Mark of the Devil (25 page)

“Don’t know why you’re so anxious to hang me, Hammersmith,” Matt said. “Suppose because I’m the handiest guy around, but I did not kill Sam Gravely or the man from the Smithsonian, and I sure as hell did not kill my wife.” Matt took one final look at the sheet covering the outline of his wife’s body. With chin quivering and a failed attempt to hold back the tears, he touched one of her feet and vowed, “I love you, Ashley, and whoever killed you, I’ll get them if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Six Days Later
Saturday, 3 November 2001

Park shook Matt’s hand and clasped his shoulder as he entered the dive shop. “I’m sorry, Matt. If only I could’ve—”

“Not your fault, Steve. Not a damn thing you could’ve done and, besides, you were in the Keys.”

Taking Matt by the arm, Park guided him toward the office in the rear of the store. “But if I’d been here…”

“You’ve got a business to run. Taking people on dive trips is part of it.” As they entered the office, Matt added, “And even if you’d been here, there was no way you could’ve kept Ashley from doing what she did. The main thing right now is I’m pretty damn sure the AFI people will still try to take me out, one way or the other. And since you’re also part of the equation…”

“Gotta admit, I’ve been giving that some thought, but where have you been? Three days ago, I went down to the detention center to see you, but you’d already been released. And your face?”

“Should’ve seen it before I got the stitches taken out. As for being released, evidence showed Ashley was tied to the bed, raped…” Matt paused, momentarily closed his eyes tight, trying to shut out the imagined horror, pain and helplessness Ashley must have endured. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “…and shot, along with a man named Striker, who did the raping and who they’re now sure killed Sam Gravely and that Fitzwellen guy. But why’d they kill Striker?” he asked, the question directed more to himself than to Park. Answering his own question, he said “He must’ve outlived his usefulness or known more than he should have.” Sighing, Matt went on, “Not sure why they didn’t kill me. Apparently I was set up to take the fall for Ashley’s murder. An over-the-top way to do it, but it would still have taken me out of the picture.”

“You got the Jeep back, I’m told,” Park said, “so what’ve you been doing for the last three, four days?”

“They found the Jeep in a parking lot behind the Florida Theater downtown. As for what I’ve been doing, Dr. Fay Lundgren, Duval County Medical Examiner, who I met back in ninety-two during the Azrael thing, worked a deal. Just to keep me from wandering off, the state attorney still wanted voluntary manslaughter charges and a hundred thousand dollars in bail.”

“Hundred thou, huh?”

“Long story. Finally reduced it to fifty based on forensics, mostly DNA from saliva on cigarette stubs not matching Ashley, me, or the guy killed with her. References from NAARPA, FBI, DEA, and Dr. Lundgren vouching for me based on our past acquaintance didn’t hurt. They finally let me take Ashley home to Charleston for cremation after the autopsy once I swore on a stack of Bibles I’d come straight back. I did, however, visit my mom and go by the NAARPA office to pick up a little protection.”

“Protection?” Park asked, eyes narrowing.

Matt opened his jacket and looked down at a shoulder holster. The black plastic handle of a 9-millimeter semiautomatic Beretta Model 800 Cougar protruded from the top. “If I ever catch the sonofabitch who killed Ashley, one way or the other, he’s mine. With my bare hands, preferably. Otherwise, Mr. Beretta here can more than adequately take care of the problem.”

Park blew out a long, low whistle, ending with, “You’re out on bail and you’re carrying a gun? Pretty chancy, you ask me.”

“My problem, Steve. Not yours. So tell me, what’s been happening?”

“Couple of things,” Park said. “First, Brandy Mason called yesterday looking for you. I told her about Ashley, you being in jail, being released, and that I didn’t know where you were. Sounded pretty upset and said to pass on her condolences if and when I see you. Sorry she never had a chance to meet Ashley, and hopes to see you in the next day or two if you’re in Jacksonville. That is, if you can stay out of trouble long enough.”

Matt raised his eyebrows and grunted at the
out-of-trouble
statement before asking, “Next day or two? How’s that?”

“Celebration with the team that excavated the Civil War boat in the St. Johns River not long ago. Omni Hotel, downtown Jacksonville.” Park quickly scanned the calendar on the wall. “In fact, it’s this coming Monday night. Personal invitation from her.”

“We’ll see.”

“Second, my watchers report the
Sea Rover
and the AFI crowd are out at the submarine today, but more importantly I want you to listen to this.” Park opened one of the desk drawers and, from the rear of the drawer behind a pile of invoices, pulled out a mini tape cassette and placed it in the telephone answer machine.

