Huddling from the cold in the cubby under the bow, he reflected upon his close call and concluded that his mission had suffered no damage. The garden path where the night watchman had almost caught him was at least a half mile from the Gun Factory. Nor did it matter that the old man had seen his face. Americans were contemptuous of Asians. Few could distinguish between Japanese and Chinese features. Since immigrants from China were far more numerous than those from Japan, the watchman would report an intrusion by a despised Chinese—an opium fiend, he thought with a relieved smile. Or, he chuckled silently, a nefarious white slaver lurking to prey on the commandant’s daughters.

Five miles downriver, he disembarked in Alexandria, Virginia.

He waited for the boat to depart the wooden pier. Then he hurried along the waterfront and entered a dark warehouse that was crammed with obsolete naval gear deep in dust and spiderwebs.

A younger man whom Yamamoto had labeled, scornfully, “The Spy” was waiting for him in a dimly lit back room that served as an office. He was twenty years Yamamoto’s junior and ordinary-looking to the point of being nondescript. His office, too, held the outdated paraphernalia of earlier wars: crossed cutlasses on the walls; a Civil War-era Dahlgren cast-iron, muzzle-loading cannon, which was causing the floor to sag; and an old 24-inch-diameter carbon arc battleship searchlight propped behind his desk. Yamamoto saw his own face mirrored in its dusty eye.

He reported that he had accomplished his mission. Then, while the spy took notes, he related in precise detail everything that he had seen at the Gun Factory. “Much of it,” he said in conclusion, “looks worn out.”

“Hardly a surprise.”

Overworked and underfunded, the Gun Factory had produced everything from ammunition hoists to torpedo tubes to send the Great White Fleet to sea. After the warships sailed, it forwarded train-loads of replacement parts, sights, firing locks, breech plugs, and gun mounts to San Francisco. In another month the fleet would recuperate there from its fourteen-thousand-mile voyage around South America’s Cape Horn and refit at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard to cross the Pacific.

“I would not underestimate them,” Yamamoto retorted gloomily. “Worn-out machines are replaceable.”

“If they have the nerve.”

“From what I saw, they have the nerve. And the imagination. They are merely catching their breath.”

The man behind the desk felt that Yamamoto Kenta was possessed—if not unhinged—by his fear of the American Navy. He had heard this rant before and knew how to change the subject by derailing the Jap with lavish praise.

“I have never doubted your acute powers of observation. But I am awed by the range and breadth of your skills: chemistry, engineering, forgery. In one fell swoop you have impeded the development of American gunnery and sent their Congress a message that the Navy is corrupt.”

He watched Yamamoto preen. Even the most capable operative had his Achilles’ heel. Yamamoto’s was a self-blinding vanity.

“I’ve played this game a long time,” Yamamoto agreed with false modesty.