Assassin's Honor (9781561648207) (17 page)

But I knew I was in the corner of every eye when I replied, “Thank you for your advice, Commander. Duly noted.”

I judged the docking of the ship to be an excellent opportunity to teach Gardiner a lesson in humility, and far more importantly, a lesson for my junior officers in close-quarters ship handling.

“This will be simple gentlemen,” I announced as we closed to within one hundred yards of the scarred wharf end. “We will approach at dead slow on a forty-five degree angle and put the starboard bow to the wharf, about two-thirds of the way down, then secure with bow and spring lines. Keeping the rudder amidships, we will then go slow ahead on the starboard engine and slow astern on the port engine. That will twist the stern up current and upwind toward the wharf. Put a good line thrower on the stern.”

Gardiner said, “Aye, aye, sir. That'll be Bosun Watson, best I've ever seen. I'll send him aft.”

Watson, in my opinion, was the second-best line thrower aboard, after Rork, but I refrained from commenting. Things went well until the bow was thirty feet off the wharf.

At this moment three things happened. Gardiner reported the Spanish and German gigs had shoved off from the flagship, an unnecessary interruption I presumed was intended to rattle my nerves. Rear Admiral Walker appeared on the port side of his main deck, evidently after seeing the foreigners off the ship, and was grimly surveying the scene. And lastly, a gust of the damned southwest wind blew against us, stopping our forward momentum instantly.
Bennington
's bow immediately slid sideways to leeward, away from the wharf.

“We've lost steerage way, Captain,” observed Gardiner lightly. “We're drifting down to Tift's dock.”

Now, to the non-nautical soul who may be reading this account, an explanation will be in order. Asa Tift's dock is 120 feet (on that day, downwind and downcurrent) east of the naval wharf. It is a tight fit, with little room between, to put a ship at each wharf when there is no wind or current to contend with. Thankfully, there wasn't a steamer at the Tift dock at the time, but 120 feet is not a lot of room to maneuver a 250-foot warship with a 36-foot beam. And at that point, we only had seconds before colliding with Tift's dock.

“We'll have to go full astern to get out and start over,” Gardiner announced while shaking his head in mock sympathy.

“No, Commander Gardiner, we won't,” I replied and turned to the men at the wheel and engine telegraph. “Slow ahead on port engine, dead slow astern on starboard engine, left standard rudder.”

These men, a quartermaster's mate and a seaman, acknowledged the orders as they instantly fulfilled them, for they, unlike Gardiner, understood what was needed. The engine telegraph bells rang up the commands and water began churning around us. Everyone on the bridge was stone-faced—except for my second-in-command.

“What are you doing!” gasped Gardiner. “We'll hit the wharf ahead of us!”

“Watch and learn, Commander,” I tried to say as pleasantly as I could, though my stomach and nerves were agitated into knots. Glancing aft, I called out to Watson and his men, “Watson, stand by on the starboard quarter lines!” Then I called out to a big-bearded petty officer on the bow, “Kouskee, send over the bow messenger line!”

He knew his business. A monkey's fist knot, trailing a light line, instantly flew out from our starboard bow and arced to the wharf, where
Chicago
's men caught it and used it to haul the heavy main bow line up to the wharf deck. There was a good man in charge who didn't wait for orders but began dragging the line to a bollard near the foot of the wharf.

This was the moment of truth. “Dead slow astern on port engine. Dead slow ahead on starboard engine. Left full rudder.”

Bennington
's bow was now secured, albeit still a ways from the wharf, but our stern was unsecured and out beyond the wharf, in the stronger current and wind. I ignored Gardiner's shaking head and mumbling, and ordered, “Slow ahead on starboard engine.”

The engine order bell rang and I felt the ship surge forward, getting the stern inside the end of the wharf and out of the worst of the wind and tide. But now the bow was closing rapidly with the bulkhead along the shoreline at the head of the pier. “Stop starboard engine,” I said, waiting for fifteen long seconds before adding, “Stop port engine.” The churning water and vibrating deck ended.

To Watson I shouted, “Send over the stern line!”

The stern messenger line flew over to the wharf as the ship slowed her forward speed. That damned bulkhead was still getting closer though. The eyes of the quartermaster's mate alternated between me and the bulkhead.

“Send over and take a strain on the forward spring line!” I ordered. “Take the bow line to the capstan and heave around!
Send over the after spring line!”

Bennington
finally stopped twenty feet from the bulkhead, and sat there parallel to the naval wharf, fifteen feet off our starboard side. Soon the capstan was doing its work and the bow edged close alongside the wharf. It was followed by the stern.

I turned to the executive officer, who still stood rooted in the same place, by the chart table, and said, “Commander Gardiner, please have all lines doubled up, set fenders, secure engines, shift the colors, and make ready to coal ship. I'll be with the admiral. When I return, I want to see you in my cabin. That will be all.”

Then, without waiting for him to process the import of my final words and come up with a cynical reply, I departed the wheelhouse.

Outside, the sun was nearing the horizon, searing the marching lines of dark clouds with fiery edges of copper and gold, and making a beautiful sight. In my hurried condition, my mind vaguely processed it as an indicator a storm was coming, but my main attention was on my destination across the wharf. I dashed down the ladder to the main deck and, without waiting for the brow to be set up, leaped down to the wharf and made my way across to
Chicago
.

A storm, indeed—for Rear Admiral John Grimes Walker was certainly the human equivalent.

Key West Naval Station

Wednesday evening

14 December 1892

The wrinkled brow, tired eyes, and wan expression told me the admiral wasn't angry, he was disappointed and exhausted. That made me feel even worse, for I respected this man more than most. I stood before his desk, looking down at him, waiting for the inevitable.

