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9

I was in my laboratory, leaning over a shallow tray of sodium hydroxide that I’d just prepared by mixing distilled water with laboratory grade NaOH pellets. A weak solution, into which I’d placed the silver death’s-head, with its diamond eyes and swastika. The bronze eagle, too.

I’d done a clumsy job of butterflying my split cheek but it felt okay, and my headache, which had become chronic, had eased. Work can be an enjoyable distraction. I was enjoying this.

I’d separated a couple more interesting objects from the cluster Jeth had found, and they were also in the tray: a cigarette lighter, barely recognizable, and two silver coins. Both coins were German five-mark pieces, eagles and swastikas on the back, a man’s bust on the front indistinguishable because of ridges of calcium carbonate.

One coin was dated 1938, the other 1943.

More and more, it was looking as if the wreck was circa World War II, not the detritus of some unlucky modern collector whose plane, or boat, had gone down.

I straightened and braced a hand on the stainless table, testing and discarding explanations.

Was it possible that local stories about a sunken U-boat were based on fact? It’d been several years since I’d researched the subject, but I remembered reading that there were three, maybe four German subs unaccounted for after the war. A theory was that one of the missing subs had been used by high ranking Nazis to escape before the Reich fell. The others had been scuttled, or stolen by the Soviets.

A U-boat off Sanibel? No…the scenario was implausible. Islanders would have known if a vessel that size had been attacked so close to shore. In forty feet of water? For a submarine, that was rendezvous depth, not battle depth. Even a small submarine needed one hundred feet of water to submerge.

There were dozens of people living on Sanibel and Captiva who had lived on the islands during the Second World War. Details of a sunken U-boat would have been anchored in oral history. Fact, not legend.

I t was nearly 7 P.M. I went out a screen door, exiting my lab, and crossed a breezeway to another screen door, which is the entrance to my home.

An unusual structure, for an unusual lifestyle.

I live in a house built on stilts over water, connected to land by fifty feet of boardwalk. Dinkin’s Bay Marina, with its ship’s store, take-out restaurant, and docks, is just along the shore, a quick walk through the mangroves. Tomlinson, nonconformist that he is, lives on the other side of the channel, aboard No Mas, the sailboat that has been his home for years.

I’d had to rebuild the boardwalk after the hurricane. Felt lucky that any of it survived. Same with my house. It had been built in the early 1900s by a thriving fish company that constructed similar piling houses all along the coast. They’d built them to house fishermen and also as storage depots where fish could be iced.

The design of the buildings varied but not much: there’s a lower platform for mooring boats and an upper platform with two small cottages under a single tin roof. One cottage served as a bunkhouse large enough to sleep a dozen men. The other was used for storing ice, so the walls are triple thick.

These structures—fish houses, they’re called—had to be as well built as any seagoing vessel, so the company had used cypress, or Miami yellow pine, which, when cured, is so rock hard you can’t drive a nail in it.

So, yes, I felt lucky my house and lab had survived. There was a lot of damage—I’d had to gut the place because a tornado took the roof off. On a laboratory wall, I’ve tacked photos of the way it had looked the day after the storm, even though the details were vivid in my memory: the tin roof shredded, lower decking gone, pilings and lamp poles all leaning at the same precise angle, still pointing toward the hurricane’s exit path—northeast. There was something accusatory in their uniformity; the impression that my home had been violated.

It had been violated. I’m not a sentimental person, but it was painful to look at the mess. Stare at my damaged property too long, and the image became penetrating, like staring at a strobe light.

As Tomlinson said when he came to check on me after the storm, “Looks like she collided with an iceberg. Which is kinda far-out, if you think about it. Your place has always seemed more like a ship than a house, anyway.”

I replied, “Iceberg. Interesting metaphor, this close to the equator.”

“She almost sunk but didn’t. That’s what I’m telling you. You’ll get her fixed up fast, though. People say things’ll never be the same? Dude, I am glad. It’s exciting. Your place will be better than ever.”

Hard to believe at the time, but it was turning out to be true. No, I wasn’t surprised that my ship of a house was standing.

M y kitchen, appropriately, is the size of a ship’s galley. There’s a two-burner propane stove, and copper-bottomed pots and stainless pans hanging from the ceiling. My office desk is across the room near the reading chair, and the wooden RCA shortwave radio I sometimes use. I went to the desk now and rummaged through it until I found an unused notebook. In pencil, I labeled the notebook, NAZI ARTIFACTS, and returned to my lab.

Through the north window, storm clouds leaned westward toward a harsh and angular light. The sunlight fired distant mangroves, transforming gray trees to silver, dark limbs to copper. I could see a pod of bottlenose dolphins cruising along the oyster bar that edges the channel. Their skin was luminous as sealskin.

I watched them for a while—fluke tails slapping; herding mullet into the shallows—before returning to work. I placed the new notebook beside the tray of sodium hydroxide, and snapped on fresh rubber gloves.

