“Never mind those. I plan to put this one on the newswire as soon as you put me off in Europe. I can see the headline now: ‘Famous author abducted, crosses the Atlantic in luxury zeppelin.’ That should give my name a boost. Might even be able to get a better rate.”
“But that’s not entirely accurate. I didn’t abduct you; I rescued you from those who did.”
“Piffle.” The writer waved a hand. “It’s just a headline, to grab attention. I’ll explain everything else in the body of the story.”
“I thought as much.” Barron smiled. “I’ve just had a thought. If you are going to tell the tale, then you need to see Majestic as she truly is. I’ll arrange for Mr. Sorensen, my chief pilot, to take you out in one of the autogyros.”
Lafayette nearly dropped his plate.
Fiona clapped her hands together. “What a splendid idea! Findlay, I can take you out in the other.”
Newcombe was impressed. “You fly?”
“I can fly anything with wings… and in the case of the autogyros, things without wings, too.”
“Strictly speaking, the autogyro’s rotor assembly is a type of wing…” He realized he was lecturing and quickly adjusted course. “What I meant to say is, I would love to fly with you.”
“Well that’s an even better idea,” Lafayette interjected with a forced chuckle. “Newcombe here can take notes and tell me all about it when he gets back. That way you don’t have to go to any additional trouble.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” Barron answered, his voice steady but insistent. “No, Mr. Lafayette, if you intend to tell this story, then you must see the view from the top.”
“This must be old hat for you,”
Hurricane Hurley glanced at his traveling companion. “How’s that, Miss Nora?”
“Dashing off on one of your adventures. Flying across the ocean on a moment’s notice. You do this all the time, don’t you? Just like in your stories.”
“I do seem to travel quite a bit, though not usually in such luxury.” He didn’t let on that the luxury of flying aboard Pan-American’s newly inaugurated Yankee Clipper — a Boeing 314—came with a hefty price tag. The cost of two trans-Atlantic fares had put a serious dent in his savings account.
“Well I could definitely get used to this.” She raised her champagne glass to him, and then took a sip.
Hurley smiled. Nora’s enjoyment of what amounted to little more than sitting in a chair for hours on end was a pretty fair trade-off for the cost of the journey; she embraced every aspect of the flight with an almost child-like enthusiasm, pressing her face to the porthole as they taxied down the Hudson River and lofted skyward. Once airborne, with nothing to see but clouds and the gray ocean, she had taken out a pen and notebook, and commenced scribbling away furiously, filling several pages and pausing only to enjoy the food and beverages provided by the stewardesses. And now, several hours later, as they approached their first port — Horta harborage on the island of Faial in the Azores archipelago — she was back at the window, soaking up every detail.
Formed by volcanic activity, the island of Faial looked like little more than a bump in the ocean, sloping with deceptive gentleness up from sea level to its highest point, Cabeco Gordo — Portuguese for “Fat Mountain”—a massive volcanic caldera with an elevation of more than three thousand feet. The city of Horta, situated on the southern part of the island, was a sprawl of Anglo-Saxon architecture stretching across the low lying ground facing the harbor and gradually creeping like ivy up the surrounding hillsides. The island had long been a waypoint for ships crossing the ocean, but technological developments in the late 19th and early 20th century, including both the emergence of air travel and the critically important trans-Atlantic cable, had breathed new economic life into the archipelago, and Horta in particular.
Although they hadn’t been able to learn a great deal from their visit to the Royal Industries hangar in New Jersey, they had a rough idea of the route Barron would be taking to cross the Atlantic. Because the airplanes were considerably faster than even the fastest dirigible, they would be able to get ahead of the Majestic, and as soon as she put in an appearance anywhere in Europe, they would know about it. At least, that was the plan.
Hurricane was pleased that the experience of travel had apparently distracted Nora from her concerns about Lafayette’s safety. The simple fact that they were on the move, doing something… anything… was preferable to staying in one place and worrying. For his own part he was worried, and not just about their friends on the Majestic.
Dodge’s silence was disturbing. He had expected a phone call or at the very least a telegram, but there had been no word. He knew that Dodge could take care of himself, but that didn’t lessen his concern. The young man had gone off with a bomb-throwing anarchist; there were any number of ways that could end badly.
And then there was the matter of their shadows.
He escorted Nora off the plane, making idle small talk about the weather on the mid-Atlantic island, and the fact that it was now almost evening, even though their wristwatches and their bodies said it was only midday, but he kept a wary eye on the two men in gray suits who had boarded the plane in New York shortly after he and Nora. He was pretty sure he had seen them earlier, following the cataclysmic conclusion of the chase the day before.
The men weren’t hard to miss. Although they seemed adept at blending into the background, they couldn’t hide their distinctive racial heritage.
He had made a casual inquiry of a stewardess during the first leg of the flight, and been told that the pair were Chinese businessmen. By itself, that was suspicious. New York did indeed have a robust, if insular, Chinese community, but the primary area of influence for Chinese shipping abroad was the Pacific.
More significant of course was the fact that the men were not Chinese.
He didn’t fault the stewardess for not recognizing the difference. Unless a person had spent a great deal of time immersed in the many different cultures of the East, it was an unfortunate reality that people from that part of the world all kind of looked alike. But Hurricane had spent nearly half his life roaming the world, and he immediately recognized their country of origin: Nippon… Japan.
That also did not of itself constitute cause for concern. Although the invasion of Manchuria had aroused anger toward Japan in the West, it did not follow that every citizen of that country was responsible for the atrocities committed there. The men might indeed simply be businessmen, traveling abroad, looking for new opportunities.
That did not however explain why the pair was following Nora and himself, and that fact, not their heritage, had aroused Hurley’s suspicions.
He escorted Nora to a popular portside establishment, adorned with a carved wooden sign that read “Café Sport,” where many of the clipper’s passengers were admiring the museum-like collection of scrimshaw and otherwise doing what most travelers did when there was nothing else to do: indulging in food and drink. Hurley found a table with a view of the harbor, where a maintenance crew was refueling the plane. While Nora resumed writing in her notebook as she sipped a drink, he fired up a cheroot, and considered what to do next.
The Japanese men entered the cafe and, to all appearances, chose a table well away from the flow of foot traffic through the establishment. They kept their eyes down, but every few minutes one of them would glance casually around the establishment. Hurricane was careful to be equally discreet in his own surveillance, never looking directly at them, but his suspicions about the men were not alleviated in the slightest.