The Spy (39 page)

Bell waved the telegrams and headed back to the platform to scan them in private. “Join you in a minute. Orders from the front office.”

Bennett laughed jovially, calling over his shoulder, “But you already know they’re only instructing you to sell more insurance.”

The train was crossing salt marshes, and the cool, wet wind that swirled under the awning smelled of the sea. The wind rattled the emergency-brake handle that swung from a short rope rhythmically against the wall and buffeted the flimsy yellow telegraph paper.

Research had no word yet from Germany on the identity of the schoolgirl who was Riker’s ward—that it was taking so long was proof that Joe Van Dorn was right to expand field offices into Europe.

They
had
unearthed additional details about the death of Erhard Riker’s father in South Africa in 1902 during the Boer War. Smuts, the Transvaal leader, had led a sudden raid on the copper-mine railroad from Port Nolloth, where the senior Riker was searching for a rumored deposit of alluvial diamonds. He was taking refuge in a British railroad blockhouse when the Boers attacked with dynamite hand bombs.

The third wire was from James Dashwood.

Bell grinned. Dash had the makings of becoming a character. His grin faded abruptly. The last wire in the stack started with the warning initials YMK.

You must know—Archie Abbott warning that if Bell was not already aware, he should be.

 

 

YMK.

 

ARNOLD BENNETT AT HOME PARIS.

“What?” Bell said aloud. He glanced through the glass in the door, saw the man in tweed who claimed to be Arnold Bennett, and looked back at the telegram.

It was a stunning revelation, and Isaac Bell rejoiced.

At last he knew for sure who he was hunting. The man who claimed to be Arnold Bennett was in league with the Chinese, probably with their boss, who was likely the man who ordered the redhead to kill Scully when the detective uncovered the Chinatown connection.

At last he held the advantage. They did not know that Bell knew.

“Misser Bell?”

Bell looked up from his telegrams and down a gun barrel.

L
OUIS, I THOUGHT WE AGREED THAT YOU WOULD KEEP that in your suitcase.”

Harold was behind Louis, drawing a weapon from his coat.

“You disappoint me, too, Harold. That is not a Bible. Not even a traditional tong hatchet but a firearm any self-respecting, modern American criminal thug would be proud to carry.”

Louis’s English was suddenly accentless, his manner superior.

“Step to the edge of the platform, Mr. Bell, and turn your back to us. Do not draw the pistol you conceal in your shoulder holster. Do not try for the derringer in your hat. Do not consider reaching for the knife in your boot.”

Bell glanced past them through the vestibule door. At the front of the coach, the false Arnold Bennett was holding forth with broad gestures that were having his desired effect of distracting the few people in the car. The wheels were clattering too loudly for Bell to hear their laughter.

“You’re unusually observant of sidearms for a divinity student, Louis. But have you considered that witnesses will hear you shoot me?”

“We’ll shoot you if you force us to. Then we will shoot the witnesses. I’m sure you’ve heard that we Asiatics and Mongolians have no regard for human life.
Turn around!
”

Bell looked over his shoulder. The railing was low. The roadbed was disappearing behind the train at fifty miles an hour, a blur of steel rails, iron spikes, stone ballast, and wooden ties. When he turned, they would crack his skull with a gun barrel or plunge a knife in his back and dump him over the railing.

He opened his hand.

The telegrams scattered, twisting and twirling in the buffeting slipstream, and flew in Louis’s face like demented finches.

Bell thrust his arms straight up, grabbed the edge of the roof awning, tucked his knees, and kicked a boot at Harold’s head. Harold jumped left where Bell wanted him to, clearing a path to the red wooden handle of the train’s emergency brake.

Any doubt that they were not divinity students vanished when Bell’s hand was an inch from the emergency brake. Louis smashed his gun against Bell’s wrist, slamming it away from the brake pull. Unable to bring the train to a crashing halt, Bell ignored the searing pain in his right wrist and punched with his left. It landed with satisfying force, hard enough on Louis’s forehead to buckle his knees.