Beside the tray was a smaller basin that contained a ten percent solution of nitric acid. I’d already dipped the artifacts in the acid bath, and rinsed with freshwater. All but the cigarette lighter were cleaning up nicely.

I was wearing rubber gloves because the artifacts, I decided, were too delicate to risk tongs. So I was using my hands—taking all the precautions, because archaeological restoration is not my field.

I’m a biologist. That’s my business: collecting, and selling, marine specimens. Vertebrates, invertebrates, sharks, rays, sea urchins, mollusks, and plants. I sell them live, mounted, or preserved to schools and labs around the country. Sanibel Biological Supply, Inc. I also do consulting work, which pays most of the bills, as well as my own research—a passion.

These artifacts were becoming another passion.

The silver death’s-head now lay on the bottom of the tray, diamond eyes focused upward through the lens of sodium hydroxide. I couldn’t keep my own eyes off it. Each time I came near the thing, I paused to stare. Couldn’t quite define why.

The cigarette lighter drew my interest, too. It had been engraved with a person’s initials, which added a sense of intimacy. Some long-gone man or woman had carried it, held it, leaned their face to it in darkness. I wouldn’t know what the initials were until the barnacle scars were removed, but the etching was unmistakable. A portion of an N showing? Or an M. Possibly a V, or a K.

The lighter was personal.

I paused to look at the lighter now. Tried to project what the initials might be. Stopped, though, when I heard the engine of Tomlinson’s dinghy start in the distance. Checked my watch: an hour or so before sunset. That’s when he usually came ashore.

I returned to the window and there he was: yellow shirt adorned with bright hibiscus flowers, his hair stuffed under a Boston Red Sox cap. On the bow of the red dinghy was a ditty bag—he always carried it when he planned to shower at my place. A long, warm-water shower instead of a sponge bath aboard No Mas. Ladies, he told me, appreciated the extra effort.

Which meant that he was stopping by the lab for a beer, a shower, and then to stroll the docks until after dark. After that, he’d vanish. Him on his bicycle, sometimes for hours. Occasionally, most of the night. Presumably, he was with his new love interest. Washed and fresh for the woman he seldom mentioned and we’d yet to meet. Tomlinson’s “mystery woman,” the guides called her.

I’d never met her, but I knew where his mystery woman lived.

A week or so after the hurricane, I’d gone for a late jog. The moon was full, it was impossible to sleep, so I’d run toward the Gulf along Tarpon Bay Road to the beach. Continued running on a ridge of firm sand when I happened to notice Tomlinson’s bike in the moonlight. It was chained to a boardwalk that led into bare trees.

Unmistakable, Tomlinson’s bike: a fat tire cruiser, peace signs painted on the fenders, and a plastic basket on the handlebars that reads: FAUSTO’S KEY WEST.

On my way back, the bike was still there, and I heard music coming through the trees. A piano played elegantly. I recognized the melody but couldn’t name it. Something from the 1930s or ’40s, not big band. Torchy, with smoky subtleties.

I stopped to enjoy the music, my shadow huge on the white sand. Among the trees was a two-story house I hadn’t known existed, the foliage had once been so dense along that stretch of beach. The storm had taken most of the trees, though, so the house was now exposed, a Cape Cod–sized place with gables and an upstairs balcony. It appeared solitary on its own grounds, a moneyed estate that had once been hidden—an indignity to be endured.

I felt like a voyeur. Which is what I was, in fact. The music stopped a couple of minutes after I did, yet I stood looking at the house, oddly pleased that I’d never suspected the house was there.

Something else that pleased me was that I could also see the rhythmic flare of Sanibel Lighthouse, far, far down the beach. The lighthouse had been built in the 1880s during the era of train barons: a tower of steel rails, one hundred feet high, and capped with a crystal lens.

Until the storm, it hadn’t been visible from this section of beach.

As the music was ending, Tomlinson appeared on the balcony. He wore a white linen jacket, and slacks he’d bought at the consignment store on Palm Ridge Road, his favorites. There was a last alto flourish on the piano, and then a woman appeared, her hair silver in the moonlight.

His mystery woman. Finally.

The woman was thin as a reed in her sequined gown. She moved elegantly, like her music. Elegantly…but with a measured slowness that I associate with injury, or old age. It was incongruous with the way the gown hung on her body, the sleek contours, and also incongruous with what happened next: the woman stopped, held her hands up, palms outward—an invitation to Tomlinson. There was no music, but she wanted to dance.

For a few seconds longer, I watched as they joined and began to sway, dancing to the cadence of storm waves and a pulsing lighthouse beacon.

Their shadows were a single vertical stripe on the house’s gray shingles, elongated by moonlight.

I crossed the lab to get a rack of test tubes. Returned to the artifacts, and, once again, found myself staring at the death’s-head.

Why?

I thought about it for a moment, trying to pinpoint the allure. It seemed important that the attraction be defined—another compunction not easily understood.

Part of the fascination was the historical linkage: days that would live in infamy; boogie-woogie bugle boys who battled their way to the gates of gas chamber horrors.

