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

“The Comintern is the foreign espionage arm of the Russian Revolution,” said Grady Forrer. He heaved the file folder onto Bell’s desk, where it landed like a blacksmith’s anvil.

“What’s this?”

“Your report on the Comintern.”

“What?”

“I suspected you would want it after your interest in Cheka Genickschuss—neck shots.”

A pleased smile warmed Isaac Bell’s face. It was right and fit that the crime-fighting operation Joseph Van Dorn had taken such pains to build had shifted smoothly into top gear to bring his attackers to justice.

Grady patted the folder lovingly. “The gist is, the Comintern exports the Communist revolution around the world to, quote, ‘overthrow the governments of the international bourgeoisie by all available means—spying, sabotage, and armed force.’”

“How are they doing?”

“They fell on their face in Hungary and, so far at least, they’re falling on their face in Germany. I predict they will fare better in India and much, much better in China.”

“What about here? How are they making out in America?”

Grady adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. Bell was familiar with his deliberate expression. He had seen it often. Grady’s central belief—a tenet he drilled into his apprentices—was that generalizations murdered facts.

“Interesting question, Isaac. And difficult to answer. America is different. We were not destroyed by the World War. Despite the current business recession, we are not starving. And I see no evidence that the Comintern has united the warring American Communist factions in any manner that made them stronger.”

“What about the anarchists?”

Grady Forrer shook his head. “The Bureau of Investigation would have us believe the Bolsheviks have teamed up with radicals and anarchists. That is simply not true.”

“Why not?”

“The Comintern are cold, ruthless, and eminently practical. They despise anarchists as hopelessly impractical.”

“Do you have any evidence the Comintern conspires with the IWW?”

Again Grady shook his head. “The Wobblies may be radicals, but they are essentially romantics. The Comintern has even less time for romantics than anarchists. Don’t forget, they invented Genickschuss to execute impractical radicals and romantics.”

Bell said, “You are telling me that the Comintern will attack America on its own—independent of our homegrown conspirators.”

“The cold, ruthless, practical ones might,” Grady amended cautiously.

“Aren’t they already attacking?”

Grady smiled. “Isaac, I am paid to keep heads level in the Research Department. Somehow, you have maneuvered me into speculating that the coldly efficient bootleggers who shot up a Coast Guard cutter, nearly killed Mr. Van Dorn, executed their wounded, and are currently wreaking havoc on street gangs and hijacking rumrunners and whisky haulers are actually attacking the United States of America.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“But bootlegging profits,” Grady Forrer cautioned, “are incalculably immense. Getting rich quick is as powerful a motivator as ideology.”

Chief Investigator Isaac Bell had heard enough.

He raised his voice so every detective in the bull pen could hear.

“Pauline Grandzau linked the bootleggers who shot Mr. Van Dorn to the Russian Bolshevik Comintern. As of this minute, the Van Dorn Agency will presume that these particular bootleggers—led by one Marat Zolner, alias Dmitri Smirnoff, alias Dima Smirnov—have more on their minds than getting rich quick.”

18

BILL LYNCH, a portly young boatbuilder already famous for the fastest speedboats on Great South Bay, and Harold Harding, his grizzled, cigar-chomping partner, watched with interest as a midnight blue eighty-horsepower Stutz Bearcat careened into Lynch & Harding Marine’s oyster-shell driveway.

A fair-haired man in a pinch-waist pin-striped suit jumped out of the roadster. He drew his Borsalino fedora low over his eyes and looked around with a no-nonsense expression at the orderly sprawl of docks and sheds that lined a bulkheaded Long Island creek.

Lynch sized him up through thick spectacles. Well over six feet tall and lean as cable, he had golden hair and a thick mustache that were barbered to a fare-thee-well. There was a bulge under his coat where either a fat wallet or a shoulder holster resided.

Lynch bet Harding a quarter that the bulge was artillery.

“No bet,” growled Harold. “But I’ll bet you that bookkeeper nosing around here yesterday works for him.”

“No bet. Looking for something, mister?”

“I’m looking for a boat.”

Bill Lynch said, “Something tells me you want a speedy one.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

In the shed, mechanics were wrestling a heavy chain hoist to lower an eight-cylinder, liquid-cooled Curtiss OX-5 into a fishing boat hull that already contained two of them. The driver of the Stutz did not ask why a fisherman needed three aircraft motors. But he did ask how fast the Curtisses would make the boat.

Lynch, happily convinced that their visitor was a bootlegger, speculated within the realm of the believable that she would hit forty knots.

“Ever built a seventy-footer with three Libertys?”

Lynch and Harding exchanged a look.

“Yup.”

“Where is she?”

“Put her on a railcar.”

“Railcar?” The bootlegger glanced at the weed-choked siding that curved into the yard and connected to the Long Island Railroad tracks half a mile inland. “I’d have thought your customers sail them away.”

“Usually.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Haven’t seen her since.”

The bootlegger asked, “Could you build a faster one?”

Lynch said, “I drew up plans for a seventy-foot express cruiser with four Libertys turning quadruple screws. She’s waiting for a customer.”

“Could I have her in a month?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Harding bit clean through his stogie. “We can’t do it that fast.”

“Yes we can,” said Lynch. “I’ll have her in the water in thirty days.”

The tall customer with a gun in his coat asked, “Would you have any objection to me paying cash?”

“None I can think of,” said Lynch, and Harding lit a fresh cigar.

Lynch unrolled his plans. The customer pored over them knowledgeably. He ordered additional hatches fore and aft—Lewis gun emplacements, Lynch assumed, since he wanted reinforced scantlings under them—and electric mountings for Sperry high-intensity searchlights.

“And double the armor in the bow.”

“Planning on ramming the opposition?”

“I’d like to know I can.”

They settled on a price and a schedule of payouts keyed to hull completion, motor installation, and sea trials.

The customer started counting a down payment, stacking crisp hundred-dollar bills on a workbench. Midway, he paused. “The seventy-footer you built? The one with three motors.