by David Wood
Dane thought fast. Apparently this guy knew a lot about some coins in the metal box that Bones found, but nothing about the nuke on board the craft. Dane had to keep it that way.
“We wanted to dive the Spanish wreck, but there’s already another ship on that site, so we thought we’d check out the capsule wreck as a pre-dive to test our systems.”
Streib glanced at the submersible, its spinning arc now beginning to slow.
“Listen guys, I don’t know who you are, but you don’t fool me. There are only a handful of subs in the world capable of working at these depths.” He stared into the sloshing moon pool. “You must be U.S. government: either employees, contractors, or possibly military,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at Dane and his new TEC-9 with which he already appeared more than comfortable.
Dane felt his jaw start to go slack and he willed it shut. Even Bones glanced over at him for the first time since he’d started guarding Streib. But it was the expedition manager who filled the silence first.
“You can drop the pretenses. I know why you’re here.”
Chapter 8
When neither Dane nor Bones spoke, Roland Streib elaborated at gunpoint.
“You want these coins for the same reason I do...” He glanced down at his pants pocket where he had dumped them before continuing. “To prove once and for all that the Mercury-Redstone 4 mission was a fake. A sham. Hoax. A wool-over-the-eyes stunt in an attempt to scare the Holy Hell out of the Russians.”
Streib’s hands started to come down and Dane shook the submachine gun. Streib put his hands back up high.
Dane was concerned at how close the salvage manager seemed to be to his true objective. It seemed like the nuke was the only thing he wasn’t aware of.
“Less worrying about who we are, more about answering our questions. Tell us about the coins. Why do you think they’re so important?”
“Space lore has it that at least one roll of dimes, Mercury dimes, naturally, went aboard the capsule with Gus Grissom. Gus and a bunch of the other astronauts and mission personnel wanted to have a souvenir of their flight. Some common object that they could say has been to space after the flight, to show off to their friends or even sell later on. But of course, these supposedly space-flown dimes went down with the capsule when it sank. Gus reportedly screwed the pooch and blew that hatch by mistake, causing the Liberty Bell to flood.”
“Reportedly?” Dane prompted.
“I say ‘reportedly’ because I believe that’s another lie. The government was trying to cover up the fact that the capsule was sent to the bottom on purpose, to prevent evidence that it never went to space at all from being found.”
Dane felt his skin begin to crawl. This guy knew a lot, yet was wrong on some key counts. Besides omitting the nuke, the capsule did fly in space, for fifteen minutes in a suborbital hop. At least according to his briefing. This guy was starting to sound like one of those conspiracy theory nutballs who claimed Neil Armstrong never walked on the moon, that it was all done on a Hollywood sound stage.
Streib continued. “That hatch took a lot of force to open. They didn’t want it coming off by accident. Imagine if you could just elbow it the wrong way while you’re in space, right? So it was designed to require a lot of applied force to open. In fact, technicians maintain to this day that the only way to open it was to hit it so hard that it would leave a bruise on your hand or wrist. And guess what? They checked Gus’ hands after the mission. No bruises to be found.”
“So he never opened the hatch,” Dane said.
“No! But NASA and the Kennedy administration always maintained that he did. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
“So what do the dimes have to do with that?”
“The dimes have special symbols carved into them.”
The sound of water dripping from the sub was all they heard for the next few seconds while Dane and Bones wrapped their minds around what Streib was saying. To Dane, it was starting to seem more and more fantastical—this guy must be a conspiracy theory wackjob. But it was easy enough to find out.
“Bones, check out the dimes.”
Bones glared once at Streib. “Reach into your pocket, nice and slow, and pull out a few of the dimes.” Streib complied, holding a palm full of dimes out toward Bones, who plucked a couple of them from Streib's hand before stepping back.
