The Spy (37 page)

“Yes, sir. Was either of the officers killed Ron Wheeler?”

“No.”

Bell breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Wheeler snuck off to spend the night with a woman. If he hadn’t, he’d be dead, too. It was his people who were killed.”

“Thank the Lord he wasn’t. Captain Falconer says he’s irreplaceable.”

“Well, here is something else irreplaceable,” Van Dorn growled. Six hundred miles of copper telephone wire between Chicago and Washington did not diminish the sound of his anger. “This is not in the newspapers, and it won’t ever be—are you still alone there, Isaac?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Listen to me. The Navy has suffered a terrible loss. The explosion started a fire. The fire destroyed their entire arsenal of experimental electric torpedoes that had been imported from England. Wheeler’s people had apparently improved their range and accuracy vastly. More important—much more important—Wheeler’s people figured out a way to arm the warheads with dynamite. The Navy Secretary told me this morning. He is distraught. So much so, he is threatening to offer the President his resignation. Apparently the use of TNT would have given U.S. torpedoes ten times more power underwater.”

“Can we assume it was not an accident?”

“We have to,” Van Dorn answered flatly. “And even though the Navy is nominally in charge of guarding their own facility, they are extremely disappointed with Van Dorn Protection Services.”

Isaac Bell said nothing.

“I don’t have to explain the consequences of being a government entity’s target of blame, deserved or not,” Van Dorn continued. “And I am not entirely sure what you were doing in Chicago when the spy attacked in Newport.”

This did require an answer, and Bell said, “The Great White Fleet is about to make landfall at San Francisco. Scully was tracking the spy, or his agents, to San Francisco. Thanks to Scully, I very likely have him in my sights.”

“What do you suppose he intends to do?”

“I don’t know yet. But it must involve the fleet, and I am going to stop him before he does it.”

Van Dorn remained silent for a long minute. Bell said nothing. Finally the boss said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac.”

“He will not pack his bags and go home after Newport. He will attack the fleet.”

Van Dorn said, “All right. I’ll alert Bronson in San Francisco.”

“I already have.”

He went back to the luggage room. Van Dorns reported that Herr Shafer and the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, as their tickets had indicated. “Their train’s leaving, Isaac. If you’re going with ’em, you gotta go.”

“I’m going.”

TWO STRONG HORSES PULLED an ice wagon modified with carriage springs and pneumatic tires instead of hard rubber, which made its ride unusually smooth on the rough cobbled streets that slanted down to Newport’s waterfront. No one took note in the dim light of the thinly scattered gas lamps that the driver clutching the brake handle cut too slight and boyish a figure to heave hundred-pound blocks of ice onto a fishing dock. And if anyone thought it odd that the driver was singing to her horses,
in a soft soprano, they kept their opinions to themselves. The seamen of Newport had been smuggling rum, tobacco, slaves, and opium for three hundred years. If a girl wanted to entertain her horses while delivering ice to a boat in the dark, that was her business.

The boat was a rugged, broad-beamed, thirty-foot catboat with a stubby mast ahead of a low coach roof. With its gaff-rigged sail that was nearly square, and a centerboard instead of a fixed keel, it was faster than it looked and equally at home in shallow bays and off the coast. A gang of men in slickers and wool watch caps climbed out of the cabin.

While the girl stood watch with her hands buried in her pockets, the men drew the canvas off the ice wagon’s cargo, inclined a ramp of planks between the wagon and dock, and gently slid four seventeen-foot-long, cigar-shaped metal tubes down the ramp one by one. They shifted the ramp and slid all four into the boat, and lashed them securely to a cushioned bed of canvas sails.

When they were done, the wide wooden hull squatted low in the water. All but one of the men climbed into the wagon and drove away. The man who stayed raised the sail and untied the mooring lines.

The girl took the tiller and sailed the boat skillfully off the dock and into the night.

THAT SAME NIGHT—the westbound Overland Limited’s first night out of Chicago—reports waiting for Bell at Rock Island, Illinois, confirmed that the gem merchant Riker had indeed boarded the California Limited to San Diego. Still disliking coincidences, Bell wired Horace Bronson, head of the San Francisco office, asking him to assign James Dashwood, a young operative who had proven himself on the Wrecker case, to intercept the California Limited at Los Angeles. Dashwood should see whether Riker actually continued on to San Diego to purchase pink tourmaline gems or changed trains to San Francisco. Regardless, the young detective would trail Riker and observe his subsequent actions. Bell warned Bronson that Riker was traveling with a bodyguard named Plimpton, who would be watching his back.

Then he wired Research back in New York, asking for more information on the death of Riker’s father in South Africa and urging Grady Forrer to step up the hunt for information about his ward.

