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

Valtin’s every move. We watched like hawks. We were keen-eyed and we were silent. They never saw us.”

“Did Valtin put Kozlov on a boat to America?”

He hesitated. “I am not privy to that detail.”

That sounded to Pauline as if the Foreign Office secretary had it right. The security police had indeed lost sight of Kozlov and his Comintern contact. “Where is Valtin now?”

“We are currently tracking him through a young woman who is either a Comintern courier or his lover, or both. We’re holding back to see with whom else she makes contact.”

It was more likely, she thought, they hoped the girl would lead them back to the agent they had lost. “What is her name?”

“Her name is Anny.”

“Anny?” Pauline took a dainty bite of her Mohnkuchen. Her tongue crept across her lips to lick a poppy seed. She touched her mouth with her napkin and eyed him over the linen as if it were a veil.

The Polizeioberstleutnant steadied his breathing.

“What is Anny’s last name?” she asked.

“You are a devil in devil’s clothing, Fräulein Privatdetektive Grandzau. I’ve spoken too freely already. You know I cannot tell you her last name.”

“You can’t blame a devil for trying . . . If you can’t tell me her last name, you can surely tell me what is the color of her hair and eyes . . . or perhaps where she stays or works . . .”

•   •   •

WHEN MARAT ZOLNER returned to Manhattan from the Bronx, he found that Yuri Antipov had left an urgent message with Fern Hawley.

“He wants you to meet him downtown. He said you’ll know where.”

Zolner went to a blind pig on Vesey around the corner from the Washington Market. Antipov was taking a small sip of what passed for gin in the place.

“How is your empire?” he asked.

Zolner said, “You know, bootlegging wasn’t my idea originally. I got it in Finland. Do you recall the Comintern scheme to raise money for weapons by smuggling liquor past Finnish Customs? It was very innovative until the Comintern’s entire Finnish Section passed out drunk on the contraband.”

Antipov did not laugh.

“What do you want from me?” Zolner asked.

“I want you to rent a stable in Lower Manhattan.”

“What for?”

“Come.” Antipov led him around the corner to Barclay Street, where he had parked an old-fashioned coal wagon identical to the thousands that cluttered the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan and drove the truck drivers crazy. A strong horse stood in the traces, nosing an empty feed bag.

“Where did you get this?”

“I brought it over from New Jersey on the ferry. It is high time to do the job we were sent to do.”

“What’s in the wagon?”

“Dynamite.”

Zolner stared at him while he thought how to deal with what was clearly an ultimatum. Antipov gazed back calmly, a man whose mind was made up, determined, utterly sure, and implacable.

“Where did you get dynamite?”

“I memorized Moscow’s list of quarries where comrades work,” Antipov answered. “If you will not help me, I’ll do it myself.”

“I will help you, of course. There is no reason why we can’t build and attack at the same time.”

“I need a safe stable for the wagon.”

“You’ll be inside it in one hour.”

Antipov looked at him curiously. “You surprise me, Marat. I would have thought you would tell me to go to hell.”

“We are Comintern, Yuri. Our goal is the same. Overthrow the international bourgeoisie by every means. Come. Let’s walk the horse while we talk.”

“Where?”

“I have a stable. Ten short blocks.”

“It must be a safe place to prepare the attack.”

“Trucks O’Neal will keep it safe.”

“Excellent.” Antipov had come to see the value of the American, a hard-boiled, clearheaded gangster who could recruit similarly trustworthy men when they were needed.

Zolner took the bridle and coaxed the animal to turn the wagon up Washington Street. “What is our target?”

“Wall Street.”

15

A PATCHED SAIL of faded canvas looked common, thought Captain Novicki. Even innocent. And if you hoisted your sail on a slow-moving, old-fashioned, cat-rigged workboat and sat a white-whiskered Barnacle Bill smoking his pipe at the tiller, you’d be damned-near invisible. At least to anyone searching for the get-rich-quick boys.

Or so Novicki hoped as he steered his catboat across Great South Bay. A stiff wind raised a fierce chop studded with whitecaps. The old mariner sailed blithely through it, out the narrow Fire Island Inlet and into the Atlantic Ocean.

Eight miles out in international waters he found a row of wooden schooners and rusty tramp freighters anchored to the shallow bottom and pitching on the swells. Their hulls and rigging were hung with billboards advertising authentic Scotch whisky, English gin, and French champagne. Captain Novicki tied up at the schooner he had contracted to deliver for and handed over mail and gifts of fresh fruit and vegetables to the captain and his family and soda pop for the kids. The oldest child climbed the mast with binoculars to watch for the Coast Guard while the family helped load as many cases as Novicki’s boat would hold.

He was not the only upright citizen taxiing booze to shore. It was evident from the private yachts and motorboats sailing up and down Rum Row, bargaining with the ships selling liquor. But neither they nor any rum-running taxi that night had a more valuable cargo—the finest single-malt Scotch whisky of such a dark color and pungent smoky aroma that it could be stretched five-to-one with grain alcohol and still sold as the real McCoy.

The schooner captain and his wife appeared anxious. Novicki asked what was bothering them.

“There was another hijacking last night. At least we think there was. The boat never came back, and he was in fine shape when he headed in. I’d keep a weather eye, if I were you.”

“Nobody’ll bother a little old catboat.”

“She ain’t that little, and she’s beamy as a barge,” said the schooner captain. “Any gangster who knows his business will see you squeezed in a hundred cases.”

Novicki had timed it so he could run for