by William Kerr
“And I’ve missed you, too, Gypsy man.” The words had barely escaped Ashley’s mouth before she’d thrown her arms around Matt and was giving him one of her watermelon-sized kisses.
“Oh, yeah,” Matt moaned.
“That’s enough, you two,” Mary Elizabeth Kirkland said, rapping Matt’s backside with her walking cane.
Both laughing and still holding hands, Matt and Ashley moved to a sofa across from Mary Elizabeth as Emmy Lou entered and handed Matt his drink. “Just like you like it, Mr. Berkeley.”
“Glenlivet?”
“No other,” she kidded.
“All right, dear, Emmy Lou’s brought you your whisky,” Mary Elizabeth chided. “Now tell us why you had to go to Washington and why you’ve got to go back to Jacksonville tomorrow. I didn’t know your Aunt Freddie’s house was that important.”
As night settled over the Battery, a short, thickly muscled man carrying a rolled-up newspaper rose from a park bench, moved past the bandstand to the street, then climbed a set of concrete steps to the walkway that ran along and above the waters of Charleston Harbor. The bill of his Charleston Riverdogs baseball cap was pulled down tight over his forehead, shadowing the man’s square-jawed face, his olive complexion already blending with the coming darkness. His back to the harbor, eyes focused on the line of two-and three-story homes fronting South Battery Street and White Point Gardens, he punched in several numbers on the face of a cellular phone and waited until saying, “It’s me, Striker. Mr. Shoemaker said to report directly to you.”
After a brief pause, he continued, “Berkeley arrived from Washington, went straight to his office, and got here, his mother’s house, about thirty minutes ago. His wife’s here, too.” Another pause and, “No ma’am, no idea who he met in Washington, but I think we’ll know before the night’s over. Took me all afternoon, six domestic employment agencies, and a bundle of money to find the right person. Once I found her—a hundred-dollar bill can buy a lot of information from a new cook with no allegiance to the family. If she did what I told her, I’ll be on my way to Washington first thing tomorrow morning.”
Slightly over two hours later, Striker watched the car with Berkeley and his wife pull away from the front of the house. Moments later they were followed by the new cook, let out the front door by a black woman in a nurse’s uniform. As the cook came down the steps and along the sidewalk to the gate, she looked back for a moment and seemed to give a great sigh of relief as the nurse locked the door and turned off the porch light. Lights inside the house quickly followed suit.
The cook, a stout woman in her early forties, pushed through the gate at the end of the walk. Throwing another rapid glance over her shoulder toward Berkeley House, she hurried to an aging Ford Escort parked in the shadows of a large oak tree some distance from the nearest street lamp. Unlocking and opening the door, she shoved her purse to the passenger side seat and slid in beneath the steering wheel.
“You got it?” Striker asked from the back seat.
The woman jerked around. “Oh, God! You scared me! How’d you get in my car?”
“Easy when you know how. You got it?”
The woman grabbed her purse and pulled out a small cassette recorder. “Almost got caught getting it back. That Emmy Lou’s one snoopy black bitch. You got the other hundred?”
“Here.” Striker handed a hundred-dollar bill over the front seat. At the same time, he grabbed the recorder from the woman’s hand.
“What’s on that thing’s not gonna get me in trouble, is it?” she asked. “You’re not gonna do anything to hurt the old woman, are you?”
Holding up the recorder, Striker said, “Whatever’s on this thing’s got nothin’ to do with you or her, and if anything happens after I listen to the tape, it won’t be happening in Charleston, at least for now, anyway.”
The woman let out a shallow swish of breath. “If I didn’t need the money so bad…” She let her words fade away before adding, “Tape probably doesn’t have what they talked about in the dining room, but I heard most of it from the kitchen when I was bringin’ in the food and pickin’ up plates afterwards.”
Striker thought he detected a more-info-will-cost-you inflection in her voice. “Uh-huh,” he hummed, followed by, “You got nothin’ else to do tonight?”
