“Hull 44, Mr. Bell.”

Isaac Bell drank in the noble sight. Even with her frames awaiting more armor, there was a majesty to her flaring bow, an eagerness to join the water, and a promise of power as yet unleashed.

“Keep in mind she doesn’t even officially exist yet.”

“How can you hide a six-hundred-foot ship?”

“It resembles a hull that Congress authorized,” Captain Falconer answered with an almost imperceptible wink. “But, in fact, from her keel to the top of her cage mast she will be chockful of brand-new ideas. She will have all the latest in turbines, guns, torpedo protection, fire control. But most important, she is uniquely designed to continue improving by swapping new innovations for old. Hull 44 is far more than one ship. She’s the model for entire classes to be built, and the inspiration for ever-more-innovative, ever-more-powerful super-dreadnoughts.”

Falconer paused dramatically. Then he intoned in a hard, grim voice, “And that is why Hull 44 is targeted by foreign spies.”

Isaac Bell raked Captain Falconer with a cold eye.

“Are you surprised?” he asked curtly.

Isaac Bell had had it with Falconer’s attempts to lead him in circles. As inspiring a sight as the great ship was, and as much as he had relished driving a fifty-knot race yacht he would have better spent the night combing Hell’s Kitchen for the man who murdered Alasdair MacDonald.

Falconer backed off when he heard Bell’s cold retort.

“Of course everyone spies,” the captain admitted. “Every nation with a naval shipyard or a treasury to buy a warship spies. How far ahead are their friends and enemies in guns, armor, and propulsion? What new next invention will make our dreadnought vulnerable? Whose gun is longer range? Whose torpedo goes farther? Whose engines are faster, whose armor stronger?”

“Vital questions,” Bell concurred. “And it is normal-even for nations at peace-to seek the answers.”

“But it is not normal,” Falconer shot back. “And certainly not right for nations at peace to commit sabotage.”

“Hold your horses! Sabotage? There’s no evidence of sabotage in these murders-no destruction, with the possible exception of the foundry accident in Bethlehem.”

“Oh, there is destruction, all right. Terrible destruction. I said sabotage and I meant sabotage.”

“Why would a spy kill when killing is sure to draw attention to his spying?”

“They fooled me, too,” said Captain Falconer. “I feared that Artie Langner had accepted bribes and killed himself out of guilt. Then I thought, What awful luck that poor young Grover Lakewood fell on his head. But when they killed Alasdair MacDonald, I knew it had to be sabotage. And didn’t he, too? Didn’t he whisper, ‘Hull 44’?”

“As I told you,” Bell admitted.

“Don’t you see, Bell? They’re sabotaging Hull 44 by murdering minds. They’re attacking the minds that imagine the vital guts of that warship-guns, armor, propulsion. Look past the steel and armor plate. Hull 44 is no more than the minds of the men still working on it and the minds of those who died. When saboteurs kill our minds, they kill unborn thoughts and new ideas. When they kill our minds, they sabotage our ships.”

“I understand,” Bell nodded thoughtfully. “They sabotage our ships not yet launched.”

“Or even dreamed of!”

“Which enemy do you suspect?”

“The Empire of Japan.”

Bell recalled immediately that old John Eddison had claimed to have seen a Japanese intruder in the Washington Navy Yard. But he asked, “Why the Japanese?”

“I know the Japs,” Falconer answered. “I know them well. I served as an official observer aboard Admiral Togo’s flagship Mikasa when he destroyed the Russian Fleet at the battle of Tsushima-the most decisive naval battle since Nelson beat the French at Trafalgar. His ships were tip-top, his crews trained like machines. I like the Japs, and I certainly admire them. But they are ambitious. Mark my words, we will fight them for the Pacific.”

Bell said, “The murderers who attacked Alasdair MacDonald were armed with Butterflymessers manufactured by Bontgen and Sabin of Solingen, Germany. Isn’t Germany a leading contender in the dreadnaught race?”

“Germany is haunted by the British Navy. They’ll fight tooth and claw for the North Sea, and Britain will never let them near the Atlantic. The Pacific is our ocean. The Japanese want it, too. They are designing ships for distant service across the wide Pacific, just as we are. The day will come when we’ll fight them from California to Tokyo. For all we know, the Japs will attack this summer when the Great White Fleet approaches their islands.”

“I’ve seen the headlines,” Bell said with a wry smile. “In the same newspapers that inflamed the war with Spain.”

“Spain was a cakewalk!” Falconer retorted. “A stumbling relic of the Old World. The Japs are new-like us. They’ve already laid down Satsuma, the biggest dreadnought in the world. They’re building their own Brown-Curtis turbines. They’re buying the latest Holland submarines from Electric Boat.”

“Nonetheless, early in an investigation it pays to keep an open mind. The saboteurs could serve any nation in the dreadnought race.”

“Investigation is not my department, Mr. Bell. All I know is that Hull 44 needs a man with gumption to protect her.”

“Surely the Navy is investigating-”

Falconer interrupted with a sarcastic snort. “The Navy is still investigating reports that the battleship Maine sank in Havana Harbor in 1898.”

“Then the Secret Service-”

“The Secret Service has its hands full protecting the currency and President Roosevelt from fiends like the one who shot McKinley. And the Justice Department will take years to launch any sort of national bureau of investigation. Our ship cannot wait! Dammit, Bell, Hull 44 demands an outfit that’s got steam up and is itching to cast off.”

By now Bell knew that the Special Inspector of Target Practice was manipulative, if not underhanded, and devious by his own admission. But he was a true believer. “As an evangelist,” Bell told him, “the Hero of Santiago would give Billy Sunday a run for his money.”

“Guilty,” Falconer admitted with a practiced smile. “Do you suppose Joe Van Dorn would allow you to take the job?”

Isaac Bell fixed his gaze on the bones of Hull 44 rising on the ways. As he did, a yard whistle started the workday with a deepthroated bellow. Steam cranes chanted full-throttle. Hundreds, then thousands, of men swarmed onto the a-building ship. Within minutes, red-hot rivets were soaring like fireflies between “passer boys” and “holders-on,” and soon she echoed the din of hammers. These sights and sounds thrust Bell’s memory back to Alasdair MacDonald mourning his dead friend, Chad Gordon. “Horrible. Six lads roasted alive-Chad and all the hands working beside him.”

As if a shooting star had swept the last strands of darkness from the morning sky, Isaac Bell saw the mighty dreadnought for what she could be-a lofty vision of living men and a monument to the innocent dead.

“I would be amazed if Joe Van Dorn didn’t order me to take the job. And if he doesn’t, I’ll do it myself.”