Assassin's Honor (9781561648207) (5 page)

His face transformed into an innocent mien, which I knew to be entirely insincere from almost thirty years' experience with the man. Rork hadn't had an innocent thought since he was ten years old.

Rescrewing the India rubber hand back in place, he said, “Aye, aye, sir. Nary's the worry, 'tis ordered an' will be done. This'll be easier than slippin' off Mary O'Shanassey's garter on a Friday night. After two pints o' ale an' a glass o' gin, them sea-weary lads'll be putty in me hands. Why, they'll think o' me as their newest bosom buddy, a true brother o' the ocean, an' a man to be trusted with their innermost secrets an' prides.”

“It's Sunday, so where will you go that's open?”

“Only waterin' hole open is Annie's on Front Street—used to be Curry's Saloon. “Aye, an' methinks Annie's is jus' the right place to steer 'em. That way, what the lads don't gab to me, they'll whisper to me dear ol' friend Annie upstairs, an' that's sure 'nough. Ooh, but she do have a way with Jack-Tar, no matter his flag.”

“Annie Wenz, the madam?”

“Aye, one an' the same. The temperance people failed to close her down.”

It didn't surprise me. Wenz was formidable when angry, and
the most successful madam in Key West. One of the temperance people was my daughter, Useppa.

“Yes, well, no fights with the Germans, Rork,” I repeated.

He stood up and showed me his sincerest look of complete agreement, knuckling his brow with his right hand. “Sir! Nary a blonde hair on their big square Kraut heads'll be put out o' place. An' that's me solemn promise,” he glanced up, “as Saint Peter's me witness.”

“Good.” I handed him a small envelope. “First thing when you're ashore, get a boy to take this note to Useppa over at the church. I was hoping we both could have dinner with her but, of course, it's out of the question now with all this going on. She'll be not be pleased with our sudden departure, but I suppose I'll have to just put it on the list of her grievances with me.”

My daughter Useppa had been a Methodist missionary in Key West, teaching the island's black children, for the last eight years. Hers had been a difficult life; learning to live with a crippled leg, losing her mother to female cancer when she was fifteen, helping to raise her younger brother Sean, having a frequently absent naval officer for a father, and losing her fiancé Raul, a Cuban Methodist pastor, to a Spanish bullet when she was twenty-one. After that tragedy six years earlier, she'd plunged into her faith with an even more zealous passion that had no tolerance for backsliders.

Our relationship was polite and pleasant, having regrettably grown somewhat distant over the years. She tried, but couldn't quite hide her disappointment in me.

The main contention was that I wasn't as vigorous in my Christian faith as Useppa thought I should be. She disapproved of my behavior regarding drink, my humor, and was particularly offended by a love affair I'd had four years earlier. All this disapproval—I thought of it as “an obsession”—usually manifested itself in her preaching to me about the various moral sins I was currently committing, something no father wants to ever hear from his daughter. It is especially embarrassing
when I realize she might very well be right. My rebuttals to these harangues rang a bit hollow, I'm afraid, and any attempt to defuse them with light-hearted wit simply engendered yet another frown of dissatisfaction with my incorrigible attitude.

As ridiculous as it might sound, I had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that at age twenty-seven, my dear little girl Useppa had somehow taken on the role of my mother, and I was the irredeemable lad heading to hell in a hurry.

Her godfather Rork, who actually
is
incorrigible, naturally thought this all rather entertaining and recommended for some time not to take it seriously, that she would grow out of it. She hadn't.

Rork took the envelope and smiled. “Aye, said an' done, sir. An' don't ye worry a wee little bit, she's a Navy man's daughter an' will understand. Next time here, we'll be havin' a fine relaxin' dinner with our dear lass.”

U.S.S. Chicago

Key West Naval Station

Saturday afternoon

10 December 1892

I ended up late for my briefing to the admiral. When one is the captain of a ship, there are many demands on one's time, most of them of a spontaneous nature. Some can be delayed, but not for long. The necessity for me to deal with the admiral's enigma trumped the routine duties and decisions of a commanding officer, even the more important bureaucratic responsibilities accompanying a warship's return to a naval station. But it hadn't stopped my executive officer from expecting me to fulfill them, for he had fulfilled his.

Commander Gardiner was fuming with frustration, a condition in which he seemed to spend most of his existence. That his irritation had reached a boiling point was clear from his cloudy expression upon entry into my cabin. This was, no doubt, aggravated by the fact he, as the number two officer of the ship,
was kept waiting while I met with a mere noncommissioned petty officer.

Gardiner walked in just as Rork was departing, casting a glare at the bosun as they passed each other. Rork didn't help himself any by bestowing a polite smile on the executive officer and, in his thickest Irish brogue, pleasantly offering, “Af'ernoon, sir!”

That amiable greeting elicited a low grumble in response. Foul mood enhanced, Gardiner started in on his business even before he sat down, with an attitude bordering on disrespectful.

