Was my grandfather Arthur Mercer Senior’s surviving younger brother.
Evan's great-grand-uncle.
Vice Admiral David Mercer.
Seventy-four years old.
Chief of Naval Operations Emeritus.
Surgeon General Emeritus of the United States Navy.
Beside Admiral Mercer stepped United States Attorney Marcus Cooper, Chief Federal Prosecutor and Special Admiralty Master, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page federal grand jury indictment stamped with the raised red-wax dry seal of the DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY // SPECIAL ADMIRALTY CHANCERY.
And walking beside them, his jaw square, carrying a newly polished mahogany shadow box containing Arthur Mercer Senior’s original 1944 surveying transit…
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Was Captain Garrett Stone, Chief Surveyor Detachment, United States Navy.
Vice Admiral David Mercer stepped to the edge of the blue-and-red mat.
The seventy-four-year-old four-star Admiral snapped his polished leather bridge shoes together with an audible CRACK against the hardwood border, looked at his grand-nephew standing unbowed in his socks and undershirt, turned forty-five degrees toward me, and brought his white-gloved right hand up to an unyielding, razor-sharp military salute:
