“What is an old French revolver doing on the Maine?” Summer asked.
Nobody had an answer until Giordino refocused the image. In fuzzy letters, a faint engraving could be seen on the barrel.
“‘F. de Orbea Hermanos, Eibar 1890,’” Pitt read. “That would be the manufacturer.”
He turned to Summer with an arched brow. “You were close. The correct question would be, what is an old Spanish revolver doing aboard the Maine?”
35
Have you found your way to the bottom of the pile yet?”
St. Julien Perlmutter looked up from his table in the central research room of the National Archives to see the smiling face of the facility’s chief military records archivist.
“Very nearly, Martha, very nearly. I apologize for the heavy workout. The files on the Maine are more extensive than I anticipated.”
“Lord knows, I can use the exercise.” Martha rested a hand on one of her ample hips. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can pull for you.”
“Martha, my dear, you are pure ambrosia,” Perlmutter said with a smile.
It was his third day in the research room, poring through century-old documents. Although already familiar with the Maine’s sinking, he was fascinated at reading the official inquiry into the disaster and its supporting documentation, including vivid accounts by survivors and reports of the ship’s damage from Navy hard-hat divers. Possible causes for the explosion, ranging from a smoldering coal bunker to a bursting boiler, were all dismissed by the inquiry board in favor of a suspected external mine.
At first, Perlmutter found no mention of the archeologist Ellsworth Boyd, so he jumped ahead to records of the salvage and refloating of the warship in 1912. Detailed engineering reports, rich with black-and-white photographs, documented the construction of the cofferdam around the wreck, the removal of human remains, and the refloating of the ship and her second sinking.
Throughout the reports, Perlmutter found no mention of Boyd’s artifact.
He perused a remaining file of naval communiqués related to responses in Havana immediately after the explosion. He was nearing the end of the folder when he found a letter from the chief forensics officer at Brooklyn Naval Hospital addressed to General Fitzhugh Lee, the Consul General of Cuba. The narrative was brief:
March 18, 1898
Dear General Lee,
Enclosed under seal is a copy of Dr. Ellsworth Boyd’s recent autopsy report, as requested.
Yours obediently,
Dr. Ralph Bennett
U.S. Naval Hospital, Brooklyn
Perlmutter studied the letter, wondering why an autopsy would have been performed on Boyd. His research instincts told him there was more to the story. Closing the file, he called to Martha.
“All finished?” she asked.
“I’m done with these materials but I’m afraid the quest continues. Can you see what Uncle Sam is holding in the way of some nineteenth-century diplomatic correspondence?”
“Certainly. What did you have in mind?”
“The file of one General Fitzhugh Lee, while engaged as Consul General to Cuba, in the year 1898.”
“Let me check. Those might be at the Library of Congress.”
The archivist returned a few minutes later, beaming. “You’re in luck, Julien. We have a file for him in the archives bearing the dates 1896 to 1898. I put a rush order to have it pulled, but it will still take an hour or two.”
“Martha, you are a peach. Two hours would allow an enjoyable lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill. Can you join me?”
“Only if we make it an hour,” she replied with a blush. “I am on the federal payroll, you know.”
“The most civil of servants,” Perlmutter said, standing and bowing. “After you, my dear.”
When they returned an hour and a half later, the files were waiting in the archivist’s bin. Refreshed from a lunch of oyster stew and crab cakes, Perlmutter dove into the records.
The correspondence from Fitzhugh Lee, a Civil War veteran and nephew of Robert E. Lee, was voluminous. The papers covered his 1896 appointment to the post in Havana by President Grover Cleveland until his evacuation from Cuba in April 1898 at the onset of the war with Spain.
Perlmutter skimmed through a hoard of letters describing growing tensions with the Spanish ruling force and growing resistance from the ragtag Cuban rebels.
Working through a flurry of communiqués surrounding the Maine’s destruction, he was surprised to find a copy of Boyd’s autopsy. The one-page document, a simple narrative of the examination, revealed a startling discovery. Boyd had not died from the Maine’s explosion. Instead, his death was attributed to a gunshot wound to the chest, in conjunction with evidence of partial drowning.
Perlmutter sniffed for more clues and found them an hour later in the form of a letter from the Maine’s captain, Charles Sigsbee, to Lee. The handwritten letter said, in part:
I am in receipt of the report on Dr. Boyd. It would seem to confirm Lieutenant Holman’s report of a skirmish on the quarterdeck immediately after the explosion. Holman believes there was a brief fray over Boyd’s crate. He didn’t realize that Boyd was mortally wounded but had assumed he was abandoning ship to board the steamer. I have no way of confirming your suspicions about those responsible, but perhaps that can be ascertained with the apprehension of the steamer. This might also affirm the supposition that the Maine was destroyed on account of Dr. Boyd’s relic. It seems a sad vanity that war will accrue on account of the treasure from a long-deceased empire. C. D. Sigsbee.
“Treasure?” Perlmutter muttered to himself. “It’s always treasure.”
He waded through Lee’s remaining papers, discovering another clue: a War Department communiqué to Lee dated a week after the Maine’s sinking. Lee was informed that the USS Indiana had engaged the steamer San Antonio in the Old Bahamas Channel off Cuba’s northeast coast.
The Indiana’s captain reported with regret that the vessel was sunk in deep water during an attempted apprehension. While the contraband was lost, a survivor, Dr. Julio Rodriguez, disclosed his assessment of the suspected repository site before he succumbed from wounds received during the engagement. The location was marked classified and sent to the War Department for strategic evaluation.
Perlmutter put down the letter, aghast at the implications. He now had more questions than answers. But he knew the Pitts’ pursuit of the Aztec stone carried considerable significance.
He perused the remaining documents in the file, nearly overlooking a one-page letter on White House stationery dated 1908. It was clearly misfiled, he thought, recognizing the sweeping signature of the President at the bottom. But perusing the shortly worded Executive Order, he felt a tightening in his throat.
An hour later, he bundled the Lee papers and carried them to the return counter, where Martha was finishing with another customer.
“I am most grateful for your assistance, Martha,” he said. “That should conclude my studies for today.”
“Find anything astounding that will bring you back tomorrow?”
“Indeed.” Perlmutter’s eyes were aglow. “A whole new cause for the Spanish — American War.”
36
It might be meaningless, but I thought it was worth passing along.”
Rudi Gunn’s blue eyes glistened on the ship’s video conference monitor as he waited for a reply a thousand miles away.