The Spy Page 16

  “Dorothy, I am so glad you came,” said Falconer. “Your father would be very proud to see you here.”

  “I’m proud to see his guns. Already mounted. This is a splendid shipyard. You remember Ted Whitmark?”

  “Of course,” said Falconer, shaking Whitmark’s hand. “I imagine you’ll be a busy fellow when the fleet replenishes at San Francisco. Dorothy, may I present Miss Marion Morgan?”

  Marion was aware of being carefully measured as they traded hellos.

  “And of course you know Katherine,” Falconer concluded the introductions.

  “We came up together on the train,” said Whitmark. “I hired a private car.”

  Marion said, “Excuse me, Captain Falconer, I see a gentleman Isaac asked me to meet. Nice to meet you, Miss Langner, Mr. Whitmark, Miss Dee.”

  THE POUNDING OF THE WEDGES suddenly stopped. The ship was fully on her cradle. Isaac Bell headed to the stairs for a final look below.

  Dorothy Langner intercepted him at the top of the stairs. “Mr. Bell, I was hoping to see you.”

  She extended her gloved hand, and Bell it took it politely. “How are you, Miss Langner?”

  “Much better since our conversation. Vindicating my father won’t bring him back, but it is a comfort, and I am very grateful to you.”

  “I am hoping that soon we will have definitive proof, but, as I said, I personally have no doubt that your father was murdered, and we will bring his killer to justice.”

  “Whom do you suspect?”

  “No one I am prepared to discuss. Mr. Van Dorn will keep you appraised.”

  “Isaac-may I call you Isaac?”

  “All right, if you want.”

  “There is something I told you once. I would like to make it clear.”

  “If it’s about Mr. Whitmark,” Bell smiled, “be aware he’s headed this way.”

  “I will repeat,” she said quietly. “I am not rushing into anything. And he is leaving for San Francisco.”

  It struck Bell that a key difference between Marion and Dorothy was how they regarded men. Dorothy wondered whether she could add one to her list of conquests. Whereas Marion Morgan had no doubt she could conquer and therefore was not inclined to bother. It showed in their smiles. Marion’s smile was as engaging as an embrace. Dorothy’s was a dare. But Bell could not ignore her desperate fragility, despite her bold manner. It was almost as if she were putting herself forth and asking to be saved from the loss of her father. And he did not believe that Ted Whitmark was the man to do that.

  “Bell, isn’t it?” Whitmark called loudly as he bustled up.

  “Isaac Bell.”

  He saw tugboats gathering in the river to take charge of the hull when she hit the water. “Excuse me. I’m expected on the ways.”

  YAMAMOTO KENTA HAD STUDIED photographs of American warship launchings to choose his costume. He could not disguise that he was Japanese. But the less alien his clothes, the farther he could roam the shipyard and the closer he could approach the distinguished guests. Observing his fellow travelers on the train up from Washington, he was proud to see that he had dressed perfectly for the occasion in a pale blue-and-white seersucker suit and a pea green four-in-hand necktie matched by the color of his straw boater’s hatband.

  At the shipyard in Camden, he doffed the boater repeatedly in polite acknowledgment of ladies, important personages, and older gentlemen. The first person he had run into upon arriving at the remarkably up-to-date Camden shipyard was Captain Lowell Falconer, the Hero of Santiago. They had spoken late last fall at the unveiling of a bronze tablet to commemorate Commodore Thomas Tingey, the first commandant of the Washington Navy Yard. Yamamoto had given Falconer the impression that he had retired from the Japanese Navy holding the rank of lieutenant before returning to his first love, Japanese art. Captain Falconer had given him a cursory tour of the arsenal with the notable exception of the Gun Factory.

  This morning, when Yamamoto congratulated Falconer on the imminent launch of America’s first dreadnought, Falconer had replied with a wry “almost dreadnought” on the assumption-from one sea dog to another-that a former officer of the Japanese Navy would recognize her shortcomings.

  Yamamoto touched his brim once again, this time for a tall, striking blond woman.

