Текст книги "The Bootlegger"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Justin Scott
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

13

Pauline Grandzau trotted briskly down the Nieuw Amsterdam’s gangway, carrying her bag in one hand and Isaac’s Marconigram in the other. She deciphered the Van Dorn code in her head.

Isaac’s last query was the easiest.

HOW DID KOZLOV RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES?

Steamer ticket and false passport, if he had the means. Or try to snag a berth as a sailor and desert when the ship landed, which was difficult with tens of thousands of merchant seamen on the beach waiting for shipping to recover from the end of the war. Or, if Herr Kozlov was especially valuable to the Communist Party, then passage would be arranged by the Comintern Maritime Section, which not only organized seamen’s mutinies but used their network to move Communist agents around the world disguised as ships’ officers and seamen. Kozlov’s execution by Genickschusssuggested that he could have been that valuable, an operative who knew too much to be allowed to talk.

“Red Scare deported to Germany” and “Kozlov associates?” were matters that she had to address, gingerly and face-to-face, with her contacts in the police and the Foreign Service. A copy of the Marconigram was waiting with her steamer trunk, courtesy of the Holland America Line’s chief purser, which showed her exactly how important Isaac thought this Kozlov was. She would find a third copy at the office.

She took the train to Amsterdam, and on to Berlin, and arrived in Germany’s capital as night fell. Outside the railroad station, she found the streets of the government districts in Tiergarten and Mitte blocked by thousands of boys singing the “Internationale” and chanting, “Up and do battle! Up and do battle!”

Tense security police were guarding banks, newspaper offices, and public buildings.

Searchlights played across the façades. Armed bicyclists patrolled the streets in the uniform of the anti-Communist Freikorps. Headlines on news kiosks shrilled the battle cries, and fears, of the political factions vying for power in post-war Germany:

COMMUNISTS TO DYNAMITE MONUMENTS

ULTRA-REACTIONARY ARMY OFFICERS TO LAUNCH COUP

BOLSHEVIKS BURN BOURGEOISIE NEWSPAPERS

FREIKORPS COMMANDEER POLICE

REDS HIDE RIFLES IN MINE SHAFTS

Provocateurs abounded. There was unrest in Saxony, open rebellion in the city of Halle, and in Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, rumor that the Communists would hoist the red flag over the shipyards.

Pauline gave up trying to get to her office and retreated to the train station to telephone central police headquarters. All lines were busy. Back outside, the streetcars and trams had stopped running. She refused to be stymied. Berlin was her city, and she was proud to know every neighborhood and nearly every street. She had had the briefest apprenticeship of any Van Dorn field chief, but she had observed her mentor, Art Curtis, in action and had learned by his example to cultivate friends in places both high and low.

She waded through the crowds, racking her brain for whom among her network of friends and informants in government, business, the military, police, and criminals could help her find at least the beginning of Kozlov’s trail.

She cut down to the Unter den Linden and walked a mile on the boulevard through thickening crowds. The police headquarters at Alexanderplatz was surrounded by poor and chaotic neighborhoods fought over by Reds and anti-Communists. The building looked under siege behind a wall of Freikorps trucks and police armored cars parked around it end to end.

She hurried back to the train station to send telegrams to her police contacts. Thankfully, the telegraph was working. But only one friend wired back.

PRATER.

She walked as fast as she could to the Prater Garten, a beer garden set under chestnut trees in Prenzlauer Berg. It was just far enough beyond Mitte to offer sanctuary from the tumult shaking the center of the city. Klaxons could be heard faintly, accompanied by a rumble of armored car engines, but at least the demonstrations and fights were too far off to be seen.

She spied a cadaverous man at a table under the trees and took a chair across from him. He had been the powerful Kommandeur of Berlin’s center Polizeigruppen until he resisted Freikorps demands. Desperate to regain his power, he was hungry for information. Give,Isaac Bell had taught her, and you shall receive.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

He eyed her bleakly and puffed smoke from a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Finally, he muttered, “The worst part of being demoted into semi-retirement is that beautiful private detectives no longer call on me for favors.”

“This must come as a great relief to your wife.”

Fritz Richter laughed out loud. “Pauline, Pauline, you always did brighten the day.”

Pauline answered him formally. “You will please remember, Herr Polizeikommandeur, that I asked for information – not favors – and I always give you information back.”

“It’s been too long a time, Fräulein Privatdetektive.”

“I’m home from the United States only this evening. You are the first old acquaintance I have called on.”

“Go back, is my advice. Make a new life in a new country. Our Germany is exploding again.”

“I don’t want a new country.”

“There’s a new one coming whether you want it or not. Our warring Nationalists and Communists and Social Democrats and National Socialists and Freikorps and Red Hundreds – a plague on all their houses – are not fighting for their supposed ideals. They are fighting for the spoils of the World War.”

“Our chief investigator told me that not ten days ago in New York.”

“How unusual. I don’t think of Americans as taking the long view. Did he tell you, too, that the winner – the best organized and most ruthless – will dictate the future of ordinary people who are trying to avoid the fight?”