But Harold had recovered. Concentrating his strength and weight like a highly trained fighter, the short, wiry Chinese wielded his gun like a steel club. The barrel smashed into Bell’s hat. The thick felt crown and the spring steel band within absorbed some of the blow, but momentum was against him. He saw the awning spin overhead, then the sky, and then he was tumbling over the side rail and falling toward the tracks. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the railroad ties, the wheels, the truck they carried, and the platform steps. He seized the top step with both hands. His boots hit the ties. For an awful split second he was trying to run backward at fifty miles an hour. Squeezing hard on the steel step, knowing that if his hands slipped he was through, he curled his arms as if doing a chin-up and hauled his feet onto the bottom stop.

Harold’s pistol descended in a blur. It seemed to fill the sky. Bell reached past the gun to seize Harold’s wrist and yanked with all his might. The tong gangster catapulted over him, flew through the air, and smashed into a telegraph pole, his body bent backward around it like a horseshoe.

Clinging to the steps, Bell reached for his own pistol. Before he could pull it, he felt Louis’s automatic pressed to his head. “Your turn!”

B
ELL BRACED HIS FEET TO JUMP AND CAST A LIGHTNING-SWIFT glance over the ground racing past. From his precarious perch on the steps he could see farther ahead than Louis. Beside the train was a steep ballast embankment, an endless row of telegraph poles, and a clump of thick trees as deadly as the poles. But far ahead spread an open field dotted with sheep. A barbed-wire fence ran along the track to keep livestock off the rails. He had to clear the fence if he had any hope at all of surviving the jump. But first he needed a five-second reprieve to get to the field.

He shouted into the roaring wind and clattering wheels, “I will track you down, Louis.”

“If you live, I will cock my ears for the clump of crutches.”

“I will never give up,” Bell said, buying another second. Almost to the grassy field. The slope was steeper than it appeared from the distance.

“Last chance, Bell. Jump!”

Bell bought one more second with “Never!”

He launched in a desperate dive to clear the fence. Too low. He missed a telegraph pole by feet and a fence post by inches. But the top strand of barbed wire was leaping at his face. The speeding train’s slipstream slammed into him. The blast of air lifted his flying body over the wire. He hit the grass face-first like a base runner stealing second, and he tried to tuck arms and legs into a tight ball. He rolled, powerless to avoid any rock or boulder in his path. In the blur of motion there was suddenly something solid right in front of him, and he had no choice but to slam into it.

The shock jolted every fiber in his body. Pain and darkness clamped around his head. He was vaguely aware that his arms and legs had untucked and were flopping like a scarecrow’s as he continued rolling on the grass. He hadn’t the strength to gather them in again. The darkness deepened. After a while he had the vague impression that he had stopped moving. He heard a drum beat. The ground shook under him. Then the darkness closed in completely, and he lay absolutely still.

At some point the drums ceased. At another, he became aware that the darkness had lifted. His eyes were open, staring at a hazy sky. In his mind he saw a spinning field filled with sheep. His head hurt. The sun had moved an hour’s worth to the west. And when he sat up and looked around, he saw a flock of real sheep—unshorn woollies grazing peacefully, all but one a hundred yards away that was struggling to stand.

Bell rubbed his head, then he felt for broken bones and found none. He rose unsteadily and walked toward the sheep to see if he had injured it so badly that he would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery. But, as if inspired by his success, it managed to stand on all fours and limp painfully toward the flock. “Sorry, pardner,” said Bell. “Didn’t aim to run into you, but I’m glad I did.”

He went looking for his hat.

When he heard a train coming, he climbed up the embankment and planted himself in the middle of the tracks. He stood there, swaying on his feet, until the train stopped with the tip of its engine pilot pressing between his knees. A red-faced engineer stomped to the front of his locomotive and yelled, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Van Dorn agent,” Bell answered. “On my way to Napa Junction.”

“You think that makes you own the railroad?”