Bones held one of the coins up to the fluorescent work lights. He squinted at the round disc in his fingers. He repeated the process with a couple more. At length he said, “They are dimes. In pretty good shape…”
As he flipped them over his face took on a puzzled expression. He held a few of the dimes out for Dane to see. Scratched into the face of the coins were in fact strange symbols.
Dane looked up to see Streib grinning at him. “How do we know that you didn’t just drop these in the capsule yourself with one of your ROVs?”
At that moment they heard radio chatter burst from the overhead speakers. It didn’t pertain to them, but it reminded Dane that, should someone call them, they were a long way from the bridge. It wasn’t normal for a vessel this far out at sea to ignore radio calls. Dane saw Streib about to respond but cut him off. “Hold on. Let’s take this party up to the pilothouse. Bones, escort our guest, if you would, while I bring up the rear.”
Bones nodded and put a firm grip on Streib’s right elbow. They marched to the airlock door, where Bones temporarily let go of the marine salvor in order to turn the heavy valve wheel that unlocked the thick metal door. Dane kept the TEC-9 trained on him while they walked into the airlock. Bones repeated the process with the outer door and then the three of them passed out into the crisp, night air on deck.
Dane’s head was on a swivel as he scanned the waters surrounding their boat for any signs that Streib had accomplices waiting. But he saw only an empty inflatable boat, tied alongside the Atlantic Pride amidships, on the side that faced away from the salvage expedition’s ship.
“How long before your people miss you and the inflatable?” Dane asked Streib from behind as they walked toward the wheelhouse.
Streib visibly stiffened. “Not long at all,” he managed.
Dane chuckled. This was of course the expected answer. In his place, he conceded, he’d say the same thing. No need to give the enemy plenty of time to interrogate you. Still, he wanted Streib on edge.
“You sure you’re not supposed to be on a sleep shift right now, and that’s why you chose to come over here alone? Maybe no one expects you back for a few more hours?”
“Oh, no. I’ll be missed anytime now, if I haven’t already. They probably think I took the Zodiac out to do a little night fishing. Not unusual at all, as long as I come back.”
Dane looked off their starboard rail and saw the converted yacht humming with activity. Men buzzed about various pieces of machinery like bees about a hive. He kept the TEC-9 to his left side in case they were being watched through binoculars.
The unlikely trio reached the stairs to the wheelhouse and climbed up. Dane guarded Streib with the gun while Bones opened the door. Inside, Dane waved the gun barrel at the co-pilot’s chair and Streib sat. Bones told him to put his hands down and bound him with the rope to the chair. Dane briefly consulted the boat’s instrument panel. Satisfied all was in order, he turned his attention—and the gun—back to Streib.
“Okay, so where were we?”
“You were asking if he might have dropped the dimes into the capsule himself,” Bones reminded him.
“Right, you’ve been working this site for days. How can you prove that’s not what happened?”
Streib shrugged as much as his restraints would allow. “It’s well documented that a roll of Mercury dimes was brought aboard that spacecraft.”
Bones nodded. “These are old. 1941. Why use such old coins?”
“It was a tradition to us the Mercury dimes. You know… Mercury dimes, Mercury capsule.”
“Sweet,” Bones said. “Made with silver
back then, too. Maybe I should keep ‘em.”
Streib frowned.
“Let’s just assume for a second that these dimes are genuine,” Dane said. “How do they prove the mission was faked?”
Streib spoke as he watched Bones pull two of the dimes from his pocket and examine them closely. “I believe that the symbols are a coded message from the astronaut on board the crew capsule. I think he had second thoughts about his orders to fake the mission.”
“A whistleblower?” Dane asked.
“Sort of, yeah. But not so publicly. Back then, with the Cold War backdrop, patriotism and nationalism ran very high. He didn’t want to appear unpatriotic, but he wanted to the truth to eventually be known. Unfortunately, someone caught onto what he was doing because he, I'm talking about Gus Grissom, was later killed in an Apollo 1 launch pad fire.”
