“Downstairs” meant privacy in the Hotel Knickerbocker’s cellar bar. Ten minutes later, they were hunched over a dark table. Archie beckoned the waiter. “You might want a drink before we report to the boss. I certainly do.”

“What’s missing?”

“Four electric torpedoes imported from England.”

The waiter approached. Bell waved him off.

“I thought everything burned up in the fire.”

“So did the Navy. They loaded all the junk on a barge to dump it offshore. I said to this Wheeler character, ‘Why don’t we count torpedoes? ’ Long story short, we went through the debris with a fine-tooth comb and tallied four missing electrics.”

Bell stared at his old friend. “By any chance were they the ones armed with TNT?”

“Wheeler is certain that those with TNT warheads are the ones missing.”

“Do you agree?”

“He had serial numbers. We found them on the remains of the cowlings. Found them all except those four—they’d been set aside for a torpedo boat to fire on the Test Range. It would have been too much of a coincidence if they’d been the only ones blown completely to smithereens.”

“And you’re sure the explosion wasn’t an accident?”

“I talked to the Navy—found an Annapolis man I knew at prep school. Our specialist confirmed. Riley from Boston, you know him. There is no doubt.”

“They are the Holy Grail of torpedoes,” Bell said, grimly. “Fast, long-range, silent propulsion married to immensely more powerful warheads.”

“The spy got the best. The only good news is that Wheeler can make more of them. The English are livid. They won’t sell us any more, but I learned that Ron Wheeler and his boys already started making unauthorized copies for the Navy. In the meantime, the spy got himself the latest British propulsion armed with the latest American warheads—priceless secrets to sell to the highest bidder.”

“Or deadly weapons to attack.”

“Attack? How would he fire them?” asked Archie. “Even a spy as cunning as this one can’t get his hands on a battleship.”

Isaac Bell said, “I would not put it past him to acquire a small torpedo boat.”

The old friends locked gazes. The laughter fled Archie’s green eyes. Bell’s blue turned dark as stone. He and Joseph Van Dorn had already blanketed Captain Falconer’s key engineers with protection. And Van Dorn operatives had infiltrated the Brooklyn Navy Yard workforce. But they both knew that neither the arrest of the Chinese spy nor that of the head of the Gopher Gang would stop Eyes O’Shay. The spy would easily rebuild his fluid organization. And with the Great White Fleet beyond his reach at sea, he would resume his attacks on future American battleships.

“We better talk to Mr. Van Dorn.”

“What are you going to tell him?”