“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.”