Havana Storm (Dirk Pitt 23)

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 explosio

n. 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.