There was an underlying component, though. A more intimate association.

What?

I leaned to focus, letting the nearby cigarette lighter, and bronze eagle blur. I’m not a fanciful person. I had to consciously will my imagination to wander.

Was it the design?

Yes. The medal’s design had something to do with it. The skull had a hint of smile showing above the diamond swastika. Smiling as it screamed. It was a design that celebrated the killing of one’s enemies. It seemed to encourage the action while depersonalizing the act. It hinted that, to participate, was to be part of a joyous brotherhood.

There was a wink in the death’s-head’s smile. A secret shared by few.

That secret; the brotherhood—I know both. Knew them better than I could admit. I am a marine biologist. But I’ve done other work in my life, too. Clandestine work in South America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia. In the world’s most dangerous places, a man who studies fish does not invite suspicion.

I have traveled the world. I still do.

The death-head’s secret, and its brotherhood—I was more than aware. I was a colleague.

The association with the Third Reich was unsettling until I reminded myself of a core precept: I belonged to a just brotherhood. There was a moral partition.

Or was there?

I felt a gathering uneasiness. The association was repellent; the connection stronger than I cared to explore.

Instead, I chose to focus on detail: twenty-six diamonds. Silver filigree.

Presumably, a man awarded such a thing was an exalted member of the brotherhood and good at it. Good at killing. Or delegating. As I’d told Jeth, this wasn’t an ornament worn by pretenders. It was real. It was murder’s totem.

I pictured the badge pinned to the chest of a German officer. The bronze eagle, too. An award ceremony with drums. Black boots goose-stepping, a Nazi war hero at attention, insulated by ritual as his homeland self-destructed…

My imagination faltered. The allure, though, remained.

What else was on that wreck?

What had Jeth found, out there in the Gulf?

I went to the VHF marine radio mounted on the wall. Locals communicated on channel 68 and that’s where I keep the dial, squelch low. Now, though, I switched to the weather channel, then knelt to open storage cabinets. From a shelf, I took a low-voltage transformer. It was book-sized, with a meter, a rheostat, and alligator clips, red and black, similar to jumper cables.

Near the tray of sodium hydroxide, I plugged the transformer into the wall and tested it. Most of my electronics hadn’t survived the storm. The transformer worked fine.

I messed with the transformer’s rheostat as I listened to the mutant, computerized voice of the weather channel:

From Cedar Key to Cape Sable, and fifty miles off shore: Small craft advisory issued, small craft warnings anticipated. Tomorrow, winds out of the southeast, twenty to twenty-five knots, decreasing after sunset, and calming to twenty knots on Saturday.

For the lower keys and Florida Bay, a hurricane watch is in effect…

Tomorrow would not be a good day to dive Jeth’s wreck. The next day, Saturday, would be better. With hurricanes building in the Caribbean, though, the weather would soon worsen. It would probably remain windy and rough for the next several weeks. Off Grand Cayman Island, there was a hurricane gaining strength. Another was headed for the western tip of Cuba, and a third storm, off Nicaragua, was forming.

Should we dive tomorrow, or Saturday? We could. Twenty-knot winds weren’t dangerous, but it would be miserable in open water. Bang our way out to the wreck at first light, twelve miles of salt spray and abuse, then anchor in heavy seas. Get the hell knocked out of us just to explore a wreck by touch, feeling around in the murk?

Exasperating.

I’d left a phone message for a Key West friend who’s a marine archaeologist. He works with the late, great Mel Fisher’s treasure salvage organization, restoring artifacts brought up from two of the richest galleons ever discovered—the Atocha, and the Ana Maria.

Mel and his team had spent years looking for those wrecks. Finally found the Atocha’s brass cannon forty miles from Key West, in the shallows of a World War II bombing range called the Quicksands. He’d taken great delight in showing friends bars of silver that had been snagged by impatient fishermen. The fishermen had broken off fish hooks and lures, indifferent to what lay below.

Jeth had not been impatient. He’d finessed the treasure he’d snagged to the surface.

If anyone knew the best way to preserve delicate metals, it was my friend Dr. Corey.

Rather than wait for his call, though, I had decided to move ahead with the cleaning procedure on my own. I told myself it wasn’t because I couldn’t rush out to the wreck and explore. Told myself I wasn’t behaving like some overeager kid; that I was willing to wait patiently until my archaeologist pal offered his advice.

The artifacts, though, couldn’t wait—I told myself that, too. The unknown objects, still clustered on the cable, required immediate attention. Minute by minute, they were deteriorating.

Partial truths make the most palatable lies.

The cleaning process is called electrolytic reduction. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. It’s based on the same galvanic principle used to make flashlight batteries: Dissimilar metals interact electrically. It also explains why outboard motors disintegrate unless protected by zinc plates.

To continue, I needed a couple of stainless steel rods, a roll of copper wire, a six-volt battery, and…what else?

I was rummaging through the storage cupboards when I felt the pilings of my fish house resonate. Realized a boat was docking outside.

Looked and there he was. Tomlinson.