Bell unbuttoned the inner breast pocket of his grass-stained coat and presented the most compelling of the several railroad passes he carried. “In a manner of speaking, I do.” He staggered to the ladder that led to the cab and climbed aboard.

At Napa Junction, the stationmaster reported, “The English clergyman and his Chinese missionary took the train north to St. Helena.”

“When’s your train to St. Helena.?”

“Northbound leaves at three-oh-three.’”

“Wait.” Bell steadied himself on the counter. “What did you say?” Another field of round sheep was spinning in his head.
“Clergyman?”

“Reverend J. L. Skelton.”

“Not a writer? A journalist?”

“When’s the last time you saw a newspaperman wearing one of them white collars?”

“And he went north?” Away from Mare Island.

“North.”

“Did he take the Chinese student with him?”

“I told you. He bought two tickets to Mount Helen.”

“Did you see them both board?”

“Saw them board. Saw the train leave the station. And I can report that it didn’t come back.”

“When’s your next train south?”

“Train to Vallejo just left.”

Bell looked around. “What are those tracks?” An electric catenary wire was supported over them. “Interurban?”

“Napa-Vallejo and Benicia Railroad,” the stationmaster answered, adding with a disdainful sniff, “the trolley.”

“When’s the next trolley to Vallejo?”

“No idea. I don’t talk to the competition.”

Bell gave the stationmaster his card and ten dollars. “If that reverend comes through here again, wire me care of the commandant of Mare Island.”

The stationmaster pocketed half a week’s salary, and said, “I suppose I’ve never seen you if the reverend asks?”

Bell gave him another ten dollars. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

He was waiting at the Interurban tracks, head spinning, when a red, four-seat Stanley Steamer with yellow wheels glided by silently. It looked brand-new but for mud spattered on its brass headlamps.

“Hey!”

Bell ran after it. The driver stopped. When he peeled back his goggles, he looked like a schoolboy playing hooky. Bell guessed that he had “borrowed” his father’s car.

“I’ll bet you twenty bucks that thing can’t do a mile a minute.”

“You’ll lose.”

“It’s six miles to Vallejo. I’ll bet you twenty bucks you can’t get there in six minutes.”

Bell was losing the bet until, two miles from Vallejo, they came squealing around a bend in the road, and the driver stomped on his brakes. The road was blocked by a gang of men who had dug a trench across it to lay a culvert pipe. “Hey!” yelled the driver. “How in heck are we supposed to get to Vallejo?”

The foreman, seated in the shade of an umbrella, pointed at a cutoff they had just passed. “Over the hill.”

The driver looked at Bell. “That’s no fair. I can’t do sixty over a hill.”

“We’ll work out a handicap,” said Bell. “I think you’re going to win this race.”

The driver poured on the steam, and the Stanley climbed briskly for several hundred feet. They tore across a short plateau and climbed another hundred. At the crest, Bell saw a breathtaking vista. The town of Vallejo lay below, its grid pattern of streets, houses, and shops stopping at the blue waters of San Pablo Bay. To the right, Mare Island was marked by tall steel radio towers like those Bell had seen at the Washington Navy Yard. Ships lay alongside the island. In the distance, he saw columns of black smoke rising behind Point San Pablo, which divided San Francisco Bay from San Pablo Bay.

“Stop your auto,” said Bell.

“I’m losing time.”

Bell handed him twenty dollars. “You already won.”

A line of white battleships rounded the headland and steamed into view. He knew their silhouettes from the Henry Reutendahl paintings reproduced for months in
Collier’s
. The flagship, the three-funnel
Connecticut,
led the column, followed by
Alabama,
with two smoke funnels side by side, then the smaller
Kersage,
with two tall in-line funnels and stacked forward turrets, and
Virginia
taking up the rear.

“Wow!” exclaimed the kid at the wheel. “Say, where are they going? They’re supposed to anchor at the city.”

“Down there,” said Bell. “Mare Island for maintenance and supplies.”