Chapter 32

Before they left for the Navy Yard, Malik said, “If an opportunity presents itself tonight, I’m going to take it. Stay alert, I may need your help.”

Gabriela said, “I’m ready.”

Both wore light coats in anticipation of the evening’s chill. The hansom cab dropped them off outside the high white walls and busy main gate of the Navy Yard, the headquarters of, and a major shipyard and docks for the United States Navy. It was situated on the Anacostia River, just north of its confluence with the Potomac, some blocks south of the Capitol district.

They saw Macready standing near the guard house. As they approached the gate, Macready showed the guard a small paper. The uniformed naval guard looked at them and said, “Please come ahead.” He came to attention as they passed.

As they approached Macready, he abruptly turned and began walking away from the gate and further into the maze of structures that comprised the Yard. With a brief look between them, they hurried to catch up.

He led them between buildings and various warehouses and lots: office buildings, barracks, food stores, sails and rope stores, lumber yards, mounds of coal, stacks of old cannons, and mechanical brickabrack of strange designs and mysterious purposes they could only imagine. Seamen, officers, and yard workers were all about at various errands and tasks, though many paused to observe Gabriela’s passage.

As the Maliks followed Macready around the corner and into a dark passage between two warehouses, they both nearly ran head on into his outstretched arm, intended to stop them in place.

He turned toward Malik and gestured for him to lift his arms. Half expecting this, Malik lifted his arms up and away from his torso. Macready approached him and began running his hands over Malik, including his legs and arms. He found the hunting knife and pocketed it in his hunting coat without comment. When he was done, he gestured for Malik to lower his arms, then turned to Gabriela.

Gabriela was not especially surprised, either. When Macready held out his hand, she hesitated, but then gave the hulking man her handbag. He opened it, pulled out the pistol and put that in another pocket of the hunting coat. He stuck his hand back in the purse and rummaged briefly, then handed it back to Gabriela. Then he twirled his finger to indicate Gabriela should turn around, which she did, but he made no move to touch her.

Macready turned and began walking again, exiting the alley and proceeding between two tarpaulin-covered obkects. The Maliks followed. Clearing those last obstacles, they found themselves in an open area and in view of a multitude of watercraft of all sizes and design moored near the upriver end of the docks. Macready led them onto a neatly-painted wooden pier lined with distinctly smaller craft, most with gleaming brass appurtenances, darkly-varnished wood decks, and brilliant white bulkheads, some with tall masts rigged for sails, others with much shorter smoke stacks, and a few with both.

One of the steam boats, a small stern-wheeler, had smoke curling from its single, eight-foot funnel, which arose from amid-decks. A glossy white plaque, fastened to the near side of the upper deck, which was also the roof of the single level of cabins, proclaimed, in ornate black letters, Lenore. In the small wheelhouse, also on that upper deck, stood Paulus Ranford, United States Senator, arrayed in the uniform of an 1850’s Mississippi riverboat captain, complete with billed cap.

“Come aboard, come aboard,” he called, drawing his arm in quick, come-hither gestures. Macready led them to a short gangplank with a rope rail along one side. He then stepped out of their way, standing in the alert, head-up posture they had seen him use when they visited Ranford’s office. Not quite at attention, not quite at parade rest, he just stood there, arms at his sides, looking ready.

As they made their way across the gangplank, Ranford came down a flight of steep stairs, a “ladder” in navy parlance. He stepped across the brief expanse of deck and took hold of Gabriela’s free hand as she finished crossing the access way, his grip seeming firmer than necessary for the circumstances. He continued to grip her hand as they waited for Malik to embark. As Malik came off the gangplank and Gabriela finally extracted her hand from his grip, Ranford turned to her and made it appear that it was part of another of his courtly bows. Then he immediately turned to grasp Malik in a brief handshake, all the while repeating, “Welcome aboard, welcome aboard.”

Then he stood back and extended his arms in a theatrical gesture. “Is she not a beauty?” he said, leering briefly at Gabriela but with his arms wide to indicate the fifty-foot steam launch. “I only recently acquired her. Named her for the Lost Lenore of Mister Edgar Allen Poe’s rhymes. But here, allow me to introduce you.” He gestured to the aft deck, protected by a white canvas canopy. Under it, a linen-covered table was set elegantly for a buffet service.

Nearby, suspended from a cross member of the glossy black pipe frame over which the canvas was stretched, hung a rounded object draped in a black cloth. Ranford walked to it and pulled away the dark fabric to reveal a large metal bird cage within which, looking appropriately forlorn, rested a raven on a perch. “Allow me to introduce ‘Mister Poe.’”

He shook the cage and the bird flapped its wings and squawked hoarsely, “Nevermore.” Ranford beamed at them, “Nevermore,” squawked the bird again.

Ranford turned to the table, pulled an open bottle from a silver ice bucket, and poured bubbling wine into two flutes. He presented one to each of them. “French champagne,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. “I import it by the case.”

“Make yourselves comfortable. Mister Macready and I have some duties to get us underway.” Macready, who had been releasing lines from the small pier, came aboard and pulled the gangplank onto the side deck, where he fit it in place to complete a section of deck and the roped rail along the boat’s gunwale. Ranford said, “My other guests are to embark in Alexandria, just across the Potomac. Depending on other boat traffic, we should be there just after sunset.

“Please, please, be at ease, enjoy these hors d’oeuvres.” He removed a napkin that had been covering a tray of a variety of prepared seafood, meat, cheeses and other finger food on crackers and small corners of toasted bread, adding, “And feel free to walk about or to sit and enjoy the passing scene.” He indicated the canvas folding chairs arrayed about the covered deck. “Perhaps later,” and he briefly snatched up Gabriela’s hand again before she could draw it away, “after I finish maneuvering us from these docks, you would like to come up to the wheelhouse and take a turn, my dear. But excuse me, for now.”

Forward of the canopied deck was an open portion upon which was situated a steam engine, small enough to have easily fit into a freight wagon. Macready, still in his trademark hunter’s coat, attended it, taking several pieces of split wood from a large, open bin, and throwing them into the boiler’s firebox, which already held a lively blaze. Then he adjusted two valves on the several pipes which ran from the boiler to below deck.

Ranford, who had climbed back to the wheelhouse, called down, “Slow astern, Mister Macready,” and he pulled a cord, which released steam through a surprisingly loud whistle, Both Gabriela and Malik were startled and spilled some champagne as three piercing blasts reverberated throughout the crowded dockage.

Macready pulled a large lever next to the engine, then shifted another as he held the first in place, and then slowly brought the first lever back to its original position. Machinery, out of sight below the main deck, began to churn the six-foot wide paddle wheel extending from the rear, drawing the steam launch to reverse out of the position where it had rested next to the dock.