The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)

He flipped O’Shay up and yanked down, slamming the spy to the deck with bone-shaking force. The powerful O’Shay kept hold of Bell’s head, took a deep breath of air, and pulled the detective down with him into the heavier concentration of the suffocating gas. But Bell’s left arm was no longer pinned between them. He slammed his elbow into O’Shay’s nose, cracking bone. Still O’Shay choked him, still the gouge raked at his eye.

Suddenly cold water cascaded down on the fighting men, sending fresh clouds of chlorine up from the massive battery under the deck. The submarine was heeling, the river spilling through the hatch. Bell pushed out with long legs, found a foothold, and forced O’Shay’s head against the bulkhead lined with hot pipes. O’Shay tried to writhe away. Bell held fast. Even sharper than the stench of chlorine was the stink of burning hair, and at last O’Shay’s grip loosened. Bell pulled out of it, dodged a vicious slash of the gouge, and punched out repeatedly as waves poured in.

Bell struggled to stand, kicked free of O’Shay’s grasping hands, and climbed out of the hatch. He saw lights converging. Launches were setting out from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and lowering from the New Hampshire. The submarine was sinking, engine still roaring, propeller still fighting the current. A wave tumbled over the hatch and swept Bell to the back of the submarine. He kicked off from the propeller shield, just missing the blades, and was thrown behind by its wash.

O’Shay climbed out of the hatch, retching from the chlorine. He dove after Bell, his face a mask of hatred. “I’ll kill you.”

The Holland’s propeller dragged him into its spinning blades. The river current whisked his torso past Bell. The gangster’s head raced after it, glaring at the detective, until the river yanked it under.

The Holland submarine rolled quite suddenly on its side and slid beneath the waves. Isaac Bell thought he was next. He battled to stay afloat, but he was weakened by cold and rendered breathless by the poison gas. A wave curled over him, and his mind suddenly filled with his memory of the day he met Marion and the floor had trembled beneath his feet. His eyes were playing tricks on him. Her thick, lustrous hair was piled atop her head. One long, narrow strand fell nearly to her waist. She looked dainty but strong as a willow, and she was reaching for him.

She gripped his hand. He tightened his own grip and pulled himself to the surface. He looked up into the grinning face of a bearded sailor.

THE NEXT ISAAC BELL KNEW, he was sprawled on his back in the bottom of a wooden boat. Beside him lay Captain Lowell Falconer. The Hero of Santiago looked as beat-up as Bell felt, but his eyes were bright.

“You’ll be O.K., Bell. They’re taking us into sick bay.”

It hurt to talk and was hard to breathe.

His throat was burning. “Better warn the salvage boys that the Holland has a live Wheeler Mark 14 still in its tube.”

“Still in its tube, thanks to you.”

The launch bumped against a dock.

“What are those lights?” asked Bell. The sky was white with them.

“Hull 44 is going to double shifts.”

“Good.”

“ ‘Good’?” Lowell Falconer echoed. “The most you can say for yourself is ‘good’?”

Isaac Bell thought hard. Then he grinned. “Sorry about your yacht.”

ON DISTANT SERVICE

TEN YEARS LATER

NORTH SEA, GERMAN COAST

FOG BLINDED THE GERMAN SOLDIERS HUNTING THE American spy.

Oozing from the Friesland peat bogs into the morning air, it crowded under the trees and covered the flat ground. It was supposed to last until the sun burned it off midmorning. But it grew thin early when a salt wind from the North Sea roamed ashore. Isaac Bell saw the daylight penetrate, revealing fields crisscrossed by ditches, trees stationed along fence lines, and in the distance a boathouse by a canal. A boat would come in handy now.

Bell saw his own face on a wanted poster nailed to the boathouse.

He had to hand it to the Kaiser’s military intelligence. Three days after he had come ashore, the German Army had plastered his image on every tree and barn between Berlin and the coast. One thousand Marks reward, five and a half thousand dollars, a fortune on either side of the Atlantic. The grim-faced fugitive on the Steckbrief bore his general likeness. Though they had no photograph, only the account of a sentry at the Wilhelmshaven Naval Station U-boat yard, the sketch artist had captured the determined set of his chin and lips and the hard, lean look of a man more muscle than flesh. Thankfully, the written description of blond hair and mustache and blue eyes fit most men in the Saxon region. Though few stood as tall.

With the United States now fighting Germany in the World War, his clothes-a ragbag mix of uniform parts-and the crutch he carried as a wounded veteran, guaranteed he’d be shot as a spy if they caught him. Nor could he expect any mercy for the map he had drawn of the new U-boat yard that serviced the latest submarines-immensely more powerful than the old Holland, and heavily armed-that were suddenly and unexpectedly winning the war for Germany. The map that was useless until he delivered it to America ’s Sixth Battle Squadron steaming offshore.

The canal was narrow, and the rushes planted on both sides to protect the banks from wakes tended to hold the fog. He rowed two miles to Wilhelmshaven, abandoning the boat to evade naval station sentries and stealing another. The fog continued cooperating, after a fashion, at the harbor, still fitful, thinning for moments, then thickened by clouds of coal smoke from a hundred warships.

It was low tide. The entrance to the harbor was shallow, and Wilhelmshaven was crowded with funnels and masts of the High Seas Fleet’s cruisers, battle cruisers, and dreadnoughts waiting for high water. But shallow-draft torpedo boats could leave, which meant that Bell ’s escape vessel had to be small enough to operate by himself and very fast, which eliminated tugboats, lighters, launches, and fishing scows.

Intelligence supplied by a Van Dorn who had gone underground when war had closed the Berlin office pinpointed a captured Italian-built MAS fifty-foot armed motorboat. Bell had spotted it on the way in and it was still there, in the grimy shadow of a dreadnought.

He prayed for more fog, and his prayer was answered so quickly that he had only a moment to get a compass fix on the MAS before every vessel in the harbor was buried to its mast tops. He rowed, repeatedly checking the compass on the seat beside him, and tried to judge the current. But to strike a fifty-foot target in a quarter mile was impossible, and the first he knew how far he had missed by was when he banged into the armored side of the dreadnought.