“What’s that?” Matt asked.

“Came in the afternoon you were stuck in Newark. I’d already left for Key Largo. Listen.”

Park closed the lid on the cassette receptacle and punched the
play messages
button.

“Steve?” It was Ashley’s voice.

“Oh, God,” Matt half whispered. He lowered himself in the chair in front of the desk and closed his eyes as Ashley’s face took shape in his self-imposed darkness.

“As I told you, my new cell phone has a mind of its own as to when it wants to work, so I’ll have to make this quick before it cuts out on me. I’m on the
Sea Rover,
AFI’s ship, just off Jacksonville Beach, with Starla…uh, Mrs. Shoemaker.” Suddenly, there were several moments of silence before “…submarine with, from what she told me, gold and other valuables somewhere inside. We just finished lunch, and I got the distinct impression from Starla that there’s something else even more important than the gold, at least to her. Some kind of papers. Maybe this afternoon I’ll learn—”

Ashley’s voice went silent again, then continued with “…an idea Mrs. Shoemaker plans to cut her husband out of whatever she finds down there and maybe anything else she can get. She was pretty emphatic. She definitely does not like the man.”

She continued, “Don’t know when Matt’s getting back. If it’s today, if you could—”

From the tape came the sound of someone knocking on a door. “Coming,” Ashley said loudly, then almost a whisper. “Gotta go. Hope to see the sub this afternoon. Call you soon as I get ashore later today.” And then nothing except the
whirrrrr
of the tape automatically rewinding and a loud click as the tape hit the stops.

Matt sat very still, the color drained from his face, a cold clamminess under his armpits. Finally, “Anybody else hear this?”

Park shook his head. “Steve Jr. is the only one. He listened to it as a matter of course, then hid it until I got back.”

Matt sat for a moment, took a deep breath, then asked, “The submarine. What’s AFI been doing?”

“Weather’s been so bad over the past week, today’s only the second time the
Sea Rover’s
been out. What and how much they might’ve taken off the sub, if anything, I don’t know.”

Matt punched the answer machine’s
play messages
tab and replayed Ashley’s call. When it finished, he said thoughtfully, “Gold…but she said there was something more important than gold.” He looked at Park. “I’ve gotta get back out there, Steve. After what’s happened, I’ve gotta know what’s down there and cram whatever it is up Shoemaker’s money- grubbing ass.”

“Don’t forget,” Park reminded him, “from what Ashley said, Shoemaker’s wife’s the one honchoing AFI and this sub thing, and for all you know she might be the one wearing the pants in the family.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, the word emphasized by a grunt of air pushed up from his gut. “Guess it’s time we find out, isn’t it? But first things first.”

“What?”

“You need to know what I learned in Germany. After that, another look at the U-Twenty-five thirty-seven and what the AFI people are doing.”

“U-Twenty-five thirty-seven, huh?”

“Yeah, and quite a story it is.”

An earlier wind had died to little more than a breeze out of the northwest as the night grew longer, its chill just enough to make him put on the quilted jacket Park had given him. Matt pushed the light button on the side of his watch, studying the blue-tinted face. Almost ten, and the moon was due above the horizon in another hour. “Hurry up, damn it!” he muttered to the ship whose lights and activity he’d been watching through the binoculars since shortly after darkness had fallen.

Stretching the kinks out of his muscles, Matt reached across
Native Diver’s
topside cockpit and jabbed Steve Park’s shoulder. “Time to rise and shine. Last of the divers just surfaced with what looked like a couple of large underwater floodlights and cameras. They’re climbing aboard now.”

With eyes still closed, Park asked, “Anything else? That couldn’t be all.”

“While you were in dream land, five humongous loads of what looked like wooden crates in a lifting net. No way to tell what was inside. I did see them lift what resembled a mini-ROV. My guess, a remote-controlled submersible with a light and camera mounted in the nose. That two hundred-ton crane of theirs must be out of operation. They rigged a small yard boom portside amidships to lift all the stuff, and you could hear the winch groaning from all the weight. That is, if you weren’t asleep like some people I know.”

“Long night ahead, my friend,” Park said, pushing upright from the slouch his body had formed. “Better to get my beauty sleep while I can.”

“Whatever they brought up,” Matt went on, “it didn’t come through that hatch in the conning tower. I barely got through the damn thing. Must have moved enough sand to open a larger hatch somewhere.”

Park shook off his drowsiness before taking the binoculars from Matt and focusing on
Sea Rover’s
lights some three miles to the north. “Still got their floodlights…uh-uh, just turned ‘em off. And off go the anchor lights. Running lights on. They’re underway.”

