Goliath

TWENTY-THREE

“What in blazes are you doing here?”

Malone considered the question. “Why am I in California? Or why am I in disguise, instead of snapping photos with the other reporters?”

“Aye, both!”

“Happy to explain everything,” Malone said. “But first we need to get aboard your ship. Otherwise those fellows are about to give me a thrashing.”

Deryn turned to follow Malone’s gaze, and saw a trio of burly men in dark blue uniforms striding across the airfield.

“Who in blazes are they?”

“Pinkertons—security guards in the employ of Mr. Hearst. You see, my paper was owned by a fellow called Pulitzer, and he and Hearst weren’t exactly pals. So let’s not dawdle.” The man started to drag her toward the Leviathan’s gondola.

“Surely they won’t set upon you in broad daylight!”

“Whatever they do, it won’t be pretty.”

Deryn looked at the men again. They carried truncheons in their hands. Perhaps it was better to be safe than sorry.

The Leviathan’s gondola was still too high to jump aboard, and she and Malone would never make it past the Pinkertons to the gangplank on the other side. But where the navigator’s bubble bulged downward beneath the bridge were two steel mooring rings, just out of reach.

“Get ready to grab one of those handholds,” she ordered Malone, then turned to the ground men she’d just untangled, shouting, “Give me a good heave in one… two… three!”

The men pulled back in a mass, and the ship’s nose dipped just enough. Eddie Malone and Deryn jumped to grab the mooring rings, then hauled themselves up as the ship bobbed back to level.

“This way,” she said, scrambling toward the forward cargo bay windows. Malone followed, his shoes almost slipping from the metal rail around the bottom of the gondola.

The Pinkertons had arrived below them, and were peering up at Deryn and Malone with annoyed expressions.

“Come down here!” one shouted, but Deryn ignored him. She rapped on a cargo bay porthole.

The ship shifted a squick beneath her—the ground crew was bringing it slowly down. In another minute she and Malone would be within reach of the Pinkertons’ truncheons.

An airman’s face appeared at the porthole, looking a bit perplexed.

“Open up. That’s an order!” Deryn shouted, and the porthole popped open.

As she shoved Eddie Malone through, she wondered why she was helping him. Maybe he’d done them a favor back in Istanbul by not spilling the revolution’s secrets, but only for a price.

In any case he was aboard now. It was the captain’s decision whether to throw him back or not.

Deryn scrambled after him, not waiting to see if the Pinkertons would take out their frustration on her. She climbed down from the barrels of the ship’s honey stacked by the window, then gave the confused airman who’d let them inside a salute. “Carry on, lad.”

Malone was looking about the darkened cargo bay, his pencil already scribbling in his notepad.

“So this is what belowdecks looks like?”

“I’m afraid we haven’t time for a tour, Mr. Malone. Why were those men after you?”

“As I said, I work for the New York World, and Hearst owns the New York Journal. Archrivals, you might say.”

“And here in America rival newspapermen attack each other on sight?”

The man barked a laugh. “Not always. But Hearst didn’t exactly send me an engraved invitation. I had to disguise myself just to snap a few pictures. Speaking of which…”

He pulled a camera from one of his sandbags, then reached into the other for his recording frog. As he placed the beastie on his shoulder, it made a burping noise, blinking at Deryn.

“I thought you were the Istanbul bureau chief,” she said. “Again, what are you doing here? Istanbul is seven thousand miles away!”

The reporter waved his hand. “Prince Alek’s the best scoop I ever had. I’m not about to let a couple of oceans get in my way. Once I found out the Leviathan was headed east, I sailed back to New York. Been there for two weeks now, waiting to see where you popped up again.”

“But how did you get here?”

“After Mr. Tesla’s shindig in Tokyo made the papers, I jumped on a train for Los Angeles. That’s where the biggest airfield on the West Coast is. But last night I got a tip that you were coming here instead.”

Deryn shook her head. Mr. Tesla had only convinced the officers yesterday to resupply at Hearst’s. “A tip? From whom?”

“From the great inventor himself. Radio waves aren’t like carrier pigeons, Mr. Sharp. Anyone with an antenna can pick them up.” The man shrugged. “You shouldn’t be surprised that Tesla sent uncoded messages. Why let one newspaper have all the fun?”

Deryn swore, wondering who else was following the Leviathan’s movements. Clanker spies had radios too. She also wondered why she’d been so anxious to rescue Malone. Sticky-beaks like him would only cause trouble in the end.

“Well, however you got here, Mr. Malone, we’ll have to ask the officers if you can stay aboard. Follow me.”

She led the man to the central staircase, then up and forward toward the bridge. The ship’s corridors were buzzing; the cargo bay was already open to take on fuel and supplies. It was only a matter of time before Malone’s pursuers found their way aboard.