“Semi-retirement has brought out the gloomy philosopher in you.”

“There will be no gracious winners, no knights in shining armor.” He signaled the waiter. “May I buy you beer, young lady?”

“No. Let Van Dorn pay.” She ordered beer and, suddenly realizing she was starving: “I haven’t eaten all day. Will you join me?”

Richter nodded and lit a new cigarette from the ember of the old. He wouldn’t eat but she ordered anyway. “Weisswurst.”

Richter raised his glass. “Prost!”

“Cheers! I’m tracking a man named Johann Kozlov who was deported last year by the Americans. He made his way back to America, where he was shot in the Cheka way.”

“Comintern. Yes?”

“I would say, yes. Who can I talk to?”

He eyed her appraisingly. “What is it worth to you?”

She returned a look that put Fritz Richter in mind of an alpine blizzard. “If I would not sleep with an important police commander for information, why would I sleep with a demoted, semi-retired old lecher?”

Before he could think of an answer, she broke into a smile that left him no choice but to smile back, duck his head, and murmur, “You can’t blame an old lecher for trying.”

Which led to an introduction to someone she did not know at the Foreign Office.

* * *

At Bellevue Hospital, Isaac Bell found Joseph Van Dorn propped up on pillows and gazing expectantly at the door. He had a week’s growth of new beard on his cheeks, which made him look a little healthier. His eyes were clearer but hardly piercing, and Bell had to work hard to put a smile on his face. The founder of the Van Dorn Detective Agency looked old and very, very tired.

“There you are,” Van Dorn whispered.

“Came as soon as they let me. How are you?”

Dorothy Van Dorn and David Novicki were hovering. Novicki said, “I was just entertaining our pal here with tales of my retirement, wasn’t I, Joe? ‘Barnacle Bill’ is home from the sea. Joe won’t believe that I was driving a trolley on Long Island.”

Van Dorn whispered, “Passengers have no idea what a hand they have at the helm.”

“Trolley went bust,” says Novicki. “I’m going to drive a taxi.”

“Dorothy,” Van Dorn whispered. “Why don’t you and Dave grab yourself some lunch. I need to talk with Isaac.”

“Not too much,” she said.

“We’ll behave ourselves. Don’t you worry.”

Dorothy kissed him on the forehead and leveled her silvery gray eyes on Bell. “Go easy. He’s not out of the woods yet. But he’s been clamoring to see you.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tire him.”

Van Dorn waited until his wife and friend were out the door. Then he asked Bell in a hoarse whisper, “How’s it going in Detroit?”

“Worse than we thought.”

Bell explained that the entire field office was being undermined by corruption, including the supposedly loyal detective Van Dorn had put in charge.

“We have to clear ’em out and rebuild from scratch.”

“Send Kansas City Eddie Edwards,” Van Dorn replied in a voice so low Bell could barely hear. “He’ll straighten them out.”

“Eddie’s not getting any younger,” said Bell. “And Detroit’s getting tougher. I sent Texas Walt.”

“Hatfield? Isn’t he out west, making moving pictures?”

“Walt’s taking time off.”

“I hope he hasn’t gone soft. All that Hollywood high living.”

“If Walt’s gone soft, it doesn’t show.”

Van Dorn closed his eyes. He lay silent, his chest barely moving with his breath. When he finally opened his eyes again, Bell said, “I do have better news about Protective Services.”

“What’s that?”

“Darnedest thing, but when the word got out that Clayton and Ellis were let go, our hotel dicks took notice all around the country.”

“How do you know?”

“I sent agents disguised as bootleggers to offer bribes.”

“Good for you!”

“The boys told them to get lost. Several were so emphatic, they threw punches.”

“That is a great relief. How are we doing with the Coast Guard?”

“I’m sorry, Joe. They canceled the contract.”

“Damnation!” Van Dorn erupted, which set him to coughing. Bell held a handkerchief for him and then gave him water. Van Dorn caught his breath. “I was really hoping we could parley new government work out of that. I got shot andlost the client. No justice in the world.”

Bell was relieved to see a wry smile on Van Dorn’s bristly cheeks. He said, “I’ll try and learn what our chances are when I finally get through to the Coast Guard chief of staff.”

“O.K…. How are we doing with the gang who shot up the cutter?”

“One of them showed up at Roosevelt Hospital, wounded. Before I could interview him, someone killed him.”

Van Dorn whispered, “What for?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they thought you were dead and they’d be facing murder charges if they didn’t kill the witness. At any rate, I almost caught the guy who shot him, but I lost him. I doubt I’d recognize him if he walked in the door. But we got the dead man’s name. Alien radical, deported to Germany, sneaked back in. I have Pauline working on who his friends were over there.”

“That’s a good start.”

“I am hoping you can help me, hoping you might remember a little more.”

“Shoot,” Van Dorn said weakly.

“The Coast Guard still won’t talk to me. So all I know about what happened out there is secondhand from the harbor cops. And the harbor’s boiling with rumors. What do you remember about a black boat?”

