Sullivan sometimes wished he were back working the Meatball Beat in Little Italy. Ryan paid him well, sure, but having to dodge G-men on the docks was not his idea of a good time.
It was a bracing, misty evening, supposed to be spring but didn’t feel much like it. The waves were choppy and the gulls were huddled on the pylons with their beaks under their wings, their feathers ruffled in the cold northeast wind. Three hulking great ships were tied up at the beat-up old dock, all freighters. This was not one of the fashionable wharfs, with passenger liners and pretty girls waving hankies. Just a couple of red-faced, sour-looking salts in pea jackets tramping by, trailing cigarette smoke, boots crunching on old gull droppings.
Sullivan walked up to the gangplank of the Olympian, the largest of the three ships in the fleet Ryan had bought for his secretive North Atlantic project. He waved at the armed guard, Pinelli, huddled into a big coat on the top deck. Pinelli glanced down at him and nodded.
Ruben Greavy, head engineer for the Wales brothers, was waiting on the lower deck at the top of the gangplank. Greavy was a fussy, pinch-mouthed, bespectacled little man in a rather showy cream-colored overcoat.
Sullivan hesitated, glancing back down the dock—just making out the dark figure of the man who’d been following him. The guy in the slouch hat and trench coat was about seventy yards down the wharf, pretending to be interested in the ships creaking at their moorings. Sullivan had hoped he’d dodged the son of a bitch earlier, but there he was, lighting a pipe for a bit of realistic spycraft.
The pipe smoker had been tailing Sullivan since he’d gotten a cab at Grand Central and maybe before. There wasn’t much the guy could learn following him here. The ship was already loaded. The feds would never get an inspection warrant before it sailed at midnight. And what would they make of the prefabricated metal parts, giant pipes, and enormous pressure-resistant sheets of transparent synthetics? It was all stuff you could legitimately call “export goods.” Only it wasn’t being exported across the ocean. It was being “exported” to the bottom of the ocean.
Sullivan shook his head, thinking about the whole North Atlantic project. It was a crazy idea—but when Ryan put his mind into something, it got done. And Sullivan owed the Great Man a lot. Almost ruined him, getting kicked out of the NYPD. Shouldn’t have refused to grease those palms. They’d set him up to look like a crook, fired him, and taken away his pension. Left him with almost nothing.
Sullivan took to gambling—and then his wife ran off with the last of his dough. He’d been thinking about eating a bullet when he crossed paths with the Great Man, two years earlier …
Sullivan reached into his coat pocket for the flask—then remembered it was empty. Maybe he could get a drink from Greavy.
Sullivan waved at Greavy and climbed the gangplank. They shook hands. Greavy’s grip was soft, fingers puny in Sullivan’s big grasp.
“Sullivan.”
“Professor.”
“How many times … I’m not a professor, I have a doctorate in … never mind. You know someone’s shadowing you on the dock back there?”
“Different gumshoe this time. Probably FBI or IRS.” He turned his collar up. “Kind of chilly out here.”
“Come along, then, we’ll have a drink.”
Sullivan nodded resignedly. He knew what Greavy’s idea of a drink was. Watered brandy. Sullivan needed a double Scotch. His father had sworn by Irish whiskey, but Sullivan was a Scotch man. Sure, the black betrayal of yer heritage, it is, his pa would say. A steady liquid diet of Irish whiskey had killed the old rascal at fifty.
Greavy led him along a companionway to his cabin, which was not much warmer. Most of the little oval room that wasn’t the narrow bed was taken up by a table covered with overlapping blueprints, sketches, graphs, intricate designs. The Wales brothers’ design sometimes looked like Manhattan mated with London—but with the power of a cathedral. The designs were overly fancy for Sullivan’s taste. Maybe he’d get to like it once it was done. If it ever was …
Greavy took a bottle from under his pillow and poured them two slugs in glasses, and Sullivan eased the stuff down.
“We need to be ready for any kind of raid,” Greavy said, distractedly looking past Sullivan at the blueprints, his mind already back in the world of the Wales’s design—and, very nearly, Ryan’s new world.
Sullivan shrugged. “With any luck he’ll get the place finished before they can screw with us. The foundation’s already laid. Power’s flowing, right? Most of the stuff’s in place on the support ships. Just a few more shipments.”
Greavy snorted, surprising Sullivan by pouring himself a second drink—and irritating Sullivan by not offering him one. “You have no idea of the work. The risk. It’s enormous. It’s the very soul of innovation. And I need more men! We’re already behind schedule…”
“You’ll get some more. Ryan’s hired another man to supervise the—‘foundational work’ he calls it. Man named McDonagh. He’s going to put him on the North Atlantic project once he proves he really can be trusted.”
“McDonagh. Never heard of him—don’t tell me, he’s not another apple picked from an orange tree?”
“A what?”
“You know Ryan, he has his own notions of picking men. Sometimes they’re remarkable, and well, sometimes they’re—strange.” He cleared his throat.
Sullivan scowled. “Like me?”
“No, no, no…”
Meaning yes, yes, yes. But it was true: Ryan had a way of recruiting black sheep, people who showed great potential but needed that extra chance. They all had a spirit of independence, were disillusioned with the status quo—and sometimes willing to skirt the law.
“The problem,” Sullivan said, “is that the government thinks Ryan is hiding something because he’s trying to keep people from finding out where these shipments are going and what they’re for … and he is hiding something. But not what they think.”
