Page 42 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)

T hirty hours later, Bell got off a train in the port city of Calais and hailed a taxi to take him to the harbor.

As the closest point to England, the Calais region had always been a bustling place, but with the war on, the port was a scene of pandemonium.

A troopship had just arrived and fresh-faced recruits were marching off the gangways in ordered ranks.

Even at a distance Bell could hear the sergeants’ bellows.

Elsewhere were vast parking lots for trucks that had been sent across the channel and big horse corrals filled with animals.

A cruiser of some considerable size was just ahead of the troopship, its main batteries turned out to the sea and no doubt manned all day, every day, on the chance a submarine or other German ship approached.

His destination wasn’t these reserved military docks, but a commercial area for fishing boats.

This section of France was known as the Opal Coast because of the pearlescent quality of the light.

It had attracted artists and poets and writers for generations.

Bell found the sky leaden and full of coal smoke and the stench of rotting fish and old hemp.

He eventually located the right fishing pier and the boat hired to take him to Holland.

It was a newer trawler, smallish but well-maintained with an A-frame crane over her flat stern.

Though a French boat, she flew the red, white, and blue horizontally striped Netherlands flag as a safeguard against a U-boat attack.

In truth, the German submarines cared little for the nationality of their victims. They had already sunk over a hundred neutral Dutch fishing boats and killed over a thousand members of their crews.

Bell paused at the quay until he caught the eye of a sailor coiling rope on the forward deck, just under the pilothouse. He noted the time by the angle of the watery sun and nodded.

Bell stepped aboard the boat, mindful the deck was slick with fish oil and slime.

A door to a small cabin located under the pilothouse swung open as if haunted.

Bell stepped through into a dim, cramped space.

Another man was there, dressed in tweeds rather than work clothes or a proper suit.

He was shorter than Bell—most men were—and heavier around the middle.

He had the soft and long-suffering look of a bureaucrat sent out into the field against his will.

“You must be Bell.” His accent was in imitation of an Etonian graduate’s.

“I am.”

“Wife’s maiden name?”

“Morgan.”

“Name of the man who rescued her in Panama?”

Bell chuckled at the memory and how she liked to tell the tale. “Teddy Roosevelt.”

“Her favorite color?”

“The same blue as her eyes,” he said without hesitation.

“And indeed you are Bell,” the man said rather more cordially and stuck out a hand.

“Thomas Wrightsmith, Naval Intelligence. Winston still has some clout in Room 40, so I got the call to come over to meet with you.” He looked around at the tiny cabin as if seeing it for the first time. “Not exactly luxurious, is it?”

“You didn’t cross the channel on this boat?”

“Oh, heavens no. I came over on a destroyer parked on the other side of the port. This rattletrap is taking you to Rotterdam, while I head home with the next convoy.” Wrightsmith indicated the two pieces of luggage at his feet.

“Your wife and Mrs. Churchill didn’t think one of your regular suits would work with the cover we’ve devised for you, so they went shopping.

You should have everything you need for a couple of days in German-held territory. ”

“And the other case?” Bell asked.

Wrightsmith lifted it onto a small table between two bench seats bolted to the deck.

It took a little more effort than Bell thought necessary and it hit the table with a solid thunk.

The British spy worked the latches and opened the leather case’s lid.

He had to open a second flap that covered the main part of the case.

The insides were divided into nearly sixty individual cells, like a bee’s honeycomb.

In each little cubby were various-sized ball bearings.

“Since no state of war exists between your country and the Germans, you get to keep your name, but from here on you’re a representative for the Fullerton Forge of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It’s an open secret that the Kaiser underestimated the number of these little balls needed to prosecute a modern, mechanized war, and their supplies are dwindling.

If you are stopped for any reason, the authorities should look favorably on your mission and will likely give you a pass. ”

“Good thinking.”

“You’re not the first spy we’ve sent in using a similar cover,” Wrightsmith confessed. “Rest assured, they all made it back out again.”

The spy handed over a leather billfold of documents. Inside was a visa to enter Germany, letters of introduction to several industrial suppliers inside Belgium, business cards for the Fullerton Forge, and sample order sheets.

“Very thorough,” Bell said.

“We have some of the best forgers in the business,” Wrightsmith said with some pride.

“Now, there is a bicycle factory one town over from where this Rath character is based out of. It’s been converted to make motorcycles for the German signal corps, meaning your presence in the area peddling ball bearings won’t arouse suspicion. ”

“Okay, good. What about transport? A car?”

“Too conspicuous, even for a traveling American. Best if you use trains. Tickets have already been bought.” Wrightsmith paused to make certain he had Bell’s full attention when he added, “I don’t need to remind you what would happen should the United States enter the war while you’re in Germany.

The Germans not letting you leave will be the least of your worries.

They will be suspicious of the timing of your visit and you’ll likely end up in Berlin in front of a man named Walter Nicolai. ”

“Who’s that?”

“He heads up Department IIIb. Counterespionage. A real nasty piece of work by all accounts. Rumor has it that he personally outed Margaretha Zelle as a German spy to the French.”

“I’m not sure I recognize—”

“Better known as the exotic dancer Mata Hari. Story we’re getting from our own spies is he grew annoyed that all the intelligence she gathered was about boudoir-hopping French officers and their various conquests and is letting the Deuxième Bureau do his dirty work.

Mark my word, the frog-eaters are going to put her up against a wall soon enough, sans blindfold and last cigarette. ”

“Grim,” Bell remarked.

“My point being is that if your lot does declare, get yourself out as fast as you can and assume that legal checkpoints are out.”

“Got it.”

“That’s about it, then, Mr. Bell. Consider yourself briefed.

The boat will be met in Rotterdam, and you’ll be escorted to the station for a train into the occupied territories.

” Wrightsmith shook Bell’s hand and doffed his hat.

From the door of the little cabin he said over his shoulder, “Good luck and all that, Yank.”