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So Chase is somewhat established as stubborn. Now we just need to show her finding the next case, the case that will have her trailing an MIA pilot in Panama. The pilot bombed and eventually took over a submarine carrying nazi gold to argentina at the end of the war, the pilot flew a floatplane with depth charges and was looking for targets of opportunity when he see the the Uboot and attacks, he blows a hole in the uboat and it raises the white flag and contacts him on shortwave asking him to land and the rescue the crew, he does and makes a deal with the commander to help him move the gold and hide it somewhere. They move it to the corn islands and bury it. The pilot disappears a month later along with the co-pilot and gunner. She tracks them all the way through their early training and then down to panama to guard the canal. Then she goes down to Panama on tip from the pilots daughter that her father never died in action, was never in fact missing as far as she knows, he simply moved to panama after the war,brought his wife down and so on. Nicole meets up with Sil hawkard, sailor extrodinare whom she hires as a translator and to take her out to dive the wreck of the uboat. or to scan the seafloor with radar looking for the sub. She calls up her old friend from germany and he traces the details of the uboat and tell her that there is in fact a missing uboat and that's when she goes to panama.
The man who sets the whole thing in motion, the one who gives her that piece of paper with the name on it is acting on behalf of someone who doesn't have the resurces to move the gold, but wants the americans, a senator or someone to know that they have it? ala cryptonomincon perhaps?
Pilot: Otto Lawrence.
The other mystery man is the senator's father who financed his early business with the nazi gold taken from the Uboat,
Okay so the men were based in the Carribean, the official details of what happened are languishing on Puerto Rico, the naval base at San Juan. That's where she meets Sil, they go looking for the wreck. Also note that there was 250 million in gold brought from france before the fall in 1941. It was sent to Admiral Georges Robert who then affirmed his allegiance to the Vichy regile and became custodian of the gold. So perhaps the men never see a uboat or anything else of the sort, they just hear about the gold and know that one of the transport boats it torpedoed? But it takes Chase quite a while to figure that out.
This isn't Nazi gold buried the basement of some bank or wherever vandamere bush put his gold. This was money stolen from the french government by a us navy officer who them had himself surgically altered and returned home under a false name.
They talk about why Chase does it, establish him as a nerdy guy in wool sweater vest maybe, based on the character from Rubicon. They go to lunch and then a man gives Nicole a name, she goes back and runs it through the WWII database, it isn't there. She goes to the files and finds the man's file, but there's nothing in it. She meets with the mysterious stranger again (the first time they meet he gives her a piece of chalk and tells her to mark a bench and he will be in touch with her), he gives her some more to go on and she goes to the Archives where she finds enlistment papers, enough to know that he was a soldier. Then she goes to his squadron headquarters in Annapolis and finds more record, though not much, just that he was shipped to Panama in 1941 to protect the canal and the gulf. Also search and rescue for the marines that were training on the beaches there in preparation for action in the south pacific. She goes back to her boss and tell him the story, he says she can work the case, but that she had to take on the other new case as well, so she does and they end up being connected maybe? Maybe not, maybe she just ignores that case and everyone int he office starts liking her more because the boss is getting more and more pissed at her because she's.. or even better the boss says no to her request, gives her the file she's supposed to be assigned to and then she goes back to the mystery man and he does something such that her boss comes back to her and says, okay, you can work that case, though he obviously doesn't want her to do it all so then everyone starts to like her because the boss no longer does, though he can't do anything about it. Then she works it some more, uncovers a bit more but hits another wall and goes back to the mystery man to tell him there's just nothing on the guy. He's the one who says she needs to go to Panama, give her Sil Hawkard's name and number, she flies down and meets up with Sil on his boat.
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