Clive Cussler - The Spy

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.

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.