“About time,” Matt said as he stood and started down the ladder to
Native Diver’s
main deck. “Let her get over the horizon before we move in. I’ll be putting the gear together. Too bad you don’t have those full facemasks back so we could talk to each other.”

“They promised me, this coming Tuesday.” Yawning, Park added, “I’d really rather go back to sleep.”

Matt chuckled. “Wait’ll you hit that sixty degree water. Sleep’ll be the last thing you’ll be thinking about.”

Less than an hour later,
Native Diver’s
bowline was tied off to one of the buoys marking the sunken barge. With the glow of his dive light piercing the darkness below, Matt one-handed his way feet-first down the buoy’s mooring line to the top of the barge. He stopped long enough to adjust the facemask strap over the hood on his head. Sucking in a full lung of air to brace against the shock, he pulled the zipper on the front of the seven-millimeter-thick neoprene wetsuit partway down and allowed a flow of cold water inside to be warmed by his own body heat for added insulation.

Once re-zipped, the water already warming, he followed the beam of his dive light and finned his way quickly to the top of the mound of sand and muck excavated from around the U-boat by
Sea Rover’s
manually directed prop wash. Atop the manmade berm, he stopped, his knees resting in the sand. A school of silversides swept past, creating a shimmering veil of bodies and tails, darting in, out, and around, obscuring his vision until an army of larger Kings and Jacks shot by in hot pursuit. With the way clear, the dive light’s beam penetrated the darkness…and there it was, lying in a hollowed-out trough. The submarine resembled a huge gray whale, asleep on the bottom of the sea, the conning tower a great hump on its back. The inanimate remains of the U-2537.

Allowing his fins to push him forward, Matt was amazed to see the U-boat’s weather deck forward of the conning tower coming into view, cleared of sand and mud as far forward as he could see, perhaps all the way to the bow. “Fantastic!” he mumbled into his mouthpiece, amazed how much of the deck had been uncovered.

With Park sliding in beside him, they both played their dive lights over what lay before them. The U-boat’s conning tower stood entirely exposed. On the tower’s side, slightly above and midway between two watertight doors entering from the weather deck, Matt made out the painted emblem of a conquering eagle, its talons fastened onto a world globe. Encircling the eagle, the words
Deutschland uber Alles,
the single word
Kriegsmarine
painted below the globe. But damn it, still no hull number to verify what he had learned from the German Archives.

Park pulled in front of him, both hands raised and fingers formed into the configuration of a box, an index finger making clicking motions.

Matt hand-signaled he understood and pulled a small, waterproof 35-millimeter camera from one of the pockets on his BC. With both dive lights illuminating the side of the tower, Matt snapped several pictures of the emblems before pocketing the camera and pondering what to do next. Finally, motioning Park toward the door leading into the after part of the tower with hand movements indicating open-if-you-can, he moved to the forward door, some 20 to 25 feet away.

The single dog or metal handle used to open the door responded with a harsh groan as he pushed upwards, yet when he pulled to open it the door refused to budge. He tried again as Park edged in next to him, but still no movement. Using a stylus on an underwater writing slate attached by an elastic cord to his BC, Park motioned toward the rear door and wrote, “CAN’T OPEN. LOCKED FROM INSIDE.” Matt pointed toward his door and nodded in agreement.

With his light motioning Park forward, Matt finned his way over the now cleared deck. At slightly over 30 feet from the conning tower, he stopped at an opening in the outer hull. Its covering plate had been forced open and lay off to the side. Just inside, leading into the pressure hull, was a raised hatch, sloped at a 10-to 12-degree angle to allow entry from the direction of the conning tower. From the top of the hatch protruded a hand wheel, which Matt estimated to be at least 5 feet in diameter. Matt took the underwater slate from Park and wrote, “TORPEDO HATCH. LET’S TRY.”

Matt let the slate and stylus swing free on the elastic cord as he handed Park his pistol-grip light and grasped the hand wheel. He exerted pressure in a counterclockwise direction, but the wheel wouldn’t turn. And then he realized, the wheel was already turned as far to the left as it would go. The hatch wasn’t sealed. Why not?
Because someone no longer cared,
Matt reasoned.
They already found what they wanted and to hell with the rest.

“Okay, baby,” he mumbled into his mouthpiece, “Let’s see what’s inside.” With that, Matt pulled back and up on the hand wheel until the hatch was halfway open. Grasping the edge of the hatch, he pushed it into a fully open position, angling on its hinges toward the bow of the U-boat, allowing unobstructed entrance through the opening.

