The Law of the Sea : A Legal Thriller

by Dave Gerard

  For some reason, Remington was keenly interested in the Excelsior’s scuba records. The ship had come back with one less set of scuba gear than it set out with. Marcum’s set. The ship also came back with five missing weight belts. But that didn’t seem significant. Other than that, the logs all checked out. Maybe Remington thought there was an equipment malfunction. I sent him everything we had, and even asked Lyle to order some books on scuba diving. Remington somehow found time to read the books and mark them up with questions.

  In the meantime, Cindy and I dutifully plugged away at the Rockweiller documents for a couple of hours each day. I also thought about privilege. The death memo had never left my mind, and I felt certain that the answers were in there. But Remington said that Judge Graves would never waive privilege unless we could prove they were lying. And I didn’t know how to do that.

  It was maybe two months after the Flor de la Mar went public that I got a phone call from an unknown number. “Jack Carver,” I said, picking up the phone.

  “Mr. Carver,” came a raspy voice at the other end. “This is Jeremy Riker. I believe you are looking for information about David Marcum.”

  * * *

  2 Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. v. Unidentified Shipwrecked Vessel, 79 F.Supp.2d 1270 (M.D. Fla. 2013) (citing Richard Barnfield, The Encomion of Lady Pecunia (١٥٩٨)).

  TWENTY

  I flew into London in the early evening. I had been there once, on a layover. It had been cold and rainy then, just like it was now. I left the airport and looked around for a place to eat. I spied a McDonalds, glanced around guiltily, and went inside. I didn’t have the time to figure out London cuisine just then. So I ordered two Big Macs and wolfed them on the sidewalk. Then I pulled up the address of the place I was going.

  Jeremy Riker was the last crew member aboard the Excelsior. He no longer worked for Rockweiller, which was why he didn’t appear at the depositions. This meant that we could talk to him without Badden & Bock around. Lyle had found several numbers for him, and we had been trying to track him down. But we hadn’t been able to reach him. Until now.

  After the Flor de la Mar became public, Riker had finally called me back and said he had information about David Marcum. He hadn’t been on the Excelsior when Marcum had died. He’d left the company shortly before that. But he knew something about it. He was willing to part with this knowledge in exchange for cash.

  Riker refused to talk on the phone, afraid it would be tapped. It was the kind of attitude I’d come to expect from anyone involved in this case. We dickered a little, and then I got together fifteen thousand dollars in cash and a plane ticket to London. I spent nine hours drinking Budweiser and watching Hugh Grant movies all the way across the Atlantic. (Scratch that, I spent the time reading case files and making deposition notes).

  I met Riker at a bar called Popinjay’s. The name evoked a cheerful establishment, but the place was anything but. Instead, it was a battered old building that looked like it was built before both world wars. I entered through a back alley and pushed my way through a sour, unwashed set of customers to the bar.

  Inside, my eyes searched the room and met those of a weathered-looking man sitting in a booth. He wore a black leather jacket and had a sardonic cast to his face. He signaled me with a raise of his drink. I walked over and sat down.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me, Mr. Riker,” I said.

  “Got the cash?” he asked harshly. I handed him a thick envelope. He looked inside, and quickly ruffled through the stack of hundred-dollar bills. Then he smiled, raised his glass, and took a deep swallow.

  “To your health,” he said. “I have to respect a man who flies nine hours for a beer.”

  “Eighteen hours,” I corrected him. “If you count the way back.”

  “Well. The least I can do is buy.” He flagged down the waitress. I started to ask her if they had any American beers, but I caught Riker and the waitress’s expressions and just asked for whatever Riker was having. It was sour and warm, like what I imagined alcoholic piss might taste like.

  “What do you want to know?” Riker asked.

  “Whatever you can tell me about David Marcum, Lloyd Gunthum, and Rockweiller Industries,” I said. “Or Excel Resources. I’m not sure of the difference.”

  Riker took a sip of his beer. “Excel Resources is Lloyd Gunthum’s outfit,” he said. “Rockweiller took a majority stake some years ago. Gunthum was doing some oil and gas work for Rockweiller, primarily in South America. Commercial diving, pipeline work, that sort of thing. He had a side business in search and recovery too. Usually contracts to recover vessels, or equipment that had sunk in some accident or other. But Gunthum also had an interest in these older ships. The treasure wrecks.”

  “Why?”

  Riker shrugged. “Partly it was business. Gunthum made a find many years ago, I heard. A big one. Once you get a taste, it’s hard to forget. And there’s something romantic about it, don’t you think?” he grinned mockingly at me.

  “Maybe. From what I know about him, Gunthum doesn’t seem like the type,” I said. Riker shrugged.

  “What did Gunthum find all those years ago?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s pretty secretive. Most people in that business are. You say too much, someone else will try to take what you find. And there are all sorts of government rights tied up in those things. You heard of those maricon Spaniards who took the Mercedes from Odyssey Marine. The U.S. tried to do the same to Mel Fisher over the Atocha. So why would anyone tell Spain or Portugal if they found another galleon? So many of the finds go unreported. Someone finds one, they salvage it quietly, sell the proceeds over time. That’s probably what Gunthum did with his first find.”

