Chapter 25
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Auke Bay Harbor—Juneau, AK
Marco cleared the table and began washing the breakfast dishes.
“Can I help with those?” Bill was on his third cup of coffee and seemed raring to go.
“I got it,” Marco replied. “You’d waste too much water.” He was surprised Bill was this animated, since he had flown in after midnight the night before.
Bill paced back and forth across the salon, the wool blanket from the guest bed folded over his arm. He opened and closed cabinets in the galley and salon. “I don’t suppose we have time to take a quick look at that transmitter you found before we head out today?”
It was a three-hour run to Taku Harbor, the site of an abandoned cannery, where Marco had planned for them to spend the night.
Still, the days were long and they had plenty of time.
Marco decided to oblige his anxious friend.
“Sure, we can take a quick look, but I wanna get going pretty soon. We might slow down and troll for salmon on our way.”
“I’m just dying to see this thing.” The talk of fishing didn’t appear to distract Bill from his fixation on the radio. “I can’t believe you stumbled on a piece of gear like that out here in the wilderness.”
The old radio transmitter was heavier than Marco remembered. He blew dust off as he brought it down the stairs from the pilothouse.
Bill laid the heavy blanket over the dining table. “Got tools? We’ll need a few things—screwdrivers…”
“That woman I heard on the radio, the Coast Guard thought it was skip,” Marco said. “I was transmitting on low power with my boat antenna. She was on a handheld.” He set the old radio on the table back-end first. “No way it could be skip, right?” He pulled his toolbox from the utility locker.
“Skip doesn’t seem likely, no.” Bill wiped the outside of the radio with a paper towel. “Let’s see what kind of condition the parts are in. Even if we can’t restore it, the parts could be really useful for other projects—”
“It’s just, if it wasn’t skip, then it had to be close,” Marco interrupted. “A woman said she swam to shore. That coast is really rugged, Bill. Nobody is out there. The water is deadly cold.”
Bill grunted as he turned the radio upside down and began removing the retaining screws on the bottom. “This is a rare find. Any radio museum or collection would be thrilled—”
“I mean, they gave up because they knew she’d be dead in the water,” Marco continued, “but she was onshore, on an island. I even found the red metal—”
“I don’t think this is healthy for you, buddy,” Bill replied. “The Coast Guard deals with these things every day. They’re the experts. Worrying about this woman isn’t going to bring Michelle back. Grab that screwdriver and give me a hand.”
Bill’s bluntness was a gut punch, but he was right.
Marco felt an…obligation? Maybe that wasn’t the right word.
There was a hole in his chest where Michelle had been ripped out, and somehow it felt self-inflicted.
The missing woman seemed like a second chance at redemption—like he could fill the void by having a role in saving her.
He picked up the screwdriver and got to work.
The screws were stainless steel and hadn’t corroded at all over the years. Except for the large dent in the top of the case, the radio appeared to be in remarkably good shape, considering it had spent decades at the bottom of a pile of rubble.
The enclosure came off easily enough. Marco couldn’t help gasping when Bill lifted it clear and the old-school craftsmanship inside was revealed.
One glass tube was cracked—probably from the same impact that had dented the lid, but the other vacuum tubes appeared to be still intact.
There was no printed circuit board, as all the wiring in those days was done with actual wires under a metal structural support.
Bill cleaned a little dirt from around the components and exercised the tuning knobs.
“These tuners are variable capacitors made with stacks of parallel metal half-disks. As long as they turn well, they will pretty much work forever. These look completely pristine. This is one of the rare things in electronics where they don’t make em like they used to.
The color of the windings on this main transformer looks good.
No sign that it ever overheated or cooked the wires.
I bet it would still power up. I’m confused about…
‘Power Transformer 2’…that seems odd. I don’t know what a second power transformer would be for, and it’s weird…
metal enclosure around a transformer. Maybe it caused radio interference? Metal enclosure was a shield?”
Marco put on his reading glasses and leaned forward for a closer look.
The aluminum of the second transformer had a different patina than the rest of the structure.
He tried to jiggle it, but it was screwed down securely.
He rummaged through the toolbox and picked out a Phillips screwdriver, holding it for Bill to take.
Bill paused again. “It’s attached with Phillips screws.
That was really unusual in those days. The rest of the screws are all slot head.
” He took the tool Marco was already holding for him.
“I think Phillips screws had just been invented about the time this was built. Maybe they did that to make this tamper resistant? I bet almost nobody owned a Phillips screwdriver back then.”
Up in the pilothouse, a whistle interrupted the static on the SSB radio.
“Hang on, listen…” Marco said.
“You should turn that thing off,” Bill replied. He backed out four screws and lifted the metal enclosure. “Uh, there’s no transformer in here. What’s this?”
Where the aluminum box had been sat a brown burlap bag the size of a lime. Bill lifted it with his thumb and forefinger, then let it plop back into place. “What do you think?”
Marco picked it up. It was dense and heavy, like a tiny sandbag, and was secured with twine drawstrings tied in a shoelace bow. There was some kind of lettering, faded, handwritten on the side of the bag. Looked like a J then an 8? Or maybe a B? Then some numbers, six digits or so.
Marco tugged at the drawstrings and the knot released. “Bill, can you hand me a piece of paper off that notepad?”
Bill tore off a clean piece of paper and set it on the table next to the bag.
Marco eased the bag open with his forefinger, then pulled the sides, opening it wide. He began to pour the contents onto the paper.
Bill gasped.
Marco set the bag back down, still half full. Bright sparkling grains of gold metal reflected in the sunlight shining through the galley window.