Well it took a long time, but Cartier finally got back to me. Good news bad news sort of thing.
Bad news they say the watch had been opened up and not put back together correctly and the gasket was damaged/not aligned. More bad news they denied the warranty claim because it had been opened by someone besides Cartier. More bad news I bought the watch new from the same AD I bought my SteelFish from. It surely looked 100% new so I cannot possibly figure out how it was "opened" after it left the factory. In my mind it has to be a QC problem when Cartier put it together.
Good news the AD, yes the AD is going to take care of the repair bill so in the end it will cost me nothing. All is well that ends well and I should have the watch back in 3-4 more weeks.
My wife is bummed she does not have it for the holidays. 
She is vindicated in that she was positive she never got it wet or had the crown out. I can only guess that over time small bits of moisture got past the incorrectly aligned gasket?Cartier was nice enough to send along pictures to show the gasket problem and the AD sent them to me. See below. Still I feel like Cartier dropped the ball here. I seriously doubt my AD sold me a used watch as all the paperwork was blank and the watch was flawless. Why on earth would they have opened it? 99% sure they did not. This has to be on Cartier. So very cool to see a company do the right thing and not push that cost onto their customer. Kudos to my AD. Another reason to get a new watch from an AD and not gray market.
Final bit of good news is the service will include a polish and at just under 2 years it was starting to show a scuff here and there. So it should show back up as good as new. Its a Christmas miracle Tiny Tim!
