“If we were close,” said Bell, “we would know what Henry Clay is going to do next. But we don’t have a clue. Nor do we know who gives him his orders. All we know is, we have a bloody-minded provocateur serving a ruthless boss.”

•   •   •

DRESSED LIKE a wealthy Southern banker, in a white suit, a straw planter’s hat, and rose-tinted glasses, Henry Clay pretended to admire the launchways of the bankrupt Held & Court Shipyard of Cincinnati. Scores of rails ran side by side down a muddy slope into the Ohio River, and the owner of the yard— foppish young Mr. Court Held, who was anxious to borrow money or sell out, or both—boasted that his family had been launching side-paddle steamers and stern-wheelers down those rails for sixty years.

“Ah suppose you-all have the hang of it by now?” said Clay, laying a Deep South drawl on thick as he pleased. Not only was Court Held desperate, but repeated intermarriage among the founding families had bequeathed his generation the brainpower of a gnat.

“Yes, sir. In fact, crane your neck around that bend and you’ll see fine examples of our product.”

Henry Clay had already looked around that bend.

“I would like very much to see a large steamboat.”

Held & Court had two of the biggest paddleboats left over from the steamboat age that ended when fast, modern railroads rendered leisurely travel passé. Nimbler Cincinnati shipyards still boomed, launching by the hundreds utilitarian stern-wheelers that pushed coal barge tows. Numerous such workboats were churning the river white as Clay and the yard owner walked across the yard for a look around the bend. But Held & Court had persisted in building giant floating palaces until the last grand Mississippi riverboat companies went under.

“Behold, sir. Vulcan King and White Lady.”

They towered over their wharf. Four tall decks of painted wood, polished metal, and cut glass were heaped upon broad, flat hulls three hundred feet long. Topping their decks were glass pilothouses near the front, and soaring about the pilothouses were twin black chimneys with flaring tops. Each boat was propelled by a giant stern wheel forty feet in diameter and fifty feet wide.

“We installed the latest triple expansion engines.”

The White Lady was appropriately white.

“She’s the prettier one, don’t you think? A brag boat, sure as shootin’.”

The Vulcan King was painted a dull blue-gray color. It was this more somber of the vessels that had brought Henry Clay to Cincinnati.

“Which has the reinforced decks?”

“Where’d you hear about reinforced decks?” the owner demanded. “That’s a government secret.”

Henry Clay returned a smile much colder than his drawl. “Ah believe a United States senatah acquaintance confided War Department plans to dispatch a shallow-water gunboat to Cuba. Although it could have been my friend the admiral who told me about the cannon and the Maxim gun.”