  Unlike the other American ladies who streamed past with chilly nods for “that puny Asiatic,” as he had heard one murmur to her daughter, she surprised him with a warm smile and the observation that the weather had turned lovely for the launching.

  “And for the blooming of the flowers,” said the Japanese spy, who was actually comfortable with American woman, having secretly romanced several high-ranking Washington wives who had convinced themselves that a visiting curator of Asian art must be soulfully artistic as well as exotically Asiatic. At his flirtatious remark, he could expect her to either stalk off or move closer.

  He was deeply flattered when she chose the latter.

  Her eyes were a startling sea-coral green.

  Her manner was forthright. “Neither of us is dressed as a naval officer,” she said. “What brings you here?”

  “It is my day off from where I am working at the Smithsonian Institution,” Yamamoto replied. He saw no bulge of a wedding ring under her cotton glove. Probably the daughter of an important official. “A colleague in the Art Department give me his ticket and a letter of introduction that makes me sound far more important than I am. And you?”

  “Art? Are you an artist?”

  “Merely a curator. A large collection was given to the Institution. They asked me to catalog a small portion of it-a very small portion,” he added with a self-deprecating smile.

  “Do you mean the Freer Collection?”

  “Yes! You know of it?”

  “My father took me to Mr. Freer’s home in Detroit when I was a little girl.”

  Yamamoto was not surprised that she had visited the fabulously wealthy manufacturer of railway cars. The social set that swirled around the American’s New Navy included the privileged, the well-connected, and the newly rich. This young lady appeared to be of the former. Certainly, her ease of manner and sense of style set her off from the oft-shrill nouveaux. “What,” he asked her, “do you recall from that visit?”

  Her engaging green eyes seemed to explode with light. “What stays in my heart are the colors in Ashiyuki Utamaro’s woodcuts.”

  “The theatrical pieces?”

  “Yes! The colors were so vivid yet so subtly united. They made his scrolls seem even more remarkable.”

  “His scrolls?”

  “The simple black on white of his calligraphy was so… so-what is the word-clear, as if to imply that color was actually unessential.”

  “But Ashiyuki Utamaro made no scrolls.”

  Her smile faded. “Do I misrecall?” She gave a little laugh, an uncomfortable sound that alerted Yamamoto Kenta that all was not well here. “I was only ten years old,” she said hurriedly. “But I’m certain I remember-no, I guess I’m wrong. Aren’t I the silly one. I’m terribly embarrassed. I must look like a complete ninny to you.”

  “Not at all,” Yamamoto replied smoothly while glancing about surreptitiously to see who on the crowded platform was watching them. Nobody he could see. His mind was racing. Had she tried to trick him into revealing gaps in his hastily acquired knowledge of art? Or had she made a genuine mistake? Thank the gods that he had known that Ashiyuki Utamaro had presided over a large printshop and had not been the monastic sort of artist who toiled alone with a few brushes, ink, and rice paper.

  She was looking about as if desperate for an excuse to break away. “I’m afraid I must go,” she said. “I’m meeting a friend.”

  Yamamoto tipped his boater. But she surprised him again. Instead of immediately fleeing, she extended her long, slender cotton-gloved hand, and said, “We’ve not been introduced. I enjoyed talking with you. I am Marion Morgan.”

  Yamamoto bowed, thoroughly confused by her openness. Perhaps he was paranoid. “Y
amamoto Kenta,” he said, shaking her hand. “At your service, Miss Morgan. If you ever visit the Smithsonian, please ask for me.”

  “Oh, I will,” she said, and strolled away.

  The puzzled Japanese spy watched Marion Morgan sail sleek as a cruiser through a billowing sea of flowered hats. Her course converged with that of a woman in a scarlet hat heaped with silk roses. Their brims angled left and right, forming an arch under which they touched cheeks.

  Yamamoto felt his jaw go slack. He recognized the woman who greeted Marion Morgan as the mistress of a treacherous French Navy captain who would sell his own mother for a peek at the plans of a hydraulic gyro engine. He felt a strong urge to remove his boater and scratch his head. Was it coincidence that Marion Morgan knew Dominique Duvall? Or was the beautiful American spying for the perfidious French?

