“We can assume, Louis, that His Imperial Majesty would not have invited the fleet if you had managed to blow up the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in his name.”
“What do I care about the Emperor of Japan?”
“That is my question. Why would a Chinese tong hatchet man try to inflame U.S.-Japanese antagonism?”
“Go to hell.”
“And for whom? Who did you do it for, Louis?”
Louis Loh smiled mockingly. “Save your breath. Torture me. Nothing will make me talk.”
“We’ll find a way,” Bell promised. “In New York.”
Heavily armed Chicago Van Dorns backed up by railroad police transferred Louis Loh from the Overland Limited across LaSalle Station to the 20th Century Limited. No one tried to snatch Louis or kill him, which Bell had half expected. He decided to leave him in the care of Protection Services until the 20th Century got to New York. And Bell continued to stay out of Louis’s sight at Grand Central, where another squad of Van Dorns put Louis in a truck and drove him to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lowell Falconer was on hand to smooth the way for Louis Loh to spend his first night in a Navy brig.
Bell waited for the captain on his turbine yacht. Dyname was moored to a navy yard pier, between Hull 44’s ways and a huge wooden barge attended by a seagoing tugboat. On the barge, engineers were erecting a cage mast. It was a full-scale rendition of the twelve-to-one scale model that Bell had seen in Farley Kent’s design loft.
High overhead, Hull 44’s stern filled the blue sky. Hull plating was creeping higher up her frame, and she more and more was taking the shape of a ship. If she became half the fighting ship Falconer had envisioned and Alasdair MacDonald and Arthur Langner had labored to make swift and deadly, Bell thought, then this view of the back of her was one the enemy would never see until their own ships were adrift and on fire.
Falconer came aboard after he got the prisoner settled. He reported that Louis’s last words as they clanged the door shut were, “Tell Isaac Bell I will not talk.”
“He’ll talk.”
“I would not count on that,” Falconer cautioned. “When I was in the Far East, Japs and Chinese virtually eviscerated captured spies. Not a peep.”
The Van Dorn detective and the Navy captain stood on the foredeck as Dyname backed into the East River, her nine propellers spinning with a smoothness that Bell still found eerie.
“There is something more to Louis Loh,” he mused. “I can’t yet put my finger on what makes him different.”
“Strikes me as being fairly low down the totem pole.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bell. “He conducts himself with pride, like a man who has a mission.”
“IT’S AN UP-AND-DOWN WORLD for the New York gangs,” said Harry Warren, and the handful of Van Dorn detectives who kept track of them nodded solemnly. “One day they’re high-and-mighty, next they’re in the gutter.”
The back room of the Knickerbocker headquarters was gray with cigar and cigarette smoke. A bottle of whiskey Isaac Bell had bought was making the rounds.
“Who is in the gutter currently?” he asked.
“The Hudson Dusters, the Marginals, and the Pearl Buttons. The Eastmans are in trouble, what with Monk Eastman at Sing Sing, and making it worse for themselves by continuing to feud with the Five Pointers.”
“They had a wonderful shoot-out under the Third Avenue El the other night,” remarked a detective. “No one killed, unfortunately.”
“In Chinatown,” Harry continued, “the Hip Sing are clawing ahead of the On Leongs. On the West Side, Tommy Thompson’s Gophers are riding high. Or were. The sons of bitches have their hands full since you sicced the railroad police on ’em for ambushing little Eddie Tobin.”
This was met by enthusiastic nods, and a remark in grudging admiration, “Those western cinder dicks are about the worst bastards I ever seen.”
“They’ve got the Gophers so discombobulated that the Hip Sing tong opened a new opium den right in the middle of Gopher Gang territory.”
“Not so fast,” Harry Warren cautioned. “I saw Gophers in a Hip Sing joint downtown. Where Scully was, Isaac? I got a feeling that something was up between the Hip Sing and Gophers. Maybe Scully did, too.”
A few muttered agreement. They’d heard rumors.
“But none of you can tell me anything about Louis Loh?”
