“Come with me and I’ll show you.”
“Where are we going?”
“Schatzi’s residence includes a marine design studio where the modelmakers first create what he creates and then do real-time simulations of sea trials. The boats are flawless before the real hulls ever splash.”
“What’s he building now?”
“The greatest ocean liner ever built.”
“For Germany? Is he planning to put guns on this one?”
“No. He’s building her for France.”
“France. Isn’t that some fascinating shit? France and Germany. I guess they finally decided to kiss and make up. Let’s go take a look.”
“Are you okay? You’re acting funny.”
“I feel good. This is just how I get when I’m impressed.”
They had to pass through a number of interesting rooms to reach the studio. There was a dining room with a table long enough to seat a small town. They came to a door marked Kriegsmarine and entered a model room where Stokely could have spent a week. Beneath the domed ceiling painted to look like a stormy sky was a sea of glass cases. Each one contained exquisitely detailed models of ships the von Draxis family had designed or built for the German navy.
Stoke paused for a moment to admire a few of them. There were the massive battleships Tirpitz and Bismarck. But also Stoke’s personal all-time favorite, the Schnellboote. It was arguably the fastest and best-designed PT boat ever built during World War II. Maybe ever.
A steel-and-bronze door with intricate carving barred the way to the next room. On it were depicted all the epic sea battles the Kriegsmarine had fought in the last few centuries. Stoke felt he was getting to know Schatzi better. And he was beginning to feel like Hawke’s decision to send him to Germany had been a good one. He couldn’t get the portrait over the fireplace out of his mind.
Jet worked her electronic magic with the door and they entered the test model studio. The ceiling was a glassed dome and stars twinkled high above their heads. Jet was reaching for the light switch when Stoke touched her arm and said, “Don’t. Let’s just leave it like this a minute.”
He walked inside ahead of her. There was only one model in this room and it stood in the center of the inlaid marble floor. It was encased in a closed glass structure at least thirty feet in length and fifteen feet high. Inside was the most gorgeous ship Stoke had ever laid eyes on. The name of the giant ocean liner was on her stern in gold leaf.
Leviathan.
“Leviathan?” Stoke said.
“The sea beast,” Jet said. “Biblical. It’s Schatzi and Luca’s idea of a joke.”
“Got it,” Stoke said, although he didn’t. He guessed this new French monster was maybe half again as large as the world’s current largest liner, the Queen Mary 2, built by Cunard. That would make her about fifteen hundred feet in length and about three hundred feet high. If Stoke had to guess her gross tonnage he’d put it at three hundred thousand. Jesus.
“It’s a working model,” Jet said, handing him a remote control pod.
“What do you mean, ‘working’?”
“Everything works. Here, I’ll show you.” She pressed one button and the ship lit up from stem to stern with a thousand tiny interior and exterior lights along the entire length of her superstructure. The red and green running lights on either side of her bow were as big as golf balls. She hit another button and the tiny anchors started to drop.
“Holy shit,” Stoke said. The thing was truly beautiful.
“That’s nothing. Watch this,” Jet said. She hit a button and the interior of the glass case began filling with clear blue water illuminated from below. It rapidly rose up the walls of the case until it reached Leviathan’s waterline.
“You can simulate all kinds of sea conditions,” Jet said, “There are wave paddles hidden at the bottom of the case. And sensors throughout the tank to monitor the parameters of wave action on the hull. Want to see a Force Five gale? A tsunami? Seas of fifty feet?”
“Not right now.”
“Would you like me to start her engines?”
“Yes, that I would like to see,” Stoke said, transfixed as Jet fingered the remote. There were propulsion pods hung from the stern. As she pushed the joystick, the pods revolved 360 degrees and the minature bronze props began spinning, creating whorls of white water around them.
“There you go. Four propulsion pods. She carries two fixed, and two azimuthing. This model is an exact replica of the real thing, down to the most minute detail.”
“What’s that big bulge in the keel? Weird looking.”
“That? Bulb keel. Lowers the VCG. The vertical center of gravity.”
“You know a lot about this stuff, Jet.”
“Enough.”
“How come she doesn’t have any smokestacks?”
“That’s an easy one. She’s nuclear.”
“Holy shit,” Stoke said, “Nuclear? An ocean liner?”
“Hmm.”
“Is the baron actually building this thing?”
“Oh, she’s already built. Her maiden voyage is coming up soon. She’s sailing from Le Havre to New York.”
“Le Havre,” Stoke said, “That’s in France, isn’t it? I’d like to be at that launching. But first I think we ought to go back to Berlin and poke our noses around that Tempelhof aerodrome. Do it at night like this, you know, so nobody will bother us.”
“Hmm,” Jet said, looking at her watch. “Look, it’s getting late. We’d better get down the mountain and back in our beds before we’re missed.”
“You ever read ‘Hansel and Gretel’?” Stoke asked, “No? Just curious.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Coney Island
“HE WON’T COME DOWN?” CAPTAIN MARIUCCI WAS ASKING the manager of the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. “What do you mean he won’t come down?” The captain was clenching his jaw in frustration. It seemed the semiretired mobster, a Mr. Joseph Bones, was alive but currently unavailable for questioning. Joey was holed up in one of the sixteen swinging cars at the very top of the world’s tallest Ferris wheel.
“How can I say this better? I mean, he won’t come down,” Samuel Gumpertz said, running his hands through the imaginary hair on top of his head. He’d been studying the car where Joey was hiding through his binoculars. He’d gaze in frustration at all the unhappy customers standing around the old Wonder, and then he’d look back up at Joey. The Gumpertz family had been running the number-one attraction at Coney for the last three decades. But it was Sammy’s baby. It was his show. This action, he had to admit, was a first.
His night man, Joey Bones, an old Mob guy who knew his carny shit backward and forward, was ordinarily a stand-up guy. But about an hour ago, what happened was Joey had flipped out about something, he wouldn’t say what. So now, he was up at the top of the wheel holed up in one of the cars and there was no way on earth to get his skinny old ass down.
In addition to a growing crowd of very pissed-off paying customers, he also had this NYPD captain all over his ass. Him and his sidekick, this English cop from Scotland Yard looking like something out of an old Sherlock Holmes movie wearing a caped coat and one of those weird goddamn backward and forward caps on his head. Smoking a pipe, for chrissakes. Give me a frigging break with this shit.
“May I borrow those binoculars?” this English character Congreve asked Gumpertz.
“Why, certainly,” Gumpertz replied, “My pleasure.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I hate to interrupt this little tea party, Mr. Gumpertz,” Captain Mariucci said, “But I’m only going to say this one more time. I want you to start up that goddamn Ferris wheel up and bring that man down. Okay? Capisce?”