Page 52 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“I found it in what looked like a classroom back in Rath’s warehouse. I figured out the meaning ofAnkerpretty easily. It made me realize the significance of the tattoo I saw on the guy who caught me snooping around. It was a compass rose. That’s a sailor’s tattoo. Your translation now confirms my suspicion that Rath has some operation in mind involving a warship, something so big it needs a hoist to get ammo to its guns. I need to go back and find out what he’s up to next.”
Holmes stared at him for a moment. “No offense, mate, but what’s your stake in this? What do you care what some anarchist hothead is doing in bloody Europe when your country’s not in the fight?”
“Because his last operation was about embroiling a neutral country into the war, and Rath mentioned he sent his brother in New York. I can’t risk that being a coincidence.”
“What would you like of me?” Thenault asked.
“First I need to contact Captain Crabbe at the 22nd and tell him I’m alive, but that his plane and pilot were both lost. Even with a map I doubt I can give any meaningful location as to where it happened. Then I need to send cables to Churchill in London and myoffice back in New York. We have our own coding system, but I don’t know how you encode communications between the Allied forces.”
“We do not have a telegraph here at the airfield,” Thenault told him, “but there is a headquarters not far from here with what you will need. I will issue you permission to use their facilities under the escadrille’s authority.”
“And I hate to ask, but I could really use some new clothes and the use of a cot for a few hours.”
“You are too tall to borrow any of the French pilots’ clothing, but I’m sure your American comrades can help with that.”
“Thank you.”
“And Captain Holmes? How may I help you?”
“That cot sounds jolly good, and if you could, I’d like a lift back to the 56th Squadron. We’re about fifteen miles south of Arras, unless they’ve moved us since last Tuesday.”
“After you’ve slept, I will lend you a dispatch rider and his sidecar motorcycle and you shall find your unit together.” Thenault gave a dismissive wave. “Now, out with you. I need to write a report for my superiors about how a previously unknown German heavy bomber ended up in my custody.”
Both men got to their feet. At the door, Bell paused and turned. “Just out of curiosity, how is it that you have a lion?”
“We have two, Monsieur Bell. Whiskey has a companion named Soda, and we have them because your countrymen are all quite mad.”
—
Thirty hours later, Bell gotoff a train in the port city of Calais and hailed a taxi to take him to the harbor. As the closest point to England, the Calais region had always been abustling place, but with the war on, the port was a scene of pandemonium. A troopship had just arrived and fresh-faced recruits were marching off the gangways in ordered ranks. Even at a distance Bell could hear the sergeants’ bellows. Elsewhere were vast parking lots for trucks that had been sent across the channel and big horse corrals filled with animals. A cruiser of some considerable size was just ahead of the troopship, its main batteries turned out to the sea and no doubt manned all day, every day, on the chance a submarine or other German ship approached.
His destination wasn’t these reserved military docks, but a commercial area for fishing boats. This section of France was known as the Opal Coast because of the pearlescent quality of the light. It had attracted artists and poets and writers for generations. Bell found the sky leaden and full of coal smoke and the stench of rotting fish and old hemp.
He eventually located the right fishing pier and the boat hired to take him to Holland. It was a newer trawler, smallish but well-maintained with an A-frame crane over her flat stern. Though a French boat, she flew the red, white, and blue horizontally striped Netherlands flag as a safeguard against a U-boat attack. In truth, the German submarines cared little for the nationality of their victims. They had already sunk over a hundred neutral Dutch fishing boats and killed over a thousand members of their crews.
Bell paused at the quay until he caught the eye of a sailor coiling rope on the forward deck, just under the pilothouse. He noted the time by the angle of the watery sun and nodded.
Bell stepped aboard the boat, mindful the deck was slick with fish oil and slime. A door to a small cabin located under the pilothouse swung open as if haunted. Bell stepped through into a dim, cramped space. Another man was there, dressed in tweeds rather than workclothes or a proper suit. He was shorter than Bell—most men were—and heavier around the middle. He had the soft and long-suffering look of a bureaucrat sent out into the field against his will.
“You must be Bell.” His accent was in imitation of an Etonian graduate’s.
“I am.”
“Wife’s maiden name?”
“Morgan.”
“Name of the man who rescued her in Panama?”
Bell chuckled at the memory and how she liked to tell the tale. “Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Her favorite color?”
“The same blue as her eyes,” he said without hesitation.
“And indeed you are Bell,” the man said rather more cordially and stuck out a hand. “Thomas Wrightsmith, Naval Intelligence. Winston still has some clout in Room 40, so I got the call to come over to meet with you.” He looked around at the tiny cabin as if seeing it for the first time. “Not exactly luxurious, is it?”
“You didn’t cross the channel on this boat?”