Laurence Rosania’s disappearance upon arrival had set off a frantic manhunt. But when Bell reached Des Moines, Iowa, the information was waiting that the retired thief—after giving his Van Dorn shadows the slip out of habit or professional pride—had been written up in the
Chicago Tribune
marriage announcements and was scheduled to steam toward a San Francisco honeymoon in his bride’s private car. So much for admonishing youth that crime did not pay, noted the Chicago Van Dorn headquarters.

Herr Shafer, Arnold Bennett, and Bennett’s Chinese companions had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, and it was with them that Bell continued on the journey west, hoping to pick up additional information from Research at the station stops along with what he could detect in their presence.

Then New York wired that Shafer was definitely a German spy.

“Herr Shafer” was an active cavalry officer, still serving as a major in the German Army. His real name was Cornelius Von Nyren. And Von Nyren was expert in land tactics and the use of quickly laid narrow-gauge railroads to supply an army’s front lines. Whatever he was spying on in America had nothing to do with Hull 44.

“Formidable on land,” Archie wrote. “But wouldn’t know a dreadnought from a birch-bark canoe.”

C
HINESE TO THE BACK OF THE LINE!”

It was the second morning out of Chicago, the Overland Limited drawing near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and something was wrong with the dining car. The corridor in the Pullman behind it backed up with hungry people in line for a breakfast already an hour late.

“You heard me! Chinks, Mongolians, and Asiatics to the back!”

“Stay where you are,” Isaac Bell said to the divinity students.

Arnold Bennett was whirling to their defense. Bell stopped him. “I’ll deal with this.” At last a chance to get to know Arnold Bennett’s charges, Harold and Louis. He turned around and faced the bigot who had shouted. The cold anger in Bell’s blue eyes, and the unmistakable impression that it was barely contained, caused the man to back away.

“Don’t mind him,” the tall detective told the divinity students. “People get testy when they’re hungry. What’s your name, young fellow,” he asked, thrusting his hand out. “I’m Isaac Bell.”

“Harold, Misser Bell. Thank you.”

“Harold what?”

“Harold Wing.”

“And you?”

“Louis Loh.”

“L-e-w Lewis or L-o-u Louis?”

“L-o-u.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Little wonder that unpleasant chap is hungry,” growled Arnold Bennett, who was standing first in line. “The breakfasting accommodation of this particular unit of the Overland Limited was not designed on the same scale as its bedroom accommodation.”

Isaac Bell winked at Louis and Harold, who looked bewildered by Bennett’s densely circuitous English. “Mr. Arnold means that there are more sleeping berths in the Pullmans than chairs in the diner.”

The students nodded with vague smiles.

“They had better open that dining car,” Bennett muttered. “Before it’s put to the sack by ravening hordes.”

“Did you sleep well?” Bell asked Harold and Louis. “Are you getting used to the motion?”

“Very well, sir,” said Louis.

“Despite,” said Bennett, “my warning about jerky trains.”

The dining car finally opened for breakfast, and Bell sat with them. The Chinese were silent as sphinxes no matter what Bell said to draw them into conversation while the writer was happy to talk nonstop about everything he saw, read, or overheard. Wing took a small Bible from his coat and read quietly. Loh stared out the window at a land growing green in the spring and speckled with cattle.

ISAAC BELL LAY IN WAIT for Louis Loh in the corridor outside Arnold Bennett’s staterooms.

West of Rawlins, Wyoming, the Overland Limited was increasing speed across the high plateau. The locomotive fireman was pouring on the coal, and at eighty miles an hour the train swayed hard. When Bell saw the Chinese divinity student coming down the corridor, he let the careening train throw him against the smaller man.

“Sorry!”

He steadied himself by holding Loh’s lapel. “Did they issue your pocket pistol at the seminary?”

“What?”

“This bulge is not a Bible.”

The Chinese student appeared to shrivel with embarrassment. “Oh, no, sir. You are right. It is a gun. It is just that I am afraid. In the West, there is much hatred of Chinese. You saw at the breakfasting car. They think we’re all opium addicts or tong gangsters.”

“Do you know how to use that thing?”

They were standing inches apart, Bell leaning close, still holding his lapel, the youth unable to back away. Louis lowered his dark eyes. “Not really, sir. I guess just point it and pull the trigger—but it is the threat that is important. I would never shoot it.”

“May I see it, please?” Bell asked, extending his open hand.

Louis looked around, confirmed they were still alone, and gingerly drew the pistol from his pocket. Bell took it. “Top-quality firearm,” he said, surprised that the student had found himself a Colt Pocket Hammerless that looked fresh out of the box. “Where did you get it?”

“I bought it in New York City.”

“You bought a good one. Where in New York City?”

“A shop near the police headquarters. Downtown.”

Bell made sure the manual safety was on and handed it back. “You can get hurt waving a gun around you don’t know how to use. You might shoot yourself by mistake. Or someone will take it away and do it for you—and get off by claiming self-defense. I would rest easier if you would promise to put it in your suitcase and leave it there.”