The Thief

“Headfirst!” said Semmler, picking up a slice bar. He raised it high, his eyes fixed on Bell’s arms.

For a single heartbeat the men holding him were distracted by having to maneuver in the cramped space. Isaac Bell contracted every muscle in his body, ripped one leg and one arm free, and exploded in a flurry of kicks and punches. A kick caught the trimmer who was holding his other leg in the face, cracking his nose, and he let go with a cry. Bell’s fist landed solidly. The man who had been holding his arm fell backwards. His head struck the rim of the firebox opening, and he screamed as his hair burst into flame. Desperately trying to escape the fire, he banged his brow on the rim of the furnace mouth and fell deeper into the coals, his head in the furnace, his body thrashing on the deck.

Bell was already trying to roll beyond the range of Semmler’s slice bar, which hit the deck an inch from his head, scattering sparks. He leaped up and dodged a wild swing, then rounded unexpectedly on the trimmer whose nose he had broken, who was creeping up behind him, and dropped him with a punch that smashed his jaw.

He spun around, reeling on his feet. “Just us, Semmler.”

Christian Semmler flashed his dazzling smile. “First you’ll have to catch me.”

He crouched, sprang up, caught the bottom rung of the ladder that rose up the ventilator shaft that shared the interior of the No. 4 fu

Nearing the top, Bell saw daylight silhouette Semmler, who was clinging to the upper rim of the fu

“Thank you for joining me,” he smiled. “Now I have you where I want you.” He folded back his sleeve, revealing the leather gauntlet that held the braided wire with which he had strangled so many. It was Bell’s first close look at it, and he saw a lead weight on the end of the cable. Semmler straightened his arm suddenly, and the weight drew six feet of wire from its spool and wrapped it around one of the steel stays stiffening the fu

Bell lunged suddenly and reached for the man’s foot.

The Acrobat moved just as swiftly, eluding Bell’s grasp and launching himself off the ladder to the other side of the ventilator shaft, where he hooked an elbow over the rim and smiled down on Bell.

“The man who falls two hundred and twenty feet to the bottom of the ship will not be the man who learned to fly in the circus.”

With that, Semmler used his elbow to flip over the rim and disappear.

Bell climbed to the top of the ladder and jumped across the ventilator. He caught the rim with both hands, pulled himself over the top, and peered down through hot smoke into the soot-blackened uptake that exhausted No. 4 boiler room’s furnaces. As it shared the fu

Semmler crouched with bird-like grace on a foothold several feet down.

“Now when you fall,” he taunted, “you will fall into the furnace.”

Bell surveyed Semmler’s new position. The foothold, a steel shelf less than a foot deep, circled the entire uptake. There were handholds welded just beneath the top rim, and Semmler’s eyes blazed again as he chose his next landing. The cable shot from his gauntlet, snagged a handhold, and the Acrobat flew, while launching a deadly kick at Bell’s head.

Isaac Bell jumped at the same time, landed beside him on the foothold, grabbed the nearest handhold, and punched Semmler in the stomach as hard as he could, staggering the man. “I was in the circus, too.”

But he had not reckoned with Semmler’s superhuman speed, nor his capacity to shrug off pain. In a move too quick to anticipate, Semmler flipped the cable off the rung and around Isaac Bell’s neck.

Bell drove punch after punch into Semmler’s torso, but even the hardest blow did nothing to relieve the pressure that was suddenly cutting blood and air from his brain. White lights stormed before his eyes, and he felt his strength ebb. A roar in his ears smothered the pounding of his heart. Gripping a handhold with the remaining strength in his left hand, he rammed Semmler with his knee, and the German slipped from the foothold. The only thing that kept him from falling was the wire stretched between his wrist and Isaac Bell’s neck.

With the man’s entire weight hanging from his throat, Bell could barely see. He felt as if he had not drawn breath in a year. His hand was slipping.

“Interesting situation, Detective. When you die, I’ll fall. But you’ll die first.”

“No,” gasped Bell. His hand moved convulsively.

“No, Detective?” Semmler mocked. “No deeper last words, than ‘no’ before we plunge into the fires? Speak now or forever hold your peace. What was that, you say?”

“Thank you, Mike Malone.”

“Thank you for what?”

“Cutting pliers.” Holding on with the last of the strength in his left hand, Bell jerked his right hand, and the tool slid out of his sleeve into his palm. He closed his fingers around the handles and squeezed with all he had left in him.

The cable snapped.

Isaac Bell’s last sight of the Acrobat before he vanished down the Mauretania’s stack was the astounded light in his eyes.

50

Arriving at the Berliner Stadtschloss in a triumphal mood, Herma

A pair of generals flaunting gruesome dueling scars looked down their noses at the banker. Wagner serenely ignored the scornful aristocrats and took great pleasure in watching their expressions change when the kaiser marched straight to Herma

Lackeys rushed in with a moving picture screen, acoustic horns, and an enormous new film projector. The lights were dimmed. His Majesty the kaiser sat on his throne. The company stood and watched a moving picture of Kaiser Wilhelm himself striding into this very room with his favorite dachshund tucked under his arm.

When the monarch on the screen opened his mouth to speak and his words poured mightily from the acoustic horns, the expressions on the generals’ scarred faces, thought Herma

“Der Tag!” spoke the kaiser’s image, easily heard over the clatter of the film projector. “Der Tag will be Germany’s begi

Herma

“Victory also depends on Germany persuading our allies to join the war on Germany’s side. One by one, Germany will destroy—”