“That don’t mean much, Isaac. Chinatown criminals are just plain more secretive.”
“And better organized. Not to mention smarter.”
“And hooked up to Chinatowns throughout the United States and Asia.”
“The international connection is intriguing, this being a spy case,” Bell admitted. “Except for one big thing. Why send two men from New York all the way across the continent when they could have used local San Francisco Chinatown men who knew the territory?”
No one answered. The detectives sat in uncomfortable silence broken only by the clink of glass and the scrape of a match. Bell looked around the room at Harry’s team of veterans. He missed John Scully. Scully had been a wizard in a brain session.
“Why the whole charade on the train?” he demanded. “It doesn’t make sense.”
More silence ensured. Bell asked, “How’s little Eddie doing?” “Still touch and go.”
“Tell him I’ll get up there soon as I can for a visit.”
“Doubt he’ll know you’re in the room.”
Harry Warren said, “That’s another weird thing, as far as I’m concerned. Why would the Gophers go out on a limb to fire up Van Dorns against them?”
“They’re stupid,” a detective answered, and everyone laughed.
“But not that stupid. Like Isaac says about Louis Loh crossing the continent. Beating up the kid didn’t make sense. The gangs don’t pick fights outside their circle.”
Isaac Bell said, “You told me it was strange that the Iceman went to Camden.”
Harry nodded vigorously. “Gophers don’t leave home.”
“And you said that Gophers don’t send warning messages or take revenge that will bring down the wrath of outsiders. Is it possible that the spy paid them to take revenge, just like he paid killers to go to Camden?”
“Who the hell knows how spies think?”
“I know someone who does,” said Bell.
COMMANDER ABBINGTON-WESTLAKE sauntered out of the Harvard Club, where he had wrangled a free honorary membership, and signaled for a cab with a languid wave. A red Darracq gasoline taxi zipped past a man hailing it outside the New York Yacht Club and stopped for the portly Englishman.
“Hey, that’s my cab!”
“Apparently not,” Abbington-Westlake drawled as he stepped into the Darracq. “Smartly now, driver, before that disgruntled yachtsman catches up.”
The cab sped off. Abbington-Westlake gave an upper Fifth Avenue address and settled in for the ride. At 59th, the cab suddenly swerved into Central Park. He rapped his stick on the window.
“No, no, no, I’m not some tourist you take around the park. If I wanted to drive out of my way through the park, I would have instructed you to go out of the way through the park. Return to Fifth Avenue immediately!”
The driver slammed on the brakes, throwing Abbington-Westlake off his seat. When he recovered, he found himself glaring into the cold eyes of a grim-visaged Isaac Bell.
“I warn you, Bell, I have friends who will come to my aid.”
“I will not deliver a well-deserved punch in your nose for selling me down the river to Yamamoto Kenta if you answer a question.”
“Was that you who killed Yamamoto?” the English spy asked f earfully.
“He died in Washington. I was in New York.”
“Did you order his death?”
“I am not one of you,” said Bell.
“What is your question?”
“Whoever this freelance spy is, I believe he is acting strangely. Look at this.”
He showed Abbington-Westlake the note. “He left this on the body of my de
tective. Why would he do such a thing?”
The Englishman read it in a glance. “Appears to be sending you a message.”
“Would you?”
“One does not indulge in childish exercises.”
“Would you kill my man for revenge?”
“One does not indulge in the luxury of revenge.”
“Would you do it as a threat? Believing it would stop me?”
“He should have killed you, that would put a stop to it.”
“Would you?”
Abbington-Westlake smiled. “I would suggest that successful spies are invisible spies. Ideally, one copies a secret plan rather than stealing it so one’s enemy never knows that his secret was stolen. Similarly, if an enemy must die, it should seem to be an accident. Falling debris at a work site might crush a man without raising suspicion. A hatpin piercing his brain is a red flag.”
“The hatpin was not in the newspapers,” Bell said coldly.
