then walk down to the surf to cast his net. He liked to fish in the area because of the inlet. Sometimes Billy would cast directly into the surf. Other times he’d fish the inlet, usually on the north side of the pass.”
“The north side is still undeveloped today. Maybe it’s still there,” O’Brien said.
“Do you think you could find it?” asked Abby.
“I have to try. The kidnappers are holding Jason.”
“I’ll pray,” Abby whispered.
O’Brien said, “They know of the possibility of the remaining uranium hidden somewhere on the beach, maybe Rattlesnake Island, the island where Fort Matanzas is located. The men holding Jason might comb the sand on the island with sophisticated metal detection equipment. The advantage I may have right now is what you’ve told me about the lighthouse, but if you can remember anything else Billy said that night, something might give me another lead.”
“I’m so sorry about the young man,” Glenda said. “Unfortunately, I’ve told you all that my husband told me. He didn’t have a lot of time to get out details.”
“I understand.”
“Maybe you can find it with the information grandma gave you.”
“I don’t know,” Glenda said. “Matanzas doesn’t give up its secrets easily. It’s a beautiful place, but it is a place of suffering and a lot of bloodshed.”
“Matanzas Inlet has quite a horrific past,” Abby said, serving more food. “Not a good story at dinner, horrendous.”
O’Brien nodded. “I remember some of the history.”
“It was where the Spanish, in 1565, slaughtered the French Huguenots.” Glenda’s eyes enlarged. “More than two-hundred-fifty settlers died. The waters of the pass ran red with their blood. Happened at the inlet on Rattlesnake Island. In Spanish, Matanzas means massacre.”
Abby said, “Years later, the fort was built by the Spanish to keep the British from entering the inlet, coming upriver and attacking the back side of St. Augustine.”
O’Brien said, “A few centuries after that, the Germans enter the inlet and, somewhere on the beach, they bury a deadly cargo. Glenda, who investigated Billy’s murder?”
“Let me see … umm … there was a young man, a FBI agent. His name was Robert Miller. Never forgot him. A nice person. Professional, but he had some sort of anxiousness about him I didn’t quite understand.”
“How do you mean?”
“Each time I asked him about the investigation he became more evasive. Finally, he stopped returning my calls. I never heard from him again. In St. Johns County, Sheriff Walker investigated it. He thought Billy was killed by a highway robber. He couldn’t explain why Billy’s truck was abandoned. Sheriff Walker died about twenty years ago. One of his deputies is still alive, I think. Deputy Brad Ford said he had kept the investigation going as long as he worked in the department, about twenty-five years. However, he never found anyone either.”
O’Brien took a bite of food. “What was the general reaction, both on the federal and local levels, when you told them about Billy’s sighting of the German sub and the burying of something on the beach?”
“They were polite but not really interested in talking with me. I never got the chance to tell them what Billy said about the beam of light from the lighthouse. A few days after my call, I was told the Navy dispatched planes but never saw the submarine. Government men said they dug all around Matanzas Inlet but only found turtle eggs buried in the sand.”
“Sean,” said Abby, “my grandfather said that the Japanese men took off running. Grandma, you never heard if the government caught them or what, right?”
“No, I didn’t, and I never saw anything in the papers. Agent Miller told me the FBI never turned up anyone.”
O’Brien was silent. He asked, “Did they do an autopsy on your husband?”
“Told me they did.”
“The newspaper report you showed me when you came to my house indicated Billy had been shot once and, yet, you said you heard three shots.”
Glenda coughed, her eyes watering. “Yes, and sometimes I still hear them.”
“Did they tell you, or did they know what kind of gun was used to kill Billy?”
“I do remember the FBI telling me it was a.38 caliber bullet that killed him.”
“Would you allow your husband’s body to be exhumed? I’d want to know if he was shot more than once and whether all the bullets were removed from the body.”
Abby bit her lower lip and sipped some wine. Glenda looked beyond the dining room to a framed picture of her husband on the wall. Billy Lawson, dressed in his Army uniform, was smiling. Forever twenty-one. “Okay,” Glenda said. “If you do find evidence of more gunshots, what do we do? What if Billy wasn’t killed by a.38 bullet?”
“Then we find out why Billy’s murder was covered up by the U.S. government.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The Phoenicia restaurant was crowded for a Thursday evening. Mohammed Sharif liked it that way. Easier to blend in with the people-his people, he felt. The scent of garlic chicken, braised lamb, baklawa, and Turkish coffee drifted over the tables. Sharif and Rashid Aamed sat in a back corner of the restaurant, watched a belly dancer, and spoke Arabic in hushed tones. They ate grape leaves with rice and lamb, hummus, and tabouli, and drank a Chateau Musar white wine grown in the Bekaa Valley.
Sharif said, “The Russian, Yuri Volkow, he already has images of the material on the Internet, offered to select dealers who have been vetted for their lists of private buyers. Our dealer has invited us to bid. The bidding is to begin at ten million U.S. dollars. However, they boast more is expected. The person who offers the highest bid for these two will have an even more exclusive first-bid option for the other canisters.”
“It confirms what the old German told us. But the Russians have yet to produce the rest of the canisters,” Aamed said.
“How would they know where more material is anymore than we might? They must know something. It would be information they could only have received from one of the three men who discovered the submarine.”
“The one who was kidnapped, the younger one. No doubt that Volkow extracted information from him.”
“Perhaps,” said Aamed, biting into a stuffed grape leaf. “So if the younger man knows the possible location of the remaining canisters, then the two other men, the one named Cronus-the Greek guy, and the American, Sean O’Brien, would know the location as well.”
“Indeed. O’Brien, we learned, owns the boat.”
“Your thoughts, Mohammed?”
“Allah will guide us,
“If we find the material before the Russians, how shall we deal with them and recover the canisters they have?”
“We become the highest bidders. Upon retrieving the material, Waahid will become a martyr,
Aamed’s jaw noticeably popped from controlled tension. He smiled just as the reflection of the belly dancer’s supple body moved across his dark eyes, and said, “It would seem the time is approaching to kidnap the girl as well.”
“Not yet, not until we have the material. After that, take her. We have
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“Sean, you’re not going up to Rattlesnake Island tonight, are you?” Abby Lawson asked.
