WAITERS SPORTING RED, WHITE, AND BLUE BOW TIES spread watercress sandwiches and iced wine in the dignitaries’ pavilion. Bartenders, who had been issued similarly patriotic garters for their sleeves, rolled kegs of beer and carts of hard-boiled eggs into the ship workers’ tents on the riverbank. A warm breeze drifted through the enormous shed that covered the shipway, sunlight filtered down from glass panels in the roof, and it appeared that half the population of Camden, New Jersey, had turned out to celebrate launching the battleship Michigan, whose 16,000 tons were balanced at the high end of a track of greased rails that slanted into the river.

The shed still resounded with steel banging on wood, but the pace of the hammering had slowed. The wedges had lifted the battleship off nearly all her building blocks. But for a last few under her keel and bilges, she rested on the cradle she would ride down the ways.

The ceremonial launching platform surrounding the ship’s steel bow was draped with red, white, and blue bunting. A champagne bottle, wrapped in crocheted mesh to keep glass from flying and beribboned in the colors of the flag, waited in a bowl of roses.

The battleship’s sponsor, the pretty, dark-haired girl who would christen her, stood by in a striped flannel walking dress and a wide-brimmed Merry Widow hat heaped with silk peonies. She was ignoring the fevered instructions of an Assistant Secretary of the Navy—her father—who was warning her not to hold back at the crucial moment but to “Whack her with all you’ve got the instant the ship starts to move or it’ll be too late.”

Her gaze was fixed on a tall, golden-haired detective in a white suit, whose restless eyes were looking everywhere but at her.

Isaac Bell had not slept in a bed since he arrived in Camden two days ago. He had originally intended to come down with Marion the night before the ceremony and dine in Philadelphia. But that was before the Philadelphia office had sent the urgent wire to New York. Disquieting rumors had begun to drift in concerning a mysterious German bent on disrupting the launch. Detectives assigned to the German immigrant community heard of a recent arrival who claimed to be from Bremen but spoke with a Rostock accent. He kept asking about finding work at New York Ship but had never applied to the company. Several hands had unaccountably lost the gate badges that identified them as employees.

This morning at dawn, Angelo Del Rossi, the frock-coated proprietor of the King Street dance hall where Alasdair MacDonald had been murdered, sought Bell out. He reported that a woman had come to him, distraught and frightened. A German who met the description of the man from Rostock—tall and fair, with troubled eyes—had confessed to the woman, who in turn had confessed to Del Rossi.

“She’s a part-time working girl, Isaac, if you know what I mean.”