  “But not with the Flor de la Mar,” I said.

  “No,” Riker allowed. “That one was too big. And in too prominent of a place. There was no way for them to do it without attracting attention.”

  “Right. Okay. Let’s go back to Lloyd Gunthum. How did he interest Rockweiller in his little enterprise?”

  “Gunthum had been working with Rockweiller for some time in South America. He pitched a partnership for salvage operations. Rockweiller would take a majority stake in the business. They would provide the capital, he would provide the expertise. This was not some big corporate deal cooked up in the boardroom, you understand. More likely it was with one of Rockweiller’s local execs in South America. They probably knew Gunthum, gave him a few million dollars and some rope, and let him see what he could do. To a company of that size, it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I worked with him for a long time.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “We had a falling out.” He didn’t seem interested in elaborating, so I didn’t ask.

  “How did Gunthum do with Excel Resources?” I said.

  “He did well. Gunthum is sharp. He used to be in the special forces, you know. Afghanistan. Yemen. Specialized in search and rescue operations, and killings, I heard. He knows how to make a plan, and he knows how to execute. Most guys, they can do one or the other. But not both.”

  “How does he look for these ancient wrecks?”

  “He would look at old historical records, maps, accounts. He had an eye for them. Then he would use sonar and magnetometers to search likely areas. Gunthum is better at it than most.”

  “What about the Flor de la Mar?”

  “What about it?”

  “How did he find that one?”

  Riker looked at me as if he didn’t understand. “The Flor de la Mar?”

  “Yes. The ship I’m here about,” I said impatiently. “How did he find it?”

  Riker continued to look perplexed. “You don’t know how he found it?” he asked.

  I stared at him, wondering what he was talking about. “How wou
ld I know how he found it?”

  Riker frowned at me. “But then…why are you here?”

  I spread my hands, confused. “If you don’t know, I get it,” I said. “But Rockweiller won’t tell us. We don’t understand how they found it. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  Riker stared at me in confusion for a moment, and then realization sparked in his eyes. He started to laugh. It was a low, harsh laugh, but pretty soon he couldn’t control himself. He coughed and almost choked on his beer. Some people looked at us from the next table over.

  “What’s so funny?” I hissed at him.

  “You don’t know,” he said, trying to stop coughing. “You don’t even know that. Wow. They must be doing a better job in this case than I thought.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Riker finally got control of himself. He leaned over to me and spoke in a low voice.

  “Gunthum didn’t find the Flor de la Mar,” he whispered.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Rockweiller didn’t either.”

  “Then who did?” I asked, puzzled.

  Gunthum leaned even closer. I could smell the stale beer on his breath. “David Marcum. He’s the one that found the Flor de la Mar.”

  I gaped at him, trying to process this. David Marcum had found the Flor de la Mar? Could it possibly be true? My head was spinning as I tried to think through the implications.

  “They didn’t tell you that, did they?” said Riker. “No. What did they tell you?”

  “They didn’t tell us anything. They withheld the information as ultra-sensitive under a protective order.”

  “Ultra-sensitive. I bet. Yeah, Marcum found it. Well, that’s not exactly true. Gunthum and his outfit actually went out and located the wreck. It took some doing. But the information that led him there, I heard that was Marcum. That’s why Marcum was involved with all of this in the first place, you see.”

  “How the hell did Marcum find it?”

  “That’s the billion-dollar question. Nobody knows. People have been looking for that ship for five hundred years. How some American college drop-out found it is a complete mystery.”

  Riker continued in a low voice. “The way I heard it, Marcum made a deal with Gunthum. Marcum had the information, you see. But he didn’t have the money to search for and salvage something like that, much less deal with the fallout. He and Gunthum knew each other from somewhere. I think they worked on an oil rig together or something.”

  I nodded, thinking about their time in Colombia.

  “Marcum contacted Gunthum, and persuaded him that the information was good. Gunthum agreed to mount a search. They went off to do it. And then they found it.”

  I nodded slowly. The pieces were all coming together.

  “What did Marcum get out of this?” I asked.

  Riker looked around and then leaned forward again. “I heard there was a contract.”

  “A contract?” My heart started thumping.

  “Yeah. With a finder’s fee. Marcum was going to get a piece of the action in exchange for telling Gunthum about it.”

  “You mean a percentage of the Flor de la Mar?”

  Riker nodded.

  “How much? What was the deal?”

  “That I don’t know. I never knew the particulars.”

  “Was any contract signed?”

  “I don’t know,” said Riker, finishing the last of his beer. “Maybe. Marcum wasn’t stupid, and you don’t go around telling people information like that without some protection. But it’s also something people don’t like to put in writing. He may have trusted Gunthum.”

  “Why?”

  Riker shrugged. “They were on the same wavelength. Friends, even. Gunthum is a hard guy, but he’s not bad. He has honor. From the military. That creed, you know.”

  I nodded. “What happened to the deal?”

  “I don’t know,” said Riker.

  “And what happened to David Marcum?”

  “That I don’t know either. I wasn’t there. It was all hush-hush.”

