Suddenly salvation! A knock at the door. “Steward, sir. May I enter?”

Wagner kicked out, hoping to knock something to the floor that would make a noise. The knock was repeated with a firm rap of impatient knuckles, not the usual deferential forgive-the-interruption-sir, but a demanding open-the-door-and-let-me-in. The missing passenger! The crew was searching the ship. He struggled harder. The hand over his mouth slid down his chin and closed around his throat. Neither blood nor air could rise to his brain. He felt his legs give out from under him and he realized with a loss of all hope that he was being strangled to death.

“Sir? Are you there, sir?”

The man who stunk of coal muttered in Wagner’s ear. “Ich bin Donar.”

It was the most beautiful sound that Wagner had ever heard in his life. Donar. German for Thor, god of thunder. It meant that he would not die. Donar named the leader of a secret Imperial German Army plan, blessed, Wagner had been assured beyond any doubt, by the kaiser himself.

The grip on his throat eased fractionally.

Wagner nodded, confirming what he had sworn in blood: obey without question.

The hand eased a little more, just enough for Wagner to whisper, “Forgive me, please. I didn’t know.”

“Tell the steward that you are sleeping. Tell him to go away.”

“What if he won’t go? They’re searching the ship.”

“If he insists, let him in, but not into your bedroom. Tell him there is a lady there who wishes to remain anonymous. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” said Wagner. He had an impulse to salute. The last man to speak to him with such compelling authority had been his colonel in the Army.

“Do it!”

“DO YOU SUPPOSE THEY’RE looking for the German?”

Two young trimmers in the No. 1 boiler room—Bill Chambers from County Mayo and Parnell Hall from Munster—passed in opposite directions, heaving wheelbarrows between the forward cross-bunker and the firing aisle. They had no fear of being heard over the thundering furnaces. Besides, the chief engineer, the American swell, the saloon steward, and the prisoner who’d been locked in the baggage room had finally left the stokehold.

“Who else?”

Chambers and Hall were leaders of a new breed of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. To hell with compromising old men. They were true rebels, and they had vowed to drive British rulers out of Ireland or die trying. Neither would deny they were hotheads. In fact, they would accept that charge as a compliment. Nor would anyone who had seen them harry English Army patrols with rocks and slingshots deny their bravery. As for being seduced by promises of rifles and explosives in exchange for helping the German, that depended on your definition of seduction.

“Think they’ll find him?”

“If they do they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

Though both were young and brave and had fought the patrols, Bill Chambers and Parnell Hall let go of their wheelbarrows and made the sign of the cross. The man they knew as the German was in a fighting class by himself.