“One reads between the lines,” the Englishman retorted. “As I told you at the Knickerbocker, welcome to the world of espionage, Mr. Bell. You’ve learned a lot already. You know in your gut that the freelance spy is not first and foremost a spy.”
“He doesn’t think like a spy,” said Bell. “He thinks like a gangster.”
“Then who better to catch a gangster than a detective? Good day, sir. May I wish you happy hunting?” He climbed out of the cab and walked toward Fifth Avenue.
Bell hurried back to the Hotel Knickerbocker and corralled Archie Abbott.
“Get up to the Newport Torpedo Factory.”
“The Boston boys are already—”
“I want you. I’m getting a strange feeling about that attack.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“What if it wasn’t sabotage? What if it was a robbery? Stay there until you discover what they took.”
He walked Archie to the train at Grand Central and returned to the office, deep in thought. Abbington-Westlake had confirmed his suspicions. The spy was first and foremost a gangster. But he couldn’t be Commodore Tommy. The Gopher had lived and fought within the narrow confines of Hell’s Kitchen his whole life. The answer must lie with Louis Loh. He could be the tong. He could even be the spy. Perhaps that was what he had noticed was different about Louis: he acted like he had a purpose. It was time to put the question to him.
Bell collected Louis Loh from the Brooklyn Navy Yard brig late at night and handcuffed his wrists behind his back.
Loh’s first surprise came when instead of putting him in a truck or an auto, Bell walked him toward the river. They waited at the water’s edge. Hull 44 loomed behind them. The wind carried the sounds of ship engines, slatting sails, whistles, and horns. Blacked out but for running lights, Lowell Falconer’s turbine yacht Dyname approached in near silence.
Deckhands guided Bell and his prisoner aboard without speaking a word. The yacht backed into the river and headed downstream. It went under the Brooklyn Bridge and passed the Battery and picked up speed on the Upper Bay.
“If you’re planning to throw me overboard,” Louis Loh said, “remember I know how to swim.”
“Wearing those manacles?”
“I assumed you would remove them, being above torture.”
The helmsman increased speed to thirty knots. Bell took Loh into the darkened cabin, where they sat in silence sheltered from the wind and spray. Dyname crossed the Lower Bay. Bell saw the lightship flash by the porthole. When Dyname’s bow rose to the first Atlantic comber, Louis Loh asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“To sea.”
“How far to sea?”
“About fifty miles.”
“That will take all night.”
“Not on this ship.”
The helmsman opened her up. An hour passed. The turbines slowed, and the yacht settled down. Suddenly it bumped hard against something and stopped. Bell took Louis’s arm, checked that he hadn’t jimmied open the cuffs, and led him out on deck. Silent deckhands helped them onto the wooden deck of a barge. Then Dyname wheeled about and raced off. In minutes, all to be seen of her was the fiery discharge from her stack, and soon she vanished into the night.
“Now what?” asked Louis Loh. Creamy whitecaps shone in the starlight. The barge rolled with the movement of the sea.
“Now we climb.”
“Climb? Climb what?”
“This mast.”
Bell directed Louis’s gaze up the cage mast. The airy structure rose so high that its swaying top seemed to brush the stars. “What is this? Where are we?”
“We’re on a target barge anchored in the U.S. Navy Atlantic Firing Range. Test engineers have erected on the barge this one-hundred-twenty-five-foot cage mast, the latest development in dreadnought spotting masts.”
Bell climbed two rungs, unlocked Louis’s right cuff, and locked it around his own ankle.
“Ready? Here we go.”
“Where?”
“Up these ladders. When I raise my leg, you raise your arm.”
“Why?”
“There’s a test scheduled for dawn to see how the cage mast fares in battle conditions when bombarded by 12-inch guns. Any spy worth his salt would give his eyeteeth to watch. Let’s go.”
It was long climb to the spotting top, but neither man was breathing hard when they reached the platform. “You are in excellent condition, Louis.” Bell removed the cuff from his ankle and locked it to the tubing that formed the mast.
“Now what?”