With Park directing both lights through the hatchway, Matt first saw two cylindrical objects, one to his left, one to his right, each with fins and a propeller mounted on one end, the other end disappearing into the darkness. The cylinders were separated by a little over three feet of space, giving him a clear view of the deck below and a pile of splintered wood. Pulling back from the hatch, he demonstrated to Park with one hand a torpedo skimming through the water and exploding against his other hand, a make-believe ship. Park quickly scribbled on his underwater slate, “BIG BOOM!”

Nodding, Matt retrieved his light and lowered himself, feet-first through the opening, using his fins to slow his descent to the deck of the compartment. As he moved past, he realized that the two torpedoes he’d first seen, both over 20 feet in length, lay in separate racks, each alongside two other torpedoes for a total of six. Beneath that, however, were two additional tiers of torpedo racks on each side of the U-boat and a rack for a single torpedo raised from the deck, each of these racks empty. Estimating the number of torpedoes per rack and with a quick calculation, he determined there was space for seventeen. Counting those in the tubes…how many tubes?

Moving forward over the deck, pieces of what appeared to have once been wooden crates scattered beneath him, he counted three torpedo tube doors on each side of the compartment for a total of six. If the Germans ran with tubes full plus full racks in reserve as allied navies had done on long missions during the war, twenty-three fish had originally been on board.
Helluva way to go,
he thought,
having your ship blown out from under you by one of these babies.
But that was then, and this was now. He did, however, wonder if the tubes were still loaded.

Matt jumped when Park tapped him on the shoulder. Park’s light played across the torpedo tube doors, moving from one door to the next. Each door was stenciled with a number, as well as a woman’s name.
Ilse. Katharina. Helena. Anna. Beatrix. Minna.
Park wrote on the slate, “WHY?” Matt took the stylus and slate and wrote, “WIVES & GIRLFRIENDS.” If there’d been room on the slate, he would’ve added: “…of the men who loaded the torpedoes destined to kill the men belonging to
other
wives and girlfriends.”

Again, Park tapped him on the arm and pointed to his watch and air gauge. Matt nodded, taking Park’s writing slate and stencil and writing, “TORPEDO RACKS USED FOR STORAGE.” Erasing the words with his thumb, he pointed to the wood pieces on the deck. “WOODEN CRATES LOADED ON SEA ROVER.” Again erasing, he wrote, “ONE OR MORE BROKEN. LET’S SEARCH.”

Hovering close to the deck and keeping the light’s beam in front of him, Matt shifted the larger wood pieces from one spot to another. His free hand swept the smaller debris away, clearing the deck, but nothing. “Damn!” he cursed, sending a squadron of bubbles from his mouthpiece toward the overhead. Suddenly, he heard the
clang, clang, clang
of Park banging something, probably the hilt of his dive knife, against metal, trying to get his attention.

Pointing his own light in the direction of the sound, he saw a stream of bubbles emerging from the lowest portside torpedo rack as Park backed out from beneath the rack, pushing himself first to a kneeling position, then upright. Even behind the mouthpiece and dive mask, Matt could see a look-what-I-found grin stretched wide across Park’s face.

Throwing up his arms and hands in question, Matt waited until Park held out his right hand and pointed his light at the hand’s contents. The golden brilliance of the object seemed to fill the entire compartment. It was all Matt could do to keep the mouthpiece from dropping out of his mouth. Instead, with a surprised smile forming on his face, he grunted the words, “I’ll be damned!”

Once out of the submarine and back to the surface, Matt followed Park up the dive ladder onto
Native Diver’s
open deck and into the cabin enclosed by a heavy, white plastic curtain. Tugging off his swim fins, Park hit the ignition button, starting the boat’s engine, then switched on an overhead light. “Dry clothes,” Park said, “then talk.”

Stripping off dive gear and shoving nearly empty air tanks with still-mounted buoyancy jackets into tank racks on the side of the boat, both men toweled down as rapidly as they could and worked their shivering bodies into the warmth of sweatshirts and pants. After putting on socks and deck shoes, Matt said, “Okay, treasure hunter, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Park pulled the Velcro flap open on one of the two large pockets of his BC and extracted a golden bar that gleamed in the light as soon as it was exposed. Placing it on the top of the operating console, he fingered a small design on one corner of the ingot. “Skull and crossbones over a swastika, and this.” He pointed to the letters
A/B
engraved beside the impression of a fingerprint.

“Five’ll get you ten, that thing came from one of the concentration camps,” Matt said, his words full of disgust. “I’ll call Hannah. She should be able to tell me.”

Pulling a set of parallel rulers from the chart drawer beneath the console, Matt measured the ingot using the ruler’s marked edges.