Why, aren't more men assigned to each crate, he wondered instinctively. Then, seeing how quickly the trucks were moving, he realized the answer. The crates were being loaded as quickly as possible.
Why?
There was only one possible answer. Whoever was receiving the cargo was in a hurry. The second type of cargo was being loaded every bit as quickly. But these crates were much larger, about the size of small shacks. No team of men could possibly handle these. Large, sturdy, mechanized forklifts were busy at the stern of the ship moving these crates onto steel platforms. The platforms were then lifted by derrick and deposited through a deck hatch into the stern hold of the ship.
Siegfried set the telescope aside and calculated. These crates had to contain extremely heavy equipment, perhaps even motor vehicles of some sort.
He looked again. The containers were much too small for tanks or trucks. Generators, maybe? But what would be the urgency for generators? Ammunition? Never. Not packed like that. Not handled like that. Parts for antiaircraft weapons? He studied the crates carefully. Possible, he concluded. But that was merely a guess. He made mental calculations over how long each type of cargo took to be loaded onto the Adriana. He wondered if he was seeing the first day of loading or the fifth. Or the last.
The spy searched both sorts of crates for any markings that might identify the contents. There were absolutely none. Whatever the Adriana was taking on for transport back to England, she was taking it on in utmost secrecy.
The further question posed itself to Siegfried: did the crew even know what they were loading'? Siegfried decided to find out.
Next, Siegfried's attention focused on the navy yard, itself. He studied the patterns of work performed by the teams of sailors. He made meticulous mental notes of the ratio of officers to enlisted men. And he carefully studied the activities of the visiting British as opposed to the resident Americans.
Then Siegfried studied the main gate. There were two sentries on duty, both with side arms. The gate was open, but could be securely shut if necessary. The spy put his Celestron 1000 on its tripod and lay flat for an hour with the lens aimed at the gate. Siegfried barely breathed as he studied the traffic that came and went from the yard, and the protocol of the main gate.
Then, toward afternoon, he felt he had diagnosed it. Any civilians arriving had to show passes and go through a security check. Men-and a few women-in military uniform passed through with a simple salute. American naval officers came and went with the greatest ease of all.
Siegfried finally sat up. He stretched and by force of habit reached for another Pall Mall. He looked around to make certain that he was still alone. He was. He rubbed his eyes. They were tired from staring through the telescope.
The spy exhaled a long stream of smoke and then withdrew from his camera bag a sandwich, an apple, and a thermos filled with coffee. He lunched calmly and watched the other side of the river with his naked eye until sunset.
*
The old man who called himself Elmer had been a fixture around Reilly's-at least for the past week. He habitually wore an old suit and on his gray head he wore a peaked cap from another era. He was bent slightly and his face was lined. He was unshaven and sometimes had difficulty speaking, as if his back teeth were missing.
Reilly's was the murkily lit watering hole for the sailors who toiled at the Red Bank naval yard. On a busy night when the ships were in, the place jumped. The old man held court at the end of the bar and liked to play darts against the English seamen, who could always beat him. Elmer also gravitated toward young Billy Pritchard, an American ensign. Pritchard was fuzzy-cheeked and quiet, a kid from Ohio away from home for the first time. The Navy had promised him he would see the world, and so far he had seen South Carolina and New Jersey. To Elmer, Pritchard made somber comments about going AWOL, but the old man always talked sense into him. Besides, unlike the Brits who flocked around Reilly's in astonishing numbers, Billy Pritchard did not know how to grip a dart before throwing it. Elmer could always beat him.
Buck was the bartender. He was a big porky red- haired guy with a moon-shaped face and a County Cork accent. He had rejoiced in serving booze to thirsty seamen since the bleakest days of Prohibition. Buck owned the joint and liked it when all the ships were docked. But Buck already had the bad news, courtesy of a British warrant officer.
"English sailors'll be pullin' out next week," Buck confided to the old man. "Don't tell no one I told you. All shore leave's canceled August 27."
"The English like it here," Elmer said, his gray brows narrowing with a mischievous glint. "They like our women. They ain't going nowhere."
"There's a friggin' war gonna start, old man," Buck said. "These English boys'll be fightin' it."
"Already fought a war," the old man recalled. "Won it, too."
"There's gonna be another. In Europe, anyway." Buck blew his breath into a glass and polished the glass with his apron. He cast a jaundiced eye upon Elmer. "Lucky you're old,"
Buck said to him. "You ain't going to fight."
"Lucky you're middle-aged," Elmer shot back at him with considerable irritation. "I was in the last one."
Buck took a long look at Elmer's lined, sickly face. A new enlightenment came over the bartender, "Hey. Sorry, old-timer," he said with sudden affection. "Let me draw one for you. On the house."
"Don't mind," the old man said, watching Buck place a beer mug beneath Elmer's favorite spigot. "Don't mind at all if I do." Elmer accepted the drink and turned with new enthusiasm toward the English sailors behind him. "Not a man in the house can beat this old man at darts!" he proclaimed boisterously.
"Penny a point, Elmer," said an English sailor who, like the others, never bothered to collect after trouncing the aging American. "Think you can afford to lose again?" More often than not, the Englishmen bought Elmer a meal instead.
"Never lost yet to you young saps!" Elmer said gruffly, snatching some darts from a table.
"What about yesterday?" a sailor asked him.
"Don't remember yesterday," Elmer said. "Here! Show you how it's done." Elmer's first shot hit the black border on the edge of the target. "That's practice," he said. "Just warmup."
"Go get 'em now, Elmer," someone said.
The old man's point total lagged considerably behind his opponents'. Meanwhile, Elmer caught snippets of conversation from the English sailors. The place to visit in New Jersey, they said, was Atlantic City, though the older crewmen remembered it as being much grander before the Depression. And two sailors had almost been severely injured or even killed when the gears slid on the derrick loading the crated motorcycles and sidecars from General Motors onto the Adriana. Those big crates weighed a ton and a half, complained one sailor, and one of them had tumbled fifty feet across the Two Deck.
The brothels were better in New York than in Philadelphia, the enlisted men reached consensus, but with the latest shipment of cargo, there was no time for extended leave. The Adriana was even being loaded on weekends, as fast as the coffin-sized crates could arrive. Desmond, Baldwin, and Condon had sprained their backs loading those boxes, someone else complained. Why did Smith amp; Wesson have to pack fifty machine guns to a crate, anyway?
Elmer threw another dart. It hit the metal rim of the target and ricocheted away. Billy Pritchard, sitting sullenly toward the end of the bar, nearly caught it in the butt. The Englishmen laughed merrily.