Dane and Bones exchanged knowing glances. Grissom was the astronaut in the capsule according to their briefing. But no one had mentioned he'd later been killed.
“But that was just an accident,” Dane said.
“Was it?” Streib managed a grin. “That would be one heck of a coincidence, and a bit of good fortune for a government that wanted to make sure he never let slip their dirty little secret.”
A moment of contemplation passed while Bones asked, squinting at one of the dimes, “So how do you read these things? This one has what looks like a triangle with an X through it.”
Streib shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I was hoping to collect all of them myself, without even my own crew knowing, and then work it out in my private study back home. “Because if the capsule comes aboard my ship with them in it, it’ll be too late. There are all kinds of people on board: crew assisting with preservation efforts, museum specialists-waiting to photograph and catalog every little piece of anything that comes out of that spacecraft.”
“How about if we let you keep all of the dimes,” Dane offered.
“In return for what?” Streib countered.
“You’re not exactly in a position to bargain here,” Dane reminded him. “How about in return for not killing you?” Not that Dane was so coldhearted, but there was no need for Streib to know that. The trussed salvor shrunk in his chair.
“In return for clearing us a window where we can dive without ROV interference. Can you do that?”
“And will you do it?” Bones added.
Streib appeared confused, looking from Dane to Bones and back again. “But, if you really don’t want the dimes, then…what do you want? You don’t work for the Russians, do you? I know they’d like to get their hands on this piece of early American space technology.”
The wall of silence his question was greeted with was answer enough. They were saying nothing.
“If you want those coins, you make it so that we can dive uninterrupted on that capsule,” Dane said. “We’re not going to hurt it or take it. We just want to look around without being hassled, and then we’ll be out of your hair.” Bones nodded in agreement.
Streib suddenly lifted his head. “Okay, you have a deal.”
Bones stepped up to Streib and relieved him of the remaining dimes.
“But listen, there’s something else you should know,” Streib added.
Dane raised an eyebrow at him in silence. Streib elaborated. “We have been detecting some weird signals down there. Total anomalies.”
“What kind of anomalies?” Dane asked.
“Odd sonar signals and even audio transmissions. We think there’s a Russian sub down there. Not a submersible,” he clarified, “but a full-blown naval warfare sub, hunting for the capsule. That’s why I asked if you were contracting for them. You sure don’t seem Russian, but who knows if maybe they hire mercenaries these days. They’re smart, they do what they have to do.”
“Why would the Russians be interested in the capsule?” Dane asked.
Streib looked almost embarrassed as he struggled with the answer. “Aside from grabbing the entire capsule to stuff in some museum in Moscow as a kind of final Cold War triumph, the most reasonable explanation I can come up with is that they also want to find the dimes so they can decode the message and prove to the world that the U.S. mission was a fake, and so it was really they who won the space race during the Cold War.”
Dane and Bones exchanged a knowing glance that Streib mistook to indicate they thought his suggestion was plausible.
“See?” he said. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Dane looked at their prisoner. “Absolutely. When can we do our next dive on the capsule?”
Chapter 9
“You really think we can trust that dude?” Bones asked. Earlier they had released Roland Streib, who had boarded his inflatable boat and rode it back to his ship, tail between his legs. Then they had motored their own vessel farther from Streib’s Ocean Explorer. They did not want to suggest any kind of collaboration between themselves and the television ship. They now floated near the Spanish wreck site, not far from the treasure hunter vessel they had sighted there before.
“A space conspiracy nut with a gun? What’s not to trust?” Dane made a face. “He wants those dimes. If it’s in his power to do what we asked, I think we can count on him.”
“I wish there was a way we could verify what he was telling us. I don’t know much about the early space program.”
“You don’t know much about any space program, do you?” Dane ribbed.
“Got me there.”
Dane reached across the cockpit and pulled down the encrypted satellite phone given to them by Captain Epson.
“Epson said not to even bother using that thing unless we had the nuke in our possession,” Bones recalled.