“Wait for dawn.”
A cold wind sprang up. The mast swayed as it sighed aound the tubing.
At first light, the silhouette of a battleship took shape on the horizon.
“New Hampshire,” said Bell. “You recognize her, I’m sure, by her three funnels and old-fashioned ram bow. You will recall that she carries 7- and 8-inch guns in addition to four 12s. Any minute now.”
The battleship emitted a red flash. A five-hundred-pound shell roared past like a freight train. Louis ducked. “What?” he screamed. “What?” Now the sound of the gun rumbled their way.
Another flash. Another shell roared closer.
“They’ll have the range soon!” Bell told Louis Loh.
The 12-inch gun flashed red. A shell struck in a shower of sparks fifty feet below. The mast shook. Louis Loh cried, “You’re a madman.”
“They say this helix design is remarkably strong,” Bell replied.
More shells roared by. When another hit, Louis covered his face.
Soon there was enough light in the sky for Bell to read his gold watch. “A few more single shots. Then they’re scheduled to blast salvos. Before they finish up with full broadsides.”
“All right. All right. I admit I am tong.”
“You’re more than tong,” Isaac Bell replied coldly. He was rewarded by an expression of surprise on Louis’s ordinarily immobile face.
“What do you mean?”
“Sun-tzu on the art of war. If I may quote your countryman: ‘Be so subtle that you are invisible.’ ”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You told me on the train, ‘They think we’re all opium addicts or tong gangsters.’ You sounded like a man with a broader point of view. Who are you really?”
A salvo thundered. Two shells ripped through the structure. Still it stood, but it was swinging side to side.
“I am not tong.”
“You just told me you are. Which is it?”
“I am not a gangster.”
“Stop telling me what you aren’t and start telling me what you are.”
“I am Tongmenghui.”
“What is Tongmenghui?”
“Chinese Revolutionary Alliance. We are a secret resistance movement. We pledge our lives to revive Chinese society.”
“Explain,” said Isaac Bell.
In a rush of words, Louis Loh admitted that he was a fervent Chinese Nationalist plotting to overthrow the corrupt Empress. “She is strangling China. England, Ge
rmany, all Europe, even the U.S., feed on China’s dying body.”
“If you are a revolutionist, what are you doing in America?”
“Dreadnought battleships. China must build a modern fleet to fend off colonial invaders.”
“By blowing up the Great White fleet in San Francisco?”
“That wasn’t for China! That was for him.”
“ ‘Him’? Who are you talking about?”
With a fearful glance at the New Hampshire, Loh said, “There is a man—a spy—who pays. Not in money but in valuable information about other nations’ dreadnoughts. We, Harold Wing and me, pass it along to Chinese naval architects.”
“And you pay for it by doing his bidding.”
“Exactly, sir. Can we go down now?”
Bell knew this was a major breakthrough in the case. This was the freelance whom Yamamoto had tried to betray in exchange for a clean escape. Louis had gotten him close again.
“You are working for three masters. The Chinese Navy. Your Tongmenghui resistance movement. And the spy who paid you to attack the magazine at Mare Island. Who is he?”
Another freight train of a shell roared by. The structure trembled. “I don’t know who he is.”
“Who is your intermediary? How does he give you orders and information?”
“Mailboxes. He sent information, orders, and money for expenses in mailboxes.” Loh ducked another shell. “Please, let us go down.”
Across the water, sparkling in the first rays of sunlight, all the New Hampshire’s guns traversed toward the cage mast. “Here comes a broadside,” said Bell.
“You must believe me.”
Bell said, “I feel a certain affection for you, Louis. You held off shooting me until I jumped from the train.”
Louis Loh stared at the battleship. “I was not sparing your life. I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.”
“I’m tempted to let you down, Louis. But you haven’t told me all you know. I don’t believe that everything came in the mail.”
Louis Loh cast another fearful gaze at the white battleship and broke down completely. “It was Commodore Tommy Thompson who told us to attack the magazine at Mare Island.”