Greavy went to the blueprints, shuffling through them with one hand, his eyes gleaming behind his thick spectacles. “The strategic value of such a construction is significant, in a world where we’re likely to go toe-to-toe with the Soviets—and Mr. Ryan doesn’t want any outsiders going down there to report on what he’s building. He wants to run things his way, ’specially once it’s set up. Without interference. That’s the whole point! Or to be more accurate—he wants to set it up to run itself. To let the laissez-faire principle free. He figures if governments know about it, they’ll infiltrate. And then there’s the union types, Communist organizers … suppose they were to worm their way in? The best way to keep people like that out is to keep it completely secret from them. Another thing—Ryan doesn’t want any outsiders to know about some of the new technology … You’d be amazed at what he’s got—new inventions he could patent and make a fortune on, but he’s holding it back … for this project.”
“Where’s he getting all these new inventions?”
“Oh, he’s been recruiting people for years. Who do you think designed those new dynamos of his?”
“Well, it’s his call,” Sullivan said, looking wistfully into his empty glass. Weak brandy or not, a drink was a drink. “You’ve been working for him twice as long as I have. He don’t tell me much.”
“He likes information to be compartmentalized on this project. Keeps a secret better.”
Sullivan crossed to the porthole and peered out. Saw his shadow, out there, still clamping that pipe in his mouth. But now the G-man was pacing by the Olympian, looking the freighter up and down. “Son of a bitch’s still out there. Doesn’t seem empowered to do anything but ogle the ship.”
“I’ve got to meet the Wales brothers. You know what they’re like. Artists. All too aware of their own genius…” He frowned at the blueprints. Sullivan could see he was jealous of the Waleses. Greavy sniffed. “If there’s nothing else—I’d better get on with it. Unless there’s something else besides this new man that Ryan’s taken on?”
“Who? Oh, McDonagh? No, I’m here to confirm the time you ship out. Ryan wanted me to come down personally. He’s beginning to think they might be listening in on the telephones somehow. I’m thinking if you can leave earlier than midnight, it’d be better.”
“As soon as the captain’s back. I expect him within the hour.”
“Leave soon as you can. Maybe they’ll get a warrant after all. I don’t think they’d find anything illegal. But if Ryan wants to keep them from knowing what he’s up to, the less they see, the better.”
“Very well. But who could imagine what he’s up to? Jules Verne? Certainly not these drones at the IRS. But Sullivan, I assure you—Ryan is correct: if they knew what he really has in mind, they’d be quite worried. Particularly considering how little help he gave the Allies in the war.”
“He took no sides at all. He didn’t care for Hitler or the Japs neither.”
“Still—he showed no special loyalty to the United States. And who can blame him? Look at the wreckage the ant society made of Europe—for the second time in the century. And the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki … I can’t wait to leave all that behind…” Greavy escorted Sullivan toward the door. “Ryan has every intention of creating something that will grow—and grow! First across the seabed, and then, in time, above the surface of the sea—when they’ve done such damage to themselves, these so-called nations of the earth, that they can no longer pose a threat. Until then, he is right to mistrust them. Because he is creating something that will compete with them. A whole new society. Indeed, in time a whole new world! One which will utterly replace the vile, squirming anthill humanity has become…”
New York City
1946
“Merton? Get outta my bar.”
Merton was gaping at Frank Gorland from behind the beer-stained desk of The Clanger’s smoky little office. Harv Merton was a man with a large round head and thick lips, a skinny body, and a brown turtleneck sweater. Hell, he looked like a damn turtle—but a turtle in a bowler hat. “Whatta hell ya mean, your bar?” he asked, tamping a cigarette out in a butt-filled ashtray.
“I’m the owner, ain’t I? As of tonight anyhow.”
“Whatta hell ya mean you’re the owner, Gorland?”
The man who called himself Frank Gorland smiled without humor and leaned against the frame of the closed door. “You know any expressions besides whatta hell? You’re about to sign this bar over to me, is whatta hell.” Gorland ran a hand over his bald head. Prickly, needed to shave it. He took the papers from his coat, all legal down to the last period, and dropped them on Merton’s desk. “That look familiar? You signed it.”
Merton stared at the papers, eyes widening. “That was you? Hudson Loans? Nobody told me that was—”
“A loan is a loan. What I seem to recall is, you were drunk when you signed it. Needed some money to pay off your gambling vig. A big fucking vig it was too, Merton!”
“You were there that night? I don’t remember—”
“You remember getting the money, don’t you?”
“It—it don’t count if I was drunk!”
“Merton, if there was no business done drunk in this town, half its business wouldn’t get done.”
“I think you put something in my drink, that’s what I think; the next day I felt—”
“Stop whining; you cashed the check, didn’t you? You got the loan, couldn’t pay the interest, time’s up—now this place is mine! It’s all there in black and white! This dump was your collateral!”
“Look, Mr. Gorland…” Merton licked his thick lips. “Don’t think I disrespect you. I know you’ve hustled—uh, worked your way to a good thing, this end of town. But you can’t just take a man’s bidness…”
“No? My attorneys can. They’ll come after you hammer and tongs, pal.” He grinned. “Hammer, Tongs, and Klein, attorneys at law!”
Merton seemed to shrivel in his seat. “Okay, okay, whatta ya want from me?”
“Not what I want—what I’m taking. I told you, I want the bar. I own a bookkeeping operation. I own a drugstore. But—I don’t have a bar! And I like The Clanger. Lots of dirt on the fights, what with the boxin’ setup and all. Might be useful … Now you call that fat-ass bartender of yours in here, tell him he’s gotta new boss…”
* * *
Gorland. Barris. Wiston. Moskowitz. Wang. Just some of the names he’d had the last few years. His own name, quite another Frank, seemed like it belonged to somebody else.
Keep ’em guessing, that was his way.
The Clanger wasn’t just a cash cow—it was the place for Frank Gorland to hear the right conversations. It was just a short walk from the docks—but it was not just a nautical bar. There was a big boxing bell on the wall behind the bar; when they
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