Page 63 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“Yes, Captain.”
“Then off you go. You’ve other duties.”
“Yes, sir.” The escort vanished the way he’d come.
“Mr. Bell, this is my XO, Tony Whitman.” Whitman wasn’t yet thirty, huskily built with a grip he obviously tempered when they shook hands.
The captain led Bell and his executive officer to a small day cabin behind the bridge reserved for his private use. The dishwater light coming in through a small window indicated the weather was worsening. Finch poured tea from a vacuum flask. “Could you elaborate on the need for our mad dash to Ponta Delgada? My orders were rather vague.”
“There is reason to believe the Germans are going to try to retrieve an old battleship that’s been impounded since the war began from the Azore Islands. My mission is to alert the authorities so they can beef up their security and stop them.”
“And if we’re too late? You don’t expect us to go after them solo, do you?”
“No, Captain.”
“Thank the Lord for that. We’d need a squadron of tin cans to go after a Boche battlewagon, even an obsolete one.”
“If the ship is already gone, our mission is complete, and we return to England at best-possible speed. We need to alert the Admiralty that there’s a new hunter on the open Atlantic far deadlier than any U-boat.”
Bell added this last bit to maintain the fiction that he was in pursuit of Germans and not anarchists bent on seeing the world turned to ashes. If his hunch was right, Rath and his crew would still be at sea by the time theMastiffmade it back to Southampton. He would have to admit to his and Churchill’s fib to the Navy and suffer whatever rebuke they were due. On the bright side, it also meant he could give Archie and Roosevelt an accurate estimate of Rath’s arrival time if New York was his intended target.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come,” Finch called.
A sailor stepped into the cabin and announced the harbor pilot was here, the extra fuel was aboard, and they were ready to cast off.
“Very good. Mr. Bell, a couple of rules. You’re permitted on the bridge provided you stay well back from my men. For meals, you’ll dine with the officers. And if we have to go to battle stations at any point on the voyage, your action station is your cabin in the sick bay. You are to wear your life jacket and remain there until the all clear is signaled. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Captain. My cabin, in a life jacket.”
Bell enjoyed watching competent people doing their jobs. It didn’t matter the job. A pizza chef tossing pie after pie over his head couldbe as satisfying as watching a mason build a straight wall by sight alone. Captain Finch had a very competent crew, and watching them take theMastiffout of the harbor under the guidance of a civilian pilot was a treat. Not a word was wasted nor an order missed.
Once the pilot was disembarked onto a tender that had shadowed the destroyer, Finch ordered theMastiffup to speed. Bell loved speed, be it car, plane, or boat. He looked forward to the sensation of such a nimble ship cutting through the waves at nearly forty miles per hour. The swells outside the harbor were moderate, and theMastifftook them well. Soon Southampton was well behind them and there was no traffic around, and yet the destroyer never accelerated past sixteen knots.
By this time Finch had left the bridge and his XO, Whitman, had the con.
“Begging your pardon, XO,” Bell said, standing at the man’s shoulder. “I thought the ship was much faster than this.”
“She is. She can do double what she’s running now. The problem is she can’t sustain it for long. Burns too much fuel and kills our range. As it stands, we’ll be close to dry when we reach Ponta Delgada.”
Bell did the calculations in his head. They had a journey of two thousand miles, and at sixteen knots it would take just over five days. Anxious about the lead Karl Rath already had, Bell knew he’d feel like a lion in a cage for every minute of the trip.
33
Archie Abbott was one ofthose rare creatures that was a natural at just about anything he did. The first time he tried golf, he shot seven-over. The first time in a bowling alley, he rolled a two hundred. He won his first boxing match on a dare against someone who’d been training for years.
He never let the ease of his success go to his head. He was truly grateful. That was the reason he’d given up a career as a stage actor to follow his friend Isaac into the world of the private detective. He was good at it, for he was smart, observant, and had a knack for guessing people’s motivations. More important, he’d seen how Bell made a difference for the people he helped and sought to do the same.
Most people who came to the Van Dorn Agency had nowhere else to turn, no other recourse open to them. They were frightened, usually embarrassed, and most definitely desperate. And when the agency solved the client’s problem, no matter the outcome, usuallythe person was relieved to finally have answers. It was a good feeling making that happen.
His current client was his best friend, Isaac Bell, and he wasn’t going to be happy with the results of his investigation because there were none.
The job was a simple missing person’s case. All he had to do was locate a man and keep him under loose observation. It should have been a snap, especially because the guy was described as handsome to the extreme. In Archie’s experience, handsome men liked to be around beautiful women. Lord knows before marrying Lillian he spent more than his share of time in the company of some beauties.
The job was even easier in that he had a name, Balka Rath. He’d sent junior agents out to canvas dance halls, brothels, and the nightclubs that vaudevillians frequented after their shows. He got a big fat goose egg. Bell had said the man came from the Carpathian Mountains. He put out feelers in Easter European neighborhoods. There it was always a little tricky because recent émigrés didn’t like the police in any form and so they were reluctant to talk.
People were talking about a kid newly arrived from Hungary who fell from the window of an apartment of some other Hungarians who were out of town at the time. It was all very suspicious because he was seen in the company of a young woman shortly before his death.