  Before he could ponder further, he had to doff his boater to a beautiful lady dressed head to toe in black.

  “May I offer my condolences?” he asked Dorothy Langner, whom he had met at the unveiling of the bronze tablet at the Washington Navy Yard shortly before he murdered her father.

  A MASTER CARPENTER in blue-striped overalls served as Isaac Bell’s guide when he made his final inspection under the hull. They walked its length twice, up one side and down the other.

  The last of the wooden shores bracing the ship had been removed, as had the poppets-the long timbers holding her bow and her stern. Where there had been a dense forest of lumber was a clear view alongside the cradle from front to back. All that remained leaning against the ship were temporary tumbler shores-heavy timbers designed to fall away as she began to slide down the flat rails, which were thickly greased with yellow tallow.

  Nearly every keel block supporting the vessel had been removed. The final blocks were assembled from four triangles bolted into single wooden cubes. Carpenters disassembled them by unscrewing the bolts that held them together. As the triangles fell apart, the battleship settled harder on the cradle. Swiftly, they unbolted the bilge blocks, the last holding her, and now Michigan’s full weight came on the cradle with an audible sighing of minutely shifting plates and rivets.

  “All that’s holding her now are the triggers,” the carpenter told Bell. “Yank them, and off she goes.”

  “Do you see anything amiss?” the detective asked.

  The carpenter stuck his thumbs in his overalls and peered around with a sharp eye. Foremen were herding workmen off the ways and out of the shed. With the hammering of the wedges finally stopped it was eerily quiet. Bell heard the tugs hooting signals on the river and the murmur of the expectant throng above him on the platform.

  “Everything looks right as rain, Mr. Bell.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “All they’ve got to do now is bust that bottle.”

  “Who is that man with the wedge ram?” Bell pointed at a man who abruptly appeared carrying a long pole over his shoulder.

  “That is a mighty brave fellow getting paid extra to poke the trigger if it jams.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Bill Strong. My wife’s brother’s nephew by marriage.”

  A steam whistle blew a long, sonorous blast. “We ought to get out of here, Mr. Bell. There’ll be tons of junk falling off her when she moves. If it happens to brain us, folks will say she’s an unlucky ship-‘launched in blood.’ ”

  They retreated toward the stairs that led up to the platform. As they parted at the juncture where the carpenter would join his mates on the riverbank and Bell would continue up to the christening, the tall detective took one last look at the ways, the cradle, and the dull red hull. At the bottom of the ways, where the rails dipped into the water, massive iron chains were heaped in horseshoe loops. Attached to the ship by drag cables, the chains would help slow her as she slid into the water.

  “What is that man doing with the wheelbarrow?”

  “Bringing more tallow to grease the ways.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Can’t say that I do. But here comes one of your men checking him now.”

  Bell watched the Van Dorn intercept him. The man with the wheelbarrow showed the bright red pass required to work under the ship. Just as the detective stepped aside, motioning for the man to continue, someone whistled, and the detective ran in that direction. The man lifted the handles of his barrow and wheeled it toward the rails.

  “A regular patriot,” said the carpenter.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wearing that red, white, and blue bow tie. A regular Uncle Sam, he is. See you later, Mr. Bell. Stop by the workmen’s tent. I’ll buy you a beer.” He hurried off, chuckling, “I’m thinking of getting me one of those bow ties for Independence Day. The waiters was wearing them at the boss’s tent.”

  Bell lingered, studying the man pushing the wheelbarrow toward the back of the ship. A tall man, thin, pale, hair hidden under his cap. He was the only man on the ways except for Bill Strong, who crouched with his ram hundreds of feet away at the bow. Coincidence that he wore a waiter’s bow tie? Did he get past the gates pretending to be a waiter until the ways were cleared and it was time to make his move unhindered? His pass had convinced the detective, though. Even at this distance Bell had seen it was the proper color.

  He began hastily shoveling globs of tallow out of the barrow onto the flat rail. So hastily, Bell noticed, that it looked more like he was emptying the barrow rather than spreading the grease.

