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Bell thought fast, envisioning the long, sprawling bays of San Francisco enclosed from the Pacific Ocean by the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula. From Suisun City, the main line continued southwest seventeen miles to the Benicia Ferry that carried the train across the narrow Carquinez Strait to Port Costa. Then the final thirty-mile run beside San Pablo Bay to Oakland Mole, where a passenger ferry crossed San Francisco Bay to the city.
Twenty miles north of the city, up San Francisco Bay and across San Pablo Bay, was the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. It was the U.S. Navy’s Brooklyn Navy Yard of America’s West Coast, with a long history of building, repairing, and refitting warships and submarines. Napa Junction, connected to Suisan City by a local branch line to the west, was only five miles north of the shipyard.
Bennett and the Chinese would be a short train or electric trolley ride from Mare Island, where the Great White Fleet would put in from its voyage to refit, replenish food and water, and load fresh ammunition from the magazines.
“Isn’t that a coincidence?” said Isaac Bell.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m taking that very same train.”
“Where are your bags?”
“I travel light.”
The Overland Limited pulled into Suisun City ten minutes late. The train to Napa Junction was blowing its whistle. Bell snatched a handful of wires waiting for him at the telegraph office and hurried to board. It was a two-coach local, with a gaily striped awning sheltering its back platform. There were a half dozen passengers in the rear car, Arnold Bennett in their midst and starting to tell a story. He interrupted himself to indicate an empty seat. “Come let us talk you into tromping grapes with us at St. Helena.”
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.
RIKER ARRIVED LA.
NOW EN ROUTE TO SAN DIEGO.
BODYGUARD PLIMPTON SUSPICIOUS.
JD MISTOOK FOR TIFFANY JEWEL AGENT.
BODYGUARD PERSUADED JD ITINERANT TEMPERANCE SPEAKER.
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 t
hrough the glass in the door, saw the man in tweed who claimed to be Arnold Bennett, and looked back at the telegram.
WRITER NOT-REPEAT NOT-ON OVERLAND LIMITED.
SF VD AGENTS MEETING TRAIN AT BENICIA FERRY.
WATCH STEP.
It was a stunning revelation, and Isaac Bell rejoiced.