“He said not to call him, unless we had it. He didn’t say we couldn’t call anyone else,” Dane said, lighting up the handheld device.
“We sure as hell can’t tell anyone about…”
Dane held the phone up, its digital display ready to dial. “Of course not. But like you said, we just want to know a little more about the space program. We can call someone who might be able to tell us about it at face value, without even mentioning we’re on a mission.”
“Like who?” Bones asked.
“Know any space buffs?”
“Nope.”
Dane grimaced. “Me neither. Nor do I know any NASA guys.”
“Who do we know that’s just a smart guy, not in the military?” Bones asked, scratching his head.
The pair of SEALs thought about this in silence for a moment, until Dane pumped his fist in a gesture of triumph.
“Okay, he's ex-military, but what about Jimmy Letson?”
“Oh yeah, the guy who helped us out in Boston that time?”
Bones grinned at the memory of an adventurous search for a historical lantern.
“Right, the Boston Globe reporter, who’s good with computers. He might know something, or at least be able to look it up.” Dane pulled out his wallet and rifled through it, coming up with a folded sheet of paper full of phone numbers.
“The Maddock rolodex,” Bones said. “Any single ladies on that list, or just dudes with computer fetishes?”
“Here it is.” He hit the speaker phone button and punched in Jimmy’s number.
“Pretty late,” Bones said, glancing at a clock in the cockpit. “Hopefully he’s a workaholic.”
“He's probably up playing Dungeons and Dragons or hacking some network for kicks.” They heard a high, nasal voice emanate from the sat-phone speaker. “Jimmy here.”
Dane pictured the tall, wiry man with his curly brown hair, thin mustache and round spectacles. “Hey Jimmy, it’s Maddock. Sorry for the late call.”
“Maddock. Let me guess, you need a favor and you need it fast?”
Dane grinned at Bones. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“You in Boston? Bottle of Scotch again?”
“No, actually Bones and I are travelling right now, through Florida.”
Jimmy sighed. “That’s too bad.
Some friends and I are just starting a game of D&D. You’ve never tried out that dwarf warrior I rolled up for you.”
Bones guffawed and mouthed “geek” while Dane’s face reddened.
“Yeah,” he said, “anyway, we need to know some info on the Mercury era NASA space program.” He explained that they heard there might be some dimes that were brought aboard the Liberty Bell 7 capsule.
“Yep,” Letson replied. “It was common practice, and still is, for astronauts to bring small, light, personal effects aboard so that they would have something that’s been to space afterward. You didn’t know that? I thought you were supposed to be intelligent, at least by swabbie standards.”
Dane ignored the jibe. “But I have also heard that there were some strange symbols carved into the dimes. Any idea what those are about?”
There was a slight pause on the other end of the connection. “Strange symbols, you say? What’s so strange about them?”
Dane looked at Bones, who was looking at one of the dimes closely. He showed it Dane, who leaned in to look at it while he spoke on the phone. “Not sure, really, but maybe shapes, like triangles.”
“Are they cast into the coins or were they carved later?”
“Definitely carved in later. Directly over the head side.”
“Hmm. So one of the astronauts did it. In that case, obverse or reverse, I doubt the side means anything. You’re reading too much into it, would be my semi-informed opinion.”
“How so?”
“Put yourself in the shoes of a 1960’s astronaut or mission support specialist. Space was very new. To be able to have a space-flown object of any kind was quite a bragging right, and potentially even valuable. So what they did was, everyone put in their dime to give to the capsule astronaut, Gus Grissom, on this particular mission if I’m not mistaken, and to make sure they’d get back their exact dime and not one that was substituted, they would carve their initials, maybe. Or if they feared being reprimanded for bringing a dime on without permission—space contraband, you know— and didn’t want to be identified, they would simply carve a symbol on it, so later on they could say, ‘Hey that one’s mine, the one with the triangle.’”
