The handsome Ted Whitmark trailed behind them, shaking hands and slapping backs and declaring in a voice that carried to the glass roof, “Michigan is going to be one of Uncle Sam’s best fighting units.” While Whitmark occasionally played the fool in his private life, gambling and drinking, at least before he met Dorothy, Research had made it clear that he was extremely adept at the business of snagging government contracts.

Typical of the incestuous relationships in the crowd of industrialists, politicians, and diplomats that swirled around the “New Navy,” he and Dorothy Langner had met at a clambake hosted by Captain Falconer. As Grady Forrer of Van Dorn Research had remarked cynically, “The easy part was discovering who’s in bed with whom; the hard part is calculating why, seeing as how ‘why’ can run the gamut from profit to promotion to espionage to just plain raising hell.”

Bell saw a small smile part Dorothy’s lips. He glanced in the direction she was looking and saw the naval architect Farley Kent nod back. Then Kent threw an arm around his guest—Lieutenant Yourkevitch, the Czar’s dreadnought architect—and plunged into the crowd as if to get out of the path of Ted and Dorothy. Oblivious, Ted seized an elderly admiral’s hand and bellowed, “Great day for the Navy, sir. Great day for the Navy.”

Dorothy’s eyes wheeled Bell’s way and locked with his. Bell returned her gaze appraisingly. He had not seen her since the day he had called on her in Washington, though he had, at Van Dorn’s urging, reported to her by long-distance telephone that there was strong reason to hope that her father’s name would soon be cleared. She had thanked him warmly and said that she hoped she would see him in Camden at the luncheon that would follow the launching. It occurred to Bell that neither Ted Whitmark nor Farley Kent would be pleased by the look she was giving him now.

A warm breath whispered in his ear. “That’s quite a smile for a lady dressed in mourning black.”

Marion Morgan glided behind him and made a beeline for Captain Falconer. He looked heroically splendid in his full-dress white uniform, she thought, or splendidly heroic, his handsome head erect in a high-standing collar, medals arrayed across his broad chest, sword at his trim waist.

“GOOD MORNING, MISS MORGAN,” Lowell Falconer greeted Marion Morgan heartily. “Are you enjoying yourself?”