Its name was the Indian Harbor Marina and Resort Community, a mall-sized project built by out-of-state investors, with acres of metal buildings, duplexes, condo sites and dockage, most of the new construction intact after the storm.
There was some damage, though. I saw bulldozers and a crane over there bucking twisted metal where the storage barn had collapsed; security guards stopping cars at the marina entrance. Boats that had survived had been dragged to the parking lot, several dozen of them listing on their keels. They were spaced incrementally like cemetery headstones. A hundred or more.
I said, “If Javier doesn’t show in the next ten minutes, I think we should stow your gear in my skiff and leave. I can’t tolerate much more of this place, or of your pal Augie.”
I was using the surgical probe, along with a magnifying glass and forceps, to clean one of several metallic objects Jeth had snagged while fishing a wreck he’d discovered a few days before. That morning, he’d reeled up a section of cable, a couple of pounds of marine growth attached, man-made objects embedded, most he couldn’t identify.
There was a U.S. silver dollar, some brass screws, and what now looked to be a diamond brooch. A dozen or so other objects were also attached but too heavily covered with barnacles and goop to make a guess.
A few hours ago, Jeth had called me on VHF radio, asking me to meet him here and have a look.
I hadn’t expected to find anything of consequence.
Surprise.
Jeth said now, “Augie isn’t my pal, I already told you. I’ve just got a business arrangement with him and the other guy. They have a boat, I don’t. They don’t know how to fish, I do. We been catching grouper offshore, sellin’ it for top dollar. There’s hardly any boats out since the hurricane. But we ain’t friends.”
Yes, he’d told me. Augie Heller and Oswald, the men who’d offered him a share of the profits to run this marina’s forty-three-foot Viking sport diesel. Jeth needed money, so he’d taken the job even though he didn’t like the duo and didn’t trust them.
My impression exactly. And now Jeth had stumbled onto something important. Valuable, too, depending on the identity of the vessel he’d discovered and what remained on the seafloor.
I hadn’t told Jeth that, not yet. I’d seen no reason to risk sharing the information with the two jerks who’d just stomped off to get reinforcements.
I knew they’d be back soon.
I returned my attention to the brooch. The metal filigree was black as gunpowder, scarred with barnacles and worm shell. Silver converts to silver sulfide when immersed in salt water. This object was silver, coated with a black sulfide patina. It had been underwater for a long time, judging from the empty worm casings. Years. Decades. But there was no fresh benthic growth, and the metallic structure was solid.
It had been preserved by something. Sand? Buried and insulated beneath a few feet of sea bottom.
Maybe the same was true of the wreck. Everything cosseted beneath underwater sand dunes until exposed by the recent hurricane.
Thinking about it, I pictured the Sahara desert. Peaks of undiscovered pyramids showing after a wind storm. I pictured the Stony desert and domes of ancient mosques.
As Jeth said, “Even if they weren’t such assholes, I don’t see how they can claim part of something I found.” I touched the object with forceps. A flake of black patina broke away as if it were a scab. I had my glasses atop my head. I removed the object from the water briefly, holding it close, squinting as nearsighted people do.
If this was a brooch, it was the strangest I’d seen. Staring back at me was a silver skull. It was a military-style skull known as a “death’s-head.” It had luminous stones for eyes. Several more stones created the upper blade of something…a symbol. A portion of leaf cluster framed the symbol.
A…swastika?
As I replied, “You discovered the wreck. You’re the one who snagged this stuff. The state of Florida may have claims but your partners don’t.” I took a double-ended mall probe and continued cleaning.
Yes. A swastika.
It was inset with stones, presumably diamonds. Tiny stones, valuable as gems, or maybe not. But part of an insignia from World War II Germany.
Symbols are a form of cipher. This symbol projected a historic energy, dulling the luster of the gems that formed it.
“Then screw ’em,” Jeth said. “They’ve been treating me like some low-life hick since my first day aboard. I ain’t sharing nothing with those two. And Javier, the bastards are trying to keep his boat. They’re calling everything on their property ‘salvage.’”
I replied, “I heard. They should be in jail.”
“You remember old man Arlis Futch. He’s been working here nights as a security guard. He says he’d quit the damn place if he could afford it.”
Arlis had once managed Sulphur Wells Fish Company. I was surprised to hear his name. It had to be embarrassing, him working as a night watchman.
Jeth took his cap off and slapped his leg. “Some of the crap we do for money, huh?”
I said, “It happens to all of us,” but was thinking: What’s a Nazi insignia doing in forty feet of water on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico? Twelve miles off the usually cheerful vacation beaches of Sanibel Island, Florida?
“Does Augie have the numbers?” I was asking about the GPS numbers, latitude and longitude, that marked the wreck’s location. On a forty-three-foot boat, the navigational system would be interfaced. If Heller knew how to use the electronics, the autopilot could steer them back to the wreck. They didn’t need Jeth.
Jeth smiled, pleased with himself. “I never showed them how to use the GPS. I ran the boat, all they did was fish. Besides, those lat-long numbers were already in the system.”
“What?”
If true, it meant that someone else had found the wreck before Jeth.
“Not the exact numbers,” he said. “It was a waypoint left by the boat’s previous owner, that’s my guess. No way in hell was there a wreck down there before the storm, so maybe they punched in rough numbers for a pod of tarpon. Or a bale of grass.”
Jeth was grinning as he added, “I erased the numbers after I wrote ’em down.” He patted the pocket of his cargo shorts. “Got them here.”
“Smart,” I said. “I should’ve guessed.”
Jeth is the quiet type. Like most introverted people, he knows how to be aggressive without making a fuss.
M y magnifying glass has a 4-power wide-angle lens with a quarter-sized 9-power inset.
Amplified details: I was looking at an elite military decoration. A death’s-head made of silver, impressionistic design, lower jaw replaced by the upper blade of a swastika. The top of the skull sat upon the blade like a head on a platter.
The eyes were oversized and empty, the diamonds bending prismatic light on this pale September afternoon. The elemental combination—silver, fresh sunlight through crystallized carbon—seemed conflicted and obscene. Use natural pigments to create pornography, you might achieve the same effect.
Not pure silver. The galvanic pores indicated it was a ferrous amalgam. The pores were filled with salt that had crystallized when exposed to air.
Some metals absorb salt water, and deteriorate from within after long submersion. Which is why everything Jeth found was now soaking in a bucket of salt water, and why I was using this saltwater tray to keep items submerged while doing a preliminary cleaning.
From what I’d seen so far, the items warranted care.