Chapter 41 - The Depths Below the Breakwater
Two hours later, the courthouse plaza was empty, but the war for our harbor was far from over.
We returned to the estate as the midday fog finally began to burn away under a cold, relentless sun. The long, armored black town cars were gone from our gravel driveway, replaced by the white cruisers of the state environmental police and the cutter of the United States Coast Guard, which now sat anchored directly between our stone pier and the foreign survey vessel *Zephyr*.
Helena de Witt had been taken into federal custody on the courthouse steps under the Belgian extradition warrant. Catherine had refused to get into the marshals' van, throwing herself onto the pavement in a screaming fit of hysteria until she was physically restrained and driven away to the women’s detention center in Framingham.
Julian stood with me at the end of the stone pier. The cold wind off the water whipped his dark hair across his forehead. He held the brass 1888 triangulation plate in his hands, staring down at the circular bronze recess in the ancient granite cornerstone where it had originally been mounted over a century ago.
"I’m sorry, Mother," he said. His voice was raw, stripped of all defenses. "I brought her into this house. I let her mock everything you and father built. I was so completely blind."
I put my arm through his, pulling him close against the biting salt wind. "You were looking for love, Julian. There is no crime in being blind to cruelty until it shows its true face. The only crime is refusing to see it once the glass is broken."
He dropped to one knee on the wet granite. With steady, deliberate hands, he aligned the brass plate with the four rusted iron dowels set into the cornerstone. With a dull, heavy *clunk*, the plate settled into its original recess for the first time in eighty-six years. The alignment was absolute; the compass rose pointed dead-true toward the Boston light.
From behind us, down the long length of the pier, came the rapid sound of running boots.
It was Marcus. He wasn't carrying documents this time. His face was white, his coat flapping open, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Eleanor! Julian!" he shouted, waving his satellite phone frantically. "Get away from the breakwater! Step back from the edge right now!"
Julian sprang to his feet, stepping instinctively in front of me. "Marcus, what is it? Helena is in custody! The auction is closed!"
"It wasn't Helena’s ship!" Marcus yelled, skidding to a halt on the wet stones, his hand pointing out toward the *Zephyr*, which still sat motionless beyond the outer rocks. "The Belgian prosecutors just raided the Antwerp offices! Helena wasn't the head of the syndicate!"
A deep, deafening shudder suddenly tore through the stone beneath our feet.
It was not the sound of thunder, nor was it the crash of a wave. It was an underwater detonation—a low, concussive thump that sent a five-foot geyser of white foam and ancient black silt exploding straight out of the ocean floor, right at the base of our newly restored cornerstone.
Out in the bay, the Panamanian survey vessel *Zephyr* did not turn away to flee.
Its heavy iron crane swung out over its stern, hoisting a massive, rust-caked iron object from the seabed that had been hidden beneath the silt for over eighty years—an object bearing the unmistakable black cross and faded serial numbers of a scuttled German U-boat from 1944.
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And high up on the bridge wing of the *Zephyr*, lowering his binoculars to look directly at Julian and me through the rising sulfur smoke, stood a man who was neither an Antwerp lawyer nor a Belgian diplomat.
He was the spitting image of Harold Sterling, but thirty years younger, holding a detonator wire in his bare hand.
