“Have you ever worked as a freelance?”

Abbington-Westlake smiled disdainfully. “The Royal Navy hires freelances. We don’t work for them.”

“I mean you personally—if you need money.”

“I work for His Majesty’s Navy. I am not a mercenary.” He stood up. “And now, Mr. Bell, if you will excuse me, I believe I have paid you for your photograph in equal coin. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Bell.

“Good day, sir.”

“Before you go, Commander?”

“What is it?”

“I have been dealing with you in my capacity as a private investigator. As an American, however, let me warn you that if I ever again see or hear of you taking photographs of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or any other shipyard in my country, I will throw your camera off the bridge and you after it.”

ISAAC BELL HURRIED UPSTAIRS to the Van Dorn office. A big case kept getting bigger and wider. If Abbington-Westlake was telling the truth—and Bell bet he was—then Yamamoto Kenta was not the head of the spy ring attacking Hull 44 but only another of its many agents. Like the German, and the hired killer Weeks, and whoever threw the young fire-control expert off the cliff. Who was the freelance? And whom did he serve?

Bell knew he was at a crossroads. He had to decide whether to arrest Yamamoto and squeeze what information they could out of him or continue following him in the hope that the Japanese spy would lead them higher up the chain of deceit. There was risk in waiting. How long would it take a seasoned professional like Yamamoto to catch the scent of his stalkers and go to ground?

As Bell strode into the back room, the man on the telephones said, “Here he is right now, sir, just walked in,” and handed him the middle one. “The boss.”

“Where?”

“Washington.”

“Yamamoto just hopped the train to New York,” Van Dorn said without preamble. “Coming your way.”

“Alone?”

“Not if you count three of our men in the same car. And others watching every station the Congressional Limited stops at.”

“I’ll watch the railroad ferry. See who he’s come to meet.”

YAMAMOTO KENTA HAD a choice of three different Pennsylvania Railroad ferries to cross the river from the Jersey City Exchange Place Terminal to Manhattan Island. After disembarking from the Congressional Limited into the enormous glass-ceilinged train shed, he could take a boat to 23rd Street, another to Desbrosses Street near Greenwich Village, or one that would land all the way downtown at Cortlandt Street. There was even a boat to Brooklyn, and another went up the East River to the Bronx. The ferry he chose would depend upon the actions of the Van Dorns following him.