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“Guilty,” Falconer admitted with a practiced smile. “Do you suppose Joe Van Dorn would allow you to take the job?”
Isaac Bell fixed his gaze on the bones of Hull 44 rising on the ways. As he did, a yard whistle started the workday with a deepthroated bellow. Steam cranes chanted full-throttle. Hundreds, then thousands, of men swarmed onto the a-building ship. Within minutes, red-hot rivets were soaring like fireflies between “passer boys” and “holders-on,” and soon she echoed the din of hammers. These sights and sounds thrust Bell’s memory back to Alasdair MacDonald mourning his dead friend, Chad Gordon. “Horrible. Six lads roasted alive-Chad and all the hands working beside him.”
As if a shooting star had swept the last strands of darkness from the morning sky, Isaac Bell saw the mighty dreadnought for what she could be-a lofty vision of living men and a monument to the innocent dead.
“I would be amazed if Joe Van Dorn didn’t order me to take the job. And if he doesn’t, I’ll do it myself.”
ARMORED COFFINS
*
15
APRIL 21, 1908
NEW YORK CITY
THE SPY SUMMONED THE GERMAN HANS TO NEW YORK, to a cellar under a Biergarten restaurant at Second Avenue and 50th Street. Barrels of Rhine wine were half submerged in a cold underground stream that flowed through the cellar. The stone walls echoed the musical sound of tumbling water. They sat face-to-face over a round wooden table illuminated by a single lightbulb.
“We plot the future beside a buried remnant of pastoral Manhattan,” the spy remarked, gauging Hans’s response.
The German, who appeared to have put a dent in the Rhine wine supply, seemed moodier than ever. The question was, had Hans’s brain become too congested by wine and remorse to make him useful?
“Mein Freund!” The spy fixed Hans with a commanding gaze. “Will you continue to serve the Fatherland?”
The German straightened visibly. “Of course!”
The spy concealed a relieved smile. Listen closely, and you could still hear Hans’s heels click like a marionette’s. “I believe your many experiences include working in a shipyard?”
“Neptun Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik,” Hans answered proudly, obviously flattered that the spy remembered. “In Rostock. A most modern yard.”
“The Americans’ ‘most modern yard’ is in Camden, New Jersey. I think that you should go to Camden. I think you should establish yourself quickly in the city. You can draw on me for whatever you need, be it operating funds, explosives, false identification, forged shipyard passes.”
“To what end, mein Herr?”
“To send a message to the United States Congress. To make them wonder whether their Navy is incompetent.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Americans are about to launch their first all-big-guns battleship.”
“Michigan. Yes, I read in the papers.”
“With your experience, you know that the successful launch of a 16,000-ton hull from land into water demands balancing three powerful forces: gravity, drag on the slipway, and the upthrust of the stern’s buoyancy. Correct?”
“Yes, mein Herr.”
“For a few fraught seconds as the launch begins-when the final keel and bilge blocks are removed and the tumbler shores fall away-the hull is supported by nothing but the cradle.”
“This is correct.”
“I ask you, could strategically placed sticks of dynamite, exquisitely timed to detonate the instant she starts to slide down the ways, derail her cradle and tumble Michigan onto dry land instead of the river?”
Hans’s eyes lighted with the possibility.
The spy let the German fix his imagination upon the avalanchine crash of a 16,000-ton steel vessel falling on its side. Then he said, “The sight of a five-hundred-foot-long dreadnought hull sprawled on the ground would make a laughingstock of the United States’ ‘New Navy.’ And surely destroy the Navy’s reputation with a Congress already reluctant to appropriate the money to build more ships.”
“Yes, mein Herr.”