But the bridge was just as hectic as the rest of the ship, and Deryn found herself shunted from one officer to the next. The captain was busy being photographed for the newsreels, and no one else wanted to take responsibility for a wayward reporter. So when Deryn spotted the lady boffin and her loris taking tea in the officers’ mess, she pulled Malone inside and shut the door behind them.

“Afternoon, ma’am. This is Mr. Malone. He’s a reporter.”

The lady boffin nodded. “How kind of Mr. Hearst, remembering that there are more than just Clanker scientists to interview aboard this ship!”

“Clankers!” said the loris with a snooty tone.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Deryn said. “But it’s not what you think. You see, Mr. Malone doesn’t work for Mr. Hearst.”

“I’m with the New York World,” Malone said

“A trespasser, then?” Dr. Barlow’s eyes traveled over his ground crew uniform. “And in disguise as well, I see. Do you realize, Mr. Sharp, that there are German spies here in America?”

“You’re right about that, ma’am,” Malone said with a smile. “Stacks of them!”

“Mr. Sharp, how exactly did this man get aboard?”

Deryn’s voice felt small in her throat. “Um, I sort of let him in a porthole, ma’am.”

Dr. Barlow raised an eyebrow at this, and her loris said, “Spies!”

“But he can’t be a German agent!” Deryn cried. “I met him back in Istanbul. In fact, you did too! On the ambassador’s elephant, remember?”

Malone stepped forward. “The boy’s right, though we didn’t chat much. And of course I wasn’t wearing this.”

He reached up and took one end of his mustache, yanked it off in a single jerk, and threw it onto the table. The lady boffin’s eyebrows shot up, and her loris crawled over to inspect the false mustache.

“Ah, you’re that Malone,” she said slowly. “The one who’s been writing those dreadful articles about Prince Aleksandar.”

“The very same. And as I was just explaining to young Sharp here, I don’t intend to stop. If you Darwinists think you can do an exclusive deal with Hearst’s operation, you’ve got another think coming!”

“There is no ‘deal’ between us and Hearst.” Dr. Barlow waved a hand. “This detour was Mr. Tesla’s idea.”

“Hmph, Tesla,” said the loris, affixing the mustache to its own face.

“I’ve been trying to talk to the captain, ma’am,” Deryn said. “It might get a bit tricky for Mr. Malone. Hearst’s men are after him.”

“Well, of course they are.” Dr. Barlow stroked her loris, which was now posing with the mustache. “This land is private property, which makes him a trespasser.”

Deryn groaned, wondering why the lady boffin was being so bothersome. Had those articles about Alek upset her, too?

“Oh, so that’s how you’re going to play it?” Eddie Malone said; then he pulled out a chair and sat down across from her. “Let me tell you something, Doctor. You don’t want to get mixed up with this Hearst fellow. He has some mighty unsavory friends.”

“I should think, sir, that having unsavory friends was the defining attribute of newspapermen.”

“Hah! You got me there!” Malone slapped the table, making the loris jump. “But there’s unsavory, and there’s dangerous. A fellow called Philip Francis, for example.”

“Mr. Francis?” Deryn said. “I just met him. He was in charge of the ground crew.”

Malone shook his head. “What he’s in charge of is the Hearst-Pathé newsreel company. At least, that’s what most people think.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “But what they don’t know is that his real last name isn’t Francis. It’s Diefendorf!”

There was a moment of silence, and then the lady boffin’s loris spoke up.

“Clankers!”

“He’s a German agent?” Deryn asked.

Malone shrugged. “He was born in Germany, that’s for sure, and he hides the fact!”

“Many immigrants to America change their names,” Dr. Barlow said, her fingers drumming the table. “On the other hand, not all of them create propaganda films for a living.”

“Exactly,” Malone said. “You must know how Hearst uses his papers and moving pictures to rail against the British, and against Darwinism, too. And now, all of a sudden, he’s being friendly with you?”

Deryn turned to Dr. Barlow. “We should tell the captain about this.”

“I shall make the proper introductions.” She waved a hand at her tea dishes. “You may clear these, Mr. Sharp, and you shall come with me, Mr. Malone. If the captain is done with his theatrics, perhaps he can spare us a moment. I might be able to explain the wisdom of not putting all our eggs in one basket.”

“Madam, I think we understand each other,” said the reporter, rising to his feet. He clapped Deryn on the back. “By the way, Sharp, thanks for your help back there. Much appreciated.”

“Happy to be of service,” Deryn said. She began to stack the dishes, glad that they’d run into the lady boffin, after all. Everybody else aboard seemed overawed by the famous Tesla, and this Hearst fellow with his cameras and newspapers could only make things worse.

But then something quite unsettling happened.

As Malone pulled out Dr. Barlow’s chair for her, the loris yanked off the mustache and dropped it into a teacup, fixing Deryn with its haughty stare. Without thinking, she stuck her tongue out at the beastie.

“Deryn Sharp,” it said as it rode the lady boffin’s shoulder out the door, quite pleased with itself indeed.