  “Could it have been a scuba diving accident?”

  Riker shrugged. “Could have been. It’s possible. But I heard Dave was a great diver.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “There were rumors.”

  “What sort of rumors?”

  “That’s hearsay, ain’t it?” he said with a grin.

  “This isn’t a court of law. What happened?”

  Riker looked at me evenly. “What do you think happened?”

  I looked at him. “Are you saying…?” I waited expectantly, but he said nothing more. “You think something happened?”

  “I’m not saying that. I really don’t know. But when you’ve got that much at stake, and something happens…you put two and two together, don’t you?”

  I flew back from London that night and delivered the explosive news to the team the next morning. Around noon, everyone gathered in the conference room to strategize. Kruckemeyer authorized lunch, and we ordered fajitas. Houston has its downsides, but one of the upsides is the best Tex-Mex in the United States.

  The fajitas arrived within the hour, and we helped ourselves to sizzling plates of chicken, beef, and refried beans, piling stone-ground tortillas high with peppers and onions. While we ate, I recounted Riker’s tale for the group.

  Kruckemeyer was the first to pick up on the financial import of the news. “If Marcum had a deal,” he mused, “then he might be owed a whole shitload of money. Shipload, excuse me.”

  “That’s right,” said Cindy, taking a bite of her third fajita. “He’d get a percentage of whatever the Flor de la Mar is worth.”

  “Hmm. What’s the latest on that?” Kruckemeyer asked.

  “Billions.” I said.

  “The news says a hundred billion,” Harder added.

  “Ye haw,” said Kruckemeyer.

  “It’s not a hundred billion,” I said, annoyed. “That’s just a bunch of cranks bidding up the price.”

  “A hundred billion dollars,” Kruckemeyer said dreamily. “Okay. Well look. Let’s be realistic. Say it’s ten billion, Jack. Even five. At a ten percent finder’s fee. You’re fast at math. What’s that worth?”

  I wondered if Kruckemeyer was aware that he was being anchored. But I didn’t bring it up just then. “If that was the case—and it’s a big if—then Marcum would be owed anywhere from half a billion to a billion dollars,” I said. And then, because I knew what he was really after, I said “at a forty percent contingent fee, it would mean hundreds of millions for the firm.”

  “Hundreds of millions,” said Kruckemeyer greedily. “That’s real dough.”

  It was real dough indeed. Kruckemeyer was a successful attorney. He probably made a million dollars a year. That was a lot of money. Some of the top litigators in the country could pull down even more. But it was only the big plaintiff’s lawyers—the ones who took a cut of the wins—who earned hundreds of millions. Those lawyers fought big corporations over catastrophic injuries, mass torts, or class actions, and reaped huge rewards. But it took a hell of a lot of luck to do that, and balls of steel. They were a different breed. The only practicing lawyer ever to make the billionaire’s club was the infamous Texas trial lawyer Joe Jamail.

  “That’s a best-case scenario,” I cautioned Kruckemeyer. “And that’s not factoring in expenses. Cost of salvage. Percentage of the wreck that gets lost. Selling costs, time to market. Legal fees. It’s not that simple.” Schnizzel had explained all of this to me in detail.

  “Right, right,” said Kruckemeyer. “Legal fees. Gotta love ‘em.”

  But even as I tried to urge caution, I was getting caught up in the mania too. Even if all of these figures were speculative, and there were expenses that went along with them, there was no doubt that the F
lor de la Mar was worth a colossal sum of money. If we could prove a contract, Marcum’s take would be astronomical. As would ours.

  “What do you think, John?” Kruckemeyer asked, turning to Remington.

  Remington had stayed quiet until then, listening to the discussion. “I don’t know, Bob,” he said. “I really don’t. But aren’t we putting the cart before the horse?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Remington pushed his plate away and leaned forward. “We’ve got a problem. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Riker is telling the truth. That David Marcum had a contract giving him some percentage of the Flor de la Mar. Here’s the thing: because they filed the case in Florida, it doesn’t matter. Even if there’s a contract, we get diddly squat.”

  “Oh my God,” said Cindy. “That’s right. Sovereign immunity. Title to the wreck goes to Portugal under Odyssey Marine.”

  My mouth fell open. “That means no one else can get a piece of the wreck. The Flor de la Mar is Portugal’s sovereign property. The only way Rockweiller gets it is through its deal with Portugal. But if we try to ask for Marcum’s finder’s fee…”

  “…Rockweiller will say it never had rights to the property at all,” Cindy finished. “And they can’t give what they never had, so they can’t give a percentage to Marcum. Any contract would be null and void.”

  Remington nodded. “That’s right, kids.”

  “They screwed us,” I said stupidly. “They totally screwed us. That’s why they filed in Florida. So if we ever found out about the contract, we would have no way to enforce it.”

  “That may be one reason. But I suspect there are others. There are bigger players waiting in the wings,” Remington said cryptically.

  I didn’t know what he meant by that, but just then I was too pissed off to care. “Those assholes,” I seethed, imagining Bock’s sneering face. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “Good question,” said Remington. “And while we’re at it, there’s another problem I should mention.”

  “What’s that?”