The woman turned back in Striker’s direction, her hand on the seat back for support. “Whatcha mean nothin’ to do? Got two kids at home to take care of. Bein’ a single mom’s not much fun, I clue you.”
Striker studied the woman for a moment. “What about another hundred? Let the kids take care of themselves for a while. You and me, we go for a ride.”
The woman bristled at the thought. “What are you getting at? You think I’m some kinda easy pickup or somethin’?”
Striker reached forward and touched the woman’s hand resting on top of the seat back, a soft touch, nothing rough, nothing to generate fear. “Uh-uh. Just a single mom needing money. Me? A man wanting all the information I can get and willing to pay. Like an escort service.” Taking his hand away from hers, he reached into his pocket, brought out a wad of bills, pulled off another hundred, and held it toward the front seat.
The woman looked at the bill for a moment, then said, “My name’s Connie, short for Constance.”
“Okay, Connie babe, I’ll sit back here; you drive and give me everything you heard at dinnertime.”
As the woman started the engine and pulled out into the street, she said over her shoulder, “I just hope nobody finds out about this, or I won’t be able to find work anywhere in this city. You won’t tell, will you?”
Striker laughed. “Me tell? Don’t worry, lady. It’s like we never met.”
CHAPTER 8
Wednesday, 17 October 2001
Jacksonville Beach, Florida
It was two days later when Native Diver made her way past the St. Johns River jetties, continuing due east for slightly over two miles. Cutting across the abrupt demarcation line of muddy discharge from the river into the clearer blue of the Atlantic, the dive boat turned to starboard and steadied on a southerly heading. With Steve Park at the topside controls, Matt worked below on the main deck, laying out two sets of dive equipment on top of the raised engine cover.
Taking inventory, Matt separated their equipment into two equal piles: facemasks with attached snorkels, fins, regulators, vest-like buoyancy control jackets commonly called BCs by the diving fraternity, dive knives, compasses, and two small shovels. Using a tape measure, he marked off a fifty-foot coil of safety line at ten-foot intervals and tied a white strip of cloth at each marked location. In case shifting sand were to cover the box-like object, they could work their way out from the barge’s bow to where the object was located.
Matt heard Park call down above the engine noise. “You didn’t forget the picture of that sub you downloaded off the Internet, did you?”
“No, I didn’t forget,” Matt shouted over the noise of the big Detroit diesel and the wind whipping around the corners of the boat’s enclosed cockpit. He immediately held high for Park to see a clear plastic Ziploc pouch with the picture of a World War II German U-XXI class submarine on one side. On the other was an enlarged view of the sub’s sail area showing the strangely shaped Schnorchel standing higher and slightly aft of the two accompanying periscopes atop the conning tower.
The next words Matt heard from topside were “Oh, shit!”
“Oh, shit, what?” he shouted in response.
“You’d better get up here.”
“Hey, man, I’m trying to get everything together,” Matt called back.
“Just get up here,” Park yelled down over his shoulder. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
“Whatta you mean?” Matt asked, climbing the ladder to the topside deck.
Park pointed dead ahead. “There.”
“I’ll be damned,” Matt uttered in amazement, immediately sinking onto the padded seat next to Park and grabbing a set of binoculars. Jamming them to his ey
es and quickly adjusting the focus, he said, “That’s no pleasure craft. That’s a goddamn ship. The name Sea Rover on the bow. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s an old Navy ASR. Might be painted white, but—”
“ASR?” Park asked.
“Auxiliary Submarine Rescue. One of the older class on a catamaran hull. Only a couple built back in the seventies before going strictly to the single hull configuration. I remember when they were decommissioned, lots of people wanted one. Jacques Cousteau, for one, to replace the old Calypso.”
“How do you know that?”
“Once dived on a wreck with one of Cousteau’s team members. He told me.” Scanning the ship with the binoculars, Matt added, “Still got the helo deck on the stern and the original two-hundred-ton crane It would’ve been used to lower a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle into the water for personnel recovery from a sunken sub, but the DSRV’s gone and so are the emergency personnel transfer capsules. Question is, why are they out here?” Biting his lower lip in thought, Matt lowered the binoculars. “Could the Coast Guard have asked somebody else to check on the barge?”