  Isaac Bell plunged down the stairs. He ran the length of the ship at a dead run, drawing his Browning.

  “Elevate!” he shouted. “Hands in the air.”

  The man whirled around. His eyes were big. He looked frightened. “Drop the shovel. Put your hands in the air.”

  “What is wrong? I showed my red pass.” His accent was German.

  “Drop the shovel!”

  He was gripping it so tightly that tendons stood like ropes on the backs of his hands.

  A hoarse cheer erupted overhead. The German looked up. The ship was trembling. Suddenly it moved. Bell looked up, too, sensing a rush from above. In the corner of his eye he glimpsed a timber thick as railroad crosstie detach from the hull and tumble toward him. He leaped back. It crashed in the space in which he had been standing, knocking his broad-brimmed hat off his head and brushing his shoulder with the force of a runaway horse.

  Before Bell could recover his balance, the German swung the shovel with the gritted-teeth determination of a long-ball hitter determined to turn a soft pitch into a home run.

  24

  THE LAUNCHING PLATFORM HAD BEGUN TO SHAKE WITHOUT warning.

  The crowd fell silent.

  It suddenly felt as if after three years of building, growing heavier every day as tons of steel were bolted and riveted to tons of steel, the battleship Michigan refused to wait a moment longer. No one had touched the electric button that would activate the rams that would release the triggers. But she had moved anyway. An inch. Then another.

  “Now!” the Assistant Secretary of the Navy cried shrilly to his daughter.

  The girl, more alert than he, was already swinging the bottle.

  Glass smashed. Champagne bubbled through the crocheted mesh, and the girl sang out in golden tones, “I christen thee Michigan!”

  The hundreds of onlookers on the launching platform cheered. Thousands more on the shore, too far away to see the bottle break or the slow movement of the hull, were alerted by the voices of those on the platform and cheered, too. Tugboats and steamers tooted in the river. On the train tracks behind the shed, a locomotive engineer tied down his whistle. And slowly, very slowly, the battleship began to pick up speed.

  UNDER THE SHIP, the German’s shovel smashed Bell’s gun out of his hand and caromed off his shoulder. Bell was already thrown off balance by the falling timber. The shovel sent him pinwheeling.

  The German jumped back to the wheelbarrow and plunged his hands into its gelatinous cargo, confirming what Bell had seen from the stairs. He had been
shoveling tallow onto the ways not only to appear to be innocently performing his job but to expose what he had hidden under the tallow. With a glad cry he pulled out a tightly banded pack of dynamite sticks.

  Bell leaped to his feet. He saw no fuse to detonate the explosive, no powdered string to light, which meant that the German must have rigged a percussion cap to detonate on contact when the saboteur smashed it against the cradle. The German’s face was churning into a mask of insane triumph as he ran at the cradle holding the dynamite aloft, and Isaac Bell recognized the cold-eyed fearlessness of a fanatic willing to die to set off his bomb.

  With every shore and block removed, Michigan was balanced precariously as she started down the ways. An explosion would derail the cradle and spill the 16,000-ton battleship on its side, crushing the launching platform and sweeping hundreds to their deaths.

  Bell tackled the German. He brought the man down. But the madness that propelled the German to fearlessly face death gave him the strength to wrest free from the detective. The slowly sliding ship still had not left the shed nor reached the water’s edge. The German stood up and ran full tilt at its cradle.

  Bell had no idea where his Browning had fallen. His hat had disappeared and with it his derringer. He pulled his knife from his boot, propped erect on one knee, and threw it with a smooth overhand motion. The razor-sharp steel pieced the back of the German’s neck. He stopped in his tracks and reached back as if to swat a fly. Grievously wounded, he buckled at the knees. Yet he staggered toward the ship, raising his bomb. But Isaac Bell’s knife had cost him more than a few precious seconds. By stopping for an instant, he remained directly in the downward path of another falling timber. It hit the German squarely, crushing his head.

  The dynamite fell from his upstretched hand. Isaac Bell was already diving for it. He caught it in both hands before the percussion cap hit the ground and drew it gently to his chest as the long red hull hurtled past.