Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler

anything on a miner by the name of Jake Hobart.”
    â€œYes, of course. I’m sorry, my mind was elsewhere.” Seagram could almost envision the man on the other end of the line. A West Pointer, under thirty—that much was betrayed by the clipped verbs and the youngish voice. Probably make general by the time he was forty-five, providing he made the right contacts while commanding a desk at the Pentagon.
    â€œWhat do you have, Major?”
    â€œI’ve got your man. His full name was Jason Cleveland Hobart. Born January 23, 1874, in Vinton, Iowa.”
    â€œAt least the year checks.”
    â€œOccupation, too: he was a miner.”
    â€œWhat else?”
    â€œHe enlisted in the Army in May of 1898 and served with the First Colorado Volunteer Regiment in the Philippines.”
    â€œYou did say Colorado?”
    â€œCorrect, sir.” McPatrick paused and Seagram could hear the riffling of papers over the line. “Hobart had an excellent war record. Got promoted to sergeant. He suffered serious wounds fighting the Philippine insurrectionists and was decorated twice for meritorious conduct under fire.”
    â€œWhen was he discharged?”
    â€œThey called it ‘mustering out’ in those days,” McPatrick said knowledgeably. “Hobart left the Army in October of 1901.”
    â€œIs that your last record of him?”
    â€œNo, his widow is still drawing a pension—”
    â€œHold on,” Seagram interrupted. “Hobart’s widow is still living?”
    â€œShe cashes her fifty dollars and forty cents’ pension check every month, like clockwork.”
    â€œShe must be over ninety years old. Isn’t that a little unusual, paying a pension to the widow of a Spanish-American War veteran? You’d think most of them would be pushing up tombstones by now.”
    â€œOh hell no, we still carry nearly a hundred Civil War widows on the pension rolls. None were even born when Grant took Richmond. May and December marriages between sweet young things and old toothless Grand Army of the Republic vets were quite ordinary in those days.”
    â€œI thought a widow was eligible for pension only if she was living at the time her husband was killed in battle.”
    â€œNot necessarily,” McPatrick said. “The government pays widows’ pensions under two categories. One is for service-oriented death. That, of course, includes death in battle, or fatal sickness or injury inflicted while serving between certain required dates as set by Congress. The second is nonservice death. Take yourself, for example. You served with the Navy during the Vietnam War between the required dates set for that particular conflict. That makes your wife, or any future wife, eligible for a small pension should you be run over by a truck forty years from now.”
    â€œI’ll make a note of that in my will,” Seagram said, uneasy in the knowledge that his service record was where any desk jockey in the Pentagon could lay his hands on it. “Getting back to Hobart.”
    â€œNow we come to an odd oversight on the part of Army records.”
    â€œOversight?”
    â€œHobart’s service forms fail to mention reenlistment, yet he is recorded as ‘died in the service of his country.’ No mention of the cause, only the date…November 17, 1911.”
    Seagram suddenly straightened in his chair. “I have it on good authority that Jake Hobart died a civilian on February 10, 1912.”
    â€œLike I said, there’s no mention of cause of death. But I assure you, Hobart died a soldier, not a civilian, on November 17. I have a letter in his file dated July 25, 1912, from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft, ordering the Army to award Sergeant Jason Hobart’s wife full widow’s pension for the rest of her natural life. How Hobart rated the personal interest of the Secretary of War is a mystery, but it leaves