“I don’t know.”
“Jason, can you take our crew back out there?”
“No, he can’t,” O’Brien said, coming from behind the cameraman.
Susan whirled around and stuck the microphone in O’Brien’s face. “You weren’t truthful when you told us you didn’t find a U-boat. Why’d you lie?”
“Is that how you get your kicks-ambushing a kid, hitting him with questions?”
“This is a serious matter, potentially one of national security. We have the pictures. We saw what you found. You said you didn’t find the sub?”
“I didn’t. Another member of my crew did.”
“Where is it located?”
“In the Atlantic Ocean.”
“This is not a time to be coy, Mr. O’Brien.”
“Excuse me. Come on, Jason, we have charter prep work to do.”
“Mr. O’Brien, did you bring up any of those canisters?”
“No.”
“Have you alerted the proper authorities about this find?”
“Looks like you’re doing that for me, the authorities and everyone else.”
“America’s safety may be at risk if those canisters contain enriched uranium.”
O’Brien said nothing. He started for Dave’s boat, Jason following.
“Mr. O’Brien, we understand there are human remains in that sub, correct?”
O’Brien was silent.
“You’re jeopardizing national security by acting this way.”
O’Brien turned toward her. “What way? By remaining silent about a potentially, and the operative word here is potentially, deadly substance if it is U-235. Seems to me, Miss Schulman, you are the one compromising the safety of the nation by your zeal to be the first to put this on television rather than to be responsible and shut the hell up. Don’t attempt to follow me on private property.” O’Brien stepped onto Gibraltar’s cockpit, walked past Dave with Jason following. Dave closed the cockpit door and seemed to melt into the salon couch.
“Come on,” Susan said. “We got some great stuff! Let’s get in the truck and start editing. I’ll have Manuel call the network news desk to see if they want us to do a live feed.”
“What about Jason?” Nicole asked.
“What about him?”
“You embarrassed him! He’s going to look like an idiot on TV.”
“Hey, no offense to your boyfriend. It’s part of the job. Get used to it.”
O’Brien looked at Jason. “How’d that reporter get those pictures?”
“I don’t know! I swear.”
“How’d you get them from my camera?”
“I downloaded them to my cell when you and Nick were in the bridge.”
“Damn! Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen.”
“Who saw the pictures?”
“Only Nicole.”
“Jason, I thought I had made it clear not to say anything!”
“I didn’t know Nicole would do this. I’m not sure how she got them off my phone. We were celebrating my birthday, and I had too much to drink. After she looked at the pictures, I went to the bathroom.”
“And she simply e-mailed them to herself.”
“Oh, shit ….”
“Oh shit is right, Jason. Take your phone off your hip. Look at the sent e-mails.”
Jason searched through the phone’s digital records, his face pinched, hands trembling. “She sent it and then deleted the file. But it’s here.” He glanced away, his face reddening, eyes searching. “I trusted her.”
“And I trusted you,” O’Brien said. “Let me see your cell.” Jason handed him the phone. “Is your girlfriend’s number the last one called?”
“Think so, yeah.”
O’Brien scrolled to the next number, memorizing it before returning the phone.
Dave handed Jason a bottled water and O’Brien a Corona.
Jason said, “I’m really sorry. I did something I shouldn’t have. I wish I could take it back or make it up to you. If you want to fire me, Sean, I understand. I deserve it.”
O’Brien was silent. Max trotted over to Jason and he rubbed her head.
O’Brien said, “You’re right. I should fire you. But I won’t. You’re a young guy who made an old mistake. You let your small head think for you.”
Dave grunted, “A mistake like that, Jason, can easily get you killed. This is a hell of a breach-”
“I’m sorry, Sean,” Jason mumbled, blinking back tears.
O’Brien looked at Jason a long moment. He felt compassion for the kid-a young man who took his mistakes to heart. “I hope you’ve learned a lesson.”
“I have. I swear.”
“Call your mom. Tell her what’s happening before she sees the news.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll get through this. You’ll have something to tell your grandkids in a few decades. In the meantime, we need to think through how to minimize the risks.”
Jason tried to smile. Max sat at his feet, her eyes half closed.
O’Brien added, “We need to get Nick in here so that all of us can talk about what to do next. We’ve got to form a plan.”
Dave grunted. “This is about to get way out of our control.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nick Cronus stood in Dave Collins’ galley and poured himself a tall glass of Ouzo. He said, “Never in my life have I ever wanted to slap a woman. They are God’s most special creations. I give her a compliment. But she kept askin’ me questions, even after I said there was nothing I could say.” Nick walked up the two steps from the galley to the salon and sat in a canvas director’s chair with the words ‘Key West, FL’ on the back. He leaned over and scratched Max’s head, her tail thumping.
Dave said, “This Susan Schulman is on a mission, no doubt.”
Jason looked at his watch. “News will be on in an hour. I don’t want to watch my stuttering face on TV.”
O’Brien peered out of an open slat in the blinds. “I see their satellite news truck in the parking lot. The other TV stations, the papers, and the national news, will be here soon. We have to plan for that and deal with it the best we can.”
“So what we gonna do?” Nick asked. “Just tell ‘em where the ghost sub is and let’s go on and let our lives get back to normal.
Dave said, “It’s not that simple.”
“Why?” Nick asked.
“Because the ghost sub, as you so aptly put it, is indeed a ghost sub.”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked.
“It’s a phantom. Officially, it doesn’t exist. You gents opened Pandora’s Box. Now the evil genie is out. The German U-boat 236 has no documentation in unclassified U.S. war documents. It seems that somebody didn’t want a record of it. Sean and I are working on a time-line. We’re not sure exactly when the sub you found was sunk. Probably May 19, 1945. The same day an eyewitness spotted it from Matanzas Inlet. He saw men leave the sub in a life raft and bury something on the beach. Perhaps more of the uranium canisters. I did some digging, spoke with an old contact in Germany. The manifest on file in Germany from U-boat 236 indicates there were ten canisters of U-235 on board. You spotted two. Maybe the other eight were buried that night on the beach.”
O’Brien said, “The eyewitness Dave mentioned was an American not much older than you, Jason. He was shot and killed after he reported the presence of the sub and a party of four German sailors and two Japanese men burying something in the sand. This man saw one of the Germans shoot another. He said a man, maybe an American, came out of the bushes that night and met them.”
“The FBI and Navy,” Dave said, standing, “have no unclassified record of the sub’s existence. Why? Because they took down a sub with nuclear material on it, and they never found it. This was almost the twelfth hour before the dawn of the nuclear age. With the race to see who was going to make the bomb first, the least amount of information out there, less chance for a leak or to cause a breach. The other reason could have been connected to the shooting death of the young man or the mystery man who met them. I hope you now understand you have to be quiet about his. No more information to anyone. It’s too dangerous.”
“I understand … I won’t say a word,” Jason said.