Rafe Engels was a gunrunner wanted by the British Special Irish Branch for arming rebels of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and by the Czar’s secret police for supplying Russian revolutionists. O’Shay had first met him on the Wilhelm der Grosse. They had danced carefully around each other, and again on the Lusitania, probing warily at the kindred spirit they each sensed behind the other’s elaborate disguise. There were differences: the gunrunner, always on the rebels’ side, was an idealist, the spy was not. But over the years they had worked out several trades. This exchange of torpedoes for a submarine would be their biggest.

“Where’s the Holland?” O’Shay called across the water.

“Under you!”

O’Shay peered into the waves. The water started bubbling like a boiling pot. Something dark and stealthy took shape under the bubbles. A round turret of armor steel emerged from the white froth. And then, quite suddenly, a glistening hull parted the sea. It was one hundred feet long and menacing as a reef.

A hinged cover opened on top of the turret. A bearded man thrust his head and shoulders into the air, looked around, and climbed out. He was Hunt Hatch, at one time the Holland Company’s chief trials captain, now on the run from Special Irish Branch. His crew followed him out, one after another, until five Republican Brotherhood fighters who had pledged their lives to win Home Rule for Ireland were standing on the deck, blinking in the light and breathing deeply of the air.

“Treat them well,” Engels had demanded as they clasped hands cementing their deal. “They are brave men.”

“Like my own family,” O’Shay had promised.

All had served as Royal Navy submariners. All had ended up in British prisons. All hated England. They dreamed, O’Shay knew, that when the Americans discovered that the submarine and its electric torpedoes were from England, it would appear that England had instigated an attack to cripple American battleship production. They dreamed that when war engulfed Europe, angry Americans would not side with England. Then Germany would defeat England, and Ireland would be free.

A lovely dream, thought the spy. It would serve no one better than Eyes O’Shay.

“There is your submarine torpedo boat,” Engels called from across it. “Where are my Wheeler torpedoes?”

Eyes O’Shay pointed at the sailboat.

Engels bowed. “I see the fair Katherine. Hallooo, my beauty,” he hailed through cupped hands. “I did not recognize you out of your sumptuous gowns. But I see no torpedoes.”

“Under her,” said O’Shay. “Four Wheeler Mark 14s. Two for you. Two for me.”

Engels gestured. The steamer’s seamen swung a cargo boom out from her king post. “Come alongside, Katherine. I’ll take two torpedoes—and maybe you, too, if no one is looking.”