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 detaiclass="underline" 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 channeclass="underline"
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.
10
Tomlinson was in one of his moods. It rarely happens, but it happens. The joy goes out of him and shadows flood in.
Upon his arrival, I’d counted his foot-slap cadence as he came barefoot up the steps to the lab: three steps to the stairway, seven steps to the upper platform. He’d rapped on the lab’s screen door. “Beer?” Sufficiently at home to offer me a drink from my own refrigerator.
I’d told him, “No thanks. A bottle of water—if you have it.”
He was on a second beer now, his Adam’s apple bobbing like an oscilloscope, graphing flow from a bottle that was already half empty. He lowered the bottle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, making the sound men make when they’re thirsty and need a drink.
“That’s better,” he said, sounding relieved.
He noticed the tray of sodium hydroxide for the first time, and went to it. “Hey—you cleaned up some more stuff. Jeth’s going to be psyched. The cash monkey is climbing all over the poor boy’s back. He’s broke.”
“I know.”
“Old German coins, huh? Pieces of silver—eighteen pieces short…get it? Sell these bastards, let Caesar choke. Oh…and a cigarette lighter?” There was an odd inflection in his voice. Not surprised…but surprise.
“With engraved initials,” I said. “We should be able to read them in a few days, maybe a few weeks. I’m not sure. Here, I’ll show you how it works.”
The transformer, with its meter and jumper cable clips, was on a shelf above the artifacts. I took a strip of stainless steel, attached an alligator clip, then placed the strip into the tray that held the artifacts. To the other clip, I secured copper wire that had several more clips attached. One by one, I connected the clips to the death’s-head, the eagle, the cigarette lighter, and coins, everything submerged in sodium hydroxide, now connected in series.
I touched a finger to the transformer’s rheostat, watching the meter, as I told Tomlinson, “Different metals have different electrical potentials, high to very low. Stainless steel has a low potential. Silver and bronze, they’re higher. The sodium solution completes the circuit, so electricity flows from the artifacts to the stainless plate, carrying molecules of metal. Tarnished metal.”
Tomlinson said, “Ah.”
“Electrolysis,” I told him. “It’s why we bolt zinc plates to outboard motors, and driveshafts. Zinc has a high electrical potential, so it gives up its molecules—deteriorates—instead of the aluminum. Zinc becomes the sacrificial anode. It’s a term engineers use: a sacrificial pole.”
Tomlinson was listening, but his mind was somewhere else. “Sacrificial pole. I like that. Like yellow leaves on mangrove trees. They absorb salt, and drop off so green leaves can survive. Sacrificial leaves.”