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

“Dash,” said Bell. “Find a sawbones and hunker down here.”

“Where are you going?”

“That tanker makes me nervous. Pauline, you and I and Ed and Asa are going to Eleuthera.” He waved for Tobin to come back. “How are we on gas, Ed?”

“Full tanks.”

“Can we handle this weather?”

“Seventy feet long, four props, and eighteen hundred horsepower? I should think so.”

“Better rig the cockpit tarpaulin and the motor shrouds.”

“Already done.”

“We’ll need food and water in case we have to hole up for a few days.”

Fern said, “There’s a run on the shops. Come out to my yacht. I’ll give you food and water.”

•   •   •

“WOMEN,” Ed Tobin growled, helping Pauline with a heavy canvas bag. “Why can’t they travel light?”

“Because we pack things men forget.”

“Hope you don’t get seasick. It’s going to be a mess out there.”

“I’ve never been seasick on the Aquitania.”

They headed across the windswept harbor on one engine.

Fern’s captain had steam up. Maya’s decks were cleared, the awnings stowed. Stewards and deckhands formed a human chain to pass food and water out their pilot door, across their tender, and into the Van Dorn cruiser rafted alongside.

Bell went up to the mahogany wheelhouse while Tobin and Asa lashed canvas over two of the idle engines to keep spray out of the straight pipes. Fern’s captain was an affable Connecticut Yankee. He showed Bell on his chart where he had seen the Sandra T. Congdon four days ago. Tiny Harbour Island was on the windward side of Eleuthera, the big island along the east side of Grand Bahama Bank.

“The tanker’s heavily laden, drawing too much to enter the lagoon. She anchored on the windward side, inside the Harbour Island reef.”

“Will she move for the storm?”

“She’ll put to sea if it swings east.” The captain glanced up at Fort Fincastle, where triangular red pennants flew. “But still only a gale warning. I just heard from a captain on the radiotelegraph that the storm is veering west across Cuba, while you’ll be heading east.” He nodded approvingly at Marion’s long, sleek hull. “It’ll be rough, but it’s only sixty miles, and your boat’s got a seakindly bow and plenty of power. If the storm changes course, you’ll have to hole up in Dunmore Town or Governor’s Harbour. Of course, the truly prudent thing would be to ride it out right here in Nassau.”

“Where are you going, Captain?”

“Bermuda.”

•   •   •

FERN INTERCEPTED BELL as he was about to go down the gangway.

“Can I come with you?”

“Sorry. Van Dorn policy: We don’t bring friends to gunfights.”

Fern smiled. “Does that mean I’m a friend?”

“Only as long as you behave yourself.”

“Isaac, what am I going to do? You’ve destroyed everything I believed in. Not you. He. I suspected, but you gave me proof, and it is terrible.”

Bell was anxious to clear the harbor. With any luck, he would trap Zolner on his tanker in two or three hours. “If you want to believe in something, try this: Prohibition is killing the country. Why don’t you join up with the society women trying to repeal it? Joe Van Dorn’s wife is leading them.”

“I have an aunt who’s formed a committee. But I’m not ready to hang out with a bunch of frumpy old ladies.”

Tobin started another engine. Bell raised his voice to be heard.

“If you were to ‘hang out’ with Dorothy Van Dorn, you would have to get used to men looking over your shoulder to catch a glimpse of her. She’s only a few years older than you are, stylish as Paris, and a dazzling beauty.”

“Sounds like you’ve fallen for her, Isaac.”

“Dorothy could make a good friend. I’ll introduce you.”

“I’ll give you a piece of information in return.” She stepped close to whisper in his ear. “Your ‘colleague’ is in love with you. Pauline never mentioned your name when we talked, of course, but now it’s clear.”

“I’m working on that,” said Bell.

“Ready, Mr. Bell?” called Tobin.

“One second . . . Fern, you told me that Zolner did not want to bomb Wall Street. But you also told me that you didn’t know about the plan in time to stop it.”

“I didn’t. Marat told me afterward, after Yuri died.”

“Why didn’t he want to bomb Wall Street?”

“He had bigger plans. Bombs would distract from the bootlegging plan.”

“Good luck, Fern. Safe passage to Bermuda.” Bell shook her hand, dodged her kiss, and ran down the gangway.

“Cast off.”

•   •   •

THE VAN DORN EXPRESS CRUISER Marion was ten miles up the Northeast Providence Channel, with Nassau and New Providence Island twenty minutes in her wake, when James Dashwood saw the gale-warning flag lowered from Fort Fincastle. A red flag with a black square in its center took its place.

Dashwood hurried to the cable office to warn Isaac Bell that a hurricane was approaching The Bahamas. But, as he had feared, remote Harbour Island had neither cable nor radiotelegraph. His friends might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

39

“BOSS MAN, HE GO TO RUM ROW.”

The Harbour Islanders who had been rolling gasoline barrels off a sailboat onto the Dunmore Town dock had stopped work to catch Marion’s mooring lines when the big cruiser rumbled into the harbor.

The tiny town occupied a low, narrow spit of land between the lagoon and ocean. Offshore, Atlantic combers pounded the fringing reef. But the sheltered waters inside the reef, where Bell had hoped to see the tanker looming above the shingled cottages, held not a single ship.

Marat Zolner had chosen well. The tiny shipbuilding harbor was both remote and cut off from the world. A four-masted schooner was under construction on shipyard ways, and the British Union Jack flew above a modest wood-frame government building, next to which ground had been broken to build another. But there was no radio tower, which made Dunmore Town not only remote but as cut off from the world as it had been in pirate times.

The Sandra T. Congdon had weighed anchor two days earlier, the islanders said.

Bell looked at Tobin and shook his head. “Making twelve knots,