Clive Cussler The Sea Wolves (An Isaac Bell Adventure, Band 13) - Softcover

Buch 13 von 15: Isaac Bell Series

Du Brul, Jack

 
9780593422007: Clive Cussler The Sea Wolves (An Isaac Bell Adventure, Band 13)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593422007 ISBN 13: 9780593422007
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Detective Isaac Bell battles foreign spies, German U-boats, and an old nemesis to capture a secret technology that could alter the outcome of World War I in the latest adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Clive Cussler.

As New England swelters in the summer of 1914, Detective Isaac Bell is asked to investigate a cache of missing rifles—only to discover something much more sinister. Whoever broke into this Winchester Factory wasn’t looking to take weapons, they wanted to leave something in the shipping crates: a radio transmitter, set to summon a fleet of dreaded German U-boats. Someone is trying to keep American supplies from reaching British shores, and if Bell doesn’t crack the conspiracy in time, the Atlantic Ocean will run red with blood.

Bell must hunt down a new piece of technology that is allowing the Germans to rule the seas from New York to England. With the outcome of the war at stake and Franklin Roosevelt’s orders on the line, Bell will risk everything to stop the U-Boats before they strike again.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Clive Cussler was the author of more than eighty books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt®, NUMA® Files, Oregon® Files, Isaac Bell®, and Sam and Remi Fargo®. His life nearly paralleled that of his hero Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers discovered and surveyed more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Civil War submarine Hunley, which was raised in 2000 with much publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collected classic automobiles. His collection featured more than one hundred examples of custom coachwork. Cussler passed away in February 2020.

Jack Du Brul is the author of the Philip Mercer series, most recently The Lightning Stones, and is the coauthor with Cussler of the Oregon Files novels Dark Watch, Skeleton Coast, Plague Ship, Corsair, The Silent Sea, and The Jungle, and the Isaac Bell novels The Saboteurs and The Titanic Secret. He lives in Virginia.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

New Haven, Connecticut
August 1914

It was a gray area. That's all anyone could agree on, the politicians and the lawyers and the military people. The current situation was a gray area.

The war in Europe hadn't yet broken out when the first shipment of Springfield rifles, twelve thousand of them, in fact, had left the Port of New York bound for England. They were due in Bristol in just a day or two. The second shipment of eleven thousand rifles was loaded onto a ship still moored in New York Harbor on August fourth when England declared war on Germany. A timely phone call from the British consul in Manhattan to the harbormaster saw the freighter's hawse lines pulled from the pier moments before the declaration was announced. She was technically not in port when the war became official, so she wasn't violating America's strict neutrality. She'd steamed down the East River a short time later on her run to England.

The third consignment, six thousand desperately needed rifles, was where things became sticky, legally speaking. They had been purchased by the British government in the month since Archduke Ferdinand's assassination in Serbia, but before England had actually entered the war. Now that war had been declared, the guns were currently sitting in the Winchester Arms factory in New Haven, Connecticut, and subject to a U.S. military oversight. Current exportation laws meant that them leaving U.S. soil was a direct violation of America's vow to stay out of the latest European war.

Joseph Van Dorn himself had devised the work-around. His firm, the Van Dorn Detective Agency, had been hired by the British government to oversee security for the operation, so Joseph was aware of the looming legal problem and had a plan to sidestep the intent of the law if not its letter.

England had purchased the guns from the United States government and they were to have been shipped by rail from the Springfield Armory in western Massachusetts straight to New York. But as the situation in Europe rapidly deteriorated, concern grew that the weapons wouldn't make it out of the country on time and would then languish in some warehouse for the duration of the war.

Van Dorn's eleventh-hour suggestion was that the English reject the rifles in all three batches and that Winchester Arms buy those same surplus guns. The sale needed to take place before the war's declaration. That date was a closely guarded secret, so the deal went through on July twenty-eighth. Winchester Arms, a duly licensed manufacturer and exporter of all manner of weapons, then sold those three batches of Springfield rifles back to the British government. Again that sale took place before the declaration so it wouldn't violate America's promise to favor nor aid either side in the war.

