d he go?”

Tomlinson had witnessed our confrontation with Heller and Oswald. I’d told him to go back to my skiff and stay there in case we had to leave in a hurry. But giving an order to Tomlinson was another mistake. Counterculture visionaries have an aversion to authority. Ordering him to do something was a guarantee he’d do the opposite.

Jeth said, “Tomlinson’s about as predictable as a fart in a forest fire. He coulda wandered off anywhere, that bonehead. If it wasn’t for Javier, we shoulda left the moment I realized there was gonna be trouble…” He was looking over my shoulder, his face registering surprise, then tension. “Probably should of…buh-but it’s too late now. Here they come.”

Augie Heller and Oswald. And they had someone with them.

“Jesus, that’s the head guy, the owner,” Jeth said. “That smile of his…He sounds like the nicest Yankee in the world, but he looks at you like a bug he’d squash, give him a chance. I won’t even talk to him, he makes me so nervous. Which tah-tuh-tells you something.”