Harry nodded. “Yeah, I hear talk in the neighborhoods that the Gophers are throwing their weight around.”
“I want you to find out who his new friends are. Five’ll get you ten, they will be the connection.”
“You could be onto something. I’ll get right to it. Oh, here, they passed me this as we were leaving.” Harry fished in his pockets. “Wire came in for you from the Philadelphia office.”
They had reached the corner of 42nd Street. Bell stopped under a streetlamp to read the wire.
“Bad news?”
“They got a line on a German sneaking around Camden.”
“Wasn’t that a German who did the Bethlehem job?”
“Possibly.”
“What’s in Camden?”
“They’re launching the battleship Michigan.”
22
THE SPY SUMMONED HIS GERMAN AGENT WITH A CRYPTIC note left at his Camden rooming house. They met in Philadelphia in a watchman’s shack on a barge tied to the west bank of the Delaware directly across the busy river from the shipyard. Through an ever-moving scrim of tugboats, lighters, ships, ferries, and coal smoke they could see the stern of the Michigan thrusting her propellers out the back of the shed that covered her ways. The river was only a half mile wide, and they could hear the steady drumbeat of carpenters pounding wooden wedges.
The ship workers had built a gigantic wooden cradle big enough to carry the 16,000-ton ship down greased rails from her building place on land to her home in the water. Now they were raising the cradle up to her by driving wedges under it. When the wedges pressed the cradle tightly against the hull, they would continue hammering them until the cradle lifted the ship off her building blocks.
The German was glum.
The spy said, “Listen. What do you hear?”
“They’re hammering the wedges.”
The spy had earlier passed close by in a steam launch to observe the scene under the hull, which was painted with a dull red undercoat. The “hammers” were actually rams, long poles tipped with heavy heads.
“The wedges are thin,” he said. “How much does each blow raise the cradle?”
“You’d need a micrometer to measure.”
“How many wedges?”
“Gott in Himmel, who knows. Hundreds.”
“A thousand?”
“Could be.”
“Could any one wedge raise the cradle under the ship?”
“Impossible.”
“Could any one wedge lift the cradle and the ship off her blocks.”
“Impossible.”
“Every German must do his part, Hans. If one fails, we all fail.”
Hans stared at him with a strange look of detachment. “I am not a simpleton, mein Herr. I understand the principle. It is not the doing that troubles me, but the consequences.”
The spy said, “I know you’re not a simpleton. I am merely trying to help.”
“Thank you, mein Herr.”
“Do the detectives frighten you?” he asked, even though he doubted they did.
“No. I can avoid them until the last moment. The pass you had made for me will throw them off. By the time any realize what I am up to, it will be too late to stop me.”
“Do you fear that you will not escape with your life?”
“I would be amazed if I did. Fortunately, I have settled that question in my own mind. That is not what troubles me.”
“Then we are back to the same basic question, Hans. Would you have American warships sink German warships?”
“Maybe it is the waiting that is killing me. No matter where I go I hear them hitting the wedges. Like the ticking clock. Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticking for innocent men who don’t know yet that they will die. It’s driving me crazy-What is this?”
The spy was pushing money into his hand. He tried to jerk back. “I don’t want money.”
The spy seized his wrist in an astonishingly powerful grip. “Recreation. Find a girl. She’ll make the night go faster.” He stood up abruptly.
“Are you leaving?” Suddenly Hans did look afraid-afraid to be alone with his conscience.
“I’ll be nearby. I’ll be watching.” The spy smiled reassuringly and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Go find that girl. Enjoy the night. It will be morning before you know it.”
23
WAITERS SPORTING RED, WHITE, AND BLUE BOW TIES spread watercress sandwiches and iced wine in the dignitaries’ pavilion. Bartenders, who had been issued similarly patriotic garters for their sleeves, rolled kegs of beer and carts of hard-boiled eggs into the ship workers’ tents on the riverbank. A warm breeze drifted through the enormous shed that covered the shipway, sunlight filtered down from glass panels in the roof, and it appeared that half the population of Camden, New Jersey, had turned out to celebrate launching the battleship Michigan, whose 16,000 tons were balanced at the high end of a track of greased rails that slanted into the river.
The shed still resounded with steel banging on wood, but the pace of the hammering had slowed. The wedges had lifted the battleship off nearly all her building blocks. But for a last few under her keel and bilges, she rested on the cradle she would ride down the ways.
The ceremonial launching platform surrounding the ship’s steel bow was draped with red, white, and blue bunting. A champagne bottle, wrapped in crocheted mesh to keep glass from flying and beribboned in the colors of the flag, waited in a bowl of roses.
The battleship’s sponsor, the pretty, dark-haired girl who would christen her, stood by in a striped flannel walking dress and a wide-brimmed Merry Widow hat heaped with silk peonies. She was ignoring the fevered instructions of an Assistant Secretary of the Navy-her father-who was warning her not to hold back at the crucial moment but to “Whack her with all you’ve got the instant the ship starts to move or it’ll be too late.”
Her gaze was fixed on a tall, golden-haired detective in a white suit, whose restless eyes were looking everywhere but at her.
Isaac Bell had not slept in a bed since he arrived in Camden two days ago. He had originally intended to come down with Marion the night before the ceremony and dine in Philadelphia. But that was before the Philadelphia office had sent the urgent wire to New York. Disquieting rumors had begun to drift in concerning a mysterious German bent on disrupting the launch. Detectives assigned to the German immigrant community heard of a recent arrival who claimed to be from Bremen but spoke with a Rostock accent. He kept asking about finding work at New York Ship but had never applied to the company. Several hands had unaccountably lost the gate badges that identified them as employees.