Page 60 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“No, sir. He died twenty years ago. Almost to the day.”
“Damn.” Churchill grunted. “Looks like that’s a dead end after all. I thought this chap could have been helping your anarchists.”
Bell played poker well enough to keep his own sense of disappointment off his face.
“Thank you, Davida. That is all.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned to go, but then paused at the double doors leading to the house’s main entry. “Not sure if this is anything for you, but the Brazilians named an old dreadnought they bought from the Germans after him.”
This time, Bell’s poker face failed him completely. His grin was wide and wolfish.
“When?” he asked.
“It’s a bit of a muddle. Archduke Ferdinand was killed during the middle of the deal. Knowing war was inevitable at that point, the Germans wanted to cancel the sale to keep their fleet reinforced, but the Brazilians refused to give it up. The Brazilians named her after Admiral Lisboa about this time to bolster their position.
“As the ship happened to be in the Azore Islands at the time of the sale, the Portuguese government offered to mediate, but as things here in Europe went from bad to worse, nothing ever got resolved. The Germans ferried all their stranded sailors home on U-boats.The ship has remained under impound at Ponta Delgada since the autumn of ’fourteen, presumably with a skeleton crew of Brazilian sailors aboard to keep up her maintenance.”
Bell asked Churchill, “Could forty-five men crew a battleship?”
“Not if she’s coal-fired. How about it, Davida? This ship, oil or coal?”
“I’m good, Mr. Churchill, but I’m not that good. I’m sure somebody at the Admiralty would know. Her German name wasSaarland.”
“Thank you, Davida. You’re a tremendous help, as always. Please follow up on this for me and contact our chargé d’affaires in Ponta Delgada to confirm the ship is still there.”
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
After she’d gone, Bell said, “Quite a remarkable woman.”
“A second cousin of mine. She has what they call an eidetic memory. Never forgets a thing.”
“Invaluable in this instance. Consider theSaarland. A German ship would have German signage throughout. That explains why I saw evidence of Rath’s men being taught German nautical terms. He must have learned of a battleship being impounded in the Azores and it inspired his whole mission.”
Churchill nodded, his cigar cradled in his fingers. “If your anarchist is going after this ship, what do you think are his ultimate goals?”
“Could be anything,” Bell admitted, and then something occurred to him. “Thinking aloud, I had the feeling he regretted mentioning to me that he’d sent his brother to New York. So maybe New York is a target. I need to know more about the ship and its capabilities.”
“I just remembered I have exactly what you want.” Churchill gotoff his sofa and ambled over to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. His hand went unerringly to the book he wanted, as if he’d memorized the location of every tome on the shelves. “This will do. Jane’sAll the World’s Fighting Ships.It’s an older edition, but it should suffice.”
He began thumbing through the thick book, repeating under his breath the German name of the battleship,Saarland, until he found it. “Here we go. TheSaarlandis her own class of ship, a one-off the Germans laid down in 1907 when they got wind of the construction of our HMSDreadnought. So, Davida got one wrong. TheSaarlandwould technically be classified a pre-Dreadnought.”
“Pardon the interruption, Winston,” Marion said as politely as possible. “I hear talk about thisDreadnought, but I don’t understand its significance.”
Clementine Churchill, dutiful wife and chief confidante of the former Lord of the Admiralty, answered for him. “She was built as the largest battleship ever, back in 1906 or so. She was the fastest, best-armed, and best-armored ship of any fleet in the world and completely changed how such capital ships are conceived and constructed.”
“At a cost of just over one point seven million pounds,” Churchill added, “it makes her the most expensive as well. It set off an arms race unlike any before, as she made all other battleships immediately obsolete.”
“Thank you.” Marion smiled prettily, thinking, but not mentioning, that the arms race the Brits started had been a huge determining factor in the current war.
“Okay,” Churchill said, his head wreathed in fragrant cigar smoke. “Back to theSaarland. She’s four hundred and sixty feet long, seventy-four wide, and displaces a little under sixteen thousandtons. She carries four of the German SK L/40 main guns in two turrets. Eleven-inch bores and the ability to hurl a quarter-ton shell about twelve miles, as well as a bunch of six-inch guns in broadside barbettes.
“And, Marion, in comparison, theDreadnoughtdisplaces twenty thousand tons. She’s five hundred and thirty feet long, is armed with ten main guns, and can launch a shell some fourteen miles.”
“Wow,” she replied, understanding Churchill was trying to impress her. “I guess that is quite the difference.”
Churchill went back to his reference book and within just a couple of seconds exclaimed, “Well, that certainly explains it.”
“What?” asked the three others simultaneously.