“No. I talked with Commander Worley yesterday and told him we were coming out to make sure the buoy lines were still secure on the barge. He would’ve mentioned it if they had anybody else doing it. Fact, he said it’d be at least another two, three weeks before they could raise the barge and tow it out of here. Thanked me for coming out to check.”
As Native Diver drew closer, Matt said, “This is not some coincidence, Steve. And they’re not just stopping by for a quick look-see. Anchor balls, forward and aft. And that flag flying from the main mast…” He tried to focus his binoculars for a clearer view. “If the wind’ll stand it out a little more…uhh, A-F…AFI. Sonofabitch! Antiquity Finders, Inc. We’ve got a problem, but who could’ve told them?”
“Probably Bruder,” Park answered. “The archeology big shot from Tallahassee that came to see me when you were in Washington. Didn’t trust that guy the minute I saw him.”
“Brandy Mason seemed to think he’s pretty sharp.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Too sharp. Sneaky, you ask me. The way I told him to wait out in the store, and suddenly there he was, standing in the doorway to the office when I was putting the magnetometer printout in the desk. If he didn’t see what I was doing, he’s blind, which I seriously doubt. And half a second later, he says he’s surprised we haven’t already used a magnetometer.”
With the two orange warning buoys now in sight, Park eased back on the throttle and allowed the dive boat to slowly putter in toward the first buoy he knew was secured to the after section of the barge. “There’s a line on the bow,” Park said. “If you’ll get it and tie it off to the buoy line, we’ll find out if they’ve got divers down there.”
With the binoculars raised once again, Matt said, “Already know that. Over there.” He pointed toward a double mushroom of air bubbles breaking the surface. “Just forward of the buoy marking the front of the barge. Two divers at least.”
Swinging the binoculars up toward the ship’s pilothouse bridge, he said, “There’s a guy on the ship checking us out with binoculars…and now he’s on the phone. Two bits’ll get you a dollar, he’s letting his boss know Native Diver and its crew of two have arrived.”
Within moments, three other men stepped onto the bridge, two carrying what looked to Matt through the binoculars like rapid-fire machine pistols. The third man, much older, was nautically dressed as though spending a day at sea on his yacht. He held a megaphone, which he raised to his mouth. “You’re violating restricted water. Please leave immediately.”
Matt yelled back over the noise from Native Diver’s engine, “Who the hell…” To Park, “The engine—shut her down!” As soon as Park flipped the ignition switch to OFF, Matt shouted, “Whatta you mean, restricted water? By whose order?”
“State of Florida,” the man called back.
“That’s bullshit! We put these warning buoys out here the other day on a sunken barge at the request of the Coast Guard. They asked us to come back and check to make sure they’re still secure, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”
The man lowered the megaphone, turned to the open pilothouse doorway and spoke to someone inside. Immediately, a fourth man stepped out of the pilothouse and onto the bridge. Taking the megaphone, he said, “Mr. Berkeley? I am addressing Mr. Matthew Berkeley of the NAARPA organization, am I not?”
“You got it,” Matt called back.
“I’ll be damned,” Park said out of the corner of his mouth in Matt’s direction. “It’s Bruder, the guy from Tallahassee.”
“And you’re Dr. Mason’s man from Tallahassee,” Matt immediately responded toward the larger vessel.
“That’s correct, Mr. Berkeley. Eric Bruder.”
“So what the hell’s this restricted water thing? And what are you doing with those people? I sent you an application requesting exploration and excavation rights to this area almost a week ago.”
Bruder spoke hurriedly to the man in the yachting outfit, then called, “Afraid I never received your application, Mr. Berkeley. Appears Antiquity Finders also submitted an application which has been approved.”
Matt dropped back onto the cushioned seat, numbed by Bruder’s words. “Can’t be,” he said to Park. “No way those people could have known about this place, unless—”
Park cut him off. “Like I said, gotta be Bruder.”
