The German’s name was Hans. He claimed to have worked at the Krupp Werke in the Ruhr Valley. That was fine with foreman Hall. Hans was strong and seemed to know his business and understood more English than all four Hungarians combined. Besides, Mr. Gordon wouldn’t give a damn if the German had come straight from Hell as long as he worked hard.
Seven hours into the shift, a “hang” of partly solidified metal formed near the top of the furnace. It threatened to block the uptake that vented volatile hot waste gases. Foreman Hall suggested clearing it before it got any bigger. Chad Gordon ordered him brusquely aside. “I said, ‘More limestone.’ ”
The German had been waiting for such an opportunity. Quickly, he climbed the ladders to the top of the furnace where barrows were standing by with fresh stock. Each contained a twelve-hundred-pound load of iron ore, or coke, or the dolomitic limestone with an unusually high content of magnesia that the hard-driving Chad Gordon was counting on to strengthen the metal.
The German grabbed a barrow of dolomitic limestone and rolled the two-wheel cart to the mouth of the furnace.
“Wait for the boil!” the foreman bellowed from down at the base where melted impurities were tumbling from the slag notch. The molten iron and slag in the bottom of the furnace were roaring at a full three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. But the ore and coke on top had barely reached seven hundred.
Hans didn’t seem to hear him as he dumped the limestone into the furnace and hurriedly descended the ladders. “You lunatic,” yelled the foreman. “It’s not hot enough. You blocked the uptake.”
Hans shouldered past the foreman.
“Don’t worry about the hang,” Chad Gordon shouted without bothering to look up. “It’ll drop.”
The foreman knew better. The hang was trapping explosive gases inside the furnace. Hans’s dump had only made it worse. A lot worse. He shouted to the Hungarians, “Get up there and clear the uptake!”
The Hungarians hesitated. Even if they couldn’t fully understand English, they knew the danger of flammable gases accumulating above the batch. Hall’s clenched fist and angry gestures at the ladder sent them scrambling to the top of the furnace with bars and picks. But just as they started to break up the hang it dropped on its own accord in one solid piece. Just like Mr. Gordon had predicted. Except the barrow of limestone heaped on the cool surface had also blocked the uptake. When the hang dropped, the sudden burst of outside air into the furnace combined with the heat below to ignite the trapped waste gases.
They exploded with a roar that lifted the roof off the building and threw it onto a Bessemer converter fifty yards away. The blast blew boots and clothing off the Hungarians and incinerated their bodies. Tons of fiery debris splashed down the sides of the furnace. Like a burning waterfall, it drenched the foreman and Chad Gordon in flames.
The German ran, gagging from the stink of cooked flesh. His eyes were wide with horror at what he had set off and terror that the boiling metal would catch up with him, too. No one took notice of one man running when suddenly every man in the giant mill was running. Workers from the other blast furnaces raced to the scene of death, driving wagons and carts for makeshift ambulances to carry the injured. Even the company thugs guarding the gate ignored Hans as they gaped in the direction from which he ran.
The German looked back. Flames were shooting into the night sky. The buildings around the blast furnace were wrecked. Walls had collapsed, roofs tumbled to the ground, and everywhere he saw fire.
He cursed aloud, astonished by the immensity of the destruction he had wrought.
THE NEXT MORNING, changed from his workman’s clothing into a somber black suit and exhausted from a sleepless night of brooding on how many had died, Hans stepped off a train at Washington, D.C.’s National Mall Station. He scanned the newsstands for headlines about the accident. There were none. Steelmaking was dangerous business. Workmen were killed daily. Only local newspapers in the mill towns bothered listing the dead-and often then only the foremen for their English-speaking readers.
He took a ferry to Alexandria, Virginia, and hurried along the waterfront to the warehouse district. The spy who had sent him to the steel mill was waiting in his curious den of obsolete weapons.
He listened intently to Hans’s report. He asked probing questions about the elements that Chad Gordon had introduced into his iron. Knowledgeable and insightful, he drew from Hans details that the German had barely noticed at the time.
The spy was lavish in his praise and paid in cash what he had promised.
“It is not for the money,” said the German, stuffing it in his pocket.
“Of course not.”
“It is because when war comes the Americans will side with Britain.”
“That is beyond any doubt. The democracies despise Germany.”
“But I do not like the killing,” Hans protested. Staring morbidly into the lens of the old battleship searchlight behind the spy’s desk, he saw his face reflected like a decaying skull.
The spy surprised Hans by answering in northern-accented German. Hans had assumed that the man was American, so perfect was his English. Instead, he spoke like a compatriot. “You had no choice, mein Freund. Chad Gordon’s armor plate would have given enemy ships an unfair advantage. Soon the Americans will launch dreadnoughts. Would you have their dreadnoughts sink German ships? Kill German sailors? Shell German ports?”
“You are right, mein Herr,” Hans answered. “Of course.”
The spy smiled as if he sympathized with Hans’s humane qualms. But in the seclusion of his own mind he laughed. God bless the simple Germans, he thought. No matter how powerful their industry grew, no matter how strong their Army, no matter how modern their Navy, no matter how loudly their Kaiser boasted “Mein Feld ist die Welt,” they always feared they were the little guy.
That constant dread of being second best made them so easy to lead.
Your field is the world, Herr Kaiser? The hell it is. Your field is full of sheep.
4
IT WAS A CHINAMAN,” SAID MARINE LANCE CORPORAL Black, puffing smoke from a two-dollar cigar.
“If you believe the Gramps Patrol,” puffed Private Little.
“He means the night watchmen.”
Isaac Bell indicated that he understood that the “Gramps Patrol” were the pensioners employed as night watchmen to guard the navy yard inside the gates, while the Marines manned the gates themselves.
He and the husky young leathernecks were seated at a round table in O’Leary’s Saloon on E Street. They had been generous sports about their previous encounter, offering Bell grudging respect for his fighting skills and forgiving black eyes and loosened teeth after only one round of drinks. At Bell’s urging they had polished off a lunch of steaks, potatoes, and apple pie. Now, with whiskey glasses at hand and Bell’s Havanas blueing the air, they were primed to be talkative.