Page 76 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bell. You can count on me.”
“On the jump, Betsy, I’ll be there soon.”
Bell hung up. From a ferry terminal concession stand, Bell ordered a hamburger steak, but rather than eat it on a plate with breadcrumbs, he asked the counterman to put the patty between two pieces of toast and add some mustard and extra onion. He drank two glasses of water while he waited for his food, the first that hadn’t tasted stale and a little briny since leaving the Azores.
He was handed his burger in a pocket of folded newspaper. He liked tuna as much as the next guy, but nine days in a row was well past his limit. The first bite of beef made his salivary glands work overtime.
He was still munching away when he reached the head of the taxi line outside the bustling Beaux-Arts terminal on South Street. He told the attending valet his destination, which was relayed to the driver in the front seat of a Model T. The liveried man held the rear door for Bell and received a quarter tip for his troubles. Bell usually overtipped, but his funds were limited.
Traffic was light, allowing them to make it to the Knickerbocker Hotel in a little over fifteen minutes, faster than the subway, even.He paid off the cabbie and rushed into the hotel lobby. There were just a few guests about, two reading quietly on one of the deep sofas and a couple dressed for the theater talking about how much they didn’t like the play they’d seen. Bell nodded to the hotel detective, who was in fact a Van Dorn agent, as were most in-house security personnel at the city’s better hotels.
In long-legged strides, he climbed up to the second floor and let himself into the Van Dorn’s New York office. It was all so familiar, the large wood-paneled bullpen that was usually a hive of activity during the day, the back wall of offices, one of which was his, the smell of cigarette smoke, and the easy glow of shaded desk lamps. It felt like he hadn’t been there in months, but at the same time he was almost sure he’d just been away a few moments.
“Mr. Bell.” Betsy Singer had been at her desk in one corner of the large room and sprang to her feet. “Mr. Abbott and Mr. Dashwood are on their way, and the telegram has been sent.”
“What about Eddie Tobin?”
“I talked to Diane from the day shift. She told me Mr. Tobin has returned from England, but he didn’t answer my call. I’ll keep at it every fifteen minutes until he does.”
“No need for him to come in, but I need to talk to him. I’m running upstairs for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bell had lost his keys somewhere in France and so grabbed a spare set from his office and took the elevator to his floor. The rooms he and Marion occupied looked out over Times Square, but were high enough to filter out most of the noise. They were tastefully appointed, neutral for the most part, but with some pleasing feminine flourishes that made it feel like home. Bell stripped out of his clothes and stuffed them into a trash can in the bathroom. He’d have roomservice empty it as soon as he was finished. He could almost see the odor wafting off of them.
He took his first shower in days, soaping his lean body and lathering his hair twice in order to cleanse himself of salt and the stench of fish oil and bad cooking. He dressed in a pair of casual herringbone slacks and a black cashmere pullover. From a drawer of various holsters and weapons tack, he grabbed a shoulder rig for his spare Browning automatic pistol. Since the weather appeared unseasonably mild, he covered it up with the lighter of his two leather flying jackets.
He was back down in the office within fifteen minutes.
Bell went through the correspondences on his desk that had grown into an impressive stack during his absence. He was dismayed that there was nothing from Franklin Roosevelt. Surely he’d gotten the cable he’d sent from Churchill’s country estate concerning the possibility of an attack on New York. At least there should have been a receipt that he’d received the cable, but there was nothing.
A creeping sense of horror filled the pit of Isaac Bell’s stomach. His race across the Atlantic had been for nothing. It had all been for nothing. He was more than willing to do whatever it took to stop Rath from carrying out his attack, but he’d worked off the presumption that the Navy would have the primary task of destroying Rath’s ship. He’d been thinking of his team in the secondary role of apprehending Balka Rath, Karl Rath’s brother, while on the streets acting as a spotter.
The phone rang out in the bullpen and Betsy called to him that it was Eddie Tobin.
“Thank you,” he called back and picked up his phone as Betsy jacked in the line. “Eddie, glad you’re back safe and sound. How was the crossing?”
“No problem,” the grizzled investigator told him. “What about you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“With you, I’d believe anything.”
“Listen, there’s no time for small talk. I believe there is a captured German battleship on its way to bombard New York.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me right. It’s a dreadnought-style ship sporting eleven-inch guns. She was taken by a group of very motivated anarchists, and I believe their mission is to shell the city.”
“You’re not one for elaborate jokes in the middle of the night, so I’ll bite. What do you want from me?”
“Reach out to all your contacts, every pirate, fisherman, smuggler, scow captain, anyone you can think of. I need to know when the ship is approaching New York.”
“Okay, then what?”
“I don’t know. Up until a few minutes ago, I thought the battleship would be the Navy’s problem and not ours. Bloodhound this for me, Eddie. A lot of lives are at stake.”
Bell dropped the microphone onto its cradle and called out to Betsy again. “Can you call Joe Marchetti over at the Brooklyn Naval Yard? I—”