Matt pushed to his feet and called, “I think there’s been a mistake, Bruder. A very serious mistake, and I plan to find out what happened. I suggest you be in your office tomorrow ‘cause I’ll be there with a copy of my application, and I want to see AFI’s application.”
“Afraid not, Mr. Berkeley. It contains privileged information that—”
“Don’t give me that crap, Bruder. State of Florida’s Sunshine Law says I can. That’s state land down there, and state land means it’s public land. Anything to do with public land must be available to the public, and that’s me.”
“It really won’t do you any good, Mr. Berkeley,” Bruder said through the megaphone, “but if you want to waste your time, be my guest. And, oh yes, Mr. Park, I promise AFI’s divers will check your hazard-to-navigation buoys each day to make certain they’re secured to the barge. Now please leave. AFI does not want any unpleasantness, but if you insist…”
Eyeing the machine pistols, which slowly rose in his direction, Matt cupped his hands over his mouth and directed his next words to the man wearing the yachting cap. “You’re Henry Shoemaker, aren’t you?”
The man nodded.
“You and AFI have pulled this shit with other people and other organizations before, but you’ve pulled it on the wrong person this time. One way or the other, I’m gonna find out what’s down there and make sure the right people get it.” Taking his seat and ignoring anything else that might be coming from the Sea Rover, Matt said to Park, “With those two pinheads pointing popguns at us, we’re not gonna accomplish anything by hanging around. Let’s go. I’ve gotta call Brandy Mason, and I don’t want to do it on a cell phone. Too many ears on the airwaves.”
Henry Shoemaker watched from Sea Rover’s bridge as Native Diver backed away from the buoy, pivoted, and pointed its bow to the north. Turning to Bruder, he said, “Mr. Berkeley needs to be taught some manners. Just enough to warn him off. Tomorrow in Tallahassee, I think. What do you think, Eric?”
Bruder nodded. “Tomorrow in Tallahassee.”
“And Striker. Where is he?”
“Arrives in Washington this afternoon,” Bruder answered.
“Excellent,” Shoemaker said, retreating into the pilothouse out of the sun. Once inside, he added, “Unfortunate for Mr. Berkeley but, as my loving wife insists, it appears it’s time we removed the opposition from the playing field. And by the way, from now on the game you play is Starla’s responsibility and yours. Don’t embarrass me, Eric. I’m not one who likes to be embarrassed.”
CHAPTER 9
Chantilly, Virginia
There was still enough daylight for Striker to glance at the street map one last time before tossing it onto the passenger seat. He followed the short line of cars as they split in different directions at the intersection of Middle Ridge and Melville Lane, then followed the car in front of him as it turned left.
It had been years since Striker had been to northern Virginia, a lifetime ago it seemed. So much had changed. He frowned at the thought. Outside Washington’s Capitol Beltway and past the suburbs where open farmland had been now stood shopping malls, sprawling subdivisions, four-lane highways, and—worst of all—people. Hundreds of thousands of people. For all he knew, probably some of them were ones who had taunted him in his early years. Progress—it stretched almost to the Shenandoah Foothills, their rounded tops silhouetted in the afterglow of the sunset now visible in his rearview mirror as the car neared the top of the hill. It was, however, the memory of those foothills and their people that still made him angry.
Communist-controlled Poland. After the death of his father at the hands of the government, Karol Strzelecki and his mother were smuggled out of the country by members of an underground worker’s group with the help of a sympathetic couple visiting from East Germany. First, they stopped in a small town just over the East German border, then in Berlin, and finally, hidden beneath the false floorboard of a truck, they passed the “Wall” and entered the city’s American sector.
Who had helped them get to the United States? He had been too young to remember, but he did remember the farm just outside Middleburg, Virginia: its rolling hills, the small cottage near the main house, and his mother cooking meals and cleaning for the family. He could smell the stables he’d mucked; the horses, his only friends.