the Spy (2010) by Cussler Clive (early readers .txt) 📕

And you! No wonder you won the first law degree ever granted a woman at Stanford University.

I wouldn't know either except my father occasionally bought a Japanese scroll, and I remembered a strange story he told me. I wired him in San Francisco for the details. He wired back a very expensive telegram.

Ashiyuki Utamaro was at the height of his printmaking career when he got in trouble with the Emperor apparently for making eyes or more at the Emperor's favorite geisha. Only the fact that the Emperor loved Ashiyuki Utamaro's woodcuts saved his life.

Instead of chopping his head off, or whatever they do to Japanese Lotharios, he banished him to the northernmost cape of the northernmost island of Japan-Hokkaido. For an artist who needed his workshop and staff, it was worse than prison. Then his mistress smuggled in paper, ink, and a brush. And until he died, alone in his tiny little hut, he drew calligraphy scrolls. But no one could admit they existed. His mistress and everyone who helped her visit him would have been executed. They could not be displayed. They could not be sold. Somehow the prints ended up with a dealer in San Francisco, who sold one to my father.

Forgive me my skepticism, but it does sound like an art dealer's story, said Bell.

Except it is true. Yamamoto Kenta does not know about the Exile Scrolls. Therefore he is no scholar and no curator of Japanese art.

Which makes him a spy, Bell said grimly. And a murderer. Well done, my darling. We'll hang him with this.

THE SPEECHES THAT ACCOMPANIED the luncheon's toasts were mercifully brief, and the rousing one delivered by Captain Lowell Falconer, Special Inspector of Target Practice, was, in the words of Ted Whitmark, a real stem-winder.

With crackling language and powerful gestures, the Hero of Santiago praised Camden's modern yard, lionized the ship workers, thanked the Congress, commended the chief constructor, and acclaimed the naval architect.

During one of the explosions of applause, Bell whispered to Marion, The only thing he hasn't praised is the Michigan.

Marion whispered back, You should have heard what he said privately about the Michigan. He compared her to a whale. And I don't believe he meant it as a compliment.

He did mention that it is barely half the size of Hull 44. With a courtly bow in Dorothy's direction, Falconer wound his toast up with a stirring testimonial to Arthur Langner. The hero who built Michigan's guns. Finest 12s in the world today. And a harbinger of even better to come. Every man jack in the Navy will miss him.

Bell glanced at Dorothy. Her face was alight with joy that even a maverick officer like Falconer had said for all to hear that her father was a hero.

May Arthur Langner rest in peace, Captain Falconer concluded, knowing that his nation sleeps in peace secured by his mighty guns.

The last bit of business was the presentation by the chairman of New York Ship of a jeweled pendant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy's quick-moving daughter, who had cracked the champagne over Michigan's bow before the ship got away. Heading for the podium, the savvy industrialist shook hands warmly with a man in an elegant European frock coat, who handed him the pendant. And before he draped it around the young lady's neck, he used the occasion to plug the booming jewelry industry in Camden's sister city of Newark.

ANTICIPATING THE CRUSH heading home to New York, Bell had bribed Camden detective Barney George to arrange for a police launch to run him and Marion across the river to Philadelphia, where a police car sped them to the Broad Street Station. They boarded the New York express and settled into the lounge car with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the safe launching, the thwarting of a saboteur, and the imminent capture of a Japanese spy.

Bell knew that he had been too visible today to take a chance trailing Yamamoto back to Washington. Instead, he put the Japanese under close surveillance by the best shadows Van Dorn could field on short notice, and they were very good indeed.

What do you think of Falconer? Bell asked Marion.

Lowell is a fascinating man, she answered, adding enigmatically, He's torn by what he wants, what he fears, and what he sees.

That's mysterious. What does he want?

Dreadnoughts.

Obviously. What does he fear?

Japan.

No surprises there. What does he see?

The future. The torpedoes and submarines that will put his dreadnoughts out of business.

For a man torn, he's mighty sure of himself.

He's not that sure. He talked a blue streak about his dreadnoughts. Then suddenly his whole face changed, and he said, There came a time in the age of chivalry when armor had grown so heavy that knights had to be hoisted onto their horses with cranes. Just about then, along came the crossbow, shooting bolts that pierced armor. An ignorant peasant could be taught how to kill a knight in a single afternoon. And that,' he said-patting my knee for emphasis-in our time could be the torpedo or the submarine.'

Did he happen to mention the airplane flights at Kitty Hawk?

Oh, yes. He's been following them closely. The Navy sees their potential for scouting. I asked what if instead of a passenger the airplane carried a torpedo? Lowell turned pale.

There was nothing pale about his speech. Did you see those senators beaming?

I met your Miss Langner.

Bell returned her suddenly intense gaze. What did you think of her?

She's set her cap for you.

I applaud her good taste in men. What else did you think of her?

I think she's fragile under all that beauty and in need of rescue.

That's Ted Whitmark's job. If he's up to it.

TWO CARS AHEAD on the same Pennsylvania Railroad express, the spy, too, headed for New York. What some would call revenge he regarded as a necessary counterattack. Until today the Van Dorn Detective Agency had been more irritant than threat. Until today he had been content to monitor it. But today's defeat of a