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

a bullet that could have been propelled by Russian smokeless powder. “Go say good-bye to Joe and Dorothy and pack your sea chest.”

“I hate leaving them.”

“They’ll get by. I’m here, Dorothy’s strong, and, with any luck, Joe will continue improving.”

“If he doesn’t get another infection.”

“You being here can’t stop an infection,” Bell said firmly. He reached for his wallet. “Buy a train ticket to Miami. I’ll have a wire about the ship waiting for you at the station. Depending on where the ship is, you’ll have to take a steamer either to Nassau or down to Jamaica or Hispaniola.”

“I can’t take your money.”

Bell was not surprised by Novicki’s reluctance and had prepared for it. He extended a thick wad of bills. “It’s not my money, it’s Van Dorn money. And I’m hiring you to send me a report on the Nassau-to-Miami rum-running before you ship out for the Caribbean.”

Novicki set a stubborn jaw.

“It’s not charity,” Bell insisted firmly. “I’m convinced that the illegal booze business is about to become a national criminal enterprise. If I’m right, then the smuggling and bootlegging at entry points like Detroit and Florida are going to attract the same criminals who are getting rich in New York. I’ve already put a top man in Detroit. The fact that you are going to Miami means that you can help me out down there.”

“I’ll get myself down there on my own.”

Bell grabbed his hand and pressed the money into it. “I need you there right away. You’re alert and observant, Dave. I need all the help you can give me.”

He walked Captain Novicki out the door and hurried back to the bull pen, where he leveled an imperious finger at three bespectacled detectives. Dressed in vests, bow ties, and banded shirtsleeves, they looked less like private investigators than hard-eyed, humorless bookkeepers.

Adler, Kliegman, and Marcum gathered around his desk.

“The high-powered armored rum boat that machine-gunned the Boss is prowling the coast again,” Bell said. “Grady Forrer will pinpoint the location of boatyards in Long Island, New York, and New Jersey that are capable of building such a vessel. You gents will canvas them to find out which one launched her. Pretend that your bootlegger boss is offering top dollar to buy one like it—only faster. Telephone me the instant you find one and I’ll be there with the money.”

Something else that the cool-headed old geezer told him about the black boat had lodged in the back of Bell’s mind. Despite ducking bullets and swimming for his life, Dave Novicki had recalled in fine detail a long rank of three engines spitting fire from a motor box near the stern. He had speculated that the box had room for a fourth engine. That the fourth was not spitting fire indicated either that it had broken down or, as likely, was a replacement standing by in case one of the three regulars stopped running.

No one knew better than an airplane pilot that Libertys broke down often. A big selling point when he bought his Loening Air Yacht had been the design that perched the motor high atop the wing, which provided for quick removal and replacement of the entire unit. He had not signed on the dotted line until Loening Aeronautical threw in a spare motor and a crate of valves.

“McKinney!”

“Right here, Mr. Bell.”

“Do any of your Washington friends work for the War Department’s director of sales?”

“They’ll know someone who does.”

“Find a War Department man who can tell us who buys war surplus Liberty motors and spare parts.”

“I don’t mean to outguess you, Mr. Bell, but at last count the government had thirteen thousand Liberty motors on hand.”

“That’s why bootleggers buy them. They’re fast, cheap, and plentiful. Tell your man to concentrate on motor and spare parts purchases within a hundred miles of New York.”

The detectives scattered.

Bell sent a transatlantic cable to Pauline Grandzau.

MORE RUSSIANS.

WHAT OF KOZLOV?

•   •   •

PAULINE GRANDZAU SHOOK the Communist girl Anny awake when the Hamburg train slowed to stop at a small-town station ten miles before the northern port city. They got off the train and walked from the town into the forest where Anny’s friend, Valtin, was leading a Hundertschaften company of a hundred Communist fighters in maneuvers in preparation to lead an uprising in Hamburg.

“Is Valtin your friend or boyfriend?” Pauline asked.

“We don’t do it that way. If a girl likes a boy, she says, ‘Come with me.’ And if he wants to, he comes. But that doesn’t mean you have to be with him every day.”

“What if you do want to be with him every day?”

“You can. But if another girl says, ‘Come with me,’ you would be wrong to try to stop him. The revolution has no room for jealousy.”

Pauline Grandzau found that utopian fantasy even harder to believe when Anny pointed out the tall, handsome, dark-haired Valtin. Even seen at a distance through the trees, he looked like a man who could provoke an array of jealousies with a smile.

At the moment, he was concentrating mightily on drilling a hundred tough-looking merchant seamen armed with ancient czarist army rifles, a variety of pistols, including a handful of new Ortgies, some powerful World War stick grenades, and numerous old-fashioned Kugel grenades. Of the hundred, she noticed on closer inspection, at least twenty were younger men, carrying knives and clubs.

They were rehearsing signals for assault and retreat as they advanced and fell back along forest paths that represented city streets and gathered around trees that stood for tenement buildings and factories. A huge heap of fallen trees and limbs became a street barricade.

Valtin ordered a break. The men sprawled on the forest floor and shared cigarettes. Valtin sauntered over and kissed Anny on the mouth without taking his eyes off Pauline. “Who are you?”

“This is Pauline,” said Anny. “She saved me from the Bürgerwehr.”

“How?”

Anny explained how she’d been trapped in the bomb factory. Pauline said, “All I did was find a way out.”

“Why were you there?”

“She is looking for someone named Kozlov.”

“Johann Kozlov,” said