Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

Giordino guided the crawler across the steel deck footings, now absent the inlaid teak that originally graced the ship. He battled with the crawler’s low level of lighting and an annoying time delay between his movements on a joystick and the device’s reaction, but he soon had it scurrying about the wreck.

The Maine’s remains were a ghostly tomb of corroding steel, the decks starkly empty. The robot crept into the stern superstructure, which had housed the officers’ and captain’s quarters. Where paneling and carpet once covered the interior, now there were only gray steel bulkheads. Most of the hatch doors had been dogged open, allowing free view of the empty cabins that had been home to sailors now long dead.

Giordino maneuvered the crawler down a companionway to the berth deck and into an empty wardroom. There was little to see other than some small cut-glass lighting fixtures that still clung to their ceiling mounts. Finding nothing that resembled a large stone, Giordino guided the crawler back to the main deck and exited the aft structure. He had bypassed the engine room and some coal bunkers, which everyone agreed were unlikely storage places for the stone.

“I think we’ve seen all there is to see.” He stretched the tired fingers that were operating the joystick.

“Nothing remotely resembling the stone,” Dirk said. “It probably didn’t survive the explosion.”

Summer nodded. “I guess we’ll never know the full Aztec tale.” She turned to Giordino. “Thanks for the effort, Al. If nothing else, you’ve captured some amazing footage of the old battlewagon.”

“All in a day’s work,” he said, sharing in their disappointment.

“How are you going to get your crawler back?” Dirk asked.

“I’ll send it walking toward Key West. If we’re still in the neighborhood in a few days, we can pick it up on the fly.”

As he spoke, the crawler caught a leg on a twisted ventilator that was pressed against the aft superstructure. Giordino had to reverse course in order to free the device.

“Hold up.” This came from Pitt, who had been standing silently behind the others, watching the video.

“Go back to where you got hung up.”

Giordino reversed the crawler a few steps. “Something catch your eye?”

“There, against the bulkhead. Can you zoom in with the camera?”

Giordino nodded and tapped a keystroke. The video display enlarged, revealing a metallic object wedged between the bulkhead and the damaged ventilator.

“It’s a gun,” Giordino said.

He finessed the camera controls to focus on the weapon. Pitt stepped to the monitor for a closer look. It was an open-frame revolver, showing only slight corrosion on the barrel and grip though missing its original wooden stock.

“It looks like a Lefaucheux,” Pitt said, “a French cartridge revolver that was a common sidearm with the Union cavalry during the Civil War.”

“It looks to be wedged pretty tight under that mangled ventilator,” Giordino said. “It must have gone unseen when they cleaned up the ship for refloating.” He brought the crawler a step closer, magnifying the image even more.

“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.