The Thief

“Sir? Are you there, sir?”

The man who stunk of coal muttered in Wagner’s ear. “Ich bin Donar.”

It was the most beautiful sound that Wagner had ever heard in his life. Donar. German for Thor, god of thunder. It meant that he would not die. Donar named the leader of a secret Imperial German Army plan, blessed, Wagner had been assured beyond any doubt, by the kaiser himself.

The grip on his throat eased fractionally.

Wagner nodded, confirming what he had sworn in blood: obey without question.

The hand eased a little more, just enough for Wagner to whisper, “Forgive me, please. I didn’t know.”

“Tell the steward that you are sleeping. Tell him to go away.”

“What if he won’t go? They’re searching the ship.”

“If he insists, let him in, but not into your bedroom. Tell him there is a lady there who wishes to remain anonymous. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” said Wagner. He had an impulse to salute. The last man to speak to him with such compelling authority had been his colonel in the Army.

“Do it!”

“Do you suppose they’re looking for the German?”

Two young trimmers in the No. 1 boiler room — Bill Chambers from County Mayo and Parnell Hall from Munster — passed in opposite directions, heaving wheelbarrows between the forward cross-bunker and the firing aisle. They had no fear of being heard over the thundering furnaces. Besides, the chief engineer, the American swell, the saloon steward, and the prisoner who’d been locked in the baggage room had finally left the stokehold.

“Who else?”

Chambers and Hall were leaders of a new breed of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. To hell with compromising old men. They were true rebels, and they had vowed to drive British rulers out of Ireland or die trying. Neither would deny they were hotheads. In fact, they would accept that charge as a compliment. Nor would anyone who had seen them harry English Army patrols with rocks and slingshots deny their bravery. As for being seduced by promises of rifles and explosives in exchange for helping the German, that depended on your definition of seduction.

“Think they’ll find him?”

“If they do they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

Though both were young and brave and had fought the patrols, Bill Chambers and Parnell Hall let go of their wheelbarrows and made the sign of the cross. The man they knew as the German was in a fighting class by himself.

As the poet said, plague and famine ran together.

Through his regal suite bathroom door, Herma

“Turn around,” Donar called through the door. Earlier, he had warned in a cold voice that left no doubt of the consequence, “Never look upon my face.”

Wagner stepped into the parlor and turned his back. His throat hurt since the man had nearly squeezed the life out of him.

“Order your di

Wagner, who sang in his church choir and had an ear for voices, heard something slightly off-key in Donar’s High German accent. While smooth and guttural, with the expected educated flair, now and then the tones of the Prussian upper crust roughened like a peasant’s. “Shall I order food for you, too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. One passenger doesn’t eat two meals.”

“I meant so you might have di

“I’ll eat yours.”

“Yes, of course. I see.” He heard Donar walk from the bathroom into his bedroom.

“Wipe up that coal dust before the bath steward sees it.”

Herma

He did not mind. It was an honor to be among the elite diplomats, bankers, and merchants drafted into the Donar Plan. Admittedly, he was no soldier. Nor was he privy to the details of the military scheme. But he could travel freely in the United States of America while conducting legitimate business and mingle in the highest echelons.

Der Tag was coming. Victory depended not only on soldiers. There would be no victory unless a patriot like Herma

10

At dawn the newly wed Isaac Bell slipped silently out of bed, kissed his sleeping bride softly on her brow, dressed quietly, and went out on the promenade deck. It was bitter cold, and the sea was making up again. Long, evenly spaced rollers marched out of the northwest. The sky was clear but for jagged clouds stacked on the horizon like ice-capped mountains. The wind was strong, and the smoke from Mauretania’s tall red fu

He went straight to the point on the starboard side that the man who jumped from the boat deck would have passed as he fell. Somehow, Bell suspected, he had managed to land safely on the promenade deck — although that did not seem possible, as the boat deck was not set back and the promenade deck did not thrust farther out. But Beiderbecke had called him an acrobat.

Bell paced the area, his eyes roaming. Assume, he thought, that the Akrobat was a real acrobat. Assume he was a trained circus tumbler or trapeze artist. Assume he was extraordinarily strong, astonishingly agile, with no fear of heights and nerves of steel.

Bell smiled, suddenly gripped by a fond memory. He had run away from home to join the circus when he was a boy. Before his father caught up with him in a Mississippi fairground, he had befriended animal tamers, clowns, horseback performers, and especially the acrobats, whom he revered for their bravery and their strength.

Assume this Akrobat possessed every power of a professional big top performer who had honed his skills since childhood, as circus stars did. Surely, from what Bell had seen the night they sailed, the man was indeed strong and agile, with no fear of heights and nerves of steel. Was it possible for such a man to jump off the boat deck, drop ten feet down the sheer side of the ship, and swing back aboard on the promenade deck?

The answer was no.

Bell leaned over the railing and looked straight down at the water. Then he looked up the side of the Marconi house. As he had told Archie, the nearest lifeboat hanging from davits beside the boat deck was thirty feet from where the Acrobat jumped the railing. A quick count of boats revealed something he had never really thought about before. They had room for only five hundred people, while Mauretania carried three thousand…

Suddenly Isaac Bell bolted to the nearest companionway and bounded up the stairs. Would he have noticed in the dark if the Acrobat had jumped up rather than down? Up to one of the many stays and cables rising to the sundeck, immediately above the boat deck, where the Marconi house sat. Would he have seen him grip a line and scramble up to the sundeck?

Bell ran along the boat deck past the library windows that had backlighted the scene that night and saw immediately that the answer was no. There were no stays remotely near enough for a man to jump to. Therefore, if the Acrobat hadn’t fallen into the sea, he had to have landed on the deck below the boat deck. Also impossible. Baffled, Isaac Bell wandered slowly back down to the promenade deck.

Two seamen were smoothing the wood railing with rasps and sandpaper.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, gents. Up early?”

“Soon as we can see to work,” said one.