“It was going like a bat out of hell. Fastest boat I ever saw, Isaac. Had to be doing fifty miles an hour. It had a Lewis gun and a fellow who knew how to use it. And it was armored.”

“An armored speedboat?”

“Bulletproof glass in the windshield, too. I thought for sure I’d nailed him. Bullets bounced off it like rain. The only men I hit were on the other boat. The taxi.”

“Was the black boat guarding the taxi?”

“That was certainly the effect. Here’s the thing, Isaac.” Van Dorn sat up taller, his eyes glowing.

“Take it easy. Talk slowly. Don’t push yourself. O.K.?”

“O.K.,” Van Dorn whispered. “Here’s the situation. My head’s clearing, and I’m remembering that was one heck of a gun battle.”

“Machine guns and armor… I should say so.”

Van Dorn waved for silence. “I’ve been in plenty scraps, but not like that one. I thought I was back in Panama. Do you know what I mean?”

Bell nodded. Decades ago, as a young U.S. Marine, Joe Van Dorn had landed on the Isthmus in the middle of a revolution.

“Those boys on the black boat knew their business. They used their speed to hold an angle of engagement the Coasties couldn’t cover with their cannon. They’d been to war before.”

14

As Newtown Storms had predicted to Marat Zolner, the stock market began to move up.

“I can’t promise every week will be as exciting as this one, Prince André,” Storms told him on the telephone. “We were especially fortunate with a New York Central offering. The firm had an inside track, shall we say. Your ten thousand dollars is now worth twenty.”

“I need ten thousand of it immediately,” said Zolner.

“May I strongly counsel, Your Highness, that you plow this windfall back into your account? I see new opportunities every day.”

“I see one, too,” said Zolner. “Fern will pick up the money this afternoon.”

That evening, Marat Zolner took the ten thousand to the Bronx and paid the owner of Morrison Motor Express for a controlling interest in a fleet of seven-and-a-half-ton Mack AC “Bulldog” trucks. He dispatched four of the sturdy, slope-nosed, long-haul vehicles three hundred fifty miles to Champlain, New York, on the Canadian border.

Zolner gave command of the convoy to the powerfully built and aptly nicknamed Trucks O’Neal. Next to each driver rode a guard armed with cash for the booze, the names of the customs agents to pay off, and a Thompson submachine gun to either defend the convoy or, if they ran into a New York – bound shipment, cut short the two-day trip to Canada and hijack it.

* * *

Despite, or because of, an introduction by retired police commander Richter, the Foreign Service secretary did not invite Pauline Grandzau to his office. Pauline suggested they meet at the Kronprinzenpalais, where the National Gallery had created a wonderful new museum for modern art.

“That would be splendid,” he said, his genuine enthusiasm reminding her that for anyone who loved painting and sculpture and film, it was a magnificent time to be alive in Germany. For artists, the past was over and the future gleamed.

They made eye contact in the bustling front hall – he as handsome as Richter had promised her, she as striking as Richter had promised him – and he followed Pauline upstairs to the top floor, which housed a temporary collection. They wandered separately until, as if by chance, both were standing in front of an exciting Hannah Höch collage, a photo montage, with a title that made it hard to dismiss the violence in the streets.

Pauline read the title aloud, couching it as a question: “‘Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany’?”

“Tongue in cheek?” the Foreign Service man asked.

“Let us hope.”

Side by side, they continued in low tones.

“We had Kozlov watched from the moment we stamped his passport.”

“Is he Comintern?”

The secretary answered that nothing in the Foreign Service files had indicated whether Kozlov served the Russian Comintern. But all in his department agreed that the newly returned emigrant would be a fount of up-to-date information about radicals in the United States and therefore a potential agent to be smuggled back in.

“We asked who would approach him, this revolutionary who knew America. It did not take long. They met at the zoo. The agent’s name was Valtin.”

“Is Valtin Comintern?”

“Of course.”

“Where did they go? What did they do?”

The reply was neutral, his voice and expression bland. “The security police made a fateful decision to watch but not intervene. They were hoping, I suppose, to arrest not just two men but an entire network. Thus when they lost track of Kozlov, they lost Valtin, too.”

* * *

The sweepers were out in force, cleaning the streets of every sign of the demonstrations and marches around Alexanderplatz, when Pauline called on an old friend in the security police. They went out for coffee and pastry.

“You know I can’t talk about this.”

“Of course you can’t,” she said. “But, I must ask you”—the clatter of china and silver in the busy confectionary ensured that even the couple holding hands at the next table could not hear them, but she lowered her voice anyway for dramatic effect—“is it true that Valtin and Kozlov escaped surveillance and disappeared?”

“Disappeared?” He sat up straight as a sword. “Is that what the Foreign Office told you? Pauline, how could you believe that for even a moment?”

“I did not think it likely. I imagined you let that story out to get them off your back.”

“You imagined correctly. We followed Kozlov’s and 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.”