“Jason, don’t tell me we have a charter that I forgot.”
“No, I just came down to meet my girlfriend Nicole. Said she wanted to see where I worked. You mind if I show her around Jupiter?”
“Here, take the key. You two make yourself at home. Nick left some grape leaves in the refrigerator. They’re stuffed with rice and his secret ingredients. If you guys are hungry, pop ‘em in the microwave. Don’t tell Nick that I said microwave and his food in the same sentence.”
“Thanks.”
He handed Jason the keys. “How was your birthday?”
Jason’s eyes drifted away from O’Brien. “Okay, I guess. Had a little too much to drink. Paid for it the next day.”
O’Brien watched him a moment. “Moderation is the key. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He pursed his lips, his eyes averting from O’Brien.
“Is there something you want to talk about?”
“Not really.”
O’Brien smiled. “Anytime you want to talk, about anything on your mind, I’m here for you, okay? I’ll be on Dave’s boat. If you have time, I’d like to meet Nicole.”
As O’Brien turned to leave, Jason said, “Thanks, Sean.”
Dave Collins was just starting to fix his first afternoon cocktail, a Grey Goose martini, when O’Brien stepped onto Gibraltar’s cockpit, lifting Max aboard. “Ready for a very cold martini?” Dave asked
“A little too early for me, thanks.”
“You might develop a taste for one when I share some of my research with you.”
“Let me start with a beer.”
“You know where they are. Max looks like she just got out of the bay.”
“She played tag with a garden hose.” O’Brien popped the cap off a bottle of Old Speckled Hen and tried not to overanalyze Jason’s odd behavior, but he felt Jason was hiding something.
Dave sipped his martini, smacking his cold, wet lips. “As you know, Sean, I still maintain contacts with people who have access to information that can never be made public. In that light, if you will, there are some dark secrets in America that might as well remain that way.”
“Why do I have a feeling you’re about to tell me something I’d rather not hear? I’d just as soon not know where the bodies are buried.”
“You stumbled over them, you and Nick. The ‘unofficial’ classified documents indicate that U-boat 236 was Hitler’s last sub. It was by far his largest and the most technically sophisticated one the Nazis ever produced.” Dave glanced at his notes. “The sub had duel sources of propulsion-powerful diesel engines and very quiet, long-range electric motors. It had an advance snorkeling system allowing it to ride far enough below the surface to avoid most visual detection.”
“Was it carrying nuclear material?”
“Let me give you a little background information. I think it’ll put this find of yours in context with the times. In 1942 German U-Boats sank at least 259 American ships right off our coasts. These included Merchant Marine ships, tankers, and Liberty Ships. It was bloody, fast and furious until the Navy ended it. Now, advance four years later to the time Glenda Lawson’s husband, Billy, spotted a U-boat south of St. Augustine. Germany had surrendered, but there were still German U-boats prowling the waters. Via radio, they were told to surrender to the closest Allied port city. I mentioned one U-boat, number 234, surrendering to the U.S. Navy, impounded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, May 17, 1945. This was a few days before Billy Lawson spotted the sub you, Nick and Jason found. It was at the time of the Manhattan Project. The race to build the first nuclear bomb was in the final hours. It’s known that the physicist, the man who led that pursuit at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, Robert Oppenheimer, boarded the impounded U-boat in Portsmouth. Some believe his team removed the cargo, the HEU, of more than two-thousand pounds. There are those who speculate that we used at least some of it, if not all of it, in the bombs we dropped over Japan three months later.”
“Hold on. Enriched uranium, found on a German U-boat, may have been used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”
“Indeed.”
“And the stuff Nick and I found?”
“If it is HEU, it would be deadly as the day it was manufactured.”
O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Nick Cronus. “Sean, where are you?”
“On Dave’s boat. You okay?”
“That TV reporter, the same woman that filmed us the day the coast guard stopped-”
“What about her?”
“I’d just parked my bike. Walkin’ up to order a beer from Kim when this woman-the reporter, all tits, ass, and perfume like tropical flowers, comes up to me. I recognized her, and she asked me if I knew where the sub was. I laughed, you know me, and say, hey, I can take you there. You wear a bikini, ride in my boat, I’ll take you there. About that time she moves her arm from around her back. She’s holding a microphone. She waves and her cameraman and another chick step out from a corner. Then that crazy woman starts asking me all kinds of questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Like did I know there might be nuclear bomb stuff on the sub? She said she knows there was uranium on the sub-saw pictures-wanted to know if we brought it up and where is it? I started to tell her what she could do with that microphone. Got back on my bike and rode to the other side of the marina.”
“How’d she see pictures?”
“I don’t know. But as I was driving off, I saw her open the dock gate. Looks like she’s walking toward your boat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jason Canfield was polishing Jupiter’s transom door when he looked up and saw his girlfriend, Nicole Bradley, and a TV news crew approach. He wasn’t sure what was about to happen, then he recognized the reporter. Susan Schulman, the same woman that had asked them questions after the Coast Guard search.
Something was wrong. Nicole looked embarrassed. “Jason, I wanted you to meet Susan Schulman, and this is our cameraman, Lyle Hartman.”
“What’s everybody doing here?” Jason asked.
“Susan just wants to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t know-”
“Roll, Lyle,” Susan said as she extended the microphone toward Jason. “Did you and the crew bring up the canisters labeled U-235?”
“What?”
“The canisters, the cargo you found on the German U-boat. What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“Jason, we have the pictures, the ones you shared with Nicole. Now, tell us what you found down there. Where is this submarine?”
Jason shot Nicole an angry look. “I don’t know exactly. It’s out in the Gulf Stream. About ninety feet down.”
“We have a problem,” O’Brien said, heading for the cockpit door.
“What kind of problem?” Dave asked.
“Jason is about to get crucified on television.”
“That is indeed a problem. Max, stay here.”
Lyle, the camerman, zoomed in, the frame filling with Jason’s nervous face. “Who made the dive?” asked Susan.
“Nick and Sean.”
“What did they do with the canisters?”
“Nothing.”
“Did they and you know those canisters may contain weapons-grade uranium?”
“What?”
“Jason, this is a very serious matter. How much of this material did they find?”
“Two canisters, I think.”
“What was the condition of the U-boat?”
“Broken in half.”
“Did they know what was in those canisters? Did they try to open them?”
“I think Sean might have known.”
“We saw pictures of a jet engine and something that looked like a rocket. What did Nick and Sean say about those?”
“Not a lot.”
“How about the human remains? We saw pictures of a skeleton.”
“I don’t know about-”
“How many skeletons?”