“Captain, I have been trying for hours to get in here to see you and go over these division head reports and requests. Can we please go over them now? I have the master-at-arms' prisoner and punishment report; captain's mast disciplinary requests from the division heads; surgeon's sick bay list; paymaster's commissary and supply accounts and requests; gunnery officer's ammunition and guns readiness report; signals traffic from the station ashore; chief engineer's machinery readiness report, bunker report, fuel request, and his repair and maintenance requests. Also there are the watch, quarter, and station bill changes, liberty ashore allocations; and several officers' ship visit requests. As per my duties, I've made decisions on all these things, but need to apprise you of them.”

Need to cover your stern, is more like it
, I uncharitably thought as he started in again. Holding up a hand to stop a continuation of the monologue, I pointed to the bulkhead. The clock showed thirteen minutes until 2 p.m.

“You are right, of course, Norton, but I'm afraid the admiral outranks you, me, and
Bennington
's administrative issues right now. He's expecting me at four bells, so I've got only a few minutes to get there. I don't hear any emergencies in your list, so we'll go over all of that when I return from the flagship. I should be back in an hour or two.”

“Aye, sir,” he said mechanically, departing without saying anything further and, most notably, without asking for my permission to leave.

This was followed within seconds by Seaman Bundle again,
the quarterdeck messenger timidly reporting that my gig had capsized when the forward boat falls were let go prematurely. It was presently being righted and bailed by the coxswain, the messenger said while stifling a grin, adding that the coxswain and the officer of the deck sent their apologies for the delay.

“Any other boats alongside and ready for use?”

“No, sir. The duty launch is over at the station landing. Should we call her back for you, sir?”

Damned bad luck—I would be late for the admiral. I was sure Rork, for whom the coxswain worked, would make certain the boat crews would never make that mistake again.

“No, Bundle. The gig'll be ready sooner. You're dismissed.”

And so it was several minutes past two o'clock, or four bells in sailors' jargon, when I arrived in Admiral Walker's cabin. His irritation was apparent.

“Well, Wake, I see you are finally here. So tell me, what have you determined about the mysterious coast on the chart segment, and that coded message?”

I concisely explained the facts I had discovered and added that I had sent Rork ashore to obtain information from the
Gneisenau
's petty officers on liberty.

He nodded, then asked, “This place is in Mexico, you say, not Venezuela?”

“Yes, sir. All the evidence points to the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.”

“Killing . . . an assassination. Serious indeed. And they've already proven with Simon Drake they can murder quite effectively and anonymously.”

“Yes, sir, they did. These are definitely professional assassins, part of a sophisticated scheme, not some ragtag gang of
bandidos
.”

“This Dzul fellow, what do you know of him?”

“Not much, sir. He's the leader of the Mayan rebels, apparently a native religious zealot who calls himself a Christian and, from what I can recollect, a bit ruthless.”

“How so?”

“Some Mayans wanted to reach an agreement with the central government a short time ago, but he said no, then went after the moderates who proposed it. Rumor had it he killed them, but that is unconfirmed.”

I held up a hand to make my next point. “And there is the conundrum, sir. It is very difficult for me to believe the Germans actually would support a man like him, at least openly, and I have no idea why they would want to rendezvous with him.”

“We must understand their
motive
, Wake, and it will take us to the heart of the matter. Money's involved, we can be sure of that.”

“Yes, sir, no doubt. The Germans have a lot of commercial money involved in the Caribbean and Latin America. The American hemisphere is a major foreign trading partner for the Hamburg firms, probably
the
major trading partner, and their trade is increasing everywhere. But the Mayans don't have anything valuable in their area, except sisal for making cordage.”

I shook my head in irritation at my own inability to deduce any reason for the Germans' rendezvous with Dzul. Airing the thought process aloud, I reiterated my knowledge of German influence inside Mexico, seeking a clue.

“Admiral, the German government has been currying favor with the Mexican federal government for several years in order to get commercial advantages in the country. President Díaz and Chancellor Bismarck were friends long before Kaiser Wilhelm II took the throne and subsequently dismissed the chancellor from office. There is a sizable German immigrant population—mostly farmers and tradesmen—all over coastal Mexico.”

A recent article in the
New York Times
came to mind. “Just a little while ago, Baron Bleichman, one of the big Hamburg
bankers, was in Mexico to study the potential for railroads with a view to investing in them. At the end of his trip, he publicly said he would recommend the idea. So why would the Germans jeopardize it by having a rendezvous with Dzul, much less kill him? Why get involved at all with the Caste War?”

Then it struck me. For the second time that day, I'd been overlooking the obvious.

“Admiral, I just had a thought. The Germans have been trying for five years to get a naval station somewhere in the Caribbean so they could protect their country's considerable commercial trade in the region.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Well, sir, they've tried the eastern Caribbean repeatedly at Curaçao, Venezuela, and St. Thomas, failing to secure an agreement each time, and that island they stole and tried to make a naval base, Klein Curaçao, turned out to be a failure. So maybe they're changing target areas. Maybe they're opting for the western Caribbean?”

Walker didn't seem warm to the idea. “Perhaps . . .”

“Sir, here's my logic. If the Germans had a naval station on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, they would control the Yucatán Channel, chokepoint of the major shipping route to the Caribbean and South America from all the Gulf coast ports of Mexico and the United States. Not to mention dominate the local countries from Mexico to Costa Rica. But the real object of their efforts is something far more important.”