To further the ruse, the rifles went from the Springfield Armory to Winchester's factory, where they were pulled from their Army-issue crates and loaded into wooden chests stamped with the Winchester name and logo. The first two shipments made it out of the country on time. The holdup with the third group came when plain-clothed Canadian Mounties, His Majesty's representatives in North America, along with their armorer, found fault in several dozen five-rifle crates, causing the inspection and selection of guns to take far longer than expected.

Today was August sixth, the war for England was two days old, and their guns remained on American soil.

To make matters worse, because so many people in Washington had been hastily consulted on the legalities, the German Ambassador had learned of the deal and had already lodged a complaint with the War Department. A reply was being drafted explaining to His Excellency that the U.S. government did not involve itself in private sales made during times of peace and viewed the transaction as permissible under current law.

Despite the certainty in that pronouncement, it remained a gray area.

The workers transferring the rifles from the Army crates to the familiar Winchester packing chests did so with the expectation that federal police would burst in on the operation and arrest them all.

The Van Dorn lead investigator had no such concerns.

Isaac Bell wore his traditional summer white linen suit and low-crowned hat, though his jacket was draped limply over the back of an office chair and the hat sat atop a nearby filing cabinet. Outside the bank of windows where he stood, he saw men down in the factory's loading bay work in the wilting heat wearing denim overalls, often unbuttoned with the straps flapping around the backs of their thighs.

The heat wave was in its second week and showed no signs of letting up.

Archibald Abbott sat at a nearby desk, his face inches from a desk fan, so when he spoke it sounded like it was through an airplane's propeller. "This is ridiculous, we were supposed to guard a couple of trains on a milk run from Springfield, not babysit worker bees swapping one box for another in what amounts to an industrial-sized oven."

Archie was another Van Dorn man and Bell's best friend since college. Their wives were close as well. He had once been a stage actor and still had the good looks of a matinee idol. His hair was burnished copper and worn a little long on the sides and back. In contrast, Bell was blond, his hair neatly trimmed. Handsome, but more intense than Archie, with warier eyes. Both men were in their thirties and had the look of comfort in their own skin.

"Don't forget," Bell said in a deep but languid voice that still carried a hint of his native Boston, "we have junior agents currently picking through three days' worth of Ritz-Carlton garbage looking for a diamond necklace that the owner swears she lost in the hotel. You could join them."

"Ah, the glamorous life of a private dick," Archie mooned. "Remember that time in Tampa with the rum distillery owner stepping out on his wife and he got the jump on us?"

Bell shook his head at the memory. "Doused head to toe in molasses. Had to shave our heads and scrub for hours and we still smelled of it for weeks."

Archie leaned back so the fan wasn't directly in his face. "And look at us now, melting like gelatos so politicians can give the old 'wink wink' to our neutrality. Mark my words, the European war will be over by Christmas. Both sides have too much to lose to fight any longer than that."

"Your lips to God's ear. Our economy is in shambles enough as it is. The New York Stock Exchange is closed indefinitely, and if we lose exports long-term, things are going to get a lot worse."

Just then another detective popped his head into the borrowed office. "Isaac, we need you." The agent was Eddie Edwards, one of Van Dorn's top people and a specialist on railroad crime. He'd led the men who'd guarded the trains carrying rifles south from Springfield. "There's something you have to see."

Grateful for the distraction, Bell turned away from the window and strode after the much older Edwards. Archie got to his feet, but didn't make a move for the door. He would take Bell's spot overlooking the work. Any change in routine could be a diversion and Van Dorns never allowed themselves to be distracted.

"What do you have, KC?" Eddie's nickname was Kansas City. They went down a flight of stairs double time, Bell's custom-made boots making his tread as light as a cat's.

"Guns."

"They are the point of this place, you know," Bell deadpanned. They had to raise their voices slightly. While there was no machinery in the big loading bay, the Winchester factory was still a working arms plant, and the throb of nearby machinery was ever-present.

Edwards wasn't known for his sense of humor, but he said, "It ain't what I found that's interesting. Like the real estate people say-it's the location, location,...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593422007
ISBN 13 
9780593422007
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
497
Kontakt zum Hersteller
G.P. Putnam's Sons
https://www.penguin.com/putnam/

1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander
NEW YORK
NY
10019
USA
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
36244
Deutschland

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780593421987: Clive Cussler The Sea Wolves (An Isaac Bell Adventure, Band 13)

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0593421981 ISBN 13:  9780593421987
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2022
Hardcover