The Bootlegger by Clive Cussler (novels in english TXT) 📗

But Yuri Antipov gave her a look of withering disdain.

“What is it?” she asked. “What did I say?”

“Don’t you know why they are small?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“It’s a Lancashire Regiment. From the English coalfields.”

“Yuri, what are you talking about?”

“They have mined coal for four generations. They are paid a pittance. Neither they nor their fathers nor their grandfathers nor their great-grandfathers have ever eaten enough food to grow tall.”

Even tonight, separated from that moment by three years and three thousand miles, Fern Hawley winced at the memory of such ignorance and such callousness. “They’re hungry,” she had whispered, and Antipov had reached around Zolner to grip her arm and say, “They will stay hungry until the revolution.”

Thanks to Antipov, she believed with all her heart that the international revolution of the proletariat should abolish government. Thanks to Antipov, she passionately supported the Russian proletariat’s struggling new state—the Socialist Republic of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

She pulled a bell cord. A butler appeared.

“What would you like, Yuri? Champagne? A cold bird?”

“Bread and sausage.”

•   •   •

LATER, upstairs, alone in their palatial bedroom, she asked Zolner, “Why didn’t you tell me Yuri was coming?”

Marat Zolner had seen Fern Hawley in action and he admired her bravery and her coolness under fire. She did not panic when police charged with pistols and rubber truncheons. When they bombed the barricades with mine throwers, she could retreat without losing purpose, a rare gift. The revolution needed her sort to fight battles. But she was a naïve romantic. If the Comintern ran to pattern, when the war was finally won brave naïve romantics would be shot in the interest of stability. For romantics would be seen as dangerous as freethinkers.

Until then, he saw great advantage to teaming up with her.

She already helped him escape execution in Europe, staring down cops as she had the private detective at Roosevelt Hospital. In America she had shown him the ropes and provided extraordinary cover. Together, they had worked up disguises that allowed him to move freely. He had learned to ape the pretensions of the elegant White Russian émigrés fleeing to New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Or, wearing laborer’s duds, he could pass as just another of the faceless foreigners who toiled in the docks, mines, and mills. And to mingle with their bosses, he had only to stroll into the opera or a high-class speakeasy with Fern Hawley on his arm.

“I didn’t tell you that Yuri was coming because information that you do not need to know endangers both you and our mission. What if you were forced to reveal what you knew?”

“What are you talking about? This isn’t Russia or Germany. We’re in the United States.”

“You think there is no torture in the United States?”

Fern Hawley laughed. “They’d know what torture was when my lawyers got through with them.”

Marat Zolner said, “I’m sorry. Old habits die hard.”

“I am only asking you to trust me. You should have told me. Yuri is my friend.”

“Yuri Antipov is no one’s friend.”

“He’s your friend.”

“We fought together. We are brothers in blood. But he is not my friend. He is Comintern from the soles of his feet to the hair on his skull.”

“I know that. That’s why he likes me. He knows that I’m as devoted as he is to the proletariat.”

“He is Comintern,” Zolner repeated. “If Moscow ordered him to throw you in a fire, he would without a second thought.”

“So are you Comintern.”

“I use my brain to think. They hate thinking that they can’t control.”

“Would Yuri throw you in that fire?”

Zolner gave her a thin smile and turned out the light. “Only if they told him to.”

“Marat,” she whispered in the dark. “I am grateful to Yuri Antipov and I admire Yuri Antipov. But I could never love him the way I love you.”

“Why are you grateful to him?”

She sat up in the canopied bed and hugged her arms around her knees. The sky had cleared, and through the French windows she saw a sliver of moon hanging over the bay. “Yuri helps me understand a world I never knew until I met you two. He’s like a wise uncle. But you are my muse. Yuri was my guide. But you are my comrade-in-arms.”

“Wait until they force you to chose,” Zolner said bleakly.

“I will fight at your side.”

10

THE FIRST MAIL DELIVERY of the morning brought a letter from the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office to the Van Dorn field office.

Dear Isaac,

The powder on Johnny’s bullet wound was manufactured by the Aetna Explosives Company of Mt. Union, Pennsylvania.

Hope it helps.

Sincerely,

(Signed) Shep

Bell was familiar with the powder plant, a sprawling factory he had often seen from the Broadway Limited on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line between Altoona and Harrisburg.

“Dear Shep,” he wrote back,

So much for hunches. That Russian neck shot gave me a feeling the powder was from Germany or Russia. Next time you’re on Fifth Avenue, let me buy you a drink of strong tea.

Warm regards,

(Signed) Isaac

•   •   •

ISAAC BELL hurried from the Sayville train station to a one-story white clapboard building that had Ionic columns supporting a wide triangular pediment in the Greek Revival style. Lettering carved in relief and painted black read:

THE SUFFOLK COUNTY NEWS

Under his arm were several recent editions of the Long Island weekly he had ordered up from Van Dorn Research. He went inside and spotted his quarry, a retired private detective named Scudder Smith. Smith was wearing shirtsleeves, banded at the elbow, and a red bow tie. He was behind his desk, reading a long yellow galley that reeked of wet ink.

Bell said, “The Research boys found me your stories about rumrunners. Spellbinding.”

Smith looked up, dropped the galley, and jumped to his feet. “Isaac! How in the heck are you?”

“Scudder.” Bell shook his hand. “It’s been too long.”

The two men cast keen eyes on each others’ faces.

Bell, Smith thought, looked as youthful and robust as ever despite the years and the war