“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?”