The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)

They shook hands. Del Rossi’s were soft but bore the long-healed burns and cuts of ship work in his youth.

“Busy night.”

“God bless our ‘New Navy.’ It’s like this every night. New York Ship launches the Michigan next month and just laid the keel for a twenty-eight-knot destroyer. Across the river, the Philadelphia Navy Yard is building a new dry dock, Cramp launches South Carolina come summer, plus they’ve already nailed a contract for six 700-ton destroyers-six, count ’em, six. What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m looking for a fellow named Alasdair MacDonald.”

Del Rossi frowned. “The Professor? Follow the sound of fists cracking jaws,” he answered with a nod toward the farthest corner from the door.

“Excuse me. I better get over there before someone floors him.”

“That’s not likely,” said Del Rossi. “He was heavyweight champ of the Royal Navy.”

Bell sized MacDonald up as he worked his way across the room, and he took an immediate shine to the big Scotsman. He looked to be in his forties, tall, with an open countenance and muscles that rippled under a shirt soaked with perspiration. He had several boxing scars over his eyebrows-but not a mark on the rest of his face, Bell noticed-and enormous hands with splayed-out knuckles. He cupped a glass in one, a whiskey bottle in the other, and as Bell drew close he filled the glass and stood the bottle on the bar behind him, his eyes fixed on the crowd. It parted suddenly, explosively, and a three-hundred-pound bruiser lumbered at MacDonald with murder in his eye.

MacDonald tracked him with a wry smile, as if they were both in on a good joke. He took a swig from his glass and then, without appearing to rush, closed his empty hand into an enormous fist and landed a punch almost too fast for Bell to see.

The bruiser collapsed to the sawdust-strewn floor. MacDonald looked down at him amiably. He had a thick Scots accent. “Jake, me friend, you are a purrfectly fine laddie ’til the drink riles your noggin.” Of the group around him, he asked, “Would someone see Jake home?”

Jake’s friends carried him out. Bell introduced himself to Alasdair MacDonald, who, he surmised, was drunker than he looked.

“Do I know you, laddie?”

“Isaac Bell,” he repeated. “Dorothy Langner told me that you were a particular friend of her father.”

“That I was. Poor Artie. When they made the Gunner they broke the mold. Have a drink!”

He called for a glass, filled it to the brim, and passed it to Bell with the Scottish toast, “Slanj.”

“Slanj-uh va,” said Bell, and he threw back the fiery liquor in the same manner as MacDonald.

“How is the lass bearing up?”

“Dorothy is clinging to the hope that her father neither killed himself nor took a bribe.”

“I don’t know about killing himself-mountains shade dark glens. But I do know this: the Gunner would have shoved his hand in a punch press before he’d reach for a bribe.”

“Did you work closely together?”

“Let’s just say we admired each other.”

“I imagine you shared similar goals.”

“We both loved dreadnoughts, if that’s what you mean. Love ’em or hate ’em, the dreadnought battleship is the marvel of our age.”

Bell noticed that MacDonald, drunk or not, was dodging his questions artfully. He backtracked, saying, “I imagine you must be following the progress of the Great White Fleet with keen interest.”

Alasdair snorted scoffingly. “Victory at sea goes to ordnance, armor, and speed. You’ve got to shoot farther than the enemy, survive more punishment, and steam faster. By those standards, the Great White Fleet is hopelessly out-of-date.”

He splashed more liquor in Bell’s glass and refilled his own. “ England’s HMS Dreadnought and the German dreadnought copies have longer range, stronger armor, and dazzling speed. Our ‘fleet,’ which is simply the old Atlantic Squadron tarted up, is a flock of pre-dreadnought battleships.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A pre-dreadnought battleship is like a middleweight fighter who learned to box in college. He has no business in the prize ring with heavyweight Jack Johnson.” MacDonald grinned challengingly at Bell, whom he outweighed by forty pounds.

“Unless he did graduate studies on Chicago’s West Side,” Bell challenged him back.

“And put on a few pounds of muscle,” MacDonald acknowledged approvingly.