“Well, Wake, you're in trouble yet again, aren't you? Should I expect the Mexican government to be in line demanding your head along with everyone else?”

“No, sir. The Mexican government is outside of this matter.”

“Well, that's something, at least.” He let out a long weary breath. “It has not been a good day, Wake. In fact, it's been a deuce of a long, lousy day. At four o'clock this morning the officer of the watch informed me a gunner's mate from
Atlanta
was arrested for drunken assault on an undertaker—an undertaker, of all people—and the sheriff of Key West is in an uproar.”

Well, that one wasn't my fault, so I waited.

“This afternoon, one of your brother captains informed me his ship was unready for the gunnery drills and another one informed me they were delayed by some local dispute in Panama and would be late for the rendezvous. Incredible!”

Walker's eyes were blazing, and I was happy I wasn't one of those two captains. But he hadn't mentioned me yet, so I knew the fire was about to get hotter. He leaned forward and pointed a finger in the air.

“All of that would be quite enough to ruin my day, of course, but wait, there was more to come. And, naturally, it involves
you
.”

“Sir . . .”

He didn't let me talk. “Yes . . . you. This evening an irate German captain and his Spanish sidekick showed up in this very cabin.”

“Sir, I can explain.”

“Oh, you'd better! The two of these pompous asses,
after
draining a glass of my personal wine, started complaining about how you stole German-contracted coal in Mexico. This Blau fellow next proceeded to threaten me with accusations that your actions have been an international provocation, an insult to the Imperial German Navy's honor, and none other than the great Kaiser himself will be greatly enraged and personally protesting to the President of the United States immediately. The Kaiser will demand immense satisfaction, starting with your naval career, and possibly mine.”

He paused and took a breath.

“Oh, and there was more, Wake. Blau said the cost incurred by the Imperial German Navy will run into the thousands. Guess who will be billed for that? It was a very impressive performance on his part. I doubt whether even you could have done better.”

The admiral glared at me, then said, “So, in an effort to calm Captain Teutonic Drama down a bit, I told him he could coal here absolutely gratis, at this very wharf, courtesy of the United
States Navy, starting right away.”

Walker paused again, shaking his head in contemplation of the situation. Yet again, I took advantage of the lull and began to try and clarify the situation, but the admiral still wasn't ready for that. He unloaded another salvo.

“Now here is where it gets really ironic, Wake. I had just given orders for the Germans to coal at this wharf when who should appear? The long-lost Commander Wake! And then, just to rub salt into Blau's wound and compound the Kaiser's coming enragement, you blissfully ignore the naval station's orders to anchor out. Oh no, instead, you chose to steal Blau's berth at the wharf, and his coal for the second time. And now, you show up in my cabin right after our foreign guests have disembarked, and you've got that look on your face,” the admiral let out a long sad sigh, “the one I know only too well. My day is bound to get worse. Far worse. Isn't it?”

“Well, sir, the situation has changed considerably, and that's why I'm here. I was wrong in my initial assessment of both the target of the assassination and of the perpetrators of the assassination.”

“All right, explain what happened.”

I didn't waste his time with remorse over barging in and taking the berth, but started my narration with our arrival at Cozumel Island and the ensuing events. The admiral kept a stolid visage throughout, even when I related how I had co-opted the Germans' collier away from them. When I reached the point where
Bennington
's collier arrived in Mexico and I received my delayed correspondence, I slowed down, for this was the part which worried me.

“As you will recall, sir, I maintain correspondence with acquaintances all over the world as a result of my intelligence missions since eighty-one. Jesuits, Freemasons, Asian and Pacific royalty, politicians in Europe and South America, foreign intelligence agents and naval officers, writers and artists, performers and merchants—I've tried to keep a diverse selection
of information coming in.”

“Wake, please speed this up. I know about your global circle of bizarre friends.”

“Yes, sir. Well, part of the correspondence lately was from an unwitting source who provided an insight into an upcoming Spanish operation. The operation is to stop the Cuban rebel organization, which has finally consolidated and strengthened, from mounting a coordinated massive military campaign for independence of the island. Their goal is to decapitate the organization and thus re-fractionalize it.”

He understood straightaway and said, “Your friend José Martí.”

“Yes, sir. He is the target. It was a false-flag disinformation ploy. And it worked.”

“All this was concluded from an insight gained from an unwitting source?”

“Yes, sir. Ancillary information from an unwitting source.”

I could see the inquiries forming in his mind, but he held back, so I went on.

“This kind of operation could only be accomplished by Colonel Marrón's Sección Especial, of the Cuerpo Militar de Orden Público.”

The admiral's jaw tightened. “Marrón, again. So how did they deceive us?”

“The basic premise we partially uncovered here in Key West several days ago is still correct, sir—there will be an assassination of a rebel leader. But I erroneously attributed it to the Germans, against the Mayan rebel leader in Mexico. The scrap of chart was a plant by the assassin. The fact it coincided entirely with the coded message in German means the Spanish knew the Germans had somehow gotten wind of their plan and were passing it along to Berlin, so they made the Germans look like the suspects. It was simple, and I bought right into it.”

I didn't add the admiral did too. Admirals don't like to hear that sort of thing—especially from mere commanders.

He grumbled something as I continued. “However, with this new insight, we now know the real target is José Martí. The Spanish don't know we know. From our previous information, we know the assassination will be on December sixteenth. Martí wrote me in September that he would be on a speaking circuit in Florida in December, though he didn't say where, so now we also can be certain that the assassination will be